Carelessness

I woke up in my room at the inn on the Adventurers’ Guild’s second floor. A stabbing pain shot through my head, and my stomach churned.

Yep, that’s a hangover.

Holding my aching head, I staggered down the stairs and somehow made it to the well out back. With my unsteady body, I managed to draw water and gulped it down.

Ahh… I’m alive again.

I drank plenty of water, then stretched in my usual spot by the garden behind the guild. Once I broke a light sweat and my warmed-up body loosened up, the hangover had improved a lot.

I’d started drinking from midday and ended up collapsing by evening. I must’ve slept a long time. It was early morning now, just as the sun began to rise.

The sun slowly climbed, tinting the cobalt-blue sky orange. It was beautiful. While I admired the scenery, my stomach growled.

Pretty views can wait, I need food. When I entered the guild tavern, the place was a field of corpses. People who’d stuffed themselves with free food and alcohol were snoring on the floor.

I headed to the kitchen and found the tavern owner collapsed there. Useless. I gathered ingredients, lit a fire, and made soup.

Once the soup was ready, the smell roused the “dead” drunks off the floor. The adventurers dragged themselves to their rooms upstairs, and the regular townsfolk returned to their homes and workplaces.

After eating bread and soup and washing the dishes, I woke the tavern owner who was sleeping in the kitchen.

“The shop’s a disaster. Get up and clean.” I said, handing him a cup of water.

With an annoyed expression, he snatched the cup, chugged it, and muttered while starting to clean.

By the time the cleaning was done, Gonz, Al, and Kimon came down from the second floor. I greeted them.

I handed the hungover trio some water, and we were making idle conversation when it happened.

My presence detection picked up many signatures. A whole group was heading toward the guild.

A bad feeling crept up on me, but being complacent, I reacted too late. While I was telling Gonz and the others that a group was approaching the tavern, the town guards stormed inside.

The guards formed ranks, blocking the guild entrance. Tension shot between us.

Every adventurer in this town has something shady in their past. The timing suggested they were after us, but maybe it was someone else.

While I entertained such naive, hopeful thoughts, the man at the guild’s purchase counter looked at us with a smug grin.

In that instant, Al and I grimaced.

Rock lizard stone isn’t that expensive among Rank 4 monster materials, but to common folk, it’s still a fortune.

And if you kill a Rank 4 monster, it means your party owns blacksteel weapons.

In our case, only Gonz had one, but normally people assume every party member has a set.

To ordinary people, that’s a huge amount of money. Even nobles consider it a decent pocket profit. The smirking man at the counter must’ve sold our information to a noble.

Judging from his grin, he was dreaming about his cut.

Gonz and Kimon didn’t seem to understand the situation. They watched the guards warily but didn’t realize they were the targets.

Al whispered quietly, “We’ve been marked by a noble.”

Gonz and Kimon’s eyes widened, their faces darkening.

The response was too fast. Could they really mobilize this much in just one day? Maybe I’d been marked all along.

They probably already assumed I was the one who killed the village chief, but didn’t want casualties from a messy capture. Maybe they hoped the adventurers would kill each other off.

Maybe they’d left me alone while preparing to act the moment the lord returned from the capital and issued a capture order.

And now the prey they’d been watching got his hands on a pile of money. A greedy noble would move immediately to catch me.

Or maybe it was just my paranoia. That pompous, incompetent swine of a noble lounging in the back didn’t look capable of such efficient planning.

And I doubted the town’s lazy guards would properly prepare to capture a single adventurer. Still… maybe this situation really was my fault.

Once I thought about the possibility of Gonz getting dragged into this because of me, I couldn’t stand it.

Gonz and the others also had skeletons in their closets. No, if you’re a man of power, you can fabricate charges as you please. There was only one choice.

“Gonz, Al, Kimon. I’ll be the decoy. While I distract them, break through the wall and escape.”

“Decoy? How the hell are you gonna do that, Yajin?”

“I’m gonna deck that pig noble in the back.”

“Deck… a noble? Yajin, you—”

The curse that nobles and the church have imposed on commoners over many years. Nobles are terrifying beings who wield magic and possess high levels. They are descendants of God’s apostles, or perhaps apostles themselves, exalted beings of noble stature.

