Chapter 232: By the Way
"Logan!"
Jayce shoved his way through the crowd, and the moment he saw that black-haired figure standing with his back to him, his eyes lit up.
There were plenty of black-haired people at Zaun’s docks now. Ever since more and more people from Ionia had started coming over to settle down, the Twin Cities had become home to every kind of person from every corner of the world. But that silhouette was different. Jayce knew that silhouette far too well.
There was something indescribable about Logan’s presence. It stood out.
So Jayce called out immediately.
Logan turned around, saw Jayce, and asked curiously, "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing here?" Jayce almost laughed from sheer irritation.
He glanced at the group standing beside Logan, and the moment they saw Jayce, their expressions darkened for an instant before they turned to leave.
But Jayce called after them. "It’s you assholes again. Noel, are you people ever going to stop?"
"Mr. Talis, watch your tone when you speak."
The man named Noel turned around. He was about six-one, with a gaunt face, sunken eye sockets, and a sharp nose. The combination gave him a harsh, rather vicious look.
Clearly displeased, he straightened and said loudly, "Last time, I already reported your attitude toward Demacia to Baron Prolang. Did you forget what Lady Mel told you?"
"Well then, I have other business to attend to. Goodbye."
With that, Noel turned to leave again.
"Don’t use Mel to pressure me. She worries about things I don’t," Jayce said as he reached out and grabbed at Noel’s shoulder.
One of the men beside Noel, a brown-haired young man in knight’s armor, immediately raised his hand as if to knock Jayce’s hand away.
But before his hand could touch Jayce, another hand blocked him.
The young man froze, then looked at the black-haired youth standing sideways in front of him, watching Jayce. Logan wore ordinary clothes, nothing about him looking remotely noble. The young man gritted his teeth and pushed downward with force.
The result was that his face turned red from exertion, while Logan did not react in the slightest.
"You know them?" Logan asked.
He casually flicked his elbow upward, and the brown-haired young man was launched backward, landing hard on his backside. He looked up at Logan, his face full of disbelief.
Noel looked just as stunned.
The brown-haired young man was named Crisis, a minor noble from one of Demacia’s towns, which meant he was a knight. And in Demacia, the gap between knights and ordinary soldiers was not just about rank, it was also about strength.
As the leader of an escort team, Crisis was strong enough to casually lift several hundred pounds.
And yet... he had been sent flying by a light raise of Logan’s elbow?
"They’re the nobles Demacia sent to station in Zaun, these people..." Jayce immediately started explaining to Logan, but before he could finish, an angry shout cut in from the side.
After his initial shock, Noel exploded in fury. "What do you think you’re doing?"
"Do you even know who we are? Are you trying to, mmph, mmph, mmph..."
Logan turned his head and looked at Noel. His gaze sharpened, and Noel stumbled back several steps in fear. He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
"Go on, Jayce," Logan said. "What exactly is going on here?"
Seeing Noel get shut down instantly made Jayce feel a whole lot better.
Fuck, these Demacian bastards had seemed fine when they first arrived. But after a while, once they realized how much profit there was to squeeze out of the Twin Cities, they started causing trouble without restraint. They formed cliques, bullied people from smaller nations, and siphoned off massive amounts of resources in the process.
And don’t think threatening merchants at the docks and playing highway robber would be too embarrassing for Demacia. Sure, Zaun’s dock traffic was not as large as Piltover’s, but if anyone wanted to claim second place in all of Runeterra, who would dare say Zaun wasn’t third?
Stand at the docks, say a few words, and rake in a huge cut in a single trip. Who wouldn’t want that kind of business?
But it was also only possible because the Twin Cities had tolerated it. Neither Silco nor Mel wanted to stir up diplomatic conflict. After all, Demacia was invited by Zaun. Silco had personally sent people to negotiate, met face-to-face with Jarvan III, and only then formally brought Demacia in.
Demacia was a great nation, the white lion of western Valoran, powerful and prosperous, but also a country long known for staying closed off from the outside world, living in self-sufficient isolation much like Ionia.
That was why Silco had gone to great lengths to win them over, starting from the example of Noxus and then using the Twin Cities’ technology as leverage. And Jayce knew exactly why Silco had worked so hard, because this was what Logan wanted.
