1.
I’ll skip the annoying explanation.
Repeating myself is a pain, you know?
“...So Silver Wolf, you got the Aeons’ attention?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh...”
The pawnshop, our usual meeting place.
We dragged over a chair and talked with the old man who ran the place.
The gaze of an Aeon is special.
I already knew that, but Silver Wolf was different.
I had already explained it to her.
The kinds of Aeons, the concept of the Paths, and what their existence meant.
The Path of Elation.
Silver Wolf had ended up walking that useless, boring Path that gave you nothing at all.
In the end, I still hadn’t gotten my [Temporal Prism] back either.
“Then how do I use this power?”
“Ask the guy next to you. There’s literally someone right here who walks the Path of Elation.”
“It’s me!”
Silver Wolf blinked at me.
“You?”
“Yeah, me.”
“...I knew you suddenly got stronger about a week ago. So that’s why.”
“Yep!”
Sky Leap and dice-throwing.
The abilities I gained by walking the Path of Elation.
I had no idea what abilities Silver Wolf would gain.
I’d said it before.
Everyone’s Path is different.
And the Path of Elation is just a broad label, nothing more.
The Path manifests in a different form for each person.
“...Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“That you were walking the Path of Elation. You never said a word about that.”
Oh?
What’s this?
Silver Wolf was looking at me like she felt hurt.
I wanted to defend myself by saying I couldn’t help it back then.
I was only half sane.
Adrian is human too, damn it!
How the hell was I supposed to stay normal after hearing, as my final words, “I love you, Adrian”!!!
I killed three Rank 7s, and if there was someone annoying me, I killed them too.
For about three days after my regression, I kept living like that.
Even when Silver Wolf said things out of concern, I couldn’t hear them.
I wanted to fill the emptiness, but I couldn’t.
“...Sumimasen.”
“Forget it.”
“Hey, Lady Silver Wolf, should I do a little performance for you?”
To cheer up Silver Wolf, who was clearly pouting, I tried an old-fashioned grand bow and stole her attention.
I even did a backflip and put on a little circus act.
Apparently realizing I was sincerely apologizing, Silver Wolf came over, hugged me tightly, and sat on my lap.
“We’re partners.”
“Of course.”
“So you’re not allowed to hide things from me.”
“Don’t worry. Losing my head for a bit is unavoidable. It’s my specialty, after all.”
“Even if you lose your head, I want you to rely on me.”
The pawnshop owner watched us from the corner.
“Quit rubbing it in and get the hell out of my shop, you two!”
“Is our relationship really only that much?”
“...You’re a broker and a fixer. That’s all.”
“I’m seriously feeling betrayed. You lied to me about being able to walk a Path when you weren’t even walking one.”
“I never said I wasn’t walking a Path, did I!?”
The conversation kept going in circles.
Now it was time for something useful.
“Come to think of it, I don’t even know your name. Tell me your name already.”
“My name?”
“...Now that I think about it, I’ve been calling you Old Toad Guy all this time and never even knew your name.”
That’s right.
I’d known this man for over three months.
And I still didn’t know his name.
No idea.
None.
Seriously, I don’t know.
His business card only said something like “So-and-so Pawnshop,” not his actual name.
If I dug through my memories, I vaguely remembered hearing he was from Xianzhou.
And judging by the way this old man acted now, it was obvious he wasn’t ordinary.
“Kimi no namae wa!”
“...What the hell is that supposed to mean now?”
“What is your name!”
Doubt began rising in me.
No way, old man. You’re not some hidden powerhouse, are you?
“I threw my name away. I don’t have one. I committed a grave sin and was cast out.”
“Whoa, a criminal.”
“I had a wife, and I had a daughter. In a single moment of greed and my own desire, I lost everything.”
The old man stared off into the distance, as if recalling the past.
People like that always turn out to be insanely strong later on, don’t they?
I was looking forward to it.
The old man’s story time.
What kind of past did he have?
“I was a blacksmith.”
“...With that body?”
“Hey! Silver Wolf! Sure, I’m all fat and flabby now, but back in my prime, women lined up for me!”
“Dentures clack-clack.”
“Adrian Servet!!!”
Let’s skip the old toad-faced man’s stories about women from the past.
“I was called the greatest master in the Artisanship Commission. I had pride in my work. Making swords was a joy.”
“What’s the Artisanship Commission?”
“The department in the Xianzhou Alliance that handles industry.”
“What’s the Xianzhou Alliance?”
“You son of a...”
I dodged the old toad-faced man, who was about to hit me, and sprinted off while holding Silver Wolf.
If I don’t know something, I say I don’t know.
I can’t just pretend I understand and move on.
“...Think of it as a planet similar to Punklorde. Though it’s not a planet, but a huge ship.”
