Uprooting (2)
Uprooting (2)
"Ghhk... grrrgle...!"
The culprit who'd kicked up all that dust.
The one sent flying into the building along with the door panel was making choked, dying sounds.
Teeth all knocked out, face crumpled—his already nasty features had turned properly hideous.
I stepped through the doorway where the door had been ripped out.
—Crunch!
At the same instant, a blade came scything at my ankle with vicious momentum. I stomped it.
It had been wrapped in Aura, after all. Decent strength—must have carried a fair amount of Mana.
But the quality was laughable.
The sword blade, unable to withstand the force, snapped cleanly, Aura and all, and embedded itself in the floor.
"Huh?"
The one who'd hidden beside the door and aimed for my ankle stared blankly at the broken sword.
His face was perfectly positioned, so I kicked it with full force.
A blurred arc connected with his head. —Smack! His face splattered blood as it whipped backward.
The eyes that had been staring stupidly went slack and lifeless.
His powerless body flew skyward and plowed headfirst into the ceiling.
In that moment, three attacks came flying in quick succession.
A sword aimed at my throat right in front of my nose, a sword thrusting at my stomach beside it, a dagger slipping toward my flank from a blind spot.
They weren't even close to competent.
Gaps all over the place. Responding wasn't hard.
I swung the leg I had just retracted and booted the sword embedded in the floor like a soccer ball.
The blade, scooped up by the top of my foot, spun, flashing.
—Crack!
"Aagh!"
The sword going for my throat twisted. The cultist shrieked as the broken blade punched into his wrist and collapsed.
The already gaping opening in their formation widened further.
I turned my body slightly. The sword flying at my flank didn't so much as graze my robe—just sliced uselessly through empty air.
To give it some meaning, I nudged the blade lightly with my knee.
The sword had poor balance. Easy enough to interfere with from outside. Its trajectory warped.
—Shunk! The sword tip rammed into the shoulder of the man holding the dagger.
While pain momentarily locked up his movements, I pivoted and drove a turning kick into his side.
The bastard clenched his teeth and coated his flank in Aura. A murky violet Aura wrapped his side like armor. Decisive, at least.
—Crunch!
"Ghak...!"
Too bad the quality of his Aura was terrible. Filthy Mana, miserable technique.
Fragments of shattered Aura scattered. Crack! The man's waist folded at a ninety-degree angle.
I didn't stop there. I put force into my leg and shoved the man, catching the dazed bastard right next to him in the same kick.
—Crash!
"Kuheugh...!"
The two tumbled across the floor tangled together.
The interior of the building, briefly filled with commotion, fell quiet.
I set my leg down lightly. Around then, the dust raised when the door was torn out began to settle.
Though they'd just thrashed around enough to kick up dust clouds again.
"Why... why the hell'd you barge in here and start a massacre..."
The one sprawled on the floor—the one who'd rolled together with the colleague who'd lunged at my throat—spoke through gritted teeth.
"You fuckin'... you a Golden Dragon brat? Or an Association piece of sh—"
Wham! The kick landed, and the mouth shut right back up.
I used Observation to check on the four strewn across the floor ... and the one embedded in the ceiling. I quickly assessed their condition.
Still breathing. Injuries not that serious. Just unconscious for now.
It wasn't that I lacked the heart to kill them. I still had things to interrogate.
If I'd meant to kill them, I wouldn't have just knocked them out. I could've shattered their skulls.
'Low quality.'
Probably because they were small-time. They barely scraped low-grade Hero status—around what a new cadet at Siyoram could handle.
That wasn't strange. The method had been the same in the original story, too.
Spread branches across China, catch monsters and humans as appropriate, offer them up as sacrifices, and send them to the main base.
Monsters get used as sacrifices too, but the primary sacrificial offering is human.
Step, step. I walked over to one side of the building and slammed my foot into the wall.
The rotted wooden wall surface crumbled, revealing the path leading underground.
Following it down, I came to a thick iron door. Rusted and covered in scratches—not a decent appearance at all.
More than that, Observation let me plainly recognize the spells inscribed on the iron door. The moment I recognized them, the security was breached and I could interpret them.
'Durability Enhancement, Presence Shielding, Mana Circulation Cutoff... fairly complicated.'
The spells engraved on the iron door spiderwebbed out, enveloping the entire underground chamber. A magical configuration aimed at securing both covertness and durability.
I kicked the iron door with all my strength.
—Craaash!!
"..."
The solid iron door was violently ripped off its hinges. Leaving a clear footprint dead center, it clattered and rolled across the floor.
The one conducting the sacrificial ritual flinched and spun around. The surprise plastered on his face said he hadn't noticed the situation upstairs.
He had devoted all his concentration to the ritual, and the underground chamber itself blocked internal and external presence anyway.
