Walm burst through the castle gate and ran straight toward the slums. Many of the undead, ghouls foremost among them, had concentrated around the key facilities inside the walls, but the cityscape spreading beyond the ramparts was no exception. Along the main road, bodies with crushed skulls lay scattered here and there. Most of them were citizens who had turned into ghouls.

The clearest difference from inside the walls was the number of the walking dead. Faust’s group couldn’t extend their reach to the entire city, and the damage outside the walls had been kept down compared to within. Aside from the unlucky ones who were struck in the opening moments, most people had fled into buildings or toward the outskirts. The city garrison and adventurers had begun an organized counterattack.

Walm cut down undead that were clashing with adventurers from the side, then peeled away from the main avenue. After slipping through countless alleys, he reached the Suderin District on the city’s outer edge. A guild staff member’s explanation resurfaced in his mind. After the Unification War, the Labyrinth City entered an expansion phase. Workers moved in, the population grew, and people spilled beyond the walls until the city fell into a severe housing shortage. The Marquis Borgia family had felled the trees of what was once called the Suderin Forest and carved out a new district aimed at the poor.

It sounded benevolent, but in practice it was a policy that shoved the poor and criminals to the city’s fringes and placed them under centralized control. The district clearly deviated from the Labyrinth City’s former landscape. Shacks had been thrown up without planning, packed together in disorder, and the roads twisted like a maze.

Walm frowned at the sight. Complex passageways and narrow streets alone made ambushes easy. There were castle towns designed with that very idea of using houses as substitute walls to split invading troops. Whether this slum had been intentionally built that way or had formed naturally was unclear, but it resembled those designs.

“No… it’s worse than that.”

Because the excessive amount of buildings had destroyed the roads’ practicality, the slum in front of him had become a kind of choke point where you couldn’t see what lay ahead. The moment Walm stepped into the district, he was exposed to countless unseen gazes through gaps in crumbling walls, from windows overhead, from everywhere. Wariness, fear, and all kinds of jealousy blended together. Walm had thought he understood the Labyrinth City after living here, but he realized now that he’d been wrong. In the dim, sunless gloom, people burdened with every sort of misery lay hidden. Whether they were connected to Faust was uncertain. Even so, there was no way anyone here would look on Walm with goodwill.

As he advanced down a path so tight that passing another person would be a struggle, Walm caught the sound of something being dragged from above. Tilting his head, he spotted a wooden box rushing down at him from overhead. It was probably filled with sand or pebbles. He dodged the crude mass weapon by pressing close to the wall. With a dull crash, the box shattered.

“Woaah!!”

Using the falling object as a signal, a man came charging in with a cleaver held at his hip, drool spraying from his mouth. Behind him followed others wielding sickles and hoes. Their movements ignored all technique of defense, pursuing only a single killing blow. From behind, two more closed in with a broken sword and a dagger. Their faces trembled with delight. Skill didn’t matter. Their disregard for their own lives made them true suicide troops. If Walm met them half-heartedly, sheer weight and momentum would sweep his legs out from under him.

Obeying the constraints of the narrow space, Walm slid his halberd and choked his grip halfway up the shaft before thrusting. The spearpoint tore open a soft throat, severed the artery, and drove deep enough to reach the spine. He caught the cleaver, still gripped tight, as if taking a baton in a relay, then shoved the corpse into the man with the hoe. He struck aside the sickle that tried to hack down at his head with the cleaver. The dull edge shoved the sickle away and, at the same time, cut clean through fingers.

The man who dropped the sickle along with his fingers howled in pain. He lost his weapon and tried to crush Walm beneath him without any restraint, but Walm sank his center of gravity and, using the man’s body like a load on his back, threw him straight into the pair rushing from behind. Without even time to breathe, a hoe swung toward Walm’s skull. He caught the hoe’s blade base with the halberd’s hooked side-blade in his right hand, then drew his longsword with the arm that had tossed the cleaver aside. The blade, swung in reverse grip, smashed through the attacker’s skull from temple to temple.

Three enemies remained on the ground, but something fell from above again. Walm knocked aside a fist-sized stone with the flat of his sword, then threw away the halberd and raised his longsword in a high guard. The three rushed him as a single mass. Pouring mana into the blade, Walm swung a full-force Strong Strike. The sword sheared away the outer wall as it went, yet its speed didn’t slow. It cut an outstretched arm away into empty air, dagger included. The owner didn’t survive either. When the tip grazed his throat, blood erupted without end, and he thrashed on the ground as if drowning.

