Iron Fist
When Bagan stepped out of the Demeca Guild, it was already late in the day. The sun had set, painting the sky a deep crimson. The despairing hue of the heavens and the unusually sparse foot traffic around the guild seemed to perfectly reflect Clorsus’s current situation.
On the other hand, Bagan—who could beat the man to death whenever he felt like it—stared at him without the slightest tension.
Perhaps because Bagan had only spoken words so far, nothing happened even after a decent amount of time passed. That was when Clorsus’s party members began whispering unpleasant things.
“Boss, if we all jump him at once, don’t you think we could win?”
They thought they were being quiet enough that Bagan wouldn’t hear, but his senses were far superior to an ordinary human’s. Their voices reached him as clearly as if they were speaking right beside him.
At his party member’s words, Clorsus snapped coldly.
“Shut your mouth… Even if dozens of you swarmed him, you couldn’t win. My instincts are screaming that at me.”
Clorsus trusted his instincts deeply. They were animalistic senses honed through years of adventuring, and they had never led him astray. Right now, those instincts weren’t simply warning him not to touch Bagan—they were screaming at him to run.
But even that was impossible. When the gap in strength was this overwhelming, running away wouldn’t even qualify as a proper escape.
Absolutely not.
The man had changed so drastically from their first meeting that it was almost baffling. Clorsus had once heard that truly powerful people hid their strength to avoid troublesome matters. That seemed to describe Bagan perfectly.
“I’m tired of wasting time, so I’ll ask you straight. You’re the one who put out the request, right?”
Bagan kindly gave the hesitant man an opening. His patience was reaching its limit. If Clorsus didn’t answer soon, something bad might happen. Sensing that, Clorsus finally opened his mouth.
“Well… the truth is…”
Clorsus couldn’t readily admit it. His indecisive attitude was obvious. Bagan slowly walked toward him.
Since the two had been standing off for quite a while, they were bound to draw attention even if the street wasn’t crowded. This was right in front of the Adventurer Guild, after all. Adventurers who recognized them couldn’t help but throw in a comment as they passed.
“Whoever wins, just finish it already!”
“Are they finally going at it again?”
Some seemed to have been hoping the spark from their previous encounter would eventually ignite into a proper brawl. They cheered the fight on.
As the crowd gradually swelled and the situation teetered on the edge of chaos, Clorsus finally spoke.
“I won’t apologize. I did my best too. It was all Papan’s personal decision. When he came to me saying he’d put out a request to assassinate you, I wanted to kill that bastard myself.”
What was this now? Bagan listened carefully to the new information.
“The truth is, after that first meeting I kept hating you, but I never planned to kill you. So I went back to the Flang gang that took the request, but they were already in prison.”
Clorsus was slowly losing his mind in the face of an impossible situation. His voice grew louder and louder as he desperately tried to make himself understood. It was a pathetic sight.
“So before today’s request, I even stopped by the prison. Papan had disappeared. To find him, I needed to see Flang. I tracked the guy down and tried to tell him to pay for his crimes.”
Clorsus’s tone grew increasingly haggard.
“But the Flang gang had all become cold corpses. In the end, I couldn’t find him either.”
It was the moment he began to suspect the world had gone mad.
“Who could’ve guessed Demeca’s prison would get raided? That’s how far the underworld’s reach extends. Even if you don’t kill me, I’m already a dead man. Papan’s definitely dead too. No matter how much I regret failing to control him, there’s nothing I can do about it now. What can you expect from a dead man?”
The underworld’s rule was that betrayal always carried a price. It seemed Flang had paid that price. The same went for Papan, that sewer rat.
(It’s the truth.)
“What cruel bastards,” Bagan muttered.
He couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for Clorsus, who had been thrust into an impossible situation. That didn’t mean he was going to forgive him, though. After all, the man had said himself that he wouldn’t apologize.
“Then I won’t kill you. Let’s just beat you until you’re on the verge of death. Your subordinate committed a crime, so you need to take responsibility.”
