25 - Career Incident

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“Surely there are less obvious ways of telling me to go die?” Rei’s voice was laced with sarcasm, but there was no mistaking the bitterness behind it.

Her hand unconsciously brushed over her abdomen, where a bruise from her last encounter still throbbed faintly, a painful reminder of Berto’s assault. She winced. The thought of jumping back into ‘real combat’ made her stomach churn; her body wasn’t even at half capacity.

Elena leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with that irritating enthusiasm she seemed to carry like a weapon.

“You won’t be going solo, obviously. I wouldn’t throw such a great too—” her words revealing her true feelings for a moment, quickly recovering with her usual smile.

“--asset like you into the bin after barely using you!” She ended.

‘So she admits she would cast me into the bin once my use has run out, this shitty boss …’ Rei felt her jaw tighten, the grinding of her teeth almost audible. The casual way Elena wielded her power, the arrogance behind her words—it made Rei’s blood simmer.

‘Was this the confidence of those with power?’ She thought.

“Now now, there’s no need to get heated. This is in your interest too, I’m sure you know that Red Hilt operates on an almost purely meritocratic basis so if you do this you can even earn extra rewards!” Elena spoke with the practiced air of someone dangling a treat in front of a dog, her smile saccharine.

Sadly Rei wasn’t so simple minded.

“I refuse. Having to accompany combatants into hostile areas wasn’t in the work description! You told me that this was the only work I would be doing!”

“I guess I lied then.” Elena reclined and shrugged her shoulders.

“Kugh!” The casual way she said it hit Rei like a punch to the gut. A frustrated noise escaped her, the words caught in her throat. Her indignation was suffocating, her appeal to reason swatted aside with ease.

“Besides, don’t you think you should take extra work as compensation for all of your extra snacks during break?” Elena teased.

“Kugh!?” Rei visibly recoiled upon hearing this.

Rei justified her overeating derived from the Essence of Gluttony’s effect by saying she deserved at least that much as extra compensation outside her meagre payroll.

It was similar to an overworked white-collar worker taking advantage of her company’s ‘free coffee’ policy as a form of feeble rebellion against the system.

Only in this case it wasn’t just the white-collar taking in more coffee than what was normal, but drinking every packet and then going on to eat ten of her company’s complimentary mess hall lunches and then using company wifi to download twenty terabytes of digital content.

In short it was actually damaging to the company’s operations and Elena was implying that whatever Rei’s opinion was didn’t matter in the subject and that she should instead be glad that there’s even rewards in it for her.

Rei clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms. She wanted to lash out, to snarl something biting and cut Elena down with her words. But the truth of it was, she was cornered. No matter how she framed it, Elena held all the cards.

The rewards—extra merit, the promise of climbing the ladder just a little higher—it dangled in front of her like a lifeline, thin and fragile.

“I guess contributing more wouldn’t be too bad …” Rei muttered, her voice deflated, eyes averted. It wasn’t an agreement; it was surrender.

Carrot and the stick.

 

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Two days had passed since then, and the bruise on Rei's upper torso had all but faded. What was once a black-and-blue patch the size of her palm had shrunk into a faint, barely visible blotch against her soft yet firm skin.

Several times much faster than what the average human’s recovery rate was

“So she wasn’t just a quack doctor then …?” Rei mused, puzzled by the unexpected effectiveness of the remedy.

Though impressed, the quick recovery also annoyed her. It meant she couldn’t delay the field mission any longer—much to Elena’s quiet amusement.

At least the day hadn’t been as troublesome as she’d feared.

“Boring day today, isn’t it.” A flat, raspy voice remarked behind her, followed by a loud yawn. The voice belonged to none other than the man shadowing her every step, Hwan Seong.

“Truly, Manager Hwan.” Rei replied with a professional glee.

Hwan Seong, second in command at Red Hilt, was a man whose presence spoke volumes without him needing to say much.

