On a typical weekday, the tavern was comfortably crowded.

On payday evenings, it was customary for off-duty royal guards to gather at the tavern and share a few drinks in high spirits, and Isaac was no exception. For young men with tight pockets, payday was the one day they were allowed the luxury of treating themselves to three or four drinks.

Having entered the tavern with his colleagues, Isaac had nodded off after downing a couple of drinks. His quick nap must have lasted quite a while, because when he opened his eyes again, his friends were already happily buzzing, and two or three familiar young women had joined their table at some point.

“Oh my, this one’s been dozing off this whole time, and it looks like he’s finally waking up. Didn’t you sleep last night?”

Staring blankly at the woman sitting across from him, who was teasing him with a bright smile, it took Isaac a moment to recognize her as the flower girl he often saw down the street. “No,” he replied, shaking his head vaguely.

“I slept…… but my sleep hasn’t been very refreshing lately, so I haven’t been able to sleep deeply.”

“Why? Are you lonely sleeping all by yourself?”

The girls, selling flowers by day and love by night, asked with a flirtatious twinkle in their eyes.

“No, I’ve just been having bad dreams. It feels like something is constantly whispering right next to my ear all night. When I wake up in the morning, I don’t feel rested at all. It’s been like this for the past few days.”

“Oh my, how strange. Could it be some kind of wandering ghost or spirit?”

“This guy lives on the grounds of an old church, you know? You know the old church building on the hill behind Marnius Square? …… Honestly, it’s practically an abandoned ruin now, so it wouldn’t be surprising if there were ghosts.”

A colleague listening nearby chimed in, eventually convincing himself of his own conclusion. Isaac moistened his throat with a sip of water and lightly slapped the back of the colleague’s head.

‘Ghosts or whatever else it is, I just want a good night’s sleep.’

It was true: last night, too, his ears had been filled with endless, noisy chatter, keeping him from sleeping deeply.

Normally, he should have slept wonderfully last night. The new moon was only a few days away. On those days, feeling light on his feet and inexplicably giddy, Isaac would finish his evening shift in high spirits and return home late. He was so tired he felt he could fall asleep the second his head hit the pillow, but it had been a good evening.

When he opened his door and stepped inside, the first thing to welcome him was a single cat sitting proudly in the middle of his bed. Isaac had stopped in his tracks.

He hadn’t seen it for a few days, but it seemed it had returned. The cat with the massive eyes.

‘You…… is your paw okay?’

‘It’s just a stray thief that’s always stealing my food, but it’s kind of nice to see it again after a while,’ Isaac thought, stepping forward with a pleasant smile. Staring fixedly at him, the cat suddenly dropped something from its mouth onto the bed with a soft thud.

“Oho…… What’s this? A gift? Are you finally trying to repay my kindness?”

The cat was staring up at Isaac with an incredibly smug, arrogant expression. It had a look that clearly said, ‘Go on, praise me, praise me.’ Amused by the adorable sight, Isaac chuckled as he approached and picked up the dark, lumpy object sitting on his bed.

It was a rock.

“…… ……”

He looked again. Still a rock. No matter how he looked at it, it was just a rock. Not even a rare ore or gemstone, just a horribly common, ordinary piece of flint.

“What the hell is this……”

‘Why a rock? And what’s with that arrogant expression?’ Tilting its nose up and staring at him as if it were bestowing an unimaginable treasure upon him, it looked as if it were scolding him: ‘Why have you not fallen to your knees to worship and thank me yet?’ …… Or maybe it was just a face that said, ‘Ha! Gotcha! What were you expecting, idiot?’

While Isaac stood there clutching the rock in one hand and staring blankly at the cat, a second cat hopped in through the window. With eyes just as impossibly round as the first, this familiar-looking feline sauntered over, stared intently at Isaac, and also dropped whatever it was holding in its mouth with a *thud.*

Isaac picked up the rusted, metallic clump to see what it was.

‘…… …… …… A steel striker?’

Ah. So the rock was flint, and this was the steel. They had actually brought him a matching set. They did, but……

“It’s not like I’m desperate to start a fire…… I don’t even smoke tobacco…… What am I supposed to do with this?”

Isaac stared at the cats, genuinely baffled. In response, the cats looked genuinely bewildered, almost as if they could understand human speech and were completely thrown off by a reaction they hadn’t expected.

Watching the cats blink in confusion, unsure of what to do, Isaac eventually couldn’t help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.

“If you’re going to give me flint and steel, you should have brought the tinderbox too. Where’s the box?”

Teasing them lightly, Isaac tossed the flint and steel aside. It was baffling, but whatever. These little beasts must have seen someone using them to light a fire somewhere, thought it was incredibly fascinating, and brought them to him as a gift. It was actually quite endearing and cute.

