My Name Is Albrecht Part 4

“Now that I get a good look at you, you’re a real mess. Go wash up at that well. I just managed to get some salve,” as he said this, the big man showed me the salve he had recovered from the corpses of the adventurers.

“If we do not escape right away, won’t the guards come?”

“Around here in the Minor States, guards don’t give a damn if adventurers kill each other. They’ll drag off the corpses, sure, but you can tell they hate the hassle.”

The Minor States was far more barbaric than I had imagined. I didn’t think it could be this bad. It’s a wonder they could even maintain a functioning state.

I washed my wounds with the well water and applied the medicine that the man who called himself Gonz handed to me. I was used to pain, but that did not make it pleasant.

I finished treating myself, wincing slightly from the pain.

After thanking Gonz, I followed as he led the way to an inn. With practiced movements, he collected the weapons. Carrying the gathered weapons, he strode forward without hesitation.

Not knowing what else to do, I followed behind him. The buildings around us grew dirtier with every step, and a foul stench began to hang in the air.

Feeling uneasy, I asked Gonz, “Mr. Gonz, where are we going?”

“You don’t need to call me mister. It makes my ass itch. These are goods with a bit of a story behind them, so I am thinking of selling them to a trader in the slums.”

I frowned when I heard the word slums. Even after becoming an adventurer at the bottom of the social ladder, it was a place I avoided. It was not even part of the bottom tier, but a mass of discarded waste.

That was what the slums were to me.

In fact, the residents here were watching me from a distance with glittering eyes. When they noticed Gonz walking in front of me, they seemed to give up on trying anything.

The filthy and lazy slum dwellers lived off criminal acts. Some people might have fallen into the slums against their will, but most of them were trash who had no intention of working honestly.

The terrible road was soaked in stench, without even a trace of hygiene.

Perhaps it would have been acceptable a few hundred years ago, but even now people dumped their waste directly onto the street. It felt like I would get sick just from breathing.

I pressed a clean cloth over my nose and mouth and followed Gonz while trying to breathe as little as possible.

“We’re here. This is the place.”

At first glance, the thrift store looked like an ordinary store. However, the men guarding it had faces that could not be described as decent, and gave off a strong sense of something shady beneath the surface.

Gonz roughly slammed the weapons down on the counter. He took the money offered by the shop owner and tried to leave immediately.

“Wait a minute, Gonz. Are you not going to negotiate the price?”

“Huh? All that back-and-forth’s a pain in the ass, so I just told the shopkeep if we’re gonna end up at the same price after haggling anyway, then just give it to me for that price from the start.”

Watching Gonz speak proudly, I held my head in my hands.

At first glance, it looked like an efficient transaction that skipped unnecessary steps, but that only worked when there was a certain level of trust between both parties.

From the looks of it, there was not even a baseline price set. In other words, he was selling them for whatever price the other side decided.

There was one more thing that bothered me.

It seemed he had sold weapons here many times already. Just how many adventurers had this man killed? He was clearly simple minded and foolish, yet his strength appeared to be genuine.

I asked Gonz to confirm the amount of money he had received, and it was terribly low. I had often been forced to negotiate with worthless adventurers, so I was familiar with the market prices in this town.

Normally, three times this amount would have been reasonable. I told Gonz this and was about to suggest that I negotiate on his behalf.

If I could get on this man’s good side, perhaps I could live without suffering such misery again. That was what I thought. However, Gonz was even more simple and violent than I had imagined.

“You bastard! You tricked me!” Gonz shouted and grabbed the shop owner by the neck with one hand, lifting him into the air. The shop owner flailed his legs desperately as he struggled.

“What the hell are you doing? I will kill you!”

The shop’s guards rushed at Gonz. Gonz grabbed one of the weapons on the counter and smashed it into a guard’s head.

“Don’t touch me. I will kill you!”

The sword Gonz swung split the guard’s head nearly in half. He said he would kill them, but he already had.

Overwhelmed by the sheer brutality, I froze in fear. The other guards drew their weapons and attacked Gonz.

Gonz used the shop owner as a shield, and at times even as a weapon, swinging him around. While the guards hesitated, unable to injure the shop owner, Gonz showed no mercy and struck them down.

It was a completely reckless fighting style, unlike anything I had ever seen. He swung the shop owner around and took care of the guards almost without a scratch.

The shop owner, used as a shield and a weapon, was covered in wounds and left half dead.

Gonz forced the shop owner to sit behind the counter of the thrift store, then placed the guards’ weapons on top of the desk.

“Buy them for ten times the price you paid before. That settles everything between us.”

Glared at by Gonz, the shop owner stuffed gold coins into a bag with trembling hands and handed it over. Gonz accepted the bag of coins in high spirits and walked out of the shop.

I did not know what to do, so I hurried after him.

Gonz strode forward without hesitation. To keep up with his long strides, I quickened my pace.

Once we were outside the slums, Gonz plunged his hand into the bag of gold coins, grabbed a handful, and shoved them into his pocket. Then he held out the bag of coins to me.

“Hey. This is your share.”

“I cannot accept such a large sum. I did not do anything.”

“You were the one who told me I was getting cheated, were you not? Thanks to you, I made a killing.”

“I really cannot take this much. Twenty percent, no, ten percent is enough.”

“That kind of nitpicking is a pain. Half is fine. Half.”

I was completely bewildered. Gonz had suddenly handed me a huge amount of money. Did this man have no attachment to money? And yet, he had been particular about it at the thrift store.

Was this some kind of trap? I could not imagine the simple man standing in front of me setting one.

Still unable to gather my thoughts, I hesitantly held out my hand, and the bag of gold coins was placed into my palm.

The unmistakable weight rested in my hand. Back when I was a bureaucrat, this amount would not have caught my attention, but since coming to the cluster of petty states, it was a fortune I had never once held.

“See you around, lad.”

Gonz raised his hand lightly and started to leave.

I hurriedly called out to him, “Wait, Gonz.”

“What?”

“Will you form a party with me?”

“What is this all of a sudden, lad?”

“I do not have the power to fight, but I have knowledge and negotiating skills. Gonz, you have the power to fight, but you lack knowledge and negotiating skills. If we cover each other’s shortcomings, we should be able to build a good partnership.”

My heartbeat pounded like a drum. I had said it, straight to his face, that he lacked knowledge. He might take it as an insult. If he chose to, he could kill me in an instant.

But if I parted ways with him here, my future was bleak. Even though the money I had just received was a fortune, it was nowhere near enough to last a lifetime.

And without the ability to fight, I had no way to protect this money.

If I was going to return to the miserable life I had before, being killed by an enraged Gonz would still be better.

“Hm.”

After showing signs of thinking it over for a moment, Gonz said, “Let’s try teaming up for now. If there’ ‘is a problem, we can just disband the party.”

Hearing his words, I smiled and extended my right hand.

“Nice to meet you, lad.”

“Call me Al.”

“Nice to meet you, Al.”

“The pleasure is mine. Gonz.”

I thought my right hand was going to be crushed. His grip was as strong as ever. I tried to end the handshake and pull my hand away, but Gonz did not let go.

“I am stupid. I have been tricked many times. Al, you look smart. You could probably fool me easily. But listen. Not a single person who has tricked me has lived. If you are going to deceive me, you had better be prepared for what comes with it.”

Still gripping my hand, Gonz stared at me with a chilling gaze. In the depths of his eyes, I felt something indescribable, rage, hatred, and madness.

Overwhelmed, I could not speak and desperately nodded my head up and down.