Episode 22 - The Assassin's Gauntlet 1

The conversation was brief.
The four members ended up neatly arranged in a circle, each with their head stuffed into the backside of the one in front.

He seized the guard at the gambling den's door by the throat, twisted, killed him, and helped himself to the key.

"Hm."

He held the key up for a moment, then snapped it between his fingers without a second thought.
He didn't need it to get inside.

"Hup!"

He drove his knee hard into the hinge side of the door, broke the hinges clean off, and shoved the whole thing inward.

"Wh-what?! The door?!"
"—! It's him! He's here—!"

The man behind the counter recognized him and shouted the alarm, yanking an axe out from beneath the counter.

Forty gold on that head.
An unusually large sum even among solo criminals in these parts.
If by some chance he could take that head — it would be a windfall beyond imagining.

"It's him—! Kill him—!"
"I'll do it! I'm the one who kills him!"

They had heard the rumors, of course — but they had also made the comfortable assumption that rumors were just rumors.

How many inflated stories floated around these streets on any given day?
Whatever this man's reputation, it was almost certainly hot air.

"Hyaaah—!"

The members sent flying along with the door had barely hit the floor when two more rushed in from either side, hammer and knife raised overhead.

"...Hm."

Kaftin deliberately angled his body toward the one with the hammer. His hand came up naturally and caught the descending arm, then threw the man over his shoulder — directly into the path of the incoming knife, which buried itself into the thrown man's back.

"Gwaaargh—?!"
"What—?!"

In the same motion, the hand he'd kept free drove a sharp blow into the thrown man's abdomen.

The impact sent the knife springing loose from his back, throwing the knife-wielder off balance and dropping him onto his backside.

"Kghk—?!"
"...Sloppier than I expected."

The knife-wielder scrambled to his feet and reached for his weapon — Kaftin kicked his face like a football.

The sound of a watermelon splitting. The man's face caved in, one eye popping loose, and the body sailed into the middle of the gambling floor — prompting screams from the gamblers who had dived under their tables at the commotion.

"Now then... what to do."

According to his information, the den ran three floors, with the office he was after on the top floor.

Whispermere had also asked him, repeatedly, to avoid killing uninvolved bystanders where possible — so he paused for a moment to consider whether he ought to sweep up the gamblers as well.

The consideration lasted about a second.
Unlike the workers at the drug workshops, these people were here for their own entertainment. They weren't the weak, coerced into cooperation to survive.
They had walked into an illegal gambling den of their own free will, for their own amusement, fully aware of the risk.

No particular reason to bother keeping them alive.
Even if he let them go, he'd run into the same lot at some other illegal den soon enough.

With that settled, he turned toward the gambling tables —

— and an axe came down hard on the back of his head.
Naturally, the blade didn't come close to splitting bone. Instead, it rang out with a sharp crack as the handle snapped and the axe ricocheted away.

It had, however, managed to nick the skin — and as Kaftin felt blood from the back of his head, his expression went cold.

He turned around slowly.
There stood the man who had swung it — the one from the front counter — staring blankly at the broken handle still in his fist.

"Ah... uh... look, I..."
"......"

Kaftin immediately swung the broken handle upward into the man's face, dropped him, then picked up the broken axe head and walked over.

"Open your mouth."
"Wh... what are you going to — mmph?!"

The color drained from the man's face the instant he saw Kaftin's smile as the axe head was forced into his mouth.
He had understood, instinctively, exactly what was about to happen.

"Aeh—! Mmph, sthop—!"
"Payment for what you put on the back of my head."

What came next was Kaftin's boot, driven squarely into the flat of the axe head.

*

Third floor.
The manager sitting in the office had already been warned that he was coming, and was wound tight with tension.
Facility after facility had been reduced to ruin by this one man alone.

In the end, the gambling den's manager had gone to considerable lengths to hire a Silver-ranked mercenary.

"P-please, I'm counting on you."
"Don't worry. I don't know how impressive this fellow is supposed to be — but he's still a man. My blade will be more than enough."

The mercenary, Alcorim, was quietly scoffing on the inside.
He had heard there was some kind of trouble brewing in the underworld lately — but all this fuss over a single brawler?

He briefly wondered if the Four Gang Lords were finally showing their age.
Not that he intended to let his guard down, of course.

From beyond the door came what sounded almost like a scream of protest — followed immediately by a meaty thud, and a steady seep of blood beginning to spread under the gap at the bottom.

"Eek—?!"
"Please stand back. I'll handle this."