‘A bonafide Traveller …’ Rei thought, glancing sideways at the towering figure beside her.

Clad in black-and-red Murim garments, his sword hung ominously at his hip like an unspoken threat. His hair was dark, almost jet-black, and his eyes carried the weight of fights unseen by those in this world.

Rei had heard of his reputation, how he rose to his position not through magic or political manoeuvring, but through sheer martial prowess—quite unlike Elena, who used both magic and administration to claw her way up.

'He’s like a walking deterrent,’ Rei thought. Wherever they went, eyes lingered on his sword, and anyone considering resistance quickly reconsidered. Cooperation flowed as smoothly as water, and for that, Rei was grateful.

“Are you sure you’re not a Traveller?” Hwan Seong asked, his sharp gaze falling on her once more. Something about Rei’s appearance, her black hair specifically, set off his suspicions.

"I don’t remember much, but I do know I’m from another world but somehow can’t access magic.” Rei explained with a lie and a truth, Hwan Seong knew there was much more to it than that but didn’t really dig much into it as he had his own secrets to hide.

Not that Rei was privy to answering, considering that’s not what she came all the way to the shitter parts of Guella for.

All Rei had to do was fill-in for Elena, going around from notable establishments in the city and remind them they were missing their payments both to the government and the police, do safety inspections and notify them of upcoming government events.

“Olles Silverworks is off … so the last one for today is … Bonomo’s Drinks by Leon Bonomo.” Rei said as she stared down at the last establishment on her paper.

Hwan Seong’s face lit up at the mention of the place. “Ah, Bonomo’s! I know that one. It’s a great spot, only five minutes from here. Always filled with good people.” His voice carried an unusual warmth as he reminisced.

Rei raised an eyebrow, somewhat relieved. If Hwan Seong had already been to the place, that could only mean a smoother visit. “You’ve been there before?” she asked, feeling a sense of ease start to wash over her. Perhaps today would end without incident after all.

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“Oh yes, it’s a lively joint. The owner even gave me a free drink last time.” Hwan Seong smiled broadly, lost in the memory.

“Filled with people, huh?” Rei replied, her own skepticism creeping in as they approached the building.

What she saw, however, was the opposite of what Hwan Seong had described. Bonomo’s Drinks stood out against the dilapidated backdrop of Guella with its neat exterior, the sign hanging above the door freshly painted and welcoming.

But it was ... quiet. Too quiet.

“Doesn’t seem too lively to me,” Rei muttered, her rising suspicion gnawing at her.

Hwan Seong’s confident grin faltered slightly, but he quickly shrugged it off. “It’s still daytime, and it’s a Monday. You know how it is—things don’t get rolling until later.”

Rei nodded absently, though the uneasy feeling in her gut remained. Something wasn’t adding up. She pushed open the double doors, stepping inside with Hwan Seong close behind her.

 

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‘Ah …’ Rei was already regretting being there.

Her eyes darted across the room—two women, one older and one younger, both trapped in the hands of the men surrounding them. The older woman’s clothes were halfway undone, her face contorted with terror as the group of about fifteen men leered at them. Armed with crude knives and clubs, they were nothing more than back-alley thugs. But the danger they posed was all too real, especially to Rei, who still bore the memory of nearly dying to a man with nothing but his bare hands.

At the centre of the room, a barely conscious old man lay obviously beaten black and blue. The tavern itself was in disarray, furniture shattered and decorations ripped down, as if the very soul of the place had been violated.

‘So much for a quiet day…’ Rei thought bitterly. Both she and Hwan Seong had already come to the same grim conclusion about the scene before them.

The older woman’s eyes locked onto Rei, desperation filling her gaze. She tried to speak, her lips trembling as a weak plea for help began to form, “P-Please hel–”

“Shut.” The thug standing nearest to her—the cleanest of the lot, clearly their leader—cut her off. He clamped a hand over her mouth, silencing her with a mocking shushing gesture.

