A Little More Chaos
“……Break through head-on, you say?”
It took Richt a long moment to wrinkle his brow and ask, and Arendt simply shrugged.
“There's not much choice, is there?”
“Hold on. That's fine for us. But what if these people get caught up in it?”
“That's exactly why. Once we settle things up top, they'll come straight back down here.”
Ryder pressed him in a somewhat heated tone, but Arendt continued on, unbothered.
“The state of this place makes it obvious they're people we couldn't handle with our own strength—they'll figure that out in a heartbeat. And if they take these people hostage then, we'll be completely helpless too.”
The enemies still believed them to be an ordinary band of mercenaries out on a jaunt with a useless playboy young master. It had never once crossed their minds that these were people who could smash through a wall barehanded, which was why they'd left them unwatched so carelessly.
That was precisely why Arendt had deliberately put on his whole act, letting himself be pummeled by fists that couldn't have hurt a fly.
The apprentice knight's eyes swept slowly over his party.
Eight knights counting himself—and with Saif added in, nine people capable of fighting. And then there were the twelve dead weights.
“That's why we—”
“Your mouth, watch your mouth!”
Arthur growled and swung a fist at the back of his head, but Arendt ducked out of the way with practiced ease, dodging the blow without any trouble.
“It'll be pure chaos outside by now, so if we ride on top of that, it'll work out somehow.”
Taking one long step back, Arendt turned his gaze toward the captives. The moment their eyes met his golden ones, the people flinched.
Cheese. His fine lips curved into a smile. Arthur and Richt, who recognized exactly what that smile meant, recoiled like men watching something they wished they could unsee.
That was the sign that this brat was about to do something terrible.
“Well, since it's come to this—let's feed the bastards a proper helping of payback.”
“P-payback…?”
The boy holding his little sister repeated his words like a man bewitched, and Arendt added lightly,
“Later, I'll let you smack your debt-ridden father across the back of the head too.”
Warmth slowly began to kindle in the boy's eyes, which had been dull and extinguished only moments before.
“Do you mean it?”
The others were just the same. The people who had lain there limp and listless were gradually coming back to life.
All it took was a few words.
Watching their morale return, Arendt nodded with satisfaction.
“In that case, let's make this commotion we've started even louder. Loud enough for our comrades outside to hear.”
“……Haah. Fine, fine, let's do it.”
Glenn let out a long sigh, dragged a hand down his face, and ground his teeth together.
“It's come to this—what's there we can't do?!”
“Damn it all, let's smash the whole place to pieces!”
Watching from a distance as the knights whipped themselves into a frenzy out of sheer spite, Saif could do nothing but shudder uncontrollably.
Someone had once said that madness was contagious. His gut told him, strongly and unshakably, that this might be exactly what he was witnessing right now.
Arendt's orders followed.
“We move in three groups. One team escapes first, and the rest stay here to buy more time.”
“What? We're already short on fighting strength as it is—splitting up further is a bad idea, isn't it?”
“If we all clump together and wander around in this situation, that's even more conspicuous. And some of us have already had our faces shown around—we'd get spotted and surrounded in no time. Can you punch through an encirclement while hauling all of these people along with us?”
That much, at least, made sense.
After thinking for a moment, Arendt spoke again.
“Richt, you take Saif here and these people and head outside.”
“You want me to go outside?”
When Richt asked, slightly frowning, Arendt answered simply.
“Me, Senior Ryder, and Senior Glenn will draw everyone's eyes in the middle of the gambling den. In that gap, you move. Once we start hitting and smashing and raising hell, the customers will panic and try to run—you slip out among that crowd.”
“You said the exits would be blocked.”
“Then we break through. What's the problem? You're not going to tell me you can't handle a handful of mercenaries in a place like this, are you?”
“……”
Richt, who had been about to argue back, let out a strained groan and shut his mouth.
“Once you break out, take the people and run straight to wherever the Knight Commander is. Saif here knows all the shortcuts out of the territory, don't you, uncle?”
Arendt's gaze passed slowly over the people.
“The rest of us will search the underground. Ransack this room and that room, and something useful is bound to turn up.”
“Um… what exactly should we be looking for?”
A man who had been listening quietly raised one hand shyly and asked, and the answer came back curt and unfriendly.
“Anything works. Anything that can be used against those bastards once we're out in the world.”
“Excuse me?”
“Ledgers, slush funds, or famous recognizable faces who were sitting in the gambling den—I don't care which.”
In other words—
“Find me things to seize and hold over their heads. Anything will do.”
“……”
At the words, spat out without a shred of hesitation, the knights' expressions soured in an instant.
Just then, the boy raised his hand high.
“Yes, you. Something to say?”
“I know Merlin's office is somewhere in the underground.”
“Excellent information. You're far more useful than these uncles.”
When Arendt smirked, the boy sprang up from where he sat.
“Please let me help too. They forced me to help with the work a few times, so I know the layout roughly. I'm not sure where the office is, but…”
“That's plenty. Then you'll be our guide. Can you manage that?”
“Yes, I can. I'm fairly quick on my feet, too. Could my sister be sent out ahead of us?”
“Do that.”
Arendt gave a light nod, then looked around at everyone.
“No objections, right?”
“It's nothing but problems, start to finish.”
