Chapter 26
After sending Elena off, I was in the back alley.
In one of the back-alley buildings, bandits beaten into bloody pulp sprawled at my feet.
"Ghk, cough..."
One foamed at the mouth with his limbs twisted at grotesque angles, another clutched his stomach and retched, and a third clutched his face around his broken nose.
The buildings in this back alley, where no one came looking, were occupied by roughnecks who called themselves clans.
They were commonly known as 'bandit clans.'
They were illegal clans unworthy of official guild registration—criminal organizations that engaged in smuggling, fencing stolen goods, and contract assaults while lording over the back-alley underworld.
They were nothing more than a third-rate gang of thugs who imitated the legitimate clans active aboveground and put on airs.
I ground my foot into the flank of the man whose toes were twitching.
"Ugh!"
A scream burst out.
"Quiet. Before I kill you."
The man who had been struggling froze as though someone had flipped a switch. He clamped a hand over his mouth so tightly that he did not even dare breathe.
"Gnnngh...!"
I pressed my foot down against his ribs.
The deeper I pressed, the more muffled groans he let out.
"I'll ask one more time."
I repeated the question I had asked when I first came to the bandit clan.
The man calling himself the clan leader glared at me with wide eyes, but he still listened.
"Why have you been following me? Continuously, for days. Did you think I wouldn't notice?"
"Ghk, gnnngh...!"
The clan leader's eyes widened as though they might pop out at any moment. When he tried to scream, unable to endure the pain, I lifted my foot away.
He gasped raggedly over the filthy floor.
After coughing up blood several times, the man looked up at me.
His pupils trembled like a mouse's when faced with a cat.
But even a mouse will turn and bite a cat when driven into a corner.
The clan leader, who knew Eck well, seemed convinced that his death was certain, and a despairing laugh escaped his agonized lips.
"Puhahahaha! E-Eck, you acted all high and mighty, pretending to be the loneliest man in the world! Ptui!"
The man sprawled on the floor spat blood-flecked saliva onto the ground.
Though he coughed as if he were about to choke to death, ecstasy spread across his grotesque, bloodstained face as though he had achieved enlightenment.
"The rumors were true! You got bewitched by that little brat! Thoroughly bewitched! The rumors really were true!"
He snickered, baring his broken teeth.
"The great Eck came to wipe out an entire clan over one little brat! Are you really the Eck I know? Puhahahah!"
"Is that all you have to say?"
"You've gotten awfully kind. You're even waiting for me to finish speaking? Then there's something I absolutely must tell you!"
The clan leader shouted in a trembling voice, fear written across his face.
"If you touch us, that girl won't make it out safely! Everyone in the back alley knows that you came here!"
The clan leader gritted his teeth.
He clenched his fists tightly.
"What do you think they'll assume if we disappear? You'd better keep a close eye on that little brat of yours. Heh-heh. Go ahead and kill me if you want. The day you do will become the day your brat is mourned."
If the bandit clan disappeared, it would become known that Eck had acted for Elena.
Elena was Eck's weakness.
The logic was simple.
"How many people hold a grudge against you? Do you think all the sins you've committed in the past will simply disappear, Eck?"
The clan leader burst into mad laughter.
His spiteful voice rang through the alley.
Poison glinted in his eyes.
The hope that he might be able to threaten me gave him a shallow sense of relief, pulling the corners of his mouth into an unpleasant smile.
I turned my gaze toward the back alley outside the building.
More than ten people were already lurking nearby, eavesdropping on what had happened to the bandit clan.
Things in a back alley like this could shift from day to day.
Any piece of information could determine an organization's fate that day, so the back alleys were always full of eyes and ears watching everything.
"I have to be a good person."
No matter what I had done in the past, I had to be that in front of Elena.
Knowing how Elena thought, I needed to be beyond reproach to deal with her. She trusted people easily, but she also had a strong tendency to become blindly devoted to the person she trusted most.
I had to be the person Elena trusted most.
Elena would not keep trusting someone the guards had dragged away forever.
So even while playing the usual Eck, I could not help but let my performance become clumsy.
Assault, rape, fraud, extortion, murder.
If any one of those crimes got me dragged away by the guards, would Elena consider me worthy of her trust? I still did not know whether she had reached the stage of blind devotion, but even blind devotion had conditions.
Elena's blind trust would be shattered by crime.
She was especially sensitive to the crime of 'murder'—the crime of killing her father.
After hearing me, the bandit clan leader smiled with visible relief.
"R-right. Now that you're pretending to be a good person, there's nothing to gain from making an enemy of us."
I placed my hand on the hilt at my waist.
"The guards turn a blind eye to what happens in the back alleys."
It would be good for the guards, too, if one less headache remained.
The blade slid out of its sheath.
"W-what are you trying to do...?"
The deranged smile clinging to his lips froze in an instant. The eyes that had been certain of victory contracted with fear.
