Chapter 7, Episode 48: Defending the Storefront
At this point, the city of Gimul had been in turmoil for three hours. Ryoma was magically steering his boat through the city, wrapped up in the cat and mouse game of arsonists and firefighters, when suddenly he turned as if someone had called out to him.
A moment later, he set back on course.
“What’s wrong?” Hudom asked.
“I was pinged by the slimes I stationed at the laundry shop and trash plant. They’re being attacked,” said Ryoma.
“This late in the game, no less. You don’t want to check on them?”
“Trouble’s brewing all over the city, and more of their agents are starting to crawl out.” Ryoma produced a vial from his jacket, downed the magic recovery potion in it, then fed magical energy to the slime synchronized with the torrent whirling under his boat, hastening the boat down the road. “Fay and the others are at the shop, and are prepared to protect the employees who don’t fight. If I let this delay us dealing with other attacks, I’d be giving them exactly what they want. Are you ready to fight?” Ryoma asked.
“Of course.”
“Then we’re going in!” Ryoma declared.
The boat skidded out onto the street like a car on ice, sliding in beside another burning building. It bowled over some of the adventurer-looking goons attacking the firefighters.
“Whoa! I know it’s an emergency, but I was hoping for a more leisurely disembarkation!” Hudom called to deaf ears as he slugged the attacker closest to him.
This attack was the tip of the iceberg of the seemingly never-ending pandemonium that racked the city.
■ ■ ■
Meanwhile, on the street facing the Bamboo Forest laundry shop, security officer Ox was facing off against twenty or so adventurers. The tension in the air was palpable.
“I’m telling you,” one of the adventurers said, “we’re here to help guard the shop. This kid named Ryoma hired us.”
“I wasn’t told of any such arrangement. Walk away.”
“Look around you. It’s tough to get a message across town in times like this. Just check with your boss, will you?”
“No need. The owner himself has left me in charge of defending this place. And said explicitly that neither he nor any additional personnel would be coming,” said Ox.
The adventurer persisted. “Don’t you think your boss could have changed his mind—”
“Whatever.” Another adventurer, standing behind the first, drew his sword.
“H-Hey!”
“Shut up. It was gonna end this way regardless. Would’ve been cleaner if we’d gotten inside, but if he’s not opening the door, we gotta waste him.”
“R-Right,” the first adventurer stammered. “We don’t have time to debate...or to deal with any passersby.”
That settled it. The rest of the men drew their weapons; they flashed ominously in the light pouring out of the laundry shop.
Ox watched them and simply said, “You’re going to kill me, you say?”
“Ha!” scoffed the one who drew first. “Your days in the Colosseum are done, Champ! How are you gonna use two swords with one arm? Surround his ass and he won’t stand a chance! Let’s go!”
The men roared and encircled Ox. The same man leapt first, swinging his sword down towards Ox’s right shoulder. Before the blade could reach his flesh, it shattered spectacularly.
Ox was standing opposite the man, holding his sword high in a reverse grip.
“Huh?” the man said dully.
“Should have trained harder.” Ox switched the grip on his machete-like sword and swung it down towards the adventurer’s right shoulder. Although Ox had only struck him with the dull end, the immense strength behind the blow shattered the man’s collarbone through his flimsy pauldron and nearly decimated his lung.
The adventurer gasped in pain. He tried to step away from Ox and tumbled over his feet and onto the ground. With just his left arm, he crawled away like a caterpillar.
Ox spared him only one more look. He parried the thrust of another adventurer’s lance, then swiftly snapped the arm that held it.
As a man charged with a knife from behind, Ox took a step forward and circled around to crush the attacker’s hand with his sword. Then he struck the man on the chin with the pommel of his sword, sending him flying as if he’d been hit with a carriage.
That sight—along with the realization that three of their men had been incapacitated in a matter of seconds—nailed the feet of the remaining adventurers to the ground.
“Is that it?” Ox taunted. “I may have lost my left hand, but I can still swing one sword. You must have expected that much.”
“Dammit, we gotta attack him all at once! He can’t stop us all with one sword!” one of them called out, urging his comrades to action. The group fanned out to surround him.
“As if,” said Ox.
The assailants were awestruck as Ox’s other sword independently floated out of its sheath, spun in the air before Ox, and settled where it would have been if Ox had a hand to hold it there.
“The sword’s...floating?!”
“Damn! He uses magic too?!”
“Beastkin don’t have much magical energy! He’ll run out of stamina in no time!”
“Well, then,” replied Ox, “I simply need to end this battle quickly.” For the first time in this fight, Ox made the first move. His floating sword flew to the center of the group that was surrounding him, while Ox charged the adventurer on the far right of the formation. As soon as Ox had deflected yet another blade coming his way, his other sword flew back to him, striking the man’s head with its pommel.
Even after he’d lost his left arm, Ox had never given up being a swordsman. As a last-ditch effort to regain his former fighting style, Ox had learned to wield one of his swords with magic. With the help of Ryoma and his long-term magical recovery potions, Ox could levitate his sword much longer and with greater accuracy than before.
“H-Help!”
“You damn— Whoa!”
“Aaaagh!”
The flying sword naturally commanded a larger area than the one Ox wielded in his physical hand. Holding the group at bay with the flying sword, Ox picked off the attackers one by one as they fell out of formation.
“I’m not going down today!” One of them decided to gambit, realizing that they stood no chance in the long haul. Alas, his blade was deflected by Ox’s right sword. Ox parried the attacks with a combination of delicate technique and brutal strength. Offense on the left; defense on the right. His swords danced, tearing through his opponents like a tornado.
