19
I Killed the Demon King. It Was a Mistake.
Chapter 19
Vito dragged all his organization members to the tea house that Caesar had supposedly bought.
"This is definitely the tea house. Didn't they say it was open until night?"
At Vito's words, a member of the Jix Family stammered.
"Y-yes, it's ce-certain! They used to be open until late evening..."
"Have my eyes gone blind? Why does it look closed today?"
"That's, well, I don't really..."
Bang!
In an instant, Vito pulled out his revolver and shot the guy in the head, killing him.
"Listen carefully to what I'm about to say."
Vito looked around at the organization members who were staring at him with fearful eyes.
"The reason the Big Foot Family has been able to grow this much is that no one has ever interfered with what I do."
"But now, some wandering knight bastard who ran away scared during the demon realm war is interfering with what I do. So what should we do?"
When Vito held out his hand to a subordinate, the subordinate handed him a stick of dynamite.
"He needs to lose something of his own too. That's how he'll learn what happens when you mess with me."
Vito lit the dynamite fuse with the cigarette he was smoking.
Hisssss-
"Find all the employees working here right now, chop them up, and scatter them all over this place. Got it?"
"Yes!"
Vito threw the dynamite towards the shop.
The stick of violence flew through the moonlight and slipped through the broken window of the shop.
He won't go easy on him just because he's a knight.
After all, Vito has lived off everyone's fear in Homigraph.
There's no reason Caesar should be any different.
That's what Vito thought.
Vito tossed his cigarette and turned back the way he came.
"...?"
Vito looked back again.
The dynamite should have exploded by now, but it hadn't.
Vito glared at the guy who had handed him the dynamite.
"Jimmy. Did you get the dynamite wet?"
"N-no. It's clean."
Before Vito's revolver could spit fire, Jimmy lit another dynamite and threw it towards the shop.
The dynamite that slipped into the shop similarly didn't explode.
"W-what's going on? Why is this happening?"
"Forget it. Go in and smash everything."
"Yes!"
As the organization members were about to enter the shop, two lit dynamite sticks flew out of the shop window.
"Huh?"
Boom!
The dynamite exploded above the organization members' heads, splattering blood and flesh across the road.
Eeeeeee.
Vito was fortunately far enough from the blast center to survive, but he fell due to the ringing in his ears and dizziness.
Vito barely opened his eyes to assess the situation.
Thump Thump.
A man wielding twin axes opened the shop door and walked out.
The axes of Homigraph.
It was Caesar.
"Who dares to throw dynamite at my shop? Want to die?"
"K-kill him!"
At Vito's command, the surviving organization members shot at Caesar.
A hail of bullets flew towards Caesar.
No matter how well Caesar had mastered 'Noisy Silence', it was impossible to deflect dozens of bullets with axes.
So Caesar decided to defend only two spots precisely.
His face and his manhood.
Caesar's axes cut through the air.
Then, the sound of a wasp's wings flowed along the axes.
Caesar's axes cut down the bullets flying towards his eyes, and the intense gust of wind emanating from the axes deflected the bullets aimed at his forehead.
The rest of the bullets heroically buried their heads into Caesar's solid body.
Thud thud thud thud!
Despite bullets piercing here and there, not only did blood not burst out, but the lead bullets crumpled and fell limply to the ground.
Jimmy's mind went blank at the incomprehensible sight.
"I-impossible."
Caesar closed the distance in the blink of an eye.
At this close range, a gun becomes a weapon inferior to an ordinary dagger.
The blood demon's red eyes glinted in the moonlight.
Slash-
That was the last scene Jimmy saw.
The blood gushing from Jimmy's neck became the signal flare for the slaughter.
"Aaaargh!"
Wherever Caesar passed, a carpet made of fresh blood was laid.
The organization members frantically fired their guns trying to hit Caesar somehow, but they ended up shooting their fellow members more often than hitting Caesar.
After reducing their numbers to some extent, Caesar's sight fell on Vito.
"S-stop him!"
Caesar charged towards Vito like a cheetah.
The organization members tried to block him to protect Vito, but they were all butchered by Caesar's merciless axe strikes.
Vito drew his revolver and fired at Caesar.
Ratatatata!.
Almost simultaneously, five bullets flew towards Caesar as if from an automatic pistol.
With a technique called Fanning, no one had survived this at point-blank range.
But Caesar was not an ordinary human, he was a knight.
Caesar once again used 'Noisy Silence'.
Caesar's axes cut the air twice, and with a fierce gust, all the bullets lost their direction and fluttered down.
At the same time, the gust that started from Caesar's axes turned into a sharp scream, tearing apart the eardrums of all the mafia guys nearby.
