Time to Rob the Vault
A sharp slash cut the air.
Laward carved a diagonal line across a Houndry member’s shoulder. There was no hesitation in the blow. Blood fountained up and painted his face, but he made no move to wipe away the crimson baptism.
The blade in his hand was a cheap Academy-issue longsword, the kind handed out as standard equipment. The hilt was stamped with his department and name, so he had wrapped it in bandages to hide the marks. A crude, unlovely weapon—and still more than enough to part flesh and snap bone.
A low hum answered him as light bloomed along the edge of his sword. A vivid red radiance sheathed only the cutting edge, a thin coat along the blade’s lip and nothing more.
Still can’t draw enough divine power to flood the whole blade, Daywin thought, watching from a rooftop with his chin resting on his hand. But coating just the edge like that is a smart way to work around it.
Knowing his own limits and choosing the best option anyway.
I’m starting to like him.
Laward reset his grip and lunged at another guildsman. He deflected an incoming spear with a glancing parry, accelerated, and in that same breath found the weapon’s blind spot. He dropped low, slipped into the opening, and drove the sword up in a rising cut that took the man through the neck. The severed head spun away in a clean arc.
…But the rest of them are adapting fast.
While Laward dealt with the lead fighter, the others closed in around him. The instant he sensed the threat at his back, one of them swung.
Light flared in Laward’s palm. From the moment the glow began to gather, Daywin knew which spell he was shaping—a low-tier holy art for blasting close-range enemies away. Standard kit for a Holy Knight. Rank: F.
Daywin had taught him that spell before Laward ever set foot in the Academy. It was treated as a basic technique because it could exert force without physical contact, but an F-Rank spell had hard limits. In short, it was weak. Used on an ordinary person, the best it could manage was a knockout.
Even so, Laward aimed the stun magic at empty space on his right—when the real threat was already behind him and closing. His stance was a mess. Fire a recoil-heavy spell without balance and it would throw him as hard as it threw the target. Or—
Or using the recoil was the point all along.
The blast went off. Laward shot the opposite way, to the left, and rolled out of the cut that would have taken his spine. He had judged the blade behind him impossible to block and turned a clumsy spell into a booster.
“Huh.”
Daywin had never taught him that. Pure instinct.
The man who had overcommitted his swing froze for a heartbeat. Laward closed the gap in that same heartbeat and drove the sword home.
“Ghk—!”
The remaining fighters filled in on either side. Laward fired the stun magic again—opposite his intended path—and the kick spun him hard. He had planned for that too. He rode the rotational force into a single sweeping cut.
A half-circle of steel. Two men folded at the waist as the red-hot edge of light sheared them clean through. One spinning slash, momentum-fed.
Laward found his balance and fixed his eyes on the last man standing. The moment both feet touched the ground, he chained the stun magic left, then right—zigzagging past the desperate swing of a blade—and opened the man’s gut. Dark blood ran down the sword until it soaked the bandaged hilt.
High above him, his halo flickered. Once. Twice. Still faint, still unstable—the dying pulse of a lightbulb about to go out. Laward himself seemed unaware of the ring of light over his head. He had eyes only for the enemies in front of him.
They died helplessly under his purifying rampage. Watching him, it was hard to say who the real monster was.
“A… a demon…”
“D-do something about that thing!”
Houndry’s men were not the only ones stunned. Even Marquis Fred’s soldiers stared at Laward’s movement in open horror. Marquis Fred himself stood with his mouth hanging open, unable to produce a sound.
Daywin Hasgard…
Minutes earlier the marquis had been treating Laward like a child. That attitude had flipped on a dime.
He’s using something like that as a limb…?
Laward’s concert of screams rolled on. While it did, I slipped into Houndry’s hideout like a shadow.
The corridors were empty, exactly as expected. Carelessly so—every last member had gone out to catch Laward. The shrieks and clash of steel from outside only deepened the silence within.
It had been a long time since I last played the game, but stepping inside the hideout brought the layout back in fragments. Second floor. Deepest room.
Karma’s chamber.
The door creaked open. The room did not match the man they called the master of the pleasure district. It was plain to the point of austerity—a battered desk with the paint peeling off, a faded gray carpet, a few candle stands on bare walls and not a single ornament. Everything he earned must have gone straight into the vault.
