Chapter 8

Chapter 8

I had no intention of actually borrowing money. I only needed to draw out the owner. Meanwhile, the consultation employee looked Cesare up and down. His gaze seemed to be appraising him.

“Who is this man? Is he worth one billion?”

“Of course. The employee standing beside you would know better.”

The consultation employee looked to the side. The employee beside him nodded with a pale face.

“He was a famous fighter in the dogfighting pit. He retired after only a year, but if he had stayed longer, he would have easily earned one billion. He is also the one who knocked out my teeth.”

“Your teeth?”

The consultation employee’s eyes changed. It seemed the man beside him was fairly strong. He rose from his seat and said.

“This is a large matter, so I will have to discuss it with the owner. I will return shortly.”

The employees left. As soon as only the two of us remained, Cesare clung to me with a tearful face.

“Master, are you trying to sell me?!”

“Of course not. I was only trying to call out the owner.”

Only after I explained the plan did he barely manage to calm down. I looked at Cesare quietly and said.

“Did I look like a worthless master who would sell his disciple to earn money?”

“O-of course not. I only asked just in case.”

Perhaps he felt guilty, for Cesare smiled awkwardly and changed the subject.

“Still, I did not expect them to lend as much as one billion. When you are in a hurry, sell me.”

“One billion. It is certainly a large sum.”

“……You are not really going to sell me, are you?”

Before long, the door opened. In addition to the people who had come earlier, a man who looked to be in his late forties entered.

He was wearing rather expensive clothes. He sat across from me and smiled quietly.

“I heard we had a big customer. Cesare, it has been a while.”

“What? You know me too?”

“Yes. I once made a tidy profit thanks to you at the dogfighting pit.”

The owner looked at Cesare with satisfied eyes, then turned his gaze to me.

“I hear you came to borrow money. One billion batz, very well. Then we will take Cesare into our…….”

“I have no intention of handing Cesare over. I only called you here because I wanted to speak with you in the first place.”

The owner stared at me in silence. There was a relaxed smile on his lips. Though it was more of a sneer.

“The orphanage that used to be here. I want to know the whereabouts of the director who ran it.”

The owner took out a cigar. A match flared to life.

“What a nasty prank from a brat who is still wet behind the ears.”

Through the acrid tobacco smoke, the owner’s eyes gleamed like a snake’s. Despite his slender build, there was a weight to him.

“This is not an orphanage. We are not tolerant of children’s pranks.”

The owner snapped his fingers. As soon as the sharp sound rang out, employees poured inside.

A fight, was it? I had not thought this would go smoothly. In fact, this was what I had been hoping for.

There were broadly two ways to persuade a person.

One was profit. The other was fear.

If profit would not move him, then I only had to make him feel fear. Through violence, for example.

If they struck first, it would also give me justification. However, the employees stood frozen in place. Someone stammered in terror.

“C-Cesare the Undefeated Mad Dog?!”

What sort of nickname was this one? My disciple, who had once been like a little puppy, was now being called a mad dog.

As they hesitated while looking at Cesare, the owner opened his mouth.

“No matter how strong he is, he is alone. With your numbers, there is no way you will be overwhelmed. If you think you will be…… you had better look for new work.”

At the owner’s words, the employees’ eyes changed. The employee we had first encountered let out a furious breath.

“Pull that bastard’s teeth too! Rip out all his front teeth!”

-CRACK!

The toothless employee threw a punch. However, Cesare caught the fierce fist easily.

The opponent’s fist was large, but once Cesare wrapped his hand tightly around it, it looked like a baby’s hand. Cesare twisted the man’s fist and gave a mocking laugh.

“Hey, I am worth one billion. How much are you lot worth?”

-WHACK!

Cesare struck the man’s jaw with his other fist. I saw one more tooth fly out.

“Surround him!”

As soon as those words ended, Cesare grabbed the man by the collar. The opponent, who looked as though he weighed a hundred kilograms, was lifted clean into the air.

The moment another employee charged at him, Cesare hurled the man he was holding as though firing a cannonball. Both of them screamed and tumbled to the floor.

“Good grief. You bastards would not even make it into the dogfighting pit.”

-THUD!

Every punch landed cleanly on the opponent’s vital points. Precision in targeting weak spots, the reflexes to read an opponent’s attacks.

And overwhelming strength that far surpassed all of those advantages.

There was no opening for me to step in. While Cesare’s one-sided massacre unfolded, the ease vanished from the owner’s face.

The moment the owner tried to rise in a hurry, I pressed firmly down on his shoulder and forced him back into his seat. I looked down at him and spoke softly.

“Should you really be using violence like this? We have no choice but to protect ourselves, do we not?”

“Y-you bastard…….”

“Now that I look, you also have several gold teeth, Owner.”

The shoulder under my hand flinched. I spoke quietly.

“If you say you do not know the director’s whereabouts, I will come again tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. What will your customers think if something like this happens every day?”

“…….”

“We only have something to collect from the orphanage director as well. Giving us a single piece of information would be much cheaper for you.”

He closed his mouth. From the look of him, he seemed to be calculating something. Since he was a man who played with money, he would know what was profitable.

I asked once more.

“Do you know the orphanage director’s whereabouts?”

Silence flowed between us. The cigar burned down, and ash fell to the floor. After glaring at me, the owner slowly opened his mouth.

“……He is at the crystal quarry now. He could not repay his debt, so we handed him over there. The location is…….”

After getting the precise location from him, I removed my hand from his shoulder. At some point, the cigar had burned down by half.

