WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Dionysus

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ I Picked Up the Protagonist’s Heroine ◈

Chapter 19: Don't They Usually Cut Off a Finger or Something?

──────

Bam!

With a deafening crash, the iron door of Lowcat's hideout was torn off.

Ripped from its hinges, it flew into the middle of the gambling tables and lodged there.

"W-What the hell?!"

"Who the fuck is it?!"

The gang members playing cards shot to their feet in alarm.

As the cloud of dust settled, a mass of flickering shadows appeared beyond the ruined entrance.

"Those starving mutts are really putting up a fight..."

Realizing who the intruders were, Lowcat's enforcer sneered as they grabbed an iron pipe.

"Hey, stomp them. Make sure they never walk agai..."

But the enforcer never got to finish shouting.

Whoosh.

A, the Houndry member at the front, closed the distance in the blink of an eye.

Crunch!

His fist drove deep into the enforcer's solar plexus.

"Guh, hck...?"

The enforcer's eyes rolled back as they coughed up blood.

It was destructive power that could not possibly belong to a human body.

Their body flew backward like a cannonball, bowling over three or four gang members behind them like pins.

"W-What was that?"

"That bastard... What kind of strength is that...?!"

They had no time to be shocked.

Following A, the Houndry members surged in like a pack of starving dogs.

"Kill them all!"

A dark-purple haze rose from their bodies.

It was the blessing Daywin had bestowed upon them.

Drunk on that power, the Houndry members became berserkers who felt neither pain nor fear.

Crack!

Even an ordinary-looking guild member caught the wooden club swung by a Lowcat member with their bare hand and crushed it.

It was a one-sided slaughter.

Lowcat's elites, who had held some sway in District 6, were swept away without being able to do a thing.

Into that chaos walked a man in a neat coat, entirely unsuited to such a bloody battlefield.

The new Karma.

He slowly entered the dust-filled hideout.

"Guh... S-Save me..."

"Shut up!"

Thud!

A swung their fist.

He had pinned the Lowcat member he had met at the tavern against the wall and was driving his fists into him.

The wall had cracked, and the man's face had already been beaten beyond recognition.

Yet A did not stop there.

Crunch!

Grabbing the man by the hair, A slammed his head into a nearby wooden table.

Meanwhile, Daywin shook his head as he watched A.

‘Why is he trying so hard...? Did something bad happen to him today?’

Bang! Bang!

"You pieces of trash! How dare you disrespect Houndry? How dare you doubt Lord Karma? Die! Apologize with your deaths!"

Half-mad, A stomped the Lowcat members into the ground.

Daywin briefly considered stopping them.

‘Well, they're all the same trash anyway.’

Not long afterward, several men were dragged out from the back of the hideout amid rough shouting.

"Ghk! Let me go! I said let go!"

Lowcat's officers, including its boss.

They were a miserable sight.

Their expensive suits had become rags, and their faces were covered in blood and bruises.

But they still screamed defiantly, their eyes full of venom.

"Get on your knees!"

A kicked the boss in the balls.

Crack!

The boss instantly collapsed as though by reflex.

Even as his legs gave out beneath him, he held his head high.

Ptooey!

He even spat blood-tinged saliva at Daywin's feet.

"Houndry... You crazy bastards. Did you fucking eat drugs or something?"

"Watch your mouth."

A moved to grab the boss by the hair, but Daywin raised a hand to stop him.

"You're the fifth Karma? You look like a girl."

The boss was quite bold for someone being held prisoner.

Perhaps he had something to rely on. Or perhaps there was someone behind him he feared more than Karma.

On the other hand, the officers were strangely quiet.

They kept their mouths tightly shut and avoided his gaze.

‘Hmm.’

Daywin looked down at their firmly closed mouths.

Getting them to talk would take time.

Torture was a skill, and the Order had plenty of specialists in it.

With his hands behind his back, Daywin stepped closer to the kneeling boss.

Then he bent down to meet the man's eyes.

Into his ear, he asked what he most wanted to confirm.

"Black envelope."

His voice was low.

"Have you ever received one?"

The boss's pupils constricted for an instant before returning to normal.

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

The man merely sneered.

‘Of course, he might truly not know. The Death God Cult would not have sent requests to every organization.’

But that look just now was the look of someone who at least had an idea.

Daywin stared at him for a moment, then slowly straightened up.

Instead of pressing further or throwing a punch, he calmly nodded.

"You don't know... is that it."

The boss seemed more flustered by Daywin's reaction.

Wasn't he supposed to cut off a finger or something to threaten him?

Daywin gestured to A behind him.

"Take them away."

The leaders of criminal guilds who would normally have snarled at one another over territory had gathered in one place.

The three guilds other than Houndry and Lowcat.

They were the powers dividing up what remained of District 6.

"Lowcat got taken out?"

When one man slammed a hand on the table in disbelief, the subordinate delivering the report nodded with a pale face.

"Thirty minutes... They were wiped out in thirty minutes."

A silence like cold water being thrown over them filled the cramped room.

Thirty minutes.

An entire organization had vanished while they ate dinner.

"Hmph. Those idiots just let their guard down. What a bunch of morons."

