There was no time.
From the moment Andrea left the dojo forlornly, the fuse had already begun to burn.
If I did not think of a way quickly, Andrea would die.
Whether he died after fighting a battle he could not win against the opposing organization, or whether the Council cleaned him up even if he won.
Once the conflict grew, there would be no way to survive.
I searched for a way to save my friend and thought until my head felt ready to burst.
First, I scoured the Sword Saint's memories.
Having wandered all manner of places and lived past the age of seventy, he was wise, but even his memories offered no answer.
So I stopped relying solely on the Sword Saint's memories and asked the people around me about the Brave Brothers.
Their reputation was surprisingly good, which was encouraging, but there was still no solution.
Next came my teacher and Anna.
They had traveled throughout the vast Empire, so both were good people to consult.
They each told me various things, but there was no answer from them either.
In the end, I turned my question to the Guild members last.
"Isn't the work that someone who makes a living by the sword can do out in the open ultimately mercenary work? If things go well, they can become soldiers or knights."
"I told you, the Brave Brothers are not people who make a living by the sword."
"But you said they would become that. How are you going to stop it?"
"I'm asking because I don't know!"
I was the idiot.
Uncle Aldo was no help whatsoever. Not that I had expected him to be.
No matter what anyone said, Uncle Aldo was the Guild's greatest fool.
Just as I was about to give up with a sigh, an answer I had never expected reached me.
"But aren't they protecting the market merchants for now?"
"Yes, they are."
"Then can't they just make a living from that?"
"If they collect protection money, it will become extortion. Then they will just be a criminal organization, won't they?"
"What nonsense. Killing people is murder in the end, but those mercenary bastards make a fine living from it. What matters is whether it is legal or illegal."
The words Uncle Aldo offered as he scratched his head were nonsense, as usual.
That was what I thought for a moment, but then I marveled as an idea flashed through my mind.
"How can collecting protection fees be legal... It can! Good heavens!"
Threatening people who do not want it and taking their money is extortion.
But what if they made protection contracts only with people who wanted them?
Would that not simply replace the personal protection provided by mercenaries with protection for market merchants' establishments?
They say that even a cow stepping backward catches a mouse.
I smiled brightly and vigorously patted Uncle Aldo on the shoulder.
"Uncle, you're a genius! Good heavens!"
"A genius, my foot. You know why those mercenary bastards don't take guard contracts from small business owners, right?"
"Because it does not pay enough?"
"Yeah. Even market merchants are all common folk. Gather up their pennies, and it's still only a few coins."
If they worked another job alongside it, they could not be devoted to guarding, either.
Uncle Aldo was thoroughly skeptical, but I wagged my index finger from side to side.
It felt as though my brain were burning brightly.
"Not at all. There are two flaws in what you just said."
"Bastard... I don't like you acting all high and mighty. So what are they?"
"Maybe elsewhere, but in Raechia, people who own their own shops may not be enormously wealthy, but they are not common folk."
I knew it well because my parents ran a general store.
Most self-employed people in Raechia were fairly well-off.
This was the continent's greatest trade city, where even street vendors earned a generous living.
The pockets of those who owned buildings and ran businesses in such a place could not be thin.
The income from guarding alone would be sufficient, which meant they would not need another occupation.
It was not as though the Brave Brothers, like a mercenary company, consisted of people who intended only to earn a pile while they were young and retire.
Of course, changing the nature of the organization would require reform.
Rather than retain the ambiguous identity of both merchant and organization member, they would have to choose one, and those who chose to remain merchants would have to leave the organization.
A considerable number would leave.
Even so, it was better than remaining a criminal organization.
As I considered that far and grinned, Uncle Aldo asked.
"Uh... is that so? All right, say that's true. What is the second flaw?"
"Strictly speaking, the Raechia Guard is a military force."
"A mil...itary force? But isn't that how it is everywhere?"
"The military is supposed to fight wars. It should not be patrolling markets."
"What are you talking about?"
