Chapter 283
"Mmmpf! Mmmmmmph!"
A dim, empty house.
A man in his twenties, covered head to toe in scars and tattoos, looking thoroughly delinquent, sat tied to a chair with a gag in his mouth and both hands bound.
He couldn’t speak with the cloth stuffed in his mouth, but his eyes were wide open and he was making a racket, stomping his feet on the floor.
In front of him stood Maelyn, arms crossed. She had been quietly enduring with her eyes closed, but finally, she lost her patience and shouted.
“Ugh, shut up! Sit still!”
Despite her scolding, the man’s thrashing only intensified.
“Over here!”
Just as things were about to get violent, Kamibarez arrived with Simon in tow. Maelyn turned around and said,
“You’re here?”
“What’s going on? Who is this guy?”
In response to Simon’s question, Maelyn began to explain.
She had been going around the village, asking residents about the Saint candidate ‘Sasha’, but most of the villagers either claimed ignorance or avoided her, thoroughly ignoring her attempts.
Except for one person.
—What? Why are you looking for that girl? Who the hell are you?
The man had suddenly turned serious.
When Maelyn didn’t answer, he pulled a dagger from his coat and lunged at her.
Judging by his appearance, he must have thought he could easily overpower her, but he ended up subdued within seconds and now sat tied to a chair.
‘Could he be connected to the people who took Sasha?’
It seemed Maelyn had scored a solid lead. Simon approached the man with a satisfied expression.
“B-be careful, Simon!”
“It’s fine.”
Then he untied the cloth gag from the man’s mouth.
“You f%$@&@ bastards!!!”
He immediately began to curse.
“Damn brats think you can mess with me?! Do you know who I am?! I’ll suck your eyeb—”
“And who might you be?”
Simon asked.
He asked so casually and naturally that the man nearly answered out of habit before catching himself and hardening his expression.
“Like hell I’d tell you!”
Simon stared at him silently, then turned around.
A few villagers, curious about the commotion, had stopped to watch.
“Excuse me!”
Leaving the man alone, Simon quickly approached the onlookers.
Startled, the villagers flinched and tried to walk away, but Simon kept pace and caught up with them.
“Do you know who that man is?”
He asked as he walked alongside them, but got no response.
Simon quickly changed the question.
“We’re looking for a girl named Sasha. If you know anything, even something small...”
“Sasha?”
One of the villagers’ faces darkened.
“That freak? Good riddance if she’s gone.”
A freak.
That was a blunt way to put it.
Simon made a mental note of how the villagers perceived Sasha, then asked again.
“Do you know why Sasha disappeared?”
“Ugh, why are you bothering us? Who the hell are you?”
They were turning the question back on him now.
Letting it slip that Keyzen was involved would be bad. And more importantly, this was Neutral Zone territory, beyond Keyzen’s influence. He couldn’t invoke any authority to force an investigation.
[Heh heh! Looks like you've gotten yourself into something annoying, boy.]
‘I just need to use the adult method Dick taught me.’
[Adult method?]
Simon dug into his pocket.
“Oh, I had this in here.”
He opened his palm and revealed a single gold coin.
The "adult method" worked instantly on the adults. Their eyes gleamed with greed, and Simon smiled inwardly.
For the record, Silver and Gold—the currency of the Dark Alliance—were valid even in the Neutral Zone.
“Just tell me about that man.”
Simon pulled out another gold coin. One of the men glanced around and whispered in a low voice.
“Don’t tell anyone I said this. He’s part of a gang. A pretty big one around here.”
“Oh? What gang?”
“They call themselves the Sentinel Gang. They’re big enough to have a combat unit of necromancers who’ve unlocked their Cores. Our village is part of their turf.”
Simon added a third coin on top of the two.
“So the Sentinel Gang took Sasha. Is it safe to assume that? I won’t ask for anything else. If you agree, just nod.”
The man nodded with a stiff face.
Simon paid the three gold coins and headed back to the scene where the gang member was being held.
