The man with the sword was defeated in a single strike.
Finding it hard to accept that fact, the light had vanished from his eyes, which were filled with blood as he coughed. Of course, it was none of my concern.
I grabbed him by the nape and dragged him along.
He was likely involved with the Dark Cult. There was no way someone with his skills would simply belong to a violent gang in the back alleys.
He could have at least been a common knight from a high noble family.
Though he was not as skilled as me, he was certainly not at the level of some street thug.
With so many people collapsed, I encountered several obstacles. Eventually, I couldn’t contain my irritation and threw the man forward.
Toward the reception room door that was far away.
With a loud crash, the wooden door was shattered.
Dust filled the air as I could hear the sound of a furry man inside gasping for breath. I hopped over the fallen bodies and entered the reception room in one go.
The large men, who were groaning and trying to rise, turned their gazes toward me and the man with the sword in turns.
Then they voluntarily laid back down on the ground.
It seemed they had realized that resisting would only lead to worse outcomes.
As the man with the sword coughed, attempting to prop himself up with his arm, I kicked at his side.
“Guh!”
With a scream resembling a death rattle, the man rolled back to the ground. He appeared to have lost all strength to rise after crashing against the wall.
The eyes of the furry middle-aged man watching the scene widened.
His voice emerged, trembling as he cleared his throat.
“W-How… I had dozens of people and the Sound Concealing Sword master after me, yet in just a few minutes!”
‘Sound Concealing Sword,’ huh.
I glanced at the man holding the sword. No matter how I looked at him, he didn’t seem older than the middle-aged man, and he had never once shown me a smiling face.
It seemed that the people from the back alley had the lowest taste for naming things.
Thinking it was better than ‘Lord Handaxe,’ I pulled out the handaxe that was strapped to my waist.
“I’m in the Academy Swordsmanship Department, third year.”
“W-What does a handaxe and the Swordsmanship Department have…”
Crack! The edge of the handaxe deftly severed one of the middle-aged man’s fingers.
As I raised my hand, the handaxe naturally returned.
It was no ordinary skill.
To the middle-aged man’s eyes, it must have looked like magic.
Though he clutched the severed finger with his other hand and trembled, he bit down to keep himself from screaming.
The glimmer of fear that appeared in his eyes grew more vivid.
Before stepping outside the reception room, I walked toward him slowly and bent my knees. Tears filled the middle-aged man’s eyes as he faced me.
He was a person who had been shattered along with dozens in what seemed like a short time.
It would be strange if he weren’t terrified; there was no way he had any more strength left.
Now, if we were to divide the power, I held the overwhelming advantage.
I smiled slightly and said.
“Let’s stop with the pointless questions. We’ll exchange one thing each that we need, but for each question you ask, you’ll lose a finger.”
The middle-aged man nodded without hesitation.
After all, hesitating now would only get him more fingers chopped off. Given that it was cleanly cut, he might even be able to reattach them.
If he was not a high priest, there would definitely be some lingering aftereffects.
If he cooperated willingly, I was even willing to introduce him to the Lady Virgin Saint.
“Now, for the first one. What happened to the missing people?”
“…I-I don’t know!”
I stared at the middle-aged man in silence.
As I squeezed my grip on the handaxe again, the middle-aged man instinctively cried out.
“I-I really don’t know! We just… sold the information!”
The continuous violence inevitably pushed the human psyche to its limits.
Especially the fact that severe assault could occur at any moment gave a strong sense of tension to any human. I even made sure not to show any signs of conflict on purpose.
It was to maximize the interrogation’s effect.
After all, it was just a matter of not seeing him for a day, and being fearful wouldn’t be a bad thing.
I glared at the middle-aged man without a word. His pupils were shaking violently.
So far, he didn’t seem to be lying. A low voice escaped my lips.
“To whom?”
“I-I’m not sure. As I told you, I just did what I was told… Ahhh! Alright! I’ll tell you everything!”
As his excuses went on for too long, I had no choice but to raise the handaxe again.
Immediately, the middle-aged man covered his head with his arms and started rambling incoherently.
“U-Above! It was an order from above, but I don’t know the details! When a suspicious person in a black hood came, we were told to pass on the information…”
“Who would see them as anything other than suspicious?”
“I-I had no choice!”
Gasping, the middle-aged man continued his excuses.
“The bad debts are supposed to be sold anyway… Even if I wanted to collect, I couldn’t, so I just passed on the debtor’s information! After that, it doesn’t matter how the collection goes… Gah!”
Once again, a finger flew into the void along with blood.
Now, he had seven fingers left.
I smiled faintly and uttered.
“…I didn’t ask that.”
Taking a deep breath, the middle-aged man seemed to finally calm down a bit.
He hesitated as he tried to distance himself from me.
Though, that would only have limited effect.
I continued my questioning in a nonchalant voice.
“Still, you must have heard something. It doesn’t make sense that you would just pass on the debtor information and leave it at that?”
“I-I’m telling the truth… Ah, ah!”
The middle-aged man, seemingly feeling wronged, finally had an idea and his eyes widened in realization.
He opened his mouth as if clinging to it as a lifeline.
“Th-There’s… biotic experiments!”
“…Biotic experiments?”
Just hearing those words left an unpleasant feeling.
If it was against animals, I could understand, but the subject of our conversation was about the missing people.
It meant they were all human.
As my brow furrowed, the middle-aged man burst into a hasty laugh as if he had just recalled essential information.
“Y-Yes… I think they said to hand over the data needed for the ‘biotic experiments.’”
“…You crazy bastard.”
I let out a heavy sigh, directing a cold glare at him.
“Were you still able to pass on that information?”
“W-Well…”
The middle-aged man was nervously looking around for my reaction.