"I mean the Brave Brothers should take over patrol duties from the city! The military can function purely as a combat force! It would not be much of a loss for the Council, either!"
There might be some additional spending, but to the Council, it would be pocket change.
They might even welcome it, since it would strengthen the military force they had always wanted.
Of course, things in the world did not always go the way one planned.
Even so, I thought we could at least be given a chance somehow.
Uncle Aldo tilted his head with a puzzled expression even after hearing the entire explanation.
In contrast, I thought I had found a fairly plausible answer.
So I rose immediately and was about to head to the second floor when—
"An interesting story."
"Grandma! You were listening?"
"I heard you. You know that well, too."
Grandma Sujin came downstairs, looking like a Fairy beauty out of a painting.
At her words, as she tapped her ears, I merely nodded.
A Fairy's hearing was almost at a cat's level. It would have been stranger if she had not heard me, after I had shouted several times from the middle of the conversation onward.
In any case, encouraged by Grandma Sujin's positive reaction, I cried out hopefully.
"What do you think, Grandma? It will work, right? You can help us with this much, right?"
"Your idea is plausible, for now. But you are a little late."
"What?"
"Your friend is already fighting those Adoocenum-or-Odoachenium bastards."
With those words like a bolt from the blue, the hope that had barely sprouted was trampled.
As Andrea's head displayed on a pike flickered before my eyes, I collapsed to the ground.
It was the time when summer had passed its peak and was giving way to autumn.
Winter came to us far too early.
It was a winter of blood-red snow.
***
"Kill every one of those bastards!"
"You small-time neighborhood thugs, do you know where you are?!"
With murderous shouts, men with a scar each on their faces charged at him.
Each of them held a deadly weapon, whether a sword or an axe.
Their vicious bearing was enough to make an ordinary person collapse at the mere sight of them.
But Andrea was not ordinary, and he could see it.
Perhaps because they felt their disadvantage in numbers, their faces were filled with consternation despite the words they spat.
Andrea sneered at their desperate state and drew his sword.
He held the 1.7-meter blade upright in front of him and looked at his reflection in it.
It was a ritual that his friend, changed from a certain point onward, had always performed.
He had said that through this ritual, he learned what his heart truly felt before a fight.
The face reflected in a blade did not lie.
'Pathetic.'
In that sense, Andrea's face was a mess.
His eyes were dead, and deep shadows lay beneath them.
The turmoil in his heart, adrift amid his father's sudden death and the attack that followed, was laid bare.
But
"Capo."
"No one moves. I will do this alone."
"It is dangerous!"
"Not at all."
He had to fight. This was the time to do so.
For the family who called to him and watched him in worry.
For the people his father had tried to protect all his life.
He could not let the scum who sold everything from drugs to people seize Raechia's night.
'No, is that merely an excuse?'
Perhaps he simply wanted to run wild.
Feeling the uncertainty of his own heart, Andrea gave a bitter smile.
Standing a head taller than everyone else, he gripped his sword and stepped forward.
He swept away his still-confused heart with a battle cry.
"VENDETTA!"
With a fearsome expression, the wielder of the two-handed sword charged forward with a great shout and slashed horizontally through the air.
The enemies rushing at him without restraint faltered and recoiled before that overwhelming mass and reach.
One of the less perceptive men raised his sword to defend himself, and the blade snapped in two.
CLANG!
THUNK!
The two-handed sword that had broken his sword cut straight through his neck.
The defender's poor-quality sword and clumsy stance, combined with the attacker's fine sword and overwhelming strength.
One died from a single stroke, and three retreated.
Andrea watched blankly as blood droplets sprang up like fountains, dotting the ground like spring petals.
Along with the head of a man rolling across the ground like trash.
The Ispanian-style two-handed swordsmanship he had learned with Johan's suggestion and his teacher's help.
Its power was extraordinary, but Andrea was not pleased.
'I've become a murderer.'
He had committed a sin with swordsmanship that he had developed with his friends while laughing, talking, and sometimes agonizing together.
