To Hell 2

It’s come to this, but Valet isn’t just an executor; he’s an executioner.

He’s a kind of reserve bomb or landmine, deployed in various environments to kill high-ranking Awakened, S-class hunters, difficult-to-handle returnees, and problematic Overseers.

These executioners existed throughout the Ark.

They weren’t people working under the Execution Agency or the Overseers; their faces, memories, and personalities were all sculpted, and they operated secretly throughout the layers and society. Until an order came down, they truly lived, recognizing the daily life of the personality they had sculpted as their real life.

They even built relationships with colleagues, disguised as coincidences.

They became close childhood friends. They became civil servants of the agency, offering kind guidance and helping returnees who had just returned to the Ark find housing.

Executioners remodeled even their own egos and personalities, becoming blades to deal with those who threatened the Central. Thanks to this, even most Overseers didn’t know of the existence of these executioners.

If an Overseer lived normally without falling out of favor with the Central, they wouldn’t encounter executioners in the first place.

But when an order came from above, the story changed.

The person who had been a colleague or neighbor.

The executor who had been a rival guild’s executive or even the target’s lover became the most secret and deadly poison to the target, aiming for the moment when the target was most at ease.

Valet was the same.

The appearance of the commander of the execution legion, feeling pity and sympathy for Sira, a young priestess and living sacrifice in the Enchantment of the Fallen layer, was also genuine to him, but what was rooted even deeper within him was the executioner who would execute the target at any time when an order came down from the central administrator.

When the ‘order’ was activated and the time came to target Alice in earnest, Valet felt sorry for Alice.

She looked no more than his daughter’s age, so what on earth had she done to displease the Central?

The Central had sent down the reason for the execution.

Disturbing social order, disrupting layer order, and various other reasons, but weren’t these things that even a decent Overseer might do while carrying out a mission?

Of course, things like the red ideology seemed a bit dangerous, but wasn’t the central administration capable of handling that?

Perhaps there was another dangerous reason hidden even deeper.

But Valet stopped thinking there.

The dangerous and complex thoughts of the central administration and the administrators were beyond the scope of what a commoner like himself could understand, and the big picture they were drawing often took decades to unfold.

He would simply act as ordered.

He felt sorry for Sira, and he felt sorry for Alice.

But that was that, and he had to carry out the duty and work given to him.

It was something someone had to do, and there was no room for personal feelings to interfere with the work given to him, who lived off the Ark’s salary.

And [Eternal Shackles] was one of the few techniques that allowed an executioner to gain an advantage even against a high-ranking Overseer.

It froze all organic and inorganic matter in a designated space, including spacetime, and this applied to all energy, including mana.

Even an Overseer who could erase a layer with a flick of their finger would become as helpless as a gnat if caught in this Eternal Shackles.

But he didn’t let his guard down.

Was it easy to execute or neutralize an Overseer?

The Central basically treated Overseers with extreme courtesy and didn’t ignore their existence, as they dedicated themselves to the peace and order of the Ark, but there were times when Overseers crossed the line or became a threat to the Central.

Moreover, there were Overseers who used clones or avatars, and even if that wasn’t the case, it wasn’t impossible to break through the danger in other ways or to annihilate the executioner in reverse.

Overseers basically possessed extraordinary, inhuman abilities, reaching a level that couldn’t be interpreted by the common sense of existing Awakened or mages, so not only the executioner but also a large execution task force from the Central was dispatched.

The size of the execution task force was 1,000 execution legionnaires.

Each one was comparable to an A-class hunter, and with that many executioners waiting in the operation area, even an Overseer who barely escaped from [Eternal Shackles] couldn’t possibly face that many execution legionnaires.

And originally, that was how it should have been today as well.

Alice would be neutralized by Eternal Shackles, and even if she barely escaped, she would have to face the Central’s forces waiting in the area adjacent to the Enchantment of the Fallen layer.

The central administration was in negotiations with the source of the True Ancestor, called the Primordial Calamity and Origin Blood, and the True Ancestor’s request was a sudden demand to hand over Alice.

But they couldn’t just hand her over.

True Ancestor.

Among them, Nihilus Karmashia, the Primordial Calamity’s request was no ordinary request.

She hadn’t asked for anything since the negotiations with the Ark, but since she was openly mentioning negotiations and demanding Alice, the central administration couldn’t refuse the True Ancestor’s request.

If they refused?

Well, how would they stop the True Ancestor from deliberately committing widespread terrorism and massacres throughout the Ark?

Their intelligent terrorism, spreading in units of cells, viruses, and bacteria, was something even the central administration had no answer for.

Of course, the central administration had its own excuses.

‘Even though we negotiated with the True Ancestor and virtually handed over the lower layer and the Abyss as the True Ancestor’s courtyard, we don’t want to hand over a valuable talent like the Overseer to the True Ancestor, who is openly showing sinister signs.’

One might say, ‘Why not just hand over one Overseer?’ but the Central had already highly valued Alice, who had completed several high-risk missions. At the same time, they were even more reluctant to hand Alice over to the True Ancestor faction.

What danger would Alice return to the Ark as if she was handed over to the True Ancestor and infected?

At this point, the central administration had already betrayed Alice once, but a consensus was reached among some administrators to at least avoid the misfortune of handing her over to the True Ancestor.

