Chapter 87: A Strong Start

At that point, another question was raised.

“What if those people rush in to stop us?”

Maguna curled his lip in disdain at the words. Wouldn’t that be even better? Forcing the hunters to abandon their terrain advantage and come in to hunt them down would mean that Yuuki and the others—the travelers—would seize the initiative instead.

“…If they come at us, I’ll stop them.”

When they looked up, they saw that the speaker was the young man who might have been human, the very same one who had knocked out more than a dozen thugs in the cabin—a human who could really fight.

Yuuki stepped out into the open space at the center, bent down, and picked up the dagger he had dropped earlier. Glancing at the sharpened blade, he began walking step by step toward the thug who had been surrounded in the middle.

Perhaps because of overwhelming fear and tension, the man could no longer maintain a human shape and had reverted to his true form: a Fokian.

Yuuki crouched down beside him. The Fokian tried to swing a punch at him, but seated on the floor as he was, he had no proper leverage to begin with. Yuuki easily intercepted the blow.

All the Fokian felt was a burst of agony in his knuckles, as though he had punched a wall.

Yuuki knocked the fist away and seized the Fokian by the neck, slamming him to the ground. The movement was heavy and forceful, so much so that the people nearby heard the grating thud of skull against floor.

The Fokian was struck out cold on the spot, his eyes rolling up as he fell silent without even a groan.

Yuuki crouched beside him again, his voice steady, as if speaking of something trivial. “When I kill someone, I do so prepared to be killed in return.”

“Are you prepared?”

At that moment, the Fokian’s consciousness stirred back into him a little. He was dazed and drifting, completely failing to hear what Yuuki said.

But it no longer mattered.

Yuuki pressed the Tiger Key, brought up the interface, and poured a small portion of bond points into strength. Then, with casual indifference, he raised the dagger in his hand and drove it in with a soft sound into the Fokian’s left shoulder.

He did not seem to use much force, yet Yuuki could clearly feel, through the hilt, the dagger tearing through outer skin and severing the flesh and bone beneath, the sensation of layers collapsing and crumbling in sequence.

The Fokian let out a horrifying scream. In pain, he nearly convulsed himself upright from the ground, but a great force pinned him down. Power only bursts once; after that, it weakens and wanes, and that old truth holds everywhere. His first struggle failed, and now he had already lost all strength to rise, able only to wrestle with the agony in his shoulder.

At that moment, Yuuki stood as well. His hands were slick with a strangely scented pale violet blood and minced flesh, and the dagger remained embedded in the Fokian’s shoulder. Only Yuuki himself knew how violently his heart was pounding, beating so hard it made his eardrums ache.

Perhaps it was because he had acted so decisively, his expression utterly unmoved and wooden; perhaps the atmosphere was too oppressive; perhaps the Fokian’s screams were simply too wretched. In shock, the others unconsciously made way for Yuuki as he walked outward.

He reached the outer edge of the human wall and came to a stop with his back to the crowd, facing the “empty” alleyway.

Toru Soya and Maguna finally reacted and hurried out after him.

“Yuuki!”

Toru Soya was especially worried. He looked at Yuuki’s profile, trying to glean some clue from it.

It was not as though Toru Soya had never seen Yuuki injure or even kill someone—he himself had done no less. Back when they were working at Aegis, they inevitably encountered life-or-death situations, and there was no possibility of holding back against an enemy.

But in Toru Soya’s view, what had just happened carried the scent of cruelty, even of torture, despite the fact that the man had only been wounded and not killed. After all, they had acted against someone who was already plainly unable to resist.

“I’m fine.”

Yuuki took the shock baton from his waist and held it in his hand. Just as he had said earlier, he would take responsibility for guarding against those lying in wait in the dark.

“Yuuki, is it all right? To let them do this…”

Toru Soya had not finished speaking when a terrified cry erupted from behind them. Without turning around, one knew it had to be the Fokian. At first he was still shouting things like, “Don’t come near me,” “Do you even know who my boss is?” and “Let go of me.”

Then, after the wet thrust of a blade entering flesh and several screams, the voice turned into sobbing pleas for mercy. After that, it became nothing more than meaningless howling.

“I have no standing to stop them from doing it.”

Yuuki stared straight ahead, his gaze firm, though his voice still trembled slightly. “If anything, my position is more like… I’d welcome it.”

After all, he had been the victim who nearly got stabbed.

And judging by the Fokian’s expression, he had no intention of giving up just because one attack had failed. It was hard to say whether, if Yuuki spared his life here, he would come back again. If the man got away, vanished into the shadows, and then at the most crucial moment suddenly sprang out to ruin everything…

Just imagining it made Yuuki’s scalp prickle.

That was always how the scripts went—the protagonist nearly killed by his own kindness and so on. Yuuki had no desire to become that sort of protagonist and let the writer get his way.

Now that so many people were willing to do the work for him, Yuuki naturally would not have some saintly impulse to save the man who had tried to kill him. Though he did not consider himself to hate the Fokian, hatred was by no means the only emotion that could stir a desire to kill.

The fear that a mission might be obstructed, and the decision to strike first before that could happen, could stir that desire just as easily.

In fact, he could not even accept standing aside and doing nothing. He could not accept allowing others to kill merely because he wished to keep his own hands clean, while he hid at a distance and watched, relieved that an uncertain factor had vanished, and afterward could still say with righteous confidence, “It had nothing to do with me.”

If what he hoped for was the Fokian’s death, then what was wrong with facing his own desire? What Yuuki wanted was to be able to say without shame: I do not want my mission to go wrong, I want him gone, and so I took part in his killing.

Indeed, I led it.

Although the stab he had delivered was not lethal, it had completely robbed the Fokian of mobility, and that alone had sealed the man’s death.

“…Sorry. I’m not strong enough, so I don’t have any generosity to waste. I have no margin for error… not a single bit.”

Yuuki did not know whether his murmured words were meant for Senior Toru or for himself.

If he were strong enough, he could indeed ignore the interference of such a mere insect. But not now. He had to regard this thug as an unstable factor.

So when he said, “I’ll keep watch,” that meant he was agreeing to the travelers’ plan.

If his hands were to be stained with filth, he had to be the first to strike and make a good beginning.