No matter how heinous his opponents were, murder was still murder.
There was no turning back now.
Until this life ended, he would only devote himself to revenge.
With that thought, Andrea growled like a wolf.
"Why are you standing still? Have you lost your nerve?"
"You wet-behind-the-ears bastard!"
"Fine! Even if I die, I will kill you, you little bastard!"
"Try it, you scum!"
Andrea's swordsmanship had been created to fight many enemies and protect his allies.
With the roar of a lost wolf, swordsmanship that brought out its inherent meaning blazed and surged.
The Adoocenum member who had shouted boldly staggered backward, contrary to his words, before that explosive momentum.
Then he bumped into another man behind him and stopped, yielding his neck to the incoming blade.
Along with the man behind him.
Before the two heads could even fall to the ground,
The other men, their poorly held swords and axes knocked aside, sprayed blood as well.
On a night when broken blades, axe handles, and human bodies tangled together and became garbage,
Sorijo Nero, a subordinate organization of Adoocenum, was annihilated.
By Andrea and the Brave Brothers, who had boldly struck first.
***
In the underground darkness filled with nothing but shadows, someone from Adoocenum reported respectfully.
"Capo, Sorijo Nero was attacked by the Brave Brothers and annihilated."
At the voice cutting through the suffocating darkness, the man receiving the report rose from his seat.
In an instant, an aura as chilling as a blade filled the space.
"The Brave Brothers? Did you not say that, after the former Capo died, his immature son succeeded him?"
"Yes."
"I seem to recall you saying they would be unable to move for a while as well?"
"I am sorry. He is... more violent than I thought."
"No, that is not it."
Capo shook his head and approached the reporter.
As his aura grew stronger, the reporter's eyes quivered, but he did not move.
Instead, he remained prostrate as if offering up his neck, waiting for his lord's words.
"He is clever. He knows that if he does not quickly reduce their numbers through surprise attacks, he will die after being overwhelmed by their numbers."
The Brave Brothers numbered fifty.
In contrast, Adoocenum numbered over three hundred when its subordinate organizations were included.
If they simply fought, defeat was certain.
But what if a fifty-against-thirty battle were repeated ten times?
Their odds would still be low, but defeat would no longer be certain.
In the Archipelago's Warring States era, where countless warlords killed and were killed,
the man who had survived that carnage for hundreds of years found interest in the fangs bared by a young beast in a foreign land.
The Capo, whose eyes shone bright yellow even in the darkness, turned his head.
Staring somewhere far away, where the bold young wolf must be, he suddenly asked.
"What is the plan?"
"It is proceeding as scheduled."
"Change it."
"What?"
"Since they struck first, they cannot escape the Council's attention."
Things in the world did not always go as one intended.
Having spent hundreds of years on battlefields, the Capo knew that better than anyone.
"Push the trash who have grown too cocky just because they are our affiliates into Subura. Let them fight the Brave Brothers there and die on their own. Ah, and cut off all the drugs going to Subura as planned."
Rather than be flustered by an opponent's unexpected actions, he immediately revised his strategy.
As cunningly as a snake hunting two rats fighting each other.
"Then..."
"How do you think the Subura scum will react when they see outsiders fighting in their territory? When their eyes turn bloodshot because the drugs have been cut off, do you think they will merely stand by and watch?"
"They will... riot."
"We will help the Council bastards sweep them all away. We will become righteous men who could not tolerate their lawless acts. And then—"
Breaking off, Capo drew the sword at his waist.
With the sword gleaming chillingly, he suddenly slashed through the basement door.
The iron door, which should have easily repelled any sword, slowly split and fell as it shrieked and spat sparks.
When the sunlight streaming through the doorway reached the man who had displayed that wondrous sword,
Capo revealed his long ears and murmured with a twisted smile.
"This is the day that I, Saito Naoyuki, and the Saito Family are reborn."
As his eerie voice echoed, a leaf drifting in from somewhere fell near his feet.
Its tip was red, as though foretelling the bloody autumn to come.