Playing with Fire
Do you remember them?
Baron Olamo Gatria.
Baron Chirmoin Nowin.
Baron Rasel Onria.
And Count Wendel Borsha… along with Viscount Tuiln Anverse, who died on Limon's blade.
Yes. The fathers of Kendrick's little gang — and the ones Leon had fleeced for an absolutely staggering sum of money.
Which was precisely why they nursed a black, bottomless grudge against him. Leon, for his part, didn't think much of them either.
Perhaps that was why, while turning over his plans for the Full Moon Auction, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
Isn't there some way to screw these bastards over?
Would the hatred they held for him really wash away with time?
If they were going to become obstacles one way or another down the line, wouldn't it be smarter to crush them in advance?
……Should I just set their houses on fire?
"Oh. Not bad."
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiing—!!!
The entire 4th District was swallowed by a blaring alarm.
Sound-magic tools installed throughout the district — devices that ordinarily drifted out music — now poured out warning bells at maximum volume.
Citizens mid-dinner, mid-conversation with family, mid-evening with lovers, mid-sleep — people living out their own quiet hours — jolted upright and poured into the streets as one.
An alarm meant something had gone spectacularly to hell.
That single fact alone was enough. The citizens each acted as they saw fit.
This world's disaster-evacuation manuals were nowhere near as thorough as those of modern Earth. There were no prepared bomb shelters, no designated refuge points for civilians.
People simply had to dodge whatever disaster came for them however they could — until the Imperial House resolved the situation.
Papapat—!
Leon worked his feet to the alarm hammering against his eardrums.
———!!!
Right on his heels came a thoroughly enraged Hwasinjo. The beast's roar shredded the alarm in a single stroke.
Every so often Leon pulled an elixir from his bundle and tossed it back, stoking the creature's fury higher.
Kwaaaaaaah—!
A wave of searing heat rolled up his back.
"Whoops."
Leon spun lightly aside, slipping the flame the Hwasinjo had spat. The street trees that caught it instead blackened in an instant.
Kuwaaaaaah!
This time a low-rolling tide of fire swept across the ground.
Leon lofted himself high, releasing mana to hang in the air a few extra seconds. The sheet of flame melted nothing but a stretch of innocent sidewalk.
And so it went — the Hwasinjo hunting, Leon dodging and fleeing.
True to those vast wings and that crushing aura, the Hwasinjo was fast. It tore through the sky at a terrifying clip, leaving red tracer lines in the air behind it.
But Leon was no slouch either.
He cut angles, twisted, wheeled. He modulated his speed, faked his timing, used the terrain. Sometimes the Heavenly Spirit Steps. Sometimes the Heavenly Escape Steps.
He worked the footwork like a man possessed, leisurely managing the distance, drawing the Hwasinjo exactly where he wanted it.
"……."
And in the middle of it, Leon felt a strange, rising exhilaration.
Running with half his life already on the table like this……
It felt as though the Heavenly Spirit Steps and the Heavenly Escape Steps were fusing into one. His martial understanding was rewriting itself by the second.
Was it because he was brushing the next realm?
Or because one slip would turn him into ash?
Or simply because his talent for stealth was so sharp that he was dissolving the Heavenly Escape Steps into the Heavenly Spirit Steps?
Every step he took fed the high. The footwork refined itself, advanced.
Paaaaang—!
Leon tore through the 4th District on a rush of pure, electric pleasure.
Less than two minutes into the chase, he reached his first destination — stop number one on the route he had mapped.
The 4th District. Home to the main estates of countless central noble houses.
And right in front of him stood the manor of the Onria family, headed by Baron Rasel.
Leon erased his presence even further and slipped into the grounds. Naturally, the Hwasinjo came with him.
Beyond the front courtyard, the main house and its outbuildings. A handful of knights and servants had come outside at the alarm, trying to make sense of the situation.
"Out of the way. Move."
Just as Leon muttered, they took one look at the Hwasinjo screaming toward the manor in a blind rage and scrambled backward in pure terror.
Even the knights charged with protecting the house fell back without a second's hesitation. Instinct told them this was nothing a human could face. The Hwasinjo's presence was that savage, that crushing.
The truth was that Leon was the madman here. Seeing a berserk Hwasinjo and reacting like that was the normal response.
Even so, he couldn't very well incinerate every innocent servant working the estate. Leon spread his senses and checked whether anyone remained inside the buildings.
Empty. Aside from the people already outside, everyone had likely fled to the family's internal safe house.
Confirmed. Without delay, Leon dove through a first-floor window of the nearest outbuilding.
Kwachang!
Glass shattered. A corridor opened. Leon sprinted straight through to the window on the far side.
And then—
Kwaaaaaaaaaaang—!!
The Hwasinjo that had been tailing him slammed into the outbuilding in a straight line.
The entire structure erupted in a roar of fire and force.
It came apart with almost insulting ease. Given the beast's bulk and power, an outbuilding was no more than a sandcastle a child had piled up.
—Puhahaha!
Leon laughed with pure delight and moved on to the next outbuilding.
In through a window. Walls and doors smashed open because he didn't know the interior layout. Out the opposite side.
He repeated the process, and boom after boom of fire and force kept erupting as the outbuildings blew apart one after another. The grounds looked as though they had taken an aerial bombardment.
— ……
The servants' faces, glimpsed outside, were blank with shock and hollow despair. They stood stunned before a feast of overwhelming, irresistible violence.
Of course, none of them noticed Leon darting around in front of the Hwasinjo. He was concealing his presence well, and the beast right behind him was so overwhelmingly present that it was all anyone could see.
