252 The wooden door
Luke received confirmation that his suspicions were true when he saw the startled expression on Straw Hat’s face.
“Um! Say no more, the truth is stamped in your eyes…”
“Tsk!” The Straw Hat snapped his tongue, and put away his red tunic that was messed up by Luke’s tug.
“Come on, keep going.” Luke ordered, finally putting the tip of his sword against the Cage King’s throat. Just one more move and his throat would be cut like nothing by the obsidian.
“All right, all right. I will speak!” He reacted to this, and raised his hands high again. “Where was I again? Right… port guards are paid to facilitate the entrance to the port, as well as to spread some information.”
“What kind of information?”
“The rumor about ‘The Beast’, for example, was one of many legends spread over the past few months, saying that it was a mystical creature, a monster, or even a person who lived in the forests around Oukiwa… It’s hard for them to come up with something from scratch, a completely new piece of information, so they usually take a small rumor and increase it. The rumor about ‘The Beast’, which you seem directly involved in to me, was spread by a teenage thief named Zeld, he claims to have had his band of thieves attacked by a man who could run faster than shadow, and that every movement sounded like a roar.”
The half-wolf did not recognize the name of the boy who was attacked, but he certainly remembered a situation long ago. In the past, when he felt obligated to protect his friends at any cost, he had without much thought killed almost an entire group of thieves who attacked his carriage to Vasconcelos, leaving only one boy alive.
‘And how the hell did the Smakusa know it was the one who killed those thieves? It could have been any Adventurer…’ Luke wondered, and suddenly a flash of awareness reminded him of something. ‘I almost forgot about the First Servant and damn his mania for knowing too much.’
At this point, Straw Hat noticed that the half-wolf was distracted in his thoughts, and decided to try something. At high speed, he slammed into Luke’s fist who was holding the obsidian sword with his right hand, and with his left hand he grabbed the blade to spin it, getting rid of the sword tip on his neck while applying a counterattack.
However, just as he did this maneuver to perhaps drive the sword into Luke’s chest, his left hand caught half an inch from the half-wolf’s body.
The Straw Hat looked down at his arm, startled, to see what was wrong with it. Then he saw small vines wrapped around his arm, pinning him down as if they had grown naturally around his arm.
He was simply at a loss as to how to react, because he didn’t know what had happened in the last few thousandths. ‘I was sure I wasn’t with these things a second ago, how come this is here?’ He wondered, looking at the serious face of the half-wolf.
Luke didn’t smile at Straw Hat’s attempt, he was just disappointed. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, because I’m not, but it’s a little sad that we have an agreement about the future established and it’s not respected, isn’t it? But who am I to say something like that…” Luke said and took a step back, while ordering his vines to secure Straw Hat on his comfortable throne.
“Hey! What are you doing!?” The Straw Hat tried to shake himself hard to fight off the vines. This only made them curl up more and more, as if fighting only made things worse. “Are you going to arrest, you bastard?” He asked Luke, stretching his back forward.
The half-wolf turned on his back, and as he walked to the main exit, which was a large wooden gate, he said:
“You know, I’d rather prevent headaches, so I’m afraid I can’t fulfill the agreement we made.”
Then Luke opened the big wooden gate, and five people revealed themselves. All of these people wore worn clothes, were dirty, and had wounds and scars coating all the naked parts of their bodies. Almost instantly after the door was opened, and these people appeared, the strong wind current that entered the room extinguished all the flames of the torches, turning the people into simple dark silhouettes.
These silhouettes began to smile, and the last thing Straw Hat saw before Luke closed the door and left him in the darkness, was the sound of the smiling blades these people held.
When Luke closed the door, he felt nothing, neither pleasure at condemning someone as bad as the Straw Hat to death, nor sadness at having added one more face to the list of people he has already killed.
Meredith and Matthew, who were waiting for him outside, were the people who were a little wary about the decision to let some of the slaves take revenge on those who were holding them captive.
“Is it okay that we did that? Didn’t he have anything else to talk about?” Matthew asked. With his forward lean, the left sleeve of his jacket swung, while his right arm stretched forward, waiting for a touch from the half-wolf.
Luke realized this and touched one of his fists to his friend’s right fist. “It was either that or kill him with my own hand. There’s no reason to risk any more than we’re already risking. Alexis is walking two demons back and forth, and having an enemy who friends with our enemy would be an obvious problem in the future.”
“You’re right… So, you got what we were looking for, right? If not, there is a document storage room in sector 3 and we can start looking there.” spoke Matthew.
“There’s no need. Look, he handed me this, I believe it to be true, but we won’t really know until we get home…” Luke showed the parchment with the silver seal and then asked, “Where are the rest of the staff?”