Chapter 113

Edward is a coward.

A coward who feared dying pointlessly on the battlefield.

A coward who feared achieving nothing, simply vanishing as an nameless corpse.

Edward was the coward who fled the battlefield, afraid of failing to become a hero.

Blessed with a talent so profound, failure had been a stranger to him his entire life, and so he lived a life adored by all.

“Goddamn it, who the hell is this kid!”

It didn’t take him long to realize he was a child.

Ever since fleeing the battlefield, Edward had drowned himself in drink, consumed by self-loathing.

While others bravely swung their axes to protect the world, he had abandoned his sword and run, so perhaps it was only to be expected.

“Th-there’s only one enemy! Don’t back down! Hold the line, you b*stards!”

But the place he’d run to, hell awaited.

Every day, to overcome the dark impulses that consumed him, fueled by self-hatred, he needed the bottle.

It was an experience of everything that had defined him crumbling away.

He had always believed he would soon be a hero, yet when the world was most in danger, he’d fled.

Edward was a coward.

A coward who spewed nonsense from his mouth.

This, he knew better than anyone.

“…Spare me, spare me!”

Edward didn’t hate the golden sea so much.

He thought it suited a man like him.

He had simply intended to spend his remaining days steeped in liquor, slowly dying in this trash heap.

Such an end suited a coward like him.

“…Stop it… here! Here’s the jail key, please…”

And yet.

The newspaper arrived, fluttering down.

A newspaper brimming with stories of the hero, Rex Belzarc.

“Son of a b*tch!”

Was this to be the end?

Without shame, he posed the question to himself again.

Ignoring the prickle of humiliation, he asked the world once more.

Did he truly wish to die like this?

“I wanted to be a hero.”

Though perhaps those words weren’t meant for the lips of a coward who had fled the battlefield.

“And still, I think, if it were possible, I would like that.”

Ed hadn’t been able to relinquish the dream.

So brazen, so utterly pathetic.

A small, insignificant human.

* * *

The man with the closely cropped hair emerged from the inn, barely ten minutes after entering. Trailing behind him, a line of small children, their heads barely reaching his thigh.

Bruises mottled the children’s wrists and ankles. It seemed they had been chained for a long time.

The children neither cried nor laughed. They simply followed behind the man, their faces frozen and doll-like.

The man drew closer to the building where the boy resided.

But the white-haired boy had long since lost interest in the commotion unfolding across the street at the inn.

With his back to the window, he continued his usual wrangling with Sion, who was spouting his typical nonsense.

“……”

Edward surveyed his surroundings, then, as if entranced, tilted his head, his gaze following a scattering of silver hair in the corner of his eye.

And he saw.

The general he had sworn to protect.

The hero who, alongside Rex Belzarc, had slain the Archangel Malthael.

…A prodigy possessing talents so vast he couldn’t even begin to fathom them.

Edward glanced between the silver-haired boy reflected in the window and the children following behind him.

After a lengthy deliberation, he resumed his steps into the darkness.

No one could possibly know what Edward was thinking during that brief moment, what intricate concerns he harbored within his heart.

But Edward’s mind was a battleground indeed, and the conclusion he reached at the end of that chaos was astonishingly simple.

‘The children’s safety comes first.’

* * *

Long after Edward had departed the city.

Sion, who had been quietly watching Lir and Bean from the bedside, only felt as though she could breathe after they had fallen asleep, stretching as she walked out of the hospital room.

“Hmm, hmm hmm!”

Sion exited the building with a light step.

Just across, in the Rodine Inn, were beggars rummaging through corpses, and bandits threatening those beggars with knives.

Sion found a suitable spot on the rooftop of a nearby building and quietly observed them.

“…Mmm, mmm~”

Her humming traveled on the starlight-brightened night air. She wore a blissful smile as if she were someone who had never once in her life known worry.

The beggars fled the inn, clutching bread, liquor, and casino chips of dubious worth.

