Chapter 98
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 98
Step, step.
The man I had threatened led the way, guiding us toward the "real establishment." His stabbed jaw had been sealed with a liquid bandage, so it was no longer bleeding.
"The trained intuition of your combat style is certainly useful," Iskan said from behind me.
He was referring to the intuition of Akies Victima. With an outsider walking ahead of us, we avoided naming it directly.
If our personal information were exposed, we would have to kill the man. Which meant Iskan genuinely intended to let him live—at least for now.
"Is this your first time meeting a Force User?"
"I've only encountered them as enemies," Iskan replied. "And the only Force User you know has already retired."
He meant Kinuan, the one Force User I was acquainted with.
"This ability has saved my life more than once."
"I know how useful it is. It doesn't let you perform beyond your actual capabilities, but it helps you reliably perform at your absolute limit. Still, we prefer to raise the ceiling of our capabilities. If your peak is overwhelmingly high, even your lowest point will surpass your opponent."
That was precisely why the Imperial Guard relied on the Legion. If you could overwhelm your enemy in every respect, there was no need for petty techniques.
Even if I honed Akies Victima to its absolute limit... I wouldn't be able to defeat even a single, ordinary Imperial Guardsman equipped with a Legion.
Perhaps sensing my bitterness, Iskan added,
"But I have dozens of times more combat experience than you. It's impressive that you sensed the anomaly faster than I did."
"Even without me, you would have noticed the trap. The outcome wouldn't have changed much."
Iskan didn't deny it. His insight and sixth sense were on par with mine.
An Imperial Guardsman has no need for Akies Victima.
That was the conclusion of the Upper Command.
Iskan and I fell silent and stared at the end of the passage. A faint noise and a faint vibration echoed toward us. Something lay beyond.
Their establishment, most likely.
Bao Zakanan would be there too.
"Do you know the identities and names of all your clients?" Iskan asked the man. His voice pitched low, weighted with quiet menace.
"I know a few... but most of the list is managed by the higher-ups—ah, damn it, anyway, they handle it. The client list that trickles down to low-level grunts like me only has aliases."
The man grimaced as he spoke, spilling information he shouldn't have. His mention of "higher-ups" suggested the operation was more organized than we'd expected.
"As I said before, once we get what we came for, we have no intention of interfering with your business. We don't want things to escalate either."
"I don't know who you're after... but if you leave quietly, I'll keep my mouth shut. If the higher-ups find out, I'm a dead man. And for the record, there are no surveillance devices or facilities inside. Same for the passage we just walked. This place puts client privacy above everything else. No one will notice if a person or two disappears."
The man was being cooperative. He'd apparently decided to trust Iskan. And even if he hadn't, he had no other choice.
He stopped.
The man stood at the end of the underground passage.
The path we had followed was winding and complex. Carved out without any proper excavation technology, it wouldn't have been surprising if the tunnel had collapsed at any moment.
The outlaws had done a thorough job of burrowing beneath the city like rats. Since this wasn't the city center but the ground beneath the Ruins, it was a facility even the Empire would struggle to find.
This place is nothing like the establishments in the Lower District.
Every business in the Lower District operated in a gray area.
The Upper and Lower Districts interacted and complemented one another. To be precise, it was closer to the Lower District's one-sided sacrifice. The manpower and resources of the Lower District flowed up to the Upper District, while the leftover byproducts of the Upper District were recycled below.
But the lawless zone of the Ruins was where all of Akbaran's waste gathered and rotted. To put it bluntly, it was a cesspool. Here, they carried out deeds that even the gangs of the Lower District would flinch from.
"We're going in, then," the man said, eyeing us warily as he opened the door. We watched him closely to make sure he didn't try anything foolish.
Screeech.
As the rusted iron door swung open, the noise from inside grew louder. The air stirred and leaked out through the pressure difference, and a stagnant stench washed over us.
I pressed the side of my mask to partially open the mouthpiece. The smell rushed vividly into my nose.
What in the world...
I frowned. It was an indescribable stench, impossible to even separate and analyze. Too many odors were competing to assert themselves at once.
Iskan was clearly suffering the same sensory overload. His brow furrowed deeply as well.
Urine and feces—both fresh and rotting—mingled together. Beneath that lay the metallic tang of blood and the reek of grease. The harsh bite of cleaning solutions sprayed at intervals. And even that couldn't fully mask the smell, so they'd scattered cheap fragrances everywhere to cover it.
Then there were the artificial body odors secreted by Full-Body Prosthetics to mimic human flesh. The acrid smell of gunpowder, the sharp tang of energy particles, the scent of cooked meat from someone eating nearby, the alcohol vapor floating in the air...
Throb, throb.
It was a headache-inducing stench under normal circumstances, but my enhanced senses only sharpened the agony. Whether I wanted it to or not, my brain was overheating as it dissected the odor particles one by one.
Click.
Unable to bear it any longer, I shut the mask's valve. Only then could I breathe.
"Ah, there's no ventilation system in the hallway..." the man said awkwardly, noticing my reaction.
Beyond the open door, a long, straight hallway stretched out. It was wide enough for four people to walk abreast. Firmly closed doors lined the corridor to the left and right.
Clatter, thud.
Noises echoed from inside the rooms now and then. The structure kept anyone in the hallway from seeing in.
"The client who arrived two turns before us..." Iskan finally specified. Since we knew the order in which Bao Zakanan had entered, finding him wouldn't be difficult.
"Please finish it quietly. So you don't disturb the other clients," the man said, displaying his own twisted sense of professionalism. He walked down the hallway, checking the room numbers.
...It was at that moment.
Clack!
One of the doors swung open.
Click!
Iskan and I drew our pistols in an instant and trained them on the open doorway.
