Ch.72Reunion (5)

“I don’t want to.”

The alchemist. The being Hertol last met, and possibly connected to the Emperor’s true form.

Even though meeting them could provide more clues, my mouth arbitrarily expressed refusal.

“Excuse me?”

“I said no. Who do you think you are, ordering me around…”

The thug seemed quite taken aback.

Well, normally nobody refuses in this situation.

But who am I?

Am I not the true warrior who carried a jungler to victory after a one-hour game despite them constantly trying to surrender and end the game early?

I was willing to sacrifice some progress just to spite this alchemist acting like they were my master.

Besides, I had many other things to do.

“B-but… the Alchemist…”

“Tell them to come personally.”

The thug was hesitating.

Perhaps it was because he couldn’t force someone like me, yet somehow needed to bring me along.

The thug looked back at his companions with a puzzled expression, then bowed his head and retreated.

The drug dealers filed out in a group, taking with them the sickeningly sweet smell that had filled the space.

I watched the direction they withdrew, then stepped outside.

To meet Isla and Lorian, to check on the two who were probably resting, and to find the blue mineral myself.

Perhaps I would also need to decide what to do with the mixed-blood vampires remaining in this city.

With these thoughts in mind, I was heading toward the mine.

Before I knew it, I realized I had reached a place that was familiar but somewhere I had no intention of going.

The sickeningly sweet smell. A nauseating, cloying odor filled the underground space.

The opposite direction from where I was heading.

In that space, I saw an unfamiliar figure.

Someone sitting at a table as if waiting for me. Their face covered in darkness, dressed in aristocratic attire and carrying themselves arrogantly.

That wasn’t all. Looking carefully into the darkness filling the back of the storage room, I could see the thugs who had tried to take me earlier.

Judging by their heavy breathing, they must have run to deliver the news.

The meaning was simple. I crossed my arms.

“Pleased to meet you. I am—”

“I haven’t eaten, and I haven’t rested.”

Silence fell. In the dark storage room, the sound of me clenching my fist was loud.

“So this situation is extremely unpleasant. Whether it’s a mind game or negotiation, I understand you want the upper hand, but isn’t this too petty?”

There was no answer to my words. In the awkward silence, I advanced one step at a time.

“Didn’t anyone teach you manners?”

“W-what…?”

The ones who responded weren’t that being, but the thugs standing behind them.

The alchemist remained silent until I stood right in front of them. I was looking down at them, uncomfortably close.

“Stop putting on airs and take off that fucking mask.”

Homunculi don’t have magical power. Similarly, they don’t have the ability to sense any kind of energy.

But I, who had delved into the game Grim Darker until becoming the best player in the country, knew. There was no one in the clan who looked like this.

This was just a disguise.

Because they didn’t want to reveal their true face, or to gain an advantage in negotiations through mysticism.

It was obvious they were trying to appear as a more imposing being.

Even I, an orphan, knew about such types.

No, perhaps I knew better because I was an orphan.

I lowered my voice and clenched my fist.

“W-wait…!”

Behind me, the thugs panicked and some rushed toward me.

The figure shrouded in black shadow seemed to notice what I was about to do and tried to change posture, but.

I am a monster who could engage in hand-to-hand combat with Blood Knights even at level 1.

It was beyond the level a mere puppet could handle.

Thump.

My outstretched hand grabbed the shadow. More precisely, the head covered in something like billowing black mist.

The moment I grabbed it, I knew. It’s a puppet. The texture itself is different. Not human.

Not a shapeshifter, not a blood clan, not a necromancer. Just a puppet.

“If you want to talk…”

Gritting my teeth, I spread my legs. I gripped firmly with my right hand to hold it in place, and clenched my left fist.

A strange sensation came over me. Some kind of energy I’d never felt before.

It felt as if my hand had a shell attached to it rather than a fist.

I fired that shell. A punch launched from my waist through my side struck the puppet’s head.

