Chapter 22: First Aid and Low-Blow Kick

Chapter 22:
First Aid and Low-Blow Kick

 

“I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY. Hurry up and kill me.” Having said this, Ginem Bari shut his mouth. He had awakened from his faint—his minor injuries had let him regain consciousness as quickly as I hoped—and I was interrogating him.

About half of the other spellcasters had remained conscious the whole time, and upon a quick check, none appeared to be deceased. This was no coincidence. I was continually amazed by Gol’s developing restraint and the expertise with which she delivered it. I had asked her not to kill anyone, and as such, there were precisely zero deaths. Even in a pitched battle, she had remembered I wanted these guys as witnesses to the crimes of the Paisley Company.

Or—wait a minute. Had Gol at last come to appreciate the sacred beauty of all life…? That would be wonderful! Ah, this bright epiphany was no doubt the result of my dutiful daily training.

In any case, it wasn’t that Gol had refrained from killing only because she feared my disappointment. No way, no how, not possible. My partner was always so kindhearted—if she learned to cherish all living things, she would be like unto a goddess of love. Then no one would call her rude names like “Goddess of Slaughter and Jealousy” or “Barbarian Queen.”

How should I put this…? I thought “Barbarian Queen” was the least appropriate name for her. Gun to my head, I might yield to “Barbarian Princess.” And actually, wasn’t this whole naming scheme kind of weird? What did they mean by “Queen”?

“Like, exactly which king is she married to anyway, am I right, Gol?” I asked her.

She had been pressed to my back for some time, as if someone had glued her there. The way she was frantically rubbing her cheek against me felt like a hug. She probably wasn’t listening to me at all.

Well, nothing I could do about it. Gol had feared I would die when that stone missile came hurtling at us, to the point that she’d nearly killed the crossbow golem in her fraught state. She had lost herself to terror over my well-being; I had once again made her worry too much. Therefore, I would let her rub all she wanted until her heart settled. After all, an owner is responsible for taking care of their partner’s emotional and mental health.

So Gol was still stuck to my back as I crouched down and grabbed the collar of Ginem Bari’s robe.

It seemed that Ginem still couldn’t move his body very well, but I grabbed his collar to ensure he couldn’t run, just in case. I had no intention of intimidating him. I simply had no other option, as I didn’t have any handcuffs or rope.

Naturally, I would conduct my interrogation with words and words alone. I didn’t know the laws of this world, but I hoped brutality wasn’t the standard of legal questioning. As a proud, cultured man, I would never stoop to something as inhumane as torture. Humans are perfectly capable of having a reasoned discussion without relying on violence.

If humanity descended into an endless cycle of throwing axes at fired arrows, we would have no future. My gentlemanly pride demanded I prove right now that reasoned discussion could always overcome brutish tactics.

Ginem’s narrow eyes concealed his emotions. “I did the best I could with all the power I held, and I lost. As a golem wielder, I no longer have a reason to live, nor reason to talk. Hurry up and kill me.”

It was like he wanted to cut my cultured heart off at the pass.

“Wait, listen, I hear what you’re saying, but…I don’t really have any plans to kill you or anything. Can’t we just talk?” I asked.

“…”

No reaction, huh? Welp, I give up. Unless he talks of his own free will, there’s nothing I can do.

Ginem Bari might have held his silence out of professionalism. However, he was a professional criminal, and when it came to criminal activity, I didn’t care if he was a pro or just a bastard.

“If you don’t talk, I’ll just have to make one of your injured comrades talk for you.” I casually glanced about.

Said tattered comrades were all severely wounded. Furthermore, unlike Ginem Bari, they were all, for some reason, terrified of me. The moment our eyes met, their teeth chattered, and some even trembled, their faces pale.

Ugh, this civil conversation just got harder…

“What should I do? This is hopeless,” I muttered sadly, eyes downcast.

At that moment, Ginem Bari suddenly screamed. “A-a-ah! Auuughhhh!”

“Huh?!”

I almost let go of his collar in surprise. However, I had learned my lesson. When the leader of those punks in Tibar had begun to scream and cry, I had been startled and let go. Because of that, he escaped. As a result, I had missed my chance to have a discussion—one which could have prevented this whole fiasco.

