Chapter 21
*
Eri, don’t rush them.
How am I supposed not to rush when my life’s on the line!
But will rushing change anything? Once Otto got taken down, there’s no way we can go up anyway.
...
More importantly, it’s already too late.
Still, if we hurry now...!
Bang!
But before Eri could finish, the front gate was smashed inward.
Hinges were torn off, wood splinters scattering everywhere.
That gate had only recently been repaired after the hinges froze last winter...
'Those bastards. Our clinic's already in the red.'
Of course, there was no way those thugs would respect my financial situation.
The silhouettes of the thugs surged in through the dust.
One, two, three, four, five.
And one more guy poking his head out at the very back, making six.
They were all clowns, recognizable by the lipstick streaks running from the corners of their mouths to below their ears and the ridiculous wigs perched on their heads.
The moment I saw them, the phrase 'clowns who blew their stock picks' flashed through my mind.
Among them, the man peeking out from the back had a completely different makeup.
“Heehee….”
Like the other clowns, he wore lipstick and a wig, but on top of that he had his face caked white.
Even among those white-faced clowns, his frame was unusually small.
“Ah-hi… ehehehe….”
The white face laughed.
More accurately, it was closer to trying to laugh.
An awkward laugh that was so stiff the word “creaking” fit it.
The fact that he only stuck his head out from behind the five ahead of him made him look like a mouse peeking its nose out of a hole.
“H-hello, h-healer, s-sir?”
I'm a doctor, not a healer.
Eri too, and the boss too.
Why did everyone here keep calling me a healer?
“I-I’m Kaski, Weißgesicht of the Lahenden Carnival.”
The clown bowed.
“Y-you can also call me White Face, s-sir, since you’re an outsider.”
Lahenden Carnival?
Weißgesicht? White Face?
What the hell is that, you otaku?
Fortunately, I didn’t need to ask—Eri explained it for me.
“The Lahenden Carnival is the artist faction of H Sector.”
“An artist faction?”
“Even if they all make money off people, how they process them before selling them differs by organization. Among them, factions like the Lahenden that modify people and sell them as works of art or as spectacles are called artist factions. That clown there’s one of them.”
So, an isekai-version freak show.
Not exactly the kind of people I wanted anything to do with.
At that moment, someone objected to Eri’s blunt assessment.
“Clown, you say?! In this harsh world, we spread laughter—insulting our noble mission—”
Judging by how not a single word stumbled out of his mouth even while angry, it must have really hit a nerve.
Eri ignored Kaski’s protest and kept explaining.
“From the bottom up, call them the hype man - Red Nose - White Face - King of Fools. White Face is basically the boss’s muscle.”
“I see.”
Even small and mid-sized groups have strict hierarchies, huh.
He seemed to be at least a mid-level executive over there.
White Face, or rather Kaski, was it?
“So, what brings you here?”
“W-we need y-you, s-sir.”
“Is there a patient waiting for me?”
“There are c-comrades waiting for you, s-sir.”
It looked like he’d come to recruit me as an ally.
“I’ll pass.”
I didn’t hesitate at all.
I’m the protagonist, and not just any protagonist—I’m a doctor protagonist.
Was it even sane to join an organization that did those kinds of things to people?
Besides, what was I lacking that I’d join the ranks of those lunatics?
White Face Kaski nodded calmly, as if he’d expected as much.
“Ah, that’s a shame. Then I suppose we have no choice….”
At that moment, Eri cut him off and drew a revolver.
“Sorry, but our teacher isn’t someone who’ll serve under anybody.”
It was the gun I’d prepared for self-defense.
Apparently, while she was putting things away in the bag earlier, she’d taken it for herself.
Click.
Eri cocked the hammer and aimed the muzzle at Kaski’s forehead.
'Wait. Is it okay for a 12-year-old kid to be holding a gun?'
For a moment I thought that, then remembered this was a world where magic was an even more monstrous personal firearm, and shook my head.
Right. At that level, it was just a child’s self-defense tool.
“Hiiik?!”
Kaski let out a scream and hid behind one of his underlings as the gun was aimed at him.
Using a clown in a wig as a shield, he rubbed his hands together.
“C-couldn’t we ju-just talk this out...?! I-I only came because I was told to….”
Eri frowned at White Face Kaski’s reaction.
I snorted inside my crow mask too.
It was just too stark a contrast to the boss’s enforcer I’d heard was of the same rank.
That guy was the sort who got stabbed in the stomach and still tried to go drink the next day, only to get lectured by me for it.
But this organization’s enforcer was putting his subordinates in front of him the moment a gun was pointed at him.
Maybe this was what the difference in organizational rank looked like.
Eri seemed to share the same sentiment, and the tension in her shoulders eased.
The muzzle in her hands lowered slightly.
And in that loosened atmosphere,
Kaski suddenly burst out laughing.
“Ihihi!”
Kaski shoved his underling toward Eri.
The shoved “crowd-stirrer” looked shocked too.