The man who had picked his sickle back up and the attacker with the broken sword slipped around their fallen companion to block Walm’s path. Expecting the attempt to flank, Walm raised his longsword in a rising cut from low guard the instant they lunged. The blade entered through the side and burst out through the chest. The man with the broken sword tried to seize the opening bought with his neighbor’s life and stabbed in, but Walm guided the broken blade into the line of his own killing edge and brushed it aside as if wiping dust away. A shrill metallic note rang through the alley.

“Ah… aah…”

Face to face through the demon mask, Walm peered into the attacker’s eyes. For the first time, fear lit there, but it was already too late. The longsword driven into his side churned his insides. Walm twisted the blade free, then slid his gaze upward. The stone-thrower on the rooftop froze like a statue. After a brief hesitation, he turned to flee but a Fireball blew both the rooftop and the fleeing man apart. In the alley where blue flames smoldered, every human but Walm had vanished.

The next two attacks that followed ended only with more corpses piled in the slum. No resident remained relaxed enough to try and peek at him anymore. Walm had suffered three ambushes, but in a way, it was going smoothly. The information he’d gotten from the guild staff hadn’t been wrong. With his certainty deepening, Walm fixed his eyes on the facility built at the slum’s center.

Even in a slum jammed with shacks, that spot was left open as if it were a forbidden place no one should touch. A canal also ran around the outside of it, and a wall easily taller than a man sealed it off. Even though Walm approached from the front, no one came to greet him.

He climbed the wall and dropped into the compound. Alongside warehouses of unclear purpose, there were wooden training dummies and piled embankments meant for drills. Walm stepped into the largest building. The slum he’d passed through had felt filthy and chaotic, but the structure worthy of being called a mansion, was shockingly neat, meticulously maintained. With the doors thrown open, Walm walked into a great hall that rose up through multiple floors and a voice was tossed down at him.

“So you made it here. That means Faust is dead.”

“Yeah. I killed him. …So, who are you?”

As he answered, Walm looked up. A man around his thirties was leaning against the railing above the open atrium.

“Hah, me? Name’s Gizel. I’m the one in charge here. More importantly, do you get off on going around killing my people and my little brother?”

“Your brother?”

Walm had far too many candidates in mind. He’d killed and wounded countless people on the way here.

“The mercenary boss Giusto, the one you killed at the Karoloria Vein, was my little brother.”

If that was the case, Walm remembered him well. Not many groups kept charging in even while being swallowed by blue flames.

“Yeah. I remember.”

“Hah. Thought you would. You can’t run from the ties that bind in this world. I’m a villain. I’ve killed women, I’ve killed kids. I egged the slum rats on, stirred them up, pulled them into my side. But I haven’t thrown away my obligations. And he was my only blood relative. A man who stays quiet after his brother’s killed? That’s not a brother.”

What came out of the man’s vicious face was talk of brotherly love and obligation. Walm narrowed his eyes and spat back.

“You can’t point even a fraction of that loyalty toward anyone else?”

“Hah! We don’t have the luxury to worry about strangers in this slum! You saw it, didn’t you? This place is a mess. Peace? Calm? Don’t make me laugh. Are we supposed to spend our whole lives losing? Hell no. This isn’t over yet.”

There was a void in them that would never be filled. This wasn’t something words could resolve, so Walm asked him plainly.

“Is that all you want to say?”

“Hah. Sure. If you use Demon Fire, good citizens will burn to death, you know?”

At Gizel’s signal, a group bound together with rope was dragged in by three underlings. Their arms and legs were tied with thick cords, their mouths sealed. The intent was obvious.

“Do I look like the kind of man who belongs in some heroic tale?”

Walm spoke without even glancing at the hostages. Gizel shrugged, drew the sword at his waist, and casually cut down one of the nearest hostages.

“Hah. Guess you’re not going to be useful. Come on, mercenary!”

After beheading a citizen, Gizel beckoned Walm in. In his hands were a sword and a shield. The fact that they hadn’t killed everyone suggested it was insurance to keep Demon Fire in check. Even knowing that, Walm accepted the invitation. Accelerated by wind-attribute magic, he sprinted up the atrium and slammed his halberd down.

Gizel didn’t retreat. He wrapped mana around his sword. Mana-laced weapons met as if drawn together. As they broke from the bind, Walm flicked out a small thrust. Gizel dove in without hesitation, deflected the halberd’s point with his shield, and stabbed back from a blind angle.

