Winter in the Limbus Pit, Part II
"Eri, don't rush."
"Our lives are on the line! How can I not rush?!"
"But will rushing change anything? The moment Otto was taken down, our escape route to the upper districts was cut off anyway."
"..."
"More than anything, it is already too late."
"Even so, we have to hurry, right now—!"
Crash! Before Eri could even finish her sentence, the front door shattered inward. The hinges tore free, sending wooden splinters flying in every direction.
I only just fixed those hinges last year after they froze over...
Bastards. Our clinic is already operating at a loss.
Of course, those thugs weren't about to show any respect for my financial situation.
Through the rising dust, the silhouettes of the intruders flooded in. One, two, three, four, five. And one more peeking out from the very back, making it six.
Every single one of them was a clown, characterized by smeared lipstick stretching from the corners of their mouths to their ears, and ridiculous wigs perched on their heads. The moment I saw them, the phrase 'clowns who failed in the stock market' instantly came to mind.
Amidst them, the man peeking out from the very back had a different makeup style altogether.
"Ihihi..."
Like the others, he wore lipstick and a wig, but his face was also caked in thick, white paint. Even among the white-faced clowns, his stature was exceptionally small.
"Ahi... ehihi..."
The white face laughed. Or rather, he was trying his best to laugh. It was an awkward chuckle, so stiff it felt as if his jaw was creaking. Peeking out from behind the other five, he looked exactly like a rat poking its nose out of a hole.
"H-hello, h-healer, d-doctor?"
I'm a doctor, not a healer. First Eri, then the Slum Boss, and now this guy. Why did everyone in this place insist on calling me a healer?
"I-I am... Kaski, a Weißgesicht of the Lachenden Carnival."
The clown bowed politely.
"S-since you are an outsider, doctor, you m-may also call me White Face."
Lachenden Carnival? Weißgesicht? White Face? What on earth are they talking about?
Fortunately, Eri explained it to me before I even had to ask.
"The Lachenden Carnival is an artist faction from H-Sector."
"Artists?"
"Even if they all traffic in humans, different syndicates process their merchandise differently. Factions like the Lachenden, who surgically modify people to sell them as 'artworks' or freak shows, are called artist factions. That clown is one of them."
An otherworld freak show. Definitely not the kind of people I wanted to associate with.
Just then, someone took offense to Eri's dry assessment.
"A clown?! To insult our sacred mission of spreading laughter in this harsh world—"
Seeing how he didn't stutter a single bit while expressing his outrage, she had clearly hit a nerve.
Eri ignored Kaski's protests and continued her explanation.
"Their hierarchy goes from the bottom up: Barker, Red Nose, White Face, and finally the King of Fools. You can think of a White Face as roughly equivalent to a vanguard captain in the Slum Boss's gang."
"Ah."
A minor syndicate, yet they had a surprisingly strict hierarchy. It seemed he was a mid-level enforcer in their organization. White Face... or was it Kaski?
"So, what business do you have with me?"
"W-we... we n-need you, doctor."
"Is there a patient waiting for me?"
"There are c-comrades waiting for you, doctor."
It looked like they had come to recruit me.
"I must decline."
There was not a shred of hesitation. I was the protagonist of this story, and a doctor at that. There was no way in hell I would join an organization that committed such atrocities against human beings. Why on earth would I willingly join a pack of lunatics?
Kaski, the White Face, nodded calmly as if he had expected this response.
"A-ah, what a shame. Then I suppose we have no choice but to..."
Just then, Eri cut him off, pulling out a revolver.
"Sorry, but our doctor isn't the type to work under anyone."
It was the gun I had kept for self-defense. She must have swiped it while packing my medical bag earlier.
Click. Eri cocked the hammer, aiming the barrel directly between Kaski's eyes.
Wait. Is it really okay for a twelve-year-old child to hold a gun?
I pondered that for a moment, but then shook my head as I remembered this was a world where magic—an even more devastating personal weapon—existed. Right. In this world, a revolver is basically a child's safety toy.
"Hieeeek?!" Staring down the barrel, Kaski shrieked and dove behind his subordinates. He used one of the wig-wearing barkers as a meat shield while rubbing his hands together frantically.
"C-can't we... can't we r-resolve this with words...?! I-I only came because I was t-told to..."
Eri frowned at Kaski's pathetic display. I let out a dry chuckle beneath my plague doctor mask as well. The contrast between him and the Slum Boss's vanguard captain was night and day. That beastman was the type to get stabbed in the gut, try to go out drinking the very next day, and get scolded by me for it. He lived with his life constantly on the line. Meanwhile, this syndicate's captain was cowering behind his own men the moment a gun was pointed at him.
Perhaps this was the difference in caliber between their organizations. Eri seemed to share the same sentiment, as the tension in her shoulders visibly relaxed. Her gun lowered slightly.
And in that brief moment of eased tension, Kaski suddenly burst into a mad, cackling laugh.
"Ihihi!"
Kaski shoved his subordinate toward Eri. The shoved barker looked utterly bewildered. He clearly hadn't expected his own boss to betray him like this.