That expression said he’d never dreamed Kaski would do something like this.
Kaski took advantage of the moment his underling became a meat shield and rushed at the gun in Eri’s hands.
As his hunched-back posture straightened like a spring, a gleaming jackknife flashed out from his chest.
Startled by the movement, I shouted.
“Look out—!”
Bang!
But before I could even finish, Eri, face blank, pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Kaski’s head snapped back hard.
Dead center of the forehead.
Right above the red nose decoration, a neat black hole opened in the middle of his white brow.
“Gurk…!”
With a ridiculous dying cry, his body couldn’t overcome its momentum and rolled across the floor.
I found myself looking at Eri.
Eri shrugged.
“In Limbus Pit, the only one who believes in tears and weakness is you, Teacher.”
Hmm.
Come to think of it, this really was the empire’s Gotham.
I guess I’d been taking Limbus Pit too lightly this whole time.
*
Huff-
Eri, having dealt with White Face Kaski, blew on the barrel of her gun.
“Who’s next?”
Her muzzle turned toward the remaining five.
The five claqueurs (stooges) with her gun trained on them froze and exchanged glances.
Even though their superior had died, what came first on their faces was confusion rather than anger.
“Hey, was that a real gun? For real?”
“No way, what the hell... a gun goes off here?”
“Was that teacher guy really that rich?”
A 12-year-old girl overwhelming five adult clowns.
It was a pretty absurd sight, but in a way, the five’s reaction was only natural.
Whether it was a gun or magic, anyone at tier 0 goes down in one hit anyway.
Unless the opponent was a superhuman of tier 1 or higher, a gun’s threat level was no different from my past life.
“A working gun...”
“There isn’t even a gun shop nearby.”
“The guys from A Sector do smuggle them though.”
“That’s a different district, idiot.”
“Was that teacher really in that kind of position? Aren’t we the ones who messed up?”
One clown swallowed hard.
A person holding a gun is no different from a mage.
Not only because it can kill someone with just a finger on the trigger, but because of the symbolic meaning of a gun actually working.
In this city full of sticky, mana-soaked smog, you needed money just to own a gun in the first place.
Beyond that, you needed a social position that allowed you to possess one, and the power to buy ammunition regularly.
Taking all that into account, maybe a gun was scarier when it was hanging at your hip than when you were actually pulling the trigger.
“Isn’t that all she’s got? There’s no way she bought a bunch of bullets...”
“Why? Want to check how many are left?”
Eri cocked the hammer.
Click.
“T-the gun looks pretty... expensive... should we talk this out?”
“Yeah. Bullets are a waste. If we sell that, the lot of us could even throw a feast.”
The rude little clowns who had been smashing the door in just a moment ago were nowhere to be seen; now they were all putting on polite faces.
As expected, even if the worldline changes, the etiquette injector’s performance is rock-solid.
But Eri still couldn’t pull the trigger so easily.
The revolver’s innate limitation—its cylinder capacity—was holding her back.
The clown in front of us numbered five.
And the bullets left in the revolver were five as well.
It would work if she hit each one exactly once, but if they all rushed her at once, even Eri would have trouble dealing with them.
Apparently sensing that instinctively, Eri chose to hold the line instead of pulling the trigger.
“Teacher. Let’s just wait like this until the boss gets here.”
The good news was that time was on our side.
Otto had gone to fetch the boss.
So Eri calmly waited for the boss to arrive.
But something about the situation felt off to me.
'Weird. If they can handle this with just one gun, Otto shouldn't have been taken down.'
Otto also has a gun.
On top of that, he was a guard who was just one step away from tier 1.
The fact that he’d been taken down bothered me.
Just as I was about to tell Eri to be careful because something felt fishy,
Thwack!
Suddenly, the head of the guy standing at the back snapped backward.
As if he’d been struck by an invisible hammer.
“Huh...?”
Thud.
The crowd-stirrer collapsed limply.
And dead center of his forehead, in the exact spot where Kaski had been hit, there was a pitch-black hole.
“W-what? I said let’s talk it out!”
“I didn’t shoot.”
“Ihihi….”
An unpleasant laugh echoed through the clinic.
“Ih... ugh. That hurts...”
Before long, the fallen white-faced clown pushed himself up.
The hole in his forehead was smooth as if nothing had happened.
“It, it really hurt... You’re too much...”
Kaski grumbled as he got back up.
Without even asking what had happened, Eri immediately aimed for his chest and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Kaski clutched his chest and fell.
But Kaski’s clothes, which I’d thought would be stained red, were perfectly fine.
“Guh...!”
And at the same time, another clown behind Kaski had his chest stained red.
At the sight of the same thing happening again, Eri hurriedly called out to me.
“W-what? Teacher! It looks like the gun’s going somewhere weird? Is it broken?”
“No. It hit properly.”
“Then why is this happening?”
“It’s a magic tattoo. He’s been enhanced.”
That explained why Otto had been taken down.
Who could have predicted something like that would pop out in Limbus Pit?
