-King
We turned back to the stairs and headed for the fourth floor.
The entire third floor was frozen solid now, so there was nothing more to look around for.
I wasn’t in a position to waste time fooling around with that X bastard, so I had frozen the whole place over. I had also driven an ice blade into each of the chimeras’ cores.
Whether they would still manage to regenerate after that was something we would find out in time.
In any case, for the time being, there would be nothing moving alive on the third floor.
Gil followed silently behind me.
He must have understood what the human mouths inside the chimeras, repeating the same words like parrots, had meant.
“It looks empty here.”
“Now only the fifth floor remains.”
“Yeah. Their leader must be there.”
Since we sensed no movement on the fourth floor, nor any gray energy, we immediately turned back and climbed the stairs to the fifth floor.
From the landing between the fourth and fifth floors, we could hear the sound of frantic movement above.
Before long, several hulking figures appeared at the top of the stairs.
There were humans fitted with machinery, and there were also pure, unaltered orcs that had not been combined into chimeras.
“Stop!”
“This is a restricted area!”
“Who the hell are you people? Why did you come here?”
“Get lost right now!”
One of the shouted threats was phrased as a question, but it was probably not because they were actually curious.
They must already know who we were and why we had come here.
There was no way X, who had run away earlier, hadn’t reported to the higher-ups.
“Move. We didn’t come here to fight. We came to meet your representative.”
For now, I answered politely.
It was a sincere answer. I truly had no desire to fight them.
But the hulking figures did not seem to feel the same. Whatever the reason, they snarled like beings whose sole purpose was to fight.
“Who says we have to move or not move? Fight! I said fight!”
“If you can’t beat us, you can’t meet the boss!”
“Or get lost right now.”
Like enforcers who had spent their lives solving everything with brute force while leaving their brains somewhere else, they radiated violence from every inch of their bodies.
It felt as though adrenaline was flowing through the air strongly enough to be felt on my skin.
Then bullets began pouring out of their machinery, and flames started spewing forth as well.
The orcs, excited, were smashing the wall beside the stairs with their fists. Chunks of concrete broke off and rained down the staircase.
Of course, nothing pierced the barrier.
Looking closely, it seemed the enforcers and orcs were simply frightened and panicking.
From their perspective, the goblins and chimeras they had sent downstairs ahead of us must have been a fairly formidable force, yet we had taken them down one after another without being delayed at all and had made it all the way to the fifth floor. Of course they were tense.
After all, this was likely their last line of defense.
The problem was that this last line of defense consisted only of hulking brutes who posed no threat whatsoever to us mages.
“Don’t come!”
“I told you to get lost!”
“Damn it! Attack!”
As expected, they were already terrified and lashing out.
Bullets and chunks of concrete clattered down over the barrier, but we paid them no heed and continued up the stairs.
Surely they knew it was reckless to face a mage with physical strength alone.
Especially if they knew I hadn’t earned the title of hero for nothing.
If any of them had ever been to a terror raid site even once, they would have known what that meant.
But that was probably expecting too much.
There was no way humans serving as enforcers for a gang of thugs had ever been to a terror raid site.
“Why don’t you move aside now?”
“Move aside? Move aside, my ass! Have a taste of an orc’s kick!”
When I strode up the stairs and stood right below them, the orcs blocking the way thrust out their feet.
They must have intended to shove me back, but the one who fell was the orc instead.
I grabbed his thick foot, swung him around, and threw him down the stairs.
“Aaaagh!”
The orc tumbled down the stairs with heavy thuds, apparently slamming into things here and there. His scream receded into the distance.
“Oh! That’s incredible strength!”
“A human threw an orc!”
The orcs in front of me suddenly burst into admiration.
Their words were so innocent that I was dumbfounded, and a dry laugh escaped me on its own.
“What the hell? Were you born yesterday? You can’t even recognize a mage?”
Naturally, I had used magic. I had activated a spell to strengthen my body, one suited for a fight against hulking brutes. It was an extremely simple spell.
If I had decided to kill them all, I could have dealt with them in a single powerful spell, but I had only meant to clear them away without killing them.
And yet the orcs were impressed by just that.
One of the orcs, who had been staring wide-eyed in admiration, even thrust his foot out in front of me again. As if asking me to show my strength to him too.
I did exactly what he wanted.
Using the same pattern, I grabbed him, swung him, and threw him down.
“Aaagh! Amazing!”
Another scream receded into the distance.
Then cheers erupted among the orcs.
“Incredible!”
“Mages are strong!”
“Cool! So cool!”
Unable to stand it any longer, the enforcers screamed at the orcs.
“You stupid orc bastards! What are you doing? We told you to beat him down, so why the hell are you standing there admiring him?”
“Hurry up and stop him! Stop him!”
