Chapter 16. My First Crime in a Fantasy World...

Chapter 16: 16. My First Crime in a Fantasy World...

I looked past the guards at Millie, still on her knees with her forehead against the floor. Then I looked back at the merchant, and I felt something inside me settle... like a stone dropping to the bottom of a well.

"And what does that make you, huh?" I asked.

He frowned. "What...?"

I clenched my fists in front them. "If her life has a price... what price would you put on yours?"

I didn’t recognize my own voice... It had no joke in it, no bluster, nothing but flat, quiet certainty.

Beside me, I felt Elsbeth go still... and I heard her draw a slow breath, as if she had just realized she was standing next to a very different person than the one she’d been walking with all day.

The merchant’s smile twitched. "Grrgghhh..."

"Take them," he said to the guards. "Both of them!"

"And if either one resists, I’ll put the little rabbit through her paces!"

The first guard swung at me before I’d even finished turning around.

I got lucky... That’s the truth.

I didn’t have any fancy training or heroic instincts, but Apex Physique had given me reflexes I didn’t understand yet, and my body simply moved.

The sword whistled past my ear, and I ducked under it and rammed my shoulder into the man’s chest. He flew backward into a stack of barrels and hit the ground with a crash.

BAAMMMM!

The second guard came in fast, and he was a lot better than the first. His blade caught me across the upper arm, and I felt hot pain and the wet slide of blood.

I snarled, grabbed his wrist before he could pull back, and twisted until I heard something crack. He screamed, dropped the sword, and I slammed my fist into his jaw.

BAM!

He crumpled.

"That’s it...? I thought you guards are trained for this kind of thing." I said while wiping the blood from my injury.

Elsbeth had drawn her sword and started toward me, but I shot her a look and shook my head.

’Watch Millie,’ I mouthed.

She hesitated for half a second, then nodded and moved to the cage, placing herself between it and the crowd.

Screams broke out around us.

"A FIGHHTTTTT!!!"

The market had gone into a panic, with people shoving past each other and dragging children away from the fight. I turned back to the merchant... and not going to lie that I was panting while having to feel that my arm was throbbing.

He wasn’t smiling anymore.

"Stay where you are!" he shouted.

He had a knife in one hand, a long, curved skinning blade, and he had dragged Millie out of the cage with the other.

She was on her feet... I can see her trembling, and he was holding her in front of him with the blade pressed against her throat.

"One more step... and I swear to every god in the sky that I’ll open her throat up just to make sure that you can see it with your own eyes!"

I froze.

Fuck... this situation is harder than I thought... just like what I always seen in action movies.

It’s hard to describe what that felt like... A minute ago I’d been the strongest I’d ever been in my life, laughing about how I could lift a boulder.

And how naive I really am for having a thought that power meant I’d never be helpless again. But in that moment... with a knife against her neck and a stupid, cowardly man’s hand shaking on the handle, all my strength was worth nothing at all.

"Put the weapon down," I said, as steadily as I could. "Now...!"

"You put yours down first, asshole!"

I let my sword slide out of my fingers and clatter on the ground. And slowly... I raised both of my hands.

"No... Don’t!" Millie whispered.

I can hear that her voice was cracked and tiny. Tears were running down her cheeks, but she was looking straight at me.

"Please, don’t fight him...! Just go...! I’ll be fine..."

"No," I said. "You won’t... and I can tell by the look of his reaction right now."

The merchant’s eyes darted around, to the crowd, to Elsbeth with her sword raised, and to the bodies of his guards... He was starting to understand that he had lost.

I saw it in his face, and I saw something nastier come into his eyes right after it.

"If I go down..." he hissed, "...she goes down with me."

He pulled the knife back... but just a few inches, and brought it down toward her throat.

I don’t remember deciding to move.

One moment... I was standing there with my hands open up, and the next I had crossed the space between us faster than I thought was possible.

I slammed my forearm into his wrist, and the blade flew out of his hand and spun across the cobblestones.

Millie stumbled free, and Elsbeth caught her before she hit the ground. I drove the merchant backward into the side of the cage, hard enough to rattle the bars.

BAMMM!

He slid down onto the ground... gasping. I stood over him while breathing hard, with blood dripping off my elbow.

And I swear... in that moment... I would have let him live.

I really would have.

I’d stopped him... I’d saved her, and the fight was over.

I was ready to turn around... grab Millie, and run as fast as I can before other guards can catch us.

But I noticed something... His hand closed around a second knife, looks like a small one that had been hidden in his boot.

He didn’t go for me, but he has gone far enough... He lunged for the chain in Millie’s wrist guard, the one that controlled her collar.

I saw it all at once... the knife, the chain, the pain that would come when he yanked it, the look on her face when she realized it was happening again, and I saw how it would never stop.

He’d chase her... He’d threaten her...

He’d have men and money and also those pointless papers, and he’d keep hurting her as long as he was alive.

All I can think about this whole situation is to stop this man, but with a different kind of resolve. And it’s not a good one because my instinct instantly says to me that I had to give the REAL justice to this worthless man.

And so... I grabbed my fallen sword off the ground while letting out a long scream. "DIEEEE! YOU FUCKING SCUUUMMMM!!!"

I drove it through his chest.

STAAABBBBBB!

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be... That’s the part that stays with me.

The blade went in with barely any resistance, and the merchant’s eyes went wide... Then I could feel the most satisfying feeling when he made a small, surprised sound like a man who had forgotten something important.

"A-agghhh... naaggghhhhh..."

Then his hand opened, and the knife dropped. After that I see him slid sideways off my sword and lay still on the cobblestones.

For a long moment, I couldn’t hear anything... The shouting and the screaming plus the clang of the town bells faded away into a dull, empty hum.

I stared at my hands... which were red to the wrists, and I tried to think of something to say.

For a quick second, I stared at the man... noticing the pool of blood on the floor where I realize that I just committed my first crime in this fantasy world.

In my previous life... I’d been a bully, and I’d been a liar.

I’d hurt people’s feelings... broken their hearts and treated other people’s lives like a game.

But... I’d never taken one...

I had never once held a life in my hands and let it go.

I took a step back, and my legs didn’t want to hold me.

"I... actually killed him," I whispered.

A shadow moved at my side. Elsbeth had left Millie with a cloth-seller who was crouched behind a barrel, and she had come to stand beside me with her sword still out.

She had killed more people than I could count, and she looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

She didn’t tell me that I should feel proud, and she didn’t tell me it was nothing. She just looked at the dead man for a long moment, then at Millie, who was shaking in the arms of a stranger.

"He was going to kill her," she said.

I didn’t answer that. None... I have none.

"You had a choice," she continued, very evenly. "You chose to protect someone who could not protect herself..."

"But still..." I swallowed. "That doesn’t make it okay."

"No... It does not." She turned and looked at me properly, and her red eyes were steady and strangely gentle. "I will not tell you that taking a life is something to celebrate, Leon."

"But I will not call you a coward for doing what you believed was necessary, either."

I didn’t know what to say to that... I nodded, because it was the only thing I could do, and I felt something loosen in my chest.

It wasn’t relief. But it was just a tiny bit of weight lifting, and it’s far more than enough that I could breathe again.

Somewhere behind us, a bell started ringing. It was a loud, urgent one, the kind that meant guards were coming.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

"We need to go," Elsbeth said. "Now!"

"But Millie..."

"I know!"