My Disciples Became Scoundrels - Chapter 31

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Throughout all this, Chezare had been watching me as if I were the most enviable person in the world.
“Did you enjoy the drink, master?”
“I did.”
It was good liquor, at that. I looked over at Jenia, who had passed out from the alcohol. She was muttering in her sleep.
“Mmm… want to see the whale…….”
Best not to wake her. The Shop Owner was half-drunk himself, rambling incoherently. His companions looked uncomfortable.
“Ugh, this guy. He’s completely out of it. Too heavy to even carry.”
All the better. I’d wanted to talk to the Shop Owner anyway. I spoke up.
“We’ll carry the Shop Owner from here. Shop Owner, snap out of it. Do you remember where you live?”
“Huh? Oak Barrel… workshop… if you go there…….”
I hoisted Jenia onto my back and had Chezare carry the Shop Owner. We walked along a moonlit path toward the Oak Tree Forest. Chezare grumbled as we went.
“Jenia got all the luck.”
“Was drinking really that appealing to you?”
“Well, that too, but you got to drink with the master. I never got the chance.”
Come to think of it, I’d never shared a drink with a disciple before. I’d died when Arkel had just come of age.
Sometime down the road, if the opportunity came, I wanted to share a cup with each of my disciples. Though when that would be, I couldn’t say.
When we reached the workshop, the Shop Owner’s head rose as if the alcohol had burned away. He seemed to have sobered up somewhat.
“What? Hey, this is my shop…….”
“Shop Owner. Are you coming to? Do you remember passing out while we were drinking?”
“Yeah. You said if you won, I’d sell you the Oak Barrels. Get me down.”
He slid off my back and stumbled toward the shop door. Once inside, I saw numerous Oak Barrels and the work benches where they were made.
It looked ordinary enough at first glance. The Shop Owner plopped down and drank some water.
“So how many barrels are you buying?”
“Before that, I’m curious about something. Do you sell Oak Barrels to the Blue Moon Distillery from here?”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?”
Good, we’d found the right place. I was about to attach some pretext and ask for the Distillery’s location when the Shop Owner lurched to his feet.
“Wait a moment—I need to use the privy. Phew, I’m drunk…….”
He’d drunk quite a lot, it was true. The Shop Owner shambled out of the building with an unsteady gait. I laid Jenia down and quietly moved to follow him.
Chezare looked puzzled.
“What? Are you going too?”
“No. That man seemed suspicious. He was the only one who refused the Blue Moon.”
It seemed better to tail him than to follow openly. Chezare’s eyes sharpened.
“Is that so? Do you suspect something? Come on, let’s chase him!”
We stepped outside and looked around. The Shop Owner had vanished, and the surroundings were utterly still.
Because of that, the sounds carried all the more clearly. Focusing my hearing, I caught the rapid footfalls of someone crashing through the grass and brush, fleeing.
“He’s running. Come on!”
I ran after the sound of those footsteps. Drunk as he was, he couldn’t have gone far.
But those footsteps led toward the Oak Tree Forest. A smart move. Once inside the forest, pursuit would be far more difficult.
The Shop Owner was hidden behind the trees. I glanced at Chezare.
“That spear—it won’t break now, even if you throw it with magic power behind it.”
Chezare seemed to understand my intent. He smirked and drew out the spear that Zik had made for him.
“Right. How about we take it for a test run?”
Chezare took a Spear Throw stance and hurled the spear upward into the forest canopy. The sound of the wind being cut gave way to Chezare vanishing in an instant.
He’d leaped high into the air. His eyes gleamed with a predatory light as he fixed his gaze somewhere below.
“Is that as far as you could get?”
―Crash!
The moment Chezare threw the spear downward toward the ground, a scream rang out. Chezare, who had been suspended in the air, vanished again, and his voice boomed from deeper within the forest.
“Master, I’ve got him!”
Even without the benefit of the liquor, the arc of his attack had been clean and precise. He was growing. I headed toward where Chezare’s voice had come from and found the Shop Owner.
His lower half was already soaked clean through. Terror streaked across his face as he cried out.
“Who—who are you people! What are you doing!”
“Customers interested in buying Oak Barrels. And in the Blue Moon as well. Where is the Distillery located?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know, I’m telling you! If I tell you, I don’t know what the boss will do to me……!”
Cartel. He was terrified, speaking without even knowing what he was saying. I watched him quietly and spoke.
“Are you more afraid of the Cartel? It’s a shame you can’t tell which is scarier.”
I undid my sleeve buttons as I approached the Shop Owner. Chezare glanced at me and asked.
“Should I rough him up?”
“You don’t know how to beat someone without leaving marks. Watch—I’ll show you a few techniques.”
With the Shop Owner gagged, I demonstrated several methods. Chezare watched with a serious expression, his eyes full of admiration.
“My, what an ingenious approach. Quite creative of you.”
I’d meant to spare the children such sights, but Chezare and Jenia were adults now.
About twenty minutes passed. When I removed the gag, the Shop Owner wept freely as he spoke.
“The Distillery is to the north! I—I can give you the exact location!”
“Shop Owner, why didn’t you drink the Blue Moon? Is it some kind of strange liquid?”
“I—I don’t know. I never saw it myself. I only heard the organization members saying it wasn’t fit to drink……”
We’d pinned down the Distillery’s location. Still, I wanted to avoid conflict with the Cartel if at all possible.
I wanted to slip inside without drawing their attention. I turned to the trembling Shop Owner.
