Unaware of the catastrophe standing directly before him, the hulking man continued to jeer, his voice dripping with mockery.
"Let me guess—you're expecting me to cough up the girl's location, right? You aren't the first to try this, kid, and believe me, you won't be the last."
"..."
Charlie remained silent. He let the quiet stretch out, granting the man a final moment to waste his breath before Charlie personally escorted him to the afterlife.
"Sure, I could tell you." The brute chuckled, clearly amused. "But everything has a price. Information isn't free."
By now, the atmosphere in the bar had shifted entirely in the gang leader's favor. The other patrons—low-life adventurers and small-time thugs—watched Charlie with sneers and muffled laughter. They were sharking for the moment the young man would break.
Finally, the man adjusted his seat, peeling his back off the creaking wooden chair to sit upright.
"So, kid, you know how to play cards?" he asked, his calloused fingers sliding a single card from the messy deck on the table. "Since you had the guts to walk in here alone, you must be pretty confident in your strength, yeah? But I'm a man who hates violence, so I figure we can settle this with a game. I'll wager the information you're looking for. You can bet your gold—or, if your pockets are empty, you can put yourself on the line."
The man's grin widened, revealing the ugly truth behind Anna's disappearance.
"That's how this all started, after all. A pathetic excuse of a father gambled his only daughter on a hand of cards, lost big, and was forced to hand the girl over to us."
Despite his arrogant front, the big man was no fool. He sensed that the figure beneath the cloak was likely an adventurer, or at least someone with power worth respecting. By proposing a gamble, he was attempting a preemptive strike—dragging Charlie into a "battlefield" where he held total control over the rules.
"Are you finished?" Charlie interrupted. His voice was like ice creeping across the floorboards. "Don't waste your breath. I already know exactly where she is. I only came here for one reason: to pull you all out by the roots."
He took a single step forward. Nearby, several men instinctively reached for their weapons.
"I have no interest in playing your games. Besides, I can already guess the outcome. Even if I won, bottom-feeders like you would just break your word. Expecting integrity from a swarm of cockroaches is an exercise in futility."
"..."
The bar fell into a sudden, suffocating silence. The clinking of glasses and the rowdy laughter vanished, replaced by a thick, murderous intent that began to saturate the room.
The leader stunned for a moment before erupting into a hollow, jagged laugh.
"Ha! So the brat knows us well enough, does he? Unfortunately, kid, dropping the act in a place like this is a fatal mistake. You just dug your own grave." He gave a sharp, brutal signal with his hand. "Kill him!"
In an instant, dozens of men and Demi-Humans unsheathed their blades, lunging from every direction with bloodthirsty intent. Charlie remained still, his expression as flat and unreadable as a frozen lake.
"Listen well. Anyone with the intent to kill must be equally prepared to be killed."
A Pallum darted in from the side with blinding speed, aiming a dagger at Charlie's ribs. With a movement almost too fast for the eye to track, Charlie caught the small creature's wrist, twisting until the bone snapped with a sickening crack, and snatched the dagger in one fluid motion.
The next second, the bar turned into a slaughterhouse.
*PU-CHI!* *PU-CHI!* *PU-CHI!*
Charlie moved like a shadow of death dancing between flashes of steel. Without hesitation, without so much as a blink, the massacre began. The dagger in his hand swept across the throat of a seven-foot adventurer, severing the carotid artery before the man even realized he'd been hit.
Without waiting for the body to hit the floor, Charlie spun, driving the blade deep into the heart of an enemy behind him, then ripped it out to pierce the skull of the next through an eye socket.
Every strike was an instant kill—precise, efficient, and devastatingly cruel. No screams escaped their throats; the only sounds were the wet thud of parting flesh and the rhythmic splatter of blood beginning to flood the floor.
He executed them one by one with the cold professionalism of a man who had discarded his humanity for a darker brand of justice.
From the start, Charlie hadn't left the outcome to luck. While the leader had been busy gloating, Charlie had been silently weaving Spirit Arts throughout the room. An invisible barrier now sealed the bar in total isolation.
As the thugs realized the sheer horror of the "prey" they had provoked, mass panic erupted. They tried to kick down the doors and leap through the windows, only to slam into transparent walls as hard as tempered steel.
