Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 362: The Very End
“Damn it! What was that dragon? I need to get out of here!”
A short man cursed as he hurried down the stairs into the basement of Viscount Bomen’s mansion.
“My standing in the Assassins’ Guild has risen so much, yet no one even bothered to escort me.”
The man was Salk, Tauro’s former father, and his complaints didn’t stop.
“I’ve been useful to the guild. I’ll take whatever I can carry and leave. Once I start running, no one will catch me. Hee hee hee.”
Rather than seeking an escape route, Salk was searching the basement for the treasure room.
“Everyone must be fighting upstairs. I’m not getting dragged into a battle between lunatics eager to die.”
He eventually found the door he wanted.
“Is this it? Hm? It’s open?”
The treasure-room door stood slightly ajar.
“Perfect! Anyone careless enough to leave it open has no right to complain when the contents disappear. Hee hee hee.”
Salk seized the door and pulled it wide.
A man was already standing inside.
Salk recognized him as the person who had received the confidential documents he carried from the Royal Capital after the guild’s bases there were destroyed.
The man was Viscount Bomen himself—and the head of the Assassins’ Guild.
“Hm? I remember you. Salk, was it?” the viscount said. “Did you intend to loot the treasury during the confusion?”
His gaze turned cold.
“I valued your rare skill, but a man with such a contemptible nature would only hinder our great purpose.”
Viscount Bomen drew his sword.
“H-Hic!”
Realizing his life was in danger, Salk turned and activated [Escape].
“You won’t get away.”
The viscount slashed through the apparently empty space with a dazzling sword technique.
“Gyaaah!”
Blood sprayed into the air.
A moment later, Salk reappeared with a deep wound across his back.
“As expected, [Escape] merely conceals you while you flee. It doesn’t remove your body from the world.”
Viscount Bomen looked down at Salk as he crawled across the floor and raised his sword again.
“P-Please… spare me… I only want to live…”
“You’ll answer for your actions. This is the price of attempting to steal from me.”
The viscount thrust his sword into Salk.
Salk gave one brief cry and died.
Thus ended the life he had spent fleeing.
To Tauro, Salk had been a terrible father. Yet before losing his wife, he had apparently been a decent man.
He had once been respected enough in the village to marry the woman regarded as its greatest beauty.
After Tauro was born, however, his mother became ill. When she eventually died, Salk’s grief turned into rage, and he directed that rage at his son.
He convinced himself that Tauro had stolen his wife’s life.
Salk stopped working, sank into drink, and forced the young Tauro to labor alone in the fields.
The birth of his son may have been the highest point of Salk’s life. Everything afterward was decline.
Debt pursued him. He abandoned Tauro, became a bandit and criminal, and spent the remainder of his life running from one place to another.
Apart from fathering Tauro, the greatest service Salk ever rendered to others was unknowingly guiding the dragonfolk to the Assassins’ Guild’s bases and helping bring about its destruction.
He died without ever learning of that achievement.
After killing Salk, Viscount Bomen packed confidential documents and valuables into a backpack enchanted with [Magic Storage]. He intended to escape through a secret underground passage.
“At this point, I have no choice but to return to the Northern Empire and begin again.”
Having made his decision, he opened the door to the passage.
A solid wall of stone blocked the way.
“What? What’s this?!”
Viscount Bomen struck the rock where the tunnel should have been.
“Impossible…”
The dragonfolk had detected the hidden passage from above and sealed it with earth magic.
There was no longer any route out of the estate.
“Then… there’s only one thing left to do.”
Viscount Bomen returned the confidential documents to the treasure room and set them alight without hesitation.
“This fulfills our obligation to protect our clients’ secrets. Now I need only see how many enemies I can take with me.”
As he muttered, he sensed someone behind him.
“Who’s there?”
He turned and saw a child.
Behind the child stood Ankh with his greatsword and four striking companions: Ragune, Malak, Zumei, and Reeva.
“Are you Viscount Bomen, lord of this territory and head of the Assassins’ Guild?” Tauro asked.
“Who are you, boy?”
“This is our first meeting. My name is Tauro. Your organization once accepted a contract on my life.”
Tauro inclined his head slightly.
“You…” Recognition flashed across the viscount’s face. “The boy who overturned the work of our skilled members and humiliated the guild.”
He clicked his tongue.
“We avoid unnecessary killing outside our contracts, but we should have made an exception. The moment your survival was reported, we should have used every possible means to eliminate you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
Salk’s body lay at Tauro’s feet, but Tauro showed no outward reaction.
From the location and condition of the corpse, he could roughly infer what had happened.
“What will you do with me?” Viscount Bomen asked. “If you want my head, I won’t surrender it freely.”
“I’d normally have no objection to that,” Tauro replied. “Unfortunately, you burned much of the evidence, so we must capture you alive as a witness.”
Ankh and the others readied themselves behind him.
“Ha ha ha! You believe I’ll quietly permit my arrest? You’ll all die with me!”
Viscount Bomen drew a large processed magic stone from his pocket.
It was the Assassins’ Guild’s familiar life-sacrificing forbidden spell, intended to kill its user and everyone nearby.
The stone didn’t activate.
“What? Why is nothing happening?!”
“I’ve encountered that spell several times,” Tauro said. “Naturally, I prepared a countermeasure.”
He produced a box-shaped magic tool fitted with a magic stone.
“This stone has been specially processed to suppress the activation of magic within a limited area.”
Viscount Bomen’s confidence collapsed, and he fell to his knees.
“Damn you…”
Ankh and the others immediately restrained him.
“Whew…” Tauro exhaled. “The suppression only lasts a short time. We’d have been in trouble if he had continued resisting and repeatedly tried to activate the stone.”
“What?!”
Ragune and the four others froze, only then realizing how narrow Tauro’s gamble had been.