Chapter 470: Being cruel
(3rd Person POV)
"What should we do about this Delly? Should we just dispose of him?" Kaiser suggested, his eyes sharp in the way of someone who considered this a perfectly routine solution.
Still kneeling on the ground, Granak heard that and visibly shuddered. Before Arthur could respond, he cut in with a stutter: "Y-you cannot go against Master Delly. I don’t care how powerful you lot are — you will regret it. I guarantee it."
Arthur turned to look at him, visibly amused. "Oh? You seem to know quite a lot about who is backing Delly. Judging by how frightened you are, anyway."
Granak swallowed hard. "I am telling you this for your own good."
"For our own good?" Keanu couldn’t help himself. "Why would you be concerned about us? It’s not like we did you any favors. We’re the ones who just beat you half to death, remember? Why do you even care?"
"Because the moment you make a move against Master Delly, we get dragged into it whether we like it or not," Granak said through gritted teeth. "The organization will know we were the ones who leaked the information. That puts us in the ground."
Arthur chuckled. "You look like a man built purely for hitting things, yet here you are, thinking three steps ahead." He pulled a nearby chair over and sat down, completely relaxed about it. "But here’s the thing — you’ve already exposed Delly to us. That ship has sailed. So you might as well tell us everything about the organization behind him. Just how terrifying are they? Who knows — maybe after hearing it, we’ll think twice about doing anything at all, and you’ll have nothing to worry about."
Granak went quiet for a moment.
’...That actually makes sense,’ he thought reluctantly.
Off to the side, Kaiser and Keanu exchanged a glance. The man had just reframed the entire situation so neatly that even they would have talked if they were in Granak’s position.
Sure enough, Granak let out a long breath and said, "...Fine. I’ll tell you."
He took a moment, the way a man does before dropping something he knows is heavy.
"Master Delly is backed by an organization called the «Legion Swords»." He paused. "The name comes from how they operate — they don’t move with one blade, they move with many, striking from every direction at once. Nobles, merchants, enforcers — they have fingers in all of it, coordinated like a military formation. That is why they are called Legion Swords."
He let that land before continuing.
"I was once a member. And despite my strength, I was nothing — a lowly grunt taking orders from figures I barely ever saw. The high-ranking members are a different breed entirely. Powerful enough to be a genuine threat to the kingdom. I only ever crossed paths with one of them during my time there." He paused again, heavier this time. "That one person alone could level this entire city with a handful of spells."
He watched their faces as he said it. Expecting something — fear, hesitation, at least some flicker of concern.
Arthur was stroking his chin. He looked interested. Curious, even.
Granak felt something was very wrong.
"...Is that it?" Arthur asked.
Granak coughed, and a thin streak of blood came with it — the damage from his earlier fight with Keanu and Kaiser making itself known. He pushed through it. "The organization has deep ties with the nobility. That alone makes them nearly impossible to uproot. On top of that, the Nordsturn Kingdom doesn’t have the resources to go after them even if they wanted to — and with the Demon King threatening the borders, they can’t afford to split their attention anyway."
Arthur nodded slowly, still stroking his chin. "I see. A rather interesting organization."
"N-now that I’ve told you all that, you’d better think twice about going against the organization or Master Delly," Granak added, his eyes sharp despite everything. "Unless you want to regret it."
"I appreciate the concern," Arthur said coolly. "Perhaps because of that, I’ll spare you."
"Hm!?" Granak’s eyes went wide — and then Arthur was already in front of him, moving faster than the eye could follow, one hand locked around his throat.
"But this mercy isn’t free," Arthur said. "You’re going to keep working under Delly. And every time he makes a move, you’re going to tell me about it."
"Urgh—!" Granak’s eyes bulged. He had a look on his face like he was about to refuse — and the grip tightened.
"Don’t worry," Arthur said, smiling coldly. "I’ll pay you well for it."
"Ugh—"
"Arthur, aren’t you being a little harsh?" Keanu said from the side, looking genuinely uncomfortable.
"And aren’t we supposed to be avoiding our deity powers?" Kaiser added.
"This isn’t deity power." The ring on Arthur’s finger — the one that had gone largely unnoticed since they arrived — caught the light with a quiet gleam. "I’ve kept my true power sealed since we crossed into this world. What you’re seeing is my physical strength running on mana, and nothing else."
He held the ring up briefly. "This thing has been absorbing ambient mana from the moment we stepped foot here. It feeds that mana directly into my body — strengthens me at a purely mortal level. No deity power involved. Just a ring doing its job, and a body that’s been getting stronger every day we’ve been here."
Keanu and Kaiser both looked at the ring. Even by their standards, something about it made them uneasy.
"Unlike you two, who’ve been coasting on deity power this whole time," Arthur said, not unkindly. "I’ve been building something I can actually use here." It was honest, at least in part. He relied on his deity power the same as they did — but after what Ressètte had said about deities not being slaves to Faith, he had started looking for alternatives. A ring capable of absorbing mana indefinitely was exactly that.
"Even so," Keanu said, watching Granak struggle. "He’s just a thug. Isn’t this a bit much?"
"A thug?" Arthur laughed and hoisted Granak up by the neck until his feet left the ground. "Are you really just a thug?" His voice carried the particular edge of someone who already knew the answer.
"You — how dare you—" Granak grabbed at Arthur’s arm with both hands, got nowhere, and kept trying anyway.
"Arthur—" Kaiser started.
"Right below where we’re standing," Arthur said, his tone dropping to something quieter and colder, "there’s an artifact built into this floor specifically to hide what’s underneath it. I pushed my magic through and found out why." He glanced down. "Hundreds of people. All of them chained up and locked in cages."
Kaiser and Keanu both went still.
They hadn’t looked. Between keeping their powers restrained and not thinking to probe the floor beneath a gang hideout, it simply hadn’t occurred to them. The silence that followed lasted less than a second before something shifted behind both their eyes.
Arthur threw Granak straight down.
The floor cracked on impact, then gave way entirely. Granak crashed through into darkness, taking a section of the floorboards with him, and the hole he left behind opened into a structure below — low ceilings, poor light, and cages. Row after row of them, each one holding chained figures who barely reacted to the sudden noise from above.
Arthur dropped down through the hole without a word.
Up close, it was worse. The slaves had gone completely quiet — not from fear of the newcomers, but from something hollower than that. They were too weak to speak. Too hungry to react. Most of them weren’t even looking up.
"You muscle-brained son of a—" Keanu landed beside Arthur, his voice low and tight with something that wasn’t quite anger yet, because anger needed somewhere to go and he hadn’t decided where to send it. "What is the meaning of this!?"
Granak lay where he’d fallen and said nothing.
Arthur walked over and kicked him. Not hard. Just enough. "Well?"
Granak pushed himself up slowly, spat blood, and looked at the cages like a man who saw nothing wrong with them. "You don’t understand anything. These people are magicless. They have no future worth speaking of. This way, at least they serve a greater purpose — one that benefits the Legion Swords."
"You scum—" Keanu’s fists were clenched white. "So you’re still working for them! You lied to us!"
Granak wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. "It doesn’t matter what you know now. It won’t change anything—"
Arthur pulled a dagger from his inventory.
The motion was clean and entirely without ceremony. One slash. Granak’s head left his shoulders and dropped to the stone floor, and the sentence died with him.
"I gave you a chance," Arthur said quietly. "You didn’t take it."
The slaves in their cages stared in stunned silence.