“Works for me.”
Because I was about to rob that vault.
I crossed to the blank stretch of wall behind the desk. I knew there was a hidden mechanism somewhere in the masonry; I just couldn’t remember which brick to press. For moments like this, there was only one tool worth using.
I summoned a spirit. The first buff I laid on it was heightened detection—the same magic I had used against Karma. The spirit drifted like a bee over a flower, circling one particular brick with pointed interest.
There.
I pressed it. The wall answered with a heavy clunk as the bricks rearranged themselves. “Figures.”
In the revealed hollow sat a massive safe. I took the key I had brought, fitted it, and turned. The door swung open with a ponderous sound.
The interior was the opposite of the barren room outside. It blazed. Gold bars, stacked in neat ranks—everything Karma had scraped together while ruling District 6’s nights. Funding to hunt the Death God Cult: solved.
Beside the gold, documents lay carefully ordered. Ledgers and rosters. A client list of everyone who had hired Houndry for dirty work—and, once I controlled the guild, a set of leashes I could yank. A few roughly handled scraps of paper peeked out among the neat stacks; those could wait. My business here was not finished.
“I’m sure of it… this vault had a second mechanism.”
In the game I had never been able to crack it—my stats fell short. Now, I could. The requirement was simple: the player’s—Laward’s—[Intelligence] stat had to clear a certain threshold. High enough Intelligence let you sense the faint mana circuits running through the vault’s interior and find the hidden switch. A high-Intelligence Laward. A bonus reward you only got by running him as a mage.
The problem was that I was the opposite of that—a Holy Knight built entirely around [Holy].
“Doesn’t mean there’s no way around it.”
I stretched out a hand. A light spirit spun around me, and I layered a new spell onto it: Intelligence boost. Four stacks. Stat buffs had durations, so they were never my mainstay—but for this, they were perfect.
The floor of the vault rose with a bright metallic click under the spirit’s touch.
“Finally get to open this one.”
I lifted the velvet box hidden beneath. Inside: a single ring set with a square-cut black gem, and beside it an envelope of the same black. I opened the envelope first. The sender was obvious at a glance—the Death God Cult. A commission they had sent to Karma. In my past life I hadn’t even known they were active at this stage. Now I had their trail.
Next, the ring.
A ring that twists the wearer’s mana wavelength to transform their appearance. The signature item of Karma, leader of Houndry. Unlike ordinary illusion magic, it can fool even detection spells.
A tool built for disguise. Exactly the kind of thing a criminal guild’s boss would carry. With this, I could be an Academy patron by day and Karma by night—perfectly split.
…Time to head for the alleys.
Part of me wanted to go through every scrap in the vault at leisure, but the timing I had set with Laward was closing in. I took the ring, the letter, and the ledgers, then shut the door. The gold bars weren’t going anywhere I could carry them tonight, and I would be coming back to this room anyway. Next time, I wouldn’t need to sneak in.
Lucia gripped her younger siblings’ hands, one in each of hers.
“Just a little longer.”
“Unnie, I’m scared…”
“Don’t look back. Keep your eyes front and run.”
District 6 was chaos. Houndry members fled screaming while the marquis’s soldiers hunted them down. Acrid smoke and the stench of blood choked the streets.
If we can just get clear of the pleasure district—
Lucia rounded an alley corner, gasping. And stopped.
“Huh…?”
A familiar silhouette cut into her vision. Even under the hood, the flash of red eyes seemed to have Daywin Hasgard’s name written across them.
Why is he here…
Her gaze shifted toward the alley where Laward was still on his rampage.
“Gyaaah!”
“S-save me!”
The bandaged-hilt swordsman was butchering Houndry’s men.
Laward, was it?
She had no idea how the top-ranked Sword Department underclassman had turned into a butcher—or why he was standing with the marquis and cutting down her own people—or who, in any of this, was in the right. Only one thing was clear.
Dangerous.
Daywin was on Houndry’s side of the line. He could get caught in the middle. That killer was moving toward him.
I have to stop this.
Daywin looked unguarded. Laward, by contrast, radiated a menace that outstripped even the old Karma.
“Unnie?”
Her sibling tugged her clothes with a trembling voice. Lucia bit her lip.
