Chapter 30
Inside the room, the smell of cigar smoke and alcohol was overpowering.
It was bizarrely luxurious, utterly out of place in a back alley like a sewer.
'That bastard is obviously Jenkins.
A scar-covered middle-aged man was Jenkins—the bastard who had called me a male prostitute or whatever.
The portly man beside him appeared to be Baron Kelton, who sucked the lifeblood from the back alleys.
"Y-Young Master! Please spare me! I don't know anything! That man pressured me to make illegal drugs! Please, just spare me!"
Kelton flattened himself on the floor, his face going white.
The moment he realized who I was, he immediately backed down, but Jenkins was the opposite.
'B-Boss! This gentleman is the Young Master of Cardenos!
'I know.'
Whether he had no attachment to this world or had simply given up, he showed no reaction despite knowing.
The upper classes had been quietly turning a blind eye to the drug trade and profiteering in this area.
He had clearly taken bribes.
But someone of my standing could break that convention and hold him accountable. No—more than that, I could execute him on the spot.
The Imperial Sword, House Cardenos.
Dealing with parasites that dared suck the lifeblood from the Empire was both Cardenos's duty and its right.
In truth, I had come because of Kyle's promissory note, not the drugs....
I didn't bother saying so. I could squeeze money out of this drug dealer.
"Did you come alone?"
Jenkins surveyed me from head to toe with his arms folded, looking arrogant.
To keep acting like this even after recognizing Cardenos....
It would have been impossible without nerves of steel.
"You've got a death wish."
"So you did come alone. Gather all the men! We'll deal with this brat here!"
The lunatic was actually trying to kill the eldest son of a grand ducal house.
How did this bastard intend to deal with the consequences?
"B-Boss! This man is the Young Master of Cardenos!"
"Ah, fuck, I know already. Are you a parrot?"
"N-No. I mean, you're doing this even though you know?"
"So what? Does the Grand Duke's heir's sword dodge attacks?"
Jenkins's thick lips twisted grotesquely upward. Rather than fear, his smile even held a hint of some strange delight.
I gave up completely.
There were always lunatics against whom the oppression of rank and status simply didn't work.
"Since you've crawled all the way here, you're not going to let us live peacefully anyway!"
Their attempt to run a drug business in the slums had been exposed.
Since they had been caught by me, a member of House Cardenos, he must have thought himself surrounded on all sides.
They say a cornered rat will bite even a cat.
"It's a reasonable suspicion, but I had no intention of doing that. Not unless you were selling drugs in Cardenos's own front yard."
"Listen to me, you bastards! Killing that brat is the best way out! Beat him down right now!"
"B-But...."
"I'll slit his throat so no one will know, burn down the workshop to destroy the evidence, take all the money we've saved, and flee to another country! Just attack!"
Madness glimmered thickly in his murky pupils.
A sigh escaped me as things seemed to be getting troublesome.
"Maybe it's because you're uneducated, but your way of thinking is incredibly one-dimensional."
The thought that he could survive by running away revealed the nature of his mind.
He apparently thought a grand ducal house's pursuit network was on the level of a neighborhood game of hide-and-seek.
"Kill him! If you don't, I'll kill you myself!"
"B-Boss... Are you really sure about this?"
"You want to let that bastard kill you without a fight? At least struggle before you die! If you're lucky, you might survive!"
The eyes of the fifteen or so hulking men who had been hesitating changed at some point.
Like attracts like, and an idiot's companions were idiots too.
They each drew their weapons. Iron pipes and crude daggers closed in from every direction.
Even after drawing their weapons, they only hesitated. Their eyes passed messages that said, You go first.
In frustration, I moved first.
Tap─!
Gripping the dagger in reverse, I lightly kicked off the marble floor.
I didn't even need to draw up Solar. The movement of my body alone was enough.
Whoosh─!
The iron pipe of the man charging at the front cleaved through empty air.
I pulled my upper body half a step back to evade its trajectory. At the same time, I swung the pommel into his jaw.
"Kgh!"
There was a crunch as his jawbone shattered, and his eyes rolled back.
I stepped on the shoulder of the man crumpling forward and leaped. I drove flying knees precisely into the brows of the two men following him.
Crack!
There wasn't even time for them to scream.
"Hyaaagh!"
One man, scared stiff, wildly swung his dagger.