Therefore, the primary goal of the execution legion was Alice’s execution.

If they were unlucky, they would have to capture her and hand her over to the True Ancestor, so they decided to focus on execution if possible.

For the sake of the Ark’s peace, and to protect Alice’s dignity even a little.

Of course, Alice’s direct superior, Administrator Rilstia, didn’t know this fact.

If Rilstia had known, she would have deliberately opposed it for the sake of her precious Alice. Moreover, several administrators deliberately isolated Alice and blocked her contact, so even Rilstia was slow to notice this in advance.

Anyway, as a result, Alice was now completely alone in the Enchantment of the Fallen layer.

And Alice wasn’t particularly intimidated by being alone at all.

★

★

★

Around the time Alice’s body, except for her head, was shattered by Eternal Shackles.

Marlang was playing well with Sira.

“Marlang!”

“Marlang, that’s cheating! I want to eat too!”

“Pour it on!”

“What’s ‘pour it on’!”

“It’s a word that expresses a greater sense of loss and pain to humans than the flow of time and the emptiness of the void heading towards death that tightens us every moment.”

“…Really?”

“Marlang~”

“That’s not it!”

Sira and Marlang basically had good chemistry, so they got along well with each other.

Their appearances made them look like a daughter and mother with a big age difference, but their mental age was stuck at that of a young child, so they read each other fairy tales. They also played house with dolls.

“Eeyah! If you become my wife, give birth to my child! Eeyah!”

“That’s not it, Marlang! When the husband comes back, he should say, ‘I’m home, honey,’ and give a ‘I’m back’ kiss!”

“…Marlang?”

That’s strange.

That’s what it was like in the video Sohi Guild Leader showed me.

Marlang had doubts, but Marlang also knew that Sira was a unique child, so she decided to understand.

-We will eliminate the target.

-She is a child.

-However, we have confirmed that she is accompanying Overseer Alice. According to various records, the target called Marlang possesses superhuman or near-superhuman abilities.

-Is it necessary to do this?

At that moment, Marlang’s bizarre senses picked up the voices of the executioners.

The very moment Marlang felt a threat to her life, Marlang’s personality was ‘switched’.

‘Hmph.’

Sohi looked around through Marlang’s eyes.

She had looked through Marlang’s memories in an instant, so she roughly knew what was going on.

‘I see. Executioners… It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen them.’

Marlang being targeted by them meant that Alice was being targeted by the executioners.

Then why was Alice sentenced to execution by them?

There were many questions, but what Sohi had to do was simple.

“Marlang~”

“Marlang? Whoa!”

Sohi first hugged and knocked down Sira in front of her.

“Kya-ha-ha! It tickles!”

“Marlang~”

“A-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha, ha, haa, haaah…!”

“Marlang~ Fall asleep quickly~”

Sohi touched Sira’s delicate and soft inner flesh.

Her body was a bit big, but her mind was young, so Sira made a giggling sound as Sohi’s touch reached her, and soon her expression became dazed.

“Heehee…”

Leaving Sira like that, Sohi got up and went out the door.

The executioners were aiming for the best place and time to attack Marlang.

As if a prey was deliberately entering a trap.

Well, I shouldn’t show the child anything too harsh…

-Thwack!

Sure enough.

Eternal Shackles was activated, and Marlang’s head was cut off, and her body was crushed.

Oh dear. They really have no mercy.

To use Eternal Shackles on such a cute and young Marlang.

But unfortunately, Marlang wasn’t an existence that died when her head was cut off.

-Gurgle!

As if flesh was boiling from the severed surface of Marlang’s head, Marlang’s pure white, soft, and squishy flesh was completely regenerated in less than a second.

Sohi spun her body once in the air and instantly grasped the location of those who had targeted Marlang.

“…!”

“She’s an Infinite Regenerator!”

“No. That’s an Immortal Being!”

The belatedly horrified voices of the executioners were heard, but it was already too late.

-Click!

A toothed blade made of Marlang’s blood vessels and bones popped out from Sohi’s wrist.

Now that their location had been identified, it was impossible to escape from Sohi at this distance.

“[Joint Performance – Blade Choir]”

-Screeeee!

The formula of Eternal Shackles.

The hidden executioners.

And even the external security devices.

They were all cut off at once by Sohi’s hand, imbued with a sharp aura and intense energy.

She didn’t deliberately kill the executioners.

They were completely incapacitated and their minds were gone, but there was no need to kill them.

That was because there were still things to interrogate, and no matter how much she thought about it, she didn’t think Alice would be killed by mere executioners.

‘If Alice, that child, dies… then I can kill them, right~’

Thinking that, Sohi put the bone blade on her wrist back in and headed back to the room where Sira was lying.

“Hee, hee. Huh, Marlang? Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

“Ah.”

Right.

I keep forgetting because it’s not my body…

Sohi, who was stroking Marlang’s body, which wasn’t wearing a single thread, as if it was pretty, then turned her gaze to Sira, who was lying disheveled.

Ah, well.

I was going to take them off anyway, so does it matter?

Personal desires and tastes aside… this is also to protect that child Sira until Alice returns… so it’s okay to have some fun, right?