Those Who Live Without the Law

Chapter 8

Uninvited Guest

* * *

While continuing his thoughts, I scratched my head.

“Are they treating someone like a king or something.”

If my memory was correct, even in the House Featherwing, it wasn’t common to use such ingredients so lavishly.

To begin with, my father wasn’t someone who enjoyed unnecessary extravagance.

Well, whoever it was, to think they’d send a telegram just to order food delivery.

The fact that food delivery was possible meant it wasn’t too far away. Sending a telegram instead of just sending a person was a considerable waste of money.

In any case, if Jonathan stepped out for that “special delivery,” I would be left alone for about three or four hours to get the shop ready to open.

“Everything else is done….”

While Jonathan was out again today, I continued preparing to open the shop.

As I was setting the tables, the door opened behind me with a jingling sound.

“Longwave Bistro. We’re not open for business right now….”

I stopped speaking when I saw who it was. A man dressed in a coat and a fedora, wearing sunglasses.

It wasn’t his attire that made me stop.

“…Sir, your arms are awfully long.”

His arms were so long they almost reached past his knees, and the sleeves of his coat dragged along the floor.

“Ah, excuse me. Are you Mr. Jonathan by any chance?”

The man’s voice sounded like a rake scraping across a dry tree stump.

The suspicious man and I looked at each other in silence for a moment.

“Sir, I think it would be polite for you to state your name first. And as I said, the shop isn’t open yet.”

At my words, the man let out a small sound, as if to say “oh dear.”

“Due to personal reasons, I don’t think I can reveal my identity. I’d appreciate it if you’d simply answer my question.”

With a sudden step, the man approached me. A low, chilling metallic scrape brushed against my ear.

From the sound alone, I was sure there was some sort of blade hidden under those long sleeves.

“It’s not complicated. If you get a few required documents from the city hall, we can process your request. First…”

As soon as I started spouting nonsense to buy time, the man swung his arm. In that instant, I drew my sword to counter him.

With a sharp clash of metal, the sword in my hand collided with the man’s swinging arm.

Hidden under the dragging sleeve was a pair of claws, each boasting a blade about the length of four palms.

The blades of the sword and the claws scraped against each other, filling the air with a grating screech.

“This is a restaurant. Nail care isn’t on the menu, you long-armed monkey bastard.”

“Well, damn. If I’d known there was someone like you here, I would’ve charged more.”

My skills were superior. But that didn’t mean I had no problems dealing with the man in front of me.

“Seeing you working in such a shabby restaurant, I can guess the state of your wallet. That’s why your equipment’s trash, too.”

The output of his battle gear was far better than mine. On the fully exposed claws of the man, whose sleeve had been sliced off, the word “Benerus” was engraved in clear letters.

It was a high-end lineup brand produced by Bellagin Armory. Expensive, and as expensive as it was, it performed superbly. And the most distinctive feature…

When he casually stepped back and rubbed the two claws on his hands together, flames flared up from them, dying down and flaring again.

“Where the hell did you get that?”

The battle gear could ignite flames when certain conditions were met. It probably had a patent, too.

“If you stay in this line of work long enough, you make a lot of money, and you meet the right people.”

He sure had a complicated way of saying he bought it through someone he knew. As I thought that and prepared for my next move, he eased his stance slightly and spoke.

“The one I was paid to kill is the owner of this place, Jonathan. Nobody told me to kill the employee.”

The man with the claws slowly stepped aside, leaving the doorway open.

“Why don’t you just walk out? I’m not in the habit of killing people for free.”

At his words, I let out a short laugh.

“So our gentleman here plans to wait quietly for our boss to come back?”

If I accepted his offer and walked out, Jonathan would return to the shop, unaware of anything.

And he’d be ambushed without warning. Jonathan knew how to handle battle gear, and he wasn’t bad.

But even so, caught completely off guard by someone of this caliber, he wouldn’t survive.

Therefore, if I left here, Jonathan would definitely die.

“Isn’t this none of your business?”

“You think your employer about to get killed doesn’t concern the employee? Instead of killing people all the time, why don’t you try living like a normal person for once? Life experience is precious, you know.”

He was the guy who’d hired me a penniless drifter with nowhere to go just because he trusted a friend of mine who’d been locked up in the correctional facility, and fed me, gave me a place to sleep, and paid me.

Of course, I worked hard enough to earn it, so it wasn’t like he’d bestowed some huge favor. Still, knowing he was going to die, there was no way I could just walk away.

The man slowly raised his arm and aimed at me.

“So, should I take that as a refusal?”

“You worthless bastard. Did you seriously think I sounded like I was agreeing?”

There was nothing more to say between us.

Dropping both arms fitted with claws, he let them sway slowly as he shifted his weight onto both feet.

Flattened to the ground, scurrying noisily in every direction, he looked exactly like a cockroach.

Even while moving on instinct, he was keenly aiming for the spots outside my field of vision.

“I’ll make you regret those words. I’ve dealt with countless arrogant bastards like you!”

With a slithering sound, he accelerated, swinging his pair of claws at my throat.

“Do you know why I’m still alive to this day?”

With a metallic clang, my sword blocked his claws mid-swing. The harsh screech of metal grinding against metal rang out faintly.

“Maybe because the people you fought were all pathetic weaklings. How the hell should I know? Want me to go dig up one of their corpses and ask?”

I looked him straight in the eye and declared. As the rasping continued, his claws slowly shaved away my blade.

“You sure like running your mouth. I’ll carve you up along with that pathetic sword.”

“Yeah. The sword is pretty cheap.”

The saying that a master doesn’t blame his tools was definitely bullshit.

I couldn’t deny that this cheap, flimsy battle gear was dragging me down.

“But even so, a piece of trash like you, who’s never even properly learned how to fight, can still be fucked up.”

He was the kind of punk who’d never even had the chance to study how to fight.

Just someone who’d crawled through the gutters, learning to slit throats by pure instinct.

“Learning to fight? I’ve never heard such horse shit.”

The man looked at me with a face full of disbelief.

In his mind, true combat wasn’t something learned with the head it was something you had to experience firsthand, rolling around and getting used to it with your body. That was how he believed people became strong.

“There’s an idiot out there who learned to fight by reading books.”

He openly scorned me. I let out a short snort.

“Really? Then that means you’re exactly as far as you’ll ever go. Just a lucky thug who learned to use battle gear but has no ambition beyond that.”

I stepped back slightly and swung my sword quickly through the air.

The output of battle gear was most simply expressed in the unit of magical power.

Measurement units should be intuitive and clear. That’s why they took the total output of a battle gear and converted it into the equivalent strength of how many horses it could produce.

“That’s not all there is to it.”

For a long time, people had studied and developed battle gear, exploring how to use it properly.

And all that knowledge, experience, and data eventually succeeded in becoming a field worth studying as a discipline.

“Guys like you don’t even know how the battle gear you’re using manages to create fire in the first place.”

“As long as the blade cuts well, who cares about the mechanism?”

It was quite a reasonable rebuttal. You could use it without understanding it. I smirked and answered.

“You’re right. There’s no need to know.”

Flames rose from the sword I held.

“For idiots like you, who are satisfied to spend your lives only using the functions the manufacturer hands you.”

The things you could do with battle gear output weren’t limited to just getting stronger.

“If you didn’t understand how to harness output to create fire, how do you think Bellagin Armory made those claws? Try using your brain a little.”

You couldn’t build something without understanding it. So if it could be made, that meant someone knew the principle.

I swung the sword. A blast of searing wind, heated by the flames wrapping the blade, spread out and surged forward.

Gritting his teeth against the hot wind blowing over him, the man barked out.

“Wind? You bastard, were you one of those lackeys licking the Featherwing’s boots?”

“Honestly, having your swordsmanship be too famous is a problem.”

Among Featherwing sword techniques, Swift Blade was the most famous. It was the one style that outsiders could learn if Featherwing recognized their talent.

Because more people practiced it, it was the style most often seen and recognized by the public and therefore, the most well-known.

Even now, six years after Featherwing was annihilated, there were still people who recognized Swift Blade’s distinctive power.

The man must have decided I was an outsider who had learned Swift Blade from Featherwing.

That was only natural. Everyone believed Featherwing had been wiped out, every last one of them killed.

“Famous, my ass. You were a toady for those idiots who got destroyed for defying the Emperor, and now you’re crawling around this shitty city.”

Inside the restaurant, wind surged wildly as he continued spitting words like a tantrum.

“Weren’t they always just a bunch whose reputation sounded fancier than their real strength? They were supposed to be the Empire’s strongest, but the Emperor changes his mind and they get wiped out overnight.”

Why had the Featherwing, known as the strongest house in the Empire, been obliterated without even a proper resistance?

I knew exactly what had happened. But there was no reason to explain anything to this bastard.

“Is that so? After you get killed by the swordsmanship of those annihilated idiots, go brag about it in hell.”

Wind danced along the blade of my sword.

‘Drive it in one steady direction.’

The artificial wind swirling through the restaurant lent power to my movement and hampered the enemy’s.

Peerless Wind.

Using battle gear output and sword movement to generate wind, then maintain its direction and force. It was the foundation of Swift Blade.

If you couldn’t master Peerless Wind, no other techniques would be taught to you and even if they were, you wouldn’t understand them.

It wasn’t a gust strong enough to fling someone into the air.

‘I could make it that strong.’

But to create such a powerful updraft with this piece-of-shit battle gear, I’d have to be swinging in midair for about five minutes.

Did I look like the kind of idiot who would waste five minutes slashing at empty space in the middle of a fight?

‘If I got killed doing that, it wouldn’t be murder it’d be suicide.’

Even without pulling that kind of stupidity, the Peerless Wind I’d already formed was more than enough to secure the advantage.