Chapter 82 - Suspicions - 2

SPLASH.

Muddy water splashed with a wet, squelching sound. The droplets scattered in every direction, then fell back down with a pattering cry. Bera watched for a moment before raising his head.

A dark-red landscape met his eyes. Black and red planks stood on the gloomy ground, covered with scraps of threadbare cloth. The air against his skin was damp, and the stench invading his nostrils was foul enough to make him gag.

The gutter, on Thirteenth Avenue of the imperial capital.

Back in his old hometown, Bera took in the sight with his gray eyes. Surely things had changed since his disappearance, yet this landscape remained just as he remembered it.

As he surveyed it, a strange feeling suddenly arose within him. However long he had been away, perhaps he could not erase all those years of his past; the feeling taking shape was familiarity. He was being forced to confront the life he had lived here, and the evil he had committed with this place as his base.

SPLASH.

Muddy water splashed again. The hem of his robe grew stained with the blackish-red liquid. The stench seeped in, spreading over his entire body.

The strange, fluttering feeling that had lingered inside him until this afternoon was fading away. Gloom and irritation filled the void. Bera let out a breath as those emotions rose, then clenched his teeth. He had no time to indulge in pointless sentiment.

'... Not anymore.'

He was no longer Bera of the gutter. He was Bera, the apostle of oaths and Renée's escort knight. He had come here to investigate potential dangers.

With that thought, Bera steadied himself and walked briskly onward. He went deep, deep into the gutter, entering a den that exuded an even worse stench. He passed through it, doing his best to ignore the scenes from his past superimposed upon the landscape.

Then he stopped. His gaze rested on a shack on the verge of collapse.

... It was the very house where he had stayed with Renée at the end of his previous life. The place where everything about him had changed. Where he had finally broken his oath and laid a new guiding principle over it.

Bera's expression clouded as he faced the place. Then, abruptly, he walked over and opened the shack's door.

CREAK.

The sound revealed a shabby, chilly room that had not changed in the slightest from the past.

'... Still empty?'

There were no signs of anyone living here, so it must be. Bera briefly surveyed the spot where he had always lain, and the place beside it where Renée had sat, before leaving.

He wandered aimlessly, following the path along which he had crawled in his wretched state at the end of his life. Now, unlike in that previous life, his steps were carried by a sound, strong body. At the end of the path, he came upon a dark alley.

It was where Renée had lain dying. For now, there was only muddy water in the spot where that somber color had spread like paint.

Bera knelt and swept his hand over the muddy water. The oath engraved upon his soul burned faintly, as though welcoming the place where it had been born.

["I will live for the Saintess."]

That oath, which would be both the beginning and the end of this life, spoke to Bera. Never let Renée's blood flow here again. Stake everything you have, if you must, to ensure that she meets a glorious end.

Bera wiped the sticky mud from his fingertips onto his robe and rose.

'I know.'

He knew perfectly well what he had to do. There was no need to explain it to him. With that answer to the oath he himself had engraved, Bera resumed walking. Once again, his steps led deeper into the gutter.

* * *

Bera did not have to deliberate over how to investigate the gutter's current affairs. There was someone who could explain at once what had happened here since his disappearance.

"Gaaagh!"

BANG!

Bera's hand rested on the head of the middle-aged man he had slammed into the ground.

"Doran."

Bera looked at him with somber gray eyes. The leader of the beggar gang that had tormented him long ago. The man whose neck he had snapped in a drunken fit in his previous life. In this life, the man had somehow managed to cling to his miserable existence.

Bera had ventured into the deep alleys to hear about the gutter's current affairs from Doran. After all, what better way was there to learn about an unfamiliar area's circumstances than to enlist a local's help?

"I've come because there's something I want to know."

Bera pressed Doran's head down harder.

"Guh—!"

Doran's eyes widened. A stifled groan escaped his mouth.

Trembling, his eyes overwhelmed by terror, Doran looked at Bera and barely managed to speak.

"Wh-who...!"

He had no idea why this stranger was threatening him like this. Bera gave a hollow laugh at the question.

"So you don't remember..."

A pointless surge of anger rose within him, but Bera did not berate Doran. From Doran's perspective, forgetting was understandable. Too much had changed for him to connect the gutter's damned brat Bera with the man he was now.

For a start, he stood well above the height of an average grown man. His painstakingly honed body made its presence unmistakable even beneath all these layers.

Even setting such secondary considerations aside, to Doran he was merely one of the underlings who had disappeared seven years ago. In the gutter, where people died practically every day, remembering each one would have been more remarkable.

Having thought it through, Bera concluded that there was no particular need to reveal his identity and relaxed his grip.

"Gack! Khack!"

Finally able to breathe, Doran twitched and tried to escape Bera.

THUD!

Bera's kick stopped him.

"Guh!"

"Running away won't do."

Looking down at Doran with cold eyes, Bera continued.

"Didn't I tell you? I came because there's something I want to know. Are you too much of an idiot to understand what I just said?"

"Ughhh..."