Only the humans had not yet forgotten their mission, cursing the orcs as they unleashed attacks at me.
Completely useless attacks, that is.
Countless bullets and flames bounced off the barrier.
It was too annoying to deal with them one by one, so I activated wind magic and blew them all to the end of the corridor.
In the fierce gale, humans and orcs alike were sent flying into the wall without discrimination, where they stuck like cicadas and could not move at all.
“Gil, you stay here and watch those guys. Keep applying the wind.”
“Understood.”
Now, at last, I could go find the leader of the biohacker group without any interference.
I looked over the rooms on either side of the corridor.
Even without anyone telling me which room belonged to the boss, I could tell right away.
One room around the middle had been lavishly decorated even on the outside.
To begin with, they were using an abandoned building however they pleased, so it was far from a proper office.
Even so, had they wanted to set the boss’s room apart?
Having given up on a modern, high-class office, they had instead marked it with crude but flashy decorations.
There were no bodyguards outside the door. It seemed no more enforcers remained.
So I opened the door without hesitation and went inside.
There were three men in the room.
Directly ahead was an extremely flashy desk and chair, and one man sat there. The other two were seated on a sofa set placed in front of it.
When I entered, the two men on the sofa sprang to their feet.
The man sitting in the flashy chair flicked his hand as if telling them to stay still, and they sat back down.
All three looked completely different from the enforcers I had seen so far.
Meaning, physically, they looked as if they could not use any strength at all. Instead, it was obvious at a glance that they were men who used their heads.
At long last, I felt as if I had met people worthy of the name biohacker group.
“So you made it all the way up here in the end, Mage Oudin.”
The man seated in the flashy chair opened his mouth.
He looked the youngest of the three.
At a glance, he could have passed for a teenager. With his slender body and glasses, he truly did not look like a boss in any physical sense.
But there was no doubt that he was the leader of the biohacker group.
He did look suited to the name hacker.
“Are you the leader of the biohacker group?”
“That’s right. I am King.”
“What? King?”
“That’s right. My name is King. Everyone calls me that. But how about showing some manners? If you came here because you have something to say to me, sit down there and say it properly.”
He spoke with a slight frown, as if scolding me. Then he gestured toward the sofa in front of him.
Seeing his attitude, I could understand that he was the boss of a group.
Unlike the impression given by his appearance, his words and bearing carried a fair amount of backbone and presence.
The name King was a little absurd, but it was not something worth questioning.
I did as he said, went to the sofa, and sat between the two men.
I decided to observe the proper courtesy.
Even though he was not a mage and did not possess a powerful body, the fact that he could show that much nerve in front of a mage was worthy of respect.
“All right, King. You must already know why I came here. Release the mercenaries from Phil Office. And don’t harass the director or anyone else from Phil Office ever again.”
“Why should I?”
I spoke calmly, and a bold answer came back.
“Because I came all the way here to tell you to.”
“Are you going to pay the mercenaries’ ransom in their place? If not, I don’t see why I should release them. What’s in it for me?”
“There’s nothing in it for you. Because you shouldn’t be trying to profit by kidnapping people in the first place.”
“You say we kidnapped them? No. Let’s get the facts straight. They were snooping around here, and we caught them. They were the ones at fault for setting foot on someone else’s private property without permission.”
King continued speaking with great boldness, as if he had completely forgotten that he was dealing with a mage.
But what caught my attention was not his attitude, but the words private property.
He was calling it private property again.
Leaving aside the question of what kind of nerve let him commit crimes so brazenly, I became curious as to why he kept insisting that a closed-off zone was private property.
Since it had come up, I decided to ask.
“Private property? This place is a closed-off zone managed by the government. Are you saying you bought it from them?”
“Of course we didn’t sign a purchase contract, but since we paid money and are renting it, it’s effectively our private property.”
“You paid money and rented it? From whom?”
“Who do you think? The Government Administration Bureau.”
“You gave money to the Administration Bureau? Is that true?”
“What, in the worldview of a hero like you, is something like that absolutely not supposed to happen? But in the real world, it does. Take a good look. The world runs on money. Try paying me compensation. I can even do the work of lifting you up as a hero.”
King spoke at length and then gave a sardonic smile.
Suddenly, I remembered hearing that the biohacker group had been carrying out anti-fan activities against me.
So that meant they were being paid to do that.
Conversely, he was saying that if I paid them, they could not only withdraw their anti-fan activities but even praise me.
I had no interest in that part.
I looked at King and smiled.
By chance, I had heard something very good.
Here was a living witness who could help expose a crook inside the Government Administration Bureau.
Whoever had taken bribes and allowed the biohacker group to use a closed-off zone, I now had the evidence needed to pull them out by the roots.