The old man's gaze drilled into my forehead. For a moment, it seemed that not gun, or even tank, barrels, but at least Yamato caliber artillery were "looking" at me. But that moment passed as if it hadn't even been there. The old man shifted his gaze to the bodies and released Aun's ear.
"Yes! Let them pay!" The boy immediately caught my thought and leaned over one of the killers, whose jacket had lifted, exposing a belt purse.
No sooner had the boy's fingers touched the stranger's purse than a dry but sharp voice cut through the kitchen:
"Hands off!"
"Huh?" Aun didn't immediately understand but withdrew his hand just in case.
"Where, I say, are you reaching your grabbing hands?" The old man grumbled, and with a quick movement, he caught the boy's ear again, pulled it, and turned the boy to face him. "Whose stool leg killed him?"
"Yours!!" Aun shrieked, standing on his tiptoes.
"Exactly, mine! And that means what?" The shopkeeper shook the boy by the ear so that his feet momentarily left the floor.
"That everything on the dead man is yours!!" The merchant's son whimpered.
"Right!" The shopkeeper mercifully let go of the boy's ear. "Oh, youth! Remember, what is taken from battle is sacred!"
"But he accidentally fell on the stool so unluckily!" Freed from the grip of the old man's fingers, Aun immediately felt much more confident.
The old man's eyes flashed menacingly, although I thought that somewhere deep inside his consciousness, the sweets shop owner was literally rolling with laughter, enjoying the spectacle. My guess was confirmed by the fact that the old man picked up a broom that had somehow survived the explosion and started chasing Aun around the destroyed kitchen. With each hit on the boy's back, the old man declared:
"Accidentally! Not accidentally! Everything's mine! I'll claim you as spoils right now! And why not? I have the right! Who broke into my house uninvited? You broke in!"
The broom strikes weren't strong or even particularly offensive, but no matter how Aun tried to dodge them, he just couldn't. I watched in silence, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily.
My bet that there would be an old man hiding his true rank in the shop kitchen and that he would intervene when strangers so blatantly barged into his space paid off. It played out even better than I expected. The killers, all of them, were dead. None got away. Considering my guess that this was a family clan, we could safely hope that there would be no new attempts on Aun in the near future. Due to the elimination of all the perpetrators. Yes, the client is still unknown, but they will definitely need time to find new killers. Especially considering there's no Assassins' Guild in Tries, the task of finding new assassins is not as simple as it might seem.
It was good, but there was a flip side. This old man, who was now so ostensibly absurdly chasing Aun, frightened me. Deeply. Of course, I understood from the very beginning that a Mithril master would crush someone like me into dust with one look, but the way he wiped out all the assassins... It impressed me. A lot. So much that, turning to the memory of the Last Cycle, I compared and realized that this old man, even despite his quite venerable age, would probably have bested "the past me" in my prime. And considering that "past me" wasn't the weakest among the earthlings... A heavy and viscous lump rose in my throat. It was not so much how he pulled it all off unnoticed to an outsider's gaze that impressed me. No, that was quite cool too, but when I think of the speed of thought, as well as the quickness and clarity of planning needed to "accidentally kill everyone needed," my head spins.
Perhaps, if I were at least at the Avalonium stage now and could track everything the old man did, my opinion about the power of the sweet shop owner would change. But - I am at Bronze, and I have a feeling that this old man could make it into the TOP 10 strongest fighters of Ain. And that's at his age! And if that's the case, what was he capable of in his prime?! And why has "past me" never even heard of such a master? There wasn't a single legend about someone like that in the vaults of the "memory of the future." Although, of course, I could not know all the great masters, especially those who had long retired, but a man of such power and skills must have left quite a trace. However, according to Aun, this old man appeared in the city what, twenty, thirty years ago? A lot can be erased from human memory in that time.
What I know for certain, despite all his power, this man did not show himself during the Invasion. But this might indicate that he fought demons here, in the southeast of the continent, and didn't care about what was happening around Pentapolis.
As far as I remember, apart from the five main Invasion Armies, each aimed to destroy one of the Seals, numerous but disparate bands of demonic creatures spread to other parts of the continent. Perhaps this powerful elder was protecting Tries from such squads? Perhaps even successfully. But, when we lost the Last Battle, no one could stop the demonic legions on their way to the Seals. This meant that the Inverted Towers of the Five Cities ultimately fell. And no matter how successful anyone was in defending their settlements, families, loved ones, or friends in other parts of the world, their diligence and work went to dust - after the destruction of the Seals, the Demon Lords entered the world. Entities no less powerful than the old gods of Ain.
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My plunge into a pool of memories was interrupted by a sudden blow to my side by a broom.
"What are you standing around for, your eyes glazed over?" An irritated elderly voice brought me back to reality. "Do you think all this will go unpunished for you and this little one?" The candy shop owner gestured around. "Here!" He handed me the broom so skillfully that when I pulled my hands away, they were already gripping it.