“Show your face first.”

In the distant world of speed reached by breaking down my breathing again and again, the puppet’s head shattered.

The thugs who had been rushing forward flinched and retreated, and the puppet with its shattered head flew away.

I didn’t let go of the flying puppet. Rather, this was just the beginning.

My thrown punch stopped in mid-air after cleaving through the head without any rebound, and I opened that fist to grab the puppet’s ankle.

“Mortality.”

The word I muttered echoed in that extremely fast world. The thugs froze at the voice that resonated in their minds faster than I could open my mouth.

I was the only being moving in that space.

What I did was simple. I infused the power of mortality through the ankle I had grabbed.

The knowledge of combat techniques I had acquired taught me not just how to throw punches, but many other things.

How to swing legs, how to use knife hands and palms instead of fists, how to grab opponents.

This was part of that. I felt the way mortality worked had expanded as I pulled on the puppet’s ankle I had grabbed.

Crack!

The puppet crashed into the floor, gouging it out. My foot rose toward the puppet and then drove down.

Crash!

—!

Beyond the sound of the floor breaking and the puppet shattering, a scream echoed.

A scream that sounded more bestial than human.

As expected. I thought that if someone was controlling a puppet, they would be monitoring from nearby, and I was right.

Well, even if I had been wrong, I would have been satisfied with just beating it up.

I twisted the corner of my mouth, kicked the puppet toward the thugs with a swing of my leg, and lowered my stance.

[Explosive Leap]

Power immediately filled my muscles. An explosive and fierce leap no human could match.

With a ripping sound, I felt countless wooden fragments scatter over my armor.

Where I had shot up, smashing through the stone and wooden floor of the storage room, there was, as expected, something that had screamed.

It was.

“What the fuck?”

Something difficult to describe.

The long body reminded me of a snake. Judging by the scales covering the body and the way it dragged along the floor without a single leg.

It was hard to imagine it as anything other than a snake.

But what protruded from the upper part of the body, what should be called the torso, didn’t allow me to think that way.

The upper body had arms and a head. The head had a magnificent appearance reminiscent of a dragon with horns, but this monster, neither dragon nor snake, didn’t even have wings.

No legs either, just a pair of arms and a head.

Was it because I was seeing it in person for the first time, or because it was much smaller than what I had seen in games until now?

It was only after staring for a while that I realized what kind of monster it was.

It was a lindworm.

Unlike the dragonkin, counted among the strongest races of the Tribal Federation, this was something called a lesser dragon.

Better off than monsters like drakes and wyverns, but closer to drakes and wyverns than to dragonkin.

With intelligence either non-existent or similar to the dullest humans.

Unable to handle magic, all they inherited from dragons, who are now necromancers, were tough scales, breath attacks, and a bit more magical power.

That was a lindworm.

At least, not something that should be here.

Although its size was diminutive, incomparable to something like Nerilmaeus.

So I didn’t think this was the “Alchemist.”

Rather, it felt like another puppet or some kind of distraction.

Until the moment I landed on the partially destroyed floor.

A chilling sensation suddenly stimulated my mind.

It was a familiar feeling. The very same sensation I had felt when fighting Nerilmaeus just recently.

The unique presence of a necromancer, floating between life and death.

I quickly raised both arms.

Crash!

Something exploded above my crossed arms. Some fragments of the blood armor’s surface fell off, and a slight pain came.

[Repeated Commemoration]

But something came before that pain.

A sense of omnipotence coursing through my entire body, the sensation of power drawn from my life force imbuing my strength.

Additionally, a sensation as if something in my mind was urging me on.

Power was guiding me. Attack like this. Rush in right now and smash that skull.

I succumbed to that impulse for a moment.

As I stomped my foot, the floor beneath me shattered. The tremendous acceleration of the explosive leap rapidly closed the distance between the lindworm and me.

The lindworm couldn’t even see the trajectory of my movement.