Taking advantage of his subordinate acting as a meat shield, Kaski lunged toward Eri's gun. His previously cowering posture snapped straight like a coiled spring, and a gleaming switchblade slipped into his hand.
Startled by the sudden movement, I cried out.
"Watch out—!"
Bang! But before my warning could even leave my mouth, Eri pulled the trigger with an expression of utter indifference.
Kaski's head snapped violently backward mid-stride. Right in the dead center of his forehead, just above his smeared red nose makeup, a neat, black hole opened up in his white-painted brow.
"Gack...!"
With a ridiculous death rattle, his body tumbled to the floor, unable to fight the momentum.
I instinctively stared at Eri. She simply shrugged.
"In the Limbus Pit, you're the only one naive enough to believe in tears and weakness, Doctor."
Ah. Right. I forgot this place is basically the Gotham City of the Empire. It seemed I had been taking the Limbus Pit far too lightly.
***
Phew. Eri blew the smoke from the barrel after taking down Kaski.
"Who's next?"
She swept the barrel toward the remaining five.
The five barkers froze, exchanging nervous glances. Even though their captain had just been killed, their reactions were filled with bewilderment rather than rage.
"Hey, is that a real gun? Did it actually fire?"
"Are you crazy... a working gun in a place like this?"
"Is that doctor guy really that rich?"
A twelve-year-old girl was completely dominating five grown clowns. It was a surreal sight, but in a way, their reaction made perfect sense. Whether it was a gun or magic, a Tier 0 combatant would drop dead from a single hit anyway. Unless the opponent was a superhuman of Tier 1 or higher, the lethality of a firearm was no different from my previous world.
"A working gun..."
"There aren't even any gunsmiths around here."
"Well, the bastards in A-Sector do smuggle them in."
"That's a completely different district, you idiot."
"The doctor has this kind of backing? Did we pick a fight with the wrong guy?"
One of the clowns swallowed hard. A person holding a gun was practically treated with the same caution as a magic caster. Not just because they could end a life with a mere twitch of a finger, but because of the sheer symbolic weight of owning a functional firearm. In this city choked with thick, mana-laden smog, owning a gun required immense wealth just to keep it maintained. Furthermore, one needed the social standing to secure a permit and the influence to regularly purchase ammunition. Taking all of this into account, a gun was perhaps far more terrifying when resting quietly in a holster than when it was actually fired.
"Is that her only shot? There's no way they could afford multiple bullets..."
"Why? Want to step up and find out how many are left?"
Eri cocked the hammer again. Click.
"That gun... sure l-looks expensive... How about we just talk this out?"
"Yeah. It'd be a waste of a bullet. If you sold that thing, we could all buy a feast."
The insolence they had shown when smashing through the door was entirely gone, replaced by polite, submissive gestures. Indeed, even in another world, the 'politeness calibrator' never failed to deliver results.
But Eri couldn't easily pull the trigger either. The inherent limitation of a revolver—its cylinder capacity—was holding her back. There were five clowns before her, and exactly five bullets left in the chamber. While she could theoretically take them down with one shot each, it would be incredibly difficult to manage if they all rushed her at once. Sensing this instinctively, Eri chose to maintain the standoff rather than fire.
"Doctor. Let's just hold them off like this until the Slum Boss gets here."
The only saving grace was that time was on our side. Otto had gone to fetch the Slum Boss. Thus, Eri calmly waited for his arrival.
Yet, something about the current situation felt incredibly unnatural to me.
This doesn't make sense. If they can be held at bay by a single gun, there's no way Otto would have been defeated.
Otto possessed a firearm of his own. On top of that, he was a highly trained bodyguard on the verge of reaching Tier 1. The fact that such a man had been subdued weighed heavily on my mind. Just as I was about to warn Eri of this lingering unease—
Thwack! Suddenly, the head of the man standing at the very back snapped violently backward. As if struck by an invisible hammer.
"Huh...?"
Thud. The barker collapsed limply to the floor. And right in the center of his forehead—in the exact spot where Kaski had been shot—a dark, hollow hole had opened up.
"W-what the hell?! We said we'd talk!"
"I didn't shoot!"
"Ihihi..."
A sickening laugh echoed through the clinic.
"Ihi... ugh. That hurt..."
Soon, the white-faced clown who had been lying dead on the floor began to push himself up. The forehead that had been pierced by a bullet was now miraculously smooth.
"That r-really hurt... How cruel..."
Kaski grumbled as he stood back up.
Without even asking how this was possible, Eri immediately aimed for his chest and pulled the trigger. Bang!
Kaski clutched his chest and collapsed. However, Kaski's clothes, which should have been stained crimson, remained perfectly clean.
"Cough...!"
At that exact moment, the chest of another clown standing behind Kaski burst open with blood.
As the bizarre phenomenon repeated itself, Eri frantically called out to me.
"W-what is this? Doctor! Is the gun ricocheting weirdly? Is it broken?"
"No. Your aim was true."
"Then why is this happening?"
"It's a magic engraving. He's undergone an enhancement procedure."