“Alright, you’re good boys, good boys. Now, I need to sleep, so time for you to go.”

Isaac picked up one cat in each hand, casually tossed them out the window, threw two pieces of sausage out after them, and shut the window.

‘Good lord, the things you experience in life. Who even used loose flint and steel these days? Still, it was a far better gift than a dead rat. I guess I shouldn’t scold them too harshly when they sneak in to steal my food from now on. They do know how to repay a favor, in their own way.’

Smiling to himself, Isaac crawled into bed. The moment his head hit the pillow, he fell into a deep, exhausted slumber…… 

——That-that-that-that little brat! I felt touched that he cared for me when I was hurt, so out of the boundless depths of my grace, I brought him a treasure unparalleled in this world, and he sleeps?! He goes to sleep?! I swear, I ought to bite his head off and chew it to pieces right now!

——Alright. The ignorant child simply lacks the wisdom to understand. You must be patient, Third. As the elder, you must endure it.

——I generously forgave his insolent, wicked remarks calling my beautiful eyes useless, and this is how he repays me?! What a wretched boy!

——Tsk, tsk. How can anyone be so utterly clueless? I suppose we have no choice but to help him.

——Even if we want to help, he has to strike a spark to summon us first. What are we to do with this……

As he slept, he felt as though he could hear a relentless, chattering murmur echoing in his ears. Even in his slumber, he thought it was terribly noisy, but his exhausted brain refused to wake up. Isaac was forced to endure the bizarre, incomprehensible cacophony of voices in his dreams all night long.

He vaguely remembered something about a treasure, or maybe a chest, but because it was a dream, it wasn’t clear. He also thought there might have been some meowing mixed in……

Either way, having suffered through a night of utterly bizarre, nonsensical dreams, he didn’t feel rested when he woke up.

‘I’ve been having a lot of these weird dreams lately. Is my body getting weak……?’

While Isaac seriously considered whether he needed to buy some herbal tonics, the woman sitting across from him widened her eyes in surprise upon hearing he lived in the old church on the hill.

“Oh my, people actually live there? That place is practically a crumbling ruin! I guess our handsome guard here is quite poor, then. You look so neat and handsome, I thought for sure you were the son of a good family.”

“What’s handsome about him? I’m way better looking!”

The colleague who had been casting lovestruck glances at the woman since earlier blurted out petulantly, glaring at Isaac. Isaac understood the twisted logic of jealousy, but still…… “For a guy with a potbelly and a scruffy beard to claim he’s better looking than me is a bit much……” Isaac grumbled internally, taking another sip of his drink.

“What? I’ll have you know, back in my prime, I was told I was quite the looker. Don’t you remember when we first joined the guard, before the Squad Leader learned my name, he used to call me ‘that clean-faced kid’?”

“That was years ago! The whole world has changed since then! Sure, maybe you heard you were decent-looking back in your glory days, but not anymore. Compared to back then, you’ve aged terribly. Over the hill!”

Isaac gave a displeased glare at his colleague, who was passionately venting his jealousy. Sure, he had been a pretty youth when he was younger, and he was nothing more than incredibly average now. Isaac had never really cared about his looks anyway, but considering he was slowly reaching the age where kids on the street would start calling him ‘mister,’ hearing that he looked washed up didn’t exactly feel great.

“Why not? If he dressed up a bit, styled his hair, and took some care of his skin, I think he’d easily be considered a handsome man,” the woman defended him.

Isaac purposely threw a smug look at his scowling colleague before leaning in and whispering sweetly to the woman:

“Think you might fall for me?”

“Hardly. No matter how handsome a man is, I absolutely hate paupers.”

The woman smiled brightly, but her rejection was razor-sharp.

His colleague burst into loud, mocking laughter, and Isaac dropped his head in defeat. Yup, that’s life. Shoulders slumping, Isaac raised his glass to his lips and looked away.

At that exact moment, a group of people was descending the stairs from the upper floor. There were four or five men who looked visibly dangerous, accompanied by a few women who appeared to be prostitutes. All the women were exceptionally beautiful, but the one walking side-by-side with the man in the very back stood out above the rest. Nine out of ten men drinking in the tavern couldn’t tear their eyes away from her. It was Celina, the courtesan rumored to be the most beautiful woman in the entire capital.

“…… She really is gorgeous……”

Isaac, too, couldn’t take his eyes off Celina, staring in a daze until she and her group finally exited the tavern. Only then did he let out a breath and mutter his awe. Hearing this, the woman sitting across from him shot him a playful, sidelong glance.

“Looks like our guard here has a weakness for beauties too?”

“Of course. What man doesn’t like a beautiful woman?”

“It’s true, but even among us, this guy is notorious for his obsession with pretty things.”