"P-please... s-save... m-me..."
A naked boy was crawling out. He looked about the age I'd been when I first entered the Imperial Guard training center.
The boy clawed at the floor in sheer terror. The reason he was crawling was simple—he had no legs.
Drip, drip.
Blood gushed from the stumps of his legs, which seemed to have been freshly severed. Seeing us, the boy stretched out a desperate hand.
"Ah, for fuck's sake! Customer! How many times have I told you to keep the door shut!"
The man who had been guiding us spat out curses. A dull voice answered from inside the room.
"You have to give them hope of escape so they'll struggle. It's not like he can actually get away."
A woman stepped out. She wore a featureless mask that revealed nothing but the glow of her eyes, making her identity impossible to place.
In her hand she held a serrated knife caked with blood and flesh. She'd used it to saw off the boy's legs.
"Ah, aaaaah! Aaaaaargh! Stay away! Please! Please!"
The boy shrieked in horror at the sight of her, his face twisted with absolute madness.
"Hehe, yes, yes. I love it when they struggle so energetically. And his flesh is so soft. This is definitely worth the money."
Ah. I finally understood. I understood where the children who vanished in the Lower District ended up... and what kind of business these dregs of humanity ran down here.
"Of course. We only deal in one hundred percent pure, biological humans," the guide said with a smirk. To them, this scene was perfectly normal. Their sense of morality had rotted away long ago.
What people came here to satisfy was...
The urge to murder.
Specifically, the urge to murder humans made of pure flesh and blood.
I already knew the people here were rotten to the core. But witnessing it firsthand was sickening beyond endurance. I felt as if I'd already choked down the urge to pull the trigger dozens of times over.
Creak, thud.
The woman dragged the boy back into the room and locked the door tight.
"Apologies. Just a minor mishap. That customer is always like this," the guide said, turning back to us.
Iskan and I both kept our faces blank, I'm sure. We were well-practiced at hiding our emotions. What was Iskan thinking right now? Was he swallowing his rage and disgust, just as I was?
"Luka."
Iskan spoke my name. Until now, he had scrupulously avoided revealing any personal information.
...That meant one thing.
Iskan had changed his mind. He no longer had any intention of letting this man live.
"I'm listening," I replied curtly.
"Search every room and find Bao Zakanan. As for me..."
Iskan leveled his gun at the man's forehead and pulled the trigger without a moment's hesitation.
Bang!
Even as the gunshot rang out, not one of the people holed up in their rooms bothered to look. Compared to what was happening behind those doors, a gunshot was nothing worth noticing.
Thud!
The man collapsed backward. He died with his eyes wide open, blood trickling from the hole in his forehead.
"...I'm going to clean up the trash."
"Understood."
I liked Iskan. His humanity was admirable.
Iskan seized the door the woman and boy had gone through. Against his raw strength, the lock was useless.
Crash!
The iron door, torn away like a toy, slammed into the wall. Iskan aimed inside and squeezed the trigger again and again.
"Y-you... do you know who I—"
The woman's voice leaked out faintly. She was spouting clichés that turned my stomach. How many times had Iskan, an Irregular, heard those exact words over the course of his life?
"Hah. So the trash can talk."
Pistol rounds alone weren't enough to kill a woman with a Full-Body Prosthetic. Iskan bounced lightly on his feet and shot inside like a bolt of lightning.
Crunch!
The sound of something being crushed echoed out. The woman's head, most likely—her artificial skull and brain pulverized together. How did I know? Because it was a sound I had heard many times before.
I moved as well. Even without a guide, finding Bao Zakanan wouldn't be hard. He was bound to be indulging his own urges somewhere in this place.
Despite the commotion, no one made any move to come out.
The dead guide had led us a fair distance down the hallway. Bao Zakanan wasn't in any of the rooms we'd already passed—which meant he had to be behind one of the five doors ahead of me.
Screech, crash.
I broke the lock and threw the door open. Inside, a man covered in feces had a woman pinned to the wall, hacking away at her.
What a spectacular fetish.
"What? Extra service?" the feces-covered man asked with a grin, his pearly white teeth flashing in stark contrast to his smeared face.
"It is a service, yes. A one-way ticket to the afterlife."
I sprang lightly into the air. Hovering beside him, I swung my heel down like a hammer—an inward-curving kick that drove his head straight into the floor.
Splat!
Crushed beneath my heel, his skull burst spectacularly against the ground. I didn't know which noble family he belonged to or what high office he held.
But one thing was certain.
No matter how corrupt the Empire was, they wouldn't call me to account for putting down trash like this. Surely they wouldn't shield such filth.
And if... the Empire did shield them, then I was more than ready to become a rebel.
Screech, bang!
I opened the next door. What did I find inside? I'd rather not describe it.
"Ugh, h-heck... do you know... who I am..."
Just another piece of trash, no doubt.
I casually pulled the trigger.
Crunch!
And when I broke down the next door, I finally saw Bao Zakanan.
"Ah..."
Bao Zakanan turned to look at me with a bewildered expression.
One corner of my lip twitched, a muscle beneath my eye spasming. Bao Zakanan was draped in heavily ruffled garments. He was wearing women's clothing.
And in front of him, a naked man was bound to a cross. When I recognized the man's face, my eyes went wide.
Nikolaos?
The bound man bore a striking resemblance to Nikolaos. But of course, it wasn't Nikolaos himself. The man had been dead for some time, showing no signs of life.
The corpse of a man who looked like Nikolaos.
I could faintly grasp the sickening desire at play here.
"My name is Lucaus Custoria."
Bao Zakanan's eyes went wide. I leveled my gun at him and continued.
"You know exactly why a Custoria has come for you, don't you? You son of a bitch."