Ch.19Entry – 2

The city just before I left for the dragon’s nest was a place filled with human warmth. People were everywhere, and adventurers were full of energy.

But now, it had completely changed. There wasn’t a single person visible on the streets. The roads that should have been bustling with people starting their morning were enveloped in silence.

That silence made the city feel like an abandoned village straight out of a ghost story.

As I passed through the city gates, the first thing that caught my eye was the filthy, chaotic state of the streets.

It wasn’t the usual dirt from footprints. Food items and goods were scattered everywhere, showing clear signs of being trampled underfoot.

I examined the intervals and directions of the dropped items. There was no consistency in the types of food, suggesting they were hastily grabbed during an escape. It seemed like things were dropped roughly once every three or four strides.

One direction led toward the city gate, while the other led to the shops. They clearly came from over there.

It was a shop I had visited a few times before.

I didn’t usually come here—I frequented a shop closer to the Adventurers’ Guild—so I couldn’t even remember the owner’s face, but I wasn’t completely unfamiliar with it.

I’d been here when we had to leave through the city gates for group requests, and someone on the team had forgotten something that needed to be acquired urgently.

The shop was visibly in shambles. I had to be careful not to step on the door lying on the floor and make unnecessary noise as I entered.

The contrast with my memory was stark. The door had been torn from the inside out, the windows were completely shattered, the interior was empty, and the floor was a mess of dropped and trampled food items, just like the streets.

It looked as if it had been looted.

No, it would be more accurate to say it had definitely been looted. My head started to ache. This was a city where the lord was still alive, even if he had supposedly fainted. Yet it had been looted?

Surely the perpetrators knew this was a serious crime that would get them crucified alive if Charlotte caught them.

In the corner, I noticed stairs leading to the second floor, which was likely the shop owner’s living quarters. I considered going up but decided against invading someone’s private space.

I desperately wanted to grab someone and demand to know what had happened, but there wasn’t even anyone around to ask.

I left the shop and returned to the main street. The tiles paving the road from the city gate to the lord’s mansion were broken in many places.

I knelt down on one knee and picked up one of the broken tiles. It looked like it had been smashed with a hammer or blunt weapon.

Who would deliberately hammer the tiles on the ground? It was hard to believe these marks were accidental.

A fight. That was my first guess. With the shop being looted and food items hastily stolen, it was difficult to imagine that no fighting had broken out.

They probably fought and tore at each other over who could take more, what belonged to whom. People who would take advantage of a situation to loot wouldn’t have any sense of camaraderie.

However, what bothered me was the complete absence of bloodstains. How could there be a fight violent enough to shatter the street tiles, yet no visible blood? It was as if someone had precisely broken only bones with a blunt weapon—

‘…Could it be him?’

Scarface. A name raced through my mind.

To put it simply, he was a viciously cruel and cunning man.

If you asked whether he was a villain, eight or nine out of ten people would say yes. The remaining few who would say no were his cronies.

He was skilled. Along with Ryan, Scarface was one of the only two who had reached the rank of high-level adventurer.

Moreover, his massive frame exceeding 2 meters and his hammer—larger than most people’s height—created an intimidating presence just by looking at him.

I had witnessed him swinging that enormous hammer like a sword to crush monsters several times. The problem was that he used his exceptional skills against other adventurers more often.

He not only exploited others but also frequently lured monsters from the forest to endanger adventurers who had arrived before him, then attacked both sides to reap the benefits for himself.

And if the adventurer was a woman?

While many adventurers went “missing” after supposedly being eaten by monsters, the “disappearance” of female adventurers was usually a different story.

Why would such a person openly operate as an adventurer? The reason was simple: Scarface never broke the law.

Everything happened within the boundaries of the law, or in its blind spots, leaving no evidence. On the surface, Scarface was just a skilled adventurer with a somewhat bad personality.

There was suspicion but no physical evidence. So naturally, there were no means to stop him.

For someone of Scarface’s skill level, the money earned from hunting monsters was far greater than what he could get from exploiting low-level adventurers, yet he still chose to walk the fine line of legality simply because his nature was rotten to the core.

I had crossed paths with him a few times. Since I didn’t want to get on his bad side when I didn’t know where the dragon might be, I chose to back down.

‘But why would he do something like this?’

The Scarface I knew, at least within this city, was someone who never broke the law.

While he exploited the difficulty of finding evidence in the forest to act with impunity, he should have been more restrained within the city.

I needed to gather information first. I got up from the ground and carelessly tossed aside the broken tile.

I headed toward the Adventurers’ Guild along the familiar path I had walked for nearly ten years. All along the way, I saw the desolate cityscape and buildings in disarray.

It had been just a day. Only a day had passed since Serena caused the incident. Something was off.

For a relatively functional city to turn into such a lawless zone in just one day didn’t make sense.

Even adventurers have some sense. No one in their right mind would thoughtlessly loot a city.

“How did things end up like this?”

I muttered as I walked briskly. This place didn’t hold only good memories, but I couldn’t help feeling guilty seeing it in such a state of chaos.

I can forget what wasn’t done for me. But I shouldn’t forget what was done for me. And there were definitely people here who had been kind to me.

People who showed kindness not to me as an immortal being, but to me as an unremarkable lowest-rank adventurer. Even if it didn’t help me much, kindness was still kindness.

And if you receive, it’s only proper to give back.