“That is everything, so get out. Do not come back.”

“Of course. As long as the information is not wrong.”

The owner sent me a gaze mixed with anger and humiliation. Though there was relief in it as well.

“Let us go, Cesare.”

“Yes, Master.”

I led Cesare, who had been growling at the employees, outside. Once we were out, Cesare grinned and said.

“I fight well, do I not? You must be pleased to have a disciple worth one billion.”

“You, worth one billion…….”

I laughed soundlessly. Cesare’s expression turned uneasy.

“Ah, I was joking! I know too. I am not worth one billion.”

Was Cesare less confident than he looked? This, from the same man who had just beaten people as though hunting rats.

“Do you think you are only worth one billion?”

“……Really?”

“Of course.”

Cesare looked at me as though he was suspicious. I walked on without bothering to say more. Someday, he would realize it on his own.

***

-CLANG, CLANG…….

From the moment we entered the quarry entrance, the sound of pickaxes rang out noisily.

The quarry was surrounded on all sides by towering cliffs, and large crystals jutted out here and there.

Crystals tinged with a strange blue light filled my vision. Cesare said in admiration,

“Wow, what a sight. The way they sparkle is beautiful. And that side is a sight in another sense.”

While the crystals shone beautifully under the sunlight, below them, workers who were little more than skin and bones were swinging pickaxes.

The conditions here were dreadful as well. They said the director had been working here for ten years. I hoped he had not died.

Meanwhile, the energy I sensed from the crystals was unusual. Since the lower part had all been mined out and I could not touch them directly, I could not be certain.

“It seems what we have here are magic crystals.”

“Magic crystals? The ones mainly used to make magic tools?”

“Yes.”

Gems had high mana resistance. That meant they did not break easily even when mana was infused into them. The crystals mined here were magic crystals, which were especially resistant to mana.

Cesare looked up at the crystals as if he coveted them.

“Hmm, it would be nice if I could make a spear out of these. My spear breaks quickly when I put my mana into it.”

I remembered how, last time, Cesare had appeared at the location of the weapon he had thrown. It was a rather useful ability, but the restrictions had been unfortunate.

Since gems lacked durability, they could not be made into weapons. Though perhaps they could still be applied in some way.

We moved deeper into the quarry. Amid the emaciated workers, a man with some color in his face approached us.

“Who are you people? What business do you have here?”

He, too, had a rather rough-looking face. Judging by his clothes, he seemed to be an overseer. I lightly nudged Cesare.

Cesare cleared his throat and spoke in a slightly awkward tone.

“The owner of the loan office sent us. The orphanage director is here, right? I have something to say to him, so call him out.”

The owner had said he had personally handed the director over. It seemed likely that he had close ties to this place, so we borrowed his name.

As expected, the overseer’s eyes changed when Cesare mentioned the owner. He glanced at me and said.

“And that little brat?”

“He is my underling. Why? Is there a problem?”

That was Cesare’s ad-lib. I had not told him beforehand, but he was doing well.

Only then did the overseer seem convinced, and he lowered his guard. He pointed toward a gap inside the cliff and said.

“He is working in there. Break time is in thirty minutes, so the orphanage director will come out then.”

“You want us to wait? We can just go in and find him.”

“The inside is wide, and some parts of the floor are thin, so it is dangerous. Wait. If someone from the owner’s side gets hurt, I will be in trouble too.”

After saying that, the overseer left. Thirty minutes was not so long that we could not wait. Then Cesare hurriedly said.

“You know I do not think of you as my underling, right, Master? It is just that you look like a twenty-year-old kid, so ‘underling’ seemed appropriate.”

Was he teasing me?

I could not tell whether he was being innocent or mocking me. But judging by his expression, he was probably sincere.

“While we wait, tell me more about your ability. Are you able to move to wherever an object infused with your mana is?”

“Yes. Things that are too weak are destroyed as soon as I put mana into them, so I can hardly use them.”

“It seems useful if you use it well. Have you ever applied it in other ways?”

Cesare blinked and answered.

“Not really? If I just beat most things with my fists, they are dealt with. And using mana makes me tired.”

Was this what it meant not to need brains when one was strong?

He seemed to have endured well enough so far, but Cesare needed to become stronger. There was no need to let a good ability go to waste.

“Magic beasts should have strong mana resistance as well. Have you ever tried putting mana into them?”

“Huh? No. They all die after I hit them a few times, so I never really…….”

It seemed Cesare had never thought of it. It might be good to find a magic beast later and test it.

“With your ability, it would be useful even outside of combat. The transport business, for example.”

“Even if I wanted to work as a postman, I can only move up to one kilometer, so that is impossible.”

As we talked, thirty minutes passed. I saw several workers coming out of the cave inside. I asked the overseer.

“Which one is the orphanage director? What does he look like?”

“He is a scrawny blond man, but he is not among those who came out just now. Strange. It is break time, so why is he not coming out?”

We waited a little longer, but no more people came out. Cesare rose, grumbling.

“Ah, we are busy as hell. Where in the world did he hole himself up? Hey, we are going in to look for him.”

The overseer seemed flustered, but he could not easily stop Cesare. We entered the cave. At the entrance, the walls were plain, perhaps because most of the crystals had been mined out.

It was quiet around us, without a hint of human presence. As we moved deeper inside, Cesare flinched.

“Master, did you hear a scream?”

A sharp scream rang out from inside the cave. Along with the smell of blood.

It might have been the scream of the orphanage director.