Translator: Cinder Translations
...
"My life, oh!"
In a brightly lit, raucous establishment, a young man sat despondently on a sofa, holding a glass of liquor limply in his right hand, and sighed in near despair.
Across from him, a slightly older man was embracing a heavily made-up woman, speaking crude jokes in broken local dialect, while the woman responded with periodic bursts of laughter.
This was Friedrich Liszt and his companion, McKinley.
The night before, the church had raided their inn, searching each room for so-called witches and warlocks, causing chaos and disruption.
McKinley had knocked on Liszt's door in the morning and found him somewhat delirious, repeatedly mumbling about a woman and an antidote.
Liszt had explained the previous night's events to him.
McKinley had shown outward sympathy, but privately suspected that Liszt had just had a particularly vivid dream.
Being naked? Normal. Having a knife to the throat? Pretty intense.
A trip to the brothel might lighten his mood, and he could use the excuse of treating business partners to bill the owner, Todd, for the expenses. Ha!
And thus, the current scene unfolded.
"My life! Just when it was about to begin, it's about to end!"
After a few drinks, Liszt became increasingly despondent, exuding negative energy all over.
"Customer..."
Just like McKinley, Liszt had a flirtatious woman sitting beside him, awkwardly trying to smile and please him.
Despite her efforts, she couldn't lift the gloomy mood of the disheartened customer, feeling a sense of failure.
Moreover, she couldn't understand the Aldor language that Liszt was speaking.
"Liszt, you're really something!"
McKinley couldn't bear to watch any longer.
"How can you treat the lovely lady next to you like this?"
As he spoke, he cast a flirtatious glance at the woman beside Liszt, eliciting a burst of laughter from her.
"Come on, stop lamenting over your dream and focus on the beautiful things in reality!"
Liszt, clutching his head in despair, said, "I'm not joking with you. If I don't get that antidote from that woman, I'll really be buried far from home!"
McKinley snorted, "You must be dreaming if you believe in that. I asked the waiter, and no woman was seen entering or leaving the inn when I went to your room."
"Ah!" Liszt's eyes widened, "I told you, that woman is a witch..."
"Shh!" McKinley quickly covered his mouth. "Don't mention that word. Although we don't know how sensitive they are to witchcraft here, it's better to be cautious!"
He glanced at the two accompanying women, whose expressions remained unchanged, confirming that they didn't understand their Aldor conversation, and then he relaxed a bit.
"You can't really believe there's such a thing as... that, right? I think it's just some local thugs trying to extort money from us outsiders under the pretext of church duties!"
Liszt, looking serious, whispered, "Believe it or not, last night a woman appeared in my room out of nowhere, and I'm certain the church's actions are directly related to her!"
Seeing Liszt repeat this insistently, McKinley started to waver. Could it be true?
Suddenly, the sound of crashing dishes and broken glass interrupted the atmosphere of the establishment.
Everyone in the room turned to look at the source of the noise.
A table had been overturned, and a drunken man was causing a scene.
He held a wine glass in one hand and grabbed a woman by the collar with the other.
"Drink! Drink as I told you!"
Several other men were egging him on, leering at the woman's body.
The poor woman seemed somewhat dazed but continued to push away weakly.
"What? Not showing any respect?"
The perpetrator pushed the woman onto a sofa, yanked her hair, and shouted, "I spent so much money, you have to do whatever I say!"
The woman, in pain from having her hair pulled, screamed while the onlookers laughed heartily.
In the face of such a scene, no one in the hall intervened; a few sighed and left, preferring to turn a blind eye.
"Outrageous!"
Liszt was about to step in but was grabbed by his companion McKinley.
McKinley asked the two accompanying women in the local dialect, "What are those people's identities?"
The two women, trembling and unable to help their colleague, looked helplessly.
One of them said, "Customer, please don't provoke them. They are members of the church's Purification Squad."
The Purification Squad? Both Liszt and McKinley frowned. This was the second time they had heard this organization's name.
"Is this the same Purification Squad that conducts witch hunts?"
"Yes," said another waitress, frightened. "If you anger them, you might end up being labeled a suspect! They might even put you on the pyre."
Liszt and McKinley were shocked. Even though they knew the church was conducting witch hunts in this region, they had thought it was a rare occurrence. From the two waitresses, it was clear that the witch hunt was widespread, particularly affecting ordinary people's lives.
McKinley sighed, "I hadn't encountered this in Niceport the last time I visited, but it's only been a few months..."
He grabbed Liszt's sleeve tightly. "Don't be reckless; do you want to die?"
Liszt, filled with righteous indignation, said, "I can't get the antidote anyway. I might as well make a grand stand for justice!"
He suddenly pulled away from McKinley's grasp, stormed over to the perpetrator, and shouted without fear to the man towering over him, "Do you even consider yourself a man? How can you bully a woman?"
The perpetrator stopped torturing the woman—her face bruised and unrecognizable—and turned to glare at Liszt, making him shiver and partially sober up from the alcohol.
A rough voice boomed, "You foreign scum, what were you jabbering about just now?"
In his rage, Liszt had spoken in Aldor.
"I... I said... as a man, you should not... you should not do such things to a woman."
Liszt switched to the local dialect, stumbling over his words and feeling his confidence wane under the intimidating presence.
The other patrons in the hall looked at the clumsy foreigner with a mix of shock, admiration, shame, and derision, while some worried that the situation might escalate and quickly left.
"Hahaha!"
After a brief moment of astonishment, the perpetrator's companions burst into laughter.
"Quintus! You've been looked down upon by this Aldor man!"
"Let this Northerner teach Quintus how to be a gentleman."
"I love watching heroic rescues."
The jabs from his companions made the perpetrator, Quintus, turn beet red with anger.
Quintus cracked his knuckles. "Aldor kid, it looks like I need to teach you the rules—my rules!"
He clenched his fist, making his knuckles crack.
Liszt swallowed nervously, fully aware that he had acted too impulsively.
McKinley, you should run.
(End of the Chapter)
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