Chapter 102 October 3, 2022
Chapter 102 – A Blooming Blossom in The Abandoned Alley (2)
“Pardon? Robbing the Kunst auction house, you said?”
Violeta mumbled aloud she heard Ludger’s words and covered her mouth with her hand right.
There were a lot of listening ears around them.
Usually, she wasn’t someone who would make that kind of trivial mistake, but that’s how shocked she was.
“Since there are a lot of people here, let’s go back to the hideout and talk there.”
“Oh. There’s a hideout as well?”
“If we’re going to settle down in the future, at least two or three hideouts or more are bound to be needed.”
Alex shrugged his shoulders while thinking that it couldn’t be helped and he followed Ludger’s footsteps from behind.
“Rather than that, Leader. When you say that you’re gathering people, do you mean that you’re gathering those members?”
“Those members?”
“You know. The unique people whom you always mention… Well, aren’t all of them people?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
Ludger nodded his head while confirming.
“The rest of them are already coming to this city, apart from you, anyway.”
“Oh. I’m hella curious about it. In the end, what kind of people are they going to be? What should I do if they’re more ordinary compared to what I expect them to be?”
“If you say ordinary, what are you thinking of?”
“You know. They’ll still have the talent, but their appearance, maybe…”
Ludger halted for a moment at those words.
He pondered about something briefly before continuing to walk.
“You don’t have to worry about that, at least.”
* * *
Leathevelk’s train station…
The station which tens of thousands of people visited daily already bustled with crowds in the middle of the day.
The clockwork machines that were installed all over the place were working smoothly and signaled the news of the next incoming train.
Some people were sitting on their seats and checking their tickets, thinking that it wasn’t their turn yet, and the people who were about to board the train took care of their belongings while standing on the platform to wait for the soon approaching train.
Chooooo!
Soon, a train arrived in the station while gushing out its steam along with a horn from far away.
“Elly, let’s go.”
A woman was pulling a kid’s hand.
It was probably because she was in a rush and pulled the kid too strongly, but the balloon that the six-year-old kid had been holding slipped away.
“Mom! My balloon!”
“Oh, my…”
The balloon had already risen to a high point that couldn’t be reached by the kid’s hand. The mother also attempted to catch it right away, but it was too late.
The floating balloon had already risen so high up that it became hard for even an adult to catch.
“Balloon!”
It was when the kid was staring at such a sight with tearful eyes…
Hap.
A big, rough hand showed up and grabbed the balloon’s string.
The kid raised her chin and looked up at the person who’d caught the balloon.
“Whoaa.”
To young kids, all adults would have looked tall, but even taking that into account, the man in front of him looked extremely gigantic.
Even the people in the surroundings were surprised at the man’s physique, as people stole glances at him as they passed.
“Here.”
The gigantic man bowed his head and passed the balloon to the kid.
The kid’s eyes shone and she received the balloon which had slipped her hand.
“Thanks, Mr. Giant!”
The man with long, white hair that resembled a lion’s mane replied by lightly tilting the brim of his hat that he was wearing.
Step, step
Whenever the gigantic man walked, the people cleared the way from him by themselves.
At that moment, a childish voice was heard from behind him.
“Mr. Pantos. really. You started walking, but do you even know the way?”
Surprisingly, the giant man had a single companion.
As the people were surprised and focused their attention on his physique, they couldn’t even think of looking at the small man beside him.
He was a man who stood in stark contrast with the rough-looking gigantic man.
He was old enough to look somewhere between a kid and a teenager and he also had a beaming smile on his face.
He was a man that could suitably be described with the words “pretty boy”.
The gigantic man, Pantos, stopped and stood in his spot absent-mindedly for a moment at the words of his colleague standing next to him, then he scratched his head with his thick finger.
It was an attitude that he often showed whenever he was embarrassed or felt awkward.
The man with a small physique pushed Pantos’s waist as if he was stabbing it with his forearm and led the way, as he seemingly knew that he would turn out like that.
“Please, follow me. The leader told me where we should go.”
“How do you know?”
“He told it to us through the crystal ball. You were also listening to it, but you don’t know?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Yes, yes. Of course you don’t.”
That was how the unique pair of a man with fine lines and a white-haired gigantic man took their first steps in Leathevelk.
* * *
“Here.”
Ludger had brought Alex and Violeta to a secret hideout that was used by his newly established organization,
.
“You came?”
“Yeah. Hans.”
Hans, who realized that Ludger had arrived, greeted him.