The bastard was dressed in what looked like black priestly robes. Around the chest was a crest: a sinister scythe with a coiled serpent.
'Death God Cult... was it.' Literally, devotees of the Death God. A straightforward mark for a straightforward group.
Behind him was a stone altar. On the altar, just as I'd observed earlier, lay a single corpse.
Maybe all the blood had been extracted in that brief time; the corpse's skin was nothing short of pallid.
The underground chamber was quite spacious. In iron cages set in a corner, a handful of people who would soon become sacrifices were locked up. A nauseating sight.
The bastard opened his mouth. The force of his Mana shifted subtly. Seemed he intended to stall for time with talk.
"What kind of bastard—"
The moment his mouth opened, I kicked off the ground. Seize the initiative and win. No reason to wait.
The underground chamber was spacious enough that there was some distance, but it wasn't distance I couldn't close in a single breath.
The bastard, face contorting, radiated Mana. A Mana discharge aimed at defense. A black barrier unfurled in front of him.
His deployment was swift; he must have chanted in advance.
Then the Mana inside him shifted. A peculiar Mana manipulation. In the same instant, the corpse standing behind him twitched.
Necromancy. The ability to handle the corpses and souls of the dead. I had dealt with it quite a lot in the original story.
So I knew exactly why he'd bother puppeteering such a nearly powerless corpse. Low-grade undead like that are used as meat shields or corpse bombs.
With manipulation-type abilities like Necromancy, taking out the main body ends it. That's why they station undead forward to block enemies closing in on the main body. And if that won't work, they ram through a crude offering and use them as corpse bombs.
'Piece of shit.'
My face twisted of its own accord. Mana burst from my leg, where Body Reinforcement was already active.
Going beyond internal Body Reinforcement, the Mana emitted outward became Aura. Chilling blood-colored Aura bubbled and seethed, coiling around my leg.
—Vwoom! I drove my leg straight toward the Mana blocking my path. The blood-colored Aura pierced through it.
The barrier couldn't hold my leg even for a split second. Fired in a straight line, my leg punched through the shield and buried itself in the bastard's solar plexus.
Crack! The sensation of bones shattering into dust transmitted vividly. I kept driving my leg forward and slammed him into the wall.
"Khuheugh...!"
The bastard let out a short, sharp scream as he was pounded into the wall.
Boom! For an instant, the underground chamber trembled faintly. Dust rained down from the ceiling.
The form that had been shuddering, embedded in the wall, went limp and collapsed in a heap on the floor.
A battle ended in a single strike.
I glanced over at the corpse that had been twitching on the altar. The twitching had stopped, for now.
If I'd left it, it probably would've charged at me and blown up.
Tsk. I clicked my tongue and checked the iron cages too. Roughly a dozen or so people were locked in the underground chamber, and among them, very few were conscious.
Even those who were conscious were trembling all over from the fight that had just occurred, staring this way in terror.
"Geuheugh, ghk...! Aaaagh...!"
While I looked them over, the bastard was writhing on the floor like a bug. He must've taken the hit to his solar plexus hard—kept spitting blood and scrabbling around.
Thud—I stopped my foot right in front of his nose, and the squirming stilled. The bastard turned his head. Hair plastered with every kind of filth and dust, his face twisted violently.
"You, you piece of shit...!"
Who's calling who a piece of shit, exactly.
I tilted my head indifferently, and the ugly face warped even more fiercely.
"D-dare you— Kheugh!"
That's not what I wanted to hear. Nor do I particularly want to waste time. I kicked him roughly in the head, and the mouth that had been about to run off at random shut right back up.
'So then...'
I'd thought over a rough plan on the way here. The primary objective is the Lake of Mana, but in between, I'd locate branches of these Death God Cult bastards and wreak havoc.
In that process, I'd crush that son of a bitch.
It'd be nice if it ended there, but unfortunately, the story never rolled along that smoothly.
In the process of crushing that son of a bitch, civilians inevitably get rescued.
In a white zone like Sipnaha, I could just hand them over to the Association or a nearby faction. But in a gray zone like this, there's no faction fit to hand rescued civilians to.
'If anything, these bastards are the nearby factions.'
In the gray zones, monsters roam uncommonly, and quite a lot of land has been swallowed by dungeons. The ones I'd just roughly thrashed may have abandoned all morality and had pitiful skills, but they did have enough ability to qualify as low-grade Heroes, at least. They could probably subjugate random 7th- or 8th-Rank monsters that show up around here. Meaning, in a gray zone like this, they were a fairly useful fighting force.
I crouched down next to the bastard writhing and scrabbling on the floor and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up.
Ghhugh... With a groan, his head came up. His eyes trembled fitfully before opening, strengthless.
My reflection was in those eyes. The robe wrapping my whole body and the bizarre mask with not a single eyehole in it.