This explained how Otto had been defeated. Who could have predicted that someone with a magic engraving would appear in the depths of the Limbus Pit?
A magic engraving was essentially a tattoo-like procedure that granted magical abilities to ordinary people who lacked any cognitive understanding of magic formulas. Of course, unlike the spells cast by proper mages, its mana efficiency was atrocious, and the scope of usable magic was extremely narrow. Even so, it was more than enough to make someone an apex predator among Tier 0 combatants.
"Are the engraving effects Wound Transfer and Adaptation?"
The Adaptation engraving granted the user temporary immunity or high resistance to a specific type of damage after surviving it once. On paper, it sounded incredibly powerful, but in practice, it was an absolute garbage tier engraving. In a video game, taking damage merely reduced your health bar, but in reality, surviving a fatal blow usually left you permanently crippled. Furthermore, the amount of resistance gained at one time was quite small; to achieve complete immunity, one had to be beaten to the brink of death.
However, this white-faced clown named Kaski seemed to have bypassed that fatal flaw using Wound Transfer. Wound Transfer allowed the user to redirect physical injuries to designated subordinates, with fatal wounds being transferred automatically. Kaski was combining the two: transferring all incoming damage to his lackeys until his body adapted and gained immunity.
No wonder Otto was defeated.
In gaming terms, Kaski was a gimmick boss. He wasn't inherently strong, but if you didn't know the mechanics, even a max-level character couldn't beat him.
Hearing my explanation, Eri cried out in disgust.
"They called me rich just for having a gun, but they're using way more expensive stuff!"
Is that really what you're upset about right now?
Eri aimed her gun at the collapsed Kaski once more. I quickly stopped her.
"Eri. Not him."
Kaski was not the target. As I said, Kaski was unbeatable if you didn't know his gimmick. Conversely, once you knew the trick, he was easy to handle.
"Shoot the three remaining behind him. Wound Transfer works both ways."
The strategy was simple: ignore Kaski and eliminate his scapegoats first. Because Wound Transfer was a mutual link, it didn't just transfer Kaski's wounds to his subordinates. If his subordinates suffered fatal wounds, those injuries would automatically be transferred back to Kaski. Moreover, since transferred wounds bypassed his physical defenses, it didn't matter how much resistance Kaski had built up.
There's a reason the high society mages call both of these trash-tier engravings. If this combination were truly invincible, every noble and commoner in the upper districts would be sporting it. There was always a catch.
"Got it, Doctor!"
Eri immediately aimed at the three lackeys in the back and pulled the trigger. But Kaski, having recovered, threw himself in front of them like a shield. And from the third shot onward, the lead bullets striking Kaski flattened as if hitting a steel plate and clattered harmlessly to the floor.
"What?! How did he adapt so fast?!"
"...Was it because of Otto?"
Damn it. I didn't account for that. He must have already built up most of his resistance to firearms during his fight with Otto. His collapse from the first two shots had merely been an act to lure us into a false sense of security.
"Hehe... That bodyguard of yours... was incredibly strong. We lost twenty men on the way here... We originally brought fifty to deal with Tao Chen, but with what's left, we can only manage to stall him..."
Another piece of bad news. It seemed time was not on our side after all. The Slum Boss was not a mage. No matter how powerful a Tier 1 combatant he was, as long as he relied on blades and fists, he had to painstakingly snap his enemies' necks one by one. And if the enemy was determined to stall him, it would take twice as long. More than enough time for Kaski to achieve his goal.
Ugh. This is supposed to be a misunderstanding comedy, so why is the antagonist actually using his brain?
He was unnecessarily cunning and strategic, which only added to my exhaustion. However, there was one crucial fact Kaski had overlooked. Just as he had acquired power through capital, I could overwhelm him with even greater capital.
"Eri. Pass me the—"
"I-ihihi! That tickles!"
But before I could finish my sentence, Kaski burst into a mad laugh and lunged at Eri. Eri emptied the rest of her chamber to stop the oncoming white-faced clown. But even after three loud bangs echoed through the room, Kaski remained completely unscathed.
"No more bullets now, right? Huh?"
Now that he held the upper hand, Kaski stopped stuttering entirely. He closed the distance in an instant. His switchblade darted forward like a striking viper, grazing Eri's forearm.
"Ah!"
With a cry of pain, the revolver slipped from Eri's grasp and clattered away. Kaski followed up with a backhand to her cheek, sending the small girl tumbling across the floor.
"Y-you're being a nuisance. You're a pretty one, so I'll stop here. If the m-merchandise gets damaged, the Narenkönig will scold me again."
Kaski turned his gaze away from Eri and locked eyes with me. Meanwhile, the pistol, which had spun through the air, coincidentally slid right to my feet.
I bent down and snatched up the revolver. I swung the cylinder open, dumped the spent casings, slid a fresh bullet into the chamber, and looked up. My target was his forehead... actually, that seemed too hard to hit, so I aimed for his torso.
"Hehe. I-it's useless, doctor. Guns won't w-work on me anyway—"
"This one will be a bit different."
I replied, resting my finger on the trigger.