Chapter 128: The Poor Fool

Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Eight
The Poor Fool

After delivering lunch and filling his stomach, Klein rested for barely half an hour before hurrying off to the shooting club to practice firearms, not daring to relax in the slightest.

Fed by thousands of bullets and day after day of persistence, his shooting ability had finally reached the passing line in Dunn Smith’s eyes. He was especially decent at fixed targets.

After yet another round of mechanical repetition, he put away his revolver and took a rail public carriage to the area near his combat teacher Gawain’s home. From there, he spent ten minutes walking to the front gate.

Then he changed into knight’s practice clothing that had just been dried in the sun. From running, jump rope, weightlifting, and squats, he trained all the way to footwork and punching, until sweat streamed down his body and fatigue filled every limb.

“Rest for fifteen minutes.”

Gawain, with blond hair and white temples and a face weathered by wind and frost, took out his pocket watch, snapped it open, and glanced at it.

From the beginning until now, he had maintained his silence, speaking only when switching training methods or when certain movements of Klein’s were not up to standard.

Breathing heavily, Klein did not dare sit down directly. Instead, he walked slowly back and forth. The most visible change this period of combat training had brought him was that his skin had darkened considerably, becoming what people called wheat-colored.

Gawain put away his pocket watch and stood beside the crude training ground behind the house. With both arms folded across his chest, he watched Klein loosen his body, quiet as a marble statue.

“Teacher, aside from unarmed combat, will you also teach me how to use straight swords, greatswords, rapiers, and lances?” Klein, having just digested the Seer potion completely and therefore in a fairly good mood, took the initiative to ask.

He had seen straight swords, rapiers, breastplates, and full-body armor inside Gawain’s collection room, so he knew the other man was not skilled only in hand-to-hand fighting.

Bathed in sunlight, Gawain lifted his eyes and swept him with a glance. His voice was low as he said, “Learning those things will be of no use to you. They are all relics left behind by the age. In the future, they will exist only in museums and private collection rooms…”

He fell silent for several seconds, then added in a tone full of age and desolation, “They have been eliminated. What you should value are firearms. Even combat is merely support.”

Klein looked at his combat teacher, whose entire body seemed steeped in twilight, and laughed softly.

“I do not think so.”

“All ministers, all members of parliament, all generals think so,” Gawain said as though grinding the words between his teeth.

Klein stopped pacing. Pretending he was typing on a keyboard, like a true keyboard expert, he began speaking with confidence.

“No. They have only withdrawn from frontal battlefields. They still have other uses.”

“Why must combat and firearms stand opposed to each other? They can be completely integrated. I believe a person who is more agile, more flexible, and has faster reactions can make better use of firearms.”

Seeing Gawain’s silent eyes suddenly grow sharp, Klein felt faintly pleased and continued, “Other weapons have not been eliminated either. They merely need certain improvements to make them easier to carry…

“…We could organize a highly mobile unit, one capable of bypassing the frontal battlefield and striking straight into the enemy’s rear, straight at their command center. In this kind of small-scale surprise attack, warriors with excellent combat skill and proficiency in various weapons could play a very important role. You can imagine such a scene…”

Relying on his ability to know a little about everything, Klein chaotically mixed together and described special-forces tactics and other combat methods from Earth.

At some unknown moment, Gawain’s breathing had become heavy. He stood there motionless, as though unwilling to break the image formed in his imagination.

Klein stole a glance at his reaction and inwardly chuckled. Clearing his throat, he deliberately spoke with restraint.

“Teacher, what do you think of my idea? Is there any possibility of realizing it?”

Gawain’s body trembled visibly, as if he had finally awakened from a dream. He looked deeply at Klein and spoke in a low voice.

“Your rest has been very effective. Now repeat everything you practiced earlier ten times.”

“Ah?” Klein was left completely blank.

Very soon, as he began running once more, realization struck him, and he screamed wildly inside his heart:

Ten times? Teacher, no!

I do not want to “celebrate” my complete digestion of the Seer potion this way!

Hey, were you not moved at all?

…

Watching Klein run toward the other side of the training ground, Gawain suddenly released his folded arms and covered his face with one hand.

His eyes shut tightly. The wrinkles on his face looked deep and striking.

…

Having once again nearly trained until he vomited, Klein bathed, changed clothes, and said farewell to his still-silent combat teacher, Gawain. He then took a public carriage away from the man’s residence.

He did not go straight home. Instead, he headed to the Dragon Bar in the docks district, intending to visit the underground market and learn the prices of extraordinary materials, while also purchasing items needed to make charms.

On the way, Klein, mindful of the small treasury he carried on him, forced himself not to fall asleep. With great difficulty, he held on until he reached his destination.

“I have to keep four pounds for the final commission payment. What I can actually use is only three pounds and five soli…”

He touched the notes in his pocket, held his cane, and stepped down from the carriage.

By then, the sun had already begun descending toward the west. The glow of dusk soaked every building. Inside the Dragon Bar, the boxing match and dog-catching-rats contest were both warming up.