Doran curled up, clutching the stomach Bera had just kicked. Terror flooded his thoughts. Was this how he would die? Would some stranger slit his throat? Those thoughts occupied him for a long moment. Then his survival instinct flared, moving his body until he was prostrate in a bow.

"S-spare me... I-I'll tell you everything I know...!"

"Who said I was going to kill you?"

Bera smirked. Doran cautiously lifted his head, saw that smile, and slammed his forehead back against the ground with a bang.

Looking at Doran's shabby appearance and his groveling posture, Bera felt an inexplicable sense of pleasure rise within him. He asked in a low, murmuring voice,

"I'd like to know what the gutter's cartels are doing these days."

"W-well..."

Doran did not question the request. He wanted only to answer quickly and get away. Frantically gathering whatever came to mind, he blurted it out.

"K-Kroden is making drugs! Fomil is selling organs outside, and Jeje is catching kids and handing them over to slave traders! And, and..."

One little prod, and the information poured out. As Bera listened, thinking that the man was as spineless as ever, a question suddenly occurred to him.

"What about Delik?"

Nothing in Doran's account had mentioned the leader of the scavengers.

Doran flinched. Watching his eyes dart about in his flustered face, Bera casually took a dagger from inside his robe.

"I'd also like to hear what happened to the scavengers."

"Th-they're finished!"

Once again, the answer came immediately. Bera's face twisted into a scowl.

"What?"

"Th-they're finished! Delik and the scavengers are all dead!"

"Don't talk such nonsense—"

"I-it's true!"

Doran's shout was thick with indignation at being disbelieved. His jaw trembling, he hurriedly added,

"S-seven years ago, I think... Several scavenger branches were suddenly wiped out, and it weakened them. The other cartels took advantage and swallowed up all their territory..."

As Doran continued, Bera finally remembered something he had forgotten.

'... Come to think of it.'

Before leaving this place, he had beaten all those scavengers to death with his own hands. Had venting his anger back then led to this result?

Feeling a little sheepish, Bera nevertheless found something he could not understand and questioned Doran again.

"Didn't more scavengers spring up afterward?"

The scavengers were like weeds. Even if you massacred them all, at some point they would multiply again and reclaim their territory. How, then, were they being kept down?

Doran ran a hand down his face before answering.

"A-a new cartel moved into the space they left..."

"Who? Koko? Sara? Girgan?"

Those were the names of the leaders of the new cartels that had drifted into this place in his previous life. Anyone capable of seizing a vacancy in the altered power structure would surely be one of them.

... Or so he thought. But Doran's answer contained none of those names.

"I-I-I don't know. Nobody knows who their leader is."

Doran bowed his head still lower.

"They appeared out of nowhere one day. They started supplying goods from outside, and th-the other cartels have been trading with them."

"Trading? Not stealing?"

"Th-they don't expand their territory... Th-thanks to that, I can sleep easy now... They hand out s-supplies, too."

What kind of nonsense was this? That was Bera's first thought as he listened to Doran.

'Why?'

Could people like that exist? People with those capabilities living in the gutter, without even fighting over territory?

"Where?"

"H-huh?"

"I asked where their territory is."

This needed checking. Bera knew better than anyone what sort of people willingly crawled into the gutter and carved out territory.

'They're up to something.'

He was certain.

They certainly had not come to do volunteer work. Volunteers would not trade with those cartels. A group that took responsibility for distributing supplies while trading in things like organs and drugs gave him ample reason for suspicion.

Bera's gaze grew vicious. Doran's trembling intensified in response.

"Th-the junk shop... I've heard they're seen around there sometimes."

The junk shop. That was farther in. Bera scowled and exhaled.

'I think I've heard everything I can for now.'

What should he do with this man? Bera continued thinking as he looked at Doran. He wanted to kill him, but was there any reason to kill him here? It was a question the Bera of his previous life would never have considered.

TAP. TAP.

Bera's index finger tapped the dagger's hilt. Doran twitched in time with it.

"S-spare me..."

Just as that plea left Doran's mouth, someone spoke.

"Stop."

A new voice entered the scene. Bera and Doran looked in the same direction at once. Two figures stood at the end of their gaze, their bodies entirely covered by robes.

One appeared to be a rather tall adult man. The other was short enough to reach only the man's shoulder. Judging by the slightly youthful voice they had just heard, the shorter one must have spoken.

Tension filled Bera's body. His dagger was already out of its sheath. His wariness of the strangers sharpened the atmosphere.

Then the taller figure stopped abruptly. He whispered into the smaller man's ear, and the smaller one abruptly stopped as well.

It was unexpected behavior. Naturally, Bera began to frown as he watched.

'What the hell are they doing?'

As that thought crossed his mind, the smaller figure pulled back the hood of his robe.

'...!'

Bera's eyes widened. The figure thus revealed was someone he knew.

Splendid golden curls. Beneath them, golden eyes that shone even in this dreary gutter. Features delicate for a man, and snow-white skin.

'Albrecht...'

Albrecht van Frich. The Empire's second prince and the Knight of Reverence.

That was the identity of the figure revealed beneath the hood.