The Ironclad Assassin (1)
To cut straight to the point, the veterinary bills were no joke.
Blackie had been admitted to the hospital. I had prepaid Sinel a considerable sum of credits, and she had poured most of it into the cat’s treatment.
Thanks to that absurd chain of events, I managed to bind Sinel Cloverbloom to me as a subordinate under the convenient name of debt.
In this cruel, dangerous city, I had secured the bare minimum of force needed to keep myself alive.
So, did Sinel—suddenly saddled with a mountain of debt—resent the situation?
Not even a little.
Even now she was walking beside me with a thoroughly satisfied look on her face.
“I’m glad Blackie’s okay.”
“Yeah. Looks like we dodged the worst of it, at least.”
No matter how you looked at it, Blackie still didn’t seem entirely fine, but Sinel’s feelings for the cat were clearly genuine. Otherwise she never would have spent that kind of money trying to save a stray.
Compared to the credit-obsessed mercenaries of the Cross Network, she actually had a few redeeming qualities I could trust.
“I can’t wait to bring him home later. Blackie’s going to love it, right?”
“You’ve already saved up enough to raise a cat?”
“Ah…”
The moment money entered the conversation, Sinel’s face fell.
Of course it did. She hadn’t had much to begin with, and she had just blown most of her advance on veterinary fees. If she still had cash left after that, I would have been the one getting scammed.
“Raising a cat costs a lot of money.”
“Can’t be helped. If I’m broke, I’ll just have to live on the streets with Blackie…”
Was she seriously considering becoming a homeless person?
The more I watched her, the more I realized there was no predicting which way she would jump.
Before any more ridiculous ideas could leave her mouth, I steered the conversation toward work.
“Don’t worry too much. Do a good job and there’ll be incentives.”
“Really?”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who spouts empty promises?”
Honestly, that was exactly how I looked. The number of lies I had told since arriving in this world had already grown past the point where I could keep count.
Even so, Sinel shook her head and denied it for me.
“No. You’re a good person, boss. I’ll work hard.”
“That’s the right attitude.”
“So what kind of work will I be doing from now on?”
“Bodyguard duty. Protecting me is your job.”
The world of the novel War City was a place of struggle and bloodshed, of schemes and betrayal—a pure survival-of-the-fittest free-for-all. For a nameless extra like me to survive the coming storm, I needed a force of my own. And building that force required money. Money bought strong people; strong people made more money. The only safe way out of that paradox was, ironically, to throw myself into even greater danger.
In short, I needed someone who could protect me from the threats that would come for me in the outer districts.
“Protecting you, boss?”
“That’s right. If my life’s in danger, you keep me alive. If I need muscle, you fight in my place.”
“Got it. Doesn’t sound bad.”
Most of the job would simply be following me around. Judging by her reaction, she didn’t seem particularly unhappy with the arrangement.
I opened my phone, pulled up the contacts list, and handed it to her.
“Work starts tomorrow. Write down your number and I’ll send you the office address.”
I wasn’t going to be in this city for just a day or two, and I couldn’t keep hopping from hotel to hotel forever. It was time to settle somewhere properly.
Fortunately, finding a suitable office wasn’t difficult.
Decent size, cheap rent, tucked away in a corner of a building where no one was likely to come looking—second floor. I took over one of the units there. With a few pieces of furniture it would even work as a place to live.
Moving into the Cross Network itself would have been ideal, but I had no intention of limiting myself purely to information work, so it didn’t matter much.
“The office is bigger than I expected.”
“We’ll pick up more people as we go. Bigger is better.”
Click.
I peeled Sinel away from the unwashed window she had been staring through and locked the office door with the key. Now that the bodyguard I had been waiting for had arrived, it was time to head out and handle the business I had planned.
Sinel watched me lock up and asked, “If you lock the door, won’t customers be able to get in?”
“What good is a customer if I’m not even here?”
“…I guess that makes sense.”
“Let’s get moving. No telling how long this will take.”
I had no real intention of running a legitimate business anyway. Calling it a company was just a surface-level way to keep the people I recruited under one roof. If necessary, even a paper organization with nothing but a name would do.
