Predation – 6
Even after erasing all traces of the elves that were there, I couldn’t control my trembling. His voice had been brief, yet it lingered in my mind. Even though his magic had reached this place through that dying elf, only long enough to speak a few words, the pressure I felt was no joke. The difference between us was too great to start congratulating myself on my growth. That wasn’t the only problem, either.
“I can’t remember.” The demon who lost its name. Those who abandoned or betrayed me and acquired the status of an elf. Then, even if I hadn’t seen his true appearance, I should be able to call his name. But I couldn’t. I could feel a refusal to recall his name in my mind. It wasn’t an issue with my memories; his name was hidden from the world.
“Damn it. This is ridiculous.” It seemed that I used to wield nonsensical powers in the past, but not anymore. It had been difficult enough to defeat Marcocias, but this L was way beyond me. But perhaps I could guarantee myself victory against the demons under his command, if not him yet.
‘No, maybe the other demons aren’t like Marcocias…’ Perhaps he wasn’t protecting all of them. I had to hope so.
‘Anyway, it’s clear he’s aware of me. What should I do? Will he move himself? When I meet him, I’ll run away, that’s all.’ If he were really afraid of me, he wouldn’t leave me be, not when I’d fallen this far. It was a given to remove all risk factors.
‘But why?’ It shouldn’t be beyond him to appear right before me as soon as he sensed me. He said my name and recognized my existence, so why? Perhaps, why not? Was I so weak he decided to ignore me? But he did say five years was earlier than he thought. If I had been weaker than he imagined, he wouldn’t have said that. ‘Damn. I’ve been preparing, but that didn’t go as I figured it might. What the hell am I missing?’
“Captain!” I heard a voice calling to me. The place where I stopped the elves wasn’t that far from the fort, so the group was just catching up to me. Cain ran without thinking to hide his massive eleven-meter tall body. It didn’t really matter now that we’d been caught by the enemy leader.
“Why do you look like that?”
“Did you kill all the elves here?!” Lee Chan-yu and my sister were paying attention to different parts of the scene. I just shrugged.
“I spoke to the last boss for a while.”
“You make such serious things sound like a joke. Are you okay?” Lee Chan-yu’s sharp eyes examined me. My younger sister, on the other hand, immediately ran up to look at me.
“You mean the elves’ chief? Are you injured?”
“We just talked for a bit. The real problem starts now.” I let out a sigh as I looked around at the strangely quiet surroundings.
“I think they’re not moving.”
“As soon as you start, you’re caught by the enemy. It doesn’t make sense to face them.”
“Shut up.” I brought the group together. Whatever the case, what I needed to do would only happen faster. It would be advantageous to me if he didn’t move right away.
“We’ll start right away. Stay alert, we’ll be out for a while.”
“Okay.”
“Huh!”
[Woo!]
[I’ll stand in the front.]
“It’s okay, it’ll work.” I activated the record. A terrifying amount of mana, now a fairly manageable amount, was absorbed into the record to create a black shade in front of our eyes. Cain jumped forward as if he had been waiting, followed by the entirety of Rebellion and my sister into the shadow.
[Do I really have to go? I might die.]
“If you ask one more time, you’ll want to die.” I tossed Katsuragi into the shadow, like a parent putting their child in the car.
How stupid I was, how stupid indeed, how L had already begun to move before he noticed me. He, who is more arrogant than anyone else on this Earth, who doesn’t want anyone to be above him, has no way to admit his fear or weakness.
As expected, things didn’t go so well.
The humans who had taken over the power of Chaos Soul from the elves were mainly those who had been leading human society before the Great Fusion. Not only were they strong, society as a whole leaned upon them. Even in Korea, many hated One Flag but were reluctant to try and fight them. Many despaired and wondered who would protect Korea now that they were gone. Therefore, I decided to exercise my strength without considering the future of those in Korea.
“You can’t do that!”
“From now on, it’s the difference between facing danger now or doing it later while they pretend to be an ally. If we wait, their strength will increase.”
“…” My sister was unable to respond to my clear response. Meanwhile, I spread my hand towards Cain and began using my magic. It was reinforcement magic that I could apply to him.
“Cain, go.”
[Leave it to me.]
As with Lee Minha, the person we were after stood at the forefront of his country’s protection. At that moment, the stealth magic hiding Cain was released, and his huge body appeared from nowhere.
“Ahhhhhhhh!”
