Chapter 366: Cult of Specters (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 366: Cult of Specters (3)
A creeping, murderous intent began to rise.
Jinhyuk slowly released his mana.
"You were the one who said we shouldn't make a scene. Yet you're the one who seems to be itching for a fight the most," Cheon Yu-seong clicked his tongue, exasperated.
Well... it was true they shouldn't make a scene.
But,
"As long as it doesn't get out, there's no problem."
Who would know if a few people got beaten to a pulp inside a closed room?
At least for the time being, it would pass quietly.
Jinhyuk stepped forward, clenching his fists.
And a short while later, the bandit guild inside the building was thoroughly thrashed.
No matter how battle-hardened they were from surviving in the middle floors, that was only by bandit standards. They were no match for Jinhyuk and Cheon Yu-seong, hardcore veterans among veterans.
"Cough... ack! Gah... cough, cough."
"Ughhh..."
The bandits groaned in agony.
Having taken clean hits to the solar plexus, even breathing was difficult.
"Are you ready to talk now?"
"Just kill me. No matter what you ask, you'd better not expect an answer."
"Oh? Look at you, acting like a real boss. So you're confident in your ability to endure pain?"
"That's right. I'd rather die than sell out my comrades."
Indeed, he had quite a bit of loyalty for a thief.
But did he know? Did he know that this was merely the beginning of a very long, painful process?
Jinhyuk summoned the spirits and Frey from his subspace.
Wuuuung!
With a bright flash of light, Undine, Sylphid, Salamander, and Gnome appeared.
"Did you call, Master?"
"How much are you going to exploit us this ti—I mean, what's the matter? Hehe."
The spirits rubbed their hands together, forcing bright smiles onto their faces.
"I need to squeeze some information out of these guys, but they're not being very cooperative."
"Ah, I see. They'd rather bite their tongues and die? What crazy bastards, defying our master."
"Right? So, show them the bitter taste of our company."
"Understood, Master. Leave it to us."
Undine nodded, clenching her tiny fists.
And so, the torture began.
Whoosh!
Salamander conjured flames around the bandits' feet.
"Aaaargh! It-it's hot!"
"What is this?!"
The temperature steadily rose. Cold sweat poured down their spines.
On top of that, Undine began stuffing the bandits' mouths with water droplets packed with capsaicin.
"Ack! Cough! Cough, cough!"
"Hehe. Eat up. Want some more?"
"Dine, here. I think it'd be even better if we added this ingredient. Remember when we saw Mistress eating it last time? It made her tears and snot run like crazy."
Sylphid added mint chocolate and stinky tofu to Undine's water droplets.
In an instant, a horrific concoction that defied human description was created.
"Here comes the hammer!"
Additionally, Gnome began using a hammer made of earth to commit an act that should never be done to a man.
Thud!
"Stop!"
Thwack!
"S-stop!"
Crack!
"Aaaargh! My junior...!"
The screams turned into shrieks, which quickly devolved into begging. In the end, one after another, they began foaming at the mouth and passing out.
"Master, this one isn't moving anymore."
Gnome swung the hammer around with an adorable expression.
The bandits who were next in line shrieked in terror.
"Th-they're crazy spirits!"
"S-spare us!"
"We have honor too, you bastards!"
Horrific screams echoed through the room.
"Urgh!"
The bald man, who appeared to be the leader, gritted his teeth.
While the others had crumbled under the spirits' torture, this man alone was stubbornly holding out.
"He's tougher than I thought. Frey, how about it? Want to give it a try?"
"Yes. I'll try."
Frey stepped forward.
And without warning, she abruptly pulled out a massive cleaver—the kind used in butcher shops to chop through meat and bone.
"W-what are you trying to do?"
Terrified, the bald man thrashed his body wildly.
Ignoring him completely, Frey raised the cleaver high with an expressionless face.
"Frey!"
"Yes?"
"Even so, if you strike him with that, won't he die before we get any information?"
"I can't kill him?"
"No. Not right now."
"What about cutting?"
"That's fine. But keep it within reasonable bounds."
"Understood. Then I will proceed while taking blood loss into account. His survival rate is 99.5%. If he loses all his arms and legs, the survival rate drops to 50%. First, I must sterilize the tool to prevent bacterial infection and assist with hemostasis."
Whoosh!
Frey began heating the blade over a fire.
At their chilling conversation, the bald man's face turned from white to utterly bloodless.
"I'll talk! Damn it! I'll talk! The players are in the Gray Forest right now! They're there!"
At the bald man's words, Jinhyuk gestured to Frey.
Frey stopped her blade, which had been on the verge of coming down.
"The Gray Forest?"
"Yes! The Cult bastards put a bounty on them! It's thirty percent of a year's worth of magic crystals from the Magic Crystal Mine, so everyone is frantically searching for them!"
Indeed, the Gray Forest had plenty of hiding spots.
Teresa must have instinctively chosen a place with lots of cover and hiding places.