When his colleague sitting next to him inevitably chimed in to tattle on him, Isaac shoved the guy’s face away with the palm of his hand. “If there’s a man here who hates beautiful things, tell him to step forward,” Isaac grumbled. Naturally, not a single man stepped forward to claim the title.

“But if Celina is personally attending to him, that man must be someone incredibly important,” one of his colleagues murmured.

Isaac recalled the middle-aged man who had exuded an overwhelming, intimidating aura without being overshadowed in the slightest by the dazzlingly beautiful woman beside him. The deeply wrinkled corners of his eyes had held a generous smile, yet every line on his face seemed carved by harsh, unforgiving years, leaving not a single opening. Experience told Isaac that you did not carelessly approach a man like that.

“Oh my, you don’t know? That man is Roberni!”

Just as he thought.

Hearing the name the woman whispered, Isaac nodded inwardly. His colleagues also reacted with surprise.

Roberni was the man who sat at the absolute pinnacle of the underworld, controlling a vast territory that spanned the capital and stretched out for days in every direction. Blessed with innate cunning, sharp judgment, decisive action, and a physical strength in his youth that no one could match, plus an uncanny luck that made everything he touched wildly prosperous, he was the Emperor of the Underworld. Now, even high-ranking nobles didn’t dare cross him lightly.

“That’s the guy who fears nothing in this world? Wait, shouldn’t Roberni be nearly sixty by now? He only looked about fifty.”

“When you have the power to bend the whole world to your whim, what is there to stress over? Of course he hasn’t aged.”

“He can even buy the capital’s greatest beauty……” The colleague muttered enviously. The woman next to him leaned in and whispered:

“Still, things have been pretty chaotic for him lately. Haven’t you heard? Word is, some mysterious assailant has been causing a string of incidents in Roberni’s territory.”

“Incidents?”

“They say someone is hunting down Roberni’s subordinates. And only the high-ranking ones, too.”

“What? Is a new syndicate forming or something?”

The guards frowned, already dreading the headache a looming gang war would bring, but the woman merely shook her head

“No, it’s not confirmed, but… they say he’s acting alone.”

“What? Alone? How could a single person hunt down Roberni’s top lieutenants on his own? He’d have to have some god-like skills.”

“True, but what’s his motive? Revenge? Is it revenge? It has to be revenge, right? It’s not like there’s any shortage of people who have been wronged by Roberni’s faction.”

“Who knows? They’re keeping it so quiet that no one knows the details. Anyway, that’s why the mood in Roberni’s camp is so grim these days. They put out a massive bounty and a kill order, but they still haven’t caught him.”

“Haha, the things you hear. Did a crusader of justice suddenly descend from the heavens or something?”

The guards exchanged looks that clearly said, ‘You hear the strangest things in this world.’ Yet, despite their words, none of them were actually struck with awe for this so-called crusader of justice.

“There’s a limit to being fearless. Does he even know who Roberni is? Why on earth would you provoke a man like that?”

Someone blurted out the thought they were all having, and everyone nodded in unison.

Roberni’s influence spread like a spiderweb not only through the capital, but all the surrounding regions; there was nowhere his reach couldn’t touch. It was said he had ties to high-ranking nobles and even royalty, and his wealth was vast enough to build a castle out of pure gold. Just to give an idea of how terrifying his power was:

“Rumor has it he even has top-tier wizards at his beck and call.”

“But is that rumor actually true……? Top-tier wizards are supposedly impossible to meet unless you’re practically royalty, right?”

“Even if they aren’t the absolute highest-tier, he definitely knows some high-ranking wizards. He’s orchestrated several incidents that can’t be explained without magic. Like the time he assassinated the rival Syder faction…… Committing an impossible, untraceable murder without leaving a single piece of evidence? You’d need a wizard for that.”

The colleague reciting the grim rumors of the past lowered his voice significantly.

“There’s even a theory that it wasn’t a wizard, but a witch. The coroner said he had never seen corpses mangled so grotesquely and horribly……”

“Oh my god. Please, let’s stop talking about this. It’s too scary.”

The woman, who had been leaning in to listen to their whispers, shrank back and shivered violently. Only then did the guards nod and hastily change the subject. Isaac handed his drink to the woman, who was hugging herself.

“Is it really that scary?”

“Of course it is. A wizard is terrifying enough, let alone a witch! How awful. Just hearing the word gives me goosebumps.”

As she shuddered, one of the colleagues joked lightly:

“Wizards and witches both use magic, it’s basically the same thing. What’s the big deal?”

“How is it the same? Witches are far more horrific. Don’t you agree?”

The woman sought agreement from Isaac, who took a sip of his drink and slowly nodded.

“There is a strict difference between a human who knows how to use magic, and something that isn’t human to begin with. ——One more drink over here.”

When Isaac raised his empty glass, the waiter quickly brought a fresh one, and in the meantime, the conversation drifted to other topics. Isaac remained quiet, simply crunching on the complimentary peanuts.

