Chapter 228

“Aaaaaaargh!”

The Consul slammed his fist down on the desk, then swept everything on top of it onto the floor in a single furious motion. He had already been in a rage, but the report that the resistance had stolen a massive shipment of mana stones pushed him completely over the edge.

A woman whose clothes and skin were both pure white scolded him lightly. “You should have finished listening to the report before you killed her.”

The Consul had blown a hole straight through the female officer’s forehead when she came in to deliver the report.

“She said it was definitely a mage...” the woman said before letting out a quiet sigh.

This idiot never listens to me. Did I mess with his head a little too much? He’s more broken by the day.

The woman nudged the female officer’s corpse with her bare foot and she rolled it over. The limp, lifeless movement of dead flesh against her bare skin eased her mood slightly. Savoring the unpleasant but strangely satisfying sensation, the woman sank back into her thoughts.

There isn’t anything to think about... It has to be that bastard.

The damned Regenian mage had capitalized on Nepas’s screwups and shoved a massive middle finger into her carefully laid plans. Here he was again messing with her attempt to fracture and tear apart Regenians. Every single one of her schemes had failed, and as a result, the Cult of Ruin had taken enormous damage.

Because of those losses, Laves, the light of the Great Star that descended upon the world, had weakened, and the Cult of Ruin’s entire range of activities was now severely restricted. Moreover, all of the agents they had planted inside the Altera Empire had been cut off. In the end, that too was because of that damned Regenian.

If all had gone according to plan, I could have torn him apart properly by now...

If those who had received Laves’ grace directly, along with the Six Saints themselves, stepped in and used their power, they might buy the dying Bella even more time to cling to life. Even so, she wasn’t sure whether that would delay the day the world would be drowned in dark crimson any further.

That bastard is Regenian anyway. Even if I kill him, he will just come back to life before long. From a cost-benefit standpoint, it is completely pointless.

If she was going to consume Laves’ power and fate, then she needed to make a decisive move when the time was truly right. However, that didn’t mean she intended to simply back down.

A person is only human if they actually use their brain.

There was no need for the cult to step in directly, nor was there any need for the Six Saints to move either. She had planned to use this place as an incubator to slowly nurture strength over time, but at this point, it would have to be used as a disposable tool instead.

One of the Six Saints, Palakia, approached the still-seething Consul and brushed her fingers along his jaw. “You are not planning to just let those traitors run free, are you?”

The Consul’s eyes went hazy. “Of course not. I will make them understand with their bodies just how foolish it is to defy me in this country.”

“That’s the answer I’d love to hear. You are wonderful. But catching mosquitoes that keep running around and being a nuisance is very troublesome. Do you have a plan?”

A beat later, the Consul muttered, “I will... order the military to raise alert levels, strengthen the border lockdowns even further, and then... identify those who are c-cooperating with them and—”

His words started to stutter, like a machine glitching.

“That’s right, that’s right. Doing only such obvious things will not solve this situation. You need to go hunting more aggressively.”

“Y-yes. You are right.”

The Consul began to tremble. The stubborn pride of a dictator resisting control was struggling to push back.

“Oh my. Are you trying to resist me?”

When Palakia leaned in close and poured her beautiful voice into his ear, his eyes grew unfocused once more.

“There, there. Beasts only need to obey their master’s words. Don’t think about this so politely. Round them up at random, interrogate them, and if they don’t answer, just kill them. There are plenty of ways to make use of them.”

“They are all still labor, though.”

Annoyed that he was still talking back, Palakia slapped him across the face. The impact snapped his head to the side with brutal force. If he hadn’t been a relatively strong man, his neck would have broken from that blow alone.

“Mobilize the military and wipe out that fucking mage and the bugs who are helping him. Of course, the ones who would only turn into meat scraps if you sent them to the battlefield have other uses. Just gather them, in order, at the locations I specify.”

Without using Laves’ power, and without using my own power, I can still get a lot done.

That was what it meant to use one’s head. That was what it meant to truly scheme.

“There is no point in trying to save resources anymore, since we can’t use this place for long anyway. From now on, I am going to make very thorough use of this country. All you have to do is cooperate quietly. Just clean it up nicely and place it on the table so I can use it. That isn’t difficult, is it?”

The Consul’s eyes showed signs of regaining clarity. Clicking her tongue, Palakia brought a small sachet to the Consul’s nose. It was an extremely potent fragrance that clouded a person’s reason.

“Come to think of it, that means I don’t really need to bother maintaining you carefully anymore, do I?” Palakia grabbed the Consul’s chin and turned his head from side to side as she spoke. Then she shoved him to the floor. “Don’t worry. You will die before you get dementia anyway. So until then, at least have some happy dreams.”

The Consul began to gasp for breath. Drugged and affected by magic, he began to hallucinate. In his hallucination, Palakia stood before him, her completely naked body gleaming pure white. Like a pig in heat, the Consul forced himself up and began to press his body against Palakia’s.

“Ahahaha. Mr. Consul, that isn’t me. That is a disgusting Chimera made from a bug and a pig.”