“What is that?!”
With his extraordinarily large form and my magic backing him up, Cain was akin to a god of destruction. It was like watching a sci-fi movie, fierce scenes playing out in front of my eyes again and again.
“Brother, bystanders will get caught up in this!”
“There are few people there who have nothing to do with Chaos Soul. And those few people will be removed from the frontlines.” I couldn’t kill civilians who were only working as grunts for the company. All I wanted to do was remove everything related to the Chaos Souls from Earth.
“Fast, stealthy, and strong. We’ll move those unrelated to the Chaos Souls in a single step. Our allies will take care of it.”
“Your allies? Who’s that?”
“The spider that you said was cute, Solas. It can use Ubiquitous to form a hundred of itself and move them at the same time.”
“Liar!” Whether or not she thought I lied, Solas just reported that the work was done.
“Cain, there are no civilians left. Start!”
[No need to tell me!]
Cain, who had been playing around like he was the giant monster in a disaster movie so far, activated all of the mana in his body and jumped in earnest. The whole building collapsed with his fist, with the humans trying to escape becoming little more than smears of gore. I clicked my tongue as I looked at the overwhelming display.
“It’s worse than in Korea. There were more than a thousand twisted souls in this area.” Even after the Great Fusion, this was still the sight of a population powerhouse with more than five-hundred million people.
“Save me!”
“We’ve done nothing wrong!” People shouted loud in despair at the sight in front of them, unaware we were just killing Chaos Souls. No doubt, the elites would be sneaking out somewhere behind such a prominent building. We left Cain to run wild and caught those trying to run away, using the many monsters under Lee Chan-yu’s command.
[Ahhhhhh!]
“A Hellhound?! In such a place…!”
“Ha!” The siege network made up of monsters gradually narrowed, bringing the guild members into one place. They used the power of the soul to counterattack, but my Echo expanded to absorb all of the soul power. Soon, that power was converted into the power of destruction, smashing through our attackers.
“Do you know who you’re messing with?!”
“I know, I know.” I made Mireina and Lee Chan-yu fight the stronger ones and focused on the weak ones myself. My role in this battle was mainly to just sit back and watch so our party could grow. There was no one like Lee Minha around, and I wondered if news from Korea had spread. Although some elites remained, the head of the guild was hiding. Still, as long as they had the energy of a Chaos Soul and existed on this planet, they couldn’t escape from me. Mireina and Lee Chan-yu were mopping up the helpless enemies now, and Katsuragi was solely focused on preventing outsiders from intruding. His massive stores of mana and his dislike of killing made him surprisingly good at that role.
“Ahhh.” My sister could not speak before the sights she saw, but she didn’t try to stop us. She just stared at me with tears in her eyes.
“I haven’t been convinced…! I’m different from you, I can’t distinguish things like twisted souls!”
“Soon, you’ll encounter things that you can confirm with your own eyes…it won’t be pleasant, though.” And, actually, it came soon. On that day, we were raiding an abandoned factory owned by the same guild we had been raiding just prior. It was a space prepared to take care of absorbing human souls. It was stained with dirt, dust, and blood. Solid iron bars with scratches on them filled the space, making it look more like a prison than a factory. My sister was looking down on that reality. To be honest, it was new to me as well. I had never considered how disgusting the actions a human could take just to become a Chaos Soul.
“What is this…?”
“Was this in Korea?” I mumbled over the mass of machinery installed in the factory. Countless mechanical devices lined up side-by-side; they were torture devices activated by mana. I could feel familiar mana from them, that of undead magic.
“It must be a device to bind the human soul to the Earth.”
“They want it to remain on Earth…?”
Only
“How do you think ghosts occur?” I reached out, using Space Destruction to crush the machinery. I spread it out in all directions, leaving no traces of this horrible factory.
“Resentment, anger and despair: it artificially creates those things, destroys the body, and then absorbs the soul before it can fully form into an undead. This is the process of converting a human into a Chaos Soul.” They must’ve stopped their operations when we raided their HQ. There were still traces of hastily disposed materials.
“…Whoo.” It wasn’t a scene I wanted to look at for long, and I forced the party away from there.
“Captain.”
[…Next one?]
I silently picked up the record and set the next target. My sister now fought alongside us.
One week before the Devil’s Night, we had erased all traces of Chaos Souls from three countries.
The evolution of Lee Chan-yu and Mireina was almost upon them.
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