A Talent for Stirring Up Trouble
The underground floor was completely deserted; every staff member had bolted up to the lounge to contain the disaster. That made the search easy for Arthur's group — but there was one problem.
Before long, a frustrated groan burst out of someone's mouth.
"Goddammit, why is this place so huge?"
The corridors twisted and tangled like an ant farm, making it nearly impossible to get their bearings. Thanks to Enoch's guidance, they'd managed to descend even further below, but that was where the real trouble began.
Staring down a hallway lined with rows of identical doors, the group couldn't help but feel a little dumbfounded.
"Looks like they designed the passages like this on purpose. So nobody can just run out."
"That's a pretty dirty way to think."
Enoch drooped his shoulders as Arthur grumbled at his senior's remark.
"I'm sorry... I've never been down this far, either."
"No, you've done more than enough getting us this far. From here on, we'll figure it out ourselves."
After a brief word of reassurance to the boy, Arthur started racking his brain.
There was no time to waste here. The faster they moved, the less pressure the others fighting upstairs would have to bear.
Just then, Arthur's keen senses caught the sound of approaching footsteps. The other knights must have sensed it too, because they all snapped their heads up at once.
"Hold on. Someone's coming."
"Quick — hide behind any door, now!"
Just as the rattled knights were about to do exactly that, Arthur stopped them.
"Wait a moment, senior."
"Huh?"
As the two froze mid-motion, Arthur swept a slow, appraising gaze over his group — a look slightly different from before. The prisoners he'd dressed in fine clothes but whose faces were still pale and wan, and the knights dressed in the same garb as the gambling den's mercenaries.
Having finished his thinking, Arthur made his call.
"Everyone, just stay right where you are."
"What?"
There was no time for a detailed explanation.
By then the others' ears had caught the frantic footsteps too. It was too late to smash into a room and hide, so they had no choice but to stand still and wait as Arthur had told them.
A pack of mercenaries came scrambling out from deeper inside — apparently guards who'd been posted within and, hearing the commotion outside, were hurrying out to join it.
The mercenary in the lead screwed up his face.
"What the hell? What are you lot doing here?"
"You idiot! If you leave the entrance empty, what then? The riffraff have made it all the way down here!"
At that moment, Arthur — of all people — bellowed back at them, shamelessly playing the aggrieved party. The knights froze for an instant, staring at him in stunned disbelief, but Arthur stood his ground without a flicker.
"What did you say? Riffraff?"
The puzzled mercenaries' eyes went wide with alarm as they looked past Arthur at the people standing behind him. Dressed as guests, they were clearly not people who belonged here.
Arthur laid into them.
"A goddamn pickpocket snuck in all the way back here, you worthless idiots! He went deeper inside — you didn't run into him?"
"What? No, we didn't see anyone. Damn it, we must've crossed paths?"
"There are still people guarding the vault, right?"
"Th-the vault? You mean Mr. Merlin's office? There's nobody—"
"You dolts. What do you think happens when you leave that place empty?"
At Arthur's remarkably convincing tirade, the mercenaries shrank back.
Arthur pressed a hand to his forehead with an exaggerated, over-it-all gesture.
"Ugh, well, everything outside's already a disaster anyway... One of you comes with us. Judging by how useless you all are in a real fight, the rest of us should be plenty. The rest of you get out there and deal with that silver-haired little punk!"
"R-right. We'll leave this to you."
The mercenaries hastily nodded, left a single man behind, and scrambled back out.
Once they vanished around the bend of the corridor, the one who remained turned back toward the interior.
"Why the hell do they have to make the layout so needlessly complicated! Which way did he go?"
"There's no need to go looking for the intruder."
But...
*Grip.*
A powerful hand seized the shoulder of the mercenary, who had been about to hurry on his way.
"Because he's standing right in front of you."
*Shing.*
A blade, drawn before anyone could notice, was already pressed up beneath his chin. Only then did the mercenary, who'd been standing there blankly without a clue what was happening, go white as a sheet.
"Take me to that office you mentioned — Mr. Merlin's. That is, unless you'd rather your head and your body be permanently separated."
Blade shoved tight against his throat, Arthur spoke with a grim menace. The mercenary, absorbing the raw killing intent radiating off the knight, felt cold sweat break out in streams down his face.
"If you don't want to, feel free to say so. I'll just kill you and grab someone else to guide us."
* * *
Suddenly, an uproar broke out on the exit side. Judging by the state of things, Richt — cornered — had opted for a show of force.
The corner of Arendt's mouth curled up slightly.
"Now this is rewarding."
Compared to the days when he'd clung to principle and protocol, it was nothing short of astonishing progress.
The same went for the other two now flipping tables and beating people down beside him.
They'd seemed reluctant at first, but having apparently grasped the true purpose of this whole chaos, Ryder and Glenn were dismantling their surroundings with growing efficiency.
Once Arendt confirmed that Arthur's group had made it in through the other entrance, he snatched up a chair and hurled it.
The terrified crowd scattered in all directions.