I stopped in front of a familiar building. The Adventurers’ Guild. Fortunately, the guild building appeared intact from the outside.

At least it hadn’t been looted like the other shops, which were visibly in shambles. I placed my hand on the door handle and pulled.

Click. The lock prevented it from opening. The door didn’t budge. My thoughts momentarily froze at this unexpected situation. Locked? In this situation? The Adventurers’ Guild?

Confused, I pulled the door again, but the clicking sound only confirmed that the lock was functioning properly.

I hurriedly went around to the side to check the windows. The glass was completely shattered, and wooden boards had been placed from the inside.

They were so meticulously sealed that not a single gap was visible. The wooden boards covering the windows bore clear marks of attempted break-ins from the outside.

“Hello! Is anyone in there?”

Bang, bang, bang—I knocked on the door three times. There was no answer. It was quiet. Anxiety surged within me. The silence of this place, above all others, was truly problematic.

This building was so sturdy that there were even guidelines instructing people to seek refuge here when faced with crises that the city walls and guards couldn’t handle.

There was only one logical conclusion: an overwhelming crisis had indeed struck this city, and people had taken refuge in this place.

The windows were boarded up to protect those inside from something outside, and whatever necessitated such measures was nearby.

I knocked on the door again. The sound of bang, bang, bang echoed around once more. I waited, hoping for any kind of response from inside.

One minute passed, then two, and just as the waiting time was about to exceed three minutes—

“What’s this? There’s still someone wandering outside?”

I was about to sigh and head toward the lord’s mansion when I stopped. Someone still wandering outside? I turned my head to look at the source of the voice.

The loose way of speaking, the snickering among themselves, the smirks on their faces, and the knives in their hands clearly indicating hostile intent.

They were Scarface’s gang.

“Your name is… Ah, right. I remember. You’re that idiot whose name is having no name, right?”

They burst into raucous laughter among themselves. I couldn’t fathom what was so funny, but some were laughing so hard they were holding their stomachs. Had their intelligence collectively regressed?

“What have you guys been doing here?”

“What have we been doing? Hey, you’re a bit short with your words, aren’t you?”

“I have a lot to ask you. What you’ve been doing here, why this place is in such a state, and what kind of bold fool came up with this plan. Anyway, you have quite a few questions to answer.”

I drew the sword from my waist. The blade made a swishing sound as it left its scabbard. Seeing me draw my sword and take a stance, the gang burst into laughter again.

“Hahaha! Hey, look at this guy drawing his sword! Looks like he’s trying to fight us?”

“Aww, how cute. Should big brother here let you land a hit?”

“Can you even swing that thing? You can’t, right? That’s why you’re always just picking herbs and collecting garbage!”

One of them strode toward me. Though he was holding a knife, he didn’t seem like he was going to use it. The tip of his blade was pointing toward the ground.

They were clearly convinced that I couldn’t swing a sword. If they had pointed their weapons at me, it would have become a joke to them.

These were men obsessed with pointless pride, so it was certain.

“Hey, man! Take it easy! Relax your face! What if you run away before we even start?”

“Look at him, frozen in place! Smile, you bastard! Are you going to chase after him if he runs?”

I couldn’t help but laugh seeing that they hadn’t even bothered to cloak themselves in mana. Did they seriously think they could withstand a sword strike with their bare bodies when they weren’t even wearing armor?

I couldn’t understand how much they were underestimating me to act like this. Even a six-year-old child holding a sword should make one nervous about getting cut if they’re unarmored.

He came right up to me and spread his arms dramatically. He was truly, sincerely not showing even a hint of caution. I had no idea my reputation here was this pathetic.

Since I didn’t need two of the three necessities—clothing and food—and barely needed shelter, I had only taken cheap, unprofitable requests. It seemed that had spread some strange rumors.

Of course, I had somewhat intended that, but I never imagined they would act like this even when I had drawn my sword.

“Now, little one. Let big brother teach you how to use a sword—”

“I know how.”

Thunk. My blade sank into his carotid artery.

The laughter from behind abruptly stopped. The face before me contorted with shock. I stepped on his right foot with my left to keep him from staggering, while simultaneously twisting my wrist to turn the blade.

His body twitched. His eyes slowly glazed over as his pupils rolled back. A gurgling sound came from between his clenched lips as blood mixed with saliva flowed out.

I pulled out the sword and swung it once through the air to shake off the blood. Seeing his knees about to buckle, I removed my foot from his and kicked him.

Despite his massive, even obese body, he fell over surprisingly easily since all strength had long left his body.

With a heavy thud, his body collapsed to the ground. His chest, facing the sky, no longer rose and fell with breath. Blood gushed from the gaping hole in his neck, soaking the ground.

“……”

“……”

“……”

The remaining three were staring at me with their mouths agape. Understandable. The person they had doubted could even swing a sword had just killed someone with a single thrust to the neck.

Clearly, I couldn’t enhance my body through the process of cloaking it in mana, and my muscles hadn’t grown at all compared to the past.

In terms of pure strength, I would probably lose to most low-level adventurers. If they were to use mana as well, it would be no contest.

What more needs to be said about someone who can’t even use the simplest body enhancement?

However, that doesn’t mean the sword skills I honed for over a hundred years have disappeared.

“What are you waiting for? Aren’t you going to attack?”

I can handle guys like them with sword skills alone, regardless of whether they use body enhancement or not.

“Or should big brother here teach you how to use a sword?”