"Y-you don't care what happens to that brat...!"
Shhk!
Before he could finish speaking, my sword swept across his throat.
The bandits' attention was drawn to their clan leader's head as it fell and rolled across the floor.
The shackles binding the bandits' ankles came loose.
They fled all at once.
As the men scrambled frantically across the floor in terror, a bluish glow spread along the blade that had cut down their clan leader.
Shrring!
A flash of light swept through.
More than ten bandits collapsed without uttering even a death rattle.
Blood welled from their severed wounds and stained the floor bright red.
I looked down coldly at the bodies strewn across the floor.
"Fools. Did you think I wouldn't kill you just because I wasn't acting like my usual self?"
There was no reason to leave them alive.
They were not under a noble's protection, nor was this a matter that would get anyone dragged before the guards. Even if word got out, I would likely be defended.
After threatening Elena, they had given me not just no reason to spare them, but every reason to kill them.
I addressed the little rats beyond the wall.
"Go and spread the word! If you don't want to end up like these men, stop skulking around in front of me! Tell them that if even one of you lays a hand on Elena, I'll rip out everything you've built from the roots!"
When I raised my mana to threaten them, the nearby onlookers quickly disappeared.
"Tsk."
There had been something worth taking to heart in what the bandit clan leader said.
The sins Eck had accumulated.
Eck had many enemies.
"This is unbelievably unfair."
Even these bandits had been plotting to approach Elena and draw her over to their side.
'Drug her or frame me. Or take Elise hostage.'
If they approached her pretending to be ordinary residents, she would casually befriend them, just as she had shown by getting along with people on the street.
I already knew exactly how the bandits approached Elena.
'But I can't stick to her side and watch her twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.'
I wiped the blood from my sword with a rag and headed into the inner rooms of the bandit clan's building.
When the wooden door creaked open, the stale air pooled in each room reeked of rot.
The smells of alcohol, tobacco, sweat, and filth mingled together and assaulted my nose.
I went upstairs, kicked open the clan leader's door, and entered.
A crude chest reinforced with metal bands caught my eye in the corner of the room.
Crunch!
When I swung my mana-coated sword, the chest's old lock split apart.
The chest was haphazardly filled with a miscellany of valuables the clan had accumulated through its bandit activities.
I took pouches of compact, high-value gold coins, along with sacks carefully packed with uncut gemstones, and tucked them inside my clothes.
It was a fairly substantial haul.
"Jackpot."
I reached out and picked up a copper-colored ring.
Up close, it was a crude ring covered in a dense pattern of scales. It looked like the sort of cheap jewelry one could buy for half a silver coin at the market.
'Scale Worm's Husk.'
A rare item obtainable as the final reward from a certain back-alley-related quest.
It was a top-tier aggro item that made anyone wearing it draw fierce hostility. Depending on how it was used, it could serve as a wild card that turned the tide of battle.
I had found a very useful item.
After pocketing the ring, I left the building.
***
Lukewarm beer slid down my throat.
I sat in a corner of the noisy guild dining hall.
Even though the place was swarming with adventurers, no one sat in that particular spot.
I claimed the seat and let myself get drunk on the beer's stale taste.
After downing the entire glass, I became drunk surprisingly quickly.
Whether it was the aftereffects of my past life or the fact that I had been going out so often lately, the alcohol went to my head fast.
As I sank into drunkenness, I went over the tasks that remained.
'Only the dungeon remains now.'
The point when Elena met Eck.
The point when the Red Moon rose for the second time.
The tutorial was gradually approaching its end.
'She should be arriving soon.'
I set my glass down on the table and looked toward the guild door.
The door opened, and Elena entered.
Her footsteps were light.
Her face was bright, too.
When Elena's gaze met mine, her face lit up.
She approached in quick little steps. Like a puppy wagging its tail and waiting for its owner's praise, it was obvious that she wanted me to praise her.
Elena held out a piece of parchment.
"How is it?"
The parchment was a subjugation certificate.
The guild had issued it to certify that she had hunted and defeated a troll.
The muscles in Elena's cheeks twitched.
"Not bad."
As I put away the certificate, the guild stirred at Elena's return.
The adventurers around us began to murmur.
Elena had defeated a troll.
The adventurers who knew Elena from her first visit let out genuine exclamations of admiration and stole glances at her.
"Good work, Elena."
"It's all thanks to your help, Uncle. Hehe."
Elena sat across from me and told me about the process of subjugating the troll.
After finishing her story, she wiggled her flushed cheeks.
"I did well, right?"
"You did well."
"I'm amazing, right?"
"Yes, you are."
"Hehe."
The corners of her mouth nearly reached her ears, as though even she thought she had done a great job.
Only the dungeon remained now.
The event that would awaken Elena and give her the power to kill Eck.
'She won't kill me... but this is a little nerve-racking.'
I tightened my grip on the glass.
And that was when Elena would begin to grow stronger than me.