Clorsus tried everything he could to defuse the situation, desperately explaining how unfairly he had suffered. He hoped Bagan would at least acknowledge that much.
Yet when he looked up at Bagan’s demonic expression, only one thought came to mind.
He’s definitely insane.
And so Bagan showed Clorsus the taste of a mana-infused fist.
It was getting hard to tell who the real Iron Fist was.
Thud!Thud!
Clorsus had been confident in the toughness of his body. He had even predicted the beating and poured aura into his physical reinforcement. It should have been enough to avoid fatal injury even if a blade struck him.
But Bagan’s fist, carrying both incredible speed and pure natural mana, pierced straight through that defense and delivered devastating power. Because he had judged Clorsus an evil man, the power of condemnation was mixed in as well.
Thump!
After just two punches, Clorsus collapsed unconscious. His party members, who had been standing nearby, were no exception.
Having apparently sold their loyalty somewhere, they watched their leader fall helplessly and tried to flee down the stairs like tumbling rocks. Bagan restrained them with Bind.
It was an attribute-less spell, but it was perfectly suited to their level—they couldn’t resist at all. The party members, now completely immobilized by mana-formed roots, watched Bagan slowly approach and made faces that looked like they were about to faint. Foam bubbled from their mouths.
“Ughkweeeek!”
The bizarre shriek came before Bagan’s fist could even reach their jaws. It sounded like an orc’s death rattle. The onlookers around them clutched their stomachs and fell over laughing.
“He said ‘Ughkweeeek’! Nice one, Bagan!”
The adventurers who had long been annoyed by the usually arrogant Iron Fist felt great satisfaction watching them receive their just punishment.
However, Bagan didn’t like the spectators either.
“Enjoying the show? You want to get beaten too?”
Thanks to that, every adventurer watching from the stairs quickly vanished.
Sally, who had been watching the whole scene, shook her head. She just hoped he wouldn’t actually kill them.
“Calling him a friend after seeing him once? Really?”
Bagan finished cleaning up the situation. He tied up all the collapsed Iron Fist members with Bind and gathered them in one place. To avoid causing trouble for the Adventurer Guild, he moved them to the side of the stairs.
Slap! Slap!
“Hey, hey, wake up!”
Bagan first woke Clorsus, who had taken two hits and passed out. Fortunately, his hand wasn’t coated with mana when he slapped the man’s cheeks. Seeing the foam at his mouth and the swollen, puffy areas, it was clear the damage had been significant. Even though his eyes were open, he still couldn’t come to his senses. That said everything.
“Ugh, damn it. Heal!”
He even used healing magic on Clorsus. Healing magic was classified as high-level sorcery, not class magic, but it posed no difficulty for Bagan. Anyone else would have been shocked senseless by the sight, but Bagan paid it no mind and kept casting Heal until Clorsus regained consciousness.
He still had work for the man to do.
His personal stress relief was over. Now it was time to get to the main topic.
“Ughk!”
Clorsus, now awake, looked at Bagan.
“Is this hell?”
“Hell my ass! Idiot. You’re going to do a job for me.”
“…So you’re going to keep beating me, waking me up, and repeating the process until I die.”
Clorsus’s attitude had grown so stupid that Bagan wondered if he had hit him too hard. He glanced at his own fist, then raised the corners of his mouth in a wide grin, thinking of it as the fist of justice.
“You practically live at the guild when you’ve got nothing to do, right?”
He didn’t actually live there, but Bagan had seen him reserve the table right in front of Rina—the guild’s idol and mascot—every time, eating and chatting with her. He was clearly trying to hit on her.
“Looks like you’ll have something to do soon.”
“Did you really get hit so hard you turned stupid? Or do you need more?”
“No. I’ll do it. What’s the job?”
Clorsus, who had tucked his tail between his legs the moment he realized he wouldn’t be killed, obediently listened.
“Stay there and watch carefully. Then, whenever adventurers come by the guild, pick fights with any of them who have strange tattoos. Just like you did to me.”
