Raechia was one of the continent's most prosperous cities, with a naturally blessed trade port and fertile plains along the Eungeum River.
Even Raechia had poverty.
Clothes that looked like nothing more than sacks with holes cut into them, scarcely even worthy of being called torn clothes.
Hair clumped thick with grease from not being washed for so long, and faces streaked with grime.
Poverty seemed to drip from every inch of the children as they pointed the blades in their hands at us with gleaming eyes.
“Oh? Look at these fearless little brats. You think you can beat adults just because you have swords in your hands?”
Of course, there was no one here who would be frightened by that.
Andrea was the first of them.
With a CRACK, CRACK from the knuckles of his hands, he stepped forward.
We were not even wearing wooden swords right now, but did that matter?
Andrea, who had grown at least a head taller than an ordinary person, was intimidating simply to look at.
Naturally, the children hesitantly backed away, but they did not let go of the swords in their hands.
Seeing the malice pouring from them, I sighed and grabbed Andrea's shoulder.
“Enough. I will try talking to them.”
“A beating is the best medicine for bastards like that. Little brats who have already learned to rob people—.”
“Their circumstances do not look that simple. Just hold on a moment.”
How long did we meet each other's eyes as though we were having a staring contest?
As if unable to argue with me, Andrea shrugged and stepped back.
I handed the cat in my arms to Anna, then walked forward while using the lamb's-quarters cane in my free hand to support myself against the ground.
When I came close enough to shake hands with the children, I greeted them.
“Hello.”
No reply came.
As the uncomfortable silence lingered, I studied the children more carefully.
Sunken cheeks and limbs as thin as twigs.
In contrast, their eyes dripped with blue-black malice.
I realized anew how blessed the circumstances of my birth had been.
My parents were rather wealthy and full of love.
Because of them, though my body had its limitations, I had grown up wanting for nothing.
Naturally, comparing these little ones with myself at their age left me feeling uneasy.
The compassion that any human ought to possess welled up within me as well.
But I did not show my feelings as I tried to reason with them.
“I do not know what circumstances you are in, but that cat has an owner. We took a request to find it.”
“That is none of our concern. It crossed into our territory, so it is ours.”
“I am sorry, but your circumstances are none of our concern either.”
I gave that deliberately heartless answer.
The child who appeared to be their leader smiled eerily.
Like animals measuring each other's strength before they fought, he assessed his chances as he looked at me.
Unlike Andrea, who looked strong to anyone, I had an ordinary build.
On top of that, I was a cripple.
He must have calculated that he could accomplish his goal by taking me hostage.
“Then die!”
It was a surprise attack, rushing in from within arm's reach.
If I had let my guard down, it was an attack that would have caught me helplessly even if my opponent were a child.
Of course, I had not let my guard down, nor was I weak enough to lose to a child.
“Urk!”
The child ran his own chest into the cane I quietly extended. With his solar plexus struck, he choked and dropped his sword.
The metallic CLANG crossed with the cries of the other children.
“Emilio!”
“Boss!”
Ordinary children would have fled in terror or frozen in place, but those animal-like children were different.
Even as they screamed, they charged toward me in a swarm.
My response was simple.
The little ones, who did not even reach my waist, each took a blow to the head from the lamb's-quarters cane and crumpled down.
In the midst of that, the first child I had struck staggered to his feet.
“You, you bastard!”
“Kid, when you see someone stronger than you, you should watch your mouth. Otherwise.”
Without any preparatory motion, I thrust the cane at the child, whose body was as sturdy as his spirit, with one hand.
When something that could have cleanly pierced an eye came right before his pupil, even the child brimming with malice froze.
“Die.”
Was it because I had already put on the Sword Saint's mask?
My voice was bleak and dry.
At that voice, thick with the stench of blood, the child leader collapsed onto the ground.
Watching his unsightly state, I withdrew the cane.
“If you charge in with your chest puffed out and your arms raised high like that, you are asking to be killed. Remember it well.”
In truth, those were not the words I wanted to say.
Where did you live? Were you hungry? Did it hurt badly? Where had your parents gone?
I quietly swallowed down all of those questions.
Children who had lived even their short lives entirely under the laws of the wild.
More beast than human, they would not open their hearts simply because someone approached them without caution.
People whose hearts had rotted somewhere within could not do that.
Because I had been such a person, I knew it better than anyone.
So, contrary to my heart, I spoke even more harshly on purpose.
Of course, I wanted to help them.
The Sword Saint might have said that little brats like these, who could be found anywhere, were none of his concern, but I was not him.
“I will not make this long.”
Because I knew better than anyone how painful it was to have no one to rely on, or to believe that you had no one to rely on.
So I drew a line between the children and myself with the lamb's-quarters cane.
A line that could be rubbed away with a foot, yet could never be erased from their minds.
“Someday, when you need help with a problem that you could not solve even if you died trying.”
Following my voice, which had grown deep and low after I passed through puberty.
The children, who had lived like wild animals, looked at my face as if entranced.
Meeting each of their eyes, I left them with a single promise.
“If you have the courage to cross this line, come to the Adventurer's Guild and ask for Jeong Johan.”
Hoping that they would not forget and would come to find me one day.
With a bitter feeling, my companions and I left the Raechia that was not Raechia.
***
In the place the absurdly strong bastard, despite being a cripple, had left behind.
Groans could be heard from every direction.
“Ow… He seemed to hit us gently, but it hurts so much.”
“It still hurts less than when Dad beats me with his fists, I think. I even lost a tooth that time.”
Amid the complaints that burst out after tasting bitter defeat, Emilio, the children's leader, clenched his fists.
As he looked at the line Johan had drawn on the ground.
“Hey, Boss, maybe we should go find him later— Argh!”
