Chapter 37
The first thing that pissed me off was the weapons those bastard Ronins brought in packed to the brim.
Dragon's Lair's number one rule, 1. Weapon Prohibition, including swords and firearms, inside the Bar. If brought, Entrust them to the Manager. As if those outlaw Ronin would actually follow that. It wasn't just t number one rule,
1. Weapon Prohibition, including swords and firearms, inside the Bar. If brought, entrust them to the Manager.
As if those outlaw Ronins would actually follow that.
It wasn't just that they didn't follow it; they tried to waltz right in with swords and guns hanging from their waists, meaning I had to do a weapon inspection on every single passing Customer, and man...
I missed the Self-proclaimed Sherlock Holmes so much it ached.
At least with that guy, everything popped right out when I shook his coat.
True to people who made a living killing others with weapons, they hid them in the most Extraordinary places.
Stashing magazines and ion explosives in the heels of their shoes was basic, and in extreme cases, there were even tough bastards casually walking around with laser wire or a small plasma cutter wedged in their armpits.
If Sey hadn't been watching from behind and pointing out the spots I missed, I probably would have overlooked most of the ultra-high-risk unauthorized tech weapons they were trying to smuggle in.
Anyway, weapons hidden in shoes, pants hems, or inside clothes were one thing, but how on earth did she figure out the ones hidden in their armpits?
When she told me to check the armpits, not only me but the Ronin getting inspected stared blankly at Sey with a dumbfounded expression.
Even at the moment his small plasma cutter was confiscated from his armpit, he just blinked, as if he couldn't believe this reality.
Just like with the Troublemaker Detective last time, was this the vibe that came from a Head Bartender's experience?
Or did she have an ultra-high-performance cyberoptic lens with a magnetic field detection function installed in her eyes...
At least the last time I checked, Sey's two eyes looked completely natural.
Not that I had a license to distinguish between an artificial eye and a natural one, though.
Anyway, the important thing wasn't Sey's outstanding insight, but the fact that I was about to be crushed to death by the weapons she found with that insight.
Let's say there were twenty Customers in the Bar.
Seeing how much the Customers cared about safety, let's assume they each carried one electric katana, one mechanical automatic rapid-fire firearm, and one other small tech weapon to protect themselves.
Even just going by that, a simple calculation meant three weapons per person, totaling sixty weapons.
But, ta-da!
Those twenty Customers weren't Ordinary Customers, but all of them were Ronins?
True to those with blood-splattering professions, the weapons they carried weren't just what was visible on the outside.
If you added the weapons perfectly hidden inside their clothes, the number doubled, making it a hundred and twenty weapons by simple calculation alone.
On top of that, this Bar just so happened to have a suspiciously sharp-eyed Head Bartender who found every single weapon the Customers had hidden without missing a single one.
Thanks to the Bartender's active role, all those numerous weapons were entrusted to the Bar.
And the poor On-site Manager of the Bar ended up having to handle all one hundred and twenty or so weapons entrusted by the Customers.
Right. That poor Temporary Field Manager was me.
Furthermore, since the Customers kept cycling out, the twenty-person count was just the current capacity inside the Bar; it felt like way more than that.
The weapon inspection, where I had to face the Ronins' resistance, complaints, and threats, was cumbersome and exhausting in its own right.
But dealing with the bundles of weapons that poured out after finishing the inspection was no easy task either.
The safe box where we usually stored the Customers' belongings was already full and on the verge of overflowing.
Even then, dozens of weapons remained, so I had to move them to the Warehouse for storage, and even sort them out through data labeling to identify each owner...
At this point, I was getting confused whether I was working at a Bar or a gun shop.
If I had my way, I would have scrapped the Weapon Prohibition regulation and yelled at Sey to stop finding the Ronins' secret weapons since she wasn't a living metal detector.
But I couldn't do that.
Not only did I lack the seniority to arbitrarily ignore the Bar Regulations, but seeing the situation unfold like this made me acutely realize why the Dragon President had firmly established the Weapon Prohibition as the number one rule.
I guarantee you, if it weren't for the Weapon Prohibition regulation, a blood-splattering knife fight and shootout would have broken out ages ago, forcing the Bar to close its doors.
