Episode 20 - Veilslayer's Rage 2

One week later.
Kaftin had been going out nearly every afternoon to destroy one after another of the revenue-generating operations under the Four Gang Lords' control.

In the meantime, he had left Conquere in Whispermere's care.

The moment she became entangled with him, it was only a matter of time before the Gang Lords made some kind of move against her.
If she was going to be in danger regardless, leaving her with Whispermere — the least violent of the lot — was far the safer option.

Whispermere, knowing Kaftin's temperament, would not lay a hand on Conquere even if she took her hostage.
Not that something happening to Conquere would necessarily be a bad outcome for him either.

If it came to that, he could simply raze this godforsaken street to a ruin of nothing but meat and rubble — no hesitation, no regrets.

As befitting a red-light underworld district, the streets here were comparatively quiet during the day.

The one exception was the five-day market held along the main boulevard from the fifth to the tenth of each month.

Kaftin was on his way back after reducing an illegal arms trafficking operation to cinders, and had stopped to browse the market.

Money was no issue — he had plenty from what he'd stripped out of the operations he'd raided — so he threw himself into shopping without a second thought.

His feet eventually stopped at a clothing stall selling an assortment of garments.

"Hmm..."

Whispermere had managed to put together a couple of outfits for Conquere, but Kaftin felt this was something her guardian ought to handle himself.

He slowly looked through the clothes hanging on the rack, turning over various pieces that looked like they might fit Conquere's frame.

"What's this? Got yourself a bastard child somewhere?"
"Ah."

The stall owner had been watching him with quiet curiosity, and had assumed what was fairly common in this part of town — some illegitimate child born of a mistress or affair.

Kaftin paused for a moment, then let out a quiet sigh and shook his head.
There was nothing to be gained from correcting the misunderstanding.
Might as well use it.

"...More or less."
"Ha — more or less, he says. You're a peculiar one, sir."
"...Heh."

The middle-aged owner slowly rose from behind his stall and slid a rack of children's dresses out from the corner, presenting it in front of Kaftin.

"Pick whatever suits you from here. Buy five or more and I'll do it half-price."
"Oh..."
"That said — don't you need to get yourself some new clothes as well?"

Kaftin's own attire was difficult to call decent by any stretch of the word.
Every time he transformed into his monster form, his clothes were torn to shreds, and each time he made do by rummaging through the corpses nearby for something that roughly fit.
What he had on now was a battered leather shirt with bloodstains here and there, paired with trousers that looked like they belonged on a day laborer.

"No, I've got my reasons..."
"Come now. Don't be like that — pick out a few for yourself too. Just because it's a stall doesn't mean it's second-rate. I'll have you know I carry special-order goods from the Mage Kingdom."
"What...?"

A market stall selling goods from the Mage Kingdom.
He tilted his head, wondering what kind of operation this really was — and the owner nudged one of the nearest racks forward.

"Take a look. They're plain cloth — no enchantments — but they're made from genuine high-grade fabric used in the Mage Kingdom."
"That's..."

He could hardly explain that his clothes regularly burst apart when he transformed into a monster.
Kaftin looked over the garments, which were visibly fine quality even at a glance, and shook his head.

"Something this expensive is a bit..."
"Oh, come on... do you still not understand that you need to present yourself better if you're going to live around here? Remarkable that you managed to father a child looking like that."
"No, that's not — it's not like that..."

The owner was quietly clicking his tongue on the inside.
He was nothing more than a market stall owner, but he had always prided himself on having a nose for money that could rival any seasoned merchant.

And right now, that nose was picking up two distinct scents from the young man in front of him.
The nauseating stench of danger, close enough to make his stomach turn — and underneath it, the sweet, irresistible fragrance of serious money.

"Are you really not going to buy? Even I can't source goods like these every month, you know."
"Ugh..."

While the two of them were going back and forth, a hand slipped carefully through the crowd and drew the silver knife hidden at hip.

Step by step, it closed in, the blade angling toward Kaftin's side — and Kaftin, none the wiser, was absorbed in turning a pair of men's trousers over on their hanger, examining them from every angle.

The hand moved as naturally as if it had simply always been there — and then, the instant it made contact with his side, drove the blade in hard.

With a sickening, muffled sound, Kaftin's body lurched sideways and crumpled.

"......!"
"Wh— what just happened?! Sir?!"

Ignoring the flustered stall owner, the hand that had held the knife vanished into the crowd in an instant.

*

He hadn't been careless.
The technique had simply been that good.

To think that in a moment this ordinary — in a flow this mundane — a blade would suddenly be driven into him.
The moment he hit the ground, he understood. This was the work of Veilslayer — master of assassins.

"Ngh... kgh..."
"H-hey! Are you alright?!"

Lucky or not, the strike had hit a vital point — but there was no poison on the blade.
He immediately twisted his body and pulled the knife out himself.

"Mithril...!"

The knife was a special-order piece, coated in mithril of all things — and finished with a matte surface, so in broad daylight it would absorb the sun rather than catch it. No glint, no warning.
Veilslayer's work, without a doubt.