Before Logan left for Noxus, he had already told Silco to establish diplomatic ties with Demacia. And while Logan was away in the Freljord, Silco had been handling exactly that.
Which was why, before Logan returned, both Silco and Mel had held back. Even though they knew full well what Demacia’s people were doing in private, they had not acted. They had planned to wait until Logan got back and see what his attitude would be.
To put it bluntly, they were afraid their actions might affect Logan’s plans.
So Jayce immediately laid everything out for Logan, why Demacia’s people were here, what they had been doing, what kind of trouble the Twin Cities were now facing because of them, all of it.
And the more Logan listened, the more irritated he became, until he was baring his teeth.
"So in the end, this whole mess really did start because of me?" Logan said with his hands on his hips, shaking his head with a helpless laugh.
Silco and Mel had been worried that conflict with Demacia would affect Logan’s plans, but... plans?
It was true that Logan had always been working to connect the whole world together, but that did not mean he was going to beg people to come, especially not after what had happened in the Freljord.
Thinking about it now, Logan should not have told only Silco. He should have made his position public and laid out his stance plainly. If he had, this kind of thing never would have happened.
At this point, Logan barely counted as human anymore. Calling him a demigod would be going too far, but saying he ranked in the top ten beneath the demigods probably was not unreasonable.
And the circle Logan moved in now was packed with demigod-level beings. If Demacia wanted to come, then fine, come. If not, they could get lost.
If things really came to a breaking point, would it be hard for Logan to make Demacia fall?
Not really.
Even with Kayle, Morgana, and Galio protecting Demacia, that was still only three demigods at most.
Without even relying on Lissandra or White and the others, Logan could store up four emotion points and pull four demigods out inside the Spirit Blossom realm in a heartbeat. That would already be one more than Demacia had.
But... Logan truly had not expected Demacia’s people to pull something like this after coming here.
Honestly, Logan had always admired Demacia. Back when he had first transmigrated, he had even thought about escaping to the Demacian border and living there. But as his status rose and the number of people he knew kept growing, his understanding of the world had broadened more and more.
And once he connected that with Lux’s story, the truth was that Demacia was not nearly as good as he had once imagined. They talked about suppressing magic and hunting mages, but when it came to Lux, Garen, Tianna, Jarvan IV, the royal family, even the High Marshal all stepped in to protect her. Commoner mages were captured and stripped of their magic, while noble mages could hide safely at home...
The knightly oath Demacia had been founded on, that so-called fairness and justice, in the end it was all just a joke.
Jayce rolled his eyes and was about to ask Logan what he planned to do now that he was back.
But Logan had already turned around.
He looked at Noel and removed the spell, allowing him to speak again.
"Magic! You’re a mage, you’re a demon!"
"Damn it, Councilor Talis, is this how Zaun treats its guests? Once I return, I will report this matter directly to the king! You’ve allowed a damn mage into the Twin Cities and let him stand right in front of us! And these savages too, you actually allowed northern barbarians into this city!"
Noel was furious, and the other Demacians around him were glaring angrily as well.
Sejuani narrowed her eyes. Standing behind Logan, she clenched her fists. If this were not Logan’s city, she would already have smashed her fist straight into that man’s face.
But for now, she held herself back and shifted her gaze to Logan, waiting to see how he intended to handle this.
"Return?" Logan said.
"Where exactly are you planning to return to?"
Noel stiffened. He looked up at Jayce behind Logan and saw him standing there with his arms crossed, watching the show.
Logan looked at Noel calmly and said, "The Twin Cities’ external trade laws may not explicitly spell out how this should be punished, but sending all of you to Stillwater Prison to await formal judgment is still perfectly doable."
"Arrest every last one of them!"
There were no Enforcers standing around Logan.
But there were Winter’s Claw people.
At Logan’s words, Sejuani moved first. The moment she did, the Winter’s Claw warriors who had been guarding the goods also sprang into action. One by one, they grinned viciously and reached out with big hands for the Demacians beside them.
The Demacians were tall, the men averaging around six feet.
But Freljordians were even taller.
These warriors were all around six-three on average, and two of them were even as tall as Jayce, huge men over six-six, all muscle, terrifying at a glance.
"How dare you!"