"That's enough, Frey. And everyone else, you can stop now."
Jinhyuk halted the torture.
Undine, who was in the middle of pouring sand lance extract into a bandit's nostril, stopped with a look of disappointment.
"A-are you going to let us go now?"
"No."
I'm sorry, but it wasn't over yet.
He still needed a few more things to resolve this matter more smoothly.
"You need to introduce me to your bandit guild's master. To conquer this floor, I need a faction with excellent information-gathering capabilities and large numbers."
"What... Pfft... Pwahaha! You want to meet our guild master? Bwahaha! That's ridiculous... No, wait! Don't try to feed me that green lump! Don't try to slice me up either! It's not that I don't want to tell you. I really don't know who they are!"
"So it's organized in compartmentalized cells?"
Cheon Yu-seong frowned.
If that was the case, finding the person at the top wouldn't be easy.
But.
"We don't need to find the very top."
Jinhyuk picked up the paper with Teresa's sketch.
"No matter how compartmentalized you are, there must be at least one person who gives you orders, right?"
"Yes, there is. But even he doesn't know who the master is. It's useless to capture him."
"But he should at least know about the person directly above him."
If they climbed up step-by-step, they would eventually reach the master.
Swallowing the guild whole would begin from that point.
"If you dig around like that one by one, you'll never reach the master in time."
Torture and threats.
Of course, swallowing an entire guild through such methods was difficult. No matter how harshly they were suppressed, feelings of resentment and rebellion were bound to arise.
"You don't need to worry about that either. I have a skill specialized for exactly this kind of work."
Jinhyuk took a sheet of paper and pressed it against the bald man's face.
"W-what are you doing...?"
"Stay still."
[Lv3 'Human Skin Mask' has been activated!]
Wuuuung!
The paper gradually began to take the shape of a human face.
Before long, a leather mask identical to the bald man's face was created.
"Tell your boss to come here immediately, saying you have information on Teresa."
* * *
Rumble!
The surrounding landscape was completely transformed by a massive storm of mana.
It was the trace left behind as Apollo's Sun Chariot swept across the ground.
"Advance!"
At Apollo's command, a thunderous roar followed.
"Ohhh!"
"The gods are with us!"
"Kill them all and dedicate this land to the gods!"
Thousands of Greek soldiers, their morale soaring, began their march.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The earth shook as an immense army blanketed the frozen plains.
For the first time, the flag of an outside force fluttered over the core base of Jotunheim.
Of course, the massive faction Ragnarok was not going down without a fight.
"Aaargh!"
"Filthy invaders!"
The giants also resisted fiercely, swinging clubs made of ice and hurling conifers.
The battle had already raged for three days and nights without pause.
After a series of advances and retreats, the clash was now reaching its climax.
"...This is harder than I thought," Athena frowned as she watched the battle from afar.
She had thought they could easily sweep away Ragnarok, whose power had already begun to decline.
However, once the war actually began, the enemy's resistance proved formidable.
"It seems they haven't completely lost their strength, even after losing their crown."
"Thor... he is the biggest problem. Of all times, Heracles had to be assigned to the Eden front..."
Hades let out a long sigh.
The enemy's greatest force, the God of Thunder, was fighting valiantly against hundreds of Greek warriors even at this very moment.
It meant they had to commit far too many resources just to deal with a single opponent.
"Eden wouldn't want our influence to grow, so we had no choice. Heracles must hold the west so we can withstand even an Archangel-class threat if they show up."
Currently, the upper floors were a tangled web of sharp, conflicting interests.
Factions competing with Olympus would never wish for their success.
Therefore, they absolutely needed someone reliable to guard their rear while the main force was away on an expedition.
"Heimdall is just as troublesome. He crosses dimensions to disrupt our rear, and the damage is hard to ignore."
"You mean the Valkyrie unit. Indeed, from their perspective, they believe dying in battle will take them to Valhalla, so we're essentially fighting battle-crazed lunatics."
The other gods chimed in one by one.
They certainly held the advantage, but because of these factors, they couldn't completely secure their victory.
"Has Odin's location still not been identified?"
Zeus, seated at the head of the table, tapped his fingers against the surface.
Crackle!
Golden lightning flickered in all directions.
...It was heavy.
Mana laced with irritation and anger heavily weighed down the surroundings.
"Well... perhaps because he knows Father is targeting him, he is hiding deep. He keeps moving around using Heimdall, so tracking him is not easy..."
"Hermes, that makes it sound as if you are inferior to Heimdall."
"N-no, of course not! If you give me just a little more time, I will definitely catch his tail," Hermes stammered, making excuses.
The core objective of this war was for Zeus to kill Odin and bring the conflict to a swift end.
However, that absolute premise was being shaken to its very core.
Right then.
"...?!"
"Father! Someone is coming!"
No sooner had Hermes finished speaking than space warped in a long distortion.
[An external divinity manifests!]
Someone appeared before the Greek divinities.