"Get that guy! Forget everyone else! Grab that silver-haired brat first!!"
The commotion at the exit might as well have been invisible.
Hopping nimbly up onto one of the few tables still standing, Arendt dug a finger into his ear.
It was mockery, plain and simple.
"By all means, if you think you can. This old man's been treating me like an easy mark all night and it's getting on my nerves. You think you've hooked a sucker, but things won't go your way."
"Y-you...!"
Merlin's face flushed scarlet with fury.
From the mouth of a man who looked ready to clutch the back of his neck and keel over at any moment burst the very shout Arendt had been waiting for.
"I'll pay a bounty to whoever grabs that man and makes him kneel before my eyes! Bring him here, NOW!!"
"Yes, sir!"
The word *bounty* lit a fire in the mercenaries' eyes. Rallied anew, they gripped their weapons tight and began surging toward Arendt in a mass.
Those who'd been rushing to reinforce the fighting at the exit abruptly wheeled around too.
Glenn shrieked.
"Hey, you lunatic! We're already dying trying to keep up, and you're pulling in MORE of them?!"
"What do you think? I move my busy little feet, that's what."
There was no room to react to the infuriating comeback his damn junior tossed out.
The two men sprinted desperately to Arendt's side and set about fending off weapons flying in from every direction.
"Wow, feels so safe back here. No chance of catching a stray blade now."
"You wait till this is over. I'm going to smack you upside the head."
At Arendt's teasing, Glenn let out a ferocious growl.
Ryder's patience finally snapped.
"Fight now, harass later!"
It would have been unthinkable until just moments ago — standing back-to-back with that guy, watching each other's blind sides against an enemy.
Honestly, the punk was world-class at exactly one thing: working people like puppets.
Still, all this grinding misery wasn't entirely without its rewards. Richt's group had begun to move, visible in the distance.
"Get back! Get BACK, you lunatics!"
The mercenaries barely holding the entrance swore and raged. But the voices of men blinded by the promise of a bounty had no hope of reaching them.
The mercenaries, gritting their teeth and readying a stream of curses, spotted their 'comrades' approaching from another direction.
"You're late! Quit standing around gawking and give us some supp— KUHAAAGH!"
Before the tirade even finished, the 'comrade's' fist slammed into the mercenary's face.
Things went no differently on the other side.
Another mercenary, who'd had his hair seized by one of the drunken gamblers, took a blow to the solar plexus and crumpled to the floor without even a scream. Only then grasping the situation, another guard shrieked in horror.
"Wait — who the hell are you people?"
"No need for you to know."
But at Richt's icy reply, delivered the very next instant, he too could only let out a strangled squeak and collapse.
In a flash, every last mercenary had been subdued, and the people who'd been desperately trying to break through the exit stared at the knights in a daze.
To them it must have looked as though the gambling den's own guards had suddenly turned and beaten down their own side — so those bewildered stares were hardly surprising.
If Arendt had been in Richt's place, he would have spun some plausible-sounding lie; Arthur would have calmly talked his way around it. But Richt chose simply to ignore them, consistent as ever.
"No time. More will come!"
"I know."
As Saif urged them on anxiously, Richt loosened the sword at his hip — the one taken from him back when they'd escaped the cells.
Realizing what he was about to do, Saif and the other knight waved the crowd back frantically.
"Stand back unless you want to be maimed!"
"Move! MOVE!"
Seizing the sheathed sword — blade undrawn — Richt raised a burst of blade aura in a single instant and brought it slashing down diagonally across the locked door.
*KRAKOOOM!*
With a sound like an explosion, the door shattered into splinters in an instant.
Gazing blankly at the fragments of the door raining down around them, Saif's lips quivered.
"I... isn't that a bit much?"
"No time. Run."
But once again, Richt did nothing more than say what he had to say. Sheathing his sword, he scooped the old man and the girl effortlessly under either arm and began running for the exit.
"C-come on, senior!"
"Hold on!"
The knights swept up the people two at a time and bolted out the door, and Saif, flustered, wedged the remaining two under his arms and scrambled after them.
The others, still staring blankly at the demolished door, went white with fright when a chair suddenly came flying their way and stampeded for the exit.
Arendt, the chair-thrower himself, wore a contented smile.
"One side down, then."
"AAARGH, damn it! They're escaping! Grab those bastards too! GRAB THEM! Don't let a single one out!"
Merlin, belatedly realizing the exit had been breached, tore at his hair and flew into a frenzy.
A few mercenaries belatedly tried to chase after them, but Ryder and Glenn blocked their path.
"Going somewhere?"
"I don't think we're finished talking, are we?"
As the two men spoke in low, ominous voices, the mercenaries faltered.
Their comrades, after all, lay beaten half to death on the floor by these very men — no one had the guts to rush them.
Watching the scene, the survivors finally had to admit it.
The gaudy gambling den that had lorded over the city for years — a whole other world to some, an ant-lion pit to others — had been completely seized by nothing more than a handful of lunatics.