At the same time, in the early afternoon…
On the road leading from Central East Town to the noble area in the center of the city, a tumbler raced through the streets with speed that didn’t match its hulking size. It was a type of carriage flower—a gigantic eight-legged turtle with room for twenty people, guided by the playing of a string Symphonist coach driver.
This particular tumbler had been modified with a specially made roof set on the shell and simple seats in rows underneath it. Sitting there were Solists and Symphonists of various races, along with their instruments. Among them were young girls who, free from their studies owing to the Day of Respite, were chatting and considering where to go out that day.
One passenger, however, was a man wearing strange attire. He hid his expression beneath a red bandanna and, despite not carrying a sword, gave off the sharp air of a Solist.
Adonis.
He was in his formalwear, but it was unbuttoned, he’d removed his tie, and it looked unkempt on the whole. It was the same uniform he’d worn during the battle for the Catacombs, woven from water steel and dyed in camellia colors, repaired so as to incorporate the damage he’d taken during the battle into the design with the bloodstains surrounded in golden thread. It bordered on distasteful, but it did suit him, mostly because his body was tense and his figure was naturally supple and lithe. Yet he always carried himself in a way that seemed carefree, like he never engaged with anything unnecessary, so this distinctive attire seemed to highlight his good points.
That said, it did stand out like a sore thumb.
The tumbler came to a stop, and the coach driver’s song fell quiet. Adonis silently got to his feet, and the moment he stepped off the shell, people started whispering about his attire.
“How pretentious…”
“Did you see his eyes? He looks dangerous…”
“No way. If he’s a Solist, then he’s really trying to show off…”
Adonis could hear them, but he didn’t really care. He walked out of the mercantile area, which was silent on the Day of Respite, and passed by the pubs, which by contrast were incredibly lively. He crossed the plaza and training grounds, where many Solists were resting on their day off.
His clothing naturally drew attention, and he could hear people wondering about why he was so overdressed, but it was the scent of a stir, not their voices, that made his nose twitch nervously.
It was within that stir, and between the people refocusing on their time of repose, that he suddenly noticed another presence.
Them again…
Adonis’s lips warped into an eerie smile. As he walked casually through town, there were people who spotted him in the crowd and followed him. They exchanged glances, nodded, and then moved with swift steps. Adonis could feel their movements, sense their faint presence on his skin.
One… Two…
Adonis counted under his breath, hiding his expression beneath his bandanna. The bandanna had turned a shade redder since Kir had cut him, and it stood out against his silver fur and clear blue eyes. More than ever before, Adonis’s expression was sharp like freshly whetted steel, and his gaze was so chilling it made it seem unlikely that there was any emotion within him at all. His hands, covered in rough gloves, hung loosely at his side. He didn’t carry any weapons on him, so he didn’t look threatening, but instead terribly defenseless. It was the behavior of prey that, while expecting to be hunted at any moment, was completely unguarded.
The way he was looking around while unarmed gradually drew more attention, and he could feel additional gazes on his back as time went on.
Four… Five… Six…
That unnerving smile spread on his face.
Adonis continued walking silently down a tree-lined path leading up to the castle.
He strolled carelessly between the trees, and whenever he hit a fork in the road, it looked like he’d pick a direction at random, eventually leading him to a dim, extremely unpopulated area.
The sound of footsteps against the flagstones disappeared. Adonis got off the road and trod on the lawn, heading toward a lush, forested area. A gentle breeze blew past his path, the sound of the leaves rustling softly filling the area, and the wind toyed with his hair.
But then Adonis suddenly ducked, as if to hide himself from the wind. He raised his head and leaped forward nimbly. The next moment, something swept violently across where Adonis had just been standing—a sheathed sword. The grip was tied with a thread, and it was swung hard through the air, without drawing the blade.
The hand holding the hilt of the sword appeared from behind a tree, while a second man stood where Adonis had been just seconds ago. A black-furred Cateyes with a scary expression turned to look at Adonis—and spat in his direction.