Noel roared in fury, and the Demacians around him instantly drew their swords.
The moment those gleaming weapons came out, the crowd that had been watching burst into chaos. People scattered away from Logan and the others, terrified of getting caught in a conflict between major powers.
"So you’re actually daring to draw swords too." Logan’s anger deepened.
"Councilor Talis, are you really just going to stand there and watch this happen? And you, do you even realize that what you’re saying and doing right now will bring disaster down on Zaun?" Noel threatened. "You want to see the iron cavalry of the Dauntless Vanguard flatten this city, is that it?"
"Can you carry that responsibility?"
Logan raised a brow and was just about to answer.
Then a sharp whirring sound cut through the air, and above them appeared a group of people in uniform riding hextech hoverboards, the Sump Enforcers.
At their head was a red-haired woman, strikingly beautiful, wearing massive gauntlets over both hands. A broad smile covered her beautiful face. She landed lightly, the board settling onto her back, then smacked one gauntlet against the other with a thunderous boom and shouted, "Enforcement Bureau business! Everyone not involved, clear out!"
The crowd instinctively spread out, and then the woman stepped aside from the main road, making way as a voice sounded from behind her.
"Of course he can carry that responsibility."
The Enforcers parted the crowd. Silco, dressed in formal wear, walked forward with his hands behind his back, followed by Sevika, Renata, Vander, and the others. Step by step, he approached, eyes cold as ice, and looked at Noel as he continued, "If Zaun’s ruler can’t carry that responsibility, then no one in Zaun can."
The crowd instantly exploded.
Zaun’s ruler, holy shit!
No wonder that face had seemed familiar. Looking closely, wasn’t that black-haired young man the same person whose statue stood all over Zaun?
Though... how had his hair gotten so long?
Noel froze.
Beside him, Jayce had both arms folded over his chest, looking entertained. Several swords among the Demacians clattered down toward the ground on reflex. Surrounded by Enforcers, the Demacians immediately lost their nerve, and Noel’s tone weakened several degrees as he looked at Jayce.
"Councilor Talis, is Piltover truly going to do nothing about this?"
"Do what?" Jayce shot back. "Piltover belongs to him too. Our whole Twin Cities answers to him. If you didn’t even know that, then how the hell did you think you could swagger into Zaun?"
Noel fell silent at once.
Silco lifted one hand. "Didn’t you hear Logan? Arrest them all."
Vi gave a delighted laugh and slammed her fists together. In a blur, she was already in front of the Demacians, throwing a punch as she muttered, "Fuck your mother, I’ve been sick of you bastards for ages..."
Vi had always been that kind of person.
Punch first, ask questions while punching.
The Demacians were seized, tied together in a group, and dumped at the docks.
And there were far more Demacians than just these scattered throughout the city.
Logan crouched down and looked at Noel. "Just now, you said the iron cavalry of the Dauntless Vanguard would flatten this city?"
Noel lowered his head and stayed silent.
But Logan continued, "Answer me this, can you speak for Jarvan III? Were those words your own, or Demacia’s?"
"Do you people not know what happened in the north? Do you not know what happened in Noxus? Can you bear the price of saying something like that to Zaun?"
Noel looked up at Logan, fear flickering in his eyes.
Zaun’s ruler, the one truly in charge of the Twin Cities, that status stood on equal footing with Jarvan III’s.
Maybe a few years ago Demacia would not have cared about some so-called ruler of Zaun or the Twin Cities.
But now they had to.
The Demacian nobility had already started embracing the conveniences Twin Cities technology brought into their lives. And after climbing aboard the Twin Cities’ ship, Demacia’s economy had made a qualitative leap.
Noel obviously could not bear that responsibility.
But the pride of a knight would not allow him to admit he was wrong.
So he could only stay silent.
"I know Demacia is powerful. Maybe one day in the future, you really will dominate Valoran."
Logan looked at Noel with a smile.
"But then again, the future is the future, and the present is the present."
"I’ll help you ask Jarvan III personally whether he truly wants to make an enemy of the Twin Cities."
"The Twin Cities welcome every friend from every corner of the world. But at the same time, the Twin Cities do not fear any power from anywhere in the world."
"So I’ll ask you one more time."
"Can you speak for Jarvan III?"
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