He stepped forward with a casual grin, his tone light and friendly, as though they were old friends meeting for drinks rather than adversaries in a blood-soaked den of cruelty.

“Hello there, friends. This one is called Monte.” Monte introduced himself with unsettling cheerfulness, as if the chaos and violence around him were all part of some twisted game. His eyes flickered with amusement as he sized up Rei and Hwan Seong, clearly unbothered by the scene they had just walked in on.

Rei struggled to suppress her disgust, maintaining a tight, neutral expression as Monte beckoned the younger girl—who had been roughly handed a bottle of wine—to serve them. She moved with shaky hands, barely holding it together as she poured wine into cups for Rei, Hwan Seong, and Monte. Her face was streaked with tears, her eyes hollow and broken.

“That will be all, girl,” Hwan Seong said softly, dismissing her. The words were a lifeline, and she bolted from the room, dragging her mother with her. The other thugs, seeing no reason to keep the women anymore, let them go with sneers and laughter, their twisted entertainment for the moment over.

Rei’s stomach churned as she watched them flee to the back, away from their tormentors. At least they were safe now, for the moment.

Rei started.

“I wasn’t aware you were Leon Bonomo, that was quite the display to be showing your patrons isn’t it?” Rei tries to make small-talk, knowing full well that the thug before her wasn’t at all the legal property owner.

“Oh no. I’m not Old Leon.” Monte turns around on his seat to point at a run-down old man, beaten black and blue and barely breathing.

“That would be him right there.” He points to the barely-breathing body on the floor, as if he were proud of his work and making Rei feign surprise.

“I wasn’t aware this fine establishment changed hands.” Rei returns Monte’s comment about ‘fine establishment’.

“Well it's very recent you see, Old Leon hasn't been paying his protection fees lately so we've decided to confiscate the tavern for our own familia's needs.” Rei vaguely understood what happened upon hearing Monte explain the situation, and decided on a simple answer.

‘It’s not my problem then.’ Rei told herself.

She justified it by saying that clearly Sir Bonomo wasn’t quite in the condition for an audit or any form of action at the moment, meaning that Rei could hightail it out of there with her pride intact as she was only sent by Elena for recordkeeping and surveying, with arrests being a last resort.

In truth, Rei just really didn’t want to get involved. She was sympathetic to Leon’s cause, sure. She was a villain, not a monster.

But she just really didn’t want to get her hands dirty in a fight she’ll so obviously lose.

“Ah, alright then. I guess we’ll be on our wa–” Rei stood up, resolving herself to leave before being interrupted by Hwan Seong.

“There’s a problem with that confiscation, you see.” Hwan Seong said, and upon detecting that her plan wouldn’t work quite as expected she sat back down hoping she could still fix it.

“And what would that be, good ser?” Monte looks up at Hwan Seong, making Rei sigh in exhaustion already.

“Sir Bonomo pays us his protection fees too.” Rei decides to try and commit, despite her clear opposition to continuing dialogue.

“Oh, well that's a bit of a complication then. Awkward ain't it? Perhaps we can renegotiate some other time on this matter then?” Monte pondered for a bit before offering to resolve it in a peaceful manner some other time.

“That would be wonderfu–” Rei appreciated that Monte was of the same mind as her, as much of brutes his company was, but unfortunately the brute next to her didn’t take the same attitude.

“No. The negotiation starts now.” Hwan Seong said, the matter clearly final from the tone of his voice.

“Right right … and may I know who exactly it is that I am negotiating with?” Monte decides to ask for details at this point, sceptical of whether or not the Traveller in front of him was even in a position to be negotiating anything.

Rei looks at Hwan Seong, who was slowly losing his patience with Monte and back at him again and proceeded to introduce.

