Ch.418Slaughter

Were they enraged by the deaths of their comrades? Their momentum was quite fierce.

Their glaring eyes overflowed with killing intent, and their blades swung with confidence.

Ironically.

As I leaped onto the rooftop, I caught the scythe swinging toward my neck with my left hand.

The screeching sound of metal friction. His scythe couldn’t even penetrate Frosting, merely sliding helplessly in my grip while sparking.

“Catching my attack with bare hands…?!”

Heinz was shocked. His pupils visible behind the mask trembled with shock.

Seems he’s finally realized something was wrong.

“You bastard!”

Navis charged at me, kicking off the roof and swinging his longsword at my back as if telling me to let go.

Simultaneously, the woman called Hush threw both daggers she was holding, while Kellogg and Radelli thrust their swords from different directions.

They seem quite skilled at coordinated attacks.

I considered sweeping them all away with the blade of Karma of Murder but decided against it.

If Kist is watching this battle, it would be better not to reveal my identity until the end.

If he realizes the Winter Assassin has come to kill him, he’ll abandon his organization and flee.

So, I should present myself as just a skilled Master.

Perhaps at the level of the Masters I met in Landenburg?

The moment I reached this conclusion, my battle instincts provided the optimal answer.

I bent my knees sharply, leaning my upper body backward while flinging my left hand sideways, as if adding my strength to Heinz’s force on the scythe.

“Huh…!”

The sharp sound of metal collision.

His scythe sliced through the empty space where my waist had been, deflecting Navis’s longsword as he charged at me.

“Ugh!”

Navis, caught in the scythe’s momentum, fell back with a groan.

Simultaneously, I swung Durandal in my right hand to parry Radelli’s rapier.

– Clang!

“Huh…?”

The rapier touching my blade snapped like a reed. Radelli let out a gasp of shock.

Why be surprised at something so obvious?

Even with an ordinary steel sword rather than a true blade, breaking such a thin rapier would be trivial.

In my experience, no one who uses such rapiers is a proper swordsman.

In the original world, rapiers were useful against armor by targeting gaps, but in this world, knights can train to slash through even steel.

Rather than focusing solely on thrusting with such a thin blade, it would be far more efficient to develop the skill to cut through steel.

If you can’t manage that, just die. Like this.

A blue-silver flash penetrated Radelli’s mask, who stood dumbfounded after losing her sword.

– Thunk!

The blade pierced through her mask like paper, penetrating between her eyebrows and emerging from the back of her head.

Blood and brain matter flowed down the blade.

“Ah…aaargh…!”

Radelli, despite having a sword through her forehead, somehow still clung to life, moaning deflated breaths while her arms trembled.

The shattered mask fell away, revealing her face.

An expression full of disbelief at her own death. Her pupils contracted to dots before rolling back.

She couldn’t have been more than nineteen. Her face was younger than I expected.

I twisted my wrist, turning Durandal sideways.

– Crack!

Her skull split open, its contents mashed and mixed. Her eyeballs, which had been staring into space, danced in all directions.

Radelli convulsed like a lightning-struck beast, a dark stream flowing between her armored skirt.

“Radelli-!”

Kellogg, who had been charging at me, screamed at her horrific end.

He twisted his longsword aimed at my flank, trying to strike down my half-reclined body.

He must have trained his swordsmanship diligently, as his transition from a mid-level thrust to a downward strike was quite fluid.

Still, he was only at a knight’s level after all.

I released Durandal, which was still impaling Radelli’s face, and rotated widely to the side while still in my reclined position.

Kellogg’s longsword penetrated the rooftop instead of my body. Despair crossed his face as he sensed his impending death.

The next moment, my leg, loaded with rotational force, struck his ankle.

– Crunch!

“Aaaaargh!”

His steel greave crumpled like it had been crushed in a press, and his ankle shattered like a cracker.

Kellogg spun vertically like he was possessed by the ghost of a wagon wheel, smashing his face into the roof.

– Crash!

The impact shattered his mask into pieces.

The face beneath was pulverized beyond recognition, even by his own mother.

With Hush’s thrown dagger embedded in his back.

“This can’t… this can’t be happening…!”

Hush moaned, denying reality as she stepped back a couple of paces.

Yes. It must be unbelievable.

Five people attacked simultaneously, and in the next moment, two were knocked away and the other two became corpses soiling themselves.

Harsh reality is always difficult to accept.

“Well, are you feeling more talkative now?”

I smirked as I stomped on Radelli’s abdomen, who was still convulsing with Durandal piercing her face.

Her lower abdomen flattened like paper. Crushed intestines gushed out between her thighs along with a fountain of blood.

“Aaaah…! Radelliiiii!”

“You devil woman-! I’ll cut off that foot-!”

Navis and Heinz, having regained their posture, charged at me like hungry dogs.

Hush too, seemingly having lost her reason at the sight of her comrade’s disembowelment, rushed toward me with a dagger.

“Such devoted friends! How nice!”

I kicked Radelli’s successfully dieted corpse toward Hush, then with my other foot, threw the eternally resting Kellogg at Navis.

“Ah…!”

“Such tricks!”

Hush instinctively stopped to catch Radelli, while Navis extended his left arm to push away the flying Kellogg.

“How stupid. You should have cut first and asked questions later.”

And then he faced me, poised with my sword behind Kellogg’s corpse.

“Huh…!”