The sensation of blood flowing from his side made his teeth grind.

"Are you alright?!"
"I'm fine, so — please stop yelling. My head is ringing."
"What?!"

Despite being stabbed in a vital spot and visibly bleeding, Kaftin spoke as though it were nothing, and slowly pushed himself to his feet, knife still in hand.

"Y-you're bleeding! Are you really alright?!"
"Not exactly fine — but this much is... hm!"

He grimaced and tensed the muscles at his side. A dense, grinding sound followed as they clenched tight, and the bleeding stopped.
The merchant, white as a sheet, swallowed hard.

"Y-you're an incredibly tough man."
"I told you. Something this high-end is... not practical for me. This is just my everyday life."
"......!"

He let out a low chuckle, handed the trousers back to the owner, and proceeded to calmly pick out dresses and pay for them as if nothing had happened.

At that same moment.
From a distance, Veilslayer had watched the entire scene — and was grinding his teeth.
Drawing on the intelligence he had gathered, he had reached a firm conviction: that creature called Kaftin was, without question, a Spawn Knight.

Someone who had made a contract with a demon and obtained such transcendent power in return.
For a Spawn Knight, the weapons capable of dealing effective damage were fairly limited.

Among them, the most accessible and most reliable method had been a vital strike with a mithril weapon — relatively easy to obtain, and the surest bet.
And yet.

"......"

The man had simply shaken it off and stood back up.
There was not even a hint that the sacred energy imbued in the mithril had caused any internal damage.

Had it been a mistake to go without poison? Mithril's properties made it impossible to coat with toxins, so it had come down to a bare vital strike alone.

No — poison did nothing to him regardless, they had been told.
If mithril too did nothing, then truly...

"Aura Blade..."

Veilslayer ground his teeth, closing his hand around his glass dagger.
He had never revealed it to anyone — but he too stood at the threshold of Sword Master.

Cloaking that near-invisible, luminous glass blade with a colorless Aura Blade and striking without warning — that was the only method he could see that might reliably kill this man.

The problem was whether even that would finish him in a single blow.

If Kaftin underwent that grotesque transformation he had displayed in the arena, Veilslayer could not be certain that even the glass dagger with an Aura Blade would be enough for a one-hit kill.

He had of course considered taking the half-elf girl he'd recently been keeping close as a hostage — but Whispermere had argued against it fiercely.

If they resorted to that, she had said, he would not hesitate for a moment before hunting down and slaughtering the entire district.

Under normal circumstances, Veilslayer would have dismissed it as empty bluster. But this man was different.
The fact that someone with the means to back up that threat had said it meant...

While he was still turning it over in his mind, something changed in Kaftin.

"Grrr..."

He looked around — no one in the crowd that he could pin as the knife's owner with any confidence.
To think someone had dared to stab him like this. Had drawn his blood.

Kaftin was, in all sincerity, beginning to see every person within his field of vision as an enemy.

"Should I just kill them... kill every last one and skewer them on spits along the street..."
"H-hey, mister...?"
"A warning. The finest decoration this blood-soaked street has ever seen..."
"A-are you sure you're not hurt somewhere? I could point you toward the nearest temple—"
"Right. I'll kill them all...!"

Just as a faint red mist began to seep and curl from his body — someone caught the hem of his clothes and tugged.

"Hm?"
"......"
"...Kaftin."

Of all the timing — Whispermere and Conquere happened to be out on an errand.

"...What are you two doing here? It's dangerous."
"I serve the Four Gang Lords, remember."
"......"

Conquere was tugging at his hem, clearly wondering what was going on. Kaftin promptly dumped the newly purchased dresses into her arms.

"Here. Change into them when we get back."
"......!"
"That's unexpected. I didn't think you had this kind of gentle side..."

Whispermere was watching him with curious eyes. Kaftin flinched, and turned away with a scowl.

The odd warmth that crept up on him was irritating for some reason — he flung the knife he'd been holding to the ground and started stamping on it with complete indifference.

"It's nothing. It just happened to cross my mind."
"By the way — it seems Veilslayer has started making his move."
"......?"

At Whispermere's words, Kaftin stopped his idle stomping, picked the knife back up, and gave a slow nod.

"He got me once. I was just about to make an example when you showed up and ruined the mood."
"...Which means..."
"Yeah. I was going to kill every pest loitering around here, run them through on spits, and put them on display along this street."
"......!"
"Would have been quite the sight. What a waste..."

The genuine regret in his voice as he clicked his tongue sent a chill down her spine.
And at the same time — relief.
It meant he had, at least, held himself back in front of her and Conquere.

"Either way... I'll need to deal with this Veilslayer fellow before long. He's thrown down the gauntlet — I'll have to answer it."
"That... sounds like it's going to be an incredibly difficult fight."
"Heheh... you think so?"

The next instant, Conquere, Whispermere, and the stall owner standing nearby all froze where they stood, words dying in their throats.

Crunch. Crunch.

Kaftin was grinning — and casually chewing the mithril dagger between his teeth, eating it piece by piece.

—To be continued—