Walm knocked the sharp thrust aside with the butt of his weapon. Gizel clung tight to him, never letting up, scattering sword strokes high and low. His lines were precise, and he worked the shield neatly into both attack and defense. It was only because Walm crossed weapons with him that he could tell that this man was the complete opposite of his looks and speech. Along with Gizel’s solid, unbroken handling, the three underlings kept targeting Walm with arrows and thrown stones. Their strained expressions lacked the ferocity of Faust and the ambushers who had come at him earlier.

“You look confused. You’ve been slaughtering my men and Faust like you don’t care, so we’re short on people.”

The fact that only Gizel was taking Walm in close proved the underlings didn’t have the skill to engage in a melee fight. Walm looked for an opening to cut them down, but a shield slammed into him as if to warn, don’t look away. Walm slipped past the shield bash with a half-turn but as if prearranged, arrows and stones flew in. Trusting his eyesight and reflexes, he folded his upper body and moved with his soles scraping the floor. For men supposedly lamenting a manpower shortage, the underlings kept a truly nasty sense of distance as they attacked. Gizel, timing his own pressure to the projectiles, twisted the trajectory of his sword at the last instant and aimed to reap Walm’s knee.

To keep his range, Walm thrust out the halberd. Gizel tried to knock the point aside with his shield so Walm turned his wrist. The hooked side-blade bit into the shield’s reinforcement, and Walm yanked. The distance collapsed in an instant. Even in the tiny space where they were practically pressed together, Gizel tried to lift his sword, but Walm shoved his body in and sealed the gap. The blade clanged uselessly off the armor protecting Walm’s back. With the two locked that tight, the annoying underlings had no way to intervene.

“Bastard!”

Gizel abandoned clean swordplay and thrust his forehead forward. Still gripping the halberd, Walm drove his folded elbow into Gizel’s cheek at point-blank range. The jolt rattled Gizel’s jaw and wrecked his balance. He tried to retreat while bracing himself, but Walm surged forward in a burst of wind-attribute magic. Projectiles skimmed past his back and flew on.

Walm’s halberd forced down the lowered sword and shield from above and sank into Gizel’s chest. Feeling the collarbone give way, Walm shoved the wound open sideways.

“G-u… o-oogh…!”

Impaled through the chest, Gizel fell backward and never rose again. When Walm turned to the three underlings as his next targets, they tried to answer with weapons. The fight ended immediately. The demon mask drank three more splashes of fresh blood, clacking as if in a good mood. Ironically, the last one still breathing was Gizel, while already mortally wounded.

“It’s over.”

Walm told him so as Gizel lay on the floor. The man, barely able to breathe, laughed through a mouthful of blood.

“Heh… hehehe… I failed… but it’s not… pointless. In a fortress city… I wore down… the most troublesome man… bought time. I’m… just the warm-up act. The main show… is about to begin. Walm… you’ll like it too…”

Walm moved to finish him but before his hand could strike, Gizel stopped breathing.

“So there’s another main force. The castle gate is handled. The garrison is counterattacking around the labyrinth facilities and the city center… the Former Royal Castle?”

Walm searched his memory and pictured the points where armed groups had appeared. He wanted to rush to reinforce them at once, but first he had to confirm there were no remaining fighters in the compound. And there was also Gizel’s “parting gift” to deal with.

One hostage had been cut down, but the others remained tied together. Walm went around cutting their ropes. They spilled out confusion and gratitude in a jumble. He had no time to explain in detail.

“The Labyrinth City is under attack by armed forces and undead. Inside the walls is especially dangerous. Head for outside the cit—”

He sensed a presence behind him and turned, only to reveal a blade already inches from his face. The moment he threw up his palm, the knife sank into the hilt. When he glared at the attacker, it was one of the hostages he’d just freed. A woman with distinctive dull red hair, someone he’d seen once on the battlefield. As Walm clenched the dagger with the hand that had been stabbed, she drew a second dagger from her clothes and screamed shrilly.

“Diiiiieeee!!”

Walm drove in his halberd one-handed. Her throat split wide, and a flood of blood poured onto the floor. The woman collapsed to her knees, then quietly toppled into the pooling crimson. Her dull red hair dyed itself a vivid scarlet. Walm shifted his gaze from the now-silent woman to the still-bound captives and declared coldly.

“You all with her? I’ve killed plenty. If you want revenge, I’ll play along.”

Those whose hands and mouths were still bound let out voiceless sounds, while those who’d been freed went pale and insisted on their innocence. Walm yanked the dagger out of his palm and handed it to one of the freed hostages.

“Then you untie the rest.”

Translator – Lyxxna