The Executioner's Leisure (2)
Even at Nathan’s most submissive reply of “I’ll stay still,” the dwarf continued to huff and puff. He unfurled the parchment again, examining it closely. He needed to check which parts required restoration. The craftsman’s eyes, which had been rolling across the blueprint, suddenly froze. A bloodstain on the edge of the parchment. Strange. He hadn’t struck him that hard.
The dwarf pretended to study the parchment while sneaking glances at Nathan beyond it. No matter how you looked at him, the sight was miserable. A face covered in livid bruises, black hair matted with dried blood, and most critically, the lost wrist. He only barely endured thanks to his sturdy bones. How could anyone do this to a young lad?
The hand, hastily wrapped in bandages and sprayed with coagulant… it was a miracle he hadn’t died from shock. The dwarf had frantically ripped off the contaminated bandages and reapplied fresh ones, but the boy would still need a proper doctor soon. Even if you were generous with his age, he was barely a young man. He still had his whole life ahead of him.
“…I brought spare parts, but they must not be dropped. They are not for us, but for someone down below. Just imagine dropping a single screw here. Considering the height, it would be catastrophic. It would fly like a cannonball and flip the ground upside down. If it hits anyone, they’d be holding a funeral right then and—”
Exhausted, Nathan began tuning him out, offering only apologetic murmurs. “Yes… I’m sorry.”
Under normal circumstances he would have listened patiently, but right now it was too much. He had just brawled with a chimera, had his hand sawed off, and then been thoroughly beaten with an iron club. Still—
“You do know what kinetic energy is, yes? Potential energy? You don’t look like you understand at all. No matter. There will be a more appropriate time to explain dynamics. The important thing is what happens as a result. Who knows who might get hurt? It could be some farmer’s cow, an innocent soldier, or—even though I don’t know which country you hail from—your own king. In the last case, it would be a true disaster. Even the smallest action can return as a great karmic debt. If you cannot clean up the mess, you had best not create it in the first place.”
“Huh…? Yes…”
Righteous words poured down like a torrential rain. Nathan’s ear canals felt completely clogged. The dwarf’s brick-like, rattling speech pushed through his twitching beard. The little stamina Nathan had left was rapidly draining away. Over the bearded one’s monotonous voice, the horrific memory of the slow sawing kept overlapping. Nathan broke into a cold sweat. I get it, just stop.
“When someone with a longer beard than yours imparts wisdom, you should look them in the eye and answer properly. I do not wish to force the traditions of Imirad upon other races, but I believe some customs are universally worthy of recommendation—even to other species, and even to those who build their houses upon the ground. When my own mustache was shorter than my beard—”
“—I understand it’s embarrassing, Vandveer. We only have forty minutes left before the guards return. If I’d known you’d dawdle like this, I would have brought Benny herself. This is Mister Ard Vandveer. Nathan. He feels guilty for beating you up, that’s why he’s acting like this.”
Vandveer glared once, then wordlessly picked up the alcohol swab again. The wrist was a densely packed bundle of nerves. A botched procedure could kill a person without any bleeding. Since it was such a delicate task, he could not afford to waste the given time.
“By the way, who is this Benny?”
Nathan turned to look at the elf who had pulled him out of the swamp. Instead of answering, the elf grinned and offered him a water bottle. Nathan shook his head slightly in refusal. Bin was impressed. The human hadn’t eaten properly, hadn’t drunk, and hadn’t rested, yet he still refused. The only things he’d consumed were a sip of sugar water from that woman and a few pieces of chimera skewer—the very thing that had enraged the arena master.
“Wow, I would’ve taken it no matter what. Is this what they call chivalry or knightly honor from the Lower World? Overcoming everything with sheer grit and faith?”
“Who is Benny?”
“The one who designed that magnificent steel arm. She’s a fan of yours. Make sure you thank her later. You received fifty thousand credits in sponsorship on your very first day of arena debut.”
“How do you know my name?”
“How? Your name was plastered huge across the scoreboard.”
“Damian, Nate. Or simply Sapiens. That was the only way my name was written in your language. There wasn’t a single place that spelled it correctly. Yet you know it exactly.”
It had been a half-guess, a probe. He obviously hadn’t checked every single scoreboard. But the elf pursed his lips as if struck right in the vitals. His attitude suggested he would exercise his right to remain silent.
“My… employer told me to keep my mouth shut. So I can’t tell you the details.”
Nathan’s eyes narrowed. He let out a groan of pain as he pushed himself up.
“Done. One arm is fully assembled. Give me the other—wait, what are you doing right now?”
