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20. Beggar Siblings – Interview

The evening dusk settled in the city.

Leo wandered the alleyways, playfully fiddling with the silver coin he’d gotten.

‘Gotcha.’

Thugs who covet the silver coin held by a small beggar chased after him.

Thanks to the {rules of the back alleys}, he had a bit of knowledge about their world.

The thugs were indifferent to such trifles, working under a ‘Family’.

The Families that dominated the underworld engaged in illegal businesses, mostly paying off nobles for their namesake.

These Families adhered to strict rules and rarely harmed ordinary people.

Of course, kidnapped slaves were an exception; those were goods, not people.

In contrast, the thugs were the drifters who couldn’t join a Family.

Unpleasant elements who extorted money from the innocent, destined to be beaten by the city guards.

Leo feigned ignorance and found a dead-end alley. As he pretended to be lost, three thugs grinned and blocked his path.

“Just stay there. Be good.”

“That beggar is quite good-looking, huh? Gonna get a lot of alms.”

He didn’t resist and walked right to the end of the alley.

No weapons on him.

But Leo trained hard in his engagement scenario, having rolled around in the grim battlefield for months. Three thugs were nothing that needed {swordsmanship}.

“You seem to have some money… Ugh!”

He elbowed the guy coming at him, who had all his weak spots exposed, right by the side of his armpit.

This Leo’s body was so frail that he feared his wrist might break if he threw a punch. He had to be careful with his hits.

“What the… Ugh!”

As he kicked the confused thug’s face behind him, he ran forward and blocked the alleyway exit.

“That damn beggar!”

One remaining thug pulled out a small dagger and stabbed with impatience.

This guy didn’t know how to use a dagger.

Dagger thrusting isn’t what it’s for. It’s the shortest weapon with barely any reach; stabbing with it is foolish.

Dagger is for cutting through the arm of a nearby opponent or shining when you’re close and hacking each other up.

But right now, this thug was too focused on thrusting.

Leo pushed the stabbing arm away with his forearm, dove into him, and smacked his palm under the thug’s chin.

As the thug’s head shook, Leo grabbed his hand with the dagger and slammed down on the wrist, making it clang as it fell.

“Thanks! I really needed a weapon.”

He shoved the dagger-less thug hard, and they collided, causing the still-staggering thug to fall over.

He picked up the dagger.

The guy he kicked was wary and got on guard, but these thugs were already dead men.

[ Achievement: Cleaned Up the Back Alley – You grow stronger in the dark back alleys. ]

Leo strolled out of the alley nonchalantly.

With two daggers and about a dozen leaflets, he made a pretty nice profit for a brief job.

He headed towards the marketplace.

He didn’t plan on spending time taking down thugs for money; catching them would get old quickly.

To survive in the underworld, he had to join a Family.

The only skill he could use right now was {swordsmanship}. Since he couldn’t leave the city because of Lena, the only job that involved using a sword here was dealing with thugs.

He also considered applying to the Oberg guards, but they were ultimately soldiers, and who knows where they’d send him; not to mention, it wouldn’t pay well.

Leo searched for a carriage rental station. A place where he could rent a two-seater carriage in the city.

As it was closing time, a young man, organizing the rental desk, waved dismissively at him with disdain as he approached.

“This isn’t a place for beggars. Get lost.”

However, the beggar suddenly pulled out a dagger and pointed it at him.

“W-what are you doing? Who sent you here?”

He asked, flustered, but the beggar didn’t put away the dagger. The young man looked back and forth between the dagger and the beggar, stepping on a rope tied under a chair.

When Lena was kidnapped in the last childhood friend scenario, it wasn’t just by chance that Leo was dragged to the stable.

To smuggle illegal goods in and out of the castle, Families owned carriage rental stations.

It would be safe to say that almost all carriage rentals in the city were run by Families.

Soon, a huge man burst through the rental station door.

“Who the hell is this beggar?”

“I don’t know, he just came in here and pointed a weapon at me for no reason.”

