What Rei saw upon entering the Blue Spear hideout was a group of men just about to step outside.
Naturally, these men were members of Blue Spear.
And naturally, their objective was undoubtedly to take down the attacker—to take down Rei.
However...
(Spears, huh. Given the organization's name, it's obvious enough, but running into me inside the building instead of outside was bad luck for them.)
True to the organization's name, the men Rei encountered were holding the same blue spears as the man outside had carried.
Spears were undeniably powerful weapons in the sense that they had a wide reach. Depending on the situation, they were excellent enough to let a fighter hold their own even against a more skilled opponent.
Reach was a significant factor in combat.
But even a spear wasn't advantageous in every situation. A spear could only be used effectively where there was room to swing it freely. In other words, encountering an enemy inside a building like this—especially while moving in a group—meant the spear was by no means advantageous.
If nothing else, things would have been different had they been moving alone, even in a tight space.
"Ngh!?"
Startled voices erupted from the men who came face-to-face with Rei without warning before they could even exit the building.
But Rei showed no sign of paying them any mind and surged forward.
There was no need to say anything. The very fact that they were here—and holding blue spears—meant they were comrades of the assassins targeting his life.
Rei's fist, launched as he stepped forward in silence, sank effortlessly into the torso of one of the blue spear–wielding men. Just like with the man outside, what he felt through his hand was the sickening crunch of bones breaking.
The man blown backward by the impact became an obstacle that was hard for the others to deal with—after all, sent flying into his own allies, he had disrupted their movements entirely.
"Hey, wait—!"
Again, this might have been manageable in an open space. But all the man struck by his flying comrade could do was try to shove the body aside to keep it from obstructing him.
And by the time he pushed the man away, Rei was already standing right in front of him.
"Too bad for you."
"Guh—!"
Ribs cracked beneath another swung fist.
But the man next to the one who'd been struck, even while disrupted, managed to take action against Rei.
"You bastard!"
With a shout, a spear thrust forward. Swinging a spear was impossible in this confined space, but a thrust was a different matter entirely—a single thrust could turn the situation on its head.
With no room to swing, evading the thrust was equally difficult.
...That said, that was only true for an ordinary person.
Rei pulled his right foot back and turned his body sideways, slipping past the spear aimed at his abdomen. More than that—he firmly seized the shaft of the weapon he had just dodged.
That alone left the man who had launched the thrust unable to move his spear.
"Wh-what are you doing!? The rest of you, stop standing around and thrust your spears at him!"
The man who had attacked Rei first was likely the leader—the most skilled among them.
Following his orders, the others also attempted sharp thrusts at Rei, but...
"Gwah—!"
A violent impact struck suddenly from the side, sending one of the men about to thrust flying into another, halting his movement. Without understanding what had happened, the man lost consciousness from the blow to his head.
While that man probably hadn't comprehended what had occurred, several of the others understood perfectly. They had seen exactly what happened.
Rei had forcefully swung his arm while still gripping the spear.
Without releasing his weapon, the leader had been turned into a bludgeon against his own comrades.
Whether he hadn't let go because of a strong attachment to his spear, or because he never imagined his thrust could be stopped so easily—regardless of the reason, his failure to release the weapon the moment Rei grabbed it led to the worst possible outcome.
Swung like a club of flesh and bone, the leader crashed into his comrades, inflicting damage, and only then did he finally let go of the spear... only to slam into yet another ally, spreading even more chaos.
A brutal act carried out in a confined space.
But the tragedy for those present was not yet over.
With the spear-wielding man sent flying, those still unharmed reflexively tried to attack Rei—but in the next instant, Rei swung the spear that the man had released.
He wasn't aiming at anyone in particular. He simply swung it with the attitude that if it connected, good enough.
And a spear was light.
...Well, to be precise, it had considerable weight, but given Rei's arm strength, swinging it around was no particular effort.
As a result, the spear wielded with Rei's brute strength struck down the men one after another.
The one stroke of fortune was that Rei's grip was near the spearhead, so what he swung was the shaft—a blunted strike rather than the blade.
...But swung with Rei's strength, perhaps the blade would have been more merciful, ending lives in a single blow. Where the shaft connected, bones shattered, and for many of the men, those broken fragments tore through flesh and pierced skin.
In under a few minutes, every Blue Spear member who had come as reinforcements lay crumpled on the floor.
Some had taken the shaft to the head, skulls caved in or necks snapped, leaving them dead. Yet Rei showed no particular emotion upon seeing them.
As far as he was concerned, the people here belonged to an organization that had targeted his life. In other words, enemies.
Perhaps—and this was a truly remote possibility—there might have been some among them who had no idea they were even targeting Rei.
But to Rei, that was irrelevant. They had made themselves his enemies; therefore, he judged they must have been prepared for this outcome.
