Chapter 48 - Because I promised I would return (1)

Marcella quickly wiped away her flowing tears and furrowed her brow as she looked at the boy in front of her.

It was certainly a face she missed, but it was also a face that shouldn't be here.

"... Get out quickly. Hurry."

Marcella spoke, desperately stiffening her lips with all her might.

"... I said get out quickly!"

Urgency was conveyed in her tone as she spoke in a quiet whisper.

Tears she hadn't managed to wipe away still clung to Marcella's cheeks.

Looking at her like that, Vlad ended up bowing his head.

Yes, it was here.

The place that was my nest.

A woman speaking with her eyes, struggling to hold back her tears under the vulgar lighting.

"..."

Something sparkling was falling there.

Above the mire of desires created by men, Vlad watched the starlight flowing pitifully.

Even if a flower has fallen to the ground and been trampled, if it still holds its fragrance, it is a flower.

Smelling the scent of roses for the first time in a long while, the boy slowly stood up from his seat.

Now it was time to wipe her tears.

* * *

"..."

The madam sensed the unusual atmosphere between the blond man and Marcella.

But she, too, was someone who had survived the back alleys.

Accustomed to such sudden situations, the madam quietly sent a signal via hand gestures to the men sitting at a table far away.

'Drag him out!'

Receiving the madam's signal, the men began to stand up one by one.

There were at least more than ten of them.

All of them were Jack's subordinates dispatched here.

"... I should pay the price."

Yet despite the unusual atmosphere, the blond man calmly stood up and simply looked at the madam.

With bright red blood vessels swirling in his deep blue eyes.

"Before I give the madam the 100 gold, there's a calculation I need to settle first."

The madam was surprised.

Because the man who had looked like a noble youth just moments ago now looked like a starving wolf.

"... What calculation?"

The madam gulped and carefully opened her mouth.

At the suffocating momentum exuding from the blond man, the lust-filled men began to slowly back away.

Seeing that, Jack's subordinates quietly bared their teeth and approached.

In a situation like the calm before a storm.

"One-Armed Jack."

The man, who slowly raised his head, spoke.

"I have something to collect from him."

When a completely unexpected name came out, the flustered madam wanted to ask what he meant, but...

SPLATTER!

She had no choice but to shut her mouth, feeling the blood that suddenly splashed onto her face.

One of Jack's subordinates, who had been trying to sneak up behind the man, was collapsing lifelessly.

"You stay here and wait."

A stream of blood dripped from Vlad's unadorned sword.

"If taking it out on these bastards isn't enough, I'll collect it from you too."

A wolf unleashed from its cage drooled with hunger.

Because the things he had endured for a long time and absolutely had to do were right in front of him.

"Move! I said move!"

"What the fuck is that bastard!"

The brothel, a place where desires were spewed, suddenly became a scene of slaughter.

The customers who saw this began to scream in terror.

"Get inside for now!"

"Where did you learn such cheap tricks!"

Fleeing desires.

Struggling beasts.

Watching Jack's subordinates rushing at him while screaming curses, Vlad smiled faintly.

"... I think I missed this."

Vlad felt the tips of his toes sinking into the dirty mire once again.

But it didn't matter.

Because the star the boy had dreamed of back then was now clutched in his own hand, not high up in a smithy.

"You little shit! Who sent you!"

"... Who sent me, you ask?"

Hearing a line he hadn't heard in a very long time, Vlad found himself smiling before he knew it.

So he answered them.

The name of someone he had kept in his heart for a long time.

"Jorge."

"What?"

With those words, Vlad pulled out a dagger strapped to his waist.

It was the dagger that the man who had picked him up told him to always carry around.

"Jorge sent me."

Along with the unadorned sword, Jorge's dagger lodged into the men's throats.

Though he had fled holding his breath that day, today was different.

The boy had waded through many rivers to shout his own name.

So today, in this place.

He had returned with the right to call out his own name.

"The Vlad you were looking for is right here!"

Marcella covered her mouth with her hand, forcibly suppressing the gasp that burst out.

She remembered.

The boy who wailed behind the departing knight of blue moonlight.

"Come and kill me just like that day!"

Vlad was striking down relentlessly.

The shackles wrapped around her ankles.

"That bastard was Vlad!"

"You actually managed to survive!"

The beasts, recognizing the boy's shout, bared their sharp teeth and lunged.

"Come at me, you bastards!"

Along with a spray of red blood, the man charging at the very front was being cut down by the boy's world.

One swing, one scream.

One scream, one life.

Vlad slashed away at Jack's subordinates with bloodshot eyes.

He wouldn't leave a single one alive.

If only for the sake of the tearful Marcella.

Vlad dodged those rushing at him using the footwork a knight had taught him, and bit off their ears just as he learned in the back alleys.

With messy movements that pursued only efficiency.

Something that was neither knight nor beast was running rampant here now.

"Eeeek!"

Some turned their bodies away from the boy's ferocious momentum, but there was no need for mercy toward them.

Vlad struck the back of a man trying to flee, then grabbed the fallen man's hair and slit his throat with the dagger.

Blood pouring out like a fountain coldly soaked the floor of the brothel.

"No! Not us!"

"Spare us! Please!"

Those who had come here driven by lust pressed tightly against the walls, wailing.

Because even though the rage wasn't directed at them, it was an aura they absolutely could not endure.