“Is this a new begging method? If you don’t put that knife away, it’s gonna hurt a bit.”

The thug glared menacingly, but the beggar, no, Leo, pulled out another dagger and raised it along with his bloodstained clothing.

“I took care of three thugs in the alley near the western marketplace. This should be enough for a token of introduction, right?”

“…I can’t believe I’m hearing this crap. Stop talking nonsense and get out.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow, so check it out.”

There were various methods to recruit people into Families.

They hired mercenaries who quit the life, took decent thugs, or lured in reliable ordinary people.

The method Leo used was the most extreme and rare.

Blood-stained hands as proof of force. It’s the quickest way to enter a Family.

Of course, there were downsides.

Since he wasn’t directly brought in by a Family, it would take some time to gain trust, and he would be treated as an outsider for a while.

It was a choice Leo had to make.

Being small and frail, he needed to step up to catch the Family’s eye.

Leo turned his back on the young man and the thug.

‘I was going to buy a few outfits… but they’re probably all closed now.’

The darkness had already fallen. It took too long to lure in the thugs and find the carriage rental.

He reluctantly returned to the shoe store.

Kasia wasn’t in the store.

Perhaps it was because he had lavished money on her the first time they met, or maybe it was just her peculiar personality, but Kasia had left without even taking the money box off the table.

Leo took off his shirt before Lena could see it.

He shook it out a few times to shake off the dust, but he thought there might be some bloodstains visible.

“Lena, are you in there?”

“Big Brother! Why did you come back so late?”

His younger sister burst through the door and welcomed Leo.

“I took some time looking for a job.”

“Why are you taking your shirt off?”

“I got hot walking here.”

“You must have had a tough time…”

“No, no. It wasn’t hard at all.”

The two sat down and chatted softly.

This Lena from the scenario tended to be rather quiet.

When Leo spoke, Lena only listened quietly. She would sometimes agree but rarely shared anything about herself. Even if he persistently asked what she did today,

“I was just in the room.”

would be her typical, conclusive response.

Perhaps nothing had happened at all. Tomorrow he’d have to get her something fun to play with. He also needed to find a teacher…

The siblings fell asleep side by side on their narrow bed.

It was a warm bed for Lena, a rare treasure.

*

Leo jolted awake from the sound outside.

It was dawn.

“Hello there.”

“Hey.”

Kasia entered with a new water jug, and the cart she’d been standing by creaked away, disappearing from sight.

“Up early, huh?”

The morning was slowly brightening, but it was still dim outside.

“Sorry, but I’m going to wash up now. You can watch if you want, but can you step inside?”

“Sure.”

He could hear Kasia washing herself outside.

Perhaps she liked cleanliness; she took her time washing.

Lena was still in dreamland.

Feeling sorry for waking her, Leo gently patted his sister’s head and stepped outside.

“I’ll be going out.”

“Okay.”

“When Lena wakes up, could you tell her I went to work?”

“Sure.”

“…Thank you.”

Leo set off first to look for a teacher. In this city of Oberg, there were many people, and thus, many teachers, most of whom established academies of sorts to receive students.

In this place, there’s no public education like schools, so if you want to study, you had to pay tuition.

However, the teachers in the castle taught the children of nobles or wealthy families, so the tuition wouldn’t come cheap.

‘Surely the teachers outside the castle would cost less?’

Before leaving the castle, Leo first headed to the marketplace. He didn’t want to leave the dagger in Lena’s room, so he took it with him but had to hide it to pass through the city gate.

Not knowing a good spot to hide it, he sought the siblings’ house built near the marketplace. However, upon arrival, he found some people demolishing the place.

‘So it really was only a one-day stopping point.’

If he hadn’t left early that morning in the last scenario, he would have been beaten by the landlord.

An ending where he got beaten to death by the landlord… he shivered slightly. It was indeed a wise choice to rely on Kasia.

He hid the dagger behind a nearby trash can and bought a set of clothes from a shop near the south gate.