Passing through the billiards room and room after room beyond it, Klein entered the underground market.

He swept his gaze left and right and did not find the “Monster,” Ademisaul, who was usually active here.

“Did Old Neil not say that the only reason the Monster can survive is because the Dragon Bar’s owner, Swain, keeps him around and gives him something to eat?”

Klein murmured in some puzzlement.

As a Nighthawk, he possessed enough vigilance toward matters like this. He approached the burly man guarding the doorway and asked, “Where is Ademisaul?”

The guard answered without smiling, “No idea which corner he’s hiding in to sleep. He’s been like that recently—lying around shivering all the time, always shouting, ‘Dead, dead, all corpses, everyone will die.’”

What did he see this time? What kind of stimulus did he suffer?

Klein frowned slightly and asked several more detailed questions, trying to figure out where Ademisaul slept, but the guard did not know either.

“Once I finish what I came for, I will use divination to look for him and see what exactly happened…”

Klein noted the matter down and walked toward one of the two rooms at the end of the underground market.

According to Old Neil, the room on the left was used for lending and repayment, while the one on the right was where precious items were bought and sold—including extraordinary materials.

Klein knocked open the door on the right and found that it had been divided into an outer and inner room. Three customers were currently waiting outside.

Lowering the brim of his half-top silk hat, he sat down behind the three customers in order, leaning forward and pressing his hands against his cane, waiting in silence.

Not long after, the partition door opened. A customer wearing blue-gray dockworker clothing came out. He kept his head lowered and left in a hurry, not stopping at all.

Klein lightly tapped the teeth on the left side of his mouth twice and used spirit vision to examine the man, as well as the three remaining customers. He found nothing too unusual—though a few minor ailments certainly existed.

After another ten or so minutes, it was finally his turn.

He opened the partition door and entered the inner room lit by a kerosene lamp.

Locking the door behind him, he sat in the customer’s chair and looked toward the old man across from him, who wore a black soft cap.

“I would like to know what extraordinary materials you have and what their prices are.”

The old man’s cheeks sagged and the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes were deep, but his build was quite burly. He found Klein’s request perfectly normal, because many customers were unwilling to let others know what they wanted to buy before confirming that a certain material existed. Most preferred to hear everything first.

The old man flipped to the newest pages of his notebook. Glancing at Klein, he took a sip of the mead before him and said, “Water ghost brain tissue, depending on completeness, three pounds to fifteen pounds. Star crystal, one hundred and fifty pounds per fifty grams. One queen bee herb, two hundred pounds. Adult black-spotted frogs, one hundred and seventy pounds each… Human-face rose, two hundred and eighty pounds. Only one available…”

Klein controlled his emotional reaction and quietly listened to the old man finish the introduction. And this underground exchange had fewer than thirty kinds of extraordinary materials in total.

Touching the seven pounds in notes inside his pocket, then thinking of Miss Justice’s attitude toward one thousand pounds, Klein silently stood and sighed.

“Regrettably, there is nothing I need.”

Without waiting for the old man to ask, he turned quickly, opened the partition door, and walked out.

Returning to the underground market, Klein stared ahead in a daze for several seconds. Then, inwardly, he gave a bitter laugh and sighed:

“I may be the poorest secret-organization boss in existence…”

This only made him firmer in his decision to obtain the materials through the Nighthawks internally, or exchange for them with Justice and the Hanged Man.

After circling the underground market twice, Klein selected and bought materials for making charms: semi-finished silver sheets, herbal powders and natural minerals required for the corresponding rituals. In total, he spent one pound and fifteen soli.

My private savings are now five pounds and ten soli in total. Subtract the final commission payment, and I have one pound and ten soli left…

As Klein silently calculated his financial situation, helplessness welled inside him.

Of course, he understood very clearly that this was because he had only been working for a little over a month. If the timeline were stretched out to a year, saving over a hundred pounds would still be possible.

“In two more weeks, I will have to tell Benson and Melissa that my salary has increased by another three pounds, and that we can hire a maid-of-all-work… Then I will not have private money anymore…”

As he thought this, Klein walked toward the underground market’s main entrance.

Just then, he saw Old Neil, dressed in a black classical robe, slowly enter.

“Bought everything?” Old Neil greeted him with a smile.

“Yes,” Klein answered frankly.

Old Neil immediately clicked his tongue.

“You came rather early.”

“That is because I am still hungry, while you have already enjoyed dinner,” Klein said, exchanging casual pleasantries with Old Neil.

After a while, Swain, the owner of the Dragon Bar, entered from outside wearing his naval officer’s coat. With an exceptionally grave expression, he approached the two of them and lowered his voice.

“I need your help.”

“What happened?”

Old Neil instantly became serious, while Klein’s heart also rose involuntarily.

Swain, whose brown hair was messy and whose body smelled strongly of alcohol, answered in a deep voice, “A member of a Mandated Punishers team nearby has lost control. We must resolve him before he harms ordinary people!”