Ch.61Black Blood – 6

As I watched the fat man’s head explode, spraying blood and brain matter everywhere, my first thought was:

‘Ah, that idiot, seriously.’

He’d started looking around with lecherous eyes the moment he arrived, and apparently got caught red-handed by Christine. I’d planned to keep him for questioning later if things went south, but now that was useless.

Judging by his palanquin and corpulent figure, he seemed to be someone of considerable rank. What a waste.

I’d deliberately positioned Christine behind me so he’d see me first, but he just had to let his eyes wander and end up like that. I felt no sympathy, only regret.

Maybe I should have told Christine to stick right behind me the whole time.

The men who had carried the palanquin and the workers gathered around stood dumbfounded, clearly unable to process what had happened.

Understandably so—they’d just witnessed an ordinary-looking nun close a distance of over 10 meters in the blink of an eye and instantly explode someone’s head.

“Alright, alright. Attention!”

I clapped my hands twice to focus their attention on me. Dozens of panicked eyes immediately converged on one spot.

“Let me make this clear: anyone who tries to run dies.”

After my unilateral declaration, the eyes fixed on me trembled with fear.

Those terrified gazes kept darting between the headless body spurting blood like a fountain and Christine, who was covered from head to toe in red liquid.

I deliberately waited a moment, but no one moved. Perhaps they were too paralyzed with fear.

Either way, it worked in my favor.

“Good, your brains are working. Now, first question. Raise your hand if you know what you’re doing here.”

“……”

No one raised their hand. They kept anxiously watching me, seemingly overwhelmed by their first impression.

“Why the long faces? It’s okay, I won’t kill you. That fat guy ended up like that because he couldn’t control his eyes. Keep your gaze in check, and you can walk out of here with all your limbs intact, I promise.”

As soon as I finished speaking, a wet, squelching sound rang out. Christine was dragging the fat man’s corpse to the ground.

She grabbed the body’s legs and dragged it to a spot a little distance away, then thrust her hand into the severed neck.

The corpse jerked with her arm movements. Christine focused entirely on rummaging inside, unconcerned that she was getting covered in blood.

Before long, a long spine was extracted from the body. Her hands were stained with blood and various dark red chunks of flesh.

The faces of those watching turned ashen. Some even collapsed to the ground, their legs giving out.

Christine paid no attention to their reactions, intently examining the extracted spine she held in both hands.

“You don’t want to end up like that, do you? Answer my questions properly.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Except for a few who seemed to have lost their minds in panic, a resounding response came back.

“Let’s change the question then. Why are you all here? You, start talking.”

I pointed at the man closest to me. Suddenly finding himself singled out, he flinched, then forced his expression to relax and slowly stepped forward.

With broad shoulders and bulging muscles, he looked physically imposing at first glance.

“My, my name is—”

“Skip the name. Just answer the question. We’re only meeting once, so why bother with introductions?”

“Ah, understood. Well, the dead man over there offered triple pay for people who could start immediately and were good at their job, so I volunteered.”

“You don’t know why he called you here?”

“No. He just said we’d be working in the forest and that we didn’t need to know anything else.”

A suspiciously small number of workers for the size of the lake, a high-ranking person personally managing them, and strictly controlled information about the workers.

They seemed quite concerned about keeping this place secret.

“Didn’t he order you not to touch the lake?”

“He did. How did you know—”

His words were cut off by the sound of breaking bones. Christine was crushing the spine she had finished examining.

After completely shattering it, she carelessly tossed it aside like garbage and walked demurely over to stand beside me.

The man seemed completely intimidated by Christine’s blood-covered presence and made no attempt to continue speaking, so I asked another question.

“How far have you progressed?”

“…What do you mean?”

“The work you were doing.”

Christine had appeared before me, Serena, and Charlotte at sunset.

I wasn’t sure of the exact time, but calculating the distance between this city and where I’d been, Christine likely performed her miracle of turning water into holy water sometime in the morning.

Even if they discovered this place immediately, considering the time spent traveling between the city and forest, they’d had less than half a day of actual work time.

Even accounting for calculation errors, it couldn’t have been more than 12 hours at most.

“Our priority was clearing away the monster corpses, so we haven’t even started the actual work yet.”

“You cleared away corpses?”

“Yes. Monster corpses were scattered everywhere. We finished clearing them about an hour ago. So I still don’t know what the actual work is. They said they’d tell us after we finished clearing the corpses…”

The man trailed off. The fact that they hadn’t even started the real work was excellent news for me.

I’d been worried they might have already started selling the holy water, but that concern was now unnecessary.

This also meant I wouldn’t have to needlessly kill the people here.

“Let me congratulate you in advance.”

“Pardon?”

“It looks like I won’t have to kill you.”

I said this with a bright smile.

The man was too intimidated to speak, but based on what he’d said so far, it was clear that questioning him further would yield little additional information.

They had been strictly controlled, didn’t know what they were doing here, hadn’t started the actual work, and were hired hastily with promises of multiplied pay.

In other words, they had almost no connection to this situation.

I took out a pouch of gold coins from my bag and tossed it at their feet. The pouch landed with a jingling sound. As the glint of gold became visible through the half-open pouch, I heard several people swallow hard.

“Share it among yourselves. You deserve payment even if you didn’t complete the job. You can’t go back empty-handed, after all.”

“Is… is this for real?”

“But.”

I deliberately paused after saying that. When I confirmed that their attention had shifted from the money back to me, I continued.

