Explosions, falling fire, and now the familiar underground sewers were now filled with a different group of infected.
They lived in the deepest reaches of the underground, a world that never saw sunlight. Their clothes were torn and repeatedly patched together. They survived on scraps scavenged from garbage bins during brief trips to the surface at night. They slept in underground rooms with no windows, no doors, no furniture, and no beds. Their daily lives revolved around hiding and evading the searches of the Armorless Union.
For the Armorless Union, hunting infected had always been a covert operation. Compared to intercepting knights, it was simpler and far more direct, requiring little effort. They only needed to point their crossbows at unarmed infected, making the process fast, convenient, and brutally efficient.
For the infected of Kazimierz, there was only one way to climb upward: to become an infected knight.
In the past, most infected knights were never allowed into the public eye. Before they were officially permitted to participate in knight competitions, they fought in underground arenas, battling to the death for pitiful rewards. Fixed matches were common. They were treated like animals in a cage, existing solely for spectators' amusement. Even if they earned what was advertised as "astonishing rewards," the cost was their own lives and the rapid worsening of their Oripathy.
Under such conditions, an infected knight's lifespan was extremely short. Within a few years, or sometimes only a few months, their bodies would deteriorate so badly that they could no longer move, leaving them to face death helplessly.
Using a short life to earn money for one's family was the fate of the former infected knight.
Things were better now than they had been before. After the Blood Knight spoke out on behalf of infected knights, they finally gained the opportunity to enter formal knight competitions once a series of drafts were passed. At the same time, some Knight clubs began extending offers, recruiting infected knights into their ranks.
Of course, exploitation still existed, and infected knights still died in the arena. Even so, compared to the past, their situation had improved drastically.
This was why infected knights had become so popular. With so many infected, becoming an infected knight seemed to require only one thing: the ability to fight. There was no need to think about anything else. Moreover, once infected, one could use Originium Arts without a staff, which was an enormous advantage.
Everyone dreamed of becoming someone like the Blood Knight. He had a powerful backer who built a Knight club around him. He could move freely and even endorse products from the Fate Knight' own companies. It was the ideal life every infected knight imagined.
But ideals were grand, and reality was cruel.
Becoming an infected knight was not something one could simply decide to do. The knightly class system of Kazimierz existed precisely to restrict that path. To become a junior knight, one had to pay an application fee and pass a combat test. For ordinary knights, these requirements were reasonable. For infected people, they were nearly impossible.
The application fee was insignificant to ordinary citizens, but for infected people with no stable income who survived by scavenging, it was an enormous sum. They saved every scrap of money to afford it.
As for the combat test, it was administered by the Knights Association, which was closely tied to the Chamber of Commerce. As the number of infected knight applicants rose, the Association adjusted the "strictness" of the exam accordingly. It was not uncommon for aspiring infected knights to be beaten half to death by the examiners.
Becoming an infected knight was brutally difficult and deeply hostile to the infected.
Yet it was the only path left to them, their sole means of climbing upward.
The Armorless Union's role was to clear out infected settlements while keeping their numbers in check. Since the enactment of laws regarding infected knights, countless infected had poured into the city, creating serious problems for both residents and administrators. In response, the Chamber of Commerce began issuing orders to the Armorless Union to purge infected communities.
The Armorless Union, finding little success in hunting knights, eagerly accepted such commissions. The two sides quickly found common ground.
These orders were nothing new. When Felix first arrived in Kawalerielki, he had already encountered the Armorless Union clearing out an infected stronghold.
___
"…Are you ready? Time waits for no one. The Armorless Union will be here soon, and it will be too late if we delay any longer."
The middle-aged man spoke urgently. In the cold drizzle of October, he wore only thin clothing and a tattered vest. His body trembled in the damp chill, and only the fire burning in a bucket offered him a brief moment of warmth.
"I'm coming, Dad."
The young infected girl clutched a rag doll in her arms. She hurried back to the pile of old newspapers that served as her bed and began to pack her things. Besides the dirty rag doll, there were a few smooth pebbles, a carefully kept candy wrapper, and two pretty nylon cords.
That was everything a child could take with her.
"Dad, I'm all packed."
"Good girl. Let's go, quickly."
The father took his daughter's hand and blended into the hurried crowd as they moved forward. What they left behind could hardly be called a home. It was merely a gathering place for dozens of infected. A few days earlier, they had discovered traces of the Armorless Union nearby. After long discussion, they decided to leave and search for a new place to live, somewhere not yet discovered, or an area that had already been checked and deemed safe.
Dozens of people moved carefully through the underground sewers, not daring to make a sound. Even in the cold of the night, their teeth chattered, and their bodies trembled like leaves in the wind. The damp air swept over their thin frames. Snot ran down their noses, but no one dared to wipe it away.
They clenched their teeth and advanced, fast yet silent, toward their destination.
Above them, a crimson drone flashed its lights in the night sky. The camera at its front, equipped with a thermal scanning lens, faithfully captured everything moving through the sewers below when suddenly—
There is Explosion.
Then Flames erupted.
The middle-aged man wrapped his daughter tightly in his arms. In the chaos, he glanced ahead and saw the infected in front already riddled with wounds from the drone's earlier suicide bombing. Behind him, his companions fled in panic, crying out as they ran. Two arrows soon struck their backs, pinning them to the ground.
The man gritted his teeth, forcing down his screams of despair. He grabbed his daughter and ran deeper into the sewers. At this moment, he no longer cared about the others. When disaster struck, everyone fled for their own lives. All he wanted was for his daughter to survive.
