Chapter 72
The following evening.
A ruin on the outskirts of the slums surrounding the only city on Saria Island.
"..."
I stared quietly at the ruin with sunken eyes.
The enemy's hideout, discovered through the tiny smoke clone I had attached to the suspect.
I sat down on a small chair nearby where I could conveniently rest my backside and pulled a cigar from inside my coat, then began cutting it.
Scritch.
Ting!
Before long, I lit the cigar with a lighter, and its aroma, carrying an amplified citrus scent, began tickling my nose.
Creak.
Seated on a chair so uncomfortable it could easily be called scrap, I crossed my legs and simply spent time savoring the cigar's aroma.
One. Two. Three.
As time passed, cigars began piling up in my portable ashtray.
In proportion to their number, the sky, which had gradually filled with nothing but a reddish sunset, began sinking into darkness.
Along with the gradually fading light, the surroundings became steeped in perfect darkness, without a single light anywhere.
Except for one thing: the light of my cigar.
Click.
This was now my eighth cigar.
I had wasted about thirty minutes per cigar, so roughly four hours must have passed.
"Phew..."
I gazed blankly at the star-studded night sky, watching the cigar smoke billow from my mouth.
Feeling indescribable pleasure at the sight, as though my soul were leaving my body, I slowly rose from my seat.
Creak.
An unpleasant noise sounded as I rose from the abandoned chair.
But even more chilling was the fact that I could not hear a single person's voice anywhere around me.
What was it again?
Before coming here, I had befriended someone from the slums and heard the story of this place. Was it that, for the past five years, homeless people around here had been disappearing, making even the slum residents reluctant to come here?
"Hmm."
Five years. Five years, huh...
Clomp.
Muttering that inwardly, I slowly began walking toward the ruin in front of me.
A space that felt familiar, if familiar was the word.
It was exactly the same place as the last ruin recorded in the recording magic circle engraved in Richard's retinas.
After slowly looking around, I began to retrace Richard's movements exactly as I remembered them.
I searched the surroundings, walking all the way to the deepest part of this dust-filled ruin, and at the end found the only patch of floor without dust on it.
'Definitely.'
Richard moved like this, right?
With the cigar still between my lips, I began concentrating mana into one finger.
Clang!
Before long, when the mana-infused finger touched the dustless floor, the floor began to vibrate with the sound of something being unlocked.
'I see.'
An underground door slowly opening.
But I did not move right away. Instead, I smiled faintly at the foreign mana that had strangely burrowed into my mind.
I finally realized why Richard had fallen into a state resembling hypnosis.
It had been slowly eroding my mind ever since I entered this ruin.
But this erosion was not direct.
If it had been, Richard could not have been so helplessly subjected to cognitive alteration.
The trigger had been the final act I performed: concentrating mana into my finger and touching the floor.
'I wondered why Richard had done that.'
Now I understand.
Information etched into my mind upon entering this ruin.
[To unlock it, something infused with mana is required.]
There had been no other cognitive alteration.
It was cognitive alteration that abandoned everything else to etch only this one piece of information into my mind.
That was why Richard, unaware of the enemy's ability, had fallen victim to it.
He had been toyed with by the enemy's ability all the way through the final act that could be called the trigger.
In other words.
'This ruin itself is one enormous trap.'
Clomp.
Muttering that inwardly, I began descending underground.
The overpowering smell of blood was enough to make me dizzy, piercing even through the smell of my cigar.
But I paid it no mind and yanked open the door leading underground.
Creak.
Along with the unpleasant noise, the smell of blood began to dominate the surroundings to an extent incomparable to before.
Just how many people had died here?
It was an overpowering stench of rotten blood, enough to make me wonder that.
"Wow..."
Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. Blood.
If I were to describe the underground scene, that would be the right way to put it.
There were no people—not even corpses.
There was nothing here but blood covering the surroundings.
Squelch.
There was so much blood that every step produced an unpleasant sound and left it smeared across my shoes and black suit pants.
And in the center of that underground chamber.
A red-haired man, his hair the color of blood, stood quietly beneath a massive sphere of blood, gazing up at it.
He was the culprit who had killed Richard.
I slowly walked toward the center of the underground chamber.
"What the hell."
"..."
"What are you thinking?"
Squelch.
Good grief, there was so much blood that it was a tremendous nuisance.
Perhaps because I was wearing a suit—already a stiff garment to begin with—the dense liquid clinging to it made it terribly uncomfortable to wear.
"You spend about four hours smoking cigars and playing around in my territory without anything better to do."
"..."
"And even though you knew it was suspicious, you still came straight underground."
Someone might say this.
That I was moving far too leisurely right now.
My subordinate had been attacked. After coming all the way to Saria Island for blood vengeance, wasn't I moving far too slowly?
It was a valid question, and a very natural one at that.
But you see.
"You..."
What could blood vengeance be?
Showing overwhelming power and driving the enemy to despair?
Or inflicting the same torture Richard had suffered on the enemy?
Ah, of course I intended to do both.
Blood vengeance was only natural when someone had treated my subordinate that way.
But.
Wasn't it too easy to end things with just that?
"Me."
This enemy had mocked and tortured my subordinate, then desecrated even his corpse.
"Are you mocking me..."