What he showed us was a single picture.
Inside the picture was a city with Chinese-style clothing and a martial-arts vibe I was familiar with.
“This is ridiculous, seriously.”
Stop mixing genres already!!!
Now it’s wuxia too?
They’ve mixed in even more stuff with interstellar sci-fi.
They’re not using light-body movement and sword control over there too, are they?
Wait, hold on, martial-arts style?
Chinese?
“Chink?”
“L-let me go—! Silver Wolf!”
“No way. If I do, you’ll go over there and hit Adrian.”
“How dare you, how dare you insult the people of the Great Xianzhou as ‘chinks’!?”
“A criminal talking back?”
“I’ll—kill you—! Adrian Servet—!”
There was a commotion.
“So how exactly did you get exiled?”
“Ahem...”
“The fact that you can’t say it means you committed some huge crime.”
The old toad-faced man avoided my eyes.
Just what kind of crime had he committed?
Was he a mass murderer or something?
“Can’t you tell me?”
“...I don’t want to.”
“Well, I guess that can’t be helped. You do know that starting a story and then cutting it off is a serious crime, right?”
There are two ways to make someone angry.
The first is to stop speaking halfway through.
And the second is...
“Hah, it’s all in the past anyway. Nothing to worry about.”
“Ooooh!!!”
“I made a demonic sword.”
“A demonic sword?”
The kind I know, the one that always goes around asking, “Do you need power...?”
“I made quite a lot of them.”
“Even if you made a lot, that’s maybe ten swords...”
“I made 1,382 of them.”
“This guy is completely insane!?”
The old toad-faced man stared into the past with misty eyes.
I slowly backed away with Silver Wolf in my arms.
“Swords worthy of being called my masterpieces.”
“From this moment on, we are no longer acquainted.”
“Then the people who wielded the demonic swords started running wild, and as a result my wife died...”
“Holy shit, there’s someone even crazier than me here.”
1,382 swords?
Was that even a number a human being could make?
And his wife died because of demonic swords?
Silver Wolf and I looked at him with disgust.
Because of that conversation, the pawnshop old man’s rating dropped to zero.
“If my wife hadn’t protected my daughter, my daughter would’ve died too...”
“From this point on, stay within ten meters of us. This is a warning.”
The kind of demonic energy that would make even Satan applaud.
I’ve committed my fair share of sins, but this is on a galactic scale, so the scope is a little bigger.
“I shouldn’t have obsessed over fame. I made excuses, saying it was for my daughter, for my wife. As if the title of corpse smith mattered that much...”
“......”
“I dirtied my master’s name.”
He lowered his head.
Then he started raking his hands through his own hair.
“I lost everything. When my belly was pierced by a demonic sword, I really thought I was going to die, but somehow I survived with this stubborn life of mine.”
“...Old Toad Guy.”
“I couldn’t stay in Xianzhou. My very existence there was a stain, a flaw. So I sealed myself away.”
On the outskirts of Neon City, a hell at the bottom where the poor and the drifters overflowed.
That was where the old man came.
“H-Hold on a second!”
“What is it.”
“If this is hell, then what does that make us living in hell?”
“...I can’t answer that.”
Neon City!
Sure, it’s crawling with bastards!
But it’s still a place where people live!
Not hell!
“So that happened...”
“Don’t look at the past with those misty eyes. You’re a criminal.”
“I miss my daughter...”
“Adrian, give it up. I don’t think he’s listening to us at all anymore.”
It really was a serious past.
1,382 demonic swords was a bit much, though.
“Um, then could you make a demonic sword for me too?”
“...?”
“I need power! Adrian Servet desperately needs a demonic sword!”
Silver Wolf stared at me in shock.
The pawnshop old man stared at me like, What the hell did I just hear?
“Did you not hear what I just said?”
“I did.”
“I said people died because of the demonic sword I made, and my wife died too.”
“That’s that, and this is this, isn’t it?”
This young man needs power.
The fragile Adrian needs evolution, damn it.
“You—son of a—!”
“Silver Wolf, run!”
“You’re the one who made him angry, Adrian...”
I asked just in case, but it looked like a no.
I grabbed Silver Wolf and bolted for the door, easily slipping past the old man as he clutched the back of his neck and sprang up from his chair.
I fled with Silver Wolf.
“If I catch you—!”
“Even with all that fat, you’re ridiculously fast!!!”
The pawnshop owner came charging after us, roaring.
Blue wind and fallen leaves swirled at his feet, keeping pace with me almost exactly as I ran.
Gah!
In the end, before we could be caught, it was faster for the pawnshop owner to collapse from high blood pressure after failing to withstand the sudden exercise.
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