When half of their men had fallen without so much as getting near Ox, let alone striking a blow on him, the adventurer who had moved farthest from the one-armed guardian began focusing magical energy in the palm of his hand.
“Fireba—”
His spell, however, would not come to fruition.
“Agh! What the hell is this dart...?!” He turned his head to look at the projectile stuck in his shoulder, which had stopped his spellcasting. In the second since it had landed, the dart was already working wonders, immobilizing the man’s arm with pain.
“What’s wrong?” another attacker called. “What’s this smoke?!”
A thick cloud of smoke now stood behind them, working with the darkness of night to block out their view. It would have been plausible for some smoke to drift their way from any of the nearby fires, but the men did not realize while they were preoccupied with Ox that the smoke had surrounded them like a barrier. They realized a moment too late that the smoke was part of an attack.
“Damn—”
“Argh!”
“Who’s there?! Show yourself!”
The men shouted in vain as darts flew out of the smoke and pierced their limbs, putting them out of commission. As the remaining men tried to pinpoint their opponent in the smoke from the trajectory of the darts, Dolce and Fay—fellow security guards of the laundry shop—joined the fray.
Dolce struck the man closest to him in the head with his lance and receded back into the smoke. Fay moved behind another adventurer without a sound and swiftly dragged him into the smoke. Just as the attackers’ attention was diverted to the shadows in the smoke, another flurry of poison darts shot out. Even as the smoke dispatched some of the adventurers, Ox was steadily knocking out more of them, one by one. At this point, there were only three adventurers left who were in any condition to fight.
“Dammit!” one of them blurted out.
“What the— Don’t run away!”
“We’ll be killed!”
“Screw that! We’re dead either way! I’m gonna take my chances!” He charged into the smoke, and a second later, a scream came from it.
“There’s no way out,” said one of the survivors.
“What the hell is going on?!” the other cried. “Why are these guys doing security detail for a small shop like this?! I was supposed to get out of enslavement... This isn’t fair. We’ve been set up! We were set up!”
The pair had completely lost the will to fight and were soon apprehended.
“Took a quick look around. No other hostiles,” Lilyn said.
“Thank you,” Ox replied. “And for the backup. Same goes for you, Fay, Dolce.”
“Don’t you think you would have any trouble without us.”
“It would have been arduous to field long-range attacks,” said Ox. “And I don’t have much experience in pursuing and detaining opponents who flee. I doubt I would have been defeated had I been alone, but I might have let the first one slip away.”
Fay chuckled. “Nowhere to run in the colosseum, after all. We are better at this than fighting head-on. And the slimes he let us borrow made it really easy.” He glanced at a bamboo pipe attached to his belt. The smoke began flowing back into the bamboo through a small hole, like a long strand of rope.
It was a smoke slime that had evolved from an ash slime. It normally took the form of a granular pile, like the ash slime. But since its particles were small enough to float in the air, the smoke slime could disperse or concentrate itself upon command, similar to how ash or sand slimes operated.
Lilyn showed off the slime wrapped around her wrist like a bracelet. “Me too. It gives me as many darts as I need. Had to adjust the dose a bit, but that’s a small problem.” She wore a sting slime evolved from a poison slime.
“Good for detaining too. I never thought I’d sign a contract with a slime...” On Dolce’s shoulder sat a spider slime that spun a web more durable than a sticky slime. The adventurers were currently bound by its web.
When Dolce was first hired, he could not use any magic. He had little magical energy in him, and not much talent in the art of spellcasting. Since he’d grown up in the slums with no suitable tutor in the skill, he’d never even considered learning magic to be an option for him. However, as he’d continued working as a security guard at Bamboo Forest, he’d started earning a disposable income and free time. He had used both of them for self-improvement, training to use elementary enhancement skills. It helped a lot that he had Ryoma and Maria, who managed the slimes at the shop, along with Fay and Lilyn, who studied magic that aligned with their previous career path, who could all provide answers to most questions he had about learning magic.
As a result, Dolce had mastered basic taming magic and signed a contract with a spider slime Ryoma had provided. Along with Fay and Lilyn, he had successfully bolstered the security of Bamboo Forest.
“With the other staff set up in that room, we simply need to deal with any enemies that come our way,” Ox said. “But these can’t be the best fighters at our enemy’s disposal.”
“They probably weren’t that good of adventurers either,” Dolce said. “They probably couldn’t make it and got mixed up with a loan shark.”
“The ones that tried to sneak up to the dorm said something about debt too,” Lilyn chimed in.
Dolce turned to the assailants tied up on the ground. “This is something grown-ups told me when I was growing up in the slums... Nasty loan sharks can have connections with illegal slave traders. Illegal slaves have no rights or dignity that are supposed to be protected by law. The buyers won’t treat them any better either. If you bail, they go after your family.”
“I see,” Ox said. “Not to excuse them from their decisions, but I do feel some sympathy as someone who was sold into slavery to settle my debts.”
To prepare for more attacks, the four of them decided to take turns and keep watch. Ox was left standing in front of the shop as he waited for the security personnel to take the attackers away. As he stood there, he couldn’t help but appreciate his good fortune in being sold to a reputable slave trader, which had led to him living a normal life. At the same time, he renewed his resolution to protect the shop and its employees at all costs.
Any would-be assailants would find it difficult to go through Ox. Any stealthy mode of attack would be thwarted by the two former assassins in the shadows. In addition, they would have to contend with Dolce and their slimes, who had become stronger with consistent hard work.
Even in Ryoma’s absence, Bamboo Forest was steadfastly protected.
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