Stealing from the Wrong Person
“Looks like rain?”
“Thought I felt a drop of water.”
Their confusion lasted only a moment. Soon the two were utterly captivated by the brilliant gleam of the jewel embedded in the sword, and the water droplets falling from the clear sky were promptly forgotten.
They stroked the blade with rapturous eyes.
“If the boss sees this, he’ll wipe out our entire debt.”
“What? You’re planning to hand it over to the boss?”
“What else would we do with it?”
“We keep it for ourselves, obviously!”
“Are you insane? What if we get caught? No ordinary fence would touch something like this! Only someone on the boss’s level could even dare to move it!”
It was indeed an enormous item, far too valuable to convert into cash easily.
Breaking it apart to sell would slash its worth, but trying to sell it whole would almost guarantee they’d be caught by the neck.
If they were discovered peddling a noble’s property, they’d be dead before they could spend a single coin. Caution was essential.
The two thieves put their heads together as though seriously debating the sword’s future, but the only realistic answer was to offer it to the boss. Small fry like them didn’t have many options.
“Look, Jack, it’s impossible to sell something this eye-catching without the boss finding out. Let’s not get too greedy.”
“…You think the boss will actually give us a fair cut?”
“If we’re lucky, he might toss us a few coins. Chin up! At least we’ve got these gold pieces!”
The shaggy blond thief whose name had been called wore an expression heavy with regret.
“It’s just such a waste. If we took it to another city we could sell it for several times the price…”
“You really don’t know that every city around here is in the boss’s pocket? We couldn’t sell it behind his back even if we wanted to, and since it’s a noble’s item, small-time thieves like us would have a hell of a time fencing it. Better to hand it over clean and get the hell out of this life!”
“What if we pry the jewels off one by one and sell them? We could pay the debt back slowly that way.”
“Oh for—by the time we finished? And if the boss hears about it we’re dead anyway! Don’t you know he kills people just for pissing him off?”
Was the boss truly that terrifying? At least to these two thieves, he was clearly more frightening than any noble.
“Everything we steal belongs to the boss from the start! As long as the debt remains, it’s for life!”
“Ugh, this filthy debt.”
Both of them owed a staggering sum in the same place—to the leader of the criminal syndicate that ruled the entire area.
This crime-ridden city had relatively weak noble influence. In its place, the criminal organizations wielded massive power. Thanks to the tribal nature of Moran, that was true in nearly every city.
With so many minority ethnic groups, royal authority was ignored and the nobles’ power had weakened accordingly. Criminals had driven a wedge into that gap.
Outlaws from every nation had poured in, filling the streets.
And among them, the man who had seized control of the large border city of Mielta in a single stroke was known simply as the Boss.
In truth, in this city his word was the law.
“You know the saying—you can skip any other debt, but never the one you owe the boss? He’ll chase you all the way to hell.”
“He really is the kind of monster who would…”
“An exceptionally vicious one.”
The law was distant, but fists were very, very close.
The criminals who gathered in Mielta were mostly men who had nowhere left to run.
For those who had already fled their homelands, only a brutal jungle remained.
Therefore, falling out of the boss’s favor was practically the same as dying.
Jack grumbled loudly but seemed to accept reality. He wrapped the sword in cloth once more.
Had it been an ordinary haul he would have pocketed it for himself and turned a nice side profit, but today’s trophy was far too big for the pair of them to handle.
“Tsk. We’re not his slaves, you know. Feels like we’re always doing the boss favors.”
“We basically have been slaves! Let’s look on the bright side. This should clear our debt in one go, so it’s good for us too. Right? Let’s deliver it to the boss quick and then drink like kings—”
The moment the thieves, having settled the sword’s fate, tried to leave the alley, their sharp ears caught the sound of an encirclement tightening.
“Hear that?”
“Shh!”
Footsteps were rushing straight toward them.
Jack stiffened. His partner quickly held his breath.
He drew the dagger from his belt and stared in the direction of the approaching noise.
They waited, nerves stretched tight with the fear that their tail had already been caught, when the figure that appeared at the end of the alley with the sun at its back was…
“What the hell is that dog?”
“Whose mutt is that huge?”
Despite all their wariness, what stood at the mouth of the alley was a single massive yellow dog.
“Woof!”
It barked fiercely, glossy fur rippling in the wind, but the two thieves weren’t intimidated by a mere dog. They assumed it was just a common stray.
“Never seen a dog that big before.”
“What do you feed something to make its coat shine like that?”
“Hey, should we catch it and bring it to the boss too?”
“The dog?”
“The boss likes dog meat—ack!”
What dropped onto the unsuspecting Jack’s head was a person.
“Who are you calling food!”
“Aaaah!”
The woman who had fallen from the sky without warning used Jack’s back as a stepping stone. She had clearly aimed for him.
Driven helplessly forward by the force slamming into him from behind, Jack crashed chin-first into the ground. While he flailed in pain, the woman grabbed his hair with all her strength and shook it violently, her own golden locks flying.
“Give it back!”
“Argh, ugh!”