"Now then."
Confirming that everyone was either dead or unconscious—either way, devoid of awareness—Rei tossed the spear he held aside.
Outside, he had taken a blue spear from a defeated opponent, but the one he had seized and used as a weapon was warped from the impact of the fight. The shaft was smeared with blood, bodily fluids, and even fragments of eyeballs. It wasn't something he wanted to keep using.
He glanced around at the spears the others had carried, but those too were either stained with the blood of their owners or comrades, or pinned beneath corpses and unconscious bodies. Rei didn't feel inclined to gather them.
Collecting spears was, for Rei, purely an afterthought.
...Though given that he already had the Twilight Spear, there was no real need to gather them in the first place.
"I caused this much commotion, so they've definitely noticed my presence by now. ...Well, it's also possible they spotted Set and connected the dots to me."
Muttering, he pressed deeper into the building.
Unlike before, however, no one seemed to be coming out. Either they were cowering in hiding because Rei had arrived, or they were gathering their people somewhere to focus their efforts on attacking him.
He had no way of knowing which it was. But either way, he had come to raid an organization that had decided to target him, so there was no need to hold back.
He entered the first room he found, but it was completely empty.
...No. That was literal. There was nothing at all. If there had been even a chair or a table, he might have recognized some trace of daily life, but not a single thing of that sort existed.
"What kind of room is this? A waiting room?"
He considered it, but if it were a waiting room of some kind, it wouldn't be odd for there to be chairs or a sofa.
Deciding it was simply an empty room, he moved on to the next one.
(If they were going to ambush me, a room like that would actually be easier to fight in... though that would also mean they couldn't escape from my attacks.)
With furniture, one could at least hide. But in an empty room like that, hiding was out of the question.
(Doesn't seem like a storage room, either.)
A place with nothing in it could reasonably serve as storage. And if this had been a storage room, there was a chance Rei might have found some kind of Magic Item.
(No, no point thinking about that now. Next room.)
With that decision, he opened the next door...
"H-Hii! W-W-What is it!?"
The moment the door swung open, a frightened voice reached Rei's ears.
He had expected enemies lying in wait, but the person inside was a timid-looking middle-aged man.
"Umm..."
Even Rei was unsure how to react.
If a muscular man with the face of a villain had been there, Rei could have recognized him as an ambusher and initiated a fight. If men wielding blue spears had been waiting, he could have chosen to attack.
But faced with such a clearly unexpected person, Rei was at a loss and decided to simply ask.
"Are you a member of Blue Spear?"
He somewhat suspected the answer would be no, and as expected, the man shook his head.
"No, I'm not. I-I, well... I was only brought to this building due to certain circumstances..."
"Brought here? Well, they're an underworld organization. Wouldn't be strange for them to do something like that."
Rei accepted the explanation, but a question nagged at him: why would they need to bring such a frail-looking middle-aged man here?
If it had been a young, beautiful woman, Rei could have understood the reason. But a middle-aged, scrawny man? He had absolutely no idea what business they could have had to bring someone like him along.
"You said you had circumstances. What kind of circumstances?"
"Well, that is..."
Perhaps not expecting to be asked why he was brought here, the man faltered.
"What, is it something you can't tell me?"
"That's not it! The truth is, I used to make ornaments for a living. The people in this organization learned about that and brought me here."
"...Ornaments?"
"Yes. Apparently, it's a trend in this organization to customize the ferrule of your spear into a shape that's uniquely yours..."
"Ah, I see."
He understood, but the notion of an underworld organization engaging in something so... fashionable struck Rei as questionable.
(Well, even in Japan's Sengoku period, warriors customized their helmets and armor to stand out as their own personal gear... Though I can't quite imagine underground organization members doing the same sort of thing.)
While tentatively judging the man as a non-enemy, the fact that he had been continuously targeted by assassins meant Rei couldn't fully trust him. He even suspected that a Blue Spear member might be trying to make him lower his guard.
Then again, he couldn't exactly attack someone who was clearly not hostile—let alone someone who didn't look like a villain at all.
"For starters, this organization called Blue Spear is getting destroyed today. If you stay here, you could get caught up in the fighting, so you'd better get out fast. Oh, one thing before you go—do you know where the other Blue Spear members went?"
"No, I don't. They all suddenly left."
"I see."
He had half-expected as much, but a pang of disappointment still lingered.
"Then get out of the building right away. Depending on how things go, the whole building might come down."
"Y-Yes, understood. I'll take my leave, then. Thank you for saving me."
Saying that, the man bowed repeatedly and departed.
Truth be told, Rei had been slightly suspicious—perhaps, just perhaps, an enemy was disguising himself as a harmless civilian. But in the end, the man left without incident, leaving Rei with a vaguely anticlimactic feeling, as if he'd been left hanging.