Kwaaaaaaaaang! Kurrrrrrrrrr—!
At last even the main house went up in flames and collapsed. The entire Onria family estate was a sea of fire, a wasteland of rubble.
Damage so catastrophic the family's fortunes didn't just tilt — they dropped vertically off a cliff.
"Good boy, my little firebird. You're gorgeous. Let's go hit a few more just like this."
Leon tossed it another elixir and moved on.
Next up: the Gatria barony.
Meanwhile.
3rd District. The Borsha family mansion.
Five men sat around a table laid for an evening banquet, each with a glass in hand.
One of them — Raul Crusif — spoke.
"Thank you all for taking the time to hear me out at such length. I hope I haven't bored you too badly."
Count Wendel answered.
"Not at all. Your business proposal was most impressive. I shall give it serious consideration."
Baron Olamo, Baron Chirmoin, and Baron Rasel offered similar replies.
"I'm most grateful to hear it."
Raul surveyed the room, then smiled thinly.
"……Then let us set the business talk aside for now."
"……."
The men's eyes shifted.
Raul let the silence hang a beat, then opened his mouth.
"Something happened not long ago. This was while I was still on the eastern front. I had an adjutant I was rather fond of. Her name was… yes, Mary. A young woman named Mary. Common-born, but sharp and diligent, so I treated her quite warmly."
"……."
It was an abrupt story, but everyone listened in silence.
"One day a tip came in. Suspicion that a kingdom spy had infiltrated one of the units under my command. I ordered an immediate investigation."
"And you failed to find the spy, I take it."
Count Wendel picked up the thread. Raul nodded.
"Just so. Every soldier in that unit had served long before I was appointed their commander, and though the circumstantial evidence was clear…… when we actually looked, no one stood out as particularly suspicious."
Raul continued.
"Ah, it was thoroughly unpleasant. So I thought: why not assign that unit an operation that had previously been rejected for being too dangerous? Because if they succeeded, the gains would be considerable — and if anyone came back alive, that person would be the spy. Of course, there were…… other 'minor reasons' as well."
A quiet current ran through the room. That was clearly not a normal line of thought.
In essence, he was saying he would wipe out an entire unit over a single spy. With a spy present, an operation that low-percentage would never succeed in the first place.
Raul was no fool, though. He had simply wanted that unit replaced for reasons of his own.
"That was the first time Mary voiced a strong objection to me. ……Well. It wasn't accepted, and the operation went ahead. I rather regret not looking into her eyes at the time. As planned, the sole survivor of the unit was interrogated and confirmed as the spy."
Raul narrowed his eyes, as if reaching back into the past.
"A good deal of time passed after that…… and one evening, on my way home past a tavern, I ran into Mary dead drunk. She was a martial artist skilled enough to burn off alcohol at will, so seeing her like that meant she simply wanted to be drunk. She looked at my face and said, with a thick tongue—"
"……."
"'Commander, do you remember that unit from last year? The one you forced into an impossible operation.' I said I did, and she asked again. 'Do you regret that decision? Do you feel even a shred of guilt or pity?' When I told her I didn't understand what she meant, she burst into tears and started hurling abuse at me. Called me a demon wearing human skin, among other things……."
Cruelty surfaced in the slits of Raul's eyes.
"As it turned out, one of those unit members had been her lover. And that day happened to be the anniversary of his death. So I got to hear, at length, just how deeply Mary hated me. I was quite surprised. She had always shown me only the quiet, loyal face…… and all the while she had been carrying so much in her chest."
"……."
"There really is nothing more difficult than what people keep inside."
One of the barons asked,
"……What became of the adjutant?"
Raul's mouth twisted at the corner as he answered.
She came to share the same death anniversary as her lover, he said.
— ……
In the thickened atmosphere, Raul's voice settled over them again.
"It was chilling. What if I hadn't run into a drunk Mary that night? What if I had never heard what she was hiding? What if she had stayed at my side, nursing that grudge? I would have kept her as a trusted aide without the slightest idea. An aide who might slip poison into my cup or put a blade in my back at any moment."
Raul lowered his tone.
"I never trust anyone who has once bared their teeth. The same goes for anyone who opposes me. How could I trust someone who rolls over and shows their belly on the surface while sharpening a knife underneath?"
"I couldn't agree more."
The count and barons at the table knew exactly whom Raul was talking about. Their goals and purposes aligned with perfect clarity.
Raul studied their eyes. Finding the same look in every face, he wore an expression of satisfaction.
"Shall I tell you a little more of my story?"
But the moment the words left his mouth—
Wiiiiiiiiiiiiing—!!
A high-frequency wave of sound drove into every eardrum in the room.
Bang!
At the same instant the door flew open and the butler burst in.
"My deepest apologies! You must all evacuate at once!"
"What on earth is going on?"
"Never mind that for now — please, evacuate first……!"
Raul was the first to rise.
"Let us get ourselves to safety first. That is hardly an alarm one hears every day."
Count Wendel's judgment was just as swift.
"Agreed. Everyone, move."
Under the guidance of their escorts, they hurried toward the safe house.
And as they were descending underground—
Kuuuuuuuuung……!!!
The earth shuddered. A bone-chilling explosion rolled through the air.
"?!"
That close…… that was inside the family grounds?
It felt so near that Count Wendel's face went visibly rigid.
Then—
—Kwaaaaaaaaaaaang!!!
The blast closed in until it was right on top of them.
"What in the world……?"
Count Wendel couldn't hold it in. The words tore out of him in raw confusion.