"Gaaaaah!"

Dragging out one of Jack's subordinates who had been hiding among those men, Vlad unhesitatingly drove Jorge's dagger into his temple.

The man's eyes rolled back in his head.

"Haaah! Haaah!"

The last surviving man who had managed to reach the door.

He continuously twisted the doorknob with trembling hands, but mercilessly, the door did not open.

As if someone were blocking it from the outside.

"... If you pick a fight, you have to pay the price."

CRASH!

The door blew apart with the boy's violently thrust kick.

"Keugh! Cough!"

Though he tumbled pathetically, the last remaining subordinate of Jack had finally made it outside as he wished.

Driven by the instinct to live, he grabbed his chest and tried to stand up, but what was actually waiting for him were Soara's guards surrounding the brothel.

"It would've been better for both of us if you just ended it inside."

Vlad's voice came from behind him.

It was a strangely calm voice, but hearing it gave the man goosebumps instead.

"... S-Spare, spare me."

"No."

Vlad trampled on Jack's subordinate who was rolling on the ground, brought the dagger to his throat, and slashed mercilessly.

The man clutched his neck wound to stop the blood that flowed incessantly, but it was merely a meaningless struggle.

"You wouldn't have spared me either if you had caught me that day."

That would have been the case.

For dying if you failed to kill was one of the laws of the back alleys.

"Ghk... ghk."

In the back alley filled only with silence, Jorge's dagger swallowed someone's final scream.

* * *

Rose's Smiles.

A place that used to be one of the symbols of Soara's back alleys, but had now become a den of Money Bugs, where a man was downing alcohol.

"... Another glass."

Smashing ice with the hook attached to his left arm, he shoved a cold chunk into the glass resting in front of him.

"Boss. You've drunk too much."

"..."

The subordinate next to him carefully advised him to stop drinking, but One-Armed Jack simply stared down at his glass without a word.

Whores' Knight Jorge.

After he disappeared, Soara's back alleys had practically become his own, but One-Armed Jack did not rejoice.

Rather, as each day passed, he only spent his time drowning in alcohol.

Just as he was gradually breaking down, the ecosystem of the back alleys was also collapsing.

"Is there anything else I can do as I please other than this? Stop blabbering and just pour the alcohol."

"... Yes, boss."

Watching the alcohol pour down like rain, One-Armed Jack quietly turned his head and looked at his subordinates down below.

Those guys chattering noisily without knowing anything.

Would those bastards know?

That our lives are merely decided by those up above.

"What a dog-shit life."

No matter how desolate of a back alley he lived in, One-Armed Jack was a man with ambition.

He would climb to a higher place.

He was someone who wouldn't stop here.

That was why he hadn't hesitated to steal from others, and had willingly used the corpses of his enemies as stepping stones to build stairs going upward.

The winner goes up, the loser stays down.

He had lived his life firmly believing that everything could only be gained through victory, yet he was here now despite having lost.

That day, he lost to Jorge.

Yet in the end, the one who died was Jorge.

"Fucked-up world."

Someday, that'll be me too.

Someone up above will end up deciding my fate.

Just like Jorge, who had died a futile death that day.

"In the end, none of it means anything, is what I'm saying."

One-Armed Jack downed the bitter alcohol in one gulp and trembled from the rising intoxication.

Because it was a night where he couldn't fall asleep without getting drunk.

BANG!

"Boss! Boss!"

In an instant, a man threw the door open so roughly that everyone inside turned around.

"Boss! We have a huge problem!"

"What is it?"

"What's wrong? Did something happen?"

Jack's subordinates asked one by one as they watched the man sprint frantically up to the fourth floor, but the sudden arrival merely ran up the stairs until he was out of breath.

"Boss!"

"What is it."

Only when he was standing in front of Jack did the man, gasping for air, manage to spit out a single phrase through his barely steadied breathing.

"We're surrounded!"

"... What?"

Jack's brow furrowed at the man's unexpected words.

"Here?"

"Not just here..."

The reporting man gulped and spoke quietly.

"The entire back alley is surrounded. Soldiers have encircled us."

"... Move."

At the grave report, One-Armed Jack finally set down his glass, roughly shoved the man in front of him aside, and stood up.

"Boss!"

"Are you alright?"

The subordinates approached to support Jack as he staggered down the stairs.

"... Damn."

Even as he descended the stairs, Jack stared out the window through a hazy gaze.

Soara's back alleys, enveloped in darkness.

In the streets where lights could shine because it was night, in the very places where lights to seduce customers should have been hanging, a different kind of light surrounded them.

"Open the door!"

The subordinates hurriedly opened the doors at the shout from Jack, who had finally reached the first floor.

"... Damn."

"What the hell is this."

What awaited them as they stepped outside was a myriad of torches.

Beneath those torches stood the forms of soldiers lined up in orderly formation.

"Hah."

Watching the sight, One-Armed Jack let out a sound that could have been either a sigh or a gasp of admiration.

"Boss, w-we're surrounded."

"I know."

But even in the face of this threatening sight, One-Armed Jack remained calm.

"... It looks like we're having a guest."

"Pardon?"

"Don't just stand around here. Get ready to receive our guest."

Turning his back on the lights that would bring his end, One-Armed Jack let out a seemingly relieved sigh.

Because the destruction visible right in front of him put his mind at ease more than an anxiety that could strike at any moment.