“How’d it go?”
Maelyn asked. In the meantime, it looked like the gang member had said something else unpleasant, as Maelyn had him grabbed by the collar.
“No good. He won’t say anything.”
The gang member chuckled.
“Of course not! This territory belongs to us! The villagers are on our side too! If you know what’s good for you—”
“Oh, just now, you said this was your turf, right?”
Simon replied, casually.
“Thanks for confirming. There are many gangs, but it’s well known that the Sentinel Gang controls this area.”
The gang member’s face hardened.
“So, then. Why did the Sentinel Gang take Sasha, and where?”
“I don’t know!”
“You little—! I swear to God—! You’re really not gonna talk?!”
Maelyn couldn’t take it anymore and jumped in again, grabbing him as the two started to argue.
Simon took a small step back and turned around.
Just in time, he saw Dick approaching. Simon raised his palm in a “stay back” gesture, then gave a signal using his eyes and hands.
The two had been partners throughout their time at Keyzen. Dick immediately understood Simon’s message, gave a confident thumbs-up, then disappeared somewhere.
A few moments later—
“Hrrrm, sorry I’m late.”
Dick reappeared dressed as an old man, draped in a weird sackcloth robe.
‘...Wait, is that a disguise or is he just actually an old man now?’
Dick was wearing a biotechnical mask covered in deep wrinkles. Even with his own face showing, he looked like he’d aged decades.
Add the ragged clothing and the rows of skulls hanging from his body, and the image was far from the sleek, modern image of a trendy elite necromancer.
He looked like a truly classic necromancer.
“What the hell is this geezer—?!”
Dick walked right up and forcefully pried the gang member’s eyes open.
“Mmm-hmm.”
The man froze up, overwhelmed, and fell silent.
“What was it we said we’d do?”
At Dick’s question, Simon played along without missing a beat.
“He’s refusing to talk.”
The man flinched and began trembling.
“You brought a torture technician? Doesn’t matter! No matter what torture you use, I’ll never…!”
“Silence!”
Dick shouted wildly.
“Don’t insult me. Torture is such a crude method.”
Mimicking the voice of an old man with eerie realism, Dick pulled out a pair of scissors.
Snip, snip!
Without hesitation, he snipped off the man’s bangs. The cold metallic sound sent chills down the gang member’s spine, and his expression steadily hardened.
Next, Dick took out a blood potion from subspace and dabbed it onto his fingertip, smearing it across the man’s forehead.
“Do you like it?”
Dick gestured toward the window.
Reflected in the glass, the gang member saw the red dotted line drawn across his forehead.
It was a target.
Without understanding why, he felt goosebumps crawl across his entire body and trembled.
“You see, the information you get from a man under torture isn’t necessarily accurate. The most reliable method is—”
Dick pulled a surgical scalpel from a case and held it up.
“To crack open the skull and examine the brain.”
“!!”
Dick’s necromancer act was disturbingly convincing. Even Maelyn and Kamibarez, who were merely watching, looked unsettled.
Dick pulled out a thick needle and began inserting it into the gang member’s forehead. The needle sank deeper and deeper, more than halfway in, making the man break down and scream in genuine terror.
“You, you crazy bastards! You think you’ll get away with this in the Neutral Zone?!”
“Don’t worry. Once I remove your brain, your body will be fed to the stray dogs.”
Dick pressed the scalpel against the man’s forehead. Blood dripped down, staining the man’s vision red.
At last, overwhelmed by primal fear, the man shouted,
“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you everything!!”
But Dick didn’t stop. He drew a long line with the scalpel.
“Please! I’ll tell you everything I know, just stop that thing!!”
Finally, Simon grabbed Dick’s hand and said,
“Let’s hear what he has to say first.”
In the end, the gang member spilled everything.
Apparently, the Sentinel Gang he belonged to had received a high-paying request to kidnap and bring in Sasha.
Being a low-level member, he didn’t know who the client was, but the client had known that Sasha lived in this village, her exact address, and even that the village was under the Sentinel Gang’s control.