“This is Manager Hwan Seong, second in command of the Red Hilt Job Centre, one of the recently hired auxiliary mercenary corps of the City’s Watch granted the status of ‘Priority Overseer’ by the Lord of Guella.” Rei made it sound flashier than what it actually was, and just by looking at Monte visibly recline from the information she could already tell what he was thinking.

‘Up and jumped cutthroats, no different than us.’ A fair assessment, though Rei’s opinions on whether it was actually fair may have been influenced by her own biases.

“Now that we both know about each other, here’s how it’s going to go.” Hwan Seong drinks the rest of his wine, finishing it in a swift motion.

“You will leave this man and his family alone, return their property and from henceforth swear to never interfere on their matters again.” He leaned in.

“Or what?” Monte asked, in a bit of a mocking tone. But upon looking at Hwan Seong and Rei shrinking he could tell what the reply would be.

“We pay our bribes ser, this is against the obligations of the City’s Watch against us.”

“And you’re going to keep paying us, just not with their money.” Hwan Seong replied coldly against the final appeal of reasoning from Monte, prompting him to look at his men behind him already holding their weapons and then back at Hwan Seong again.

“Listen here, you invader scum. This isn’t going to go how you think it will.” Monte drops the collaborating attitude.

“You finally put the mask off your ugly mug, not that it was hiding much.” Hwan Seong smiles seeing such a move.

The easiest way to break people of logic was to become illogical, become ungovernable.

“Hwan Seong, I don’t think this is the right course of actio–” And just like Monte, Rei didn’t really feel like appreciating where she thought things were going from here.

“Shut up, rat. The men are talking.” Rei was cut off by Monte who had lost his cool, which made her look upon Hwan Seong and simply nodded.

Smiling once more upon seeing this, Hwan Seong thereafter looked upon Monte to give his final dialogue.

“Listening to you talk down to my partner like that has made me thirsty.”

Hwan Seong then went on to reach for the bottle …

And then reversed his grip on the neck, upon which the glass bottle glowed in an eerie purple aura.

‘Sword Qi!’ Rei recognised the phenomena.

Rei only had a moment to process it, before with one swift motion Hwan Seong had already swung it across Monte’s jaw.

First he felt nothing as he tried to speak.

But then as the pain registered and the blood flowed, it became clear what had happened to Monte, Rei, and his men now just standing up and drawing their knives and clubs.

Everything below his nose had disappeared.

“I’m going to drink the blood of you thug cunts and then piss it out with the biggest smile on my face.” Hwan Seong grabbed the entirety of the table and then threw it aside, brandishing his unbroken Qi-clad glass bottle.

Monte’s men didn’t hesitate. As one, they surged forward, faces twisted with rage, weapons raised. The tension crackled in the air like a storm about to break.

“Alright, time for me to make my leave then.” Rei simply stood up after seeing that all dialogue has failed, her words almost casual as though she were excusing herself from a dull conversation. She backed toward the door, eyes flicking between the chaos as Hwan Seong hurled himself at the incoming wave.

She didn’t want to have any involvement in this, plus she just washed her clothes very recently and there was still some of Berto left.

But just as she neared the exit, a hulking figure blocked her path.

“Hey Monte, what’s going on over there!?” The thug was massive, a slab of muscle and fat wrapped in a greasy tunic, a crooked knife in his hand glinting in the dim light.

Rei didn’t hesitate. Her hand slipped to the small blade concealed beneath her cloak, and with a single swift motion, she thrust upward.

“Urrghk!?” The thug’s eyes went wide, the blade sinking into his throat with a sickening squelch. His hands flew to the wound, fingers scrambling to stem the torrent of dark red blood gushing from his severed artery. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to the floor in a heap, gurgling as life drained from him.

Rei wasn’t about to grossly mishandle an easy kill twice now.

“You bitch!” Another knife comes at Rei, the audio barely alerting her to duck and back up.

‘There’s one more …’ Rei reacted first by lunging in to try and counter-stab the new opponent

“Um … what would you say about talking things out?” Rei tried asking him for permission to leave, as late as it was.

