Chapter 30
The old butler Dominic charged toward the city gate before Jane could stop him.
The guards, who had never imagined that an old man would draw his sword and charge the checkpoint, noticed him only belatedly.
As they hurried into the guard post, men in suits who looked unmistakably like mafiosi emerged from the same place the guards had entered.
“It’s an attack! Which family are you from?”
“Isn’t that the Paulo Family!?”
It was the only conclusion they could naturally reach upon seeing an old man draw his sword and charge at them for no apparent reason.
If they had looked at him and seriously thought he was an invader who had come from a neighboring domain to enlighten the citizens, they would have had to consider him either a genuine madman or a prophet.
The old man saw no reason to correct their misunderstanding.
The men in suits drew muskets without even calling for their surrender.
“Fire!”
The sight of mafiosi firing muskets instead of machine guns caused Dominic a slight degree of cognitive dissonance, but since it was not entirely unfamiliar, he did not appear particularly flustered.
Amid the sight of countless muzzles aimed at him, he considered two options.
The first was to deflect them.
It was a method that would clearly demonstrate the old butler’s combat prowess.
But if he showed that this early in the story, the later twist would lose some of its impact.
‘In that case···’
He decided to use the second method.
Taaang!
About twenty muzzles spewed white smoke.
Amid the drawn-out roar of gunfire, the old butler stopped his charge and swiftly threw himself sideways.
Iron balls passed through the spot where he had been and pelted the ground with a rattling sound.
Up to this point, it was a feat that most superhumans could accomplish.
If every gun was aimed at them from a reasonably distant position, this level of movement would not even qualify as a feat for superhumans.
The butler charged again.
Amid the soldati (rank-and-file), the capo (platoon commander) changed his orders.
“Create a wide curtain of fire! Reload! Fire!”
Following the capo’s orders, the rank-and-file aimed at a wide enough area that dodging would be difficult.
But Dominic took cover behind a tree and avoided the gunfire.
This was possible because widening the area had reduced the power within any narrow section.
After one volley, Dominic continued his charge.
The capo tried to order a third volley, but···
Whoosh!
A hand axe flew through the air and smashed his skull, sending his body tumbling backward.
The musketeers instinctively turned their heads backward.
Their gazes settled on the red pool spreading across the ground.
That jarring sight made them forget their situation for a brief moment.
Since they were rank-and-file members of a criminal organization who were at least somewhat accustomed to blood and death, they returned to reality quickly, but···
“It seems you are unfamiliar with spilling your own blood, even though you make others bleed.”
The devil had already drawn near them.
- “Draw!”
If the capo had still been alive, that was what he would have ordered.
They abandoned their muskets and reached for their swords.
But before they could draw them, Dominic’s sword passed through their wrists.
As severed wrists flew through the air, the old butler continued his sword swing and muttered,
“Please don’t call it cowardly. This is the only way an old man can survive.”
Of course, none of them would live to hear him, but it was a kind bit of character exposition for the vigilante woman watching from behind.
Dominic spun once, creating a silver circle, then slowly brought his sword down in front of him.
He immediately left the area, and only afterward did the mafiosi around him erupt into fountains of blood.
Having turned the checkpoint into a sea of blood in an instant, the old butler returned to the group and spoke with a benevolent smile.
“Perhaps it is because I am old, but it is rather sad that I have to resort to even such petty tricks.”
At those words, the vigilante Jane swallowed as she took in the corpses divided into upper and lower halves.
‘What in the world was I fighting?’
He was not stronger than the tax official.
If he had possessed the level of combat ability she had seen from the tax official at the mansion, he would have created a storm of blades at the checkpoint and dealt with everyone without a sound.
But the old butler’s strength was not that sort.
‘I could reproduce that if I had to.’
However, recalling and executing it in actual combat was another matter entirely.
Jane called it experience.
The tier she sensed from the old man’s body was Third Tier.
But his experience was something that could not possibly be measured in terms of tier.
The tax official’s strength was easy to understand, so she could devise strategies against him, but the old butler was even more ominous because she could not predict what he might do.
Once her thoughts reached that point, the old man’s benevolent smile began to look different as well.
It was not a smile of someone detached from the world, but one born of the confidence that he could somehow handle any situation with those two swords, no matter what happened.
‘Damn it. I underestimated him because he was a superhuman in an old man’s body.’
Among superhumans who slowed their aging, having old age catch up with them meant that they had reached the limit of their talent.
That was why she had underestimated the old butler, but···
‘That may not be the case.’
Perhaps he was simply an eccentric who had accepted old age.
She revised her assessment of the old man.
‘Come to think of it, he is an escort dispatched by the regime that brought down Count Karognar.’
Originally, she had planned only to assassinate the executives of the mafia alliance.
With so few people, she could not dream of annihilating a Family and liberating an entire city.
But after witnessing the martial prowess of the two men, she had no choice but to reconsider.
‘Perhaps, with these two···’
Perhaps it would be all right to pursue the luxury of a little justice.
The heart of the woman who had resigned herself to a grim reality began beating once more.
***
“Eek-!”
A monkey beastman (with somewhat excessive body hair) let out a final cry and collapsed onto the floor.
