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Chapter 130

The inside was unexpectedly bright and cool. It was distinctly different from the ant nest in Werner’s memory or the iron mine where I had to fight Gawain. However, I couldn’t tell if this coolness was due to the low temperature inside the building or if there was another reason…

Of course, the sudden breaking of the barrier made a surprise attack impossible, and the lobby was filled with Black Round Table troops ready to intercept intruders. But… well, it didn’t really matter.

“Black Wing Destruction Palm, First Form – Severing Heaven.”

“Phantom Magic – High Card.”

“Lightning, crawl like a snake.”

After all, they were up against us. To put it bluntly, they were just trained civilians trying to stand against a Heavenly Demon, the continent’s greatest thief, and an Archmage. The synergy of a martial artist, thief, and mage was an absurdly overpowered combination, no need to explain further.

The difference between us and those grunts was like the difference between a sewer rat and a grizzly bear. Unless they were on some weird drugs, they had no chance of beating us.

“This is just a one-sided slaughter.”

I stepped over the piles of corpses rolling around. Honestly, these trash weren’t even worth being careful about where I stepped.

“…Well, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve done a one-sided slaughter, so it’s not that surprising.”

To be fair, even back in the days of *Draghinty Fantasy 1*, unless it was a boss-level demon, most fights were depicted as easily won. Of course, as games often do, the actual difficulty didn’t always match the story’s difficulty.

“Shall we head underground now?”

A sudden, unwanted anxiety brushed through my mind. The children who had disappeared from the capital. Even if it was the Black Round Table, moving that many children to another region would have been noticeable. But there were no sightings in other regions either.

Yet, the facility we were now standing in was located in a wilderness not far from the capital. Moreover, it was sealed with a barrier, making it hard to access and an ideal place to hide “something.” If I were… no, even imagining it was disgusting, but if I were one of them… I would have locked the children here.

But what exactly were they planning to do with those children? Subject them to the same hellish training I went through? If that were the case, it would be better. If so, we could rescue them, return them to their families, and send those without families to trustworthy facilities, which I could sponsor.

But… there was a hypothesis I desperately wanted to deny. The hypothesis about the true nature of this facility, which had to be kept secret, abduct children, and remain near the capital.

No… it couldn’t be. I wanted to believe I was just overreacting.

If someone asked me what the cruelest thing in the world is, how would I answer? Massacre? Dictators? Murderers? War? Disasters? Certainly, all of those are disgustingly cruel… but if someone asked me, I would answer: reality.

Reality is always crueler than you can imagine. It’s that bastard that mocks you by presenting the one possibility you desperately want to deny, right in front of you, while you beg for anything but that. That bastard always brings along war, dictatorship, murder, rape, and disasters.

And now, that bastard was right in front of me… shaking children twisted by human experiments.

A child dried up like a mummy, a child grown enormous like a bear and screaming, a child with half their body turned into a monster, a child crushed into an indescribable shape, repeating only the words “kill me”…

I’ve seen all sorts of things in this world, but… I couldn’t hold back and vomited at this sight. It wasn’t because those poor children were disgusting. It was because the Black Round Table, who did this to them, and I, who failed to protect them, were disgusting.

“Ugh…”

Squar patted my back, and the Heavenly Demon Old Man began examining the children’s conditions. Yes… even if they look like this now, if we focus on treatment, they can return to normal. It’ll cost a fortune, but the money Werner saved up should be enough.

But reality was still cruel, and the Heavenly Demon Old Man, after checking the children’s pulses, delivered a devastating fact.

“Unfortunately, treatment is impossible.”

At those thunderous words, I instinctively grabbed the old man’s collar.

“What do you mean, Old Man… treatment is impossible? You’re an expert in this kind of thing. How can you not know? This isn’t some kind of tasteless joke…”

“Calm down. I’m not frivolous enough to joke in a situation like this. If we compare the children to water, they’ve now become green tea. It’s easy to turn water into green tea, but turning green tea back into water is impossible.”

Then what are we supposed to do with these children? Leave them like this? Or send them back to the capital in this state? Either way, I knew it would be painful.

Then there was only one answer. But I… couldn’t bring myself to choose that answer. However, the Heavenly Demon Old Man had already made the decision, and Squar nodded with a bitter expression.

“Youngest, you still struggle with these kinds of things.”

“If it’s too hard, we’ll handle it. Just turn your eyes and ears away. We’ll take care of everything and come back.”

The Heavenly Demon Old Man clapped his hands to draw the suffering children’s attention. Then, in a voice more serious and sorrowful than usual, he spoke.

“In that state, just breathing must be unimaginably painful.”

The old man concentrated magic at his fingertips. Squar shuffled the cards she brought and began spreading them out.

“So we’ve decided to grant you peace in the form of death… If you have any objections, resist in any way. We won’t kill anyone who doesn’t want to die.”

“I’m sorry we came too late, kids…”

“At least for the end… we’ll make it painless. May you live happily in your next life.”

The children didn’t resist. Instead, they welcomed death with expressions of relief, as if peace had finally come.

I could give them nothing. Neither salvation nor peace.

I could only stand there helplessly and watch their end.

I couldn’t bear how pathetic and foolish I felt.

“About the children in that room…”

The Heavenly Demon Old Man stroked his beard and continued.

“No matter how you look at it, the traces left on those children’s bodies aren’t from this continent… They resemble techniques from the East, where I’m from. Corpse manipulation, acupuncture, and curses, all mixed together.”

“Then there might be martial artists among the people involved in this facility?”

“Yes, though that’s not all… I suppose I shouldn’t be overconfident and should face this properly from the start.”

There were too many variables. There was a spy in Werner’s old party, and now there were martial artists in the Black Round Table’s hideout we were about to search. If someone heard this, they’d think I was drunk, but reality was different.

“And as for who the traitor is…”

If that person condoned all this or at least knew about it and did nothing…

“If we catch them, I’ll kill them. No matter who it is. Just tolerating this kind of messed-up facility is enough for a death sentence.”

Squar then took out a handkerchief and wiped my forehead. Her soft, delicate touch helped cool my anger a little.

“Yeah, no matter the reason, betrayal is betrayal. They won’t die easily.”

“You’re right. No matter what, a traitor must be dealt with severely.”

With that conversation, we fell silent. The frozen air didn’t thaw, and the cool interior air merely tickled our cheeks.

As we continued descending deeper, a fork in the path appeared.

“Hmm… One of these is definitely a trap.”

They wouldn’t have made a path leading to a children’s ball pit, after all.

The Heavenly Demon Old Man stroked his long beard and said.

“We’ll have to split up. Wasting time checking every path together would be inefficient.”

Both Squar and I agreed with that opinion. The problem was, who would we send alone…?


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I Possessed the Heroine’s Teacher

I Possessed the Heroine’s Teacher

여주인공의 스승으로 전생했다.
Score 7.8
Status: Completed Type: Author: Released: 2021 Native Language: Korean
Someone is reincarnated as a villain. Another person is reborn as an extra. But I was reborn as the master of the protagonist, destined to die while protecting her.

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