But unlike usual, there were dark circles deeply engraved below his eyes.
“There has been a tiring event recently, I see.”
“Not recently. I was tired even before. A brat whom I didn’t want to encounter the most arrived.”
The subject who had made Hans that tired revealed himself just in time.
“Oh? Hehe. L-long time no see, Boss.”
“Yeah. It has been a long time.”
She was a woman with a gloomy impression.
Her deep tangerine hair which was akin to autumn leaves couldn’t be organized and reminded him of a magpie’s nest.
Her face was pretty enough to make anyone say that she was a beauty, but due to her gloomy atmosphere and snickering along with her trembling eyes, such a merit was diminished.
Violeta looked closely at her appearance and was surprised.
“She… she’s an elf?”
What stood out the most was her ears.
She was a demi-human elf who’d been born with nature’s strength and anyone would say that she was beautiful.
The gloomy woman’s soaring ears above her tangerine hair held the meaning of her true identity.
“Y-yes. I’m an elf~”
As she replied while chuckling like that, it looked exactly like she was someone who’d gotten intoxicated with drugs.
Since it seemed like she wouldn’t be able to spell her name properly in that condition, Ludger introduced the woman.
“She’s Bellaruna Pettana. As you can see, she’s an elf, and she’s mainly in charge of manufacturing drugs and chemicals. She has knowledge in medicine, and she’s also proficient in alchemy.”
“…An elf?”
Alex, who was also meeting Bellaruna for the first time, was shocked at Ludger’s words and asked back.
“Why? Is there a problem?”
“I can’t say that there’s no problem. That person, no, elf. Yeah. You said that Lady Bellaruna is an elf, right?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange? An elf… is manufacturing drugs? And she has broad knowledge in medical treatment?”
Alex’s comment was reasonable.
Elves were forest tribes and the ones who received affections from nature. Thus, elves worshiped nature and extremely loathed artificial things more than anyone else.
Drugs made by human beings and all kinds of chemistry goods that just showed up along with scientific development…
Those were the things that elves hated the most.
Yet there was an elf who manufactured drugs and created chemicals? It was just too unbelievable.
“Not every elf is like that, Alex. The other species wouldn’t think that all human beings are swindlers who only tease women after they see you, right?”
“It makes sense when you put it like that, but don’t you think that your evaluation of me is very mean?”
“And don’t you think that what you’re thinking is such an old-fashioned idea? It has been such a long time since elves accepted the change. Your comment is severely discriminative toward elves.”
Most elves still resided in a huge forest that wasn’t reachable by human feet, but after the war of conquest that’d happened half a hundred years ago, many elves accepted the transformations in the world.
Among them, there were also elves who traveled in order to get to know the bigger world, and there were also elves who got fascinated with science.
“Of course, Bellaruna is someone who’s a frea… strong personality among elves. But her talent is real.”
“Weren’t you about to say freak just now?”
“Anyway, the woman will be a lot of help for us.”
The magic reagent that Ludger used when he was fighting had been made by her as well.
Bellaruna kept grinning wide as she seemingly liked to hear such a compliment.
And as she recalled the reason why she’d gone there, she approached Hans right away.
“N-now. Mr. Hans? Shall we continue our unfinished s-story now?”
“Aaargh! Get lost! You lunatic elf! Hey! Please help me!”
Hans grabbed Ludger’s trouser legs while begging.
“After that crazy elf arrived, I couldn’t even sleep properly! She uses me as an experimental rat every time there’s a chance!”
The past days that seemed like a nightmare flashed by Hans’s eyes like a panorama.
She approached him all the time and attempted to forcefully extort his body tissue.
She stealthily put in weird drugs within the food that he ate.
When he was sleeping at night, she would crawl onto his bed with a scalpel…
“Mi-Mister Hans. What do you mean “lunatic”? I-I’m just someone who seeks after knowledge to find out whether I like the new discovery,” Bellaruna replied while snickering.
“Why did you have to push a knife at me and shout for that knowledge!”
“Th-that’s because Mr. Hans possesses a very fascinating physical type. S-so it’s okay, right? Won’t it be alright for you to lose only one finger? Be-because you don’t know if maybe it’s going to grow back again next time when you transform…”
“Grow up again, my ass! Get lost!”
Ludger sighed.
For the moment, it seemed like he needed to take care of the chaos first.
“Oh? All the people have arrived already, huh?”
There was a bright voice heard from the open entrance.
All the gazes headed in that direction.
