An Unsafe Safehouse
When the Adventurers' Association first stuck Milwi with the nickname the Interminable, the name had been soaked through with mockery.
She wasn't particularly strong, they sneered—just lucky enough to keep not dying. But not even the Adventurers' Guild could have guessed her lifeline would prove this stubborn.
"Mom, wake up!"
"Hhk—!"
She had survived assault after assault from every bounty hunter under the sun, and she was becoming genuinely, maddeningly interminable. Today, too, a heavy punch had come out of nowhere and smashed into her face, and she still wasn't dead. The brothers had shaken her right up to death's door, but she had come to before her neck could snap. Group bounty rank 29. The spectacular survival instinct of the woman who led the Milwi Human Trafficking Syndicate.
"Ugh. Damn it."
The moment she sat up, searing pain tore through her cervical spine. Her senses were wrong—sound wouldn't come in properly, and her vision was a blur. Even so, teeth clenched, she took stock of the situation with cold calm. First, she could hear her sons' voices calling for her, frantic and desperate.
"Mom!"
"Mooom!"
An attack. A sudden ambush. The intruder was only one person. And that was more than enough to overcome—because any moment now her sons would dye their skin purple and crush the enemy beneath muscles on the verge of bursting.
"My sons. Catch the enemy and kill them...."
The instant the order left her mouth, Milwi strained to turn her head. But her neck and spine had already been wrung out once like someone snapping a wet sheet, and no amount of effort was going to move them. She groaned and heaved for a long while, then finally gave up and opened her ears wide. If she couldn't see, she would grasp the situation by sound.
BANG!
A sound like a bomb going off, and then a rumbling collapse. From behind her came the crash of ornamental stones giving way, and in front of them sat a treasure chest. So it really was there!
"You bitch... you dare covet my treasure!"
But while Milwi was shouting, the brothers had groaned and gone down. The stones had collapsed because Lupin had shifted her footing and kicked off the wall. Unaware of how things had actually gone, Milwi kept blustering with full confidence.
"Kehehe. Go on, run for your life! Let's see how long you can keep running!!"
But she never heard the sound of her sons swinging their fists again. That was strange. Once the brothers started an attack, they threw a punch at least once every two seconds. Unease creeping in, Milwi writhed through the pain and forced her body hard onto its side, desperate to see with her own eyes what was happening.
WHOOSH! The fist had slowed considerably, but it still hit with terrifying force, caving Milwi's face in one more time. Hot liquid came flying on the wind and splattered across her face in heavy drops.
"Mom! I'm sorry!"
"Ugh. Ugh. Uuugh."
Once the fist passed, a single shape swam faintly through her vision, the whole world dyed red.
".......khk?"
It was her son, his face crushed in, purple blood streaming down. The liquid that had poured over Milwi began to trickle slowly along her face. Some of it caught on her eyebrows and fell, drop by drop. Purple blood, with a foul stench.
"Why... how?"
It was blood made by mixing human corpses with magical beasts—special blood, meant to animate test subjects born of forbidden arts. But Milwi wasn't startled by the color. She was the one who had bought the brothers, and the one who had raised them disguised as her own children.
"Why are they dead?"
It wasn't just one of them. The other specimen—the one who had driven a fist into Milwi's face—was bleeding out and dying as well. Otherwise there was no way she could still be alive after taking that punch. Unstable, still in the experimental stage, and yet they were specimens that could block most of an aura's influence. They had beaten back every ragtag nobody who swaggered in calling themselves an Aura User.
With no bounty hunters making it out alive, the rumors inside the Association had gradually swollen out of proportion. The Milwi Human Trafficking Syndicate—in truth, tremendous masters. Send stronger hunters. ...Still no good? The terrified Association had jacked the bounty higher and higher until it finally hit rank 29. That had been only a few months ago.
Where in the world had this bitch crawled out from? The Association's strongest asset? Or had the Empire Alliance finally lost patience with the disturbance on the frontier and sent the Rounds?
Damn it. I let my guard down.... She had walked in without a single weapon, nothing on her but one thin layer of clothing, reeking of liquor and grinning like a halfwit. Bitches with big tits and fat asses were mostly idiots, so of course Milwi had assumed this one was an idiot too. She had believed, rock-solid, that Vatslava—broken in by violence over a long, long time—would never betray her. In the end, it was a failure of insight.
THUD. A massive body dropped to the floor, and the ground shuddered. At last the remaining brother had fallen as well. Sensing the death closing in, Milwi shouted at the top of her lungs.
"You there! I know you're outside my line of sight! I've got a question! Let's talk!"
An irritated voice came from behind her.
"Ah. I've got a treasure chest to open."
A treasure chest? So she'd come for the money. Then at least she wasn't with the Empire. A hidden asset the Association had been concealing?
"Th-then we can talk from there!"
Click, click. The light sound of heels stopped behind Milwi's back.
"How did my sons end up like that?"
"Looks like they had a difference of opinion. They just started fighting each other all of a sudden?"
"I'm saying that couldn't just happen!"
"Guess they were stupid."
