Chapter 255: Jus Maleficii.

"I’d like to use my immunity on this case."

Ferris paused on the other end of the call.

"Uhmm, Mr. Kael, I don’t think you understand." Ferris chose his next words carefully. "Your immunity can’t apply to something like this. You didn’t just kill one person. You wiped out an entire Guild. We’re talking about hundreds of people."

As he spoke, Ferris couldn’t help but sigh internally.

He genuinely felt sorry for Kael.

The young man had only just become an S-rank Hunter. His future should have been brighter than most Hunters could ever hope for, yet this incident threatened to put a serious stain on his record before he had even gotten the chance to establish himself.

S-rank Hunters did possess certain privileges. Their status granted them a degree of immunity from some legal complications, allowing them to avoid punishment for actions that ordinary Hunters might have been prosecuted for. However, that immunity had limits.

This wasn’t a petty crime.

It wasn’t even a case involving a few murders.

This was a massacre involving hundreds of Hunters.

Ferris could only imagine the punishment Kael might receive if the Association decided to pursue the matter seriously. Even with his rank and connections, there were some lines that could not simply be ignored.

Kael listened quietly, then sighed.

"Guess I’ll have to play that card."

Ferris frowned.

"What card?"

Kael’s voice remained calm as he answered.

"I plead Jus Maleficii."

Ferris froze for several seconds upon hearing Kael’s words, then his voice finally came through again, noticeably more serious.

"What do you mean?"

"I plead Jus Maleficii," Kael repeated. "I managed to procure quite a lot of evidence regarding the Dark Viper Guild while dealing with them. That should do it, right?"

Ferris didn’t answer.

His mind had already begun turning over the implications.

Jus Maleficii.

A fancy term commonly translated as the Law of Wrongdoers, though the more accurate interpretation was closer to the Vigilante Law.

It was one of the oldest laws established by the Association.

Long before the current era, even before the Apocalypse and the Awakening changed the world, humanity had never been short of criminals. The arrival of the Apocalypse only made the situation worse. With Hunters gaining abilities far beyond ordinary humans, the consequences of criminal activity became increasingly severe.

But alongside the criminals were their victims.

People whose families had been destroyed.

People who had lost everything because of someone else’s actions.

People who carried hatred and anger toward those responsible, yet had no way to obtain the justice they believed they deserved.

Some of those victims were Hunters themselves.

And that created a problem.

A Hunter possessed the strength to hunt down the person who had wronged them, but the law prohibited them from doing so. At the same time, the authorities were often unable to provide the kind of justice those victims wanted.

As the frustration grew, many began turning their anger toward the very organization that was supposed to protect them.

The Association.

In those early years, the consequences were devastating.

Some victims eventually became criminals themselves. Others went even further, becoming villains and turning their weapons against the Association. Some of those people had survived long enough to become infamous figures who still hunted Association personnel to this day.

The Association had learned the hard way that simply forbidding people from seeking revenge wasn’t enough.

Eventually, after suffering enormous losses, they introduced Jus Maleficii.

The principle was relatively simple.

When two parties became involved in an altercation that resulted in injuries, property damage, or even death, the law could be invoked under certain circumstances. If the person responsible for the retaliation could provide substantial evidence proving serious wrongdoing by the other party, the severity of their punishment could be reduced.

Depending on the evidence and the severity of the crimes committed by the other party, the sentence could even be completely waived.

It was a law designed to give victims a legal path to retaliate against those who had wronged them.

But despite its age, Ferris had rarely seen it used for anything serious.

Most cases involved minor altercations. A dispute that escalated into violence. Someone who went too far while dealing with a known criminal and later invoked the law after providing evidence of the other party’s crimes.

Jus Maleficii existed for situations exactly like that.

But never had Ferris expected someone to invoke it after wiping out an entire Guild.

Ferris slowly composed himself.

"Mr. Kael, do you understand what law you’re invoking and what it entails?"

"Yes."

Kael’s response came without hesitation.

"I managed to snag quite a bit of juicy evidence while dealing with those bastards."

There was a brief pause before Kael continued.

"I was originally planning to use it to negotiate for more rifts from the Association if my immunity had been enough to get me out of this."

Kael sighed.

"But it seems I’ll have to give it up to save my ass."

Ferris remained silent.

His expression had completely changed.

The casual tone in Kael’s voice made the situation even stranger.

Kael was young. To many people, that alone might have made him seem somewhat inexperienced or even naive. But Ferris had already interacted with him enough times to know one thing.

Kael was not stupid.

If he was willing to invoke Jus Maleficii over something this serious, then he had to believe the evidence in his possession was enough to support it.

The question was, how much evidence did he actually have?

And what exactly had the Dark Viper Guild done?

Ferris’s gaze hardened as countless possibilities passed through his mind.

He had initially called Kael because he wanted to determine whether the faint earth aura at the scene truly belonged to him.

He hadn’t expected to walk away from the conversation with a completely different problem.

Now he needed to know exactly what kind of evidence Kael had obtained.

Because for Kael to confidently invoke Jus Maleficii after committing a massacre of this scale, the crimes of the Dark Viper Guild had to be far more severe than anything Ferris had imagined.