Episode 140 Men are Power (2)

…Flash!

Black and red strikes crossed each other.

Vikir felt a crackling pain in his wrist as he landed on the ground.

‘That’s a lot of weight, even for a rotten Graduator.’

Turning his head, he saw the creature crashing through the outer wall of the building beyond.

[grunt……]

He’s carrying a large hammer, and the sticky aura that symbolizes the Graduator is completely coating the large surface area of the hammer.

Bubbling……

His aura is like boiling tar, or liquid asphalt.

I’d estimate it to be an advanced Graduator.

Vikir squinted at it.

”That’s clearly a blunt technique of the Faithful Saint. Why would a demon use this technique?

The holy power of the Rune Religion was clearly the antithesis of the demons, and it was a great irony that the martial technique to draw out that holy power was unleashed by the hands of a demon.

‘Does that mean the Quovadis have some sort of connection to the demons after all, because I’m sure they have their own rotten parts…….’

Maybe, just maybe, he’d pick up a clue about the Face Hunters, the stealthy men in the Imperial City.

The traitors, renegades, and insiders he’s hunted so far have all been dealing with the same demon, and they all have one thing in common: they lose their faces upon death.

And the creature in front of him seems to be a similar case, as he wears a black sack over his head.

Vikir loaded his sword with mana in earnest.

“First, I’ll cut off your limbs. Now for the interrogation. All you need is a mouth.”

An aura stretched out from Beelzebub.

Superior Graduator, solid and dense, the aura stretched out and drew a half-moon trajectory.

Thud.

A solid marble pillar was sliced diagonally.

The monster hastily raised his hammer to block the blow, but he was unable to avoid the crumbling debris behind him.

…Crunch!

With that, the creature burst through the rubble and dirt.

His black suit was torn to shreds, revealing muscular flesh, the words jaggedly etched into his chest like a knife.

‘Ephebo’

“Ephebo, is that your name?”

Vikir asked, and the creature did not answer. Just.

…whoosh!

It only emitted an even more intense aura from its body.

But even then, it was only an Advanced Graduator, the level Vikir had been at when he first arrived in Balak’s village and was settling in.

“That’s good, I’ve been having a hard time picking up trash.”

Vikir smiled, though only briefly.

He was a little sore from all the time he’d spent hunting down weaklings.

An opponent of advanced Graduator level should still be able to exert some strength, so it was time to stretch a bit.

…Flash!

Vikir also raised his aura.

The Seven Forms of Baskerville now manifested their terrifying trajectory.

First tooth transposition.

Second tooth central incisor.

Third tooth Lateral incisor.

Fourth tooth molars.

Fifth tooth wisdom tooth.

Sixth tooth premolar.

Seventh tooth molars.

Four in the upper jaw and three in the lower jaw. A total of seven teeth fell towards Ephebo, the demon with a black sack.

…Thud!

The first tooth bit into Ephebo’s body.

The second tooth ripped open the wound the first had inflicted, pulling it apart and severing it.

The third tooth helps the second strike continue strong, connecting it to the fourth.

The fourth tooth crushed Ephebo’s entire body, leaving it tattered beyond regeneration or repair.

The fifth tooth funneled all the recoil damage from the previous four strikes into one place and slammed into Ephebo’s body again.

The sixth tooth was assisting the seventh, completely sealing off even the tiniest crack that Ephebo could have gotten through.

The seventh tooth was still so small and weak that it looked like a gap, but with the sixth tooth supporting it, it didn’t matter.

On the contrary, if the trajectory in which the seventh tooth was located appeared to be empty, and it tried to escape through this gap, it would be oviposited by the sixth tooth cleverly hidden behind it and quickly become a rag.

Such was the case with Ephebo.

Quack, quack, quack, quack!

The trajectory of Vikir’s sword, the sequence of teeth, and the fact that he had managed to find a gap in it, made Ephebo immediately realize that it was a trap.

The seventh tooth, relatively small and seemingly less intimidating, was actually optimized for killing more than any of the others.

“They don’t call it the seventh for nothing.”

Vikir said as he stamped on Ephebo, which quickly turned into a rag.

It may be small, but it is a seventh tooth.

No one had ever seen it before, except for Vikir and Hugo Les Baskerville, the patriarch of the Baskerville family.

In the future, when this seventh tooth grows and reaches its full size, it will be the moment when Vikir becomes a Swordmaster.

‘And when he does, he will not be afraid of Hugo.’

Vikir’s feelings for Hugo had softened considerably since he realized that his death in his previous life had more to do with Set than Hugo.

But despite this, Vikir still didn’t feel good about Hugo.

After all, it was he who had struck his own throat in his final moments before regressing, and it was he who had tossed so many of his brothers aside like they were expendable.

“So, shall we begin our interrogation?”

Vikir kicked the tattered Ephebo and impaled him on a steel beam jutting out of one of the stone pillars.

Gurgling……

Vikir’s small and delicate hands bent the thick steel frame like a taffy stick and shaped it into a hook.

Ephebo struggled, but with his body pierced by the bent steel like a fishing hook, he could not escape.

The kind of overwhelming power that can subdue and nail a top-ranked Graduator in an instant.

If the students of the academy who had just played with Vikir had seen this, they would have fainted a few times.

Vikir asked in a cold tone.

“Now, who is your master, who made you like this?”

[grrrr……]

Instead of answering, Ephebo growled low. It was clear he wasn’t going to admit anything.

