Chapter 99
Chapter 99
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: The Woman Who Passed Through
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One day later.
The Practical Division's reconnaissance team regrouped on the outskirts of the Lano region, southeast of Ferrara.
This was after confirming intelligence that the culprits behind the looting of the regional management office were here.
Tetis, captain of the Practical Division's 1st Reconnaissance Team, spoke to his squad.
"These bastards are core members of Nostra. Be especially careful of the executives. Kill them before they kill you."
Each of them, armed with assassination weapons, approached the gray building in silence.
It was dead silent, enough to convince them their presence had gone unnoticed.
Tetis gave a hand signal, spreading his men to the left and right. Then, they stormed in.
But what they found was a scene of carnage. So gruesome it would evoke pity even for an enemy.
"Uh... Captain. Look at this."
Tetis turned to see a squad member pointing to one corner of the room.
There, as if executed, lay three neatly arranged, decapitated corpses.
Their heads were missing.
"Who would do this..."
Tetis tilted his head in confusion.
The aftermath of a battle usually leaves behind a wealth of information.
You can deduce the weapon from the sword marks on a corpse, estimate the destructive power from the traces left on walls and furniture. The direction in which each body fell and signs of resistance help determine the scale of the battle.
But this scene was baffling, even to the highly experienced Tetis.
Slashed, pierced, crushed, or dead from being burned in very specific spots.
The causes of death were varied, yet there were few signs of a direct confrontation. It was a strange scene.
Traces of a one-sided battle, a scene of carnage that could easily be called a massacre. And three missing heads.
‘To crush Nostra so brutally...’
Nostra, the criminal syndicate that grew out of Ferrara.
Among the Grave, their name had only recently become known, but they had quickly risen to become one of the most famous groups.
That was because of the immense pain and fear they inflicted upon the common people.
Tetis defined Nostra as "a collection of scum wrapped in a plausible package."
They presented themselves as gentlemen on the outside, dressed in neat suits and shoes, while committing robbery, rape, murder, plunder, and kidnapping without hesitation.
A collective of criminals who acted as if violent crime were their life's purpose.
Therefore, military might was essential to unite such men and command their obedience.
In other words, a Nostra executive had to possess considerable power.
‘Who could do this to executives like them...’
...and overwhelm them?
It wasn't easy to identify the perpetrators.
They hadn't even left tracks coming or going.
"Search the area. It was a party of three or more, wielding a variety of weapons. They're masters."
Tetis relayed his conclusion to the squad.
"If you find them, ascertain their objective, but do not engage them deliberately."
"Understood!"
The Practical Division's reconnaissance team swiftly exited the building.
And Loan, who had passed through here a day earlier, was on the move again after using [Barrier of Perception] to find more tainted mana and exterminate the ones he found.
He was cutting diagonally across Ferrara, dealing with evildoers as if crossing a stream on stepping stones.
As long as he didn't stray too far from his destination—his original path—he would take slight detours to do so.
He frequently clashed with those possessing dark mana, seeking clearer information and deeper insights. And to feed Aul.
Unfortunately, there was no information about Bella, but his magical achievements were notable.
‘It's ultimately more efficient to split the Convection into smaller pieces and circulate them, rather than circulating it as a whole.’
It felt like splitting the mass into countless fine threads, then bundling them together and rotating them.
Doing so seemed to allow for more applications than when using Convection as a single entity.
He would imbue each thread with additional Level 1 spells like [Mana Cohesion Enhancement], [Pressure Enhancement], and [Surface Hardness Enhancement], sometimes combining them with magic from other elemental schools.
It was a matter of slightly adjusting their physical properties as needed, essentially controlling threads imbued with water, fire, or earth.
‘Not bad.’
So, from previously using Convection to indirectly affect an opponent's body...
*KABOOM—!*
...he could now use the properties of earth to deliver a punch-like impact from a distance.
"Kuhuk!"
Use the properties of water to slash or pierce an opponent's body like an invisible sword.
"Aargh! Fire! It's fire! Aaaaaargh!"
And use the properties of fire to cause sudden ignition.
He had become capable of more direct forms of attack.
But this was easier said than done; the process to reach that point was incredibly difficult, even for Loan.
It took a very long time to create the initial formula and then simplify it.
The very idea of splitting a conceptual mass into fine threads was nonsensical.
Actually implementing it wasn't easy, but the real problem came after splitting it.
It was like splitting his mind into hundreds of pieces and thinking different thoughts simultaneously.
But once he was prepared and his brain had adapted to the phenomenon, he could cast it much faster than the existing ranged attack spell, [Air Bullet].
The effect was powerful, and the mana consumption was nearly the same as when moving Sheville, so it wasn't a burden.
‘I need to train to split the Convection from thick strands to progressively thinner ones, to handle them as quickly and precisely as possible. And make it second nature.’
It was always like this. Once he understood something, he repeated it over and over to make it familiar.
He had to move forward step by step, so he could be satisfied with his achievements, however slow.
He decided to name it when his current training culminated in a complete technique.
A few days passed like this.
Loan punished evil, gaining insights and practicing on his own.
He would become exhausted in brief moments, then recover by feeding Aul.
Whereas before he had used the mana clumps as a means of attack, he now used them only to replenish spent mana, reducing his dependency.
