Episode 52 - The Last Four Gang Lords 1

The mainland — back on solid ground, arrived aboard Tide's ship.

He had left her crew behind to watch the pirate ship and brought her along, and the streets they returned to were quiet.

Strangely, unsettlingly quiet.

"Something's off."

"Indeed... something is wrong here."

"What's going on...?"

Tide, still not fully grasping the situation, looked around in every direction — but the mercenaries and bounty hunters who had been swarming the streets recently were gone, along with even the small daytime street market that usually set up along the main boulevard.

Maengseol tensed at the strange wrongness of it — and then something reached his nose. A smell that was not good at all.

"...Boss."

"What?"

"...Corpse smell. And not fresh ones — actively rotting..."

"......! Athunga!"

Everything became immediately clear. The reason the streets were this empty.

Athunga — the Maritime Kingdom's foremost necromancer, one of the Four Gang Lords.

He had finally crawled up from the Underground.

A grin spread across Kaftin's face — the grin of a man who already knows he's going to win.

"Maengseol. Stay out of this one. I'll handle him myself."

"...Why?"

"My body is immune to every form of magic below the sixth circle. His necromancy can't touch so much as a hair on me."

"......!"

Chuckling to himself, he walked alone down the main boulevard toward the inn where Whispermere was waiting.

He had covered about a block when —

From every direction at once, the sound of feet scraping against the ground — and zombies came oozing out from the shadows, dragging their weapons, beginning to encircle him.

"Right then... so where is your master hiding? Going for sheer numbers since nothing else works — I'll give you marks for effort, at least..."

Kaftin showed not the slightest wariness toward them.

And with good reason — the undead were creatures sustained by necromancy, a magic that forcibly imprisoned a soul within a dead body. Whether zombie, skeleton, or death knight — any undead constructed from magic below the sixth circle would collapse the instant it made contact with his body.

To Kaftin, the undead were nothing more than boring chunks of wood that didn't scream or beg no matter how hard you hit them.

"You're in my way. Move."

"Grrrugh..."

He swept his arm through the zombies blocking his path with casual indifference — and they toppled like dominoes, each one collapsing and reverting to nothing more than an ordinary corpse, never to rise again.

"The fact that they're stalling means he has something up his sleeve... Athunga...!"

What interested him far more than the zombies around him was whatever scheme Athunga was cooking up.

Of course, that loose sense of ease only lasted so long.

"Graaugh—!"

Perhaps because so many had fallen — they finally registered Kaftin's existence and began to close in.

From front, back, left, and right, they swung the weapons in their hands in sloppy, uncoordinated arcs. Pathetically clumsy —

"Hm...?!"

He had been paying little attention to the weapons, assuming they had been conjured by necromancy — and in a moment of inattention, felt a long cut open across his back.

"Wait — don't tell me these are...!"

The smirking brow furrowed.

Damn Athunga.

So the years hadn't been wasted after all.

"Hemorrhagic poison...!"

One glance at the shortsword's gleaming blade that had just raked across his back was enough to confirm it immediately.

Almost certainly the work of Veilslayer's surviving subordinates.

The situation had changed.

The bodies were still scarecrows that would crumple with a single shove — but what they were carrying was a different matter entirely.

Not conjured alongside the undead through magic — these were real, physical weapons commissioned directly from blacksmiths and placed in dead hands.

"Athunga... you're actually making this fun...!"

Undeniably dangerous — but nothing had fundamentally changed.

Because —

"But still..."

"Grrgh... urgh..."

"Groooh..."

Kaftin shook his head, took a few steps backward — then spun on his heel, planted his foot, and launched himself into a hard sliding tackle.

"Scarecrows like these are only good as meat shields!"

Thud. Thud. Thud. The ankles of the zombies he slammed into snapped clean off, and in an instant the necromancy binding the clustered undead shattered and they collapsed.

Thirty-odd zombies in a straight line folded all at once — and with a clear path ahead, Kaftin broke into a light run.

Pummeling and tearing at those unresponsive lumps of meat wasn't entertaining in the slightest — and the living, breathing Athunga who was controlling them all was a far more satisfying target to go after.

"Kaaaftiiiin...!"

"......!"

Just at the edge of the block where Whispermere's inn stood.

The inn in question was ringed in a tight siege of zombies.

And standing in front of them was —

"What have you done to yourself? That body..."

"Hkhlhl... I watched you transform and decided to arrange something similar for myself. What do you think? Magnificent musculature, wouldn't you say?"

Athunga was not, as expected, the frail elderly mage he had always appeared to be.

