54
I Killed the Demon King. It Was a Mistake.
Chapter 54
Men with hoods and clubs gathered in a secluded alley of Eastline.
"Is that it?"
A street vendor with bruises all over his eyes nodded frantically.
"Yes. That's right. That's the carriage. From that carriage, some monstrously strong woman threatened me... Urghk!"
Nixon punched the street vendor in the stomach.
"What? You got beaten by a woman and had all your goods stolen? Does that make any sense?"
"B-but she was really strong..."
Nixon dropped his cigarette and stomped on it.
"Go check who's in that carriage. If no one's there, smash everything."
"Yes, sir!"
The men spat on their hands and headed towards the carriage.
"Look around. Is anyone here?"
"Doesn't seem like there's anyone nearby."
"Check inside the carriage."
One of the men reached out to peek inside the carriage window.
Suddenly, the window opened and a gun barrel popped out.
"Huh?"
Bang!
The man's head disappeared completely as he took a shotgun blast to the forehead.
The guys scattered from the carriage like a flock of birds.
"G-gun!"
The carriage door opened, and a woman with eerie blue eyes stepped out.
It was Gloria.
Gloria walked out wearing a dark coat as black as night, holding a club in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other.
The street vendor pointed at Gloria with a trembling hand.
"Th-that's the woman."
Gloria blew out the gunpowder smoke from her shotgun.
"What are you waiting for? If you don't come, I'll come to you."
Nixon shouted.
"What are you doing?! It's just one woman!"
How could that be just a woman?
Isn't she a woman with a shotgun?
As the guys hesitated, Gloria made it easier for them to decide.
Gloria fired her gun at the only remaining streetlight in the alley.
Bang!
In an instant, everything went dark, and they couldn't see an inch in front of them.
"W-what?! Where... Ugh!"
Gloria dove deep into the confused bunch and swung her club.
"Where is she! Where did she go?!"
Darkness favors the few rather than the many.
When everyone around is an enemy, you don't need to distinguish between friend or foe - just beat them all indiscriminately.
And when you're out of breath, just hide in a corner to reload the shotgun and...
Bang! Bang!
Fire away.
"R-run away!"
Judging that they were no match here, the guys fled towards the light.
"You damn bastards!"
Nixon pulled out a revolver from his pocket.
Bang! Bang!
"Where are you?! Where the hell are you?!"
With Nixon's gunshots, the surroundings briefly lit up and darkened again, like a camera shutter going off.
Bang!
In Nixon's eyes, Gloria with her blue eerie aura was spotted.
She was smashing the heads of the fleeing underlings with her club.
"There she is!"
Nixon fired his gun at Gloria.
Bang!
"Ugh!"
But instead of Gloria, the bullet lodged in the neck of a fleeing underling.
Even a trained sniper can't hit a target in the dark.
Rationally, saving bullets would be the right choice, but Nixon wasn't trained enough to make such rational decisions in the heat of battle.
Nixon pulled the trigger again.
Bang!
Another flash of light.
Gloria was already in front of Nixon.
But she was too far for the club to reach, yet close enough for a bullet.
"Die!"
Nixon's last bullet headed towards Gloria.
Bang!
In the flash, Nixon could see Gloria's back.
He also saw the bullet hitting Gloria's back and ricocheting high into the sky.
She had hidden a steel plate in the back of her coat.
"What... Urghk!"
Thud!
Nixon lost consciousness from the heavy club digging into his temple.
***
Gloria caught her breath.
"The training was worth it."
To face 21 people alone.
Even though she hid in the darkness, facing 21 people alone was physically exhausting.
But perhaps thanks to Caesar's rigorous training, she had enough energy left to survey her surroundings after beating them all down.
At that moment, a man holding a gas lamp approached Gloria.
It was Caesar.
"Wow, that's impressive. I was going to help if it got tough, you know."
"As an Aura user, this much is basic, isn't it?"
Caesar stepped on Nixon with his foot while gazing intently at Gloria.
"Gloria. It's time for us to be honest, don't you think? Should there be secrets between master and disciple?"
"..."
Caesar used psychometry.
-Damn... I should have fought more moderately.
-Lord Caesar's intuition is godlike...
-But he won't know that I was a mafia.
-Even if I say I'm mafia, he wouldn't believe it. Then what should I say?
"You don't think I left you to fight Nixon's gang alone without knowing anything about you, do you? I know enough."
"...What do you know?"
"Are you daring to test your master? There's a limit to cuteness, you know."
Gloria gulped at Caesar's sharp tone.
"I hate being frustrated the most. Even if you turn out to be a serial killer or a psychopath, I'll understand. So spill it all out."
"...Really?"
"Were you really a serial killer?"
"No?! Of course not!"
"Then a psychopath?"
"I said no!"
"Then what is it? Are you a mafia or something?"
Gloria nodded slightly at Caesar's joke-filled sincerity.
"Yes. That's right."
***
Gloria had been curious since she was young.
At first, she wondered what the world was like beyond the stuffy mansion walls, and then she was curious about what the magic tower was like.
As Gloria grew taller and more mature, the size of her curiosity grew along with her.
Now, Gloria's curiosity, unsatisfied with Sapientia, turned towards Homigraph beyond the drawbridge.
-Are you that curious about Homigraph?
-Yes!
-Then let's go.
To be honest, Gloria's first impression of Homigraph wasn't great.
A gray world with less character than Sapientia.
What made that dark world even darker were the lifeless expressions of the people.
-Why do those people look so unhappy?
-Because they're poor, dear.
-Why are they poor?
-Everyone has their reasons. Just as the rich in this world have their reasons for being rich, they too have their reasons. The difference is that there are more poor people in this world.