Arthur, who had been silently holding back, answered bluntly, sincerity packed into every word.
“Getting the people out is fine. But the ones who try to flee in the process?”
“Sweeping up every small fry in here was never possible to begin with. And the leadership won't be running anywhere. Not as long as they can't figure out who we are.”
“That's the whole point, then.”
Arthur clicked his tongue.
Concealing their identities. That was the most important thing of all.
“Fine for us, maybe. But what about these people? No matter how you look at them, they don't pass as mercenaries or gambling-den customers.”
“There are ways to handle all of that. We've done something similar before, haven't we?”
But once again, Arendt only gave a light shrug of his shoulders.
Suspicious gazes converged on him from every direction.
“Damn it, you haven't found a single one yet?”
Merlin snarled at his employees. His eye sockets, properly worked over by that silver-haired brat, were swelling an ugly blue—but that wasn't what mattered right now.
“That insufferable little punk… the moment this is over, I'm throwing him to the hunting dogs!”
Before his seething fury, the employees kept their heads bowed low, their hands moving faster and faster.
The customers' complaints were already rising to the heavens.
“What the hell is going on here? Get on with it already!”
“Our apologies. Just a moment longer, please…”
“Just a moment? How many times has that 'just a moment' been, exactly?”
Before a drunk customer snarling at him, the employee bowed at the waist again and again.
Watching the scene, Merlin clicked his tongue. They were stalling for time somehow, placating the crowd with drink and food, but even that was fast approaching its limit.
Naturally so—right in the middle of a profitable run, this mess had exploded without warning. Everyone still working except a bare minimum of staff had poured out to inspect the money coin by coin.
“What kind of dirty trick is this?! Why are you trying to rob people of their own purses?!”
“We'll only take a brief look and return everything right away. We are truly sorry!”
Since they had no choice but to go back through the customers' money piece by piece, incidents like this were breaking out all over.
Merlin gritted his teeth, grinding them hard.
“I said they're hard to tell apart! Look carefully!”
“Yes, sir!”
But they couldn't explain the situation to the customers. Doing so would amount to admitting their own mistake.
And if that happened, they would surely lose these people's trust……
I'm a dead man!
It had been none other than Merlin himself who had decided that brat must be somebody important and dragged him all the way in here.
Who could have imagined he was a madman who carried counterfeits mixed in among his gold coins!
Just then, in the midst of all that chaos, a single mercenary came scrambling up from below and shouted.
“Forgive me, sir—there's a problem in the underground!”
“A problem? What problem?”
“Well…”
When Merlin asked irritably, the mercenary hesitated for an instant before answering.
That was enough. It had to be that brat's party causing a ruckus down there.
“Go down with the men guarding the entrance! Damn it all—you couldn't stop even one of them, you useless fools. If they get loud, knock them out. Breaking a few arms and legs is fine too.”
“Yes, sir!”
At Merlin's signal, the other mercenaries stampeded down into the underground.
After that, mercifully, things stayed quiet. Merlin stared out at the gambling den, now a total pandemonium, and began chewing his nails all over again.
“Damn it, that cursed little bastard…!”
They still hadn't found a single fake coin. While every coin was being pulled out and handled and examined one by one, the gambling den had been plunged headlong into chaos.
Some had even tried a bit of petty theft in the confusion, and outright brawls had broken out several times as a result.
Every last bit of it was that silver-haired runt's fault.
“That little punk… I swear I'll kill him with my own two hands…!”
“Oh, you could manage that much, could you?”
At that moment, a bored, indifferent voice drove itself into his ear. The voice of a young man, still not far past boyhood.
His blood ran cold.
Merlin barely managed to rotate his frozen neck and confirm who it was. And of course—that bastard's aggravatingly handsome face was right there, inches from his own.
Arendt stepped back a single pace from Merlin's gaping mouth and idly picked at his ear.
“You—you—you…! How…?”
“Your security was laughably loose. Can't even handle one young master, and yet you go around calling yourselves mercenaries? I honestly don't know how.”
Having had his fun mocking the man, Arendt rested his drawn sword casually across his shoulder with a soft clack.
Merlin recognized it at a glance.
A sword that didn't fit his expensive clothes in the slightest. Clearly one of the blades handed out to the mercenaries employed by the gambling den.
And that could mean only one thing.
Merlin's jaw began to tremble.
“Don't tell me… you took down every last one of them?”
“Those weaklings? I roughed them up a bit. Though not alone, of course.”
Arendt gave a small jerk of his chin toward the space behind him. There, two hulking mercenaries were glaring this way with vicious eyes.
Their weapons had clearly been stripped from them—and yet both of them still clutched swords, the very ones that had originally belonged to the gambling den's own hired men.
Arendt tilted his head slightly, his face blank.
“How's the treasure hunt going? From the look of it, it's giving you some trouble. Need a hand?”
“You…”
Merlin's face flared crimson in an instant, and then a roar erupted from him, loud enough to shake the entire gambling den.
“You useless idiots! What do you think you're doing! Seize those bastards, now!”
“I beg your pardon?”
The mercenaries and employees who had been desperately raking through purses lifted their heads by reflex.
Merlin snarled at them all.
“Grab that silver-haired brat! If you let him slip away, understand that all of your lives are finished!”