Ard Vandveer had been about to lightly tap Nathan’s arm with a torque wrench. It was a gesture to indicate the assembly was complete. But somehow the tool had vanished from his hand. The flustered dwarf looked up at Nathan, who had risen without a word. The wrench was now gripped in Nathan’s hand.
While Bin couldn’t hide his panic, Nathan’s expression remained calm. The creeping killing intent forced Bin to acknowledge the situation.
“Nathan, I’m really sorry if I’m misunderstanding, but that gesture only looks like you’re asking for a fight.”
“That’s right.”
“Hey. What’s with you all of a sudden? I even brought the nice uncle who’s giving you arms, and I picked up the parts you dropped—”
“And there’s something you’re hiding, too.”
Srrrk. Nathan adjusted his grip on the wrench handle, holding it longer. It was a gesture that made his violent intentions unmistakably clear.
“I’ve only been here a day or two, but every long-eared bastard I’ve met has been hiding something. I don’t like it. I only find out their true intentions after a knife’s already buried in my body.”
Bin’s previously bright, spinning smile gradually hardened. Nathan liked that. Just seeing the smile disappear from that pretty-boy face made picking a fight worth it.
In the end, Bin stood up as well. Though he was two heads shorter, the elf didn’t shrink back. Instead, he glared up at Nathan with wide eyes.
“You sure you’re okay in that state? I thought you said even with both arms you couldn’t beat me.”
“It’s a bit different when I have no arms versus when I have at least one. Pointy-ears. What, are you scared of a one-armed cripple?”
The fingers of the steel prosthetic clenched and unclenched with a metallic clatter. Bin admitted this was an unexpected development. He had thought that suffering such treatment would naturally subdue anyone, regardless of race. He never imagined the human would immediately look for a target to vent his rage the moment he regained his limbs.
“As if. If I were scared of someone who looks like he belongs in a hospital bed, I wouldn’t be a member of the Sword Star Sect.”
“That scabbard decoration looks fancy. Draw it. I’m curious what’s inside. Wondering why some kid is carrying around a wall ornament.”
A massive gust of wind slammed against the cage as it passed. The steel structure shook like a lantern in an earthquake. The dwarf gritted his teeth and held back a scream. It wasn’t just from embarrassment. He feared that his interference would shatter the tension between the two reckless fools.
“You two, think carefully. You’re not seriously planning to brawl in a place like this, are you?”
The hook holding the cage to the hull swayed precariously. It had withstood the weight of a several-hundred-kilogram cage so far, so it must be sturdy. However, the dwarf could not trust anything made by the Eleim. It wasn’t just racial pride. From public buildings to baby cribs, he had seen countless cheap, quickly failing defective products.
“Right…?”
Who could say whether the durability would reach its limit if the weight of just three people were added?
“Hold on. There’s someone who needs to open his mouth first. If I break a few ribs, he might spit it out nicely.”
“Why don’t you just tell the truth? You’re embarrassed because you got your face smashed into the iron net. Come out to the side with the tools, Vandveer. It won’t take more than a few minutes. No one will get hurt.”
They clearly had no intention of listening to reason. Crazy bastards. The dwarf clutched the iron bars and squeezed his eyes shut.
“That’s enough.”
Nathan glared outside the cage. It was that woman. Black hair, black robe, black veil. Her long hanging hair and fabric looked as if they had been carelessly tossed onto the wind. The skin occasionally visible beyond the veil was so pale it seemed she might be a corpse. She looked exactly like the goddess of death come to take the one-armed Nathan away.
The woman was clinging to the outside wall of the cage with only one hand and the tips of her toes. She leaned her body back, her remaining arm casually clasped behind her. It was the posture of a sailor holding the mast rope and enjoying the wind.
It was insane. Nathan unconsciously looked down at the woman’s feet. If she slipped on the wind current, not even a corpse would be found.
“What’s with those eyes? Are you worried about me? How touching. I didn’t know our relationship was that harmonious.”
Nathan turned his gaze back to glare at Bin. The woman let out a small laugh.
“I was the one who told him your name, Nathan. Who else could it be? That’s quite a murderous look. Why don’t you calm down, sit, and finish getting your arm attached? Must I really pull out a magic spell?”
“Magic? Go ahead and use it. What, are you going to rip the entire prison out and throw it into the air?”
The dwarf’s complexion turned pitch black.
“There’s no need for that. ‘Aspen.’ You should behave now, shouldn’t you? Good boy. That’s right.”
Nathan quickly sat back down in his original position. The boiling tension evaporated in an instant, almost laughably fast.
“…That easily?”