It only realized I had approached when I stood right in front of it and opened its mouth to shoot a breath attack, but.

Crack!

My fist was faster than the lindworm’s breath.

With the blazing punch, its lower jaw was torn off.

Acid, poison, blood, and the lower jaw scattered.

The lindworm tried to defend with both arms, but that too was useless.

I grabbed both arms and pulled my head back, then released.

Crash!

With the impact of the headbutt, the remaining upper jaw became tattered.

Something like an impulse boiled deep in my chest.

My vision turned red, and I gritted my teeth, holding back the laughter trying to burst out as I repeatedly headbutted the lindworm’s head with my helmet.

Crash, crash, crack!

Headbutting, and headbutting again, blood armor and helmet fragments scattered and scratched my head, but I continued regardless.

The lindworm, if it was indeed a necromancer, was regenerating.

Then I would crush it faster than it could regenerate.

Crushing its wrists as I gripped them, smiling as I continued to headbutt.

Breath, magic, whatever it might be, at punching distance, I had the advantage.

Right here, right now…

“Wait—!”

It was around then that I came to my senses.

I exhaled a heavy breath and blankly looked down at the lindworm with my one remaining eye.

“I understand your grievances, so please calm down. I’ll reveal my true form and deal with you sincerely, so please, through dialogue…”

No, that wasn’t a lindworm. It was something that couldn’t be dismissed as a lindworm.

Of course, there were similarities.

Jade-colored hair reminiscent of scales, two horns protruding from the head.

And bright yellow eyes with sharp, vertical slit pupils like knife cuts.

Even the diminutive stature that made her look smaller than Melody, just like the lindworm had shown earlier.

I could tell this was the same being as the lindworm I had tried to kill moments ago.

But the differences were beyond imagination.

The “Alchemist” now had the appearance of a young girl.

I blinked my regenerated eye, and the alchemist, seeing an opportunity, hastily opened her mouth.

“Blood bag who killed Hertol, you and I are potential allies.”

Potential allies?

As I frowned and tilted my head slightly, the girl flinched her shoulders but spoke firmly.

“I-I am the core creator of all homunculi!”

“And?”

“That means I created you!”

An unexpected reunion. As I let out a “huh,” the alchemist wagged her small tail in relief, but.

I still hadn’t let go of her wrist and was still looking down at her.

Her tail drooped immediately, and she expressed confusion with an “Ah?”

I still couldn’t understand what this tiny person wanted to say.

As I was considering whether to bring out my universal persuasion tool, she bit her lip and shouted.

“The clan thinks I used you to kill Hertol and is hunting both of us!”

“Weren’t you controlling Hertol? Didn’t you meet Hertol and do something?”

I killed Hertol.

Because the alchemist did something, because he was controlled by something hiding behind the Empire.

That’s why I had to kill him.

At least, that’s what I thought.

“What are you talking about! Hertol never came to see me! I fled because a death order was suddenly issued against me!”

Never even met.

The alchemist is not behind this.

[Enemy of the Clan / The Three Clans

-The ‘adults’ of the clan have noticed what you’ve accomplished. All projects related to the adult form that were about to resume have been scrapped, and they intend to dispose of you along with the person responsible for killing the Red Beast Hertol. But is that truly the clan’s will?]

What guided me through this unbelievable story was.

[Subordinate of a Traitor / The Empire

-You are an inquisitor publicly known to be cooperating with a fugitive traitor. At the same time, you are a human weapon created by the Three Clans and the assassin of Judge Servan, who was found dead. At least, that’s how the Empire views you. Though whether that’s truly the Empire’s will is uncertain.]

Two reputations that came to mind simultaneously.

Seeing them, I thought of a possibility.

What if it’s not just the Empire being controlled by that unknown entity?

In the end, I had no choice but to release the alchemist’s wrist.

A desolate atmosphere pervaded the destroyed tavern.