For commoners, nobles were untouchable. Harming a noble was a taboo none would dare violate. Even a roughneck like Gonz would never consider it.

A commoner targeted by a noble could only bow his head and beg for mercy.

But I was different. I grew up in another world where we were taught from childhood that all people are equal.

I was the only commoner in this world who wasn’t bound by the curse the nobles and the church had spent centuries weaving.

Gonz and Kimon looked at me with anxious eyes. But Al was different. He had probably once belonged to a noble family or something close to it.

He didn’t worship nobles the way Gonz and Kimon did.

Even so, he understood the danger of noble authority better than any of us. After closing his eyes briefly, Al raised his fist toward me.

“See you again, Yajin.”

“Yeah. I won’t say goodbye. As long as we’re alive, we’ll meet somewhere.”

If I harmed a noble, they’d hunt me relentlessly even if I escaped. Maybe I could make it if I fled the country, but they’d probably seal every road and make escape nearly impossible.

It would be meaningless if I traveled with them. Even if we chose a rendezvous point outside the country, capture and torture of either side would give away the location.

If I was going to be the decoy, we could no longer stay together.

Even if I were caught, as long as I had no idea where Gonz and the others were headed, their odds of escaping safely would rise. That’s what it meant to be a decoy.

I bumped fists with Al. Then Gonz pressed his fist in as well.

“When I first met ya, I thought ya were some runt of a parasite, but you’re gonna punch a noble? You’re insane, man.”

“Not as insane as you, Gonz.”

I dropped the underling tone and bumped fists with Gonz. Then Kimon bumped his fist against mine too.

“You’re the only scout in our party. Let’s form a party again someday.”

“Thanks, Kimon. We definitely will.”

I bumped fists with Kimon as well. All of us pressed our fists together firmly.

While we were doing that, one of the guards was loudly reading some list of our supposed crimes off a parchment, but none of us listened.

I stood up smoothly. Without showing hostility or bloodlust, burying the raging fury boiling inside me, I calmly walked toward the guards.

The guards wore leering, disgusting grins.

Since a noble was present, they believed a commoner wouldn’t resist. They probably thought I’d beg them to spare my party if I surrendered myself.

And then they’d crush that plea. What bliss that must be for them. Abuse others, puff up their egos, and revel in their superiority.

But that future wasn’t waiting for them. They wouldn’t be able to protect their noble, and they’d suffer dreadful punishment. I’d turn those smug faces to despair.

Thinking that, I showed no emotion as I reached into the pouch of coins and grabbed a handful. Huh? A bribe? the guards scoffed.

Focusing on my throwing skill, I hurled the coins with all my might at the smirking man at the purchase counter.

The handful of coins scattered like shotgun pellets, smashing into the man’s face and destroying it.

The instant the guards turned their eyes toward him, I leapt.

Using the spring of my knees and pushing off lightly with my toes, I jumped softly, lightly without changing my posture much.

Humans react quickly and aggressively to fast, threatening movements. But when something approaches gently, floating toward you, you instinctively catch it instead of striking it away.

Almost nobody punches away something lobbed upward gently. You just react by catching it.

The guards were off guard. They were distracted, and when I floated upward, they froze.

I landed on a guard’s shoulder, and before my weight fully settled, I hopped lightly again.

Landing on another guard’s shoulder, I jumped once more, and there, right in front of me, was the pig noble with a stupid, slack-jawed expression.

As I descended, I pulled back my right fist and slammed a full-power downward punch straight into the noble’s nose.

“Ugh!!”

The pig noble screamed and collapsed.

Hard. His nose felt nothing like human flesh. My fist told me his level was high.

But he had no combat experience, no tolerance to pain. He rolled on the floor clutching his nose, wailing miserably.

Everyone was speechless.

A noble had been struck. By a commoner… By a bottom-rung adventurer. It was a sight unthinkable to anyone in this world.

In the silence of the guild tavern, only the pig noble’s shrieks echoed.

Snapping out of it first, Al slapped Gonz on the shoulder. Gonz then charged the guild wall and smashed through it. Seeing that, I ran at full speed and fled the scene.