“Shop Owner. There’s one thing I’d like to ask of you.”
Looking into his terror-stricken eyes, I smiled soundlessly.
“By the way, I’m quite well versed in methods of beating someone without leaving a mark. What will you do?”
* * *
In the pre-dawn darkness, several large cargo wagons approached the oak barrel warehouse.
The Shop Owner stood before the building, his complexion somewhat pallid. A man leaped down from one of the wagons.
“Why that expression? You look half-dead. By the way, wasn’t today supposed to be a holiday?”
“……A terrible hangover. I happened to sleep here, so I came to help move the goods.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Everyone, load those barrels onto the wagons!”
A metal ramp was positioned between the ground and the wagon bed. Workers began pushing the oak barrels up one by one.
As they moved roughly twenty barrels, the man watched and turned to the Shop Owner.
“I haven’t seen that red-haired fellow before.”
“A new hire. Quite strong, as it turns out.”
A large man with striking red hair was pushing the oak barrels up onto the wagon without difficulty. At the mention of a new employee, the man nodded.
“He’s got good strength. Everything’s loaded—let’s depart.”
Soon the wagons set off northward. After about twenty minutes, a building began to appear beneath an isolated ridge.
The Distillery. They backed the wagons themselves into the warehouse, then led the horses out.
Once the men had gone, silence descended. Moments later, one of the oak barrels shifted, and its lid opened.
“Phew! That was suffocating.”
The person who emerged was Jenia. An adjacent barrel opened, and Dein climbed out.
“Well done, Jenia. Looks like we made it in safely.”
Hiding inside the oak barrels as cargo—that had been my strategy.
I’d entrusted the actual barrel-moving to Chezare, concerned they might grow suspicious if an empty one seemed unusually heavy.
“He must have been disappointed. He wanted to come here too.”
“Can’t be helped. He’s too large to fit inside a barrel.”
Two meters tall—Chezare simply couldn’t manage it. We also needed someone to keep watch over the Shop Owner, so Chezare stayed behind. Though he looked decidedly displeased about it.
“Let’s hurry and examine the place. As quickly as possible.”
I approached the inner door of the warehouse. It bore a complex locking mechanism.
I could break through easily enough, but that would leave traces of the intrusion. Just then, Jenia thrust her head forward abruptly.
“Hm? A lock mechanism. It looks similar to one I disassembled before.”
I recalled Jenia endlessly breaking things apart. It seemed she’d learned quite a lot in the process.
“Can you open it?”
“Yes. If I’ve taken one apart, I can usually figure out how it works.”
Jenia’s tendrils thinned to the width of a pen and threaded into the lock’s interior. A clicking sound echoed from within.
“This is the ring, isn’t it? It’s a bit different from the one I disassembled last time. But if I touch here……”
Her tendrils seemed to quiver with something like delight when the lock suddenly gave way with a heavy clunk. Jenia looked at me with a satisfied smile.
“I opened it!”
“Excellent work.”
I resolved then and there that I’d buy Jenia whatever she asked for from now on. That train toy she’d pestered me about before, for instance.
Once we’d opened the lock and stepped inside, Jenia gasped at the sight.
“Wow, these wooden barrels are enormous.”
There were at least ten wooden vats, each roughly three meters tall. I frowned slightly.
“They look like fermentation vats. But there’s no smell of alcohol.”
Instead, an unpleasant magical aura hung within them. Beside the fermentation vats stood a long staircase with platforms. Jenia climbed up and peered inside one of the vats.
“Master. There are what look like blueberries in here, and they’re huge too.”
Inside lay spheres that resembled blueberries at first glance. The size of watermelons, however. When Jenia lifted one with her tendrils—
―Screeeee!
The sphere split down the middle in a cross, revealing countless teeth. A beast lunged at Jenia’s throat.
But Jenia was faster than the beast.
―Crunch!
Her tendril pierced straight through the sphere, which trembled and stretched. Jenia’s eyes glimmered with excitement.
“It was a monster! I’ve never seen one before! How’s your insides structured?”
Jenia slashed through the beast with her tentacles, and through the gashes poured something—blood, or some other fluid, impossible to tell which.
It was a pale blue, translucent liquid. Jenia wiped a bit onto her fingers and tasted it, smacking her lips thoughtfully.
“This tastes kind of like Blue Moon. Not exactly the same, but… what is this stuff?”
“Tushberry. A type of monster, it is.”
The things inside the fermentation barrels yawned open their mouths. They looked like fruit, but they were unmistakably alive.
“Really? They make alcohol from these too?”
“Normally one wouldn’t drink it. But it seems the Cartel has discovered a way to process it as liquor.”
The commission was complete. Jenia played with the mangled Tushberry as she spoke.
“We’ll need evidence, won’t we? Should I take this with us?”
“Yes. But what’s that over there?”
Dein pointed toward what looked like a storage space, crammed with odds and ends—and among them, a large box-like object.
A cloth draped over it hid its contents. The moment Dein pulled the cloth away, Jenia’s eager expression turned to bewilderment.
“Why are there people here…?”
Inside the iron cage were children. Sacks pulled over their heads, gags stuffed into their mouths, their hands and feet bound. Their whole bodies trembled violently.
Dein recalled a conversation he’d overheard during his rounds of the taverns some days ago.
“A Distillery? Couldn’t tell you where. But listen—you kids traveling alone? There’ve been a lot of disappearances lately. Be careful.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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