Actually, ending it at that level would be getting off easy; if someone accidentally set off explosives or something, the entire Bar might have been blown away completely.
Even now, with most of the Ronins reduced to bare hands thanks to Sey finding all sorts of weapons like a ghost, a tense atmosphere hung heavily right in the middle of the Bar.
It was a brutal scene where, given even the slightest trigger, they looked ready to clash and beat each other to a bloody pulp.
There was a reason inns and Bars were always the victims of violent battles in movies and novels.
Dozens of rough human weapons, and ones who didn't even get along that well, were sitting together in one space drinking—how could a fight not break out?
The fact that this unstable peace had been maintained until now was rather a miracle.
It wouldn't have been strange if those Ronins glaring at each other had smashed their glasses and flipped their tables ages ago, yet they were still only having a staring contest.
Just looking at their fierce momentum, you'd think they could shoot lasers from their eyes to kill their opponents.
...Since this was a Cyberpunk World, there probably were cyborgs who could actually do that, though.
Still, at least there was no one like that in here. Probably. If there were, Sey would have warned me in advance.
The same went for how those nasty-tempered Ronins poured out all sorts of complaints when handing over their weapons according to the Bar Regulations, yet ultimately didn't use Force to resist.
And how they hadn't gotten into a fistfight yet.
It looked as if something was restricting their actions.
The way they cursed up a storm yet didn't easily break the Bar Regulations I had guided them through, as if they were actual laws.
Just as people followed the law out of fear of being caught by the police, it seemed like they too were afraid of something, or someone.
...Maybe it was just my imagination.
Watching the muscular Ronins giggling while flicking heavy metal-filled boogers from their seats, they looked like they had nothing in the World to fear.
Maybe they were just exceptionally polite Mercenary Friends who followed the Bar Regulations well. Even I thought that was an unconvincing hypothesis, though.
Ah, my mistake.
Not all of the Mercenary Friends were polite. There was one bastard who kept failing to observe the etiquette required in a public place.
The homo bastard who pissed me off secondarily.
To explain how Mr. Man Hunter Alexgey Alexgeyevich Gergeyev kept getting on my nerves... I have to go back to the story about the Ronins' weapons again.
Inspecting them was a problem, and storing them was a problem, but the biggest problem was moving them.
Every time I did an inspection, over a dozen weapons popped out, and I had to move them all at once... The weight was no joke.
Especially when I was handed a large titanium hammer, a blade, or a shield barrier big enough to be used as an immediate Barricade... I was at the point where I wanted to quit the job and everything else, and just slap the cheeks of the Ronins who were shyly handing over their weapons.
I should have done some Exercise.
Even if the practical compressed muscle I mentioned before was honestly bullshit, I was still an owner of Physical Strength above the modern average.
Partly because the work was hard, and partly because it was full of all sorts of ridiculously large and heavy modified weapons, I got exhausted quickly.
Was the Dragon President recommending Exercise to me because he predicted this kind of future?
After some time passed, my arms and legs trembled every time I carried a set of weapons to the Warehouse.
It felt like I had come to a gym instead of a Bar.
And the biggest problem was that, of all places, that bastard was sitting with his Russian crew at the table near the Corridor where I was coming and going while carrying various weapons.
I didn't know if he aimed for it on purpose or if it was a coincidence, but he sat in the outermost seat there, staring intently at my movements from behind his sunglasses.
I had no idea what the hell he was doing to make his insidious gaze feel so palpable even through those thick polycarbonate sunglass lenses, but
I just wanted to gouge out those burdensome eyeballs with a fork.
But what could I do?
It wasn't exactly visual harassment, and I couldn't say anything just because he was looking. I couldn't kick him out just for staring with unpleasant eyes, either.
Still, just leaving him like that seemed like it would be a problem too.
He kept staring with that signature sticky gaze so much that I whipped my head around and glared at him, but far from stopping, he met my eyes and smirked as if asking if there was a problem.
Right. Strictly speaking, there was no problem.
I was just annoyed on my own; a clear incident violating the Bar Regulations hadn't happened yet.
At least, not yet. Therefore, I too had no choice but to hold it in and let it slide without saying anything.
Perhaps because I held it in like that, the bastard seemed to look down on me even more.