With this as their signal, other Cateyes and Centaurus men emerged from the nearby trees and surrounded Adonis. There were eight of them, and they all had swords. Their stances suggested Solist training.
“It’s a day of rest, you know,” Adonis said.
The men let out low chuckles. That noise sounded far too menacing for this to be the usual level of harassment. It was clear what they were after: They wanted Adonis to return swords that belonged to their families, but at this point, they had no intention of talking things out.
Adonis looked around at the men, his expression unchanged.
“It’s not like you guys need to steal swords from me.”
The men were all holding swords, and even sheathed, it was clear that they were honed, matured weapons.
“What are you saying?! If you’d just hand them over, we wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble!” the black-furred man howled, swinging his sword through the air in a show of force. The sheath had been crafted with a layer of water steel wrapped around it, making that in itself a blunt weapon of considerable heft.
“And since you showed your face…I’m gonna assume you’re prepared for what’s to come.”
The man drew his blade viciously, like a wolf licking its chops. The fact that Gaff was injured and wouldn’t be coming to stop them probably emboldened them, or perhaps they really were that incensed with Adonis, who hardly ever showed his face in public. They closed in on him, believing their superior numbers would help them win.
Adonis glanced around the group and said with complete indifference, “Fine. Give me the names of the spells of the swords you want.”
The black-furred Cateyes man frowned, his triangular ears twitching. He tapped his sheathed sword against his hand, exchanging a glance with the other men. His gaze moved from Adonis to his cronies and back again, filled with a mixture of suspicion and disappointment.
“The spell was…”
Still eyeing Adonis with suspicion, the man told him the spell of the sword he wanted.
“Bamboo…,” Adonis called out, and a sword appeared out of thin air. Grasping the hilt, he told the man, “I don’t have a sheath for it, so you’ll have to arrange that yourself.”
With that, Adonis threw the sword halfway between himself and the man. The tip embedded itself into the ground, and the man gingerly picked up the weapon. He didn’t react to the Question mark on it but simply leveled a cold, distrustful look at Adonis.
“What else?” Adonis asked, turning to face the others.
The men listed the spells they needed, and Adonis went around calling up the swords and thrusting them into the ground.
“That’s some weird magic you’ve got there… No wonder we couldn’t find where you were hiding them,” one of the men said, his gaze shifting between his newly recovered weapon and Adonis.
Familiars like Bamboo were a type of beast flower rarely found in Schwertland. It had been bequeathed to Adonis when he was still a young boy by a Nomad who’d visited the Catacombs, having brought Bamboo with him when he came to Park. The very same nameless Nomad who had met Tom Collins and asked to have the news of his death delivered, inadvertently passing his curse to Adonis—or rather, on to Tom, the effects of which revealed themselves solely in Adonis. Everyone in his life had taken it in stride. However, the men surrounding Adonis now didn’t know or care about it. They only saw that Adonis was strange and thought that his strangeness meant they could abuse him all they liked without the public’s reproach. On top of that, they had the luxury of outnumbering him.
“Looks like we’re done here,” Adonis said. He made to walk past the leader of the group, but the black-furred Cateyes stood in his way.
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen.”
The man grinned viciously and aimed the sword he’d just reclaimed at Adonis. Compared to his sheathed sword from earlier, it was of much higher quality, and clearly a lot of time and effort had gone into training it. Even without looking at him, Adonis could tell the man was smirking. The others did the same, holding up their swords and glaring menacingly at Adonis.
“All the swords you’re hiding, spit ’em out now. And pay us their weight in denari. Also, get rid of this thing you carved into our swords,” he demanded, tapping a finger on the Question mark on the blade.
“You want me to hand over all of them?”
“That’s right.”
“And what are you going to do with them?”
“That’s a stupid question. I’ll take the position you rose to. No matter how bad they are with a sword, any other Solist is more worthy of being an Arch-Solist than a thief like you.”
“Like you could ever,” Adonis said, slipping past him.