Daywin was strong. He would survive on his own. Right now, getting her siblings somewhere safe came first.
Think cold.
—Lucia’s here too, is she?
That voice rang through her skull. The Subjugation Festival. The duel between Karma and Daywin. She had been watching from the shadows then, too.
What was I doing?
Hiding. Hesitating. Forgetting the debt she owed. Daywin had been fighting Karma to cut the leash from her throat, and she had done nothing.
“I’m sorry.”
She pushed her siblings behind a nearby stack of barrels.
“Unnie has to go somewhere for a second. I’ll be right… back.”
“Unnie? Where are you going?”
“Stay here. Do not come out. No matter what.”
The moment they gave reluctant nods, Lucia spun and ran. She tore across the blood-soaked street, straight for Daywin—before Laward’s sword could reach the master she had sworn herself to. To protect him.
Laward spotted me and gave a small nod—the signal that it was time to move as we had rehearsed. I pushed through Houndry’s remaining men and faced him. He flicked the blood from his sword and reset his stance.
Then something slammed into the fight.
A figure leapt in and struck at Laward. It lasted only an instant, but the aim was perfect: the throat. A small, quick shadow. The person who stepped between us held an Academy-issue sword, same as Laward’s—snapped in half and used as a short blade.
“…Lucia?”
It was Lucia. A spectator had jumped the rail.
Laward caught her blade on reflex, then looked back and forth between the two of us with pure confusion—as if he could no longer tell which parts of this were real and which were the act.
Looking at me like that…
I don’t know either…?
Steel ground on steel as Lucia shoved harder, forcing a contest of strength.
“…Senior Lucia?”
“For the top-ranked underclassman to call me senior, you must not have been paying much attention to school life.”
“What are you talking about? You were the top-ranked student when you enrolled, Senior!”
Laward shoved her off and caught his breath.
“Senior—why are you coming at us from Houndry’s side?”
“None of your business.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been working under Karma?”
“I said it’s none of your business.”
“…Did your grades tank after enrollment because of Houndry?”
“……”
Ah.
I had a very bad feeling about this.
“Were they blackmailing you? Answer me! If that’s it, then I—!”
The scenario where Laward discovers Lucia’s identity and decides to save her. If this keeps going, it won’t diverge from the harem route at all—
“You—what?”
Lucia snorted.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
The third-year Sword Department student who always dozed off with a listless face—Lucia—had once been a genius, admitted to the Academy as the top of her class.
Laward, having chosen to gather information on why she changed, soon uncovered the truth.
District 6 of the marquis’s territory. The pleasure quarter.
“Hey, teach. You’re an adult. What kind of teacher drags his student to a place like this just because he’s drunk?”
“You little—! I’m the one who recommended you to the Academy! I pull you out of the slums and this is the gratitude I get—”
“Gratitude? Don’t know the word. My [Intelligence] is low.”
“…Yeah. I know that much…”
The teacher shook his head in resignation.
“Ah, right—Laward. Say hello. This is third-year Lucia. You know her face, don’t you? Well, of course you do… if I were a man, a face like Lucia’s would stick.”
Where the teacher pointed, Lucia’s face was waiting—the face of someone who wanted to hide from the shame of being found here by Laward.
“Teacher… you knew?”
“Hm? Of course I knew. I’m a regular. Come at this hour and Lucia’s waiting for me like she’s dying for it…”
“Lucia has never waited for anyone.”
Laward dumped the drunk teacher and went to her. He needed to know why she was in a place like this. When he pressed, she reluctantly told him everything—maybe because, against her will, she had started to hope. Depending on a junior, a younger boy. Ugly of her.
“I’ll help you.”
The words left Laward’s mouth the moment he heard her past.
“Don’t. It’s too dangerous.”
“Doesn’t matter. You don’t know until you try. Senior—I’ll get you out of here.”
At that, Lucia buried her face in both hands and bit her lip. She hated how easily a single sentence could move her. She hated how soft and weak she had become—but would Laward stay and look even at that ugly part of her?
“You’re the first person… who’s ever said that to me.”
“That kind of line.”
Lucia’s voice was flat and final. She glared at Laward as if the sight of him were repulsive.
“Who asked to hear it?”
Then she turned her head just enough to look at me.
“I don’t need your help, Laward.”