Alcorim moved the manager toward the emergency escape window and closed his hand around the sword at his hip.
The moment that man came through the door, he intended to take an arm, or open his chest.

From the other side of the door came a heavy, rhythmic pounding — as if someone were forcing it open by sheer repeated impact.

Both men stood rigid.
The hinges began to give, slowly at first — then the door tore free entirely and someone shoved through.

"There—!"
"......!?"

Alcorim cut cleanly and felt the satisfaction of a good swing.
Then the door finished falling, and he saw what he had cut — and his expression collapsed.

"Wh-what is—?!"

Kaftin hadn't been pounding on the door at all.
He had been pressing the corpse of the man he'd killed downstairs against it and battering it from behind.

When the door gave way, what had come through wasn't Kaftin.
It was the corpse.

"Damn it—!"

Reeling from the sheer absurdity, Alcorim nevertheless kept his grip and reset his stance with practiced calm.

Kaftin glanced briefly around the room to take stock, then immediately kicked the corpse again — sending it skidding toward Alcorim.

"You—?!"

The flying body blocked his line of sight for just a moment — and in that moment, Kaftin was already moving toward the manager.

"Eek—?! St-stay back!"
"Damn it—! You filthy—!"

To his credit as a Silver-ranked mercenary, Alcorim shook the corpse off in the same breath and sent a shuriken from the rack on his chest flying toward Kaftin.

Kaftin let it bounce off his shoulder, and a long arm was already around the manager's collar.

"Gkk—! P-please—?!"
"Stop right there—!"
"......"

Alcorim came in hard, aiming for the arm — but Kaftin had already planted the manager between them as a shield and held his ground.

"Kgk kgk—! P-please—!"
"Let him go. Fight me like a man."
"...Heh."

Alcorim's challenge was answered with a grin — and then, pointedly, Kaftin drove his heel down onto the manager's foot with a crack of breaking bone, wrenching a tearing scream from the man's throat.

"You son of a—?!"
"Fight like a man? A Silver-ranked mercenary with no grip on reality... you still haven't read the situation, have you?"
"Tch—!"

He had let the target get taken hostage right under his nose.
He hadn't been careless — and yet a Silver-ranked mercenary had missed this man's movement. That fact made his teeth grind.

The man's presence was simply too alien from anything he had fought before. That was what had slowed his reaction.

"Alright. If you have conditions, I'll hear them."
"...Conditions... conditions..."
"Kgk—! P-please—!"

Kaftin considered it briefly, then shook his head.

"I don't know who you are, and there's nothing I need from you. What I want is being held in this hand right now, making those lovely noises."
"Then at least ease up on his throat for now."

Alcorim carefully lowered his blade, making a show of negotiating to try and extract the manager from Kaftin's grip by any means available.

One wrong move and the man dies — failed contract, and the credibility he had worked to build to Silver rank would take the hit.

"Hmm... I didn't come here to compromise, so..."
"Surely you at least need to know where the money is hidden."
"......"

At the mercenary's suggestion, the hand around the manager's throat loosened — just slightly.
The manager gasped in a ragged breath and opened his mouth.

"M-money?! Yes! Money! Of course it's hidden somewhere here! It is!"
"...I already know that. Tell me where."
"Th-that is — tell you when you let me go!"

The manager had the audacity to make it a condition.
Confident that the hiding spot was secure enough that no one could find it on their own, he had decided to play tough — and even managed a smile.

But.

"Fine. I'll find it myself."
"What?! W-wait—! Aaaaaagh—!!"
"Wh-what are you doing?!"

Kaftin had immediately stamped down on the other foot and crushed it, and was already shaking his head.

"You didn't offer me terms I liked, so the deal's off. I was going to kill everyone here from the start — makes no difference to me."
"E-eeek—?!"
"Tch—!"

In the fraction of a second that Kaftin's head turned away, Alcorim stepped in and came at him head-on.

Tricks weren't going to work on this man. He had decided — go straight, go hard, overwhelm him with force.

"Now that's what I'm talking about. I'll give you that."
"You won't get your way with me!"

Kaftin's unnatural grin surfaced — then he drove a kick squarely into the manager's midsection, launching him upward and crunching his head into the ceiling. In the same motion, he let his own center of gravity collapse backward, toppling back and under Alcorim's horizontal slash.

"What—?!"

Surprised that the swing had missed, but without skipping a beat, Alcorim flicked his wrist — reversing the blade's arc in an instant and sweeping it back the other way.

This time aimed at the waist. The center of mass — not so easy to dodge.

"Try this—!"
"Hm—!"

—To be continued—