A Girl-Shaped Something

With the door gone, they walked straight in through the entrance.

It reeked of dust. The lighting was sparse, leaving the interior dim despite it still being bright outside.

Azu coughed lightly and held her right hand to her mouth.

Inside, about ten young men were gathered, all staring at the man Azu had sent flying into the wreckage of the door.

Most of them looked stunned.

"The hell?"

"Someone got launched from the entrance."

"Did they do that?"

It took a moment, but the murmuring started as the situation sank in.

In the middle of it all, one young man clapped his hands loudly.

The noise died down.

He appeared to be their leader.

"Can I help you?"

The young man drained the bottle of wine he'd been holding, gripped it by the neck, and smashed it against the table to make a crude weapon.

The few remaining drops of wine dripped to the floor.

An explicit threat, but given that a monster's claws were far more dangerous than a broken bottle, it wasn't much of one.

Overkill intimidation for an ordinary girl, but utterly meaningless against an adventurer.

"I heard crime's been going up around here lately."

"Huh? So what? You saying we did it?"

"Didn't you?"

Azu tilted her head as she said it.

Between her cute looks and the innocent gesture, the young man seemed to lose some of his edge.

"What are you, even…? I thought you were the guards. What a waste."

"So the guards do scare you. Sounds like you've got something to hide."

Elza leaned in close to the young man as she said it.

Taken aback by her refined features, he stepped back.

"And this place, did you get permission to be here? I doubt it. No one maintaining a building would let it get this run-down."

"Tch. Yeah, fine. What, are you adventurers hired to evict us or something?!"

As the young man said that, the others behind him jumped to their feet and grabbed whatever they could use as weapons.

"You're right about the adventurer part, but we're not here for evictions."

"Then get out. Actually, no. You're paying for his treatment and the repairs to that door. Unless you'd rather pay with your bod—"

The instant he said that, a mass of water tore past his face.

It slammed into the wall, punching a gaping hole through it with a loud crash before dissolving back into water and soaking everything around it.

"This is tiresome. It's plain to see that you're squatting here illegally and scraping by on petty crime. What we want to know is whether you robbed a certain shop recently, and the whereabouts of one of its employees."

That single spell shattered whatever fight most of the young men had left.

Even the leader was breaking into a cold sweat.

"Wh-what the hell."

"How about we start by putting the weapons down?"

Elza gently took hold of the young man's right wrist with her gloved left hand.

Then she squeezed.

"Gah!"

The young man let out a small cry and dropped the broken bottle.

"Y-you… sister."

"You've never tangled with adventurers before, have you?"

Elza released him.

The young man clutched his wrist and glared at her, but she looked perfectly unbothered.

"You'll scram if I tell you, right?"

"Yes, that will do."

The young man turned to the others behind him.

"Any of you do something lately?"

"I sold rigged lottery tickets."

"I bought up leftovers from food stalls on the cheap and resold them at a markup."

"Robbing a shop? That'd bring way too much heat. Way safer to just go after unattended bags."

One after another, their criminal records spilled out as if they were bragging.

Every last one was a minor offense.

No wonder the guards kept putting them on the back burner.

The victims surely weren't amused, but Azu had no interest in changing course just to deal with these people.

It wasn't their job, and handling this kind of thing was the guards' responsibility.

To the boy who'd led them here, this group might have seemed terrifying, but Azu's tension drained away.

If Yohane told her to, she'd flatten them without a second thought, though.

"A shop robbery? That wasn't us."

"… Seems that way."

There was no sign of the missing employee, either.

Azu sighed inwardly. A dead end.

"Oh wait. Those guys might've done it, though."

Something seemed to have clicked for the young man.

"Those guys? You mean the Logos family, boss?"

"Yeah. What we do is nothing compared to them. And we don't pay tribute to anyone."

"No kidding. I saw one of their grunts get his nose broken for not making quota."

Azu noticed the conversation drifting off track and rapped the floor with her scabbard.

The young men stopped talking and turned to face her.

"This Logos family? They're the suspicious ones?"

"That's right. Sure, we commit crimes, but only small stuff, to survive. Those guys prey on the weak. The guards have probably got their eye on them already."

"It's not for me to judge. That's up to this city's law."

Regardless of the reason, crime shouldn't be condoned.

Besides, everyone in this room was healthy and perfectly capable of working if they chose to.

They didn't have citizenship, so only low-paying jobs were available, and they didn't feel like being worked to the bone for so little. That was why they were here.

There was no room for sympathy.

"So where do these people hang out?"

"The biggest building in the south. They run an unlicensed lending operation. It sticks out, you can't miss it."

The young man didn't seem to be lying. But something about it felt off.

The Logos family was probably a major threat to these people.

It was transparent that they were hoping something might happen if they pointed Azu and her group in that direction.

"I see. Sorry for the intrusion."

Azu said that and turned to leave.

Elza and Alexia followed.

The young men watched them go in silence.

After Azu's group was gone, the man who'd been blown into the door finally shoved the wreckage aside and got to his feet.

"Ow, ow… why was I on the floor?"

"Because you got launched, you idiot."

"What? Come to think of it, there was a kid…"

"So that's what adventurers are like. Didn't even flinch at a broken bottle. That was a brat-shaped something."

"What do we do today, boss?"

"Nothing. Getting on their bad side would be suicide. We lay low for a while."

"Look at this. The wall's got a chunk blown out of it."

The leader slumped into a worn-out chair and scratched his head.

"Getting humiliated this badly by a group of girls… maybe we should just become adventurers."