BSS 127

Chapter 127

“Think it’s going to rain?”

“Feels like water just dripped.”

Their momentary confusion quickly faded as they became utterly absorbed in the dazzling gemstones embedded in the sword. They soon forgot about the water droplets that had seemingly fallen from a clear sky.

With rapt expressions, the two of them stroked the blade.

“If the boss sees this, he’ll wipe out all our debt.”

“What? You’re going to give it to the boss?”

“What else would we do?”

“Keep it for ourselves instead of handing it over!”

“Are you insane? What if we get caught? No ordinary fence would even dare touch something like this! Only someone like the boss could dispose of it!”

Indeed, it was an item so grand that even turning it into money wouldn’t be easy.

If they dismantled it and sold it piece by piece, its value would drop. If they sold it as is, they’d be caught in no time.

If they were caught stealing and selling a noble’s property, they’d be dead before they could even spend the money, so caution was essential.

The two thieves put their heads together, pondering the sword’s fate, but in the end there was only one answer: offering it to the boss. There wasn’t much that small fry like them could do.

“Listen, Jack. Selling something this conspicuous behind the boss’s back is impossible anyway. Let’s not get greedy.”

“…Do you think the boss will give us a fair price?”

“If we’re lucky, he might toss us a few coins. Cheer up! Besides, we’ve got these gold coins too, don’t we?”

The scruffy blond thief whose name had been called looked utterly reluctant.

“It’s just such a waste. If we took it to another city, we could sell it for several times the price…”

“Do you not know that every nearby city is under the boss’s thumb? We couldn’t sell it without him finding out, and since it’s a noble’s item, small-time thieves like us can’t handle it anyway. Let’s just hand it over and cleanly get out of this line of work!”

“What if we pry off the gems and sell them one by one? We could slowly pay off the debt.”

“For crying out loud, how long would that take? And if word gets back to the boss, we’re dead either way! Don’t you know he kills people for offending him?”

Was the boss really that terrifying? To these two thieves, he was clearly far scarier than any noble.

“Everything we steal belongs to the boss in the first place! As long as we owe him, for the rest of our lives!”

“Damn this filthy debt.”

Both of them were buried under massive debt—to the leader of the crime syndicate that controlled the area.

This city, crawling with crime, had relatively weak noble influence. Instead, criminal organizations wielded immense power. Given the nature of Koran as a tribal nation, that was true of almost every city.

With so many minority groups and a king whose authority was often ignored, the nobles’ power had waned, and criminals had exploited the gap.

Criminals from all over flocked in and filled the city.

And among them was one man who seized control of the large city of Mielta in one fell swoop—the man known simply as the Boss.

In truth, in this city, his word was the law.

“Don’t you know the saying? You can stiff anyone else, but never the boss. They say he’ll chase you all the way to hell.”

“He really is a monster capable of that…”

“Seriously, what a vicious bastard.”

The law was distant, but fists were very close.

Most of the criminals gathered in Mielta were people with nowhere else to go.

Having fled far from their homelands, all that remained for them was this brutal jungle.

So falling out of the boss’s favor was no different from a death sentence.

Jack grumbled loudly, but seemed to give up as he wrapped the sword back in cloth and slung it over his shoulder.

If it had been an ordinary item, they’d have skimmed some off the top, but today’s loot was far too much for the two of them to handle.

“Tch. We’re not slaves, you know. Feels like we’re always just doing the boss favors.”

“We were slaves until now! Look on the bright side—this’ll let us pay off our debt in one go. That’s a big win for us too, right? Now hurry and take it to the boss, then we can drink ourselves silly…”

Just as they’d decided the sword’s fate and were about to leave, their sensitive ears caught the sound of something closing in.

“Did you hear that?”

“Shh!”

Rapid footsteps were approaching.

Jack froze, and the other thief hurriedly held his breath.

He drew the dagger at his waist and stared in the direction the footsteps were coming from.

Tense with the fear that they’d already been tailed, they watched as a figure appeared at the end of the alley, backlit by the sun—

“What the hell, a mutt?”

“Whose dog is that? Why’s it so huge?”

All their vigilance was for nothing. At the end of the alley stood a large, tawny dog.

“Woof!”

Its glossy fur fluttered in the wind as it barked fiercely, but the thieves weren’t afraid of a mere dog. They assumed it was just a stray.

“I’ve never seen a dog that big in my life.”

“What do you feed it to make it shine like that?”

