[Volume 2.5 | Chapter 90: A Return to the Capital (II)]

"Honestly, I'm not sure what you're talking about."

Yet, Siegfried, knowing all about the true gravity of the slur, acted brilliantly.

"I'm Samuel Fischer. Construction foreman from Meridian, looking for better pay up north like everyone else here."

Rocks' smile didn't reach his eyes.

"Sure ya are. And I'm the Emperor's favorite nephew." He gestured vaguely at Siegfried's posture. "Ya don't move like a construction worker. Ya move like someone trained to kill. The way yer eyes scan for exits, how ya position yerself with yer back to nothin', how ya ain't sweatin' despite this heat... No sense of Fioran salt in yer accent either. I was in a militia before the budget cuts. I know a fruity Legionnaire when I see one."

"And I know a clown when I see one," Siegfried replied flatly.

"Am I now?" Rocks leaned closer. Unfortunately, he brought his stench of sweat and cheap tobacco with him. "What rank were ya? Lieutenant? Captain? Aye, a general, maybe? Got any pretty little medals to show off? Ya still carryin' around the skulls of all yer comrades ya had to step on to flay some oversea monkeys?"

One of the good things about this act was that the ashen-haired man could act as irritated and annoyed as he wanted, and it would only help.

"Dumbass, I've never served a day in my life. My father was a construction worker; his father before him. I've had a hammer in my hand since I was twelve."

"Got an answer for everything, don't ya? Well, whether ya admit it or not, I know what I know. Ya should pay attention to what's about to happen up ahead."

Before he could respond, a shout cut through the humid forest air, followed by the sickening sound of metal striking flesh.

Twenty meters ahead, the column of workers had stopped. At the front, one of Dennis's managers—a broad-shouldered man with a shaved head—was…

—beating a worker to death.

Each blow from his [Tactum]-enhanced steel baton left livid welts that split skin on contact and blood spattering across the forest floor.

"Please! I didn't—I swear I didn't—"

But the victim's pleas dissolved into wet, gurgling sounds as the baton connected with his mouth, sending teeth and blood flying in a crimson arc. He was a middle-aged man with the weathered face and rigid posture of a former military... the same worker who had proudly mentioned his Legion service during Dennis Sparrow's briefing hours back.

"Lying sack of shit! On your knees! Lower!"

Manager Ulysses seemed to take particular pleasure in his work. He brought the baton down again, this time against the man's outstretched hand. Bones shattered with a sound like dry twigs snapping. Fingers splayed unnaturally, bent backward at outlandish angles.

The man's screams drowned out the forest's cacophony of buzzing insects and distant birdsong.

"Not so tough now, are you?" Ulysses snarled, circling his prey. "Thought you could bring that filth under MY watch?!!"

The former Legionnaire's face was barely recognizable beneath the mask of blood and swelling tissue. One eye had completely disappeared behind puffy flesh, while the other rolled wildly in its socket. When Ulysses's boot connected with his ribs, the sound of cracking bone was audible even from where Siegfried stood.

It was to the point where he couldn't control his own bladder, which Siegfried couldn't really blame him for.

"M-m-mercy! It wasn't me who dropped it! I swear on my mother's grave!"

"Mercy? You're a criminal, that's what you are! Criminal to your homeland, a traitor to your oath, and a backstabber to the workers! I should just kill you right now!"

Ulysses raised the baton high overhead as he prepared a blow that would undoubtedly shatter the man's skull.

"ULYSSES!"

Dennis Sparrow's bellow froze the manager mid-swing. The pudgy foreman waddled forward.

"Gimme me that," he wheezed, extending his hand for the baton.

Ulysses grunted in disappointment but complied, deactivating [Tactum], which had enhanced the baton's durability in the blaze of blue prana, before handing the weapon over. Dennis examined the bloody metal stick with a whistle. Whether it was out of clinical appreciation or sheer morbid curiosity, Siegfried didn't know.

"Yer a beast, Ulysses," Sparrow remarked. "But we gotta be a bit gentler with these guys. They're worth money, remember?"

He turned his attention to the former Legionnaire, who was now curled up on the ground, clutching his shattered hand and sobbing quietly.

"Now then..."

Sparrow bent—with considerable effort—and retrieved something small from the forest floor: a tiny plastic packet containing what looked like a type of crystalline dust.

"Would ya mind explainin' what THIS is doin' in my work crew?"

"I... I don't know how—"

Dennis's boot caught him under the chin.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Don't INSULT me! A former Legionnaire like yerself KNOWS what this is!"

"G-G-GRIT! IT'S GRIT!"

Instantly, murmurs rippled through the assembled workers.

Grit... the black market stimulant that had ravaged working-class communities for decades. Cheap, potent, and utterly destructive, it allowed laborers to work inhuman hours while slowly corroding their bodies from within. The Empire had outlawed it last century as "degenerate contraband," but that had only driven it further underground, where its production continued unabated.

Dennis held the packet up like a trophy and shifted his body to ensure everyone could see it.

"That's right! GRIT! In MY operation! Do ya have ANY idea what would happen if an IPA patrol found this? They'd shut us down! They'd arrest ME! Everything I've built would be DESTROYED because some washed-up flounderwater needs a fix!"

He looked down at the broken worker like a pile of dung.