He was an executive of the mafia alliance and the boss of the <Skim Familia>, which ruled this city.
The scarlet-haired elf Jane panted as she wiped the blood from her sword.
“That makes one.”
Inside the room where the boss had fallen, she reviewed the battle she had just fought.
His skill had been nearly equal to hers.
If the two people who had come here with her had not prevented the other executives from joining the fight, she might have lost.
Thus, she had managed to bring down one of the nine executives.
But even after achieving her revenge, she did not feel particularly good.
‘This man··· at the end···’
Their abilities had been similar.
Even so, the reason she had won without injury, apart from being out of breath, was that the boss had been unable to focus on the battle because he was worried about his subordinates.
She lightly bit her lip as she looked at the fallen boss’s corpse.
Even as he was dying, he had clearly been angry for an entirely different reason.
- “My children!!!”
He had genuinely regarded his subordinates as family.
Otherwise, it would have been impossible to explain why he had refrained from using his finishing move, worrying that his subordinates would be caught up in it until the very moment of his death.
She turned her somber gaze toward the outside of the room.
The hallway outside was lined with the corpses of mafiosi.
Amid that mountain of corpses, the narrow-eyed tax official and the unidentified old butler were calmly chatting.
- “This will take quite a while to clean up.”
- “I fought rather messily. I will be more careful next time.”
- “No, Butler. My magic is more than sufficient to clean up this much.”
The sight of the two treating human corpses like garbage was almost eerie.
But what made her even more uncomfortable was knowing that the two had deliberately brought the subordinates nearby so that the boss could not use his finishing move.
In particular, whenever the old butler sensed that the boss was about to use even a moderately powerful technique, he precisely timed it so that the head of a mafia executive would fly to a conspicuous height and scatter the boss’s concentration.
“Tsk.”
It was unpleasant.
‘At this rate, I look like the villain.’
She thought that for a moment, then shook her head and cast the thought aside.
‘Who am I to play the hero of justice?’
She dismissed her earlier thought as hypocrisy and redefined the source of her discomfort.
‘Right. This is my displeasure at them breaking their promise.’
It was in no way an expression of the sense of justice that remained in her heart.
She scoffed at herself for continuing to act hypocritically and approached the two men.
The old butler welcomed her with a benevolent smile and offered her a handkerchief.
“Are you finished?”
“Don’t interfere next time.”
“I do not know what you mean.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“···I apologize. I was presumptuous.”
“I accept your apology.”
She wiped the blood from her face with the handkerchief.
She returned the handkerchief to the old butler and headed for the exit without even glancing at the tax official, who was disposing of the corpses with magic.
“Phew···”
She headed for the exit while hiding her fatigue and pretending to be strong.
There was even a hint of impatience in her steps.
Immediately after killing the boss, she had gained an enlightenment. And she wanted to internalize that enlightenment in the room.
However, she was afraid that the old butler would stab her in the back if he realized she was on the verge of advancing to the next tier.
Dominic stopped her.
“Miss.”
“I’m not your miss.”
She was aware that she was behaving unattractively, but she saw no reason to correct her attitude.
But Dominic showed no sign of displeasure and continued addressing her kindly.
“Then shall I call you Lady?”
“That’s cheesy.”
“Then I shall continue calling you Miss. Miss, did you just gain an enlightenment?”
Her head, which had been turned away, turned toward the butler.
That alone was answer enough.
Her heart began pounding violently.
Whether he knew what she was feeling or not, the old butler admonished her.
“You must not make murderous intent the basis of your enlightenment.”
Crack.
Jane was already displeased, but she became even more so.
“Who are you to say that? Are you my master?”
“No. But perhaps because I am a man who grew old without accomplishing anything, I cannot leave a young person rushing toward a cliff to their fate.”
“Mind your own business.”
“Hmm.”
Dominic quickly analyzed her.
For one thing, just as with Ari, she was in no state to be persuaded through authority and words.
Even so, he felt uncomfortable with the protagonist of the story falling so quickly.
At this rate, would he not be unable to properly play the final boss in this story?
‘In that case···’
Having organized his thoughts, Dominic let out a deep sigh.
Immediately afterward, a thick killing intent rose from the old man’s body.
‘!!!’
Jane’s body stiffened when she was directly exposed to the killing intent.
‘What kind of old man···’
Beyond the killing intent, which even carried the scent of blood, she thought she could hear the resentment of the dead.
As though it were telling her how many corpses that old man had piled up.
On Dominic’s face, which had worn a benevolent smile, only shadows and red glints in his eyes were visible.
The monster—she was no longer sure she could call him an old man—opened his mouth.
“I··· do not wish to cut down a beast drunk on blood again.”
Was it merely an illusion that she sensed deep regret in the monster’s threatening words?
She instinctively nodded.
Her nod held a vow never again to make murderous intent into her enlightenment.
Only then did the old man withdraw his killing intent, return to his usual state, and straighten his clothes.
“Miss, it is enough for a foolish old man to walk that blood-soaked path.”
The old butler smiled with satisfaction and returned to his master, the tax official.
Jane could not take her eyes off his back as he walked away.