Therefore, I couldn’t let go. I tightened my grip on Ginem’s collar and drew close to his sobbing face. “Don’t go wailing like that. I’m not letting you go. Absolutely not. So let’s have a discussion.”

“Agh, guh. Such torture—ergh, A-A-AHHHH!”

Ginem Bari’s heart-wrenching screams froze everyone in place—not least of all me. The defeated spellcasters stared at me in complete fear and despair, as if they beheld some kind of demon.

Wh-what’s with them…?

Although I was shocked, this was Ginem’s second round of screaming, so it lacked the impact of the first. It was no use! He couldn’t startle me again. I was a man who learned from his mistakes. This time, I wouldn’t lose my chance to talk things out like some kind of incompetent.

Newly resolved, I once again tightened my grip on Ginem’s collar. “If we have to, we’ll keep at this all day and all night. You got it? So let’s talk.”

“E-e-eeee! Eek! I-I g-g-got it! I’ll talk. I’ll talk, all right?! So please, stop!”

 

***

 

“Well, whatever… I never had any obligation to them anyway,” Ginem Bari, exhausted, grumbled in resignation. It sounded like he didn’t really belong to the Paisley Company. In any case, he continued explaining himself, piece by piece. “My client is Branch Manager Spero from the Paisley Company. He hired me to dispose of the wielder of the red-eyed shrine golem and his companions, for a total of three casualties. If possible, he wanted the young girl alive.”

“Huh? No minors? How surprisingly gentlemanly of him.”

“Apparently, they abduct brats for the main office in Kinas to use as bribes for perverted aristocrats—all to influence politics. I don’t know the details; this is just a rumor in the circles I run in. But that’s probably why he wanted the kid.”

“Wh-what the…?” The worst humans imaginable! Return my stolen purity, Paisley!

“I don’t know anything else. Really.”

“You sure?”

“I said ‘really,’” Ginem Bari snapped. Immediately after, he trembled in fear. “Eek! R-really! I swear! Please, no more! I’m just a hired hand. I ain’t one of the Company members! And anyway, I was only told to crush you, the golem wielder. Everything else was on the other guy! I was just in it for the money! The money!”

N-no need to scream. I can hear you…

Nevertheless, I didn’t think he was lying. He just didn’t know that much. Mr. Chotos had been astonished by Ginem Bari’s appearance, which implied he really was a temp hired specifically to be a secret weapon against me, or rather, Gol.

But, well, a crime was a crime.

That “other guy” he mentioned had to be the eye-patched crossbow golem wielder. It appeared he was the barbaric criminal mastermind who had willingly put unarmed civilians in harm’s way just to reach me.

“Does that mean you know that eye-patched fellow?”

“Ah, yeah. I think…unlike us, he’s with the Company. I heard he’s one of the top brass and came from the main office in Kinas.”

“Is that so? Well, that might be a problem.”

Said eye-patched man’s current unconsciousness wasn’t the fault of ever restrained Gol, but poorly controlled amateur me. Furthermore, it had been rather the unexpected incident. As such, he was still thoroughly knocked out, and I had no idea when he would wake up. That once-beautiful man was still lying in the midst of fallen trees, his head bleeding, the white of his eye showing, and his body twitching. There would be no questioning him in that state.

“Well, seeing how this all turned out, I think I believe you…”

Actually, I only had one question about that crossbow golem wielder’s tactics. At the start of the battle, he had lurked in the forest behind and to my right. Usually, that location would have been my natural blind spot. However, during the confrontation, he had kept moving until he finally settled in a spot more directly to my right. In other words, he had abandoned the advantage of my blind spot and opted for a horizontal position.

It was possible he had switched due to some unspoken coordination between the teams. I certainly hadn’t interrogated it too deeply during the fight. However, in the end, he had always intended to fire at me from a distance. So why did he go out of his way to move? That was still a mystery. Even if he had sniped me from his starting position, there had never been any threat that he might hit his allies.

But considering Ginem Bari’s claims that the Paisley Company wanted me and the elders dead so they could kidnap Teru, had the bastard intended to kill Mr. Chotos, the old driver, and me all together in one shot?

