43.
Count Lumine Rockwell looked at the empty seat across from him and picked up a glass of wine. After emptying the glass, he let out a small sigh.
“Found it.”
He wondered who was moving in the back alleys.
‘It was really an unexpected person.’
The abandoned scoundrel youngest son of Lucid. This wasn’t the first time he had seen Yu Jin. Yu Jin had been going around various banquets and parties, and Count Lumine had seen him in person. He was impressive in many ways.
The man with dying eyes could barely stand straight from being drunk, and easily gave his body to people with lewd intentions who clung to him. The fact that he was an extraordinary beauty piqued interest, but thinking the person himself was rotten, Lumine lost interest in Yu Jin afterwards. He thought he would never get close to him in his lifetime, but…
Count Lumine refilled his empty glass with wine. He had a lifelong dream he wanted to achieve. It was to regain the marquis title he originally had.
Everything else remained the same, but just because the title changed, the treatment he received was different. Count Lumine found this hard to bear. So while looking for ways in various directions, he happened to meet someone.
Blando.
A half-brother who had run away from home long ago. His father’s womanizing wasn’t anything new, so there were several such siblings. Most were guys who didn’t know their place and tried to climb up, so Rockwell disposed of them as soon as he became Count Lumine, but Blando was different.
Blando, who was 4 years older than him, was someone Rockwell could talk to quite well. Now he was building up power in the back alleys. At first, Rockwell wondered what he was trying to do by gathering the trash of the capital, but now he understood.
They say flowers bloom even on abandoned land, and he turned out to be quite useful. Getting hold of that wouldn’t immediately put the marquis title in his grasp, but it would be of some help. With such calculations, Rockwell contacted Blando.
“I know you need a lot. So I’ll become your patron.”
Blando looked hesitant but didn’t refuse.
“Give me time to think about it.”
Rockwell allowed him that. Time passed in the meantime, but for some reason, Blando couldn’t easily accept Rockwell’s help. And then, a new force appeared in the back alleys.
They caused discord between two of the back alley forces, making them fight each other, and reached out to Blando.
Fundamentally, Rockwell was a greedy person. He hated having what he had, or what he wanted to have, taken away by others. So from then on, he started investigating this other force. The number of people wasn’t as large as he thought.
About 40-50 people. One group seemed to be mercenaries judging by their lifestyle. Though they covered their faces, probably trying not to be discovered, Rockwell persistently stuck to it and found out their identity.
The Lion Mercenary Group. They were once renowned, but had been relatively quiet recently. If a mercenary group is quiet without disbanding, there’s only one reason.
‘When they’re hired and working for someone.’
Once he figured that out, the rest was easy. Rockwell found out about the trading company the Lion Mercenary Group had been working with recently, and even its owner. The person that came up was Yu Jin.
“It really was an unexpected person.”
He thought he was a broken doll, but he wasn’t. If that’s the case, it means his scoundrel act all this time was a disguise, and as soon as he realized this, a thrill ran through his body. Thinking about what the angelic-looking idiot was hiding inside.
“It’s natural to fall for him, isn’t it?”
He was ecstatic. He wanted to get his hands on Yu Jin by any means necessary.
‘Show me your true self.’
How wonderful would it be to see his inner self that others don’t know? Count Lumine smiled, his mouth corners stretching wide.
“Urghk.”
A man with his lung pierced by a sword fell with a grotesque sound. Where he fell, there was already a pool of blood, and when he hit it, there was a splashing sound. Jinhyeon roughly shook off the blood sticking to his sword, then turned to his next target.
“Ack, aack! No!”
The man who was trembling while holding a weapon turned his back and ran away. But knowing it would be troublesome to let him go, Jinhyeon threw his sword at the man’s back.
“Guhk!”
The man crumpled to the ground with the sword accurately embedded in his back. Jinhyeon picked up one of the weapons scattered on the ground and approached the man. Then he split the head of the man who was begging for his life, crying and sniveling. He stepped back to avoid the gushing blood and wiped his cheek with the back of his hand. Despite trying his best to avoid blood splatter, the red liquid was thickly smeared.
“Still far from perfect.”