"So, let's try this again: WHO. BROUGHT. THE. GRIT? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?!"

The man's uninjured eye was wild, darting back and forth as if searching for an escape that didn't exist.

But that was too long of an answer, and Dennis Sparrow didn't like to wait.

A barrage of baton blows rained down.

"WHO! BROUGHT! IT?!"

"I don't know!" the man shrieked, trying to shield himself. "Please, it wasn't me! I've been clean for years, I swear!"

Sparrow's face contorted into a rictus of rage.

"LIAR!"

He struck the man's already-shattered hand again, eliciting an unfathomably horrid scream that seemed to rip the humid air as the rest of his fingers were shattered by the baton. Like a puppet whose strings were suddenly cut, the former Legionnaire had stopped moving the instant the blow connected. However, Dennis Sparrow's thirst for blood, as bottomless as his appetite, had only begun to be quenched. Only when his arm tired did he finally step back. He surveyed his handiwork detachedly before retrieving a handkerchief from Ulysses to wipe blood from his face and hands.

"Victoria," he called, not bothering to look at the third manager who had remained silent throughout the ordeal. "Heal him just enough so he don't die 'fore we reach San Corona. The IPA should get to have their turn with him."

A slender figure moved forward from the sidelines. Siegfried couldn't make out her features clearly from this distance, but it seemed that she knelt beside the broken man and began casting [Gran Sanatio].

[Gran Sanatio]? What kind of freakish talent is working for a man like him?

But his musings were interrupted by the deranged head of the operation.

"Let this be a lesson to ALL of ya! Anyone caught with contraband: drugs, unauthorized Mystic Gear, forbidden information... will wish Ulysses had finished the job! Now MOVE!"

The column lurched into motion once more. The workers gave the bloody scene a wide berth as they continued toward San Corona.

No one spoke. No one made eye contact. The message had been received.

"Nasty business, that. Poor bastard should've been more careful with his fix."

During the whole ordeal, Rocks was uncharacteristically silent if this was nothing more than just a minor traffic accident. Then, as the column began to move again, he let out a low whistle.

"Welp, guess ya were tellin' the truth after all."

Siegfried shot him a questioning glance. Rocks chuckled humorlessly.

"A Bloodgilt would've taken that poor sap's side, demandin' mercy and justice, and all that crap. But ya didn't even flinch."

What a fool.

"That's what ya wanted me to think, right? Staying so calm and collected like a monster."

...I stand corrected.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a small figure materializing at Rocks' side: a boy no older than thirteen with a hood pulled low over his features. He tugged on the big man's sleeve.

"I did what you said," the boy whispered, barely audible. "Can I have it now?"

Rocks' face split into a grin as he reached into his pocket and extracted a small case.

"Fair winds, Dipper. Couldn't've done it better myself."

The boy opened the case to verify the contents, taking what seemed to be insulin shots out of it. Siegfried watched with growing understanding as he slipped away and vanished into the column with the other workers.

He had seen enough.

Rocks had orchestrated the entire scenario. He ordered the boy to plant the Grit in the former Legionnaire's pocket at such an angle that it would fall out at the precise moment Ulysses was watching. The man had been framed, and his military background made him the perfect target for Rocks' demonstration.

A demonstration aimed directly at Siegfried.

If he had tried to intervene, it would have absolutely confirmed his identity as a "Bloodgilt" and given Rocks leverage over him.

But simultaneously, him not getting involved did not relieve him of suspicion either. It merely cast him in a different light: that of a dangerous outsider, one who could not be coerced or manipulated so easily.

No matter how he acted, Rocks would have gained some sort of advantage. That was the true purpose of the exercise—asserting dominance and establishing that Rocks was not to be trifled with, and that Siegfried was now in his debt for not being exposed. Additionally, the implication that if Rocks so willed it, he could set up a scenario where Siegfried would be at the mercy of Dennis Sparrow.

Or worse... the authorities.

Rocks simply patted his shoulder, but it didn't feel comforting whatsoever.

"Ya know, Bloodgilts better watch their backs in these parts. Never know when they might get gutted."

With that parting message, he sauntered away, leaving Siegfried alone with the implications of what he'd just witnessed.

Siegfried, ravaged by ire, gritted his teeth.

How much of an idiot does he take me for?!

He could have easily intervened, stopped Ulysses, or seperate Sparrow's skull from his neck. He could have done a million and one things, but he had to play the part of a scared little sheep because of those bitches of women chaining him down.

How much longer did he have to act under the whims of others?!

He could feel his bloodlust boiling with each step he took, the desire to tear apart everyone and everything in his path. He wanted nothing more than to unleash the monster inside him and watch the forest burn.

No.

He couldn't let it control him.

Rocks was just a bug. An utter pissant who couldn't possibly comprehend the scope of the mission.

He was Nemesis: Head of the Bloodhounds.

The man who would finally get his revenge on Helen Vessalius.

The man who would make her and every last member of her family pay for their sins in blood. He had not survived six years in the depths of hell only to let an uppity swine like Rocks stand in his way.

Rocks was no threat.

He was a tool.

A tool that Siegfried would use to achieve his goals.

He would act the part of the cowering sheep until the time was right.

Then he would strike.

And when he did, no one would be able to stop him.

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