A brightly smiling man who seemed to be somewhere in between the age of a kid and teenager was smiling brightly toward them and a gigantic man with long white hair stood next to him.
“Both of you arrived at the appropriate time, I see.”
“Yes. Although we were almost late because Mr. Pantos almost took a weird path again on the way here.”
“I see. Anyway, with this, almost all of the people who should gather are gathered. Come in.”
Ludger clapped his hands and gathered everyone’s gazes toward him.
“There are some of you who already know each other, but there must also be people who are meeting each other for the first time. Let’s get into the detailed story in the meeting room.”
* * *
A variety of people jammed inside the huge room that was made for meetings.
Someone sat on the sofa, someone stood still, and someone else leaned against the wall.
Ludger put half of his buttocks on the work table while opening his mouth.
“All of you have gathered here well. All of you must have known the reason for why I was calling you here. I’m ending the wandering life that I have been going through for a long time now and planning to officially settle down. And at the same time, I’m thinking of creating my own force.”
“And you’re saying that your foothold is going to be in this Leathevelk?”
Ludger nodded his head at Alex’s question, who was sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed and bobbing his chin.
“As all of you already know, I called all of the people gathered here, but most of you probably don’t know each other yet. So, each of you, please simply introduce yourselves.”
It was Hans who stepped forward first.
“I’m Hans. As you already know, I have known big brother for a very long time. Most of the tasks that I do are related to collecting and organizing information.”
It seemed that he didn’t want to be looked down upon, at least, not at that moment.
As Hans put all his strength in his neck, a solemn atmosphere emerged in the room.
“This is the end of my introducti—”
“Hans…”
“What’s the matter?”
“You should speak about the other thing as well.”
“The other thing? No way… until that part?”
As Hans seemingly realized what Ludger was about to say, his expression hardened.
“Are you being sincere?”
“They’re the colleagues who will be with you in the future. You have no choice but to reveal it, as you guys will work together anyway, so it’s better to talk about it now.”
“Ahem. Well, if you say it like that, then…”
After Hans hesitated for a while, he confessed about his real ability.
“I have a somewhat unique physical type. It can be considered exceptional if compared to other people. Even so, it’s not strange or anything like that…”
Since Hans was someone who thought that his ability was a curse, he didn’t really like to describe it with his own mouth.
In the end, Sheridan couldn’t stand Hans, who kept stammering, so she stood up from her seat and approached Hans’s back lightly.
She pulled out an animal fang from her pocket and stabbed it into Hans.
“Aargh!”
Hans screamed.
Hans looked back, and his face was tearful as he saw Sheridan, who chuckled with the animal’s fang that she clutched in her hand.
“Shii… This is why I didn’t want to say it.”
At the same time, he started to transform.
“Oh…”
“Oh, my gosh.”
“Whoaa.”
There were all sorts of reactions.
Anyone would be like that if an ordinary human suddenly had furs growing on his body as he transformed into a half-human, half-beast shape.
On the contrary, the reactions of the people gathered in that place were a bit more boring than expected.
Hans, finishing his transformation, looked at his hands and glared at Sheridan.
“Which animal’s fang did you use?!”
“There was a street cat who was grinding its teeth, so I brought it with me.”
“C-cat?”
Hans hastily stared at the mirror. He had a bizarre appearance which was a mixture of cat and human.
Hans suddenly felt a severe impulse to lick his fur with his tongue.
“Hans, take this.”
Ludger pulled out a reagent ampoule and passed it to Hans.
“Th-thanks.”
Hans, who received the ampoule, injected it into his body right away.
His body size gradually decreased and turned back into his original human appearance.
Ludger opened his mouth.
“As you can see, Hans has a characteristic that lets him transform into whichever beast’s factor he receives into his body. He’s not a fighting agent, but this kind of uniqueness is a merit that only Hans possesses.”
“Pheew. It’s awesome, though? To think that a human being who isn’t even a beastperson can transform like that.”
Alexa’s eyes shone as he seemingly adored the fact.
Ludger looked around at the people who were present.
“And it’s also the case for all of you. As I called all of you here, each of you has your own outstanding abilities.”
They were all kinds of curious people whom Ludger had coincidentally met as he’d wandered all over the continent for a long time.
They were people who possessed special abilities and prominent talents that made them unfit with their surroundings.
Ludger stretched his hand out to them and recommended them to be together with him.
—Because it was only special events that fit special people.
“So, who’s going to introduce themselves next?”
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