In my own way, I had glared and warned him, but in the eyes of the infamous Man Hunter, it probably just looked like I was acting cute.
Didn't he just consider me a timid Asian Mixed-race Waiter who couldn't even get properly angry?
In other words, an easy prey.
Maybe that was why—after a little more time passed.
Tap, tap, tap.
I was in the middle of busily working and moving back and forth, but despite that, the unpleasant sensation felt on my arms and legs was vivid.
At first, I thought it was my imagination, or that we had bumped into each other by mistake, but after going back and forth a few more times, I realized it wasn't my imagination.
Every time I passed by, the bastard kept reaching out and touching my body. And every time he made contact, the Brutes around him giggled and laughed.
At this point, my blood was boiling all the way to the top of my head.
I was already building up stress from the piled-up workload and the Ronin weapons, so with him continuously tapping and touching me, there was no way I wouldn't get angry.
Furthermore, if the culprit was the Man Hunter Alexgey, who seemed to be eagerly eyeing my asshole, I couldn't help but be even more pissed off.
Still, I held it in. For the second time.
Controlling the anger inside me, I spoke to him nicely.
I didn't know if it was a mistake or not, but the unnecessary physical contact with him was making me feel extremely unpleasant, so I told him to stop touching me.
I told him that if he tried to touch me with that hand again, I would just chop off his hand.
So I asked him to please be careful so that nothing unpleasant would happen between us.
I guess I looked funny because I said it with a smiling face.
Or maybe someone as weak-looking as me saying I would cut off the hand of an infamous Ronin like him sounded like a joke.
It wasn't a joke, though.
Either way, the bastard didn't answer and just kept cracking up with his subordinates. I hadn't said it expecting an answer anyway, so I just walked right past.
I had definitely warned him.
If he hadn't heard it properly, that was the fault of the bastard for not installing hearing aid cyberware in his ears.
He didn't seem to listen to my warning seriously, but still, it was quiet for a while after that.
I, for my part, had no time to pay attention to the Gay Hunter, as I was wondering what to do about the Ronin who had a massive buster cannon attached below his elbow instead of a human arm...
Should I count that arm-cannon as a weapon, or as a prosthetic arm?
If I treated it as a weapon, could I detach it according to the regulations? Was it even in a detachable form? I was lost in these thoughts.
Ah, for reference, I decided to count it as a prosthetic arm, not a weapon. I was going to detach it if it was detachable, but they said it wasn't.
I asked Sey, who for some reason seemed extremely knowledgeable about the various heavily modified tech weapons the Ronins carried,
and since she also thought it was connected to nerves and couldn't be carelessly detached, I gave up and let him in as is.
In the process, I also had to calm down the fierce protests of the other Ronins, who demanded to know why I took their weapons but wasn't ripping off that forearm cannon.
Also, not long after the Ronin walking around with a Rockman Cannon on his arm appeared, the next batter up was the Chainsaw Man carrying a 1-meter-67-centimeter Super-Vibrating Jet Engine Saw on his back, so I had to get into all sorts of scuffles to take the saw away from him.
Piercing through all sorts of pathetic excuses—like how it wasn't a saw but a dining knife, or how he'd be too anxious to eat properly without it—I moved to carry the hard-won engine saw to the Warehouse.
The problem was that I had underestimated the 1-meter-67-centimeter Giant Chainsaw too much.
When I first went Heave— and lifted it, somehow it didn't feel right. Maybe because my Stance was awkward, it kept slipping from my hands a little bit at a time.
It was because my arms and legs were completely steeped in fatigue from carrying so many things, making them feel as heavy as waterlogged cotton. Originally, I wasn't so weak that I would stagger like this.
In the end, I had no choice but to carry the saw in stages, setting it down several times rather than moving it all at once.
And the sight of me groaning, unable to even lift it properly and dragging the engine saw along, must have looked truly defenseless.
I felt the presence of something moving behind my back.
It was obvious without even looking. It was that bastard.
Despite my clear warning, the Man Hunter Alexgey couldn't hold back any longer and made a move.
And I was the kind of person who could hold it in twice, but didn't know how to hold it in a third time.
I felt the last remaining, tattered thread of my patience snap.
You're dead now, you son of a bitch.