(Though it was questionable if he even spoke the language in the first place).

But Vikir didn’t mind.

“Interrogation is not always verbal.”

A lot of information can be gleaned from the body of an interrogate, the condition of their internal organs, the placement of their bones, their wounds, the freshness of their blood or the concentration of mana in their veins, and the social status of their life.

From now on, Vikir planned to dismantle Ephebo’s entire body into pieces and dispose of them.

Then.

“Heehee…… heehee…….”

He heard the sound of wind behind him.

Turning his head, he saw the fat man from earlier, Nursery Director Doxeller, smiling with drool dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“It’s him…… he’s coming…… hee hee…… face…… to get my face back…… don’t make a mistake.”

I could tell at a glance that he was out of his mind.

No wonder, it was understandable for a commoner to go insane after witnessing a battle between Superior Graduator and monsters at the highest level of mana explosion from a very close distance.

Waves of mana, shockwaves, and collapsing debris would have been disastrous enough for the average person.

With that, the Doxeller began to stagger away.

“I have to hide…… I have to hide…….”

He rummaged through the rubble until his fingers were bloody.

Eventually, he pulled out a fairly sizable vault.

“Hmph.”

Vikir watched the scene with interest.

Something was coming out of his subconscious that he hadn’t admitted to during his torture earlier, something that perhaps he wasn’t even aware of.

If anything, it was a good thing that he had gone mad.

Then.

BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

As he turned the dials on the vault, Doxeller suddenly stopped.

And then.

“Boom, boom, boom, boom!”

Something happened.

The doxeller’s entire body suddenly began to expand.

As soon as Vikir felt the rushing torrent of mana, he threw himself backwards.

And then.

Boom!

Dokseller’s body suddenly exploded with a loud bang.

Apparently, the demon had placed a restriction on him to self-destruct after certain actions.

“……Yikes.”

Vikir was out of the blast’s radius, but he still took quite a bit of damage.

The wounds were minor and he could regenerate them all with his bog salamander powers, but his clothing could not.

His cloak, shirt, and mask were half burned away.

Vikir pulled off the plague doctor’s mask that covered his face and tossed it to the ground.

“…….”

I turned to see Ephebo, nailed to a stone pillar, had disappeared.

Judging by the bits of flesh and guts stuck to the gritty surface of the steel, it must have been forced out with quite a bit of effort.

It was a difficult escape for a living human to pull off.

“Well, at least you got a harvest.”

Vikir peered into the vault that had been shattered by the self-destruct.

Much of the vault’s contents had been preserved, thanks to the fact that Doxeller had fired the blast just before he detonated, minimizing the aftermath.

The vault contained a significant amount of gold bars, real estate documents, and jewelry.

Probably the proceeds of selling children with nowhere else to go as food for demons.

But Vikir didn’t care about wealth.

What really caught his attention were the stacks of papers beyond.

A ledger.

They detailed the deposits of money, where children were taken from, and where they were sent.

“This will need to be analyzed.”

Vikir crumpled the papers into his arms.

He would mail them to Sindiwendi immediately and have her investigate.

“Ugh! Stop working, please!

I could already hear her singing.

* * *

After Vikir’s departure.

The guards were called to the midnight disturbance.

They looked at the ruined nursery and stuck out their tongues.

“Looks like some giant beasts have come and stirred things up.”

“Wasn’t this nursery under the control of the Quovadis family?”

“What kind of madman trespassed on the territory of the Faithful?”

The guards scoured the ruins.

But they found nothing.

What they did find was a large amount of wealth of unknown origin in abandoned vaults.

Why all this money was here, and where it came from, was a mystery.

And why would the supposedly frugal branch of the Quorvadis have all this black money?

The investigation was inevitably prolonged, and the guards soon made a shocking discovery in the basement of the nursery.

The bodies of children aged between 10 and 13 years old.

Dozens of bones and skeletons lay in the ground beneath the former nursery building.

The guards were all horrified.

And then. Some were more surprised than others.

“……!”

Saintess Dolores.

A direct descendant of the Quovadis family, student council president and newspaper editor of the Academy Colosseo.

She had rushed over at the news that an organization affiliated with her family had been attacked.

Students from the Academy’s newspaper department were also there to cover the event.

Originally, the Academy’s newspaper had rules.

First-year students only cover events inside the academy.

Second and third year students can cover events outside the academy.

First-year students are still too immature to go outside the academy, and they need time to adjust to the school, so their coverage is limited to the academy.

However, in the second and third year, they were allowed to go outside the academy.

Just like Dolores is doing now with other student journalists.

“…… what in the world.”

Dolores is speechless at the sight before her.

A ruined nursery school, with the remains of many children.

Who could have committed such a senseless act?

The guards were eager to be interviewed by student journalists.

“By the time we arrived, it had already happened…….”

“Judging by the blood and flesh splattered everywhere, whoever attacked this place was strong and evil…….”

“It appears to have been a one-man raid…….”

“There is a terrifying villain in the city, and similar incidents are popping up all over the place…….”

The students at the academy took the guards’ statements seriously.

It was an outline of tomorrow’s newspaper articles that would be distributed to the academy the next morning.

Then.

“……?”

Saintess Dolores, looking around in a panic, spotted something.

Avoiding everyone’s gaze, she went back under the pile of rubble and picked up what had fallen to the ground.

“This is …….”

What Dolores picked up was a half-burnt mask.

It was a plague doctor’s mask with a stork’s beak attached.