Meanwhile, robbers, eyes blazing with avarice, ransacked the inn’s cellar and the deepest recesses of the second floor, hunting for anything of value.

Inevitably, a beggar bumped into a robber. The beggar, who’d spent his life staring at the ground, simply hadn’t seen the robber rifling through the surroundings.

The robber paused, studying the emaciated man before him. Then, without a flicker of warning, he slashed with his blade.

The dagger forced its way through the beggar’s sternum, sinking deep. The beggar collapsed to the floor, devoid of strength.

The robber retrieved a piece of bread that had fallen to the ground and shoved it into his mouth.

He chewed, unperturbed by the rubbery, unpleasant texture.

Sion watched the entire scene unfold, an expression of detached amusement on her face.

“…Oh.”

Her gaze, previously fixed on the farcical scene, snagged on a figure with an unsettlingly hunched back.

He looked as though one could snatch the knife from his hand and toss it into the street, and he wouldn’t be much different from the beggars.

He was neither beggar nor robber.

He was something in-between, suspended in the chasm between them.

“Jackpot~”

Sion hummed a little tune as she traversed the rooftops.

Finding a suitable spot, she leaped from the roof, landing beside the hunched-over man.

He didn’t even register her presence. He simply clutched the dagger tightly, his gaze fixed on the corpses strewn across the inn’s lobby.

“Hello!”

Sion, practically breathing down his neck, screamed the greeting into the man’s sweat-soaked ear.

“Ah!”

The man swung his blade reflexively. Predictably, it never touched a hair on Sion’s head. Missing its mark, the man brought his other hand to his arm as if his shoulder ached.

Sion didn’t miss the opportunity, closing the distance to the hunched man, draping an arm over his shoulders.

Inside the pitch-black cloak, silver daggers glinted.

“Tell me, you like money, no?”

Sion posed the question abruptly.

The man glanced from the dagger in his hand to Sion’s face, then cautiously nodded.

“Wh-who doesn’t like…m-money?”

“Wouldn’t you want to earn a lot of money? Say, three gold coins. Or is that too much? How about a modest single gold coin?”

“G-gold? H-how…how do I earn it?”

The man continued to stammer. It wasn’t fear of Sion, but rather his habitually hesitant way of speaking.

“Heard the rumors about a mage who deals in lightning tossing gold coins to some kid a few hours back? How about you try working on that mage a little?”

“I-I heard. That mage’s s-supposed to be strong, right? Even our boss c-can’t beat him…told us not to m-mess with him.”

“Fool. Don’t you know the weaknesses of mages?”

Sion gave the stammering man’s back a light pat.

“Mages aren’t quick with their hands like us. Slow movers. Do you think they can move as nimbly as we can when they sit at a desk all day?”

“Th-that’s true! W-we are the experts in the f-field….”

“Exactly! Moving is your specialty! You understand what I mean, yes?”

“Y-yes! Of course!”

Sion, seeing the light in the man’s eyes, grinned widely. The man’s face flushed slightly at Sion’s bright smile.

“Good! Listen carefully. Tomorrow morning, the mage leaves this city. He’s a busy man, you see. He’ll set out regardless of whether there’s a dense fog.”

Sion dipped her waist slightly, meeting the man’s gaze.

“Exploit that opening! In the fog, swiftly!”

*Clap!*

She slammed her fist into her palm, pressing the hunched man.

“Like this! This quick, like a swallow! You understand what I’m saying?!”

*Clap!*

“Wham! Just like that, wham!”

*Clap!*

Sion continued striking her palm with her fist, guiding the man’s focus.

The man was increasingly drawn into Sion’s crimson eyes and passionate gestures.

“You can do it, right? You people are the experts in the field! Wizards just sit at their desks all day; most of them don’t know anything about what goes on out there.”

“Y-yes…! That’s right. We’re the field experts. Y-yes, we can do it!”

In the end, the man completely fell for her honeyed words.

“Now, go and tell this story to those you trust. You need to gather at least five people? That’s how we’ll make sure the operation succeeds.”