As I landed, I immediately twisted my body. I brought my elbow down and broke the wrist of the hand reaching for my side.
"Gaaaagh!"
Minimal movement, minimal trajectories.
Without blinking, I put them down one by one.
It took only ten seconds for the fifteen or so burly men to collapse onto the floor.
I looked over them before glancing toward Jenkins.
"Just going to watch?"
"......."
"If you start listening to me now, I'll let you keep your life. What will it be?"
His face twisted hideously.
Would that beast actually listen to me? After coming this far, he would keep acting recklessly.
"Y-Young Master! I am truly innocent!"
Baron Kelton crawled across the floor toward my feet.
"I swear I knew nothing! This Jenkins bastard planned it all on his own! I was only forced into it because he threatened me......!"
"Hey, employer. You're noisy, so shut up. I'll take care of this neatly."
Thud, thud.
Jenkins watched me as he leisurely strolled sideways.
Shing─
He drew the longsword standing in a display cabinet.
It was a bastard sword with perfect balance at a glance.
It was a weapon utterly unsuited to a slum kingpin.
"That's a pretty decent sword. It must be worth more than you are, huh?"
"Cardenos brat. You've received your knighthood, right?"
"Not yet."
"What a shame."
He pointed the sword's tip at me without wavering.
"It would've been much better if you were a knight. I've always wanted the title of knight-killer."
"Killing me would be harder than killing a knight commander."
"Don't get cocky, kid."
As we traded words, I kept a close eye on the way he held the sword.
For something he had learned through back-alley improvisation, it was fairly respectable.
Judging by his desire to earn the title of knight-killer, he wasn't a knight.
He seemed to be a seasoned mercenary who had seen service in the past.
Taat!
Suddenly, Jenkins sprang forward like a beast. A downward slash came crashing through the air.
Kaanng─!!
I tilted the dagger and let the slash slide off it. The recoil sent a jolt through my palm.
"Oh."
His swordsmanship wasn't driven by brute force alone.
The planted foot carrying his weight, the lower-body balance when recovering after a strike—I had guessed as much from his grip, but he had clearly learned it somewhere.
"You didn't learn some rough-and-ready swordsmanship in the slums."
His reckless move wasn't based on mere bravado.
He had reached this level, and that was why he had tried to kill Cardenos's heir.
"That's a knight's sword. No—in precise terms, it's a sword imitating a knight's. You can't possibly be a knight, so did you happen to find the sword manual of some fallen house?"
Grind!
Jenkins ground his teeth. Instead of answering, his blade came at me again.
Slash─!
I dodged the successive horizontal slashes by merely twisting my body.
Rather than counterattacking, I studied his next attack.
I watched his blade path closely as I retreated. A stubborn fixation clung to his movements.
Fwoosh─!
Suddenly, heat erupted from deep within Jenkins's chest as if it were exploding.
The cool air of the office turned hot in an instant.
A fiery aura like a wavering mirage began to shimmer over the blade in his hand.
I couldn't help but admire it.
"This bastard had a ring too?"
That was unmistakably Solar—a sun ring.
Sun rings were rare in this age, when Luna held sway.
I never expected to see one here.
However, he had only one ring, and even that one was dim. Its faint light flickered like a dying ember before the wind.
Even that faint ember was a hope no mere back-alley thug could possess.
"I made it a long time ago. A brat like you wouldn't understand. If you want to make a living by the sword, this much is basic."
Judging by his age, he was somewhere between his late thirties and early forties—a member of the generation that had experienced the twilight of the golden age of sun rings.
I more or less understood.
He had woven a single ring during his mercenary days as a young man, then taught himself swordsmanship from a proper sword manual.
'No wonder he seemed familiar.'
An ember on the verge of going out. Swordsmanship modeled on a knight's.
Even as a slum kingpin, he didn't come close to a knight's feet.
Normally, he wouldn't even have been able to awaken Solar or Luna.
Even so, in this harsh environment, he had somehow kept the spark from going out.
I remembered him.
"You're an interesting bastard."
Whoosh!
A slash came rushing toward my eyes. A blade carrying the ember's last spark filled my vision.
"But your spirit outruns your skill, and you're far too sloppy."
Clang─!!
The dagger I raised in reverse struck the exact center of Jenkins's blade, the vulnerable point in its balance.