Ah. Yes. There it was. He finally stopped moving after I told my three companions to move, and after they had finished moving themselves. In short, Mr. Chotos and the wagon driver hadn’t stumbled into the line of fire, nor had Teru evaded it simply because she was short. No, that man had intended to turn all of us into minced meat while narrowly letting Teru live so he could present her to the Company.

A cold sweat ran down my back. What a disgusting man. Ginem Bari was one thing, but this unnamed, eye-patched man was a fearsome being.

I glanced over my shoulder and shuddered in the direction of the man whom I had inadvertently felled.

 

***

 

“Nemaki, are you all right?”

“Hm? Ah, yes, I’m fine.”

For some time now, Mr. Chotos had been checking the rest of us for injuries. He carried an aquamarine mana tool that resembled a flashlight. It could activate a beginner-level healing spell that treated wounds just by being held over them. I guess you could call it this world’s version of a first-aid kit.

You know, I had thought Mr. Chotos made quite the speedy recovery after being beaten half to death by those punks, but now I realized he likely owed his health to this little aquamarine guy. And here I’d assumed he just had high vitality.

Anyway, what a convenient mana tool. If there were more like it back at Mr. Chotos’s shop, I’d have to buy one for myself. My to-buy list of mana tools just kept growing. If I wasn’t careful, I might end up getting distracted and grabbing a bunch of interesting toys. Oh dear. Mana tools could get quite expensive, so if I kept thinking of them that way, I might end up spending my every copper in the blink of an eye.

But…well, even if I did run out of coin, I probably wouldn’t die.

As usual, I had no knack for managing money.

Once Mr. Chotos had confirmed our party was uninjured, he began administering first aid to the injuries on the staff-wielding female spellcaster.

As Gol and I sat together in the wagon, we watched the aquamarine flashlight slowly heal her wounds. It seemed treatment by mana tool took some time. It had already been close to ten minutes. On the other hand, she would be the only one to receive this time-consuming treatment.

Let me explain. First, you casually kill all the male criminals, as well as all the older women, except for the one beautiful young female miscreant; then you use expensive medicine to treat her; finally, as a roundabout way of showing her gratitude, you end up sharing a nice scene…

I kid; this wasn’t some flagrant indulgence in the mental state common to protagonists in harem-centered worlds. In the first place, the one who’d elected to treat her was Mr. Chotos. Also, well, hm, to be clear, of all the injured spellcasters, her wounds were the most severe. Frankly, they were fatal. This was likely due to that inexplicable second bombardment Gol had inflicted upon her.

Basically, if we’d left her alone, she would likely be the sole casualty of our battle. Consequently, she was also the only person in serious need of medical attention.

“Even you can sometimes fail at restraint, huh?” I glanced at my partner. As usual, Gol was stuck to my back, but less usually, her disapproving gaze drilled into Mr. Chotos’s back as he healed the female spellcaster.

No, Gol. If Mr. Chotos can’t heal her, she’ll die. No matter how badly a person misbehaved, I didn’t want anyone to die, especially not if there was a possibility we could save them.

“Hey, Nemaki, I don’t know why your Goretaru’s doing that, but could you curb the weird, menacing aura it’s emitting? It’s making things a lot harder,” Mr. Chotos protested.

Sorry, mister, but even I don’t know what’s up with her.

Speaking of wounds, Ginem Bari’s were strange. At first, I had thought he only took a punch to the face, but when I checked again, it turned out several of the fingers on his right hand had been bent in unnerving directions. I wondered if they had been caught under him when he fell after being punched.

He had my sympathy, but since his life wasn’t in danger, he wouldn’t get any first aid. This was a race against time. We needed to swiftly return to Zibil and lodge our complaints with the so-called branch manager of the Paisley Company. If we waited too long, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t send another assassin after us. Therefore, we needed to sort out this matter as quickly as possible.

In the meantime, we would leave the spellcasters where they lay and take our viable witness, Ginem Bari, with us on the wagon back to Zibil.

Well, there was also another reason we needed to hasten our departure. To tell you the truth, when I wasn’t paying attention, Gol saw a chance and threw a low-blow kick directly into the female spellcaster’s stomach. If we didn’t hurry up and separate Gol from the busty lady, it would get bad. As I thought that, Gol darted over to the busty lady again.

No, stop, Gol! Don’t kick the busty woman! Mr. Chotos’s medical treatment will be all in vain!