“Anyone who speaks about what happened here dies. Keep your mouth shut for the rest of your life, no matter what. No excuses, nothing. I’ll hunt you down to the ends of the continent and kill you. No, I’ll make you beg for death. Remember that.”

The excited atmosphere from seeing the gold coins instantly subsided. No one answered, but that was enough.

As long as the workers took this threat seriously after witnessing Christine’s actions, my objective was essentially accomplished.

Of course, I had no real intention of hunting them down and killing them if they talked. I was planning to obliterate this entire area later anyway.

If they tried to talk about it somewhere else, they wouldn’t find the lake or anything else.

It was just a simple threat to prevent others from hearing rumors and coming here while Christine and I finished our work.

After that? Whatever happens would be out of my hands. This whole area would be destroyed anyway.

Having said what I needed to, I turned toward the lake. Taking this as permission to move, the workers cautiously approached the pouch of gold coins.

The voices behind me grew louder.

“Christine, do you remember which direction the black-blooded monster came from?”

“Of course I remember, my God.”

“Then let’s quickly examine the lake first and head in that direction. I’d like to check that direction first, but we don’t know how far it came from. It could take days if we’re unlucky.”

“Do you intend to spare those humans?”

“I said I wouldn’t kill them, didn’t I?”

“If that is your will, I shall follow it.”

That fat man got what he deserved for not controlling his gaze and getting on Christine’s bad side, but killing people was only meant to be a last resort if negotiations failed.

I had thought that after negotiations broke down, pulling the heads off three or four attackers would make the rest spill information.

I’d planned to kill subordinates to extract information from their superior, but instead ended up killing the superior to question the subordinates. The outcome felt reversed somehow.

And I didn’t even get anything useful out of it.

“Do you also remember where in the lake that creature drowned?”

“Yes, I remember the approximate location.”

“That’s good enough. Let’s finish this quickly.”

“As you wish, my God.”

I’m not particularly fond of the sensation of water filling my lungs, but what can I do? I’ll have to keep drowning while investigating.

After “dealing with” the girl, Alex left the temporary housing in high spirits, dusting off his hands.

He had put on new gloves in case any blood smell remained that might get him in trouble with his master, and had opened all the windows for ventilation.

Of course, he had thoroughly cleaned up everything left behind.

‘That woman was quite something.’

Walking toward the lake where Andrei would be, Alex recalled the two people he had guided here.

He had long forgotten the man’s appearance. He wasn’t interested and didn’t want to be.

The woman, on the other hand, was top-tier. If he hadn’t had over a decade of experience serving the ill-tempered and difficult Andrei, he certainly wouldn’t have been able to control his expression and gaze.

But Alex knew his place, and his appreciation ended there. Knowing it was impossible, he wouldn’t even think of coveting her.

It would be absurd to desire a woman who had the skill to destroy all the magical barriers in the forest and find this place in the middle of the night with just two people.

She must be incredibly skilled, as not even the warning sounds that should have activated when the magical barriers were broken had been heard.

In other words, she was at a level Alex could barely follow with his eyes. So it would have been extremely troublesome if he had mismanaged his gaze and been caught.

‘Blood smell…?’

As he approached the lakeshore, Alex’s nose caught the scent of blood carried by the wind.

Could something have happened? Alex quickened his pace. The smell of blood grew stronger as he got closer to the lake, and he could hear what sounded like arguing.

Soon after, Alex discovered a body pathetically discarded under a nearby tree. It was Andrei’s body.

Although the head was missing, he could tell immediately. Who else would have such a fat body dressed in unnecessarily luxurious clothes but Andrei?

The fact that he was dead wasn’t a problem at all. The question was who had killed Andrei.

“Those two.”

Alex muttered quietly. The answer was obvious.

Given Andrei’s character of being excessively interested in women, he must have failed to control his gaze as usual and ended up in that state.

Alex admired his own judgment. It had been the right choice not to give that woman even a single glance while guiding the two of them here after their first meeting.

Otherwise, the body lying there might have been Alex’s.

“Everyone.”

At his polite, low voice, the workers who were about to fight over the pouch of gold coins stopped moving.

Alex immediately grasped the situation. And the source of that gold pouch.

“What’s happening? What’s going on? And why has the master ended up like that?”

Deliberately putting on a confused expression as he fired off questions, Alex heard snickers from various directions.

“The work is over. We’re leaving.”

The muscular man with broad shoulders who had answered questions earlier stepped forward and declared confidently. The other workers nodded in agreement.

“This is problematic. The contract hasn’t been completed yet.”

“Andrei is dead, so what does it matter? We’ll handle things ourselves, so mind your own business.”

“All authority here has been mine since before the master died. By that authority, I order you: return to your positions.”

“And if we refuse?”

“The contract hasn’t ended, and I’m giving orders based on that contract. I’ll say it a second time: return to your positions.”

“And I’ll say it a second time: we refuse.”

“In that case… well, I have no choice. I’ll follow the contract.”

“Do whatever you want! We’re taking this and leaving!”

Amid the workers gathered around the gold pouch, laughter erupted at those words, and the muscular man had just turned his back on Alex.

Very quietly, a spell was recited.

The heads of all humans except Alex simultaneously exploded.

The bodies, suddenly deprived of what should have been on top of them, lost balance and collapsed in various directions. Blood continuously spurted from where their heads should have been.

Alex walked among the heap of corpses that had fallen in awkward positions, collecting all the blood-soaked gold coins and putting them back in the pouch.

As he tied the pouch to his waist, he felt its weight. Alex tapped it, listening to the jingling sound, and uttered words that no one would hear:

“I followed the contract.”