“Don’t talk bullshit. What if the people outside really eat you?”
“S-sorry….”
Emilio punched one of the younger children in the stomach to knock some sense into him.
The people outside were evil spirits who ate anyone from the inside they saw, and even if they did not eat them, they worked them as slaves for life.
Recalling the stories he had heard from adults countless times, Emilio warned his younger siblings.
“Snap out of it, you idiots. Did you see those bastards' clothes? Those are made with money from catching and selling fools who do not know the ways of the world, like you.”
He gave that warning in a savage voice, like a wolf growling.
Only then did the children lower their heads one by one and say that they understood.
Emilio, who did not like the sight, clicked his tongue and turned away.
“If you understand, let us go. Fuck, I thought we would make some money by catching that cat. Today was a wash.”
***
After they came up empty, the day was a little hungrier and a little more exhausting.
With the money they earned by stealing and taking from others all day, all they could buy was one bowl of porridge made by boiling together a nearly rotten fish head and whatever unknown weeds they could find.
That was their first and last meal of the day.
Even then, Emilio fed it first to the younger children, including his biological sibling Luka, and went without.
There was money he had to give his father.
One coin, the price of a bowl of fish porridge, and one silver coin he had set aside separately.
His father answered not with praise, but with a kick.
As Emilio rolled around with exaggerated groans to be scolded less, his father roared over his head.
Where had he skimmed this from?
Did he think his father was a fool?
When Emilio stubbornly protested that he had not, his father pulled him into an embrace and comforted him as if he had never been angry.
‘Tomorrow will be different, right? Dad believes in his son.’
After beating him, soothing and coaxing him, the man offered him moldy jerky as though he were doing him a favor.
Emilio was moved by that alone, accepted it, and went to his room.
He broke off the mold-free part for his sibling and put the moldy part into his own mouth.
It was a little sour, but as he chewed, the flavor of meat that seeped out made him happy.
Soothing his gradually growling stomach, he covered himself and his sibling with a tattered mat riddled with holes and thought.
‘I will never go outside.’
No matter what happened, he would endure in this happy hometown.
Feeling the gentle snoring breath of his sibling, who had already fallen asleep, the boy soon drifted off as well.
While thinking about whose head he would strike from behind tomorrow to make money.
***
On the way back with the cat in my arms.
The one who had created this entire mess by escaping its warm, comfortable home cried out.
“MEEEOOW!”
It was irritating that the cat rubbed its face against my chest, unaware of my complicated feelings.
At the same time, I wondered what I could expect from an animal that could not speak.
I quietly stroked its head and back.
As it purred, Anna's voice tickled my ear.
“Johan, is it really all right to come away like this? No matter how I look at them, they seemed rather strange.”
“It cannot be helped.”
I sighed.
The place the cat had run into, Subura, was another world within Raechia.
In the early days after the old Empire fell and refugees fled to the peninsula before settling here.
Those who had arrived with nothing had no leeway to care for the weak.
The weak—people without families, the disabled, the elderly, and children—were driven out of the city without anyone caring for them.
Subura was the place where the naturally excluded weak had gathered to survive.
Now, with an estimated population of more than ten thousand residents, it was a Demonic Realm that had become difficult to deal with.
Having recalled that much from the Sword Saint's memories, I gave Anna a faint sigh of warning.
She had only come here with her father a year ago, and I did not want her to make a mistake.
“Do not ever think of going in there alone. If you make a mistake, you will really die.”
“Is it that bad? There is a place like that in Raechia?”
“Violence is ordinary there, and murder is a regular event. It is not a crime there; it is encouraged instead.”
Anna's face twisted in disgust, but even that was an understatement.
It had been around eight hundred years since the abandoned had gathered and lived together.
It had already been six hundred years since they had even suspected and rejected the helping hand extended by the Raechia Council after it finally had the means to offer aid.
From a certain point onward, Raechia had given up as well, treating it as a jar of filth into which it dumped things it could not handle.
There would always be people with defects, after all.
Without distinction between criminals and the poor, they threw every troublesome thing into Subura.
As long as they kept the lid closed, the filth inside could neither be seen nor smelled.
Knowing that this was conduct seen in any large city, I smiled bitterly.
“Anna, this is not a problem we can do anything about.”
The realm of politics was beyond what a young, powerless boy and girl could do anything about.
The boiling blood of a boy protested against it, but the memories of the seasoned Sword Saint told me with frightening coldness.
That one sword and a few people could not eliminate poverty.
That they could not change a Demonic Realm even worse than a slum twisted to its limits.
“What we can do is hold out a hand to those people. Even that is possible only if they come out themselves.”
At my words, Anna looked utterly deflated.
She was kind by nature, and all she had seen here was the city's bountiful, sunlit side.
It was only natural that she could not regain her composure after confronting the city's shadow for the first time.
Forcing a gentle smile, I patted her shoulder.
“Still, someone as clear-headed as that child will surely come out here someday. When that time comes, let us help him.”
“PURRRR.”
Yes. Like this cat purring in my arms, I hoped that those children, so much like wild animals, would find the courage to come to us.
With that vague wish, I turned away.
Wanting to change the subject for now, I brought up something sweet.
“Shall we go back to the guild? We have completed the mission, so let us eat something delicious!”
“Ooh! I want a twisted doughnut covered in sugar!”
Andrea, who had been watching the serious mood in silence, cheered, and Anna finally snorted despite herself.
“You look like all you would do is tear into meat, so what is with tea and snacks? It does not suit you at all!”
“Are you discriminating against people? Everyone likes sweets!”
Watching the children's smiles bloom brightly like spring flowers, I found myself smiling as well.
Laughing and chattering with our shoulders bouncing together, we returned to the guild building, which had become another home.
While forcing myself to ignore the bitter taste lingering in my mouth.