The destination was said to be the Haldun Mountains.
“No need to cut his brain open now.”
Simon said, straightening his back.
“It’s probably best if you don’t talk about us. Then again, if your gang finds out you leaked info, they might try to kill you anyway.”
Tears and snot streaming, the gang member nodded.
And so the four of them left the building. Dick ripped off his biotechnical mask with a puhah!
“Pffft! That performance was fire, wasn’t it?”
Simon tapped Dick on the head in approval.
Meanwhile, Maelyn and Kamibarez kept a bit of distance as they walked beside them.
“Hey, commoner. Don’t talk to me today. That was creepy.”
“...Dick, I’m scared.”
“It was just acting, I swear!”
Dick said with a wounded look as he stuffed the rags into subspace.
Just then, Seiyur suddenly appeared from the sky in front of the group.
“H-how did it go?!”
His voice was full of anxiety and desperation.
“What about the priests?”
Simon asked back.
“I threatened them, and they scattered. Seems they didn’t have Sasha.”
“That’s exactly right! Agent Seiyur!”
Dick suddenly jumped in.
“At first, I was suspicious when you told us to ignore the priests and investigate the villagers, but you were right all along! It wasn’t the priests, it was the gang that kidnapped her! You figured that out ahead of time, didn’t you?”
For a moment, Seiyur seemed dazed, but then he quickly smiled confidently and brushed back his bangs.
“Of course! I suspected as much from the beginning.”
“Knew it!!”
The two looked completely in sync, but Simon let out a hollow laugh.
‘Well, those priests were probably fake anyway.’
After all, the traces of that holy explosion in the alley, where the ground had shattered, had completely vanished.
“So! Now we just have to chase the gang that took Sasha. What should we do?”
At Seiyur’s words, Maelyn gave him a puzzled look.
“You’re the agent. You’re the one who should be giving orders.”
“Ha, haha! W-well, if I just give you the answer, that wouldn’t be proper training. You all need to put your heads together and figure out our next move!”
He was smiling, but the twitching at the corner of his lips made it obvious. It felt like he was screaming, “Hurry up and figure it out yourselves!”
Simon let out a small sigh and opened his mouth.
“I found a map among the gang member’s belongings.”
He unfolded it and pointed to a specific spot with his finger.
“The gang probably doesn’t have the resources or knowledge to create a teleportation circle. If they’re climbing the mountain, they’d have to use a carriage. The destination is the Haldun Mountains, but there’s nothing there but the mountains themselves. It’s likely the gang plans to meet the client there to exchange Sasha for money. And those clients are probably—”
“People from Efnelle, right?”
Simon nodded at Maelyn’s remark.
If their intel is that good, they likely already know that Keyzen is moving. So they sent mercenaries ahead to secure Sasha and are now preparing the trade in the Haldun Mountains.
“The ideal solution is to use a teleportation circle, get to the Haldun Mountains ahead of them, crush the gang, and rescue Sasha.”
Simon stopped there and turned his gaze toward Seiyur.
Seiyur quickly waved his hands in refusal.
“As I said before, teleportation is difficult. The coordinates could be leaked to Efnelle, and, uh...”
Seiyur rattled off excuses, but in all likelihood, he simply didn’t have the authority. Even if he did, using a teleportation circle would be expensive, even for Vengeance. Only groups like Keyzen, the Vanillas, or the Ivory Tower could afford it.
“……”
It seemed Maelyn and Kamibarez had caught on, as their gazes toward Seiyur were now full of suspicion.
“In that case, another method.”
Simon said, pretending not to notice and pointing to a river on the map.
“We head upstream and intercept them midway. The gang probably hasn’t started climbing yet.”
“Go by river? But where would we even get a boat...”
Simon looked at Dick. Dick grinned and chuckled.
“Looks like it’s time to check the mana engine on my boat!”
Superb.
When are we getting more free chapters?
Thanks for the new chapters