Chapter 40
Chapter 40. The First Secret Plan (4)
When the unconscious Serena woke up again, the first scene she saw was an ominous altar.
An altar probably built from piled bones.
An unidentifiable magic circle drawn on top of it.
Even an old man with a spider beard kneeling in prayer.
"Ah."
She should've just stayed unconscious.
What wealth and glory was worth waking up for?
No.
She couldn't give up on life like this.
Right now the old man was distracted, absorbed in prayer.
If heavenly luck followed, maybe she could slip away?
"You're awake?"
However, Serena's hands and feet were fixed to the wall with thick shackles.
The moment the chains moved and made a heavy sound, the old man opened his eyes.
"I've just finished preparing too."
"U, uh... uh..."
The old man smiled brightly and placed his finger on Serena's cheek.
Perhaps her tongue was paralyzed with fear—words wouldn't come out properly.
But this was the last chance.
The final opportunity to persuade this old man and return home.
What should she say to stop this madman?
"Um, um, excuse me, sir..."
"Mm?"
"What's going to happen to me now?"
"Didn't I tell you earlier? These cute spiders will pass through your ear canal into your brain..."
"Nonono, I remember that! So... am I going to die now?"
"Are you afraid of death?"
The old man's eyes softened gently as if handling a naive granddaughter.
"Being born as prolifically as weeds and withering as fleetingly as fallen leaves—that's humanity's fate. You're getting a special opportunity. A soul offered as tribute..."
"Um, then... how about you being offered as tribute instead of me, sir? I'll send you off wholeheartedly."
"..."
"I still have many things I want to do. Hehe..."
The old man showed a flustered expression as if hearing such a proposal for the first time in his life, but fanaticism wasn't something that could be broken with a three-inch tongue.
"No more nonsense, come here. It won't hurt."
"Eek! Eeeeeek!"
The old man's beard scattered fwish and crawled along his fingertips.
The small spiders were about to pass over Serena's goosebump-covered cheeks and enter her ear canal.
Ah, she was going to die helplessly like this.
The ambition to continue the family line and be reborn not as a first-generation noble but as an emerging noble.
The desire to someday become a noble who could live arrogantly and speak loudly.
It would come to a futile end here.
She'd devoted her whole life to success and advancement.
Unexpectedly, it wasn't that regrettable or disappointing.
The weight of the dream she'd tried to achieve even at the cost of her life wasn't that heavy before death.
The regret that sank in her chest and remained without flowing away was of a different kind.
She missed her family.
Her caring father and dignified mother, her brother who always caused trouble, even the workshop uncles who'd worked day and night under Serena.
They'd probably be very sad.
Why hadn't she cherished them more, spent more time with them?
Why had she struggled desperately for recognition in the vain social circles, wearing a fake smile?
Instead of being cooped up in the workshop fiddling with machines, she should've just spent a bit more time with them.
'How foolish...'
Why did these thoughts always come when it was too late?
Tears rolled down Serena's cheeks drip drip.
—Clunk
"Excuse me."
The door suddenly opened.
The old man immediately became furious.
"Who is it! To interfere at this crucial moment! I said no one should enter!"
The space was so dim that she couldn't see properly.
Serena lifted her tear-blurred vision, trying to find the owner of the voice.
"Sorry, you look busy."
Jurgen.
It was his voice.
At the same time, goosebumps more prickling than carbonation rose on her entire body that had drooped with resignation.
'Why was he here?'
'Could it be, had he come to rescue her?'
Serena denied her own thoughts.
That couldn't be.
This was the outlaws' headquarters shoved in some corner of the Demon Realm.
Moreover, a powerful criminal organization with even a priest-level Dark Mage.
The profit didn't match diving in to save just one person, Serena.
Besides, wasn't Jurgen just an excellent engineer, not a Knight or Alchemist?
Serena came to an answer after rational calculation.
"J, Jurgen, were you... captured too?"
"No, I came to rescue you."
The spider that had been burrowing into Serena's ear canal was retrieved and returned to the old man's beard.
"Hehe, living long, I see all sorts of things. How did you get all the way here?"
The Order's priest, Gerak, let out a hollow laugh.
Those Black Fang Gang bastards who couldn't properly catch even one intruder making it all the way to the altar.
The youthful recklessness of appearing alone before an Order priest.
The fact that the reason for all this was merely 'to rescue someone'—it was all utterly ridiculous.
"You saw the Order as easy too. Well, it has been quiet for a while."
As if shooing away dust, Gerak waved his hand and raised 'Divine Power.'
Unlike naturally existing Magic Power, the Dark Mage's power is obtained by offering tributes.
As evil as it was, miracles could be manifested with even small amounts of Divine Power.
The miracles of fallen divinity.
"Become dust while savoring your insolence."
Skitter-skitter-skitter—!
The cabin's shadows, the corners where sight didn't reach.
A 'gap' connected to the abyss opened.
A swarm of tiny spiders pouring out like a flood—from Serena's perspective, it looked like darkness flowing and spreading.
If one swung a sword or magic, they could block it.
But an attack from poisonous spiders swarming from all directions was like having to block formless liquid without spilling a single drop.
"There was a commotion because of an uninvited guest. My apologies."
The moment Gerak, naturally thinking he'd dealt with the uninvited guest, was about to turn around.
"What I hate most is cleaning. It's nothing but troublesome."