'Now that I think about it, it really does look suspicious.'
Alongside a pointless thought, I operated my Mana.
"W-wait... what, are you doing...!"
Having sensed something wrong, he thrashed about. Not that he could avoid it.
Mana Affinity Expansion Ability
Homogenization.
'Illusion Dream.'
In that instant, the Mana surged. The color of the Mana expressed externally was a deep violet. Power both chilling and hazy wormed its way through the bastard's eyes and into his head.
"Ghk, ghheugh..."
The pupils of the thrashing bastard constricted, then suddenly rolled back with a snap. His mouth dropped right open, and he turned into a slack-jawed idiot drooling freely.
Maxwell's Unique Ability. Its affiliations: mind, illusion. I'd Observed it during our last encounter. My accumulated information wasn't substantial, and my proficiency was nothing special—so I could only manage the basics.
But for a son of a bitch like this with a willpower of absolute zero, the ability was perfectly suited. A bastard in his right mind wasn't necessary. A bastard turned to an idiot would give me answers far more precise and certain.
* * *
[Loss of contact with 12th Branch, Aohan area]
"Tsk."
Gyeol-won, head of the Death God Cult, grimaced as he checked the message.
Unpleasant news. Also news that fouled his mood.
China's land was vast. So too were its people.
Even now, with the nation ruined by the Twin-headed Poison Dragon and turned into a gray zone, many humans still couldn't leave this place, and many more bred endlessly as they shat out more.
And yet, their quality of life had been crammed into a trash bin, making it a perfect place to expand the faith.
When people can't find a proper place to lean on in reality, the most common thing they seek is religion.
Accordingly, the Death God Cult had many branches spread throughout China. Thanks to that, the volume of sacrifices flowing in from each branch was considerable.
Losing one or two wasn't something worth paying attention to.
He had already bribed the local powers in each region where branches were established. Far from restraining them, they were cooperating to appropriately gather sacrifices.
The Association didn't matter, either. The situation in the Demon Realm had been unstable recently as it was. Even the Association Presidents were keeping silent; they didn't have the leisure to form a subjugation force into a gray zone—never mind a black zone.
Yet lately, branches were collapsing one after another.
'The Taesan Family... What did we cross in them that they're ransacking our side like this.'
The Taesan Family. Recently, Taesan Manifestors had crawled into Chinese territory and were wreaking havoc.
Their intention was clear. They were specifically singling out and ransacking the Death God Cult.
What's more, even the heir bitch was tagging along among their number.
For Gyeol-won, it was a troublesome matter. Charge in and kill them all? Not impossible. But he had no confidence he could handle the aftermath.
The successor of Taesan dies suddenly on Chinese soil? The head of Taesan would personally lead his family's elites and invade Chinese territory that very moment. It wouldn't end with a few branches getting smashed, like now. At a crucial juncture like this, he couldn't afford to bear such risk.
'I'll have no choice but to sacrifice a handful.'
There were hundreds of branches installed across China's vast land alone. The concealment laid on each branch was also quite high-grade. They'd mobilized magic using their resources, and the branches were installed in places convenient for procuring sacrifices yet easy to conceal.
Furthermore, how many dungeons were currently rampaging on Chinese soil? The Mana Wave Disturbance was so outrageously severe that, even by mobilizing a capable Detection ability user, locating and hitting branches in succession would be a struggle.
Right now, branches were collapsing at the rate of about one per day, but there was leeway before the plan was completed. And Gyeol-won was certain the main base where he resided would not be found.
Sacrifice the minor for the major. If you have a head on your shoulders, it's a basic strategy you can think up.
Nodding, he refocused his concentration.
Gyeol-won was in his underground chamber. On the magic circle spread across the floor lay the massive bleached bones of an Earth Dragon.
The bones were not in a complete state. Though it had two necks attached, one skull was missing—a lopsided condition.
Gyeol-won concentrated, pouring sacrifices onto the bones and pulling at the faint remaining undeath.
.
.
.
[Loss of contact with 13th Branch, Aohan area]
[Loss of contact with 14th Branch, Aohan area]
[Loss of contact with 15th Branch, Aohan area]
...
"...What?"
That same day, nine branches collapsed in succession.
[Loss of contact with 3rd Branch, Naiman area]
[Loss of contact with 4th Branch, Naiman area]
[Loss of contact with 5th Branch, Naiman area]
...
[Loss of contact with 2nd Branch, Wingnyuteo area]
[Loss of contact with 3rd Branch, Wingnyuteo area]
[Loss of contact with 5th Branch, Wingnyuteo area]
[Loss of contact with 6th Branch, Wingnyuteo area]
And the next day, thirteen branches lost contact.
Forget one per day—over twenty collapsed in just two days.
"......"
Damage far, far exceeding any prediction. In other words, damage that would disrupt the supply of sacrifices.