“Hey, should we catch it and give it to the boss too?”

“A dog?”

“The boss likes dog meat—urk!”

What fell onto Jack’s head was a person.

“Who do you think you’re going to eat?!”

“Aaagh!”

The woman who suddenly dropped from the sky didn’t hesitate to use Jack’s back as a foothold. It was clearly intentional.

Jack was helplessly shoved forward, slamming his chin into the ground, writhing in pain. Ignoring him entirely, the woman shook her flowing blond hair and violently grabbed his hair, yanking it back and forth.

“Give it back!”

“Ah—ugh!”

“My sword!”

“Ghk!”

“Right now!”

With a loud thud, she sat on his back and shook his head from behind, slamming his forehead into the ground again and again. Most people would lose consciousness from that.

Caught completely off guard, Jack quickly went woozy and blacked out. Seeing the entire ambush, the other thief snatched up the sword Jack had dropped and tried to flee.

He ran in the opposite direction from where the dog was blocking the path. As a thief, he was confident in his speed.

“Undine!”

That was, until a surge of water erupted from the ground and cut off his escape.

The wall of water blocking his path was impossible to break through—no matter how hard he punched it, all his strength was repelled.

It looked like he should be able to pass through, but not even a finger could get in. It was also too tall to climb over.

When he looked up in desperation and saw a huge blue fish swimming through the sky, realization finally struck him.

Ah. We messed with the wrong person.

“Hiiik!”

A mage?

Terrified, he turned around to see the blond woman advancing together with the dog.

Recognizing who she was, the thief quickly sidestepped. She was the sword’s rightful owner.

“I’ll say this nicely. Hand it over.”

She brushed aside her blond hair swirling through the air as she spoke. Her eyes were like those of a beast—an enraged tiger.

More than anything, her tone sounded like she was about to beat him senseless.

“When did you ever say anything nicely—ma’am.”

She’d nearly beaten Jack to death the moment she appeared.

“Are you kidding me?! Don’t you know that was just a figure of speech?!”

“Huh!”

“It means give it back while I’m still talking!”

“Woof!”

“What kind of nonsense are you barking, you.”

The dog darted away from her kick, then trotted back as if nothing had happened.

It then looked at the man with an expression that seemed absurdly disdainful for a dog.

The thief told himself there was no way a dog could do that, but the sudden irritation bubbling up inside him nearly made him snap. Still, the woman’s temper looked far too dangerous to provoke.

Feeling his life threatened as the woman kept approaching, the thief hugged the sword and struggled.

“D-do you know who we are?!”

“Why would I care about some thieves?”

“You’ve at least heard of us! The Blood Wing!”

It was the name of the group that dominated the area.

In Koran, there were few places where their infamy didn’t reach. With their numbers and brutality, even nobles avoided crossing them.

Above all, they utterly despised nobles.

“Blood Wing…”

“You know it well enough. If you mess with Blood Wing members, you won’t get away alive—”

“Chicken. Makes me crave fried chicken.”

His threat was completely ineffective.

If anything, she looked like the type who feared nothing. One glance at her eyes made that obvious.

She had no sense of fear at all.

“So that group must have spare lives lying around, huh?”

“Hiiik!”

“How dare you touch what’s in my pocket.”

The moment she smiled brightly—utterly at odds with her murderous voice—the thief felt his body being sucked into the wall of water.

His head was completely submerged, and his back and lower body were immobilized.

According to everything he knew, water wasn’t supposed to be like this. The crushing pressure made the trapped parts of his body throb as if they might burst.

Sweat poured down his face as the immense weight bore down on him.

“The water… it’s heavy…”

“If I increase the pressure a bit more, you’ll burst.”

Overwhelmed by water pressure he’d never experienced, the thief’s arms were forced wide open against his will, and the sword slipped uselessly from his grasp.

Aside from his face, nothing could move. He felt like a mounted deer head decoration on a wall.

“P-please spare me!”

“One more word and I’ll drown you.”

“……”

“My sword! You’re safe! Do you have any idea what this is? And you dared steal it—damn devils.”

Who was calling whom a devil?

“Woof!”

For some reason, the dog seemed to voice exactly what the thief was thinking.

After removing the cloth and checking the sword, the woman nodded in satisfaction, then began patting down the thief’s waist.

The water treated her alone gently.

She plunged her hand deep into the water, retrieved her coin purse from his belt, and counted the coins one by one as she threatened him.

“You’ll get hit once for every shilling that’s missing.”