Their exit was sealed.
Less than a minute. That was all it took for Charlie to transform the rowdy bar into a mass grave. He finished them all without exception—even the women involved in the syndicate did not escape his blade. In the face of evil, Charlie knew no mercy based on gender; he held to a principle of grim equality—anyone who raised a weapon or walked in the dark had to be ready for the consequences.
Now, the bar was a landscape of heaped corpses, their faces frozen in masks of terror and disbelief. The pungent, metallic tang of fresh blood hung heavy in the air, pooling on the floorboards until they were slick and dark.
In that dead silence, only one other person still drew breath: the syndicate leader.
The big man's bravado had vanished. Trembling violently, his face a ghostly pale, he knelt in the blood of his own men, begging for mercy in a hoarse, barely audible voice. Without being asked, he began to vomit out every piece of information he had in a desperate, futile attempt to bribe death.
"The Entertainment District! That's... that's where we took her!"
"They gave us the job! 'We'll pay you well, just kidnap the girl without hurting her and bring her here immediately,' they said!"
The man crawled closer, only to be halted by Charlie's frigid gaze.
"A Casino in the Entertainment District, specifically! It's not just any gambling den..."
"Because of outside investment, it grew too fast. Gambling is the biggest industry in this city after the magic stone trade. Even the Guild doesn't have oversight there... it's the only place in Orario that's truly beyond the reach of the law!"
In the past, Orario was often called the "Center of the World," yet it had always lacked one thing: entertainment.
To satisfy the Gods' thirst for amusement, the city authorities had opened the doors to foreign capital from the Opera Kingdom of Meilstora, the Amusement City of Santorio Vega, and other famous realms. As a result, the Entertainment District was now packed with grand theaters and luxury casinos that far exceeded the control of the Guild that built them. The business had grown so rapidly it nearly rivaled the magic stone industry. Because of the massive foreign stakes, the area held a sort of extraterritorial status—a legal dead zone.
"The casino I'm talking about... they work with the Guild and have contracted the Ganesha Familia for security." The man stammered. "Infiltration is impossible! Even if you get in, you'll be caught. It's impossible, even for someone like you!"
"From what I hear, this specific casino is a playground for High Class Adventurers, Gods, and rich nobles from abroad. If anything happens to them, Orario's reputation is ruined! The Ganesha Familia has a roster of First-Class Adventurers; they're the top dogs here. You don't stand a chance!"
The man tried to use the weight of the Ganesha Familia's name to intimidate Charlie, hoping fear would halt the blade pointed at him.
"You don't need to tell me what I already know. Didn't I say it before?" Charlie said indifferently, his eyes glinting coldly beneath his hood. "The man who bought Anna is a dwarf named Terry Cervantes. He's the one pulling the strings behind that corporation, and the one who controls street rats like you."
"...!!!"
The man's eyes bulged, his mouth hanging open in sheer shock. Even he, a link in the distribution chain, hadn't known the buyer was someone of Terry Cervantes' stature.
*SWOOSH!* *PUCHI!*
Charlie had no interest in wasting more words. With a casual flick of his wrist, he hurled the dagger. The weapon blurred through the air, piercing the leader's skull before he could even squeeze out a final cry.
Turning away, Charlie walked toward the exit without a single glance at the mountain of corpses behind him.
As he stepped out through the ruined doors, the once-silent alleyway was suddenly flooded with the harsh glow of magic lamps. A group of men had surrounded the exit, weapons drawn. They were members of the Ganesha Familia, the guardians of Orario's order, out on their nightly patrol.
"Don't move! Hands up and get on your knees!" one of the Ganesha members barked with the practiced authority of a peacekeeper. "You're surrounded! One wrong move and we'll use force. You're under arrest by the Ganesha Familia on suspicion of rioting and murder. Surrender now if you want to stay alive!"
Charlie let out a long, weary sigh, his shoulders sagging in annoyance. He looked up at the Orario night sky for a moment before muttering under his breath.
"Haaah... classic. The police—or whatever you call yourselves in this world—always have an incredible talent for showing up exactly when everything is over. You really are consistent at being late."
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