“My sword!”
“Guh!”
“Right now!”
When you sat on a prone man’s back and shook his head from behind, his forehead was bound to slam into the dirt. Most people would lose consciousness.
Jack, taken completely by surprise, didn’t even know what was happening before his eyes rolled back and he passed out. The other thief, who had watched the entire assault, snatched up the sword Jack had dropped and bolted.
He ran in the opposite direction from the dog. As a professional thief, he was confident in his escape speed.
“Undain!”
That confidence lasted only until a torrent of water surged from the ground and blocked his path.
No matter how hard he punched the wall of water in front of him, it refused to yield. It bounced every ounce of force straight back at him.
It looked like something that should be easy to pass through, yet not even a single finger would penetrate it. And it was far too tall to climb over.
When he looked desperately up at the sky and saw a huge blue fish glide past overhead, the man finally understood.
Ah. I touched the wrong person.
“Eek!”
Was she a mage?
He spun around in terror to see the golden-haired woman charging toward him with the dog at her side.
The thief who recognized her immediately began sidestepping. She was the sword’s rightful owner.
“Hand it over while I’m still asking nicely.”
She irritably brushed aside the golden hair swirling around her face. Her eyes were those of a wild beast—more precisely, an enraged tiger.
Her tone suggested she was ready to start swinging at any second.
“When did you ever ask ni… I mean, nicely.”
She had turned Jack into a bloody pulp the instant she appeared.
“Goddammit! Don’t you know that’s just a figure of speech!”
“Huk!”
“It means give it back before I stop talking!”
“Wuff!”
“What kind of nonsense are you barking, mutt?”
For some reason the dog had fled far away to avoid the woman’s kick, only to come trotting back as if nothing had happened.
It then stared at the human with an expression that, for a dog, looked remarkably judgmental.
The thief told himself a dog couldn’t possibly make that face, yet the surge of irritation still rose in his throat. Showing it, however, seemed like a terrible idea given the owner’s foul temper.
Feeling a very real threat to his life from the steadily approaching woman, the thief clutched the sword and shouted desperately.
“D-do you even know who we are!”
“Why would I care about a couple of thieves?”
“You must have heard of us! Blood Wing!”
It was a name that ruled the entire area.
There were few places in Moran where their infamy didn’t reach. Their numbers were vast and their cruelty legendary; even nobles avoided provoking them unless absolutely necessary.
Above all, they were a group that utterly despised nobles.
“Blood Wing…”
“As you well know, touching anyone affiliated with Blood Wing means you won’t—”
“Chicken! That name makes me crave fried chicken.”
The threat had zero effect.
If anything, the woman looked like someone who feared nothing. You could tell just by looking at her eyes.
She had no fear whatsoever.
“Do members of that group have two lives apiece or something?”
“Eek!”
“How dare you touch what’s in my pocket.”
The moment the woman flashed a bright smile that completely contradicted her murderous tone, the thief felt his body being sucked into the wall of water.
His skull was fully submerged. His back and lower body were completely immobilized.
According to everything he knew, water wasn’t supposed to behave like this. The parts of his body trapped under the solid pressure tingled as though they might burst at any moment.
Crushed beneath the tremendous weight, the thief broke out in a cold sweat.
“The water… it’s so heavy…”
“If I raise the pressure just a little more, you’ll pop like a grape.”
Helpless against water pressure he had never experienced, the thief’s arms spread wide against his will. The sword slipped from his powerless fingers.
Nothing but his face could still move. He felt like a deer head mounted on a wall.
“Please spare me!”
“Say one more word and I really will drown you.”
“……”
“My sword! It’s unharmed! What is this thing, stealing something like this! You demonic bastards.”
Who was calling whom demonic?
“Wuff!”
The dog somehow seemed to have voiced exactly what the thief was thinking.
The woman pulled away the cloth, inspected the sword, then began patting down the thief’s waist with a satisfied expression.
The water behaved gently only toward her.
She reached deep into the liquid, retrieved her money pouch from the thief’s belt, and began counting the coins one by one while issuing threats.
“For every shilling that’s missing, you get one beating.”
It was clear she was completely serious. And while she was at it, she also took the thief’s own small coin purse.
She really was squeezing blood from a stone.
“Huh, you’re carrying something pretty decent.”
“…That’s…”
What caught the woman’s eye next was the high-quality dagger at the thief’s waist—a clean blade that had been sharpened only days ago.
It was practically new, and it was the thief’s most prized possession.
“Why? Can’t you give me this between us?”
“Excuse me? What do you mean ‘between us’?”
“You’re the perpetrator. I’m the victim. This is compensation. Compensation.”
What kind of victim slaps the perpetrator’s cheeks with a sword blade?
The thief had plenty to say but kept his mouth shut, praying only that the blade wouldn’t stab him anywhere vital.
Being trapped and defenseless in the water made the woman even more terrifying.
The ill-tempered golden-haired woman looked capable of anything. She was already robbing him in broad daylight.
“Got anything else on you? Huh? Hand over everything you’ve got.”