Having lost the direction of their staring contest, Bin scratched his head with the hand that had been reaching for his sword.
“Understand him, Bin. Seventeen is the age when blood runs hottest. Given the situation he’s in, how could he not be furious?”
The woman who had entered the cage opened her previously clasped hands and threw something. The fluttering paper struck Nathan in the chest. Nathan unconsciously caught it with his newly assembled hand.
“Nevertheless, when it comes to matters of one-sided love, it is also the age when one becomes unusually serious. It is the time when one mistakenly believes oneself to be a prince on a white horse.”
It was an incredibly realistic drawing. It looked as if color had simply been added to a photograph taken from the mages’ obscura. Aspen, lying on a sickbed with his eyes closed, his complexion deathly pale as if suffering from a high fever. It was too precise to have been drawn by hand. Aspen was truly in this woman’s grasp.
Should he feel relieved, or should he tremble in fear? Nathan bit his lip. As strength entered his hand, the corner of the photograph crumpled. Being held hostage and then mocked on top of it was not a pleasant feeling.
“I did everything you told me to. I won. I survived. If you got what you wanted, release Aspen now.”
“Not yet, Nathan. I’m sorry, but unlike what you wish, our business is not over. There is still at least one more fight left.”
“At least one more?”
When Nathan asked in clear annoyance, the woman tapped her chin beneath the veil.
“It would take a while to explain… Where should I begin? Do you remember the soldiers engraving a crest on your neck?”
Nathan touched his neck with his prosthetic. The brand the soldiers had burned into him with a branding iron remained a vivid red.
“Of course I remember. How could I forget them suddenly shoving a red-hot lump of iron at me?”
“You surface races can communicate without language barriers. Even though you clearly use different languages. Have you never found that strange?”
Nathan nodded.
“When I was young I thought it was normal, but I was told it wasn’t. There are many hypotheses, but I heard the prevailing theory is that the gods blessed us.”
One of the most surprising things since being dragged here was exactly that. Until the brand was engraved, he couldn’t understand the elves’ speech. It was the first time he had been unable to communicate with another race.
“That hypothesis is interesting. It neatly explains why strangers can’t speak to each other at first meeting. After all, the power of the surface gods cannot reach us in the Heavens.”
Her tone was mocking, as if to say now you understand? Nathan wanted to cover his ears.
“But after that crest was engraved, you could speak, correct?”
“Thanks to that, I heard a lot of things I wish I hadn’t.”
The woman gave a small snort at Nathan’s sarcasm, then suddenly grabbed Bin’s arm and rolled up his sleeve. On the outside of the elf’s arm was a brand of the same shape.
“It is the same pattern imprinted on every Eleim. The brand that marks one as the possession of the Celestial God.”
“So if you have that engraved, you can communicate? Like an automatic translator? What a kind and gracious god.”
“Hardly. He’s closer to a tyrant. Those who bear the tattoo…”
The woman pointed beyond the iron bars.
“…die the moment they leave the Heavens over there.”
Far off in the overwhelmingly blue sky. Thick clumps of clouds tangled together. Though he had observed clouds from below, this was his first time seeing them from the side or above. The overwhelming scenery stole his breath. Nathan let out a belated sigh. No matter how tense he had been, how could he have missed such a sight while stuck inside an open cage on all sides?
But that wasn’t all. Nathan’s pupils trembled. The realistic landscape tore apart, revealing an unreal shape. What emerged, shattering the clouds to pieces, was an object that should not exist in the sky. It looked as if a massive island had been uprooted and hung in the heavens. Countless buildings sprouted from it like barnacles, like colonnades. That place was literally a kingdom of the heavens.
“…I thought it was just arrogant rhetoric, but it really deserves to be called the Heavens. The elves live up there?”
Nathan, who had been staring in awe, suddenly frowned.
“Wait. You die if you leave that place?”
“Exactly as I said. The Celestial God is cruel and strict; he knows no exceptions. The moment one steps outside the spherical translucent boundary surrounding the Heavens, they are instantly struck by lightning and turned to dust.”
“You’re not talking about the electric torture I went through, right?”
“Of course not. Real lightning, falling from the sky. Fresh lightning at a natural 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit, born from the bosom of Mother Nature.”
“…Then why are we still alive? And what does that have to do with me having to fight again?”
“Eleim die if they leave the Heavens. There are very few exceptions to that rule, and one of them is the passage of airships. If you pay an enormous sum to the Conclave priests, you can purchase the right to launch a vessel.”
