Chapter 13.2

Anna did not give this thing more opportunities to keep talking.

While the b*st*rd was leering at Lara, she lowered her body and jumped up, striking the man’s crotch.

The guy could not even scream as he sank to the floor.

“Lara! Let’s just slide our way down. Everyone has a day when their butts will be splintered sometime in their lives, I’m sure!”

“Anna, look, there, there’s another staircase over there!”

“What? Then let’s go that—”

“That’s not the problem!”

The place Lara was pointing at.

The thick cloth stretched out in a corner of the room flutters. Past that, they could see a staircase made of stone. And the sound of footsteps.

The man who had shriveled up previously after getting hit on the crotch giggled.

“You kids, if you make uncle angrier….. I might send you off to really bad places, okay….?”

“You old man, you’ll do well to be born as a potato in your next life. Here, I’ll arrange for it to happen.”

“What…..? Gegh!”

Anna immediately kicked the man’s face.

Coaxing an easy-looking girl from the country, destroying an improvised staircase, and having another group of people come up from a hidden stairway to kidnap them. This looked like a human trafficking ring with a very distinct specialization of labor.

As she thought, she should probably turn them into manure.

…… That is, if they were able to get out of here safely.

It was at that moment that they heard someone coming up the stairs.

They were not alone.

***

Meanwhile, the pawnshop manager, who had heard about Anna’s younger sibling, went down the wooden staircase doubtfully.

He hoped she was bluffing.

If she really had family nearby, they had to chase her out as soon as possible.

The manager chewed over the features she’d described in his head again.

‘Black hair and blue eyes, and tall, had she said? That’s true, younger brothers do grow much taller than their older sisters during puberty. Even so, calling someone younger a bear…..’

…was as far as the manager went in his thoughts before he became speechless in front of the pawnshop, looking under the tree.

“A bear?”

There really was a bear-like man.

He who turned around at the sound of ‘bear’ had black hair and blue eyes. He looked ten years older than he had expected, but anyway, he seemed to match the features the girl had told him about.

The pawnshop manager crept up to his side and asked.

“By any chance….. are you looking for your older sister?”

On the other hand, Bertram began pondering the moment he heard the random word ‘older sister.’

Why had this man approached him to talk about older sisters?

Had someone said that Bertram was their younger brother?

Soon, the conclusion Bertram made was this.

‘Something has happened to Miss Anna.’

If a codeword previously agreed upon was altered strangely, rather than the possibility of the code word being leaked, there was a greater chance the person sending the codeword had been compromised. That had been the case in the battles Bertram had experienced.

As if to prove that his judgment wasn’t wrong, he heard the loud sound of men’s footsteps inside the pawnshop building.

***

Second floor, in the pawnshop.

The man who’d had his face kicked in did not stop moving his tongue. The footsteps coming upstairs seemed to have given him a new resolve.

“Be ready to go on a trip, you little things. You guys came out here because you were tired of living in the country, anyway. In your tiny town, you probably couldn’t earn enough to feed a dog, but in the city, if you’re dressed up a little—keh!”

“You’re nothing but manure in the countryside. You’re not even worth poop.”

After knocking out the man with another kick, she began shouting desperately towards the broken stairs.

“Mr. ‘Ram, quick, call the guards!”

Behind her, the curtains were drawn back.

When she looked back, there were two men with wide shoulders. One of them approached Anna and Lara in large strides.

“Good at bluffing, eh? We confirmed that there’s nobody outside. Even if there was, our kid would’ve done away with him.”

“There’s no way… Mr. ‘Ram!”

“Go ahead, shout some more. See if the guards can hear you. What’s this b*st*rd on the floor for? You think I sent you up here to play silly games with young girls?”

Even as he kicked at the sprawled man on the floor, he did not move. Their way out was completely blocked.

On the verge of tears, Lara’s fingernails dug into Anna’s shoulders. And while Anna was so tense that she could not even feel that—

The curtains in front of the stone stairway fluttered once more.

The man turned his head around

“What took you so….. aaack!”

The sight thrusted in front of their very eyes was the face of the pawnshop manager, puffy with blood. With swollen lips, the manager spoke.

“Some crazy guy….. claiming he’s looking for his older and younger sisters…. Psychotic…”

The explanation stopped there. After all, he’d been lightly tossed away to a corner of the pawnshop by the crazy guy himself.

The man with the large build, swinging a man like a bat with an emotionless expression.

His existence must have been terror itself to the human traffickers, but to Anna it was salvation.

“Mr. Bertram!”

“I came in after confirming the code word. Have the negotiations been ruptured?”

“Codeword…?”

Bertram looked at the gems rolling around on the ground, as well as at the man who lay covering his crotch.

It was for certain that the negotiations had fallen apart.

As for what he should do in the future, the man who wielded a piece of wood with no warning decided for him.

Bertram grabbed onto the man’s wrist.

“Uh, huh? Let me go, you b*st*rd!”

“In order to gain a better understanding of the situation, I will settle this as I see fit.”

“What? Guaah!”

The settling was done quite violently.