"Well, I've captured you all for now... but there are fewer of you than I expected."
Rei surveyed the people whose hands and feet were bound with rope, a question nagging at him.
There were seven men and women tied up before him.
According to the children in the Slum District, around twenty people had come into the area.
Of course, seventeen could reasonably be called "about twenty."
Even so, he couldn't shake the feeling that the numbers didn't add up.
"I'll ask just in case, but were you seven operating as a single group? Oh, and for the record, the other ten who were acting separately have already been wiped out."
"Did you... kill them?"
One of the men, still recovering from the effects of Seto's King's Intimidation, addressed Rei with those words.
Rei hesitated for a moment over how to answer, but judged that the man would be more likely to talk if he believed silence meant death. He offered a thin smile in response.
"They shouldn't have suffered."
"You bastard!"
Despite being bound so tightly in rope that he could barely move, the man shouted and lunged at Rei—or tried to. Unable to move as he was, the attempt accomplished nothing beyond sending him rolling across the ground.
Did he have a friend among those ten? Well, they accepted the same request, so it's possible they were in the same party. Though that makes me wonder why they split up... but there's probably a reason I can't fathom.
Deciding that dwelling on it was pointless, Rei shot a brief glance at the man flailing on the ground, then turned to address the remaining six.
"Right. Given the situation, if you answer my questions honestly, I'll let you go in one piece. You do realize that surviving an encounter as my enemy is actually quite rare, don't you?"
That was partially true and partially not.
In all fairness, a fair number of people who had crossed Rei had lived to tell about it.
Many of them, however, had been left with deep psychological scars or missing a limb—or worse.
Then again, there were also those like the bandit who had told Rei about the disappearances around Egginis—someone who qualified as a target of Rei's bandit-hunting hobby, yet had walked away with all five limbs intact.
Since such outcomes were fundamentally determined by Rei's mood, the process was admittedly arbitrary.
"R-really!?"
Perhaps sensing the truth in Rei's words, one of the bound men looked up at him with a gaze that clung to a sliver of hope and shouted.
A few of the others shot the man accusatory looks, but given their circumstances, none of them were in any position to complain.
For the captives, it was only natural to assume they would be killed if they stayed silent.
Everything was unfolding exactly as Rei had calculated. Pleased with how things were going, he spoke again.
"Of course. Provided you answer my questions honestly, that is. So, what about the rest of you? If this man is willing to talk, there's no point in you staying quiet."
In reality, hearing from only one person wouldn't tell him whether the information was accurate.
Given that, he still needed to cross-reference multiple accounts to verify the facts.
Though getting anything out of that one will probably be difficult.
Rei's gaze drifted to the man who had tried to attack him earlier.
He was no longer thrashing on the ground, but the man—still convinced Rei had killed his comrades—continued to glare at him.
Judging it best to leave him alone for now, Rei ignored the stare.
"Alright, first question. You were hired by the Dolan Workshop and came to the Slum District. Correct?"
"No, you're right. We're hired by the Dolan Workshop."
Rei had already surmised as much from the conversation of the first group he had ambushed, so the answer came as no surprise.
...Though if it turned out this group had nothing to do with the ones he had attacked earlier, the confirmation would have been meaningless.
"Second question. What exactly were you hired to do?"
"Capture the one who attacked the Dolan Workshop last night, along with the people who escaped from there."
"I see. But you weren't told that the target was me?"
The statement made the gap in their abilities painfully clear—people of their caliber had no chance of capturing Rei. But looking at their current predicament, none of them could possibly voice any complaint about that.
"That's why we didn't try to fight you head-on. We were trying to find the place you're using as a base."
Rei understood that his prediction had been right on the mark.
So they had been tailing him for that purpose after all.
"I see. So you were after a different target, not me. Third question: did you know that the people who escaped from the Dolan Workshop were illegal slaves?"
"...Huh?"
Hearing the words that left Rei's mouth, the captives fell silent for several seconds before letting out dumbfounded sounds.
Seeing their reactions, Rei nodded inwardly. I figured as much.
There was no way the Dolan Workshop would tell anyone that they had been collecting illegal slaves—let alone that those slaves were being used as material for golem cores through necromancy.
Because he had anticipated this, Rei had expected the people before him to be ignorant of such things. His prediction had proven dead on.
"As a side note, the Dolan Workshop uses those illegal slaves as golem materials. Did you know that either?"
Since the opportunity was there, he might as well let them in on the truth about the Dolan Workshop.
Doing so would throw the people before him into confusion, and depending on how things played out, they might even turn against the Dolan Workshop.
That was Rei's intention in exposing the Workshop's secrets.
Naturally, doing so carried the risk that the people before him would become targets of the Dolan Workshop themselves.
