Rei reached the dining hall to find a scene mirroring the one at the base of the stairs.
Five knights were surrounded by rioters, yet every body littering the floor belonged to their attackers. While a few of the knights had sustained minor bruises or shallow cuts, they were otherwise largely unscathed.
It was a stark display of the gulf between trained knights who endured grueling daily drills and the commoners who had been swept up in the mob's momentum to assault the inn. Nevertheless, nearly twenty rioters remained, circling the knights and watching for any opening to strike.
Unlike the battle in the corridor, the knights here held the advantage of space. They weren't tethered to a single point to protect the stairs; they could utilize the entire dining hall as their battlefield. Conversely, this also meant they lacked the wall at their backs, leaving them vulnerable to an attack from behind.
"Uoooooh! For Sarunis! Revenge for my brother!" one rioter screamed, bringing his sword down toward the knight in front of him.
Revenge for his brother. Those few words told the knight everything he needed to know about why this man was attacking, but understanding did not mean he would allow himself to be struck. He caught the descending blade with his own, parried it aside, and delivered a heavy blow to the man's torso.
Because the knight kept his sword in its sheath, the weapon functioned as a blunt instrument rather than a blade. He had judged it better to take captives for interrogation than to pile up corpses, but the force of his strike was still immense. Struck squarely in the solar plexus, the rioter collapsed into a heap on the floor, unconscious.
"This is the price of the battlefield. I won't ask for your forgiveness," the knight muttered, casting a fleeting glance at the fallen man.
They had chosen to incapacitate and capture these men to gather intelligence, but the rioters had made a grave mistake. They had attacked nobles—specifically, nobles formally invited by the Bestia Empire.
Had these been the nobles of some minor border state, the Empire might have found a way to gloss over the incident. But these were nobles from the Kingdom of Mireana, a rival power that had warred with the Empire for years. Furthermore, they were the entourage of Margrave Larkus, the central figure of the Neutral Faction and one of the most influential men in the kingdom.
To make matters worse, these were representatives of the very nation that had effectively defeated the Bestia Empire in the Spring War. With national honor at stake, there was no scenario where the Empire would allow these rioters to go free. Once information was extracted from them, they would undoubtedly be executed or sold off as criminal slaves.
The knight briefly wondered if the man might have been better off dying here, but he shook the thought away. Now was not the time for sentiment.
"What is this guy!?"
A colleague’s voice—pitched closer to a scream of terror than a shout of surprise—snapped his attention elsewhere.
He saw a figure lunging at a knight with a dagger clutched in his left hand. The man’s right arm was missing, and a deep diagonal slash from a longsword had opened his chest, yet he showed no sign of pain.
An ordinary rioter would have been crippled by the shock of losing a limb, let alone a chest wound. Even a seasoned knight would have been incapacitated by the agony. Yet this man charged with unabated killing intent, his fighting spirit burning as if he were immune to his own mortality.
Caught off guard by the unnatural sight, the knight’s defense was a fraction of a second too slow. As the dagger arced toward his face, he tried to raise his arm to shield himself.
A sickening, wet crunch echoed through the hall.
The knight, braced for impact, realized his arm was uninjured. In place of the pain-numbed attacker who had stood there a heartbeat ago, a figure in a familiar robe now stood over the crumpled body of the rioter.
"Are you all right?" Rei asked, his eyes fixed on the man who had just been slammed into the floor.
The knight snapped back to his senses and nodded. "Y-yeah. That was close."
"Well, no one expects an opponent to keep fighting without even flinching after taking that much damage. It's not a zombie, is it!?"
"No," the knight grunted. "He was shouting clearly, and his movements were too fluid for an undead... Hah!"
Rei and the knight continued to knock down the approaching rioters even as they spoke. Rei used his sheathed dagger, while the knight used the flat of his blade to hammer their attackers into unconsciousness. Most of the rioters either fled in terror or collapsed after a single blow.
"It's been a while since we left the Seremuse Plain, and I'd really rather not deal with more undead," Rei said.
A rioter thrust a crude spear—a dagger lashed to a wooden pole with rope—at Rei. He deflected the strike upward with his dagger, stepped into the man's guard, and drove the end of his sheath into the man's solar plexus.
"Ghe-h!" The man doubled over, vomiting as he slumped to the floor.
Rei didn't spare him a second look, already pivoting toward the next target. He leaped lightly, bringing the pommel of his dagger down on a man's temple. The rioter lost consciousness instantly. Two, three more times, Rei used his sheathed weapon like a club, systematically clearing the room.
"Uwaaaaaah!"
One rioter, seemingly broken by the sight of his comrades falling so easily, tried to swing his spear in a wide arc.
Clack! The weapon's momentum stopped abruptly.
Instead of thrusting, he had tried to swing the spear in a horizontal slash, and the long pole had snagged on one of the dining tables. It was a mistake no professional adventurer, guard, mercenary, or knight would ever make—a fatal error born of a civilian's lack of training.