"Mocking? Puhahaha hahaha!!!!"
I could not stop laughing.
"Hahahaha!!!!"
I laughed frivolously, filled with ridicule and mockery, like a clown.
The sound of my laughter began echoing through the underground chamber.
"Hahahaha!!!"
"..."
"Hahahaha... Phew. Yes. Pfft. Yes, mockery, mockery..."
After laughing heartily, I raised my head as though I had never laughed at all, looked at the man like a piece of trash, and spoke dryly.
"Of course."
If the enemy had been an ordinary opponent, I might have charged straight in without regard for anything else and killed him with overwhelming force.
My two powers, [Smoke Manipulation] and [Restriction]. If I used those two powers properly, I could deal with most opponents.
But the bastard standing before me was not a being with the mindset of an ordinary criminal or an ordinary human.
"If anything, I'm the one who wants to ask."
Smoke began spreading across the floor from my mouth.
"Did you think you could touch my subordinate and get away with it?"
The enemy had been frowning and thinking deeply at my words, but now his voice began to rise as though he had finally remembered.
"Subordinate? Subordinate... Ah! You mean that guy?"
"Hnn..."
"I put him in a salt container and sent him off the island. Looks like he was delivered safely? That's right, I'm the best."
An impulsive, arrogant enemy who played with other people's lives like toys.
"Isn't that a bit much?"
Give such an enemy despair?
Through overwhelming force?
No. The approach had to be different.
"I even carefully preserved his head in a salt container and sent it out, and you pull a prank like this? Sob, sob."
What I wanted was not the shallow despair of being crushed before overwhelming power.
I wanted.
"Isn't that a bit much?"
"Yeah. A prank? Your thinking is so one-dimensional that it's actually funny."
"What?"
"I saw the pathetic trap hidden in this ruin. It was so shoddy it made me yawn."
I wanted him to be mocked, desecrated, scorned, despised, cold-shouldered, slighted, belittled, ridiculed, ignored, and treated with contempt.
Like that.
I wanted to see him collapse and despair amid a wave of negative emotions.
"What?"
But I had thought deeply about what I needed to do to make that happen.
A thrill-seeking, hedonistic murderer.
Murderers like this tended to place great importance on their territory.
Moreover, they regarded their targets—in other words, their victims—as prey, and considered being caught according to their predetermined rules the greatest pleasure of all.
If so, then first smashing all of that head-on would be the first step toward the despair I wanted.
"Didn't you hear me?"
I looked at the enemy, who was scowling at my words, with contempt, as though he were something vile and worthless.
"That pathetic ability of yours."
Belittling his ability.
"Your thoughts, experiences, and goals. Every last one of them is frivolous and utterly pathetic."
Mocking his thoughts, experiences, and goals—all of them.
I could still feel it.
The fluctuations of power characteristic of a mental-type ability user trying to bewitch me.
"You're still trying, aren't you?"
Cognitive alteration.
"!!!"
What was there to be so surprised about?
Did he really not think that sending us a head with a recording magic circle embedded in it would let us discover his ability?
How...
Truly, so very...
"Could there really be such a stupid, arrogant bastard?"
I laughed.
Hoping the enemy would feel humiliated by my laughter.
"You bastard..."
Perhaps my thoughts had reached the heavens, because the enemy's face began twisting once again.
The muscles in his face contorted into an expression filled with displeasure, giving rise to a small sense of pleasure in my chest.
"How dare you, how dare you insult me!!"
"Puhahaha!"
Wow. Even the way he talks sounds like a third-rate villain.
Ah, for the record, I hadn't laughed intentionally.
It was simply that seeing him say the sort of cliché line a villain would utter with that horribly mangled face made me laugh involuntarily.
But perhaps my appearance only provoked him further, because all the blood in the underground chamber began vibrating violently.
"How dare you mock Azak the vampire!"
[I won't forgive you!!!]
Rumble-rumble-rumble.
At the same time, spikes like harpoons began shooting at me from all the blood filling the underground chamber.
"Ha..."
What, a vampire?
Boom!
Azak's attack collided with the smoke defense I had spread out, and the underground cavern began screaming amid a massive shock wave.
It seemed the underground foundation could not withstand Azak's attack.
The surroundings began to shake little by little.
Blocking the brick fragments and heaps of dirt raining down on me with smoke, I looked at Azak as he joined the blood around him to his own body.
"Did you say vampire?"
Funny.
I had never seen a vampire, but one thing was certain.
"Are you a human pretending to be a vampire?"
That was a human.
A human who had awakened a supernatural ability, at that.
[You bastard!!!!!]
Could those words have struck his sore spot?
Azak, whose appearance now suited a monster made of blood, began roaring.
"Hahaha!"
I laughed mockingly at Azak's roar, as though I were watching some comedy.
A famous saying from my previous life came to mind.
They say a comedy from afar, a tragedy up close.
But the comedy before my eyes was still a comedy even up close.
Right.
What was tragic about watching a man eroded because he could not control the supernatural ability he had awakened?
It was so funny that merely laughing was nowhere near enough; I was practically bursting into uproarious laughter.
So.
“Hahahaha!!!!”
I laughed.
So that it would sound all the more insulting to the enemy—and for my subordinate, who had been tortured like a toy and died at this bastard's hands.