Instead, he stood blocking the path in a body that looked about to burst at the seams — roughly three meters of swollen muscle, seams and stitching visible all across it.

Though from the neck up, his face was exactly as it had always been.

"...He processed undead and made it into armor for himself."

"Correct. It moves exactly as I will it! On equal terms now...!"

Athunga waggled his fingers as if to say, go on then, show me the Behemoth Form — goading him with open contempt.

From inside Kaftin's robe, Seakloy watched the scene unfold with bright anticipation, licking her lips in barely contained excitement.

Completely indifferent to Seakloy's expectations, Kaftin lifted the hem of the Robe of Sanguine Dark and held it out with a grin.

"Hey. Athunga... about this robe — I believe you said it was yours. What do you make of this?"

"...! Th-that robe! You — it was Vesren after all...!"

He had harbored suspicions, but without proof, and with Vesren already dead, it had seemed like something he would never recover.

And yet why was that robe draped across this man's shoulders?

"You — take that off right now! That is not something someone like you has any business wearing—!"

"Ha. You want to wear it right now? In that size? That's not going to work."

"Quiet! You ignorant ape who doesn't even know the value of that garment—! Take it off, I said!"

In front of an indignant Athunga demanding he strip, Kaftin simply grinned.

"No."

"Wh-why you—...! Fine... it doesn't matter. I'll crush you to a pulp and scrape it from the remains — wait, what?!"

A beat of silence.

The sight in front of him was so utterly unexpected that Athunga's thoughts came to a complete halt.

Blowing his nose.

Into the front of the Robe of Sanguine Dark — the ego suit that contained a fragment of a vampire's soul and abilities, the kind of artifact that couldn't be sourced anywhere at any price — he had just blown his nose.

"Hehe... my nose has been itching something awful today..."

"YOU LITTLE—!!!?!?!?!"

The veins on Athunga's forehead stood out as he drove his new body's fist crashing down.

Kaftin jumped lightly out of the way — and then, just to make a point, blew his nose again in a different spot.

"Snff... that's much better. Right then."

"Y-you little—...! You...! That garment — that's...!! That is a relic passed down through our school for generations—! How dare you — how dare you do that to our school's legacy—!"

"Oh? That precious to you, was it?"

An obvious mistake.

Saying that to this man would certainly invite something far more depraved.

"Kgh...!"

"Hfheheheheheh... things are getting more interesting by the minute..."

"Y-you little—...! You are really...! Don't do anything more to that garment! Do you want to die painfully?!"

"Heheh... I didn't realize it was that precious. Well then — I suppose I'll take it off."

The mention of taking it off gave Athunga a brief flicker of relief, and he went still.

He could at least watch and wait until this man removed the precious relic.

"G-good... take it off this instant! Now! And hand it over! I will not tolerate any further desecration of that garment!"

"Heheh..."

The laugh was unsettling — but regardless, the robe was being shrugged off, one sleeve at a time, until it fell to the ground.

"Good... so you do understand plain language when you want to..."

Athunga immediately reached out to snatch it up.

But Kaftin was watching — and the moment he reached, pressed the toe of one foot down flat onto the robe, blocking him from taking it.

"Y-you little—?! Get that foot off right now! How dare you—!"

He raised his other fist to strike — and in that same instant, Kaftin was already preparing to commit an atrocity that exceeded anything Athunga's imagination could have generated.

"Wh...?! What are you doing with your trousers, you little—"

"What else — I'm about to relieve myself. Right here on top of this black robe. Nice and thoroughly."

"......!!!!"

Athunga recoiled in sheer horror and immediately drove his fist downward.

He could not stand by and watch the garment be desecrated any further.

But the opponent was Kaftin.

A heavy, metallic impact rang out — and his waist bent slightly to one side, but he did not fall, and he did not fly.

"Kgh...?!"

And in the meantime, the trousers were sliding down, and his grotesquely proportioned anatomy began to come into view —

"St-stop...! Stop it...! I said stop it—!"

"Hfhfhf...!"

"Eeeeek...! A-alright! It's the inn, isn't it?! That's what this is about, isn't it?!"

"Hmm, is it...?"

"Hmph! Is it that bothersome that I've surrounded Whispermere and her party's inn with zombies?! Fine — I'll pull the zombies back! Just stop doing anything more to that garment!"

"...Who said you could set the terms here."

"What?!"

In the moment Athunga faltered at the unexpected response —

Right on cue, a yellow stream came pouring down between Kaftin's legs.

"NOOOOOOOO—!!!!"

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA—!!!"