Ch.263Request Log #021 – The Struggle for the Mountain Peak (4)

Even after catching two thieves and throwing them to the ground, I knew what they’d say. They’d realize they were being beaten for stealing something, but wouldn’t understand what it actually was.

Like Suzie, or rather… like Suzie from long ago, they’d only try to escape their immediate situation. They had no idea what they were trying to do. They never intended to understand, nor did they have the capacity to.

Without that capacity, they couldn’t see that what happened to them was the result of their own actions—they only saw misfortune. There are as many people in the world who fail to recognize their misfortunes as problems as there are those who do the opposite. But if they insisted on remaining ignorant, I could respond with equal ignorance.

I headed to the next fence. I left a scar on his palm too. By the end of tonight, I’d create a new tradition among New York’s fences, carving long marks into their hands.

This jewel also carried powerful magic. As the droplets of blood pooled into a palm-sized glob of mucus, I stuck a bottle of lubricating oil into it and burned the entire mass.

This time it produced a lot of smoke, but the fence, not wanting police attention, used magic to funnel all the smoke into a small chimney above the heating stove. Sometimes things resolve themselves.

Most of the stolen goods could be handled this way. Some had stronger spells than the first jewel, crudely forming skeletal structures and leaping up, which I had to crush with my hands.

Still, this method was effective. Blood from just a palm cut wasn’t enough to create a proper monstrosity. With each place I visited, I was saving one more person. Nothing wrong with that.

The number of Followers of the Forest’s Firstborn managers I’d dealt with in one night was similar to the number of fences I’d visited today. The approach was the same too: break in, threaten, then burn.

Back then, ashes and soot remained, but this time there was a long cut on my hand and a trembling person left behind. A better deal than last time.

Human life was worthless. On the battlefield, it could be exchanged for a single machine gun bullet, and now people died for much less. Yet contradictorily, it was precious enough that we tried to protect it with illusions. Was what I felt for Bunyan and my sacrificed comrades also an illusion? No.

My comrades couldn’t die. Nor were they truly alive. Lives that should have ended long ago remained forcibly bound to us. I don’t know if this thought came from rationality or stubbornness.

I put the blood-soaked jewels in a medium-sized jewelry box and headed to the next fence. The information from Old Man Beckman was generally accurate. Angry dwarves provide useful information.

He wasn’t someone who controlled all of New York, so there were quite a few inaccuracies and things that needed correction. The list even included an old jeweler who had reluctantly accepted stolen goods once. He had no jewels.

Still, the descriptions were changing. They seemed to be moving around, starting boldly from Littlehold where they’d stolen the items. In Littlehold, Old Man Beckman barely remembered their faces, but on the outskirts of the city, they were becoming “those guys who came recently.” I was starting to see not just clues, but a trail.

The job would probably be easy. If it could be solved by running around all day, then it was an easy job. I headed to the next antique shop. It was about halfway down my list, but my jewelry box was almost full.

I thought most pawnshops stayed open until dawn, but when I arrived at this one, the owner was already closing up. I hurriedly got out of the car and rushed toward the pawnshop owner.

A human in their mid-twenties. Long brown hair and a lively expression. Not the typical age for a pawnbroker. Not the typical impression of one either. She was a bit startled by the clicking sound of my footsteps.

Having heard me running, she quickly hid her keys and put on an act. Her eye-smile was quite appealing, but of all her features, that was the only part I liked.

“Are you here for the pawnshop too? My God, what kind of pawnshop closes at 8 PM? If they want to imitate a bank, they should close early in the afternoon, not at this hour…”

It wouldn’t be bad to listen to a word or two and move on, but I needed to handle business quickly. As soon as I heard her words, I reached into my coat. Seeing my hand move with an anxious expression, she also reached into her pocket.

I was faster in drawing without pulling out a gun. While she was trying to grab her gun, I lightly grabbed her nape with my left hand and struck her solar plexus with twice the force.

Her body went limp. From her pocket, I found an 11-year-old pistol that seemed well-used, keys, and… a single-edged dagger with a double-edged pointed tip—the distinctive knife of ritual practitioners.