“O-operation?”

“Yes! Operation. I’ve already planned out the entire operation. So you don’t need to worry, just wait in the fog.”

“…P-plan! You mean the plan, right?”

“……”

Sion straightened her back for a moment, letting out a small sigh where the man couldn’t see.

“Alright! Let’s try this again, from the top. Don’t forget. You must only tell people you can trust? Never breathe a word of it to those with loose lips.”

Soon, Sion bent low, meeting the man’s gaze as he spoke.

“Ah, I know! I’m not stupid. I’ll do it as planned!”

“Good, so, after gathering trustworthy fellows, go ahead and wait in the mist. The wizard will probably move around ten in the morning. Those guys are real lazybones; unlike a diligent kid like you, who’d be waiting from seven in the morning, right?”

“…Right. I, I’m diligent.”

“Exactly! You’re incredibly diligent. Look at you now, coming all the way to the Rodine Inn to take that… ‘an object for which ownership cannot be exercised’.”

“Right! I’m diligent. And, I’m not smart, but I’m diligent!”

“That’s it! You really know how to talk. Our diligent friend!”

Sion slapped the man on the shoulder and laughed heartily.

“You can gather your friends, right?”

“Of course! I, I won’t sleep today either. My friends will hit me if I sleep, because it means I’m lazy!”

“Absolutely. Don’t let any loose-lipped types know about this news. Got it?”

“U, uh! I got it!”

“Now, go!”

Sion patted the man’s waist with the palm of his hand and pushed him into the dark alley.

“Take care of it~ moron.”

Sion smiled and waved at the man disappearing into the darkness.

“Should I look for one more…”

The man turned down the dark alley, glancing back at Sion’s red eyes.

Two hours later, the man, having scavenged nothing from the Rodine Inn, had his arm broken by his ‘friends’.

The gloom of the Golden Sea held a darkness unmatched by any other city.

How could it not, when selling children into servitude was openly called “business”?

A person alive and well yesterday might be found knifed in a back alley, a common occurrence.

And then, sometimes, a corpse abandoned in those alleys would vanish completely, without a trace.

In this city without soldiers, police, or doctors, no one knew why nameless bodies disappeared in such a way.

But no one in this city would ever truly want to know the truth.

“Ah, just wait a moment! Just a touch. Just a little touch.”

Seen from that perspective, what was happening in this alley right now might not be so extraordinary.

“Please, please…! Stop!”

This was something that happened in the Golden Sea anytime, anywhere.

Whether the sun shone or the moon hung in the sky.

“Save me! Save me, please…! Plea—!”

Even so, the woman surrounded by three hulking men and screaming was particularly unlucky.

She knew full well that wandering the back alleys of the Golden Sea in the dead of night was madness. But the tavern where she worked had run out of ingredients, and the cook had bellowed at her to fetch bread from the storage shed in the alley behind.

She had no choice. She removed her grease-stained apron and plunged straight into the dark alley.

…And the tavern’s lowlifes, who had been watching her intently, followed her into the darkness.

“Sleeping with whores gives you spots all over! Look here! See this big spot? It gets bigger every day.”

The men, having bound the woman’s limbs, shoved a patch of rotting skin in front of her eyes as they spoke.

“Everyone who’s been with Kedi, men and women, has this. Kedi even calls them ‘coupons,’ says if you collect ten, you get to sleep with her for free!”

The man with the spot brought his oily face close to the woman’s cheek as he spoke those words.

“……You wouldn’t want this coupon, would you?”

It felt like bugs were crawling all over her ears, tickling her eardrums. The woman, confronted with a towering fear, couldn’t even manage a proper scream.

“Huh? That Cady fella, his skin’s a little saggy, but…”

This place is a sea of gold.

A continental drain where greed, sin, and filth collect.

“Excuse me~”

And above that drain.

“Sorry to interrupt your fun, but I’ve got a real good job for you. Wouldn’t you want to make some big money?”

A girl with crimson eyes descended.