What he thought was a peerless beauty was nothing more than a hallucination. The one he was panting over, the one he believed to be Palakia, was actually a grotesque Chimera that she herself had created.

***

The resistance led by Do-Jin continued its string of successes day after day. The military did deploy elite units to counter them, but there were clear limits to how well they could respond to a force that struck quickly and disappeared just as fast. It was like trying to catch smoke with their bare hands. A small, elite group that moved lightly was difficult both to block and to track.

Of course, the government wasn’t simply sitting back and taking it. In order to root out collaborators of the counterrevolutionary terrorists, large numbers of people were rounded up and taken away.

“Wait! Where are you taking me? I really don’t know anything!”

Most of them were dragged to some large building. What awaited those who cried and begged to be spared was nothing but curses and beatings.

“Move, and stop making this harder than it has to be.”

“Aaaagh!”

The iron clubs shattered bones every time they were swung. The soldiers beat the captives indiscriminately and locked them inside a large room. Once they finished their assigned task, the soldiers quickly left the area. Then, the priests of the Cult of Ruin appeared.

“Looks like we got some fresh ones today.”

After roughly checking the age and gender of each captive, one of the priests activated a Magic Circle, extracting the life force and souls from everyone in the room.

The people who had been trembling in fear without knowing what was about to happen to them suddenly screamed in unbearable agony. Having one’s life force and soul torn out while still alive was pain on a completely different level from anything ordinary torture could inflict.

“Good,” a priest murmured, satisfied at how smoothly that went.

Although it didn’t take long at all, extracting souls this way caused significant losses. If they had taken time and care, the amount that could be extracted from a single person could be equivalent to anywhere between thirty and fifty people.

However, neither the priests carrying out the work nor Palakia, the one who had ordered them to do so, cared about efficiency. Bugs laid eggs, and those eggs became bugs that would come to lay more eggs.

The plan to maintain Rumanus as a long-term production base had already been abandoned, so they were using everything recklessly and discarding it just as easily.

“The soldiers we summoned have arrived,” reported one of the grunts.

The priest in charge of the site nodded. “Tell them to start the sorting process.”

The soldiers, who believed they had been summoned for duty guarding the Consul’s Residence, were simply told whether they needed to go to the building on the left or the building on the right.

“Please go to the building on the left.”

“Uh... what is this place, exactly? We were told our unit was being assigned to Consul’s Residence security, but this is pretty far from the residence.”

“This is a waiting area. Please enter the left building and wait.”

“Ah, yes...” Figuring that orders were orders, the soldier entered the left building. Inside, there were already many soldiers who had been sorted there before him.

Very few people were directed to the right. Only those with large frames and superior physical condition, selected after having their blood drawn and put through a series of tests, were headed there.

“Please go to the building on the right.”

“Why did you take my blood?”

“It is a necessary process for selecting members of a newly formed special unit. Please proceed to the right building.”

Although they felt uneasy about the mechanical repetition of the explanation, the soldiers who were sent to the right building carried a faint sense of excitement. They wondered if they were about to receive special treatment. In a sense, they weren’t wrong.

“It looks like all of today’s sorted units have arrived.”

“Good. Then begin,” said a priest.

Smoke began to fill the right building. Inside, the soldiers collapsed one by one as they were anesthetized.

“Handle them carefully. Lady Palakia hates it when materials are damaged.”

On the other side, from the left building, screams echoed endlessly. They were the screams of those being stripped of everything that could be taken: HP, mana, souls, everything.

“Compress the dead ones at once to extract their blood. Sort the remaining flesh separately. She said all of it has its uses.”

“Yes. Understood.”

Palakia was carving the Rumanus Republic into pieces to forge weapons. There was no need to make them last long.

Keeping Chimeras alive for extended periods required great effort. However, if she didn’t care whether they eventually became cancerous masses and died after cellular mutation, she could mass-produce powerful specimens as much as she wanted.

I hope you like my gift, Mage.

After ten days of slaughter so wasteful it bordered on madness, Chimeras finally began to be deployed to the front lines.

***

The republican army grew increasingly ineffective in its responses. They kept engaging in meaningless skirmishes and stacking up victories that looked impressive on paper. The more that pattern repeated, the more uneasy Do-Jin became.

If I have been pressuring them this much, there should be some kind of reaction by now.

There was no way the enemy would just keep taking hits forever, which meant they had to be quietly planning something. If he could get information from Altos, that would be ideal. Right now, though, trying to make contact carried too much risk.

If they were discovered, Altos and everyone cooperating with him could have their throats slit. If Do-Jin had enough strength, he would prefer storming in, smashing everything, and ending it all in one go. However, that wasn’t an option yet.

Hah... I’ll think about it later. Let’s deal with what’s in front of us first.

With that thought, Do-Jin prepared for battle. Today was like any other day for him, another round of cheerful terrorism. But something felt off.The supply base they were planning to raid was unnaturally silent.

As they drew closer, the stench of blood filled the air. Just then, the wall of the building detonated outward. Stone and debris blasted into the open, mixed with torn bodies of dead soldiers that went flying in all directions.

“Krrrraaaaaah!”

A monster came out of the rubble, letting out a thunderous roar.