A magic tattoo is like a tattoo that grants magical power to ordinary people who can’t understand magic.
Of course, unlike the magic used by mages or sorcerers, its mana efficiency is terrible, and the range of spells you can use is limited.
Even so, it’s enough to reign as a predator over the tier 0 crowd.
“So the tattoo effects are <Wound Transfer> and <Adaptation>.”
The effect of the <Adaptation> tattoo is to gain immunity to damage you’ve taken.
In theory it sounds like an incredibly powerful tattoo, but in practice it’s utter trash.
In a game, if you take damage, your HP just goes down and that’s it, but in reality, if you take damage the wrong way, you can end up disabled.
On top of that, the amount of immunity you gain at once isn’t that large, so to get complete immunity you have to be beaten to the brink of death.
But that white clown, Kaski, seemed to offset that penalty with <Wound Transfer>.
<Wound Transfer> lets you dump the wounds you’ve taken onto an ally, and it also automatically transfers wounds that would be fatal.
Kaski had been combining the two by transferring the damage he was going to take to his underlings until he gained immunity.
'Now Otto's defeat makes sense.'
In game terms, Kaski is a gimmick boss.
Not powerful, but the kind you can’t beat even if you bring a max-level character if you don’t know the strategy.
After hearing the explanation, Eri cried out in disgust.
“You call me rich because I’ve got a gun, but you guys use even more expensive stuff!”
So that’s where your complaint lies.
Eri pointed her gun at the fallen Kaski once more.
I stopped her.
“Eri. That’s not the one.”
The one she needed to aim at was not Kaski.
As I said before, Kaski is impossible to beat if you don’t know the strategy.
In other words, if you know the strategy, he’s easy.
“Shoot the three left in back. Wound Transfer works in reverse too.”
The strategy was not to get aggroed by Kaski alone, but to take out the sacrificial pawns first.
Because Wound Transfer was a mutual tattoo, it wasn’t as if only Kaski’s wounds could be transferred to his subordinates.
On the contrary, if the underlings took wounds serious enough to be fatal, those wounds could automatically be transferred to Kaski.
Besides, the transfer effect had nothing to do with immunity, so it didn’t matter how tough Kaski became.
'No wonder people in the upper districts call both of them trash tattoos.'
If that combo were truly invincible, then everyone and their dog would be using it up there.
There’s a reason people don’t use things, after all.
“Got it, Teacher!”
Eri immediately pulled the trigger at the three underlings behind him.
But Kaski, having regained his senses, threw himself in the way as if to shield his subordinates.
And by the third shot, the lead bullets that struck Kaski crumpled flat as if they’d hit a steel plate and dropped to the floor.
“What? Why’s he already adapted?”
“...Because of Otto.”
Damn.
This is outside my calculations.
It looked like he’d already gained most of his immunity to guns from his earlier fight with Otto.
The fact that he’d been knocked out by the first two attacks must have been an act to hide it.
“Hehe... Your escort... was insanely strong. I lost twenty underlings on the way here... I originally brought fifty to take down Tao Chen, but with the ones I’ve got left, all I could do was slow you down...”
One more piece of bad news.
Looks like time isn’t on our side after all.
The boss is not a mage.
No matter how much he’s tier 1, if he uses knives and fists, then with that many enemies he’ll have to carefully twist each one’s neck one by one.
And if the opponent is determined to drag things out, that’ll take twice as long.
And that would be more than enough time for Kaski to achieve his goal.
'Ugh. This is supposed to be a misunderstanding trope, so why is the enemy actually so smart?'
He was needlessly cunning and tactical, and it was wearing me out.
But Kaski had overlooked one thing.
Just as he’d gained strength through capital, I too could overwhelm him with greater capital.
“Eri. Hand me the gun—”
“Ihihi! That tickles!”
But before I could finish speaking, Kaski burst out laughing and rushed at Eri.
Eri poured every last remaining round into him in an attempt to stop the white face charging at her.
But even after three gunshots rang out, Kaski was perfectly fine.
“You’re out of bullets now, huh?”
Now that he had the advantage, Kaski started speaking without stuttering.
He closed the distance in an instant.
His jackknife slithered in like a snake and grazed Eri’s forearm.
“Ah!”
With Eri’s scream, the revolver was knocked from her hand.
Then Kaski slapped her cheek, and the little girl’s body rolled across the floor.
“Y-you’re being annoying. Y-you’re pretty, so I’ll let it slide this once. I-if the merchandise gets damaged, Lord Narenkönig, the King of Fools, will scold me again.”
Kaski took his eyes off Eri and met mine.
In the meantime, the revolver that had been spinning through the air happened to slide to my feet.
I bent down and snatched it up.
I opened the cylinder, shook out the empty casings, loaded a fresh round, and raised my head.
The target was his forehead... though that would be hard to hit, so I’d go for the torso.
“Hehe. A waste of effort, Teach. A-anyway, guns don’t work—”
“This one is a little different.”
I replied, hooking a finger on the trigger.