Chapter 75

Lawless City (1)

Predator Merchant Company.

It was an unfamiliar name, but Isolde remembered it. A newly founded trading company that distributed monster meat.

And for some reason, the name of its owner was etched deep in her memory.

“Do you mean Adrian Whitewolf?”

“Yes. He reportedly put on a mask as soon as he entered the lawless city, but they confirmed both his face and his black hair before that.”

Black hair was rare on the continent. There was little chance the information was wrong.

“Have they determined what he is doing in the lawless city?”

“They say they were unable to establish that...”

A lawless city where even the barest semblance of law and order had collapsed. For all that it was called a free city, it was a wellspring of evil—a dead city no one visited of their own accord.

There was even less reason to visit on a trading expedition. Crime and chaos ran so rampant that trading companies could not come and go. Those that ventured in to trade routinely emerged stripped of everything.

No trading company on the continent even dared consider an expedition there. If any company did frequent the place, however—

“I suspect he may be a member of the Dark Merchant Company.”

The Dark Merchant Company.

It alone frequented the lawless city. More precisely, the city was one of its main bases.

“Given the abrupt change in this Adrian’s behavior of late as well...”

The attendant priest took a deep breath before cautiously adding,

“I believe a member of the Dark Merchant Company has taken possession of Adrian’s body and is controlling him.”

At this point, it could readily be called a certainty rather than a conjecture. After all, that was one of the vicious methods the Dark Merchant Company commonly employed.

“What shall we do?” the attendant priest asked next.

Isolde’s long lashes lowered slightly. A moment passed.

“Tell the Eye of the Pilgrim not to intervene, but to keep watching him.”

“Understood.”

The attendant priest bowed deeply and left the chapel. As its door slowly closed, the candle flames along the walls flickered faintly.

“Adrian Whitewolf...”

For some reason, she found herself repeating that name again.

Isolde reached out and pressed one side of the altar. Several symbols emerged on its surface. She pushed one particular symbol aside.

RUMBLE...!

The heavy altar gradually shifted, slowly revealing a hidden entrance.

* * *

Violess, the lawless city.

As soon as I entered, I took a full-face mask out of my Inventory and put it on. Since black hair was uncommon on the continent, I had deliberately brought a mask that covered my hair as well.

I also switched my title to <Master of the Snowy Mountains>. Violess was not in the north, so I couldn’t benefit from <Ruler of the North> here.

Once I had put on my mask and confirmed that my new title was properly applied, I headed deeper into Violess.

Beyond the narrow, tangled alleyways, a jumble of shoddily built wooden structures came into view. Creaking sounded all around me, and dust filled the air.

Assorted goods lay piled along one side of the street, with people gathered around them. This was one of the forms markets took in Violess. The wares on display included magical herbs of unknown efficacy, unidentified relics, and rotten food that looked as though it had been stolen somewhere.

Everywhere along the streets, people staggered about high on drugs. Others lay sprawled on the ground, covered in blood, perhaps after some turf war. Still others slipped into the alleys to hide.

‘What a mess.’

To put it crudely, this was one hell of a shitshow.

‘Still, it’s much better than it was during the allied army’s war.’

Back then, the conditions had been so horrific that nothing could survive, human or otherwise. Wretched as Violess was, it couldn’t compare to that. A comparison with the county and its unrelenting bitter cold would have been more fitting.

In that respect...

‘Whitewolf county is a little better.’

The county was a slightly better place to live. Cold and hunger were its only problems. Unlike Violess, it wasn’t plagued by a war of all against all.

‘To think this used to be a marquisate.’

Violess had, in fact, once been a marquisate. In other words, it hadn’t been a free city, but a fief—a territory granted by a monarch to a lord.

Perhaps the marquis had been a greedy bastard. When the residents rose in revolt, he hired mercenaries to put them down. But old habits die hard. Apparently, he gave the mercenaries no reward whatsoever when they returned after completing their mission.