Rei did feel slightly bad about that, but considering that these same people had come to the Slum District intending to capture him, Anne, Ilunara, and the others, he decided he didn't need to lose any sleep over it.
In any situation, having more pieces on the board was always better.
Fusetsu was technically one of Rei's pieces, but that relationship was built on paid compensation.
While he still had plenty of payment to offer, it was always preferable to have pieces that didn't require it.
"Now then, you've gone and learned the Dolan Workshop's secret. In other words, you're in the same boat as me."
"What... that's..."
For those who had just heard Rei's explanation, they had been completely and utterly dragged into this.
Forced to hear information they never wanted to know, and now burdened with the Workshop's secret as a result, they would be hunted just like Rei and his group.
Should I bring them to Fusetsu's hideout? No, that won't work. I don't know these people's personalities. It wouldn't be strange for them to hand over Anne and the others to the Dolan Workshop in exchange for their own safety.
If he understood their personalities thoroughly, he could at least predict how they might act.
But he had only met the people before him today.
There was no way he could trust them.
"What you do from here is your choice. You can pretend you know nothing and go back to the Dolan Workshop. But don't forget—the secret you've just learned is one the Workshop absolutely does not want getting out. And if even a single person among you is suspected of knowing it..."
Rei let the sentence trail off, but what he was implying was obvious without needing to think.
If the Dolan Workshop learned that someone in this group knew their secret, they would launch a thorough investigation to determine who else might know. And it was hard to imagine they would let anyone who possessed that knowledge walk free.
Just like Golias.
In truth, there was still no definitive proof that Golias had been captured by the Workshop.
But Rei's best guess was that he had already been seized and was being used as golem material.
Not that he had any hard evidence.
"Th-then... what are we supposed to do?"
"Who knows? That's not for me to decide. Figure it out yourselves. ...Oh, right. I lied earlier about killing those first ten. They're still alive. Though considering they're lying unconscious in the Slum District, I can't exactly guarantee what happens to them."
"Wha—hey, then untie us!"
The man who had tried to attack Rei shouted the moment he heard those words.
If asked what he intended to do once freed, he was obviously planning to rush to where the unconscious ones lay.
What should he do? Rei hesitated briefly, but having people who knew the Workshop's secret out and actively moving around wasn't a bad outcome for him either.
He generated arrowheads with the Eye of Nebula, hurled them swiftly, and severed the ropes.
The moment the ropes fell away, the man took off running. Watching him go, Rei turned back to the remaining captives.
"One person has already made his move. As for the rest of you... let's see. I'll free anyone who gives me information I need. Does anyone have anything that sounds important?"
"I know something! The Dolan Workshop has been pressuring the guards to capture Rei, but a lot of them are pushing back."
"Huh. That's..."
If the information coming from the woman was true, it was welcome news indeed.
Fighting privately hired hands like these adventurers was one thing, but clashing with guards could lead to troublesome complications down the line.
There were ways to smooth things over, but avoiding the fight altogether was obviously the better option.
"But why? For a city like Egginis, the Dolan Workshop's presence must be significant. Wouldn't guards tasked with protecting the city be in no position to defy a request from them?"
"I don't know the details. But they said the Workshop's orders were completely unreasonable and that they were being treated like errand boys."
"I see. That's certainly possible."
It was only natural for the guards to take pride in the fact that they weren't the Workshop's private army—they were the protectors of Egginis.
Even so, the Dolan Workshop wielded considerable influence in the city by virtue of producing the finest golems, which meant the guards had no choice but to comply with its directives to a certain degree.
It was only natural for them to resent that.
Besides, judging from how Ilunara and the others were treated, the Workshop's mainstream faction is getting cocky. What kind of attitude they'd take toward the guards doesn't take much imagination.
The woman's information was valuable to Rei as well.
So, true to his word, he severed her ropes with arrowheads from the Eye of Nebula.
The instant she realized she was free, the woman bolted from the scene.
The Dolan Workshop didn't know about them yet.
Whatever course of action they chose, acting quickly was unquestionably the right move.
Seeing the woman flee, the remaining captives apparently concluded that Rei would indeed honor his word.
One of the men shouted, clearly unwilling to fall any further behind.
"There's a rumor going around that the Dolan Workshop plans to use golems to search the Slum District!"
"Well, that's... given the performance of the Workshop's golems, it wouldn't be surprising if they did exactly that."
He recalled the battle between a golem and a band of bandits he had once witnessed in the mountains.
It had been utterly one-sided—something that could only be described as a rout.
And since that golem hadn't even been one of the Dolan Workshop's, the golems deployed to search the Slum District would undoubtedly be far superior.
They would almost certainly outperform even the golems created by Ilunara and the others that Rei had fought at the Workshop.
Turning these thoughts over in his mind, Rei cut through the ropes with the Eye of Nebula... and proceeded to hear what the rest of them had to say.