"Kgh......!"
His iron grip broke open, and the sword spun through the air. In that opening, I drove a front kick into Jenkins's solar plexus.
"Kgh!"
His massive frame slammed inelegantly into the floor.
I lightly snatched the falling sword out of the air. The situation should have ended there.
Spiderweb-like blood vessels stood out in Jenkins's eyes.
Even while spitting blood, he began charging at me again.
Crack!
I struck his collarbone with the flat of the blade. Jenkins's knees buckled, and he sank down.
He stubbornly refused to lower his gaze to the very end.
"You think I can lose to a brat who isn't even a knight!"
Even with me holding his sword, his fighting spirit didn't diminish in the slightest.
"Stop acting tough. You'll really die if you keep this up."
"Kill me! I said kill me, you brat! Don't act so high and mighty when you're not even a knight!"
Ptooey!
My vision was obscured for an instant. Blood-laced phlegm clung thickly to it.
Of course, even with both eyes covered, his attack was plainly visible.
"Kgh!"
I raised my knee and drove it straight into his jaw. He fell facedown onto the floor again.
"If you back down even now, I'll let you live."
"Khh.... Let me live? Go fuck yourself. I have to die today, for sure."
"You don't seem afraid. You'll really die."
"If I were afraid of dying, I couldn't have done this shit. Heh heh.... What's there to regret about a life spent wallowing in a sewer? Kill me, hurry!"
Crack!
I planted my shoe on his chest.
When I pressed down with my weight, he could no longer resist. He could only wheeze for breath.
I extended the sword toward his throat.
"Before I kill you, let me ask you one thing. How—and why—did you weave that sun ring?"
"I made it to stick my dick in some fucking hole. Happy now?"
Even with death right before him, he laughed like a madman.
I silently looked into his pupils.
"You actually wanted to become a knight, didn't you?"
"......!"
Jenkins's body, which had been wheezing, went rigid.
His obsession with earning the title of knight-killer.
The belief that defeating a knight made him no different from one.
It was orthodox knightly swordsmanship, far removed from the style of a back-alley kingpin.
He had only grasped its rudiments, making it inefficient, yet he had stubbornly clung to it despite knowing that.
A delusion that had kept a sun ring gnawing away at his lifespan alive to the very end.
He had admired the knights he saw as a child.
'Jenkins, the Knight of the Dying Ember.'
Only belatedly did I remember him from my first life.
It was when the black things first swept through the south.
While the nobles and regular knights scrambled to turn tail and flee, this man alone defended his home.
He hid orphans and prostitutes behind him and swung his sword to the very end, burning up an ember that had already died down.
He was a back-alley man who was neither strong nor a knight.
The title Knight of the Dying Ember was given to him only after his death. He had met the most knightly end possible.
For now, he really was trash, selling drugs just to survive from day to day.
Yet from a broader perspective, he possessed the potential to become a hero.
The resolve to throw his life into the fire as firewood. The tenacity to keep burning himself without ever bending.
He had already shown those beginnings.
For the Ashen Forest expedition.
And, furthermore, to prevent destruction, men like him were indispensable.
"I like you. As it happens, I've been looking for someone like you."
I withdrew the sword tip from his throat.
I happened to have a crumpled sheet of paper tucked away. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the folded paper.
The wording for the expedition recruitment notice, scribbled down as it came to mind.
Plop—
I tossed it onto his bloodied face.
The paper fluttered gently in the air before settling over Jenkins's face.
Jenkins peeled it off and narrowed his brows.
"What the fuck? I can't read."
I had briefly forgotten where he came from.
I snatched back the notice and tucked it into my coat again.
I took up the sword once more and brought it down toward Jenkins.
With the flat, not the edge. I lightly tapped him on the shoulder, not the face.
As if imitating a knighting ceremony.
"I will give you the chance to become a knight of Cardenos."
".......What?"
"If you survive the Ashen Forest expedition with me, I guarantee you'll be knighted. What do you think? Doesn't that tempt you?"
Knight of the Dying Ember. It was a wonderful name.
Jenkins looked back and forth between my face and the sword resting on his shoulder.
His stunned lips trembled. A tiny voice escaped through his slightly parted lips.
"I could become a knight......?"
His bloodshot eyes slowly calmed.
I saw the eyes of a child in the bearded middle-aged man.