As he sighed, Green, who was curled up on the other side, flinched. The Green who initially sent lustful gazes had disappeared like a lie, and now he acted like a gentle lamb in front of Jinhyeon, constantly wringing his hands.
“Oh my, have you finished everything? Your skills are indeed amazing. I’ve never seen anyone so skillful in my life.”
Green poured out flattery as if his tongue was buttered. As people from Sena’s side stuck to Hans, the number of fights between Hans and Green gradually increased. It seemed they were running around trying to replenish their numbers as people died, but they weren’t increasing. With constant fighting and people dying, who would want to join them? Jinhyeon stared down at Green, who was still spouting flattery.
Unlike Hans, Green was quite quick-witted and had been showing different movements recently. He was said to be organizing his scattered assets and looking into means of transportation to leave for far away.
He must be planning to escape.
It seemed he intended to take the wealth he had gathered here, run away to settle somewhere else, and live lavishly, but Jinhyeon had no intention of letting him live. The safest person is a dead person.
Jinhyeon carelessly threw away the weapon he used to kill the last person. It wasn’t particularly good, so he didn’t bother retrieving and maintaining it. There were already several swords of similar quality prepared, so he could just use one of those. When his skills improved further, he would need to get a proper sword in earnest, but not yet.
“Let’s go back.”
Avoiding the blood-soaked floor, he returned to his lodgings. It had been quite a while since he last saw Yu Jin. Every time he tried to visit in between, something came up and he couldn’t go.
Jinhyeon tightly clenched his blood-soaked hand. He wished he could hug that soft tofu and sleep soundly. Just because he was holed up in the back alleys didn’t mean he was completely cut off from outside news. He heard that Yu Jin had recently gained a unique new nickname.
[God of Luck]
He heard it was a nickname given because luck followed him whenever he gambled. No matter what game he played, he won enormous sums of money, and it was said that his followers were gradually increasing. It must be maddening for the gambling houses, but it seemed they couldn’t do anything about it because he was from Lucid.
How would Yu Jin gamble? Jinhyeon was curious about that too. What expression would he make when he won, what would happen if he lost? Every time he thought of Yu Jin, his heart tickled. Still, the day he would meet him again wasn’t far off. Because Yu Jin was supposed to come to the back alleys once Hans and Green were mostly taken care of.
Blando was a cautious person, so it was to show his face clearly and draw him in as an ally. Of course, Keith and Haruna were against it, but they couldn’t break Yu Jin’s stubbornness. Jinhyeon only waited for the day he would meet Yu Jin.
‘Well, if it takes too long, I can always go see him again.’
Sneaking out to meet him is fun in its own way.
Drrrr.
Every time the roulette spun and the ball bounced, people’s exclamations followed. Some swallowed their saliva, some groaned. And finally, when the ball stopped, cheers poured out.
“He got it right again!”
“As expected of the God of Luck!”
“Oh, please bestow your luck upon me today too!”
The people behind Yu Jin went crazy with excitement and in the end, knelt down and prayed to him. The gambling house manager watching this scene clutched his chest in anguish, but reality didn’t change.
The scoundrel of Lucid won another enormous sum of money. Whether they sent him to the third floor or left him on the second floor, his winning didn’t change. Because of this, all the gambling houses in the capital had now blacklisted Yu Jin. It was a futile act at this point, but they had to do something to feel a little better.
“Amazing!”
Count Lumine, Rockwell, who was next to Yu Jin, exclaimed. However, Yu Jin deliberately didn’t even look in his direction. After revealing what Count Lumine had said to Keith, he had brought back a lot of information about Count Lumine.
The previous Count Lumine had been such an incorrigible womanizer that he had several children, and one of them was Blando, who had formed a gang in the back alleys.
“How’s their relationship?”
“I heard it wasn’t bad when Blando was living in the count’s household.”
“Even though they’re half-brothers?”
“Yeah, apparently the current Count Lumine, Rockwell, wasn’t very interested in his half-siblings.”
Is that so? Yu Jin suddenly thought of his own siblings. If they had been people like Rockwell, would his life have been different? After thinking that far, he shook his head.