"I-impossible..."
"It is possible, you bastard."
Caesar cut Vito's right shoulder instead of his head.
"Aaaaargh!"
With a terrible scream, Vito rolled on the ground.
Caesar stuck his axe next to the fallen guy's neck.
The axe blade gently dug into the stone floor, and the guy couldn't move, like a convict with his head on the chopping block.
"You're the last one."
Caesar, holding his remaining axe, began to chase after the fleeing mafia members.
***
Vito, using the screams of his organization members as a melody, looked up at the pitifully beautiful moon and reminisced about the past.
Where exactly did it all go wrong?
At age 5, Vito was abandoned by his parents and became one of the many orphans commonly seen in Homigraph.
From then on, Vito was always bullied by other beggars.
Even when he stole a piece of bread, it was taken away by the older kids.
Whenever he stole a wallet, it was always snatched away.
At first, Vito thought he was treated this way because he was young.
He thought that after a year or two, as he grew older, the neighborhood beggars would stop disrespecting him.
But on the day Vito turned 10, when a 7-year-old beggar took his bread and wallet, he realized it wasn't because he was young.
It was because he was small and weak.
But no matter how much Vito ate or aged, he didn't grow.
Eventually, Vito was even nicknamed 'the walking bread factory' by the neighborhood beggars.
There was no need to go through the trouble of stealing bread when they could just rob Vito for bread and wallets.
Then one day, Vito managed to steal not a wallet, but a revolver.
"Hey. Give that here."
Usually, Vito would have been beaten and robbed by that guy.
But now it was different.
The guy's pupils were subtly trembling.
Vito knew it well from experiencing it many times.
That was fear.
Vito's finger pulled the trigger.
With an explosion as big as Vito's resentment, the bullet flew like an arrow.
Bang-
His first murder.
The initial taste was fear.
But when the neighborhood beggars who used to beat him up looked at Vito with fearful eyes,
The aftertaste was sweeter and more ecstatic than any food.
Terror.
Fear.
Receiving gazes dominated by such primal and intense emotions was as addictive as sugar.
"Right. It wasn't because I was weak that I got robbed."
It was because he wasn't revered.
Did Vito need to become stronger?
Did he need to become faster?
The reason they looked at Vito with fearful eyes wasn't because of Vito himself, but because they feared the 'gun' itself.
So Vito decided to become the 'gun'.
He decided to become fear itself.
Because only then could he avoid being ignored, hated, and instead be revered.
Twenty years after realizing this truth,
Vito had become the most vicious and cruel mafia member, and one of the five mafia bosses ruling over Homigraph.
"So, that's why you became a mafia?"
Vito looked up at Caesar, who was looking down at him.
Though Caesar's expression was completely hidden by the moon's shadow, his eyes, captured by an ice-like transparent madness, sparkled like rubies.
Caesar pulled out the axe lodged in Vito's neck.
In his dazed state, Vito saw three Caesars.
He had lost too much blood.
"Because you were always robbed, now you decided to live a life of robbing others? Is that why you've been killing people like this?"
Vito moved his dry lips.
"You... You wouldn't understand. You, who were born strong, don't know anything."
"What don't I know?"
"I've struggled to become everyone's fear. Because the moment I'm looked down upon, even for a second, I'll lose everything like when I was young."
"So that's why you've lived so cruelly?"
With all his remaining strength, Vito reached out and picked up his revolver.
"You don't know how hyenas live. Lions are stronger than hyenas, but hyenas steal the prey that lions hunt."
Vito pulled the trigger, aiming at Caesar.
Click.
"It's not because I was strong that I could steal the prey of lions."
Click.
"It's because they knew I was vicious, cruel, and frightening."
Click.
"Fear and terror."
Click.
"To rule with those primal emotions. That was my life principle for surviving in this godforsaken Homigraph, and it was my everything."
Click.
"Does my life seem so wrong to you?"
Click.
"Do you think you wouldn't have lived a life like mine?"
The strength left Vito's hand, and the revolver fell.
Vito's eyes were slowly losing focus.
"Answer me quickly... Are you certain you wouldn't have lived a life like mine? Do you think I was wrong?"
"Whether your life was wrong or not, why does that matter?"
Caesar too had fought on battlefields alongside allies who weren't truly allies, and killed allies who were like enemies.
Living the life of a spy belonging nowhere, hadn't he ever thought about whether what he was doing was right or wrong?
"You struggled to survive in the environment you were given, and so did I. The only difference between you and me is this: I'm stronger than you, and you're weaker than me. That's why you're dying, and I'm living."
