The thief hideout Fam had tracked down turned out to be a run-down pub at an intersection of back alleys.
The dim alleyways were a rabbit warren of shops, which had made it difficult to pin down the place at first glance. It was plain as day they weren’t exactly trying to attract customers.
There were two entrances to the pub: the main one in front and a back door in the rear. Our teams split up, with the Fifth taking the front entrance and the Ninth handling the rear. Our goal was to surround the thief ring and prevent any possible route of escape.
Soon, we got word that the guards of the Ninth had locked down the rear.
“All right. Let’s get moving,” I told my squadron. “We have no idea what’s in there. Stay on guard.”
“Yes, sir.”
We moved in through the pub’s front entrance. Inside, it looked exactly like one would expect a dive to look—there were a number of round wooden tables set up next to each other, along with some sketchy-looking guys enjoying a few drinks. There looked to be about twenty men in total.
To the casual eye, it appeared to be nothing more than a pub frequented by nasty clientele. However, every person there was a member of the thief ring.
“Huh? Who the hell’re you?”
Complete silence had fallen across the place the moment we set foot inside. Amid the tense atmosphere, one of the men shot us a threatening growl.
“Place is rented out today, pals. Get lost.”
The man waved us off like he was shooing away flies. Crude snorts of laughter erupted from among the others present.
“Sorry, but we’re not here as customers,” I informed them, standing my ground. Casting a firm glare at everyone in the room, I placed my hand on the sword at my hip.
“We’re here as guards, and we’ve come to apprehend you and your ring of thieves.”
I drew my sword, and the rest of the Fifth followed suit, holding their own weapons at the ready.
Immediately, the looks of drunken revelry on the patrons’ faces were overrun by expressions of panic.
“Tch...! Damn it...!”
“Looks like they sniffed us out! Who the hell ratted on us?!”
“Who cares?! Let’s just get outta here!”
As soon as they had determined things looked grim for them, they took swift action. It was almost as if they hadn’t been drinking at all. They began hurling the nearby tables and liquor bottles at us, then made a mad dash for the rear exit behind them while we were distracted.
That was where they ran into a little problem.
“Whoa?!”
“Not good! The back’s blocked too! Augh?!”
As the thieves turned around, one of them was pinned to the ground by the Ninth, who had rushed in to assist. The rest of them surged back into the room like an avalanche.
With us blocking the front entrance and Leobolt and his men blocking the rear, the thieves found themselves surrounded in the center of the pub.
“There’s no point in resisting. Just give yourselves up.”
One of the thieves smirked widely in response to my advice. It wasn’t a smile of resignation either—his eyes still had a savage spark within them.
“We’ve been very, very careful every step of the way so far. Did you actually think we wouldn’t have thought up a plan for what to do if our hideout got compromised and surrounded?”
All at once, the surrounded thief ring members pulled smoke bombs out of their pockets and hurled them at their feet. In the blink of an eye, the inside of the pub was engulfed by thick smoke.
“Are they going to use the smoke screen to make a run for it...?!” a guard shouted.
“Everyone, lock down the exits! Don’t let a single man through!” Leobolt ordered.
At their sergeant’s command, the Ninth took up position in front of the rear exit. The Fifth and I did the same on our side, standing in front of the front door to block it off.
The smoke bombs hadn’t been intended as attacks, so none of the skills I had could disperse the smoke. If they had tried to smash their way through the doors to escape, though, that would’ve been a different story; I could’ve drawn those attacks to me by using Iron Target, which would have allowed us to capture them all in one fell swoop.
“Huh? They’re not coming after us,” another guard grumbled in confusion.
“No, wait...!” Fam had noticed something unusual. “There’s a magic circle here...! It just appeared on the floor! The smoke bombs were just a distraction so we wouldn’t notice it!”
The rest of the guards were aghast.
“Whah?!”
“So they’re gonna blow themselves up—and the whole pub with it?!”
I used my sword to wave the smoke away and found a magic circle glowing on the floor beneath me. It was a formula for explosion magic; it looked as if it had taken quite a long time to scrawl out, and it was already beginning to flash as if it were about to activate. In the worst-case scenario, it potentially had enough power to blow the entire building, us included, sky-high.
“Oh no! We don’t have enough time to get out of range!” a guard shouted.
“Ninth Squadron, retreat behind me immediately!” Leobolt yelled.
“Sieg!” Seira exclaimed.
“Yup, I’m on it! Iron Target!”
The moment the magic circle was about to blow the whole place up, I activated my skill in an attempt to redirect the full force of the blast to me. Right as I was doing so, the magic circle activated as well, flooding the area with a blinding light.
