I Became the Leader of a Villain Organization

Chapter 4: The Underground Auction (1)

“One pack of cigarettes. Any kind.”

A general store in the Imperial capital.

“You mean one pack of cigarettes?”

“No, two…… three.”

“So how many are you saying, three packs?”

“Five.”

“Okay……..”

After replenishing my supply of cigarettes at the general store, I was greeted by a cityscape reminiscent of the 19th century Victorian era.

The heart of the Magic Empire, Bretona, one of the most powerful nations in the Heroic Age.

The Queen’s City – Londinium.

The power and prestige of its name extends far beyond the sunlit lands, even to Nandal, where all shadows fall.

The eye of the storm, where all the corruption, decay and lust of the continent gathers like a vortex.

It is from this eye of the storm that a holy maiden with a slave seal will emerge as an item for sale in the underground auction house.

And that’s where the real story of this piece begins.

Note that neither the underground auction house nor the kidnapping of the holy maiden are known to us.

We’re not the only bad guys in the world. There are plenty of bad guys out there so we went to the trouble of going to the Archbishop of the Holy Kingdom to find out.

“Wow, look at that! It’s a clock tower! It’s so big!”

As we exit the general store, Alice is bouncing and pointing. She’s excited like a kid on a trip, flapping her gothic dress.

“Ah, brother Rain…….”

Aria, on the other hand, has her eyes covered with bandages, fumbles with her blind cane, and shivers like a frightened mouse.

She’s clinging to my side. So close, in fact, that I can feel the shaking of her shoulders.

“Brother, there-.”

Aria’s voice trailed off as she spoke.

“Can you hold my hand……?”

“Hands?”

“Well, there are a lot of people, and I was worried that I might lose my brother…….”

I was taken aback by this unexpected statement and was speechless for a moment.

I think she’s getting a little carried away with the blind sister trope.

It’s a gap that’s hard to adjust to every time I see it.

Nevertheless–it’s broad daylight in the Imperial capital, and people are out and about. Aria’s behavior was not strange in itself. Rather, it was a rational way of avoiding suspicion.

“……Yes.”

I took Aria’s hand in mine. Her grip was soft and cold. And it was faintly trembling.

How much of this trembling is real and how much is not. I couldn’t tell.

I couldn’t help but think back to the time when she held the black sword in her cold hands.

Then and now, they were too white, slender, and precarious to be the same person’s hands so I cautiously took her hand and led her as if I were handling a piece of glass that would shatter at the slightest misstep

*

A mafia lair in Nightchapel, a slum borough east of the capital city of Londinium.

There was a hand there, a hand like glass that would shatter with the slightest pressure.

-Kwajik! Wududuk!

“Aaah, aaah, my hand, my hand!”

The sound of bones snapping, twisting and breaking was heard along with a man’s ear-splitting scream.

“Ma, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, but please, please let go of my hand, aaahhhh!”

Finally, Aria released her grip as the mobster grasped his grotesquely twisted and broken hand, sobbing in pain.

“I, my organization knows nothing about the capital’s ‘underground auctions’ anymore, we’re not in the business, we’re out of it, it’s been a while, I swear!”

“Why?”

Aria asked. Her voice is as cold and emotionless as ever.

“It’s been a long, long time! Ever since the new ‘businessman’ of the Underground Auction showed up, and announced that he was going to revolutionize the auction, we’ve been stuck with the bean counters!”

“A new businessman, is it?”

“Yes. Ever since he took charge of the underground auction, all sorts of things that we wouldn’t dare to buy from all over the continent have been auctioned off as ‘goods’, and apparently the Holy Maiden is one of them!”

Hearing that, I finally opened my mouth.

“Tell me what you know about the businessman who is said to have revolutionized the Empire’s underground auctions.”

“That, that-.”

Once again, the mob hesitated, as if he couldn’t reveal it easily, even through the pain of his hand.

“That, if I tell you that, my life will be-.”

A name that would kill him if you revealed it.

Hearing those words, Aria moved her hand once more.

-Ssshhh.

The black sword on her back was now touching the mob throat and blood trickled down the flesh as she drew it across.

“Perhaps what we should focus on now is not what was said, but what was not said.”

Aria said but there was no doubt in the man’s mind that the action was no mere verbal threat.

Except for himself–for his companions, whose bodies lay in pieces everywhere, were the proof.

“I beg you, I beg you, I beg you!”

The mob choked out through his tears and snot.

“I don’t know who you are, but I do know that you’re pretty strong!”

“…….”

“Uh, you’re probably some kind of secret service in the Holy Kingdom, on a special assignment or something, retrieving the Holy Maiden, right?!”

The man asked, clutching at his own desperate reasoning.

I said nothing and following my silence, Aria didn’t answer either.

“Still, it would be best if you didn’t get involved any further! I mean, really, I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about you!”

The man did not know our identities, because we don’t go around announcing our identities every time we get into trouble, much less when we’re dealing with a mob like this.

We didn’t even have to reveal our abilities but that doesn’t change the way we approach things.

Sometime later an agonized scream rang out, and it didn’t take long for the answer to come.

“It’s the Black Snake!”

But the answer was quite unexpected, so much so that I had to doubt my ears.

“I mean it, it’s really them!”

The mobster opened his mouth in agony. After opening it, he spoke in a desperate attempt to salvage the situation.

“Unless they’re monsters of the caliber of the “Black Snake”, wouldn’t something like kidnapping a holy maiden be possible?!!”

“…….”

“You know what it means to get involved with those monsters! The Black Snake!”

He opened his mouth and began to explain, desperately, the weight and infamy of the name that everyone knew.

“It’s not too late for you to pretend you didn’t hear it and walk away, because I’m not going to say anything, either, and that would be better for all of us!”

“…….”

I didn’t answer, just sat there wordlessly, puffing on my cigarette and thinking.

Did the “real” Rain Gray give me the order before I was possessed?

That was the first possibility that popped into my head but it was quickly denied.

“Are you sure…….?”

Aria spoke up, breaking the silence

“Did you say Black Snake?”

“That’s right, that’s what I said!”

The last mob nodded desperately.

“─Did you dare say that name?”

Frighteningly, the air in the area froze cold. Even as I desperately feigned composure, a chill raced through the room that made my heart skip a beat.

“The leader risked his all to build the name he built together with us…”

Aria’s voice was trembling, and it wasn’t hard to recognize that the tremor was distinctly different from before.

“Did you say that the name that is my everything, our everything, was taken as his own?”

“Yes, yes……?”

The mob was agitated, not understanding the emotional stirrings she was showing.

It’s not hard for him to realize that what’s in front of him now is the very same “Black Snake”.

Even if we had nothing to do with it, we wouldn’t be robbing a third-rate mafia organization on the street.

There’s no such thing as a “never,” after all.

At first, I just wanted to follow the whereabouts of the Holy Maiden, to get my hands on something that would give me a clue before the story began but then I realized, no I couldn’t help but realize that the story had already begun.

“Aria.”

For the first time, I see her on this side, unable to control her emotions, shaking and trembling but that doesn’t mean I, the leader of the organization, can’t get caught up in it.

Just as bluntly as ever, I take another drag from my cigarette and speak.

“Gather our comrades.”

To do what must be done.