"Hmph!"
Rei didn't miss the opening. He closed the distance in a blur and drove his sheath into the man's solar plexus. The rioter's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed where he stood.
"I found you, you murderer!"
A nearby rioter roared, lunging at Rei with a sword. The speed of the thrust was on an entirely different level—it was fast enough to rival any of the knights in the room.
"What!?"
Rei hadn't assumed every rioter was an amateur, but the speed of that strike was impressive even for someone who made their living by the blade. He parried the thrust with his dagger, stepped inside the man's reach, and used the man's own momentum to drive a counter into his solar plexus.
"Gheb-ah!"
The man let out an eerie cry as he was blown backward. Normally, such a blow would be life-threatening. However, the man simply stood back up as if nothing had happened.
"...This one's the same as the other guy."
The image of the man with the missing arm flashed through Rei's mind. He didn't know the method, but it was clear their sense of pain had been numbed and their physical capabilities enhanced.
"There's definitely someone pulling the strings. But..."
Rei muttered to himself as he closed the gap again, weaving through the man's thrusts with millimeters to spare.
"Once a magician reveals the trick, the illusion loses its power!"
He evaded another thrust, seized the man's extended arm, and slammed him into the floor with overwhelming strength. The man might not feel pain, but he still required a functional body to move. Rei instantly retrieved Death Scythe from his Misty Ring and drove the butt end twice into the back of the man's knees.
A sickening snap echoed through the room. Rei's strikes were so rapid they sounded like a single impact.
"Guh... d-damn it, damn it all!"
The man tried to rise, but with his knees physically shattered, his body could no longer support him. Even then, he tried to use his sword as a crutch to force himself up.
"Give up."
Rei drove Death Scythe's butt end into the man's right elbow, followed immediately by the left. Within seconds, the attacker's joints were reduced to splinters. He was left squirming on the floor like an insect, unable to do anything more.
"What do you think you're doing to him!"
Seeing Rei's clinical dismantling of their comrade, one rioter picked up a heavy chair and rushed him. Before he could strike, a knight slammed a sheathed longsword into the man's side, sending him tumbling across the room.
"Rei, that man..."
"Yeah. He's probably a key player in this raid," Rei said, looking down at the mangled man who was still trying to stand despite his shattered limbs.
Even as they spoke, more rioters threw themselves at them. Rei judged Death Scythe to be too unwieldy for the cramped dining hall and stored it back in his Misty Ring. He resumed fending off the mob with his sheathed dagger while continuing his conversation with the knight.
"The lack of pain is abnormal, and his combat skill is... well, I wonder. Was he always this good, or did someone do this to him?"
"Judging by his form, he's had formal training," the knight noted, knocking aside an unarmed rioter with his sheath. "I suspect the former."
Rei nodded. "Probably. I thought he might just be a natural anomaly at first, but..."
"There are others," the knight added. "I fought one just like him a moment ago, and my comrades have reported the same."
It was too much of a coincidence for several pain-numbed, trained fighters to be part of a random mob.
"Exactly. They're likely elite pawns. At this rate, I wouldn't be surprised if they've sent a force to the stables as well. Though I doubt anyone who merely 'doesn't feel pain' could stand a chance against Seto."
The knight’s expression shifted. "Wait. What if this riot is just a diversion? They could be drawing us here to target the horses and carriages."
"It's possible," Rei admitted. "But what would that accomplish? Warhorses and carriages are expensive, but the local governor has let this riot happen on his watch. He’d likely be more than happy to provide us with even better horses just to keep us from making a diplomatic scene. No... Hah! Enough already!"
Rei swatted a chair out of the air with a casual swing of his arm. Seeing this, one of the rioters screamed in frustration.
"Don't mock us, you murderer! This is for my brother! I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!"
Rei frowned at the man, who looked to be in his late teens or early 20s.
(At the very least, these people genuinely want us dead. Did someone manipulate them into this state?)
Rei closed the distance, weaving through the tables and the fallen rioters. The young man’s face twisted in fear, but a sudden, triumphant smirk crossed his lips—as if Rei had walked into a trap.
Several rioters who had been feigning unconsciousness on the floor suddenly lunged at Rei's legs.
"Naive."
Rei’s speed was far beyond their calculations. He blurred past them before they could even close their hands. The men collided head-on with each other and sprawled back onto the floor.
Rei reached the young leader before he could grab a club from a nearby table. He drove his sheath into the man's solar plexus, ending his consciousness in an instant.
"Handle the rest here!"
"You have it!" the knight replied, moving to incapacitate the men on the floor and those who stood frozen, unable to track Rei’s movements.
"This area's just about cleared."
Rei glanced around. Most of the rioters were unconscious, and the fight was clearly over. While several knights had minor wounds, none were serious. With a brief nod to the knight, Rei turned and headed toward the stables to check on the rest of their entourage.