“I’m going to gut you before using you.” The second thug openly declared his intentions to Rei, his plan of making Rei pay for her ambush rattling her.

‘Disgusting bastards …’ Rei thought, a bit alarmed seeing just how high the stakes were.

This was different from her fight with Berto.

Unlike with Berto, Rei didn’t at all have the element of surprise. Rei’s opponent this time around actually had a weapon, and most importantly he didn’t at all have a problem with taking lives.

But even still …

‘I learned from that experience.’ Rei had been enlightened by the fight from her little affair with Johan in the Red Hilt training yard, and this encounter would be different from the one with Berto.

‘I will not end up on the ground squirming desperately for my life again.’ Rei had resolved herself not to display such a humiliating circumstance, especially not in such broad daylight.

Rei’s opponent lunged forward and ran, leveraging his significant size and obviously superior strength in a strategy so obviously deliberated for overpowering his smaller, and weaker opponent.

But Rei was not so caught off-guard and pathetic this time around.

‘Nordend Family Technique: Needle’s Eye!’ Rei mustered the meagre muscular strength she had for an explosive thrust that went past her opponent’s defences.

… And it had made its mark, the sharp blade moving past through hardy flesh and …

‘Right in the liver!’ Rei had assured herself, victory was all but guaranteed now.

But the thug didn’t stop his forward momentum.

His eyes widened, more from rage than pain, and with a primal scream, he threw his entire body weight into her, crashing into her like a falling boulder.

‘This insane bastard!?’ Rei in her surprise didn’t even manage to pull her knife back, and was instead forced to withdraw her hands to defend against the blade coming for her own body.

Rei gasped as the air was driven from her lungs, her feet lifted off the ground as she was slammed into the floor beneath him. The impact rattled her bones, the weight of his body crushing down on her, and for a brief moment, she struggled to catch her breath.

‘It’s over!’ The man had secured his hold on top of Rei, and put both his hands on his knife as he tried to drive it towards Rei who was desperately trying to push it back away from her.

Even if he was mortally wounded, he would at least take the life of the ally of Hwan Seong, who was eager at his work in the background of Rei’s struggle.

“Fuuu … haah!!” Rei exhumed, only being able to helplessly watch the iron come closer to the base of her vision.

At this moment, the sound of lowlives screaming their death throes was drowned out as Rei felt her inferior strength falter as her opponent also used his body weight dropping downwards on her to creep his knife closer to Rei’s face as the seconds passed.

Slowly inching, until the tip was but a hair’s width away from her ruby-appareled eye.

‘Ah …’ Rei thought.

Rei had ended up on the ground squirming desperately for her life again, once more in a position quite similar to how things went with Berto.

But it mattered not.

At the last moment, just before the blade could find its mark, Rei twisted her body with a sharp jerk, letting the thug’s momentum carry the knife past her head. It buried itself deep into the floorboards with a loud thud, splinters flying up from the force.

“Die–!?” The man who was about to kill Rei shouted, but was promptly interrupted when a new hole appeared in his throat, the feeling of steel briefly present before being drawn, the blood flowing down to Rei’s face and exhausted body as the man’s body fell like a log on her.

Seeing the unreliability of keeping only one weapon around, Rei started keeping a hidden knife on her person after the Berto incident.

‘Two weapons are better than one after all.’ Rei thought as she took a small second to collect her calm before pushing the bleeding corpse aside and wiped the blood on her face off even if only by a bit, and took another hostile stance as she held her knife, getting ready for a third opponent.

“Haha! We make a great team you and I, Section Assistant Intern Rei!” Hwan Seong laughed heartily.

To this, Rei could offer no reply and the tavern aside from a hearty laugh was only accompanied by the sound of the glass bottle breaking as it finally fell to the ground after having pierced the head of Rei’s opponent and being used to mangle and mutilate the bodies of fifteen thieving bastards.

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