I set off toward our destination with Sinel in tow.
“Boss.”
“Got something you want to ask?”
“Where are we going right now?”
“We’re going to pay a visit to an organization called Valiant.”
The outer districts were full of criminal outfits fighting over every scrap of territory and profit. Valiant was one of them—and one that appeared right at the beginning of War City, serving as an early demonstration of the kind of fights the protagonist would face.
While I had been stuck in the hotel, I had confirmed the current timeline of the story and put together a plan to make money off Valiant.
“Valiant. Never heard of them.”
“They operate out of District 11. Their boss seems ambitious enough, though I’m not sure he has the ability to match.”
Of course Valiant didn’t fight the protagonist directly. More accurately, they were the ones who got wrecked by the criminal the protagonist’s party would eventually face. At this point in the timeline, Valiant had already lost one of its executives to a contract killer sent by a rival group.
The man who killed that executive was Dagas Philip, known in the underworld as Ironclad. Enraged, Valiant’s boss—Mister Trillo—was currently hunting the assassin who had taken his right-hand man. In the end, though, Mister Trillo himself would be assassinated by Ironclad, and the entire organization would collapse without its pillar.
I planned to sell Mister Trillo the information about Dagas that I had seen in the novel.
“So you really are an information broker…”
“I don’t expect any actual fighting, but there’ll be some posturing. Best to be ready.”
“Understood.”
I said it casually, but I was just as tense as she was. Walking a tightrope around dangerous people was never great for one’s mental health.
Those who stand still get swallowed by a city that never stops moving. To survive in the tiger’s den, I had to become a tiger myself.
Even after we reached District 11, we walked for quite a while before we spotted several men with assault rifles standing guard in front of a building. It matched the description of Valiant’s base from the novel perfectly.
Confirming we had the right place, I walked up to the sentries with Sinel at my side.
“Halt. Who the hell are you?”
One of the guards tightened his grip on his rifle, looking ready to pull the trigger at the slightest wrong move. I put on my most relaxed expression and answered.
“Wandering information broker.”
“What business do you have here?”
“Call Mister Trillo. I have something to discuss with him.”
“You don’t just get to see the boss.”
“Tell him I have information on Ironclad.”
The man hesitated for a moment, then nodded and disappeared inside. Information on the assassin his boss was desperately hunting—there was no way a bait that big would be ignored.
The guard returned shortly and gestured for us to follow.
“We’ll hold any weapons that look like they could be a problem, then let you in.”
“Fine by me. Take whatever you want.”
“Same goes for the woman.”
“Sinel. Hand over your weapons.”
An executive had just been assassinated. I never expected them to let us walk in armed. Sinel reluctantly surrendered her knives with a faintly disappointed look.
The man took the guns and blades, ran something that looked like a detector over us, then waved the other guards aside.
“Go in. The boss is waiting.”
“Right.”
The sentries stepped aside, and Sinel and I walked into the building.
Thud. Thud.
The interior was as crude as the exterior. In the center of a large hall, a middle-aged man sat in a chair smoking a cigarette, his subordinates arrayed around him.
Mister Trillo—boss of Valiant’s outlaws.
He fixed me with a heavy gaze, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, and asked, “Who are you?”
A simple question about my identity. I sat down in the chair opposite him and answered.
“Percival Smith.”
Six syllables no one here should have known. The moment the name left my mouth, the men behind Mister Trillo grew restless.
“Percival Smith?”
“Who’s that?”
“No way… That’s Percival Smith, the Dark Merchant!”
“The Dark Merchant?”
“What, is this guy famous or something?”
“The information broker of the century, Percival, showing up here…”
“Percival Smith, the Dark Merchant… I heard he doesn’t sell information to just anyone.”
“Hmm. Good. You’re well-informed.”
Because I made sure they were.
I looked at Mister Trillo with deliberate arrogance. Surrounded by the nonsense I had planted in his men’s heads, he finally nodded as if he understood.
“Hmph… Seems you’re quite well-known. Fine. Let’s hear what you have to say.”