Dad looked into Gloria's eyes and said,
-The reason I brought you here was to show you that everything you wear, drink, and enjoy could be desperate necessities for someone else. So always be grateful when you eat.
Looking back now, Gloria thinks her father's words were right.
But at the time, Gloria didn't think so.
-It's unfair.
-Hmm?
-I can eat whatever I want, but those people can't eat what they want. This isn't right.
She remembers her father telling her many things after that.
But none of it reached Gloria's ears.
Because all Gloria could see and hear were the disabled person with an amputated arm, the child begging in front of a carriage, and the beggars lying down covered with a single newspaper.
That day, Gloria awakened as an Aura user.
***
Gloria fidgeted with her fingers as she began to speak.
"After that, I pondered over 'Why are the people of Homigraph poor?' and 'Is there a way to save them?' But there was only one conclusion. It was to talk to those people directly. So I secretly crossed the wall into Homigraph and talked with the poor people."
"And then you found out that the reason for their unhappiness was the mafia?"
"That was the biggest cause."
The situation Gloria faced in Homigraph at that time was terrible.
The mafia ran rampant, harassing and extorting innocent citizens.
So she revealed her identity and reported to the police to deal with the mafia, and even told her father, but everyone just shook their heads, saying it wasn't something they could solve.
"So I decided to solve it myself. If I couldn't deal with all the mafia and save everyone, I thought I'd try to save the people I could protect with my own strength."
"Then why did you become a mafia? Didn't you end up becoming just like them?"
Gloria frowned and said,
"The organization I ran wasn't like that."
"Are you saying the mafia you ran was a good mafia? Explain properly."
Gloria thought for a moment before speaking.
"...Actually, I didn't intend to create a mafia. I was trying to form a vigilante group."
Gloria couldn't clean up all the mafia by herself.
Then, if the weak and vulnerable people united, wouldn't there be a way to respond to the mafia?
That's how the vigilante group started.
But someone started calling it a 'mafia,' and so the vigilante group Gloria ran ended up becoming a mafia.
"Then why did you set up a gambling den?"
"To employ people. I mainly hired vulnerable people like the disabled, single mothers, and children. And our main customers were the mafia."
"So you created a system where other mafia guys would lose all their money at the gambling den, and that money would go to the vulnerable?"
"Exactly."
"That's impressive."
This is sincere.
The idea itself is great, but the ability to put it into action is unbelievably amazing.
She must have been only 18 or 19 at the time.
"I started with a small trump card shop and expanded into various fields like horse racing and dog fighting. Of course, there was a lot of opposition in between, but thanks to the capable people who helped me, it was resolved more easily and quickly than I thought."
"How did you resolve it?"
"Since there's a limit to killing mafia members, we decided to differentiate our business from theirs. One way was to build trust with customers. We completely blocked the fraudulent gambling that was prevalent in most gambling dens and ran them cleanly."
"That way, many customers could play with peace of mind."
"Right. To be honest, the methods of the mafia at that time were dirty. They'd secretly tamper with roulette machines or do weird things like drugging racehorses. So the cleaner we ran the gambling den, the more word spread and we prospered quickly."
Gloria looked out the carriage window.
There was a gambling den, and in front of it was a guillotine that could cut off arms.
"That guillotine was placed there for that reason. Anyone who cheats, without exception, will have their arm cut off. Of course, most of them were mafia guys, and thanks to that, we could reduce the number of other mafia members."
"That's terrifying. Was it your idea?"
"No. That was my subordinates' idea."
Caesar suddenly felt something odd as he listened.
"But something's strange, wouldn't Viscount Bellum have known you were going out to Homigraph? You must have been incredibly busy running these gambling dens?"
Gloria let out a small sigh.
"Well, I thought I had fooled my dad well for the past 3 years."
"But that wasn't actually the case?"
"Right. Dad knew everything. That I was the boss of the Clown Family, that I ran gambling dens, and even that I was an Aura user. Everything."
"He knew all that and pretended not to know?"
"Yes. In fact, I was the one who was fooled. He told me at the last party. He said he knew I was running a mafia and was worried, so he secretly inserted his own people. Those capable subordinates I mentioned earlier were all people my father had sent."
"Huh."
Caesar could only laugh dryly.
To think that instead of trying to break Gloria's thoughts and ideologies, he decided to help her.
Hearing this, Viscount Bellum seems even more impressive than Gloria.
"Is this a case of 'no wise son under a loving father'? If it were me, I would have absolutely stopped it."
"...Dad was always like that. He let me do whatever I wanted. He's the kind of person who would pluck the stars from the sky if I asked. Especially if he thought what I was doing was right, he would support it even more actively."
It seems Viscount Bellum also saw Gloria's actions as right.
Although the method itself was radical and dangerous, in the end, it was about saving poor and troubled people.
That Viscount Bellum isn't normal either.
"So how are the gambling dens being operated now?"
"Actually, I've been preparing to disband since Lord Caesar killed Vito. So I've been splitting up the gambling dens and giving them one by one to people I trusted. But it turns out most of those trusted people were my dad's people."
"So you're saying all those gambling dens are now owned by Viscount Bellum."
"That's right. So I hear they're even enacting a law. All gambling dens must employ at least 50% 'disabled people', 'single mothers', and 'children'."
It seems the reason Viscount Bellum has been sticking close to Councilman Walterwood lately was because of this law issue.
Gloria smiled as if feeling relieved.
"This is the first time I've confided this to someone other than my dad. It feels better than I thought."
Caesar couldn't help but smile at Gloria's smile.
But he felt uneasy inside.
If Gloria had been running the mafia for bad reasons, he might have been able to let her go more easily when she was chosen as a saint.
But knowing that she was an endlessly good person, Caesar knew it would be extremely difficult to let Gloria go.
'This is troublesome.'
After all, Caesar is particularly weak against good people.