Just as a floating island could not survive on its own resources, the same was true for the Heavens. Therefore, the Eleim used airships to gather resources that could only be obtained on the ground. All while avoiding detection by the jealous surface races and their terrifying master, the Celestial God.
“This airship has a special concealment spell engraved on it. A spell that hides the fact that the Celestial God’s crest exists outside the Heavens. While the spell is maintained, it will never become a target of lightning. But once the spell’s expiration date passes and the concealment is stripped away… the Celestial God will discover this airship.”
Nathan imagined horrifying lightning bolts raining down relentlessly until the ship was smashed to pieces. Bin wore an expression that said he didn’t even want to think about it. Perhaps he had seen a similar sight before.
“The approved duration for this airship this time is forty-eight hours. It will return to the Heavens before then. There are only a few hours left until landing.”
The woman took out a tablet and held it out. Nathan’s name was written alongside the odds. Thanks to the scoreboard, Nathan had grown familiar with reading betting slips and immediately understood its meaning.
What disgusting bastards.
“The betting… isn’t over yet?”
“Correct. Before this airship docks, the arena master will definitely try to kill you. There are bets on whether you’ll still be alive by then. Of course, not through assassination—strictly through official matches according to the rules.”
Nathan had seen a similar form of gambling before. Deadpool betting. A gamble, mainly in the underworld, predicting who would die within a few days. Even the famous Lionwing knights occasionally had their names appear in those bets. Absurdly, it was because of those very stakes that the knights had been attacked, a fact that later came to light. In the end, the assassins failed to kill any of the Lionwings. Instead, the enraged knight order’s counterattack overturned several major underworld organizations, making them pay a heavy price.
Nathan suddenly missed those days. Back then, it had been nothing more than an amusing anecdote.
“I once joked to the seniors whose names were listed that it must be nice to be so famous, but it wasn’t something to envy after all.”
Now he was in a similar situation. There were all sorts of ways to play with people’s lives. Nathan felt dizzy. The woman’s next words made his vision spin even more.
“This time, they may have prepared something even more lethal than the chimera. After all, only your death can soothe the devastated public sentiment even a little.”
“Twins, you two are my only hope. Can you handle it for sure?”
The eyes of the two warriors in the shadows glittered. Eyes trained to precisely gauge the weaknesses of sacrificial lambs dissected their owner as if performing an autopsy. The obese arena master’s body was rapidly shrinking like a deflating balloon. One could roughly guess how much mental anguish that pig had endured. The shorter shadow struggled to suppress his laughter. The hulking figure with the iron helmet welded to his head was already chuckling. The smaller one elbowed the larger one in the side.
“Ahem. Hem. Stop laughing. Of course we can. It’s our specialty, after all. We will take revenge for Pretty Boy. Do not worry.”
The arena master seemed to have no energy left to notice their mockery. It was understandable—his chimera, on which he had spent millions of credits, had been crushed by a human.
“Those bastards… that damned Sapiens… they killed our Pretty Boy, who we cherished like the apple of our eye…”
“And then skewered his flesh and ate it.”
The smaller one mercilessly spoke the fact that the other hadn’t dared to utter aloud. The arena master, eyes blazing with fury, glared at the twins.
“Are you certain? Pretty Boy failed. What makes you think you can succeed?”
“Come on, you don’t have any other trustworthy cards besides us right now anyway.”
The smaller one answered with a hint of laughter. His torn mouth stretched ear to ear. The two shadows lifted their massive scythes. The chains hanging from the handles clinked.
“Monsters are more fun when fought against other monsters, but when it comes to catching things with limbs, we are far more thorough and reliable.”
The arena master turned away in displeasure. That woman’s smile was always creepy no matter when he saw it. If they weren’t so undeniably skilled, he would have thrown them out long ago. Arena fighters were a profession that required staking one’s life. When death was on the line, few fighters listened obediently. That was why those who operated arenas in the Heavens always prepared a method to eliminate uncontrollable fighters in case of emergency. The most common solution was to hire executioners.
Fighters who existed more for pruning than for entertainment, specialists in killing other fighters. His trump card was this pair of siblings.
“As I said, I already cut off the hand with the magic pattern engraved on it. He won’t be able to display the monstrous strength he used to kill the chimera.”
“Oh dear, we’re grateful for that.”
“You must kill him this time without fail. If you don’t, know that you two will be finished!”
“When have we ever failed, Master?”
At his sister’s sarcasm, a twisted burst of laughter leaked out from between his brother’s helmet. The slaughter experts’ ridicule filled the corridor and clung to the arena master’s back. The arena master quickened his pace. Just a little. He didn’t want to show his hired hands that he was afraid of them.