Don't They Usually Cut Off a Finger?
Don't they usually cut off at least one finger?
Bang—!
With a thunderous crash, the iron door of the Lowcat hideout was torn clean off its hinges. The door panel, hinges and all, went sailing through the air and slammed into the middle of the gambling table.
"Wh-what the hell!"
"Who the fuck is it!"
The guild members mid-card game shot to their feet in pure terror. As the dust cloud settled, a writhing mass of shadows could be seen beyond the shattered entrance.
"A pack of starving mongrels putting up a last-ditch fight…"
Recognizing the intruders at once, Lowcat's action captain sneered and snatched up an iron pipe.
"Hey, stomp 'em! Make sure they never walk again—"
But the captain's bellow never finished.
Whoosh—
At the front of the pack, Houndry's man A closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
Crunch!
His fist buried itself deep into the captain's solar plexus.
"Guh… hah…?"
The man's eyes rolled back as he coughed up blood. The force was beyond anything a human body should produce. His frame shot backward like a cannonball and bowled over three or four of his own men like pins.
"Wh-what?"
"That bastard… what kind of strength…!"
There was no time left for shock. Right on A's heels, the rest of the Houndry members poured in like a pack of starved dogs.
"Kill them all!"
Dark violet haze rose from their bodies—the blessing Daywin had bestowed. Drunk on that power, the members became berserkers who felt neither pain nor fear.
Snap!
Even an ordinary-looking guild member caught a swinging club bare-handed and crushed it to splinters. It was a one-sided massacre. The so-called elite of Lowcat, who had swaggered around District 6 as if they owned a piece of it, were swept away without putting up a real fight.
Into that bloody chaos walked a man in a spotless coat, utterly out of place on a battlefield reeking of blood. The new Karma. He strolled unhurriedly into the dust-choked interior of the hideout.
"Guhhh… s-spare…"
"Shut it!"
Thud!
A swung his fist again. He had one of the Lowcat members from the tavern pinned against the wall and was driving punch after punch into him. Cracks spidered across the wall; the man's face was already unrecognizable pulp. Still A did not stop. He seized the man by the hair and slammed his head into the wooden table beside them.
Crunch!
Daywin watched A for a moment and shook his head.
What's with him being so enthusiastic…? Did something bad happen to him today…?
Bang! Bang!
"You pieces of trash! You dare look down on Houndry? You dare doubt Lord Karma? Die! Die and apologize!"
Half-crazed, A stomped Lowcat members underfoot. Daywin briefly considered reining him in—
Eh, they're all the same garbage anyway.
Before long, several men were dragged out from the deeper rooms amid rough shouts.
"Urgh! L-let go! Let go of me!"
Lowcat's officers—and their boss. Their condition was pitiful. Expensive suits hung in tatters; faces were mottled with blood and bruises. Yet venom still burned in their eyes as they cursed and struggled.
"On your knees!"
A kicked the boss square in the balls.
Crack!
The man dropped instantly, knees giving out from the reflex. Even as he collapsed, legs useless, he kept his chin defiantly high.
"Ptoo!"
He spat a mouthful of bloody saliva at Daywin's feet.
"Houndry… you crazy bastards. You on something?"
"Hey. Watch your mouth."
A reached for the boss's hair, but Daywin raised a hand and stopped him.
"So you're the fifth? Looking like some girl."
The boss was remarkably cocky for a man in chains. Either he had something solid to lean on, or a backer more terrifying than Karma. The officers, by contrast, stayed unnaturally quiet—lips sealed, eyes averted.
Hmm.
Daywin studied those tightly shut mouths. Getting them open would take time. Torture was a craft, and craftsmen of that sort were more common in the cult. Hands clasped behind his back, he stepped closer to the kneeling boss, bent at the waist until their eyes met, and spoke the one thing he most wanted confirmed into the man's ear.
"The black envelope."
His voice dropped low.
"Have you ever received one?"
The boss's pupils contracted for an instant, then returned to normal.
"What kind of bullshit is that?"
He merely smirked.
Of course he might genuinely not know. The Death God Cult wouldn't have scattered commissions to every single outfit.
But that flicker just now belonged to a man who at least had a guess. Daywin stared at him a moment longer, then slowly straightened. Instead of pressing further or throwing a punch, he simply nodded.
"You don't know… is that it."
The man looked more unsettled by the mild reaction than by any threat. Normally, wasn't this the part where you started cutting off a finger or two?
Daywin gestured to A behind him.
"Drag them away."
Under ordinary circumstances the heads of rival crime guilds would have been snarling over each other's turf. Today they sat at the same table. Three guilds, excluding Houndry and Lowcat—the real powers who still split what remained of District 6.
"Lowcat got hit?"
One man slammed the table in disbelief. The subordinate who had brought the report nodded, face ashen.
"Thirty minutes… completely wiped out in thirty minutes."
A silence fell over the cramped private room as if ice water had been dumped on them all. Thirty minutes. An entire organization had vanished while people were still finishing dinner.
"Hmph. Those idiots got careless. Bunch of morons."