"...Is that so? You're just the same as me..."
"What nonsense are you spouting? I'm fundamentally different from you."
Caesar aggravated Vito's wound.
"Aaaaargh!"
The dying flame of life is poured with the oil of suffering
"At least I don't torture, kill, and dismember innocent people just to be revered by others. At first, you might have become cruel to survive. But now, you've become cruel for a more luxurious life."
Caesar grabbed Vito by the collar and lifted him up.
"So let's stop the chitchat and have a productive conversation, shall we? I'm busy, you see. I have four more bastards to kill besides you."
Caesar used psychometry.
"Your hidden assets, ledgers, and finally, the locations of your hideouts. Spill everything you know."
"Do, do you think I'll talk so easily?"
But the locations of secret hideouts and ledgers that the guy was thinking about kept flooding into Caesar's mind.
"Then keep resisting. I'll take you to a doctor who can even bring back the dead. Then I'll torment you until you beg me to kill you."
Vito trembled at Caesar's madness.
***
Caesar left the cleanup to the Clearbay police who had arrived and headed towards Big Foot's hideout.
Big Foot's hideout was located in an abandoned dock on the outskirts of Westline.
Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang.
As he approached the hideout, gunshots could be heard.
Judging from the screams of people, it seemed like the organization members were fighting among themselves over assets.
Caesar initially hid in the shadows and slowly approached the hideout.
But the situation wasn't what Caesar had expected.
Vito's family members were on their knees with their hands and feet tightly bound, while men in suits aimed guns at their heads.
Bang Bang Bang Bang
This wasn't a fight.
It was an execution.
Caesar shifted his gaze to the riverbank.
There, Vito's family members were being threatened by the suited men as they loaded something onto a boat.
It looked like money or ledgers at first glance.
'Who on earth are these guys?'
The first thing that came to mind was the bodyguards of the council members.
Since Vito had been paying a lot of bribes to the Homigraph council members, they might have rushed here as soon as they heard the news of Vito's downfall.
'No. That's impossible timewise.'
The police had only just received the news, so how could the council members have been informed about Vito's situation?
Then who could it be?
At that moment, a man caught Caesar's eye.
A fat man smoking a cigar and wiping blood off his hands.
He had a gold ring on his right hand.
'Isn't that... Dominic?'
The president of the Gold Stamp loan shark company and the vice-boss of the Bloody Gold Family.
He had come to the Hilton Hotel to contact Caesar and even gave him a business card, but Caesar had refused to meet him till the end because he seemed sketchy.
'I can guess what's going on.'
It was obvious that they had found out about Vito's plan to attack Caesar and used this opportunity to raid Vito's hideout.
What a ruthless world.
'Then it's okay to kill them all, right?'
If they were people from the council, he'd have to think about it, but if they were mafia guys, it was a different story.
Caesar slowly headed towards the waterfront.
***
Dominic looked through the ledgers.
"You've really been busy, haven't you?"
Is it true that the best business is selling water?
Looking through the ledgers, he found that they had been selling a bottle of beer for five times its original price.
They even used a technique where if they made a contract to supply ten boxes to a bar, they would skim off one box.
In the loan shark business, they would add at most 70% interest per month out of conscience, but these guys had no limits.
No wonder all the shops that were customers of Gold Stamp went bankrupt.
Dominic opened another ledger.
"This is a jackpot."
It contained detailed records of the bribes Vito had distributed to various sectors.
With this ledger alone, the Bloody Gold Family could take over Big Foot Family's business without much trouble.
"Boss. We've loaded everything."
"Are you sure it's all loaded?"
"Yes, I'm certain."
"Then let's go."
Splash.
At that moment, there was a sound of something falling into the river.
"What was that? What fell in?"
"I'll go check it out."
Splash Splash.
The sound of something falling into the river continued incessantly.
The organization members who said they would go check hadn't returned either.
Splash Splash Splash
Only the sound of something heavy repeatedly falling into the river could be heard.
Dominic and the organization members waiting nearby all drew their guns.
"What's going on!"
Instead of an answer, an axe came flying.
Whoosh Thud!.
The organization member right next to Dominic crumpled lifelessly.
"C-crazy."
Bang Bang Bang Bang
The organization members reflexively fired their guns towards the riverbank where the axe had come from.
But that was the wrong decision.
Click Click Click
As soon as the organization members' magazines were all emptied, the assailant revealed himself.
"Y-you...!"
The axe of Homigraph.
It was Caesar.
"You disloyal bastards. How could you kill your friends who you've lived and eaten with like dogs and pigs?"
Caesar's axe glinted in the moonlight.
"I hate disloyal ones the most."