Since he was feeding Aul more than he was using himself, he naturally had more time and opportunity to explore the contents of Aul's stomach.
"Aul, just a moment. I'm just going to rummage around a bit."
"Ka... Aul..."
He frequently checked to see if the properties of the clumps were generated randomly, how long it took for them to fuse inside the stomach, whether clumps of different properties could mix, if neglected clumps would eventually be digested naturally, and how long that process took.
Of course, he didn't neglect their conversations either.
Aul was always the same.
A conversational partner who put his mind at ease. It was also fun to watch Aul's reactions to his jokes.
"You haven't been coming right away when I call you lately. Even though you love it when it's time to eat."
"Aul?"
"Yeah. You used to appear after two or three footprints, but lately, it's been five at a minimum, and last time it was even six."
"Aul..."
"No, I'm not scolding you. I was just curious. That's why I asked."
"Aul."
"Ah, so there's a concept of distance in that place, I see. Does that mean you're going farther than before?"
"Aul!"
Aul said it was still wandering somewhere between the human world and the demon world.
But after eating Bifrons, something had changed.
"Looking for a gate? What gate?"
"Aul."
"This is the first I'm hearing of this. You never mentioned it. Why didn't you say anything?"
"Aul?"
"Then again... I guess I never asked about anything besides the stone. So, you're saying the sound has gotten louder lately?"
The reason for wandering 'that somewhere' had changed from a vague feeling that it was what it should be doing, to being drawn by a sound that seemed to be calling it.
The sound had gotten a bit louder recently, so it was venturing farther to find the source.
He wondered if the use of the word 'gate' was an unconscious expression stemming from the idea of separate worlds.
In that respect, what Aul said connected with the confession he had extracted from Bifrons.
The words the demon had intermittently spat out.
‘A way to summon demons. Secret arts, a gate, a passage, a key...’
Bifrons, who had possessed a human, was collecting the secret arts of various families.
Could it mean that one of these secret arts contained the location of a passage connecting the demon and human worlds, the gate blocking the way, or perhaps the key to open it?
And Aul, once a demon but now a good one, was instinctively searching for that gate as well.
Piecing together Bifrons's fragmented words and Aul's comments, this was Loan's understanding.
It had been a conversation meant simply to relax, without any particular intention, but it felt like he had stumbled upon crucial information.
"Aul. Next time, if you hear anything special from that sound, or if you find a gate while wandering, you have to tell me before you go in. You used to come out even when I didn't call. Got it?"
"Aul!"
Aul was loyal to Loan's words above all else, so he could be trusted.
Loan, back on the road.
Although he had made some progress in increasing the destructive power of Convection itself, he couldn't speed up his search for Bella.
The world was in too much turmoil.
The dark beings caught by his Barrier of Perception were everywhere, and it wasn't hard to come across disasters presumed to be their handiwork.
People being chased, the injured left unattended, children crying for their lost parents.
No matter how busy he was, he couldn't just turn a blind eye. Loan did not forget his duty as a member of the Union.
In a certain village where a faint scent of the sea lingered in the air.
What made it different from the other places he had passed through was that there were many survivors, and the culprits who had attacked the village lay dead on the roadside.
The groups in suits that Loan had been cleaning up whenever he saw them.
The men called 'Nostra' were all dead, impaled by something both sharp and blunt.
Loan helped an old man who was clearing debris from a half-destroyed house nearby and asked about the situation.
"What happened here, sir?"
"Are you from the Union?"
The old man glanced at Loan's clothes and asked.
Fatigue and dust covered his wrinkled face.
"Yes. I'm Loan, a Runner from the Faith Division."
"Should've come sooner."
"I'm sorry."
There was nothing more to say.
The responsibility for failing to do his duty. There could be no excuse.
"Still, we were lucky. We were about to be slaughtered like dogs by those bastards. It's a miracle it only ended like this."
He said everyone in the next village, adults and children alike, had been killed. Loan had seen it on his way here.
"It seems there was a fight. Did the villagers do this?"
"As if we have that kind of strength. We resisted, of course, but it was like throwing an egg at a rock. A few young men died, and it was about to turn into a massacre."
Amid the chaos.
A woman had walked through the middle of the village with incredible composure.
"She didn't seem like a noble, but it was hard to see her as a commoner either. Maybe a little older than you."
"Curly hair and dark skin."
"Yes. Do you know her?"
"I'm chasing her. So she was the one who fought Nostra."
"Those bastards weren't the type to leave someone walking by so calmly alone."
A man who had been harassing the woman as she walked confidently, taunting her and lifting her clothes with his sword, was struck down in a single blow.
Without a weapon. The woman punched a hole through the man's heart with her hand.
"I'd never seen anything so gruesome."
The woman blocked most sword strikes with her arms and killed the Nostra members one by one, stabbing them with her hands.
Without saying a word, without smiling or getting angry.
With a face as expressionless as a doll's, she killed all the village attackers and then passed through the village just as calmly as she had arrived.
Without a single glance at the people.
"It can't have been long ago."
"Not even half a day."
Loan subtly glanced in the direction the woman had headed.
At this point, it was certain.
Bella was on her way to Rhodos.