[Dawn's Dew]
The town's center was a place frequently visited by people.
In that place, Blood Fang was proudly doing business with a sign in the streets.
Ding ding.
"Welcome."
As Roman opened the door and entered, the bell rang loudly.
The scenery inside the building was no different from other pubs in the locality.
People around the round table and the bar were chatting, and in front of them was a man who seemed to be the owner, busily carrying beer.
There were dozens of people in the pub, probably because the business was doing well in its own way.
"Huh?"
"Hey, it's Young Master Roman."
For a moment, people's eyes turned to Roman.
There was no way they wouldn't recognize the young master of the Dmitry family, which rules the estate. Accordingly, the people who had been bad mouthing him until now quieted down as if it was preplanned.
Roman Dmitry.
No matter how much people call him an idiot, Roman was a powerful person whom commoners could not even make eye contact with.
People quickly looked away.
Roman calmly moved forward and sat down at the bar when the stillness subsided.
"Tears of Dawn, 27 years old."
"I'm sorry, but we don't have a drink called Tears of Dawn in our store. Can I recommend another drink?"
"That's good too. Please make it as strong as possible. I have a lot of work to do in the morning, so I think I need to get a little drunk."
The owner froze.
His expression suddenly hardened.
Tears of Dawn.
A strong drink.
Something you have to do in the morning.
These lines, in succession, were the code set by Blood Fang.
The problem was that the opponent was a familiar face, Roman Dmitry.
People's eyes alternately looked at the owner and Roman in the quiet space.
Some people showed pure curiosity, while others showed complex emotions in their eyes.
A fleeting moment.
A smile formed on Roman's lips, and the owner swung the dagger that he had hidden under the table like a thunderbolt.
"Attack—Kugh!"
Thud!
Clang!
Roman hit the owner's head with a beer mug.
At the same time, he threw his body backward, and several customers who had been drinking around until now attacked Roman.
Thud thud!
Two daggers were nailed to the bar table.
Under the dark lighting, the Blood Fangs revealed their fierce eyes.
Roman had found the information accurate, and several men disguised as guests rushed to Roman at once.
"Ahhh!"
"Run away!"
Customers screamed and ran out of the pub.
Thanks to this, finding who needed to be killed was easier.
'Eight people.'
Roman fought with the opponents.
The dagger wielded at close range threatened Roman's vital points, but Roman dodged all those attacks while staying close and with minimal movements.
Not only that, he immediately counterattacked and punctured a hole in his opponent's neck.
Roman knew that his opponent would fall to the floor, dripping blood, if he simply swung the dagger in his hand.
"This bastard!"
"Kill him!"
The pub was not so peaceful anymore.
The Blood Fang members revealed their true natures rather than acting like workers who soothe their tiredness with beer after a day's work.
However.
The opponent was a predator that would definitely devour them all.
Even if they rushed from all directions simultaneously, the Blood Fang members were eventually defeated.
Thud!
Slam!
He slammed the face of the last remaining man on the table. The rigid table shattered, leaving the man stunned, and Roman, without hesitation, kicked him in the face as he threw him to the floor. The man squirted blood and rolled around. Dropping to the floor, his body showed that his soul had already left him.
"Was that it?"
It ended in an instant.
All the men who rushed to Roman died.
Just one man was left.
The owner, who was beaten by a beer mug at the beginning, looked up at Roman with a blood-stained face.
"Why… why are you doing this?"
"What do you mean 'why'? You must clearly know—why I visited this place and attacked you guys. You wouldn't have attacked me if you hadn't known that."
Roman chuckled.
The terrified owner suddenly fell back when he saw Roman sitting right in front of him on a chair.
He recognized it. That was the expression of a ferocious demon.
The owner cried out in an evil voice.
"We are the Blood Fang. Even if I die by your hands, my comrades will definitely avenge me by taking your blood. Nobility? Do you think something like that will protect you? Aristocrats are, after all, humans just like us. The reality is that even the body of an aristocrat will have a hole in it and can be found screaming like a pig when a sword is stabbed in."
"Do you seriously think that saying that will save you?"
"Hah, kill me! Members of Blood Fang are not afraid of death."
Roman's smile widened.
The more his opponent struggled, the more confident Roman became that this was where he wanted him to be.
"Yeah, I wanted to meet a guy like you. A person who is not afraid of death; someone who will keep his mouth shut even if he is tortured and will somehow hide the information. A guy like that definitely knows valuable information."
Roman stood up.
Then he looked around and said in a very calm, subdued voice.
"Let's check out if you really are such a strong person who does not open their mouth to any threats."
The will of the owner was strong.
Unlike the guys who screamed and spewed out information like a child, even when he cut off his finger, he didn't open his mouth.
However.
Roman knew very well how to attack such a person.
"Is that a picture of your son?"
The owner's expression turned pale.
In a single photo, which was placed in a drawer, he was happy with his son, who looked exactly like the pub owner.
"No… no, it's not."
"What do you mean 'no'? He looks just like you."
"You bastard! You aristocrat bastard, are you seriously resorting to threatening my family?"
The owner shook his body and screamed.
I chose right.
Roman walked back to the pub owner and waved the picture in front of him with a cold expression.
"While researching the Blood Fang, I found some very interesting information. The reason people fear Blood Fang is that they will surely retaliate, even at the cost of their life. However, all suicide terrorists have one thing in common. They are people who owed a great debt to the Blood Fang, but were not members of the Blood Fang from the beginning. Obviously, this means that people who weren't malicious enough to commit suicide attacks turned into demons at some point. Why did they change like that? What the hell happened to them that they changed so much as a person?"