The old man spun around on the spot and again caught Aun, who was trying to slip past him, by the ear:
"Where do you think you're going?! What about cleaning up after yourself?!"
"But it wasn't us..." The boy tried to dodge the blame, but it wasn't happening.
In a split second, an unnoticed movement of the old man's hand, and the lad was standing next to me, also with a broom in his hands. The candy shop owner, grumbling and moaning, looked around, clicked his tongue, and complained:
"Scumbags! Good thing they didn't break the oven! Those scoundrels!" The old man pulled the killer's head out of the coals and kicked the already dead body in the side. "How messy! Ugh, smells like burnt hair! How am I going to cook anything in this oven now?!"
The Mithril master turned to us, who were still standing against the wall at attention, and began to drill us with his gaze:
"What's with today's youth! Couldn't you have just quietly let yourselves be slaughtered and not disturb hard-working folks?! I won't be able to open the shop in the morning now!!!"
The phrase was so peculiar that it threw my thoughts into disarray, not to mention Aun. The boy opened his mouth to object, but I jabbed him in the side with my elbow, and he stayed silent.
"How much work will it take to fix this?" The old man started lamenting again. "No less than a week! How much will it cost? And who will compensate me for a week of downtime and pay for the repairs?"
As there was a pause after these questions, I dared to speak:
"Just that sword," I said, without making any sudden movements, indicating the blade protruding from the patriarch of the assassins' mouth, "I think it's worth at least ten gold, which would cover all the repairs and still leave some..."
"Look who's talking!!!" At my nose, a towel, which had somehow ended up in the old man's hands, snapped like a whip from an experienced driver. "This sword is already mine! Clear?"
"Yes," I answered shortly and to the point, to avoid provoking him further. "Clear."
"But you said yourself that it was us who brought these bad men to you," Aun chimed in.
"And so?" The shop owner quickly closed the distance to the boy, stopping when there was less than a centimeter between their faces.
"I'm not arguing, everything found on their bodies is yours, but these bodies wouldn't be here if it weren't for us." What on earth is he saying? He's driving us into a grave right now!
"That's right!" The towel in the old man's hands wound itself around Aun's neck and tightened slightly.
But instead of keeping quiet, the young man began to babble even faster:
"If that one sword over there will cover all your expenses, then there must be valuable things on the other bodies as well, so you actually made a profit!"
"These are my spoils!" The candy shop owner started his spiel again.
"Yours! But you wouldn't have these spoils if it weren't for us! So, couldn't we claim a percentage as middlemen..."
"What?!!" The shop owner roared like a wounded bull. "How dare you... How did you come up with that?!"
The towel tightened around the boy's throat. The eyes of the old man and the boy met, and then the elder laughed - dryly, quietly, but, as it seemed to me, cheerfully. The towel in his hands loosened and slipped off the boy's neck.
"Youth's audacity! I'm jealous..." The shopkeeper said, turning away from us, once again surveying his kitchen, which, if you look closely, was not as badly damaged as it should have been after such an explosion. "Listen up! You'll not leave until everything's cleaned up," his index finger trembled in the air, "And if I notice you messing with my trophies, I'll twist your heads off! Understood?!"
I didn't have a chance to reply when from the other end of the kitchen, through a door leading to the inner rooms of the house, came:
"Grandfather Wyuan, can I have a look and search around?" A large figure appeared in the doorway, clad in a guard's armor. "I kind of have to. On duty. After all, five corpses are five corpses."
The old man, wheezing, turned around, squinted nearsightedly and said:
"Young Kim Chhong? Oh! Are you already a senior Option? How time flies..."
"So, Grandfather Wyuan, can I come in and examine the bodies? And about the senior Option rank, you congratulated me three years ago..."
The one the shopkeeper called young turned out to be a strong man well over thirty. A stern guard who had seen much, with an officer medallion on his chest and a Wootz rank. This guard clearly didn't know about the old man's true power, as he looked at him not with fear but with sincere respect for his old age and some kind of childlike love in his eyes. It's quite possible that this tough fighter, like the boys now, also stole sweets from under the old man's nose twenty-five years ago. And despite having long since grown up and matured, this merchant remained Grandfather Wyuan to him for life.
The quick arrival of the guards was entirely logical. The main marshal of Tries, as locals called the guardhouse, was located right on the Central Market square, which indirectly indicated that far from fools were running the city. As far as I remembered, the marshal was situated almost directly opposite the sweet shop - on the other side of the square. This was one of the main reasons why I was confident that when the alarm was raised, the killers would flee, not continue the attack. For a clan of assassins to chase their prey so close to the city's main marshal was foolish and reckless. But I misjudged the desire of the family head to avenge the death of his own. And I should have understood how much vengeance can cloud the eyes, but I made a mistake and almost died because of this miscalculation.
"Examine?" Grandfather Wyuan smacked his lips in an old man's way and waved his hand. "Work is work."