The eye-smile was truly the only appealing part about her. I clicked my tongue once. Grabbing her by the collar, I dragged her with her ankles scraping the ground, unlocked the pawnshop door with her keys, and entered.

The pawnshop was quiet. From the dusty collectibles to the pawnshop owner whose throat had been cut with a ritual dagger—everything was silent. I threw the woman against the inner wall of the pawnshop.

I locked the door and pulled the small curtain over it. I approached with my gun drawn. While I had struck her solar plexus to knock her out, I kicked her lower abdomen with the toe of my shoe to wake her up.

“Ah, guh, gurk, ha, hoo… Wh-what kind of strength…”

I pressed the silencer against the head of the woman who had regained consciousness from the pain. With my other hand, I held the ritual dagger. If I cut her the same way, the police wouldn’t think there were two perpetrators.

“No small talk. Let’s get to the necessary conversation. How much do you know about the jewels? I’m not someone who welcomes uninvited guests. I’d be content just doing the same job every day and getting the same salary.”

“Wh-what, what jewels! I don’t know anything about jewels! I just…”

I put away my gun. I pressed the protruding base of the ritual dagger against her temple and pressed lightly. Using twice the strength, I jabbed it slightly. A scream rang out. The pawnshop was relatively quiet.

It was quiet enough that someone could think of killing a person and escaping silently. The woman who had been screaming and scratching my arm finally began weakly tapping my arm. I released her for a moment.

“The old jeweler in Littlehold was collecting cursed jewels! Some idiots stole them and were selling them off… I thought I should stop them somehow…”

A lie. As usual with lies, a response was needed. Ignoring the hand clawing at my face, I grabbed her head. Again, I pressed the base of the knife handle against her temple. This time the scream was louder.

She would have known that my previous action was to get information. If she behaved and said what was needed, she might have escaped without further harm.

But not this time. This woman didn’t know whether I would demand her life for one lie, or just inflict a certain amount of pain. She clawed until her nails broke.

Since she was still useful, I threw her down without killing her. With her head face-down on the floor, I stepped on it with my shoe heel, then lifted my foot slightly and stomped next to her head.

A heavy collision sound rang out. Only three tiles were broken, but there was no one left to replace the floor tiles. I gently lifted her chin with the toe of my shoe and pushed her back. She regained her balance on her own.

Moisture welled up in her eyes as if she was about to cry. With my steel-plated heel on her ankle, I said:

“No, no. Don’t waste time. You can cry after I leave.”

Though I spoke kindly, I drew my gun again and aimed it at her head. It was obvious to her that if she sniffled once, her ankle would break, and if she sniffled twice, a bullet would fly into her head.

She forcibly swallowed her tears and began to speak. When trouble occurs, flies gather. The names were always different, but they were just flies. Unpleasant, but easily swatted with a palm.

“I, I wanted to learn ritual magic, but in New York, there’s no… no master who would share the grace of ritual magic! Who would teach me! So I could only self-study crude techniques. So when I heard thieves had broken into the old man’s house who collected cursed jewels, I thought if I could get even one cursed jewel…”

I didn’t need to hear more. Just a fly entangled in my business. I gripped the long blade of the ritual dagger in reverse. She continued speaking.

“I thought I might learn something impressive. Something more like divine power, but when I held a knife to the owner here, he said no jewels had come in, so impulsively…”

I am not impulsive. With the blade held toward her neck, I slashed down lightly, very briefly. The bleeding wasn’t severe. She could stop it with her hand. If she managed to stop the bleeding and get help, she could survive.

I lifted my foot from her ankle and stomped down lightly. She couldn’t hold on without grabbing her neck with her hands. If her ankle wasn’t intact, she couldn’t seek help. That was all. There was hope, but it was distant and futile.

There were no real jewels in that pawnshop. Even during the half-day I’d been on the job, swarms of flies had been gathering. Leaving behind the desperate voice calling from behind and the sound of crawling on the floor, I left the pawnshop.

The thick curtain was drawn from inside. The door was firmly locked, and in front of the door was a note written in someone’s handwriting—not the owner’s—saying “Closed until the hot water pipe is fixed.” It was my handwriting.