Just like that, the mercenaries were left with nowhere to go. Finally pushed past their limit, they killed the marquis and illegally occupied his territory, building unauthorized houses and forming a settlement.

Upon hearing the news, the kingdom’s monarch immediately dispatched troops, but subduing battle-hardened mercenaries proved no easy task. In the end, the kingdom gave up trying to reclaim the territory.

As the years passed, exiles, criminals, and refugees from various kingdoms flocked there. Once wandering paupers began pouring in as well, a city grew of its own accord.

That was how the lawless city of Violess came to be.

Today, Violess was a city of chaos teeming with criminals of every kind. If you died here, not even your body could be found. Even a kingdom’s resources could scarcely help someone escape its dangers.

Exposure to severe violence and crime was all but guaranteed. It had long since become a “no-go zone” that even adventurers refused to enter.

In other words, noble or royal, the moment you stepped foot here, you might as well be advertising, “Please kill me.” In fact, looking even remotely like nobility or royalty made you a target.

Just...

SWISH!

...like this.

A bastard brushed past me and tried to shank me, to put it crudely. He was too close to dodge. Even a few days ago, I wouldn’t have managed it.

But things were different now.

I had spent 241 days training in the Infinite Trial Grounds... no, the Infinite Labyrinth. On top of that, I had the stat points from the twenty-one levels I’d gained by completing quests.

I had invested all those points in Agility, giving me a reaction time of under 10 ms.

Truthfully, I didn’t even need to dodge. But there was no reason to let him hit me, either. If the blade happened to be poisoned, recovering with Regeneration[B+] would be difficult.

Reacting instantly, I twisted away from the knife, extended Dragon’s Claw[A], and tore his shoulder off whole.

“Aaaaaaargh!”

Blood sprayed everywhere along with his scream.

All eyes turned to me at once. He probably wasn’t acting alone, but I couldn’t tell who was who among the gathering onlookers.

My senses, however, had now gone beyond mere resemblance to something very close to actual ESP. When I focused them, I clearly perceived the faint murderous intent directed at me.

Three straight ahead. Two approaching from the alley on my left. One behind me, waiting for an opening.

I located them in an instant and immediately sprang into action.

First, the three in front. Perhaps they hadn’t grasped the situation yet. They were flustered.

Taking advantage of that opening, I grabbed the leftmost man’s throat and tore it out.

CRUNCH!

He fell without so much as a scream. The moment I confirmed it, I spun and swept Dragon’s Claw[A] in crossing slashes, shredding the other two like paper.

With all three down in an instant...

“Th-that bastard!”

“Kill him!”

The others revealed their true colors and drew their weapons.

The way they drew daggers from their clothes and thrust them without hesitation told me they had killed far more than one or two people.

I tilted my head slightly to evade the incoming dagger, then seized the attacker’s arm and pulled. As his face came toward me, I drove my knee into it, twisted at the waist, and lashed out with that same raised leg to strike the man behind him.

THWACK!

I didn’t even need Metabolic Overdrive[U]. That would only have wasted calories.

One left.

“Eeeek!”

The one who had been waiting for an opening behind me. Instead of killing him, I grabbed him and slammed him into the ground.

BAM!

“Which group of Visters do you belong to?”

Vister.

“Vi,” meaning violence, and “-ster,” meaning a person. A combination of those two words, referring to someone who used violence.

Simply put, a gangster.

Countless Vister gangs existed in the lawless city. In a place without law or order, force was absolute power. Visters used that force to impose their own rules.

And so countless gangs rose and fell, over and over. My turf, your turf—the struggles for territory never stopped, day after day.

Yet even amid that chaos, some Vister gangs maintained a firm grip on power.

The red-light district’s Crimson Soiree.

The gambling dens’ Black Grasp.

“I-I can’t tell you—!”

CRACK!

“Aaaaaaargh!! B-Black Grasp! We belong to Black Grasp!”

These men were Visters from Black Grasp. Contrary to my expectations, they weren’t mere street punks.

But they weren’t the Visters I was looking for. The ones I wanted were...