This is normal. This was the general public’s perception of witches. Horrifying, spine-chilling entities fundamentally different from humans, whom some even called demons. He had heard these kinds of things countless times; there was no reason to feel hurt or disappointed by it now. Isaac had already lived this life for decades, and he was entirely unfazed. Yet, he couldn’t help the sudden coldness that crept into his chest from time to time.

The feeling of being entirely alone. The feeling that no matter how hard he tried, he would never truly belong among them. Like an orphan abandoned in a barren wasteland, Isaac was occasionally reminded of the truth: There is no one else in this world like me.

But the feeling was fleeting. Isaac swallowed the familiar, rarely visiting sensation down with his liquor. If he had dwelled on every casual remark like this, he would never have survived this long. Besides, hadn’t he made a promise? To live bravely and find happiness.

“Who cares about the people living up in the clouds? I don’t even dream of getting a girl as beautiful as Celina; I just wish I could meet a nice, decent woman. I’m just getting older year by year, and my mom’s nagging is getting out of hand.”

“Tell me about it. When am I going to get married and have a couple of cute kids?”

Isaac’s colleagues, who were around the same age, tipped their glasses and sighed deeply. As his friends lamented their age, which society already considered past the prime for marriage, Isaac simply nodded along. One of the guys smacked the back of Isaac’s head.

“You’re getting older right along with us, what are you just smiling for? You think you’re immune to aging? Your glory days are gone too! When are you getting married?”

‘Why are you taking your mother’s nagging out on me?’ Not one to lose, Isaac smacked the back of the guy’s head right back before answering.

“Who knows. Maybe when someone appears who can embrace me even after I lay bare every single part of myself?”

“What could you possibly have to lay bare that’s such a big deal?”

“They say every family has a skeleton in the closet. Everyone has one or two things they can’t easily confess, right? You guys don’t have any? Think you could confess that you suffered from gonorrhea a while back? Could you tell your future wife that your dad shaved your head bald and locked you in the shed because of your gambling debts? Think you could admit you got so blackout drunk you stripped naked in the street and peed—”

“HEY! HEY! HEY! SHUT YOUR MOUTH!!”

His colleagues swarmed him like angry bees, desperately trying to gag him, resulting in Isaac getting lightly pummeled by the group. Amidst his friends, who were huffing and puffing while frantically checking their surroundings, Isaac rubbed his aching body and muttered:

“Look at this bleak world, where truth is silenced by violence…… It’s true what they say: I just need to move to the peaceful countryside, get a pretty wife, live in a pretty house, and raise pretty chickens……”

“You think just anyone can get a house and a wife down in the countryside? With not a single penny to your name? You need to make some money first!”

“Money…… How does one make money again?”

“Who knows. If I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here like this…”

The impoverished royal guards huddled together, grumbling their grievances.

“They say the first step is to never spend and just save everything.”

“Yeah, but we all know how pathetic our salary is. And we can’t exactly live without buying at least one drink on payday, can we?”

“Then maybe we should quit the guard and find a job that pays better…”

“See? When it comes to striking it rich, gambling is the only way! Stop cursing me out and think about it! The path to true wealth has always been found in the cards——”

“I’m going to hit you.”

Once again, someone became the victim of a group beating. Amidst the chaos, someone muttered dryly:

“If there’s any way for a royal guard to touch some real money, wouldn’t it be by achieving a massive feat and receiving a fat bounty?”

At those words, everyone fell silent.

“A feat. Well, if you achieve something truly great, the bounty is one thing, but they say you can even pick whatever you want from the King’s treasure vault.”

“Exactly. Then you’d be swimming in wealth and glory in an instant!”

“But how are we supposed to achieve a feat like that?”

They fell quiet again. It was a question just as difficult as figuring out how to guarantee a win in gambling.

“It’s not easy to achieve a grand feat in an era of peace like this. You’d probably have to catch a fairly high-ranking witch and present her to the King for it to even count.”

‘A high-ranking witch. Even if I presented my own neck on a silver platter, a lowly half-blood like me probably wouldn’t fetch more than a few pennies,’ Isaac thought, smacking his lips bitterly.

“Or, you could track down Roberni right now and hand him over. Catching someone like Roberni would definitely count as a massive feat, no doubt about it.”

“…… Shouldn’t I make sure I can keep my own head attached to my neck before I try that…..?”

Amidst the scattered chatter, someone finally raised his glass and said, “Alright, alright, let’s just drink.” Taking that as a cue, everyone dropped their useless fantasies and clinked their glasses together.

And Isaac returned to the thought he always held close: ‘I’m just going to live quietly. Reaching for luck that exceeds your station always ends in disaster. For a person, living quietly and out of sight is the absolute best way to live.’