"..."
The owner kept his mouth shut.
It didn't matter.
With that kind of reaction alone, Roman's decisions were correct.
"Blood Fang commits all sorts of crimes to pay off debt. In the process, taking the debtor's family into slavery is a common occurrence. And that's the truth about Blood Fang. Blood Fang isn't really a group of demonic humans that are willing to risk their lives, but people who have been put into a corner to get revenge by threatening their families as hostages. How is it? Isn't that a pretty plausible hypothesis?"
"Still, nothing has changed. Blood Fang will surely take revenge."
Pfft.
Roman laughed.
What stupid people.
From the moment he admitted Roman's hypothesis, the pub owner had no idea what trap he had fallen into.
"I promise in the name of Roman Dmitry. If you don't give me any information, I'll go back to the Inner Castle and give orders to the knights of my family. The four children in this photo—find them and kill them. And killing them quickly would not be good, right? So, I will order them to kill your children, who will surely beg to be killed off quickly, a slow and painful death."
"What… what did you just say?"
"What? Do you think I can't do that?"
"You are a noble! How could a noble…?!"
"That's just prejudice. If our family is being held hostage and used, then we have no reason to leave your family alone."
The world of survival of the fittest.
In that world, defeat means death.
Justice?
Don't make me laugh. That doesn't mean anything.
In reality, you have to do anything to win, and the fact is that Roman has no hesitation in doing such actions.
Because he had shown all the respect he could to his fiancée, who was soon to part ways with him.
Because he accepted Hans, who was only a servant, as his own person.
The origins of Roman have not changed.
Humans have various aspects, and Roman, who had lived as the Heavenly Demon, also had one aspect as the appearance of a demon.
Roman said coldly, "Remember wisely. I'm not at all concerned about the well-being of the guys I classify as enemies. No matter how they die or what kind of pain they get, I am the type of person who can regard the lives of those who disturb my well-being as less than a fly. So, think very carefully. If the lives of your family are in danger anyway, will you bet on Blood Fang, who enslaved your family, or will you give accurate information to me so that I can take care of Blood Fang before they touch your family?"
Roman spun the dagger round and round.
Then, he banged the dagger on the head of his son in the photo.
"Come on. Choose quickly."
At that moment.
The owner was sure.
Roman Dmitry.
He knew that he wasn't the person he knew before.
The owner finally lowered his head, looking at his son's face torn so cruelly that his figure could not be recognized.
After getting the required information, Roman started leaving.
At the site that had become a mess, the knights of Dmitry arrived with Hans in the lead.
"What the hell is this…"
Jonathan's expression hardened.
He had heard the testimony of eyewitnesses.
He found out that when Roman communicated with the owner, the owner and his guests attacked Roman by surprise.
However, what was more shocking than that was the current scene in front of him.
Men with strong physiques were lying on the floor with broken bones.
'Did Young Master Roman deal with them all by himself?'
He couldn't believe it.
Roman was a weakling with no talent for battle. He was an idiot who trembled when he saw the slightest of blood and couldn't even wield a sword properly. That was why he couldn't believe that Roman had dealt with so many men just by himself.
There was a sense of disparity.
He was different from the Roman he knew before from what the eyewitnesses told him.
At that moment.
"Captain! Here are the survivors!"
The owner of the pub was alive.
When he hurriedly ran, he saw the miserable shape the owner was left in.
"Kugh!"
The owner spat out a handful of his blood.
From the looks of it, he had been tortured. All the fingers of his right hand were cut off, and the thick blood he spat out showed pieces of intestines.
At a glance, anyone could tell that he would die at any moment. However, he hadn't given up on his life yet.
He spoke to Jonathan in a clear voice, as if he had had a flashback.
"You must follow Young Master Roman immediately!"
"What do you mean?"
"I told Young Master Roman everything. The fact that Blood Fang's stronghold is not here in Dmitry, but in the heart of Lawrence. As soon as he heard that, Young Master Roman left this place. It seems like he is trying to get things done on his own, but he will never be able to handle them on his own. So, hurry up and help Young Master Roman! Help the Young Master now. We must get rid of the Blood Fang at its roots!"
The owner's voice was desperate.
He had already become a traitor in exchange for his information.
Then, as Roman said, his family will be safe only if Roman takes care of the Blood Fang.
The owner crawled on the ground.
He gripped the ankles of Knights' Commander, Jonathan, with his blood-stained hands and said in a desperate voice.
"Please, please, kill them all."
"…"
Jonathan's eyes shook.
It was a complicated situation.
The appearance of the Blood Fang members crying out, requesting him to help Roman was also embarrassing. But the biggest problem was Roman's actions.
'Are you seriously going to deal with them alone?'
Lawrence.
It wasn't Dmitry's realm.
Still, he froze at the words that he had just heard.
If it weren't for Hans, Jonathan would just have been sitting there for a long time.
"Knights' Commander Jonathan! We must leave quickly! The young master is in danger!"
"Right."
Jonathan came to his senses.
Roman.
We cannot let Dmitry's eldest son die in another territory.
Although he did not request for cooperation with Lawrence beforehand, he couldn't afford to wait for the approval of such a request at this time.
The Dmitry Knights left in a hurry.
Their destination was the city of Lawrence.