A man with his hat pulled low lit a cigar and snorted.
"They were the weakest of us!"
"Mm, true. And that fifth one, I hear he's a mage. Must've used some trick."
"Weren't those bastards down to less than a hundred already?"
The three bosses raised their voices one after another.
"If we join forces we top five hundred. More than Houndry at their peak. Sheer numbers'll crush any mage or whatever—"
"We?"
"Yeah… an alliance."
The boss with the snake tattoo stretched out a hand as if he had been waiting for exactly this.
"We hit them right away. I heard the fifth Karma's all pale and soft—not a single callus. Never held a blade in his life, from the look of him."
"Keh, some noble young master who ran away from home to play gangster."
The man in the hat exhaled smoke in agreement.
"Yeah, let's go!"
The last one simply looked vacant. From the swagger alone they already seemed ready to unify District 6.
Under the table, however, the scene was entirely different.
Rattle-rattle-rattle.
Snake Tattoo's legs shook nonstop like a sewing machine. The vibration traveled up the table and sent ripples across the surface of the liquor. He pinched his own thigh hard, trying to force the tremor down, but the instinctive terror would not obey. Across from him the other boss pretended to smoke at leisure, yet his cigar was already chewed ragged with tooth marks.
Lowcat got cleaned out in thirty minutes.
The fact stuck in their throats like a thorn. Those men had not been weak. If anything they had stood a half-step above the rest of them, never below. And they had been smashed without even a chance to resist.
Even weakened, Houndry is still Houndry. Karma is still Karma…
It was obvious Houndry was moving to reclaim District 6. The marquis's cleanup had meant nothing. Even with the lord's direct military intervention, they had only grown more vicious.
Mad dogs, pure and simple…
While they were still papering over fear with bluster—
Creeeak—
The iron door swung open with a sound that crawled up the spine. Silence swallowed the room. All three bosses turned their eyes toward the entrance at once.
From the darkness came the click of boot heels—measured, unhurried footsteps. The man who crossed the threshold was the very person they had just been laughing at and tearing apart.
"…!"
Snake Tattoo's mouth fell open. The cigar in the hat man's fingers dropped to the floor.
How?
How did he know this place?
What about the sentries?
The men stationed outside?
Frozen in shock and terror, they watched Daywin smile lightly, as if he had simply arrived on time for an appointment.
"Convenient, finding you all gathered in one place."
He stood with his back to the door and smiled brightly.
A few days later.
Marquis Fred's study.
"…"
He had seated me opposite him and then let a heavy silence stretch. Roughly five minutes passed before the marquis finally set down his teacup and spoke.
"You… you wouldn't happen to have some grievance against me, would you?"
Huh?
He summons me out of nowhere and the first thing he says is… completely out of left field.
"No? A grievance?"
I gave a small smile and shrugged.
"Nothing of the sort."
"Nothing… is that so."
The marquis clicked his tongue and stroked his chin.
"Think carefully. Not even a little?"
"Truly nothing."
His eyebrows twitched.
"If you have no grievance, then why are you doing this…?"
"Pardon?"
"The entire marquisate has reeked of blood for days! I can't even open a window! Complaints from the territory folk are pouring in like rain! Why did you suddenly start a massacre without so much as consulting me!"
He jabbed a finger at the mountain of documents stacked on his desk—every one of them a petition filed over the last three days. The contents were obvious even without reading.
"Massacre? That's rather overstated."
"You were the one who said we should leave the useful ones alive!"
That was only for Houndry. Whether the other guilds lived or died was none of my concern.
"There was… a reason for it."
"A reason, good. I've been dying of curiosity about that reason."
The marquis wiped sweat from his brow and lumbered closer with his heavy frame.
"The Death God Cult appears to have made contact with guilds in District 6 besides Houndry. I was looking for traces of them."
Whether it was the sudden return to the original purpose or something else, the heat slowly drained from the marquis's face.
"So you moved not as Karma, but as the Goddess's sword… is that it."
"Of course."
"And? Did you find anything? It's a relief, at least, that all that noisy floor-scraping wasn't simple power-grabbing. So—did you find it? The Death God Cult's tail."
"Unfortunately, no decisive clue yet."
"Mm… perhaps too much to hope for…"
Marquis Fred shook his head.
"Are you certain the Death God Cult is active? I'm beginning to wonder if it might be a misunderstanding. You've been set on hunting them from the start, but as far as anyone can tell the cult was already finished a hundred years ago…"
"I move by the Goddess's will. Are you doubting the Goddess?"
"That… no."
"The Death God Cult most certainly exists. I still don't know where that black envelope was sent from, but…"
A knock interrupted him. When the marquis called for entry, Lucia slipped carefully through the door. She approached me, whispered something close to my ear, then retreated backward out of the room.
"Daywin, what is it?"
"Forgive me. Where were we?"
"You said you didn't know where the black envelope had come from."
"Ah, yes. I still don't, but…"
A full week had passed since we rounded up every last boss. Today, one of them had finally opened his mouth.
"I've found out who else, besides Houndry, received a letter."