A man with his hat pulled low sneered as he lit his cigar.

"That guy was the weakest among us!"

"Right. And I heard that fifth guy is a mage. He must have used some kind of trick."

"Didn't they say those dog bastards have fewer than a hundred people now?"

The three bosses spoke over one another.

"If we join forces, we'll have more than five hundred. That's more than Houndry had in its prime. If we overwhelm them with numbers, mage or not..."

"We?"

"Yeah... an alliance."

As though he had been waiting for it, the boss with a snake tattoo held out his hand.

"Let's go in right away. I heard the fifth Karma is pale and doesn't have a single callus. You can tell he has never held a sword in his life."

"Heh. Some noble young master must have run away from home to play at being a gangster."

The man in the hat added as he exhaled cigar smoke.

"Yeah, let's go!"

The last man seemed not to have thought about it at all.

Judging by their momentum alone, they seemed ready to unite District 6 already.

But beneath the table, the scene was entirely different.

The snake-tattooed boss's leg shook nonstop like a sewing machine.

The vibration traveled up the table, sending ripples across the surface of the liquor in their glasses.

He pinched his thigh and tried to calm the trembling, but he could not control his instinctive fear.

The boss across from him was no different.

He pretended to smoke his cigar at ease, but it was already ragged with teeth marks.

‘Lowcat was stripped clean in thirty minutes.’

That fact stuck in his throat like a thorn.

Those men were not weak.

If anything, they were a step above them.

Yet Lowcat had been smashed before it could even put up a fight.

‘Even weakened, Houndry is still Houndry. Karma is still Karma...’

Houndry was clearly moving to rule District 6 once again.

The Marquess's sweeping purge had been meaningless.

Even after the lord intervened directly with force, they had only become more violent.

‘They really are mad dogs...’

While they hid their fear behind bluster...

Creeeak.

The iron door opened with a chilling sound.

Silence followed.

The three bosses turned toward the door at once.

The sound of heels came from the darkness.

Measured, unhurried footsteps.

A man stepped over the threshold.

It was the very person they had just been mocking.

"......!"

The snake-tattooed boss's mouth fell open, and the man in the hat dropped his cigar.

How?

How did he know about this place?

What about the guards?

The men they had stationed outside?

As they froze in shock and fear, Daywin smiled lightly.

Like someone who had arrived at an appointment right on time.

"Convenient that everyone's gathered here."

Standing with his back to the door, he smiled.

* * *

Several days later.

Marquess Fred's room.

"......"

He had summoned me to sit across from him, yet all that followed was a heavy silence.

About five minutes passed before Marquess Fred finally opened his mouth as he set down his teacup.

"Do you... perhaps have some complaint against me?"

Huh?

He called me in just to say something so out of the blue?

"No? Why would I have a complaint?"

I smiled faintly and shrugged.

"I don't have one."

"You don't... is that what you're saying."

The Marquess smacked his lips shut and rubbed his chin.

"Think carefully. Not even a little?"

"Not at all."

The Marquess's brow twitched.

"If you don't have a complaint, why are you doing this...?"

"Excuse me?"

"The entire marquisate has reeked of blood for days! I can't even open my windows! Complaints from the residents are pouring in! Why did you suddenly start a massacre without discussing it with me first?!"

The Marquess pointed at the stack of documents piled on his desk.

They appeared to be petitions filed over the past three days.

I did not need to read them to know what they said.

"A massacre? That's an excessive way to put it."

"You were the one who said we should leave useful people alive!"

That only applied to Houndry.

I did not care whether members of other guilds lived or died.

"Well, there was a good reason for it."

"Good. A reason. I've been dying to know that reason."

The Marquess wiped the sweat from his forehead and waddled closer with his heavy body.

"It seems the Death God Cult contacted guilds in District 6 other than Houndry as well. I was looking for traces of that."

Perhaps because I suddenly explained my original purpose, the heat in the Marquess's face gradually subsided.

"So you acted not as Karma, but as the Goddess's sword... is that it?"

"Of course."

"So, did you find it? I am relieved that you made such a loud sweep of the streets for more than a simple turf war. But did you find it? The Death God Cult's trail?"

"Unfortunately, there is no decisive lead yet."

"Hmm... Was it too much to hope for...?"

Marquess Fred shook his head.

"Are you certain the Death God Cult is active? I am beginning to wonder whether this might be a misunderstanding. You said from the beginning that you would hunt them down, but as far as I know, the Death God Cult died out a hundred years ago..."

"I act according to the Goddess's will. Are you questioning the Goddess?"

"That is not what I meant."

"The Death God Cult definitely exists. I don't know where they sent those black envelopes from, but..."

A knock sounded as I spoke.

When the Marquess told them to enter, the person who carefully opened the door was Lucia.

Lucia approached me, whispered in my ear, then backed away and left.

"Daywin, what is it?"

"My apologies. What were we discussing?"

"You said you did not know where the black envelopes had been sent from."

"Ah, yes. I still don't, but..."

It had been a week since we captured all the bosses, and today, one of them had finally spoken.

"We found out who else received letters besides Houndry."

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried