Chapter 58
Chapter 58
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 58
Chapter Title: Salasuma's Darkness 6
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Azadin had said he'd let him go, but it seemed Coben couldn't bring himself to believe it. A perfectly natural reaction. Why would anyone spare a wererat? Even if they released him now, he'd just go off somewhere, devour more humans, keep breeding, and cause endless trouble.
Their souls had already been offered to Mezzeri, so unless they had an extraordinarily strong will of their own, they had no choice but to live out their lives as beasts.
"That's why... I only told you to run. I never said I wouldn't catch you."
Azadin picked up the sword in his hand and hurled it at the fleeing Coben.
*Thwack!*
The sword spun through the air and sliced into Coben's calf.
"Argh!"
A chunk of flesh was carved away, and blood gushed out in torrents. Coben slipped in his own blood and collapsed.
"You bastard! You said you'd let me live!"
"I told you to run. I never said I'd let you live."
"Attacking me from behind after telling me to run—you should be ashamed as a herald! You're cursed after all!"
"Sorry about that. But I didn't lie, did I?"
Azadin approached him and picked up the sword from the floor.
"Oh, I just lied about one thing... I'm not sorry at all."
He plunged the blade into Coben's throat, ending his life.
*********
Originally, Azadin had planned to lure out the enemies and pick them off one by one. But things got complicated because of Coben, a traitorous herald among the wererats. He'd already stirred up the enemy, so he couldn't back out now.
If Azadin returned to the ambush point to call Midiam or Ismail and the others, the wererats might scatter in the meantime. There were still plenty of presences left inside this underground warehouse. If he didn't subdue them all, Mezzeri's apostles would multiply like a snowball.
"No choice, then. If only I still had the Emperor's Voice... I could've asked him to call them."
Azadin had been stripped of his herald status and lost contact with the Emperor's Voice... In trying to pick off the enemy individually, he'd ended up dispersing his own forces unnecessarily.
Azadin ventured deeper into the liquor storeroom. It was a veritable slaughterhouse inside. Humans had been butchered and devoured, and some areas were set up to transform them into "Mezzeri's blessing"—wererats.
In a massive operating theater, wererats wielding surgical scalpels and bone saws were vivisecting people strapped to tables when they spotted Azadin at the entrance.
"Everyone okay?"
Azadin shouted, and the wererats realized who he was.
"An intruder!"
Sacrifices only screamed—they never calmly asked after people's conditions like Azadin did.
"Kill him!"
A wererat charged at Azadin with a bone saw.
"With skills like that?"
Azadin ducked low, slapped the ground with his hand, and unleashed a kick.
*Thud!*
With a single blow, the wererat's body flew backward and crashed into the operating table.
"You little—!"
Another wererat rushed in, dual-wielding surgical scalpels.
*Slash!*
Without even looking, Azadin swung his sword, cleaving the opponent's jaw from below upward. But...
*Crack!*
The blade shattered in Azadin's hand.
"Damn. Swinging a long weapon around so recklessly."
The tip had caught on one of the scattered operating tables and snapped.
"Our chance!"
The wererat lunged, but Azadin parried with the halberd head clutched in his hand.
*Crunch!*
The wererat's forearm vanished below the elbow. Azadin had jabbed straight with the halberd head, severing it clean. He followed up by smashing it into the wererat's face—its own long, jagged fangs became its undoing.
The fangs snapped under the blow, curling inward to pierce the roof of its mouth and burrow straight into its brain. The grotesque wererat crumpled in ruins.
"Ugh!"
The operating tables kept Azadin from wielding a sword effectively, but it also made it hard for the wererats to surround him.
"Damn, we thought the noise from upstairs was them fighting among themselves again, but it's an intruder."
"Let's jump up and surround him."
"Who's gonna do that?"
"You first?"
One wererat hastily leaped over an operating table to attack, but Azadin delivered a crisp roundhouse kick to the one on top.
The wererat tumbled onto the table from the leg strike, and Azadin's halberd head came crashing down vertically—like a martial artist smashing bricks with a knife-hand strike, or rather, gripping the halberd head to cleanly decapitate it.
"Squeak?!"
"Ugh..."
Only then did the wererats realize Azadin was no ordinary foe. They weren't the hunters here—they were the prey.
*********
It didn't take long to clear out all the wererats in the operating theater. Yet Azadin leaned against the wall, gasping for breath.
"Hah... hah..."
He'd expended too much stamina.
Azadin wasn't completely invincible. The Phoenix Gale Moon Kazas Manual mimicked magic through martial prowess. The rampaging mana from the fragmented, incomplete grimoire combined with honed muscles to unleash devastating power—but at the cost of enormous physical drain.