However—the explosion that should’ve come afterward never happened. There was only the flash of light indicating the magic circle had gone off. After that, the markings on the floor beneath us simply faded away; all the damage from it had accumulated within me.
“Is everyone all right?” I checked with my team.
“Y-Yes!” Seira confirmed.
“Thanks to you...” Fam added.
“Shit, that was close!” Spinoza breathed a sigh of relief.
“What about you, Sarge? Are you hurt?” Seira asked in concern.
“No problems here,” I responded.
“You nullified the explosion from that magic circle all by yourself...” Leobolt murmured in wonder. “Truly amazing. I could not hope for a more heartening ally than you in protecting our world.”
“Hm? Hey, the thieves are gone!” one of the guards gasped.
After the smoke cleared, there was no sign of any of the thieves inside the pub—just us at the front entrance and the Ninth at the rear.
“We had the exits locked down...” I mused.
“You sure you guys didn’t let ’em through?” Spinoza accused the other team.
“Certainly not,” Leobolt responded. “All of us were in position in front of the rear exit. Even if we had been struck down, not even an ant would’ve made it past us.”
“So you’re sayin’ it was us?” Spinoza tilted her head in confusion. “But I sure as hell didn’t sense ’em comin’ this way either.”
“It seems they used a third exit,” Fam muttered.
Behind the counter of the bar was a row of giant liquor barrels. One of those barrels was out of line with the rest. In the location it should have been, a section of floor was missing, replaced with a set of stairs that led underground. A number of footprints, presumably belonging to the thieves, were on the ground nearby.
“Ah, so they fled underground through that hidden passageway,” I said.
“They blinded us using smoke bombs and escaped underground—then used that explosion magic circle to try and detonate the building with us inside it,” Leobolt broke down the situation. “An impressively efficient plan. I can understand why we had been unable to track them down up until now. However, they hadn’t counted on Sieg’s presence here. They had likely planned on a leisurely escape after having used the magic circle to eliminate not only us, but all evidence in the area as well.”
“They can’t have gotten too far yet,” I postulated. “If we go after them right now, we’ll easily be able to catch up. Let’s get a move on and head down there.”
When we descended the stairs underground, a tunnel stretched out before us that was just wide enough for two people at a time to walk down. Torches lined the stone walls stretching up on either side of us. Using their light to make our way farther in, eventually we reached a split in the path.
“Which way did they run?” I asked.
“I sense people in both directions. My guess is they’re probably trying to spread out as they escape, on the off chance we happen to chase after them,” Fam surmised.
“In that case, we’d better split up as well,” I advised.
The Fifth and the Ninth went off in separate directions in pursuit of the thieves.
Before long, we began to hear footsteps ahead of us, and the backs of the fleeing thieves became visible amid the darkness at the end of the passage. When they heard our footsteps approaching them from behind, they looked over their shoulders—and their torchlit faces immediately contorted as if they had seen a ghost.
“Wha—?! Why are they alive?!”
“That magic circle shoulda blown them and the pub to bits!”
“I’m afraid it didn’t pack quite enough punch for that,” I informed them.
“Ugh...! We’re almost at the exit, though! We can lose ’em if we make it out into the alleys! For us, that tangled mess of narrow roads is like our own backyard!”
As soon as the thieves reached the ladder to the surface, they immediately zoomed nimbly up it like spiders, without bothering to take even a moment to catch their breath.
“Wow, look at them go. They’ve got excellent form,” Fam murmured in admiration.
Between their ladder-climbing speed and ours, theirs was clearly superior. If we tried to climb up after them, we’d lose our advantage.
Just as I was wondering if we should use some kind of projectile weapon, Fam spoke up again. “Even if I start nocking arrows, I think they’ll reach the top before I can shoot them down.”
Apparently, even Fam’s bow wouldn’t be quick enough to stop them.
The lead thief cackled madly. “Hah! Ya did better than most, but ya still came up short! There ain’t nobody in the royal capital that can catch the Midnight Moles!”
“Take your time climbing and try not to slip on your way up!” another taunted. “Though once you make it to the top, we’ll be long gone!”
The thieves’ laughs echoed loudly downward, and the one in the lead placed his hands on the steel lid above him. “All right, once we’re out under the sun, we can run circles around these chumps!”
Certain they had beaten us, they pushed the lid aside—and were met with a surprise.
“Yo buddies. Long time no see, eh?”
The relief on the faces of the thieves instantly turned to dread. They had not been greeted by the sun appearing above them, but instead by Spinoza, who had a cruel smirk plastered across her face.