Chapter 61
Chapter 61
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 61
Chapter Title: I'll Show You a Real Hell
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A world of monsters unfolded before him. The culmination of the countless evil deeds he had committed as a former squad leader of the Black-Red Brigade.
“Aaargh, my foot! My foot is rotting away!”
“Please, save me! My baby, the baby in my womb…!”
This was a world of ideas, a projection of the mind of Belloc, a 6th-circle black magician. The Black-Red Brigade's biological laboratory.
There was a man screaming in madness from the agony of his toes rotting away. There was a mother who, unable to bear watching her own legs decay, began sawing them off with a saw to protect the child in her womb.
“...It was an experiment to study maternal love,” the monster said.
“The man in the control group couldn't even think of picking up a saw while his own body rotted away.”
The black magician Belloc was proudly boasting of his achievements.
“But surprisingly! The pregnant woman was not the same!”
To protect the child in her womb, she cut off her own leg without a moment's hesitation.
“...”
“Isn't a mother's love truly magnificent?” Belloc shouted, spreading his arms wide, as if genuinely in awe.
“Therefore, I pondered day and night, racking my brain on how far a mother could endure pain for her child…”
Dale bit his lip in silence.
“And how that maternal love, that maternal ideology, could be utilized in the form of a weapon.”
Faced with Belloc’s tirade, Dale simply maintained a stoic silence.
The squad leader of the Black-Red Brigade, who had committed unforgivable atrocities. A world reflecting the mind of a monster.
Even Dale couldn't suppress his nausea at the sight.
As a Hero from another world, he wasn’t ignorant of the Black-Red Brigade’s true nature. But merely knowing about it and witnessing it firsthand were two entirely different things. In truth, there had been no point of contact between the Hero and the Black-Red Brigade. If anything, he had merely been a victim of a few of their painful experiments.
Images of his mother, Elena, and his sister, Lije, surfaced in his mind.
His stomach churned. He wanted to empty its contents, unable to hold back the urge to vomit.
“...Don’t think you’ll die an easy death.”
Dale spoke, biting his lip so hard it bled.
“I’ll show you what a real hell looks like.”
“Ah, that sounds rather exciting.”
“...”
“It seems the Black Prince’s reputation for cruelty was no empty boast.”
Dale didn’t respond to Belloc’s taunt. He simply let his Shadow Cloak flutter, overlaying the landscape with darkness. A wave of shadow spread out like a flood.
“The Black Prince's prized artifact of darkness, the Shadow Cloak!”
Yet, standing upon the lake of darkness encroaching upon the area, Belloc was not flustered.
“To think you've already expanded the artifact's form to the level of summoning a ‘Shadow Lurker.’”
A 6th-circle elder of the Black Magic Tower. To him, the dark artifact Dale possessed was by no means an unknown concept.
“I knew the talent you displayed during the Tower's trial that day was extraordinary.”
“...”
“But I never imagined it would be to this extent. Truly, a display worthy of the ‘Black Prince’s’ fame.”
Belloc spoke as if it were a genuine shame.
“To be forced to kill a mage of such radiant talent...! Please, blame the weakness of the Master of the Black Tower.”
His father’s weakness. At those words, Dale let out a bitter laugh. He simply snapped his fingers without a word.
*Plurch!*
Suddenly, the thorny tentacles of a ‘Shadow Lurker’ shot up from beneath Belloc’s shadow. But the tentacles, rushing in from below and all sides, never reached him. Belloc’s body blurred into a mass of shadows and charged toward Dale.
Wraith Form.
Being a 6th-circle black magician was no empty title.
That day, in the Library of Hell, when Dale had defeated the 6th-circle white magician Nikolai using *The Book of the Black Goat*. That had been a victory that took advantage of the geographical benefits of a hell twisted by profane thoughts and wicked ideologies. This place was not the same.
‘The Empire’s greatest talent, growing stronger by the day.’
Nevertheless, that was the reputation people whispered about the Black Prince of House Sachsen.
It was not a story inflated without reason.
And how much time had passed since he defeated Nikolai? How much had Dale grown in that time? Even he himself could not fathom it.
That was why a mere 6th-circle black magician like him could likely never imagine it.
As he accelerated his three mana circles, a horizon of emptiness unfolded beneath his feet.
A world of a white and dark winter night.
A biting chill and refined dark magic swirled into a blue-black vortex, and an unforgettable voice was heard.
It was the voice of a pure, untainted girl.
─ You finally came to play with me?
Suddenly, a girl was beside Dale. A young girl wrapped in a jet-black dress.
From amidst her black hair, the horns of a black goat—two ram's horns—rose prominently.
─ I've been waiting for so, so long.
Beneath her skirt, countless bundles of tentacles writhed.
* * *
Wraith Form.
It was the moment Belloc, having evaded the Shadow Lurker’s entire assault, closed the distance with Dale.
“...!”
Seeing ‘that being’ suddenly beside Dale, Belloc gasped in astonishment.
The most horrific being in the world was there.
A monstrosity with countless tentacles writhing like worms. A being possessing a repulsiveness that would make even a monster like him recoil.
Along the jet-black tentacles, a black, sticky liquid like coal tar dripped down.