It was doubtful whether a beggar could freely pass through the city gate, and he certainly couldn’t go to rescue a teacher-looking like a beggar.

At last, he stepped into the marketplace in front of the south gate and started asking around.

“Excuse me, are there any teachers nearby?”

“A teacher? Hmm, I’m not sure. I don’t have any kids, so I don’t really know.”

“If you go that way…”

He met a few teachers, but most of them were easy to skip at first glance.

‘That person seems too young.’

All the teachers were men. The teacher Leo sought needed to be someone with enough character not to take advantage of Lena’s appearance, preferably an older educator. Skill in teaching was the only requirement.

Finally, he found an older-looking teacher who probably just crossed the threshold of sixty.

He managed to persuade him with vague claims that it would be difficult to go far for private tutoring due to his age. After gathering a few books, the teacher arrived at the shoe store, nodding his head as if he understood.

“That young lady is truly beautiful. I understand now why you insisted on bringing an old man like me.”

And thus, he alleviated Leo’s worries.

“I won’t mention anything about this young lady anywhere, so you don’t need to worry. I will come by for lessons twice a week from now on.”

Leo gladly paid for the books and tuition.

Most of his {initial funds} went towards buying books, but for a while, it seemed like he wouldn’t have to worry about Lena.

When Leo brought the teacher back, Kasia, who usually appeared indifferent to everything, seemed intrigued and didn’t leave his side.

“What a good brother you are.”

She appeared quite impressed that he had called in a teacher.

“I’ll be going out again.”

“Did you find a job?”

“Hopefully.”

Leo left once more, leaving Lena, who was fascinated by the books, behind.

It was time to hear back from the Family.

*

“Just wait a moment.”

When Leo arrived at the carriage rental station with a dagger in hand, the same young man rushed inside and came out with a thug.

“What? I thought you’d have some skill, but you’re just a twig?”

This was not the thug he had seen yesterday.

“Come in.”

The thug led Leo past an area where carriages were lined up into a small building.

The interior was clean but barren, without decent furniture, and reeked of horse manure.

“Boss, I brought the guy from yesterday.”

“Come in.”

Upon entering the room, he found the so-called boss sitting at a desk.

Balding, his head looked like a muscular lump, yet contrary to appearances, there seemed to be something on the desk stacked with papers.

He stared at Leo, his face twitching.

“I heard, but you really are small.”

“……”

“Well, nice to meet you. If you killed three thugs with this little body, you’ve got some skill, I guess?”

“It’s just a petty skill.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.”

He grinned, revealing his teeth. The scar on his jaw was rather intimidating.

“Is your main weapon a dagger?”

“I’m better with a two-handed sword.”

“Oh my. A noble’s son, I suppose.”

“……”

“Follow me. We need to see your skills first.”

He led Leo to the stable, holding a lantern. As the light from the oil lantern passed along, the horses turned their heads, and the thugs loafing around in the hay jumped up.

“I knew you’d be here.”

“Sorry!”

The thugs bowed their heads at ninety degrees.

“Enough. I didn’t come to punish you; we have a new recruit, so let’s see… Daol, you’ll spar with him. Bring two wooden swords. One should be a two-handed sword.”

“Got it!”

Soon, Leo held a two-handed sword.

The thug named Daol took a one-handed sword and his own shield.

The surroundings were fairly bright from the lanterns hanging on the pillars, and the ground was somewhat damp, with the straw being squished wetly underfoot.

“Feel free to go a bit hard; just make sure to go all out.”

The boss settled on the hay by himself. Some thugs crowded in, watching and blocking the way.

If he were to lose, he certainly wouldn’t be leaving in one piece.

Daol, the hulking thug, loomed over Leo menacingly.

He was so tall that they could have fit two more heads in between, and if weighed, he looked almost three times bulkier than Leo.

It was a mismatch fight.

Some would call it a David versus Goliath scenario.

And he agreed with that.

Especially since David won.