I blocked Navis’s swinging longsword with my left arm while swinging Durandal vertically with my right hand.

– Crack!

A splitting sound like an axe chopping wood.

The blue arc split Navis’s skull, driving through until it emerged between his thighs.

“Navis-!”

His body split wide open.

I charged through the fountain of blood between Navis’s chest toward Heinz.

“You demon woman…!”

Heinz swung his scythe like a storm.

– Crash!

Everything touched by the scythe’s blade was harvested like barley in harvest season, whether flesh or brick.

So a Master is still a Master after all.

Though he lost his subordinates pathetically due to my overwhelming speed, his skill itself was not far from Leonore’s level.

Which means he’s an opponent I shouldn’t kill in one blow while pretending to be a ‘strong Master.’

So I’ll just play along for a while.

I gripped my longsword with both hands and charged toward him.

A clash of Karma against Karma.

The longsword and scythe danced endlessly, devastating everything around.

Fighting him head-on, he was more interesting than I expected.

The long reach like a spear, wide sweeping slashes, and the unique attack style of pulling inward while cutting.

Like a grain slaughterer who had farmed for a thousand years.

Heinz was fighting by drawing out the function of the scythe perfectly and beyond.

Though he still couldn’t harvest me.

“Starting to regret this yet! I’ll spare you if you just tell me where Kist is!”

“Never! I’ll appease my subordinates’ souls with your head!”

To finish things quickly, I provoked him with a sneer.

“Isn’t that a good death? With skills worse than a troll’s, talking about rest and divine punishment—it’s laughable. If it were me, I’d have killed myself out of shame long ago.”

“Shut uuuup!”

Oh, that worked well.

Heinz was surprisingly vulnerable to provocation.

Though I couldn’t see his face because of the mask, I could clearly sense his distorted expression.

“Did your parents kill themselves out of shame too? Grown adults dealing drugs and putting on airs—how embarrassed they must have been as parents. What, ‘Executioner’? Khuhuhu, it’s truly absurd. With such pathetic skills, whose head are you going to take? Your mom and dad’s?”

His slashes began to falter noticeably.

They seemed more powerful with the extra force, but equally full of openings.

“Be honest. Was the first neck you cut your mother’s, who sold her body in back alleys, or your father’s, who rolled around with whores while neglecting your mother?”

“You damn biiiiitch!”

A slash thrown out in uncontrollable rage.

A critical opening revealed itself.

I ducked low to avoid the slash aimed at my waist, then charged at him like a wolf.

Having put all his strength into the attack, Heinz couldn’t even recover his scythe.

“It’s over.”

The blue-silver longsword drew an arc, slicing through his limbs.

“Aaaaargh!”

Heinz sprayed blood in all directions like a garden sprinkler, performing a spectacular aerial rotation.

“Pfft, ahahahaha!”

Honestly, anyone who didn’t burst into laughter at that sight couldn’t be human.

Of course, being human, I naturally erupted in laughter.

—-

After subduing Heinz, I grabbed the half-dazed Hush and threw her down beside him.

It took about three minutes to get here.

Most of that time was spent talking; the actual combat wasn’t very long.

No, it couldn’t even be called combat.

Considering the difference in skill, what happened between us wasn’t a battle but a one-sided execution.

[The fight itself was flawless, but… wasn’t the provocation too excessive? It reminded me of Amin.]

Hersella voiced her complaint.

As a filial daughter even in the afterlife, was she uncomfortable with the parental insults?

Even so, why compare me to that bastard Amin?

‘Thanks to that, it ended quickly. Besides, these people deserve such insults.’

I dismissed her complaint and looked down at the two sprawled figures.

Five Swords or whatever they were, their skills were certainly not bad.

If their opponent had been anyone but me, they could have handled most situations.

Each of the four warriors had skills beyond Dermont’s, and Heinz with his scythe had reached the realm of a Master.

Well… this was still the result.

Heinz was fuming with only his torso remaining, while Hush had completely lost her fighting spirit and was trembling.

What was she supposed to be anyway?

She seemed to have done nothing except throw two daggers.

She gave off the vibe of a taciturn assassin, making me think she might have some hidden skill, but there was absolutely nothing.

No matter. The incompetent one would be easier to interrogate.

“Now, our Five Swords… no, Two Swords friends. Are you ready to talk now? You seem to know more than Dermont, so share some with me.”

“Cursed devil woman! Just kill me already! I have nothing to tell you!”

Heinz still had fight in him despite losing his limbs.

The way he twisted his body and shouted suggested he had plenty of time left before his last breath.

This is why Masters are great.

They don’t die easily. How convenient.

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong. Want to bet? How many minutes until you confess to cutting your mother’s throat? I’ll bet it takes less than five minutes.”

I leaned in toward him with a smile, then applied all my interrogation techniques with the utmost care.

Even the imperial physician treating the emperor wouldn’t have shown as much dedication as I did now.

—-

Heinz, who had been screaming loudly enough to shake the entire slum district, began to spill everything he knew after exactly four minutes, moaning in a state closer to an insect than a human.

“Gaaah…! Y-yes… my mother was a prostitute! I cut that whore’s throat…! My father’s too! I admit it, please, please stop…!”

“See? It didn’t even take five minutes.”

I sneered at Heinz, who had become an indescribable rag.

Hush had long since fainted with her eyes rolled back, urine trickling between her legs.

She had a weaker stomach than I expected.