I crossed out the name of this pawnshop with a pen. It was time to move to the next place. The scratching sound from inside the door was a hallucination. I decided to treat it as such. I stepped on the pedal again and started the engine.

Now I was quite far from Littlehold. I’d come quite a distance. I knocked on the door of a pawnshop located in a place so far that Motherwood was almost visible, and entered. It was 8:30 PM.

The pawnshop owner’s attention was elsewhere. A small handful of sapphires that seemed to have been taken from a necklace. The fence’s attention, not the pawnbroker’s, was focused elsewhere. I approached and tapped the counter.

He almost instinctively hid the sapphires with his hand. He narrowed his eyes sharply and raised his head, then seeing that a customer had arrived, put on a friendly expression. He tried to smooth things over with a smile.

“Ah, haha. A customer. I, I thought it was those guys coming back saying they wanted more money after thinking about it… Well, do you have any used items to sell or need money with collateral…?”

“Can you raise your hands for a moment?”

Without suspicion, he raised his hands after gathering the sapphires in one place. I wiped his hand once with the dry part of an oiled cloth.

I pushed the side of my pocket knife handle and extended the long blade. I jabbed it lightly from the back of his hand so he couldn’t see. It didn’t take long for the pile of necklace sapphires to look like a pile of garnets.

But this time, the reaction was particularly fast. With just one drop of blood, it began to writhe, and when the second drop fell on the pile of jewels, the third was caught by a blood clot that opened its mouth.

After pushing the fence back, I immediately brushed the blood drops off the jewel pile. The jewels were still heavily infused with ritual magic, but the connection with the small monstrosity made of blood clots was easily broken.

Nevertheless, the monstrosity made a strange groaning sound, twitched once, and then stopped. Simply burning it at the right time wouldn’t have been enough. This needed to be left to that dwarf warlock-soldier.

“Now you clearly know what those guys sold you. They probably knew what it was too. They’re leaving these around to mess with fences who don’t pay proper prices, or at least that’s what they think. Fortunately, Old Man Beckman wants to catch and kill those guys…”

Even while lying to provoke emotion, I concealed my client. The pawnshop owner, trembling with fear, weakly raised his hand to point somewhere. Then he spoke incoherently.

“Th-those bastards, that… they said they’d made a big score and earned a ton of money, so they were going to drink like nobles at Bouton de Rose. If you go there…”

I clicked my tongue twice. I couldn’t understand why so many people believed without doubt that they could help with detective work.

“Don’t worry, I have an invitation. Even without an invitation to Bouton de Rose, I’m quite friendly with those who have such names. And what comes after that is for the detective to handle for the client. Just stop the bleeding.”

No matter how much I pretended, it was difficult to discover that magic had been implanted, so I could get away with saying such things to the fences.

It wasn’t something they could report to the police anyway, and if so, all they could blame was their bad habits and carelessness… since my client possessed both of those traits as well, it was better to keep quiet.

I left the pawnshop again. The sky was now completely dark. It would take quite some time to reach Bouton de Rose. If I didn’t take shortcuts, I could arrive a little later than them.

I checked my wallet. I had nearly 70 dollars in cash. I could pay the bartender for their drinks, and as a sign that I wouldn’t cause trouble, quietly take them out and deal with them, and no one would stop me.

The night streets looked decent enough when doing work that wouldn’t be recognized. The city was full of vitality because there was no need to fear curses and monstrosities born from curses roaming the night streets.

Small theaters were showing new movies or plays, and while bars had their windows covered as they did business, regular restaurants that served alcohol only to VIPs were still brightly lit and operating at this hour.

Tonight, these bright night streets owed me something. I was always indebted to the night streets, squandering sleepless hours on cases, but now I could say I’d repaid some of that debt.

After driving for nearly 20 minutes, Bouton de Rose came into view. From the outside, it looked like a teahouse that would be busier during the day. It resembled Two Face.

While Two Face originally sold coffee during the day and alcohol at night, Bouton de Rose had started selling coffee and ice cream since Prohibition. It was a facade.

Those thieves had fallen for the facade again. Bouton de Rose, which seemed to have maintained its place as an upscale bar for a long time, was actually just a 5.5-year-old building, and the jewelry box where they sought fortune was Pandora’s box.