“How do I get to the black market?”

The black market’s Ashen Mask.

Visters affiliated with none other than the Dark Merchant Company.

“Th-that... urgh! That way—!”

CRACK!

“Aaaaaaaargh!! I-I was gonna answeeer!”

He glared at me as though he’d been wronged. Honestly, I hadn’t expected him to answer so readily.

“If you’re going to answer, don’t drag it out. You’re confusing me.”

“U-urgh...!”

“I just told you not to drag it out.”

CRAAACK!

“Yaaaaaaargh!”

“So, which way do I go?”

“T-turn down that alley over there...”

He gave me detailed directions, terrified I would break his arm again. Once I had heard him out...

BAM!

I grabbed his face and smashed it into the ground. His body went limp. He didn’t move.

Neither did any of the others I had taken down.

... My first killings since returning to the past.

The lycanthrope hadn’t been human, and strictly speaking, neither had the homunculi. The same went for Avarus. So these could be called my first killings.

Still, with the memories and experience of my time in the special task force, I remained calm.

Of course, that didn’t mean I was numb to killing. Even I was deeply reluctant to take a human life, and doing so weighed on me.

But refusing to spare someone who wasn’t worth keeping alive was another matter. Their attempt to murder a passerby without provocation alone suggested their crimes were anything but minor. Many innocent people must have died at their hands.

As I stood up...

“H-he took out Les’s gang so easily...”

“No way...!”

“Who the hell is he...?”

Everyone was staring at me in shock. Judging by their expressions, these men had apparently been notorious in their own right, beyond their affiliation with Black Grasp.

Murmurs rippled through the crowd.

Anywhere else, people would have fled screaming, the guards would already have arrived, and the entire city would have descended into pandemonium.

But this was Violess.

A lawless city where even the barest semblance of law and order had collapsed.

* * *

A black market.

A place where goods that could not be openly traded in ordinary markets were bought and sold in secret.

The black market of Violess sold forbidden spellbooks and magical materials, cursed items, illicit drugs, alchemical ingredients—and human slaves.

Goods that could make you an enemy of the entire continent if you were caught. The costs borne by suppliers were therefore substantial, and the prices inevitably high.

The Dark Merchant Company operated several such black markets, amassing immense wealth. In other words, Violess wasn’t the only place with a black market under its control.

But its market here was the largest.

Violess was a lawless city with no absolute authority, such as a monarch or a lord. There was no supreme power to stop anyone from openly running a black market.

That was why its black market stood in the very heart of the city.

Even so, anonymity was strictly maintained. Traders were required to conceal their faces with masks or hoods.

‘I’ve got the mask on.’

I also took a ring out of my Inventory. A Shadow Amethyst was set in its center, shimmering subtly between purple and black depending on the angle of the light.

The ring, which looked anything but ordinary, was called...

◆Covenant of the Abyss

: This ring is attuned to the bioenergy of a specific individual. It detects that individual’s unique magical power signature and genetic information, allowing only the designated person to wear it.

It was a token proving that its wearer was a Devotee of the Fallen Souls. As the description stated, only a designated person could wear it.

I had taken it from Avarus’s secret vault. In other words, it was a signet ring that proved the wearer was Avarus.

Only Avarus could wear it—but I had Predation[S+].

Predation[S+] didn’t merely absorb an entity’s abilities. It absorbed the genetic material that gave rise to those abilities.

By consuming Avarus, who was also Z’thulonak, with Predation[S+], I had acquired his genetic information.

I put on the ring.

WHINE!

The Shadow Amethyst emitted a violet light. As though scanning my biometric information, the light swept over my body once before subsiding.

It had recognized Avarus’s genetic information, which I had absorbed through Predation[S+].

From this moment on, I was Avarus, a Devotee of the Fallen Souls. The Dark Merchant Company, too, would believe I was Avarus without a shred of doubt.

‘I’ll clean you out so thoroughly there won’t be a speck of dust left.’

I adjusted my mask and entered the black market.