He'd kept up a calm front in front of the enemies, but now that they were all dead, there was no need to pretend. Azadin panted heavily, straining to recover his strength.
"P-please, spare us!"
"Eek!"
While Azadin caught his breath, the refugees bound to the operating tables writhed and begged for salvation.
"Ah, yes. Got it."
Azadin severed the ropes on their table, freeing them, and handed them the bone saws and scalpels the wererats had just been using.
"Use these to protect yourselves for now. Have you seen a noblewoman in a red satin dress, by any chance?"
"A w-woman, you say?"
"We're not sure, but if it's women... they're probably further inside..."
The rescued people trailed off. It seemed even worse horrors lay ahead.
"Hm. Hold on!"
Azadin twisted and tore lumber from the operating table, pulling out wooden shafts.
"Tie the scalpels or saws to these with rope to make spears. Short weapons won't cut it against wererats. I've killed the ones around here, but more could come from anywhere."
"Ah, okay..."
"Stay put here! I'll check further in."
"B-be careful. There are even more monstrous things inside!"
"Um, if I may ask... who are you?"
"I'm the Emperor's Herald."
"Huh?!"
"A h-herald?"
The people he'd just saved panicked upon learning Azadin was of the herald race. The soulless blasphemer, the Godslayer who stained his hands with divine blood, was an ill omen no matter how much he helped them.
"It's fine. I'm not here to harm you."
Ignoring their cold reaction, Azadin pressed onward.
*********
Deeper in the basement, alongside the meat storeroom, were massive rats—calf-sized, saddled, and ridden by malformed wererats. Kin born twisted from the womb, blessed by Mezzeri.
"Squeak!"
"Kill."
The walls held women who seemed to have birthed these kin, now nearly dead. Azadin made the sign of the cross at the horrific sight.
"Three Great Archangels... guide these poor souls."
Even called the soulless blasphemer, he pitied their spirits as he advanced. Mezzeri's kin charged on their giant rats.
Calf-sized rats, their riders brandishing huge meat hooks at Azadin before leaping. Their small frames unleashed unimaginable jumping power.
But...
*Shing!*
Azadin hurled something—a scalpel from the operating theater. It pierced the airborne kin's eye and face. Gripping the halberd head, Azadin dashed forward, unleashing the Phoenix Gale Moon Kazas Manual.
*Dusk Gale!*
Azadin's body slipped between the charging kin and rats.
*Autumn Wind!*
A powerful horizontal sweep. Azadin slapped the ground with his hand, hurling his body in a spinning kick that smashed the small kin and rats. He retracted the leg, tightening the spin and accelerating.
The kin in his attack radius were flung back, slamming into the walls—like autumn leaves in the wind.
"Kee... eek!"
The kin rose again with astonishing vitality, but blood spurted—*pssh!* The scalpel he'd thrown earlier had been flung by the Autumn Wind, stabbing deep as they rolled.
"Krwek!"
The kin collapsed. The rats lunged at Azadin, but with scalpels embedded in their bodies, a light kick to the wounds proved fatal—the injuries too deep to endure.
Azadin felled the kin and approached the women bound to the wall.
"Are you alright?"
"Ugh..."
"Ah..."
Half were already dead from exhaustion; few survivors were unscathed. No woman in a satin dress.
*Kidnapped last night, so she's probably not here. Good lord. This is horrific.*
Azadin cut the ropes of the survivors, helping them retreat, and called to the people outside. Those from the operating tables had fashioned spears by binding scalpels to shafts as he'd suggested, but they hesitated at his call.
"W-what is it, Herald?"
"Take the surviving women here and protect them."
"W-what about you?"
"I'll go deeper."
"......"
The people were baffled by Azadin's actions.
*The herald race—Godslayers, soulless blasphemers.*
*Fighting Kurt divine monsters like this?*
*Rescuing people?*
*Is he trying to deceive us?*
Yet they could all instinctively sense Azadin's sincerity in worrying for them. There was no pretense in his actions—only consistent zeal to achieve his goal.
No one could fake that.
And even if it was an act?
It had saved them, after all.
*********
At the deepest part of the liquor storeroom stood massive barrels. Beneath them, swarms of rats gnawed at corpses, while people bound with ropes dangled atop the barrels.
The dark storeroom had one light source hovering in the center: a single glowing sheet of paper. A copy of the Divine King True Scripture shone in midair.
"Mmm."
A knight clad in the plate armor and surcoat of the Rescue Knights sweated coldly, forming complex seals toward the Divine King True Scripture as he approached.