Hot heat rose behind him.
"No matter how much I clean, they keep appearing from somewhere—absolutely tiresome."
A translucent barrier was spread around the body of the man who should have been rolling on the floor being devoured by spiders.
The spiders that rushed toward their prey burst into blue sparks pop pop and scattered the moment they hit the barrier.
"Especially Dark Mages, trash like you."
A strange light appeared in Gerak's black eyes.
He realized the man in the blue flames that licked the air and burned space was no ordinary person.
Long experience told him.
At minimum, that man wasn't facing a Dark Mage for the first time.
That meant he was an expert who'd killed at least one Dark Mage.
"How glibly you speak, mere mortal."
Gerak took out the altar 'Spiderweb' and chanted a curse containing bizarre tones.
"Oh, Gluttony that devours all things, I offer your feast."
The lumpy 'Spiderweb' writhed and spewed dark red light.
An unpleasant wave that corrupted even into the soul overturned the man's body, carving the 'Mark of Tribute.'
With this, that man was recognized as a tribute to the 'Devourer' that Gerak served.
This was an irreversible curse.
Wherever he was, whatever he did, the space around him would be twisted and connected to the abyss.
Holes in clothes, small cracks in the floor, even under the shadowed bed.
As long as 'gaps' existed around him, those places would become passages endlessly vomiting billions of minions.
Until the marked tribute was presented to Him. Forever.
Now that it had come to this, Gerak decided not to take unnecessary risks.
"It's only regrettable that I must abandon such a pure and beautiful supreme tribute."
It wasn't a fight worth that.
He'd carved the mark on the threat, so he just needed to transfer body and mind with the curse carved into the Black Fang Gang and leave.
If he was an Alchemist of that level, he'd also make a decent tribute.
"Instead, I'll at least offer you as tribute..."
Gerak, who had been smacking his lips regretfully, looked at the man and froze.
More precisely, he trembled looking at the leather bag the man was holding.
An indescribable presence forcibly grabbed Gerak's perception.
Through the slightly opened zipper gap, one eye was peeking out looking at Gerak.
That alone was enough for Gerak to recognize the identity of what was contained in the bag.
He couldn't help but recognize it.
"Y, you... wh, what is that... Where did you get that..."
The existence inside that bag...
It was a fragment where the glory of Him who greedily devours all things was partially manifested.
It was an entity of a different class from the 'minions' Gerak handled.
Then the man must be a bishop of the Order, no, at minimum someone of cardinal rank.
A chill as if his body temperature had dropped 5 degrees.
Gerak felt heart-gripping fear.
Gerak immediately bowed his head and trembled.
"A, are you... a brother of the Order?"
—Fwoosh
The answer didn't come in words.
Instead, a sharp straight line pierced through the defenseless Gerak's crown.
An ordinary human would die instantly, but the lifeline of a Dark Mage who'd given up being human was tougher than a leech.
Gerak's entire body, his brain split, crumbled into a swarm of spiders starting from the head.
'No, he's not from the Order. There's no way I wouldn't know. I don't know what's what, but I'm running!'
He'd made arrangements.
A fox digs two burrows, but a Dark Mage digs dozens.
He'd carved the 'Mark of Transfer' on a Black Fang Gang member.
Gerak's spirit and flesh would devour the host and be newly resurrected.
Gerak, searching for the most suitable host through the spiritually connected Black Fang Gang members to transfer his body.
Realized that not a single spiritual signal was responding to the technique.
'There... aren't any? Not a single one...?'
Just 30 minutes ago, at least 40 of those vermin had been gathered at this hideout.
He hadn't felt anything wrong until now.
Did they all die without exception?
In just 30 minutes?
'Aah...'
Gerak, standing before the mortality he'd tried so hard to deny for two hundred years, felt a shudder.
'...I'd forgotten.'
The series of executions was chillingly familiar in method.
Heretical combat methods beyond expectation.
Cold rationalism that didn't consider honor.
Mechanical preparation that didn't allow even a shred of counterattack.
In the scattered thoughts that lost their destination, Gerak muttered like a scream.
'I, I must inform the Order!'
He had returned.
Retired from active duty.
The Order's enemy.
The Dark Mage slaughterer.
At the same time, the kingdom's hunting dog who was most like a Dark Mage.
Hanbin Ainsworth.
***
Penelope, who'd come from early dawn to be stubborn, turned back quickly.
"Anyway, when luck follows her, she acts like she owns the world."
Rex snickered recalling the morning's events.
In the end, there wasn't a hair's worth of evidence or justification, and all that young lady did was furrow her brow and spout useless bravado.
By now she must be running around trying to find evidence, but unfortunately.
The connection between the Black Fang Gang and Rex was faint.
The Black Fang Gang probably didn't know they were working under Rex either.
They'd only know that an unidentified noble was using tremendous funds to employ them like mercenaries.
Would he have taken on a dangerously unpredictable Order member as a collaborator without such safety measures?
"Heh heh heh, the information extraction must be finished by now."
Now once he received Y&P's precious business secrets, game over.
The market share war would end in Keystone Company's perfect victory.
"These fucking bastards, when's the contact coming?"
Surely by now the contact planted inside the Black Fang Gang should be sending the classified data.
No contact was coming.
It was probably nothing.
So Rex waited.
But no matter how much he waited and waited.
The contact never came.