Just like he had done to him. That was what Clorsus was best at, and he was the only one Bagan considered suitable for the role. He would probably find it strange that Bagan was giving him a task so similar to his usual behavior.
“So what are you trying to get out of this?”
“I want to see their reaction. You said you don’t want to die, right? The underworld executives don’t show any signs during public activities, so they’re hard to find. That’s why trash like you needs to appear and rub them the wrong way.”
That was exactly why the underworld had been able to last so long. They maintained a trustworthy, benevolent public image while secretly ruling the criminal world from the shadows.
“Adventurers don’t hold back, so we just need to find the ones who are desperately trying to endure, right?”
Bagan smiled at the man who was finally starting to understand.
“Exactly. And like I said, don’t go too crazy and get yourself killed. Just memorize their faces.”
Clorsus nodded, indicating he understood the mission. At the same time, his party members, who had slowly regained their senses near the gates of hell, looked at Bagan and gasped.
“Huk! Is this hell?!”
“Did these bastards all take drugs together?”
Bagan released his intimidating aura once more and spoke.
“Enough. If it looks like this guy is about to die while picking fights, help him out. You can hear the details from him.”
Bagan pointed at Clorsus, then turned and left. The sight of the group tied up with Bind, watching his back as he descended the stairs, was utterly miserable.
“U-um… aren’t you going to undo this?”
Bagan paused at the bottom of the stairs. He had clearly heard the question, but going back up felt awkward. He could have simply released the mana, but for some reason the sight of them irritated him.
“I don’t know. It’ll come undone eventually.”
Those words became reality. For a full three hours, Clorsus and his party members remained bound on their knees on the Adventurer Guild stairs, becoming a spectacle for everyone to see.
Afterward, as Bagan returned from the guild to the inn, he thought about what would happen next.
If I take care of Demeca’s underworld, the slave market should calm down a bit too.
He wasn’t particularly angry about becoming a target for assassination. No matter who came after him, he was confident he could handle it. Even if his swordsmanship was lacking, his magical ability had reached the 9th circle. Thanks to Sally, his ability to deal with evil beings was also perfect.
Bagan was confident no one could defeat him, but the dark side of the slave market wasn’t a problem that would end so simply.
“In the end, I still need to find Drake.”
Bagan entered his inn room, sat on the bed, and looked at Sally.
“After you catch Drake?” Sally asked, curious about his next move.
“If I tear down the organizations connected to him one by one, the merchant who controls the slave market will eventually reveal himself. I only know he’s in the Sog Kingdom—nothing else.”
“Why are you trying to free the slaves?”
Because that’s what he had always done. While playing the game, Bagan had enjoyed freeing slaves in most of his playthroughs. Perhaps it was because he was a modern person that he felt such strong aversion to it. In any case, he was simply repeating what he had always done.
But he couldn’t tell Sally that.
She wouldn’t believe me.
Would she believe he had come from another world? Bagan shook his head and offered a different excuse.
“The slave system isn’t entirely bad, but I still feel repulsed by the idea of intelligent beings treating other intelligent beings that way. Besides, the kingdoms where people actually suffer from it are working to abolish the system.”
“The logic that the strong take from the weak is only natural,” Sally countered, bringing up the law of the jungle.
Bagan gave her an analogy she could understand.
“Think of a spirit mage treating spirits however they want. That isn’t the law of the jungle. It’s pure coercion.”
“When you put it that way, I can relate.”
“I think it’s right to exchange fair compensation for labor, but the slave system isn’t like that.”
“Now that I hear it, it does seem like an unfair system.”
Sally flipped through a book about the origins of slavery while listening to Bagan’s explanation.
“That’s why I want to give everyone the chance to live for themselves. Especially those who had their freedom stolen from the moment they were born.”
With those words, Bagan lay down on the bed.
“Good night.”
Sally opened a book to read and spoke to him. Bagan fell asleep, lulled by her beautiful voice that sounded like a lullaby.