Chapter 126: The Man In Crow Mask

The Hall was bustling with activity, adventurers, both Towerians and Climbers, gathered at the different sections of the centre and waiting on the attendants to approve them for dungeons.

The postings board above the counter row was half a day out of date and men crowded it anyway, reading the same lines twice and arguing over them. A party of four had a slip between them that none of them could make sense of, and they had been holding up the third queue with it for a quarter of an hour.

At the lounge of the building too, many that sat told loud stories, laughing, beating the table flat-palmed at the good parts, and the smell of booze and sweat was prominent in an almost sweetening and disgusting manner at the same time.

Then the man entered the Hall.

He carried an air of silence, perhaps of doom and despair, and the moment people laid eyes on him, their expressions changed. A story broke off half told. A cup went down on a table and stayed down, the man holding it looking into it instead of at the door. By the time the newcomer was four steps in, the third queue had sorted its own slip out and gone quiet with the rest of them.

The man grunted and complained silently.

"For the good love of the old ones, this is why I hate coming here. I hate the smell here."

He pressed the back of his wrist up under his nose as he said it and kept it there for a step or two.

He walked inside and continued walking, his steps loud creaks in the large hall, and the place had gone quiet enough that every man in it could hear them. Somebody’s bench scraped an inch and then did not scrape again.

He faced the counter row but only slightly.

"Is Aufrey on seat?"

One of the attendants, a man with bushy beards, gulped. He had both hands flat on the ledger in front of him and he kept them there.

"No, he has been summoned by the King."

The man placed two fingers beneath his jaw, a smile spreading on his pale face.

"Oh? Aufrey summoned by that insufferable king... something must be up."

He looked at the man who had spoken again.

"Do you have any more information?"

The attendant stuttered as he replied.

"I hear it is about some expedition, and even Captain Dunn is involved."

The man froze the moment he heard the Captain’s name. His face went grim. On the counter between them the attendant’s quill rolled a half turn and came to rest against the ledger.

Then all over again, after like two seconds, his mouth slowly curved, forming a very wrong grin.

He gave the guy a thumbs up and was about to hurry back out of the building, and three steps from the door he froze, staggered on the turn, and came round sharply.

"Right! Right right, I almost forgot why I was here. Bethe! Yura! Out now, and where and who the hell is Theo? Out too!!"

The crowd shuddered with each shout.

The crowd was silent even after his loud demand. Nobody moved. A man near the wall took his hand off his sword hilt very slowly and put it in his pocket.

Then his voice exploded through the building.

"Oh, shall I just slaughter everyone!!!"

The room trembled and immediately, it was like these people he required were being pushed out. A lane opened from the lounge to the counter row and nobody could have said afterwards who had moved first.

With trembling shoulders, Bethe moved forward, Yura stood straight behind her, and walked forward with a blank expression on her face.

They both stood in front of him now.

He studied them for a couple of seconds with his head tipped and his hands behind his back, the way a man looks over stock he has already paid for.

"Very irresponsible of you, do you not care what happens to Sivvy?"

Yura’s blank expression suddenly folded into a frown.

"What? What did you do with Sivvy?"

She almost wanted to send herself towards him, but it was as though her legs reminded her that she was sending herself towards death, and quickly righted themselves.

He watched her do it with an amused smile, but his face was wrong in a way that unsettled anyone that was watching.

"Now, you three could walk out of all of this, give me who beat up our boy and defeated the guardian, you know all cores are to be submitted to us right?"

Yura frowned defiantly.

"I don’t even know him, he most likely has left the Tower already, unlike some of us, other people have lives outside the Tower right?"

The man chuckled. He usually was slightly hunchbacked, but he straightened slowly and his bones let out cracking sounds as he did so, one after another all the way up.

Suddenly, he was standing taller than he already was, black, wavy and wet hair spilling beside his head, almost touching his shoulders, his eyes were dark, deep and hollow, and his face was pale, with dry and chapped lips.

"I do not have the luxury of time, to play with you, Yura, so I will be straightforward about this."

He extended and caught her neck in one easy grip.

"Where is the damn Theo?"

He squeezed his hand around her neck as he asked. And slowly lifted her off the ground, until the toes of her boots were drawing lines through the dust of the floor and then finding nothing at all.

Yura strained and groaned, clutching at his skin and trying to tear it with her nails. But it was like scratching her nails against stone, soon her own nails were the one suffering the damage, two of them splitting back into the bed, while the man did not seem to spare a tiny care for her effort.

Her breath came in and out of her in a thin whistle, and the Hall could hear that the way it had heard his steps.

He tilted his head up at her, mockingly.

"You’re not gonna answer me, Yura?"

Then he glanced down towards Bethe.

"You better be ready to speak when I get to you, I’ll break both your arms first."

Everyone watched the brutal scene unfolding in the center of the Hall, all with dark looks on their faces, looking away from each other with pained expressions. Bethe had both hands over her mouth and had not taken them down. One of the storytellers from the lounge had folded his hands on the table in front of him and was studying them as though something were written there.

Yura, with a dim, and dying gaze, studied them.

She couldn’t blame them, even if they helped her, even if the entire room succeeded in defeating Hostile, he was only an errand boy, his bosses run the illegal business across ten floors, and they were too powerful to be messed with.

Everyone would merely be throwing away their lives in doing so.

So she couldn’t blame them.

Still... she wished. She wished one person would actually care enough to want to help her, even though it was a stupid thing to do. And she understood if no one was willing to do so. She just wished.

She glanced at Bethe and even she was looking away, biting her lips.

’Aww, fuck it. Let me just die.’

As soon as she spoke those words in her mind, another footstep resounded through the dark that was closing in at the edges of her sight.

And the owner of it slowly walked forward, arrogantly, shattering the domineering silence. Boots on the boards, unhurried, one after the other, all the way across a room that had not made a sound in a minute.

Yura with a weakened gaze turned to the door, and saw a man in trousers, black shirt, with waistcoat, walking towards her, with a black tenebrous looking crow mask, the beak of it long and turned down.

’Uh.. must be the Grim Reaper.’

Because she couldn’t think of what fool would be willing to walk in at such a time, and then just start coming straight towards her.

’...that guy.’

Actually, she could think of one, she just wasn’t sure he’d do something like that. Actually, she wished he wouldn’t but for some reason, after he offered them that prized core, that he fought to defeat himself, she felt like he could.

The mask came on through the lane the crowd had opened for it, past the queues, past the counter row and the ledgers and the bushy-bearded man still holding his hands flat, and it did not slow down for any of them.

Hostile continued to tighten her neck, demanding answers, and did not give a care for who just walked in.

Until the man in crow mask cut his hand.