The drone pursued them relentlessly. The man raised his arm to shield his face, pressed his daughter behind him, and slammed himself into the drone just as it was about to explode.
Boom—
The shockwave blew the doll from the girl's hands.
"Dad… Dad?"
Pain surged through her body. When she struggled out of her father's embrace, the first thing she saw was the blood soaking his clothes.
"Dad!"
"…I'm here."
The man's face was smeared with blood, a deep gash split his forehead. He gripped his daughter's hand and shouted, "Run. Now!"
"Dad!" the girl cried, refusing to let go.
The man took a sharp breath, as if he wanted to say more, but in the next instant, his face drained of color.
Several hooded figures from the Armorless Union were already standing in front of them.
"I didn't expect a child to be involved. What do we do? I don't want to kill a kid."
"I was prepared for this when I accepted the job, but still… I can ignore everything else, but I can't bring myself to do this to a child."
"So what, then? We finally landed this mission. Are we really just going to walk away?"
"We can't just let them go, can we?"
"I didn't touch the infected kids I ran into last time either. Sigh. Isn't this what Armorless Union jobs are like? Even if I spared the kids, I still killed plenty of adult infected."
Several members of the Armorless Union stood before the father and daughter, crossbows in hand. Their faces were hidden behind masks, hesitation flickering in their eyes. In this tense moment, they leaned close to one another and whispered among themselves.
One of them glanced at the girl with a strange expression, then shifted his gaze to the middle-aged man who stood in front of her, shielding her with his body.
"What do we do? Kill the old one and leave the young one?"
"Are you insane? Hatred toward the person who killed your father can never be reconciled. What are you thinking?"
"Then what? Maybe we should just turn around and go home."
As they argued, another group of Armorless Union members, also armed with crossbows, approached from the distance.
"Why haven't you taken action?"
"Tsk…"
The group exchanged glances but did not answer the question, which sounded more like an interrogation.
"Adventurers, I'm asking you a question. Why aren't you making your move?" The newcomer wore a platinum-gold uniform and a mask. He was a Kuranta male, a newly promoted Platinum-ranked member of the Armorless Union, cultivated to fill the vacancy left by the previous Platinum-ranked assassin.
Several adventurers crossed their arms and shrugged. "We don't harm children."
"Idiot."
Platinum said coldly, "As hounds of the Armorless Union, when have you ever shown compassion? This isn't the first time you've spoken up in a situation like this. Don't you know that infected children gathering together can cause enormous chaos? Wasn't the Reunion Movement in Ursus made up almost entirely of children?"
"That was brainwashing and manipulation."
"Do you really believe there are no brainwashed people in Kazimierz, no one filled with hatred toward society?"
The atmosphere slowly reached a deadlock. The Platinum assassin raised his crossbow, loaded an arrow, and said, "Move aside. That's an order."
An adventurer stepped forward and blocked the crossbow with his hand. "Lord Platinum, you should understand one thing. The Armorless Union isn't an organization you can push around. Your leader was already incredibly lucky to get us adventurers to work with you. With our help, your mission completion rate is so high now, isn't it?"
"Also, we adventurers hate being threatened more than anything."
Behind Platinum's mask, his teeth ground together. The adventurers' free-spirited nature was infuriating. It made the Armorless Union's upper ranks both rely on them and despise them. Especially Platinum, who dealt with them most often, wished he could cut open their heads to see what they were thinking. They were hunting dogs, yet they hesitated over whether to kill or not. Did they have any awareness of what they were?
The Armorless Union members behind him also viewed the adventurers as outsiders. You can choose whether to kill or not, but what about us?
With the power of Originium Arts and near-immortality, the adventurers clearly had advantages. The assassins could not help but feel a trace of envy toward their unrestrained behavior.
Platinum's gaze was sharp, and the adventurer did not back down. Just as conflict was about to erupt, a flash of sword light cut through the darkness, its brilliant arc aimed straight at Platinum.
"Hmph!"
Even while speaking, Platinum had not let his guard down. He bent backward at an unnatural angle, the blade passing close to his nose, along with a streak of red hair.
"The Fate Knight, Flametail Knight," Platinum said indifferently. "We weren't looking for you, yet you chose to provoke us. Very well."
Flametail Knight's strike missed. She seized the middle-aged man and the little girl and vanished into the dark underground sewers.
Platinum raised his head and barked, "What are you standing around for? Chase them!"
The assassins behind him, visibly relieved, rushed after the direction Flametail Knight had fled. Platinum glanced back at the adventurers, who had clearly relaxed, his eye twitching slightly. "We'll settle this score when we return."
"Move," Platinum said, leading more assassins deeper into the waterways.
The adventurers stared at one another in confusion.
"Are we really going after them?"
"Uh… aren't the Fate Knight part of Tomorrow's Development? The ones under the King of Dawn? Are we sure we still want to get involved?"
"But the King of Dawn wouldn't bother with small fry like us, right?"
"Damn it, I don't want to get targeted by professional players. You don't know this, but my best buddy ran into Kumori on a quest last week!"
"That's insane."
Flametail Knight could hear pursuit closing in behind her. She knew she shouldn't be here. The Fate Knight were currently focused on pre-match drills and training. The Blood Knight had specifically warned them about the Armorless Union. With the support of adventurers, they were far stronger than before. If they wanted to confront them, it would be best to move in groups.
But when Flametail Knight saw the middle-aged man shielding his daughter, and heard her cries, all other thoughts vanished.
Only one thought remained.
I have to save them.
In Kazimierz, what exactly does it mean to be infected?