He could feel it intuitively. The indescribable malice dwelling within that black, tar-like fluid.
‘What in the world is that...?’
And right then, those jet-black tentacles shot down as one. Towards Belloc, who had become shadow itself in his Wraith Form.
This was a strike of a nature that even he, in his Wraith Form, could not evade.
The jet-black tentacles. A crystallization of malice so wicked and horrifying it couldn't even be compared to the ‘thorny tentacles’ of a Shadow Lurker. He hastily put distance between them. As he retreated, he chanted the decay magic he was so proud of.
A wind of death that swirled from the ground towards Dale.
《Wave of Annihilation》.
The wind of death, a condensation of life’s extinction, rushed forward, but Dale paid it no mind. His ‘Shadow Cloak,’ disguised as a black surcoat, fluttered as he kicked off the ground and charged.
This was not a combat style that relied 100% on *The Book of the Black Goat*.
The jet-black tentacles provided covering fire from behind, but the one carrying out the battle was Dale himself.
As the swordsman and mage who boasted the greatest talent in the Empire, the ‘Black Prince’ rushed towards Belloc.
He didn't even think of dodging the wind of darkness swirling towards him.
‘Is he trying to get himself killed?’
Belloc wondered at the sight. The wind of death from a 6th-circle black magician. Although he had no way of knowing it was the ‘process of organic nitrogen compound decomposition by putrefactive bacteria,’ the decay of corpses was no exception in any world.
And against it, Dale processed the blue-black mana based purely on his knowledge from another world. An armor of blue-black coalesced around him, protecting him from the wind of death.
The two spells collided, and the wind of annihilation that Belloc prided himself on dissipated into nothing.
“...!”
In that instant, Dale charged forward, generating blades of darkness along his Shadow Cloak.
‘How did he neutralize the decay magic?’
It didn’t matter. It wasn’t something to think about right now. Belloc did not panic.
Before the rapidly approaching Dale, he once again formed a ‘barrier of decay’ between them.
The next moment, as Dale’s body made contact with that very barrier of decay.
‘I’ve won!’
Belloc inwardly rejoiced, and at the same time, Dale’s body, which should have started rotting upon contact with the barrier…
...was enveloped in that same ‘blue-black armor’ as it charged right up to Belloc’s face.
Completely unharmed, perfectly fine.
“...!”
Belloc’s expression twisted in horror. He felt like a mere mage who had allowed a knight to close the distance.
The blades of shadow, now orbiting Dale, were all aimed at him.
“H-H-How did you get past the barrier of decay...!”
Belloc, who only understood the phenomenon of a living creature's decay, could never know.
Decay. The process of organic nitrogen compound decomposition by bacteria.
And decay magic was nothing more than accelerating that process through the ‘power of ideology.’ Therefore, for Dale, who understood its mechanism, blocking decay magic was not as difficult as one might think.
The annihilation of the putrefactive bacteria that served as the medium for the magic.
‘Sterilization.’
Nothing in this world is immortal. Even microorganisms like bacteria were no exception.
*Plurch!*
Simultaneously, the jet-black tentacles lancing in from all directions sealed Belloc’s belated attempts to resist.
Then, the swords of shadow struck.
“Aaaaaargh!”
It was not a fatal blow meant to kill. It was a strike to pin him down, to seal his resistance. The tendons in his arms and legs were severed, and blood vessels were cut just enough to cause pain without being lethal.
“Aaargh, aaargh!”
A scream echoed.
“My, what a crybaby.”
As the screams echoed, Dale scoffed coldly at the unexpectedly anticlimactic end.
A battle between mages was, in the end, a contest of which side’s magic projected a more refined and powerful logic.
Therefore, in a battle of ideologies, the ‘refinement of logic’ possessed by knowledge from another world was beyond words.
It was no different even if the opponent was a 6th-circle black magician. No, in fact, because it was a battle between mages sharing the same attribute, the outcome was decided even more one-sidedly.
‘I didn’t even need to borrow the grimoire’s power.’
There hadn’t even been a chance to properly display the grimoire’s power.
But the real reason Dale had summoned *The Book of the Black Goat* was something else entirely.
“I told you.”
Belloc fell to his knees, screaming, as Dale continued speaking to him with a emotionless expression.
“I’d show you a real hell.”
“Ah, ahh...”
“Are you starting to fear the Black Prince’s reputation now?”
The girl beside Dale once again began to writhe the tentacles beneath her skirt.
“Does the name of the heir to the Master of the Black Magic Tower still seem like a joke?”
And to the helpless Belloc, it must have looked as if a host of repulsive tentacles was slithering forward, preparing to strike with their jet-black tips.
They were incredibly small and thin tentacles. Like nanowires for surgery from a sci-fi movie.
“...!”
The slender, jet-black tentacles shot down as one.
Into Belloc’s ear canals, his nostrils, his mouth, and further, tearing through his retinas towards the inside of his head.
To reach his brain inside his skull.
“Aaaaaargh!”
Crying tears of blood from his torn retinas, Belloc began to thrash wildly.
“They say it’s better to get the beating over with quickly.”
Watching him, Dale muttered stoically.
“Since you’re destined for hell anyway... I’ll give you a little preview before you fall.”
His voice was laced with a hatred colder than anything else.