Yet, given that he had provided me with important information, I decided not to torment him further.
I stood up and grabbed the remaining stack of documents on the table.
They were stained with blood, but the crucial contents were still legible.
My interrogation continued.
“So, how many have you sold?”
“So far… about 9 people?”
Hmmm, I flipped through the pages one by one.
Nine seemed a little low.
So I glanced at him and asked again.
“The documents don’t match the number?”
“There are indeed real missing persons in that! Basically, we pass on all the bad debts, but as I stated, there are cases where they run away! They don’t chase after the weird guys who escaped…”
I continued flipping through the documents without saying a word.
A small mutter slipped from my lips.
“…Doris, the son of Yona who runs the mill.”
The middle-aged man’s eyes darted towards me, trembling, as if he were afraid I might be reading the debtor information.
However, I was casually flipping through the documents without even glancing at the detailed information.
“Mary, has she reached adulthood? She seems to have started selling fruit, unable to hold back any longer… Her childhood dream was to eat fruit to her heart’s content. She loved apples especially.”
With a soft thud, I let the documents fall onto the table.
My blazing eyes were fixed on the middle-aged man.
“…She’s gone missing, and now she can’t even eat apples.”
Just as my hand was about to stride toward the middle-aged man again, I suddenly grabbed him by the collar.
The middle-aged man, feeling too light, struggled in the air.
I warned him in a heated tone.
“Do you think I wouldn’t recognize all these people? I grew up with them in this tiny territory… Speak clearly. Are there really only 9?”
“Cough, ugh… R-Really… it’s true! I swear!”
With a thud, I hurled the man to the ground with all my strength.
He bounced once, releasing a choked groan.
I pointed the handaxe at his neck and shouted.
“…How do you know that?”
“Uh, wh-what are you saying… Kgh…”
“The bad debts were all passed to that guy, right?”
The middle-aged man’s eyes were filled with strong doubt.
The way he seemingly sought an answer from me made me yell in frustration.
“Then how many were kidnapped by him, and how many actually ran away… How would you know that? You didn’t even see it firsthand, did you?”
“Th-That’s…”
Stumbling and trying to come up with excuses, the middle-aged man soon wore a blank expression.
A hollow voice escaped his lips.
“…Huh.”
That was when the atmosphere around the middle-aged man shifted dramatically.
His limbs began to jerk around uncontrollably, like a broken puppet, as he struggled to rise from the ground.
During the process, his arm twisted backward at the joint, making a consternating cracking sound.
Yet, there was no sign of pain on his face.
“W-Why, why, wh-why, why, why… why?!”
He suddenly began to scream as he scratched at his own face with his fingers.
Blood flowed freely, and his eyeballs were about to pop out, yet he didn’t stop scraping his face.
In fact, his speed only increased.
Faced with the sudden change, I could only feel perplexed.
“No, what… Hey, are you alright?!”
“W-Why, why is this happening?! Guh, ngh… Why?!!”
The middle-aged man was now even whimpering.
I hesitated for a moment, not knowing how to respond.
Having encountered various crises, this was a first for me.
A person who was just talking normally suddenly going into convulsions.
The middle-aged man looked at me desperately.
His hands were still scratching at his face, making it blood-soaked.
He panted like a dog and said to me.
“My, my lord… Wha-what’s happening? M-My memory… My head is…”
At least it was certain he was not doing this willingly.
I immediately lunged at him.
I thought maybe knocking him out would help.
However, at that moment.
I caught sight of a black symbol floating over the middle-aged man’s neck.
That eerie shape was radiating a dark red aura.
I was taken aback, but soon recalled that I had seen that symbol somewhere.
It was the contract magic of the Dark Cult that I had seen at the Gilford Orphanage.
I cursed and had no choice but to take a step back.
“…Shit.”
Then, with a loud bang, an explosion erupted.
The middle-aged man’s head shattered into pieces, and a fountain of blood erupted from the void left behind. Flesh, bone fragments, and brain matter clung together with a splat.
I staggered back a couple of steps from the shockwave, looking blankly at the headless body of the man.
The limp corpse soon collapsed onto the pool of blood it created with a thud.
Blood splattered around.
I stared at my surroundings numbly. The large men who had been playing dead, and the man known as ‘Sound Concealing Sword’ had fallen silent.
And soon, a black symbol floated above their heads.
With a sigh, I leaped out of the reception room.
A blood blizzard swirled as streams of blood flowed like a tide beneath the reception room door.
Covered in blood, I had to brush myself off and stand up.
As I touched my forehead lost in thought, a sigh escaped my lips.
“…I’ll have to report back to the main house for now.”
I had caught on to the Dark Cult’s tail.
Though nothing had been revealed about the contract magic, I could only trust the magic troops of the Rainelle Clan cherished by Mr. Raymond.
It was a few minutes later when I grabbed a passerby who had just walked by as I awkwardly staggered out of the building.
The passerby paled the moment they saw my appearance, but fortunately, as we were familiar, I managed to pass by.
I had been waiting there for quite a while until my companions arrived.
Leaving behind dozens of bodies groaning in the corridor and the blood-drenched reception room.
Upon seeing the gruesome scene, my companions had no choice but to stop dead in their tracks.
Among them, Liya, who had arrived representing the Percus Family, had the most noteworthy expression.
Her eyes were wide, and her lips trembled.
I greeted my cute younger sister with a word.
“…You’re here?”
And right after that.
“Y-You’re insane! Insane, insane, insane…!”
“Arrgh! Liya! I told you to stop hitting me!”
I had to endure getting hit on the back repeatedly by my enraged younger sister.
Yet, I hadn’t even taken a single hit during the battle.
It felt unjust.