"Th-they do look stupid. But they're not stupid enough to hit their own side!"
"Huh. They were trying to hit me and ended up clocking each other in the jaw. If that isn't stupid, what is...."
So she had baited the punches and then dodged. Just how fast was she? The brothers' fists could change trajectory mid-flight and still land clean hits on a moving target. If they had misread her position badly enough to strike each other, she had to be at least Master-class.
"You... are you a Master?"
One who had mastered aura and leapt a full rank beyond—a Master. But Lupin didn't know this world's rules very well. All she could dredge up was a single phrase the syndicate members had spat out earlier.
"Not really sure. Your men were saying something about irregular whatever-aura."
Irregular Form! Utterly unlike Standard Form aura, which began with specializing in a single field of weaponry and advanced by climbing rank upon rank, this was the aura of those born with sheer, heaven-sent talent. If the Standard Form was a patient climb up a sloping mountain path, the Irregular Form was vaulting a sheer cliff in a single leap. One day, out of nowhere, the talent bloomed—and the talent that bloomed blew straight past the level of a Master. On top of that, the form of the aura was completely free. It could be shaped however one wished and used however one wished.
Properly refined, it became tremendous military power, which was why the Empire Alliance and the North Country—and even the Church—scoured the world for it with their eyes on fire.
"Where did a monster like this come from all of a sudden...!"
Step. Step. Lupin, having closed the distance completely, seized both sides of Milwi's face in a tight grip. Even she, who had been humoring the conversation only because she was standing in front of the treasure chest, couldn't wait any longer.
"Before you die, allow me to show you one amusing little trick."
To Lupin, criminals were no different from gnats. And she never let the ones that got a little too cocky die easily. She would pin them with tweezers if she had to—rip the head off, tear the legs apart, scorch the wings.
"The trick where your back becomes your chest!"
CRRRACK. Her head spun a hundred and eighty degrees until it was facing Lupin, and with that, the interminable Milwi Vladimirova was put down.
"This is better than the dove trick, isn't it?"
WHUMP. The boss's corpse, kicked by Lupin, flew off the sofa and tumbled into a tangle with the fallen brothers. Her thigh and one arm, grazed by those fists earlier, throbbed. If she ran into more bald bastards like that, it was going to be exhausting. She ought to spend a while handling aura and invest some Growth Values. It was the moment the great Lupin resolved to raise the Growth Values she actually needed for combat.
Lupin shuffled over and crouched in front of the second chest.
Bon appétit!
Unlike the first chest, which had held nothing but gold bars and blazed entirely gold, the second was packed with all kinds of gems and ornaments, pretty as looking up at the Milky Way. A few fakes had rusted, but most of the treasures still kept their glittering splendor intact. Then she found something welcome.
"I love you, my daughter Vava."
"A relic!"
Treasures found in Abandoned Chests fell into two kinds. One was growth currency that bound to Lupin the instant she acquired it, its very existence known to no one but her.
She already had mountains of the stuff, and there was no need to carry it around. So Lupin hardly paid it any mind. It felt like card points that piled up on their own even if she half forgot they existed.
The other kind was relics. Unlike growth currency, these actually existed in the world—and until today Lupin had been someone without aura, so even when she obtained a relic she couldn't use it. Hauling them off every time had been a chore in itself. A collector she knew kept an imperial hawk that picked them up for her, but that bird's mileage was dogshit. The shipping fees went insane right along with it, so sending them often was difficult.
But from now on, Lupin only had to open eight more Secret Chests to become a proud Aura User. A relic showed its true worth at the most unexpected moments, so she no longer had to send them to the collector! Unfortunately her aura was a pigeon, so relic weapons were still sealed. Still, being able to handle accessories was something. She ought to drop by the collector's sometime and test any relics she hadn't sold.
"Hm. Nothing else worth noting."
Done with her business, Lupin closed the treasure chest.
Secret Chest: 2 / ? (?%)
A satisfying rise of the counter, and her dopamine was fully charged. Light as air, Lupin stepped out of the boss's private room, innocently clutching a single gold bar to use as operating funds.
"...Huh?"
Peek. Peek. Among the corpses, a few syndicate members who weren't dead yet had only their heads barely poked out—and their eyes locked dead-on with Lupin's. They yanked their heads back in a flash. A completely meaningless gesture.
"What. You were alive."
Had the cleanup been half-finished because her spirit affinity was lacking? Either way, it worked out well for her. Through Vatslava today, one new article of common sense had settled into place. If you want to loot a Secret Chest, beat the hell out of the criminals!
"Now then. Anyone who knows where a treasure chest is—let's see those hands shoot up, nice and strong."
Hesitant, shuffling, the members glanced at one another. But not one of them could raise a hand with any confidence. Those who could still speak couldn't lift a hand. Those who could lift a hand didn't know a thing. And those who knew something were in no state to speak.
Barely five minutes since she had opened a treasure chest, and her patience was already worn thin. Lupin swung the gold bar back and forth.
"Whack-a-mole staaarts, and it doesn't stop until somebody talks."
