As the white smoke from the brazier grew thick enough to fill the hallway, Shadin cautiously opened the door.
As white smoke billowed into the room, which had no light at all, something stirred inside.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh.”
A foul stench as if all the filth in the world had been gathered together, mixed with the smoke, and the person lying at Shadin's feet groaned in fear.
“It won’t hurt much.”
Shadin winked and rolled the man into the room. The man, consumed by an unknown fear, rolled his eyes here and there.
As the white smoke slowly cleared and his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he saw something stuck to the corner of the ceiling.
It has whitish wings, a plump body, slender legs, and unusually large, bulging eyes that glow red even in the dark.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh.”
The man wanted to run away somehow, but his paralyzed body would not listen.
At that moment, its white wings fluttered and then disappeared into the darkness.
“Huh?”
“Where did you go? Right above your head, up there.”
Shadin, who was doing something near the door, seemed to understand the man's question and answered.
Although he couldn't see it, the moment the man's eyes met the glowing compound eyes that had turned around without him knowing, its straw-like snout pierced the man's crown.
“Yes, thanks for your hard work.”
Shadin quickly closed the door without missing a beat. There was no screaming in the room. It wasn't a lie that he said it wouldn't hurt.
Since the stray flies suck out the brain after injecting a paralyzing venom, they probably wouldn't have really hurt. They wouldn't even know it hurt because they'd already sucked out all the brains and were already dead.
Shadin shook the poison he had scraped from the room where the spawning flies were. The pitch-black liquid shook as he shook it.
“Even a baby fly can be useful.”
Shadin put the bottle down for a moment, locked the door to the room where the flies were, and double-and triple-checked that it was locked properly.
Shadin had turned one room into a large solitude jar. Akan had left behind only the most useless of the solitude jars, the scattered flies, and his own remains.
Shadin had to survive somehow, and this was the result.
He blocked all light from entering the empty room, broke the jar that contained the flies, and fed them to living people.
The flies, which had never eaten humans before and were insignificant creatures that produced paralyzing poison rather than lethal poison, gradually became more ferocious as they sucked the brains of living people. Their toxicity also became stronger.
At first, the paralyzing venom that the fly spewed out was quickly relieved by using just a spoonful. However, it has now become so toxic that it must be diluted in water before use.
It was a poison that didn't kill people but left them paralyzed and stiff for eternity.
“Soon.”
Shadin, who was checking the lock for the last time, muttered quietly. He planned to release the scatter fly soon.
Let his flies roam the capital, feasting to their heart's content, and throwing the capital into total chaos.
It would be even better if they could mate with other flies and reproduce, although he's not sure if that's theoretically possible.
“Ugh...”
As Shadin walked back to his bedroom, past the room where Henry and Smith were locked up, he stopped because of the pain in his left leg. His left leg was still covered in blisters that kept popping.
He hurried to the pot on the fireplace. He dropped a drop of poison into the boiling water in the pot, and the poison soon turned into steam and filled the room.
“Whew.”
Shadin took a deep breath. Fortunately, the paralyzing venom from the fly worked on the nerves, so it was able to relieve the pain.
Dump.
He lay on the floor, taking deep breaths. His mind became hazy, his past life and this life mixed together, his anger boiling over and then cooling down repeatedly.
The wound on his left leg, which was caused by a curse, grew bigger with each passing day, but there was no way to fix it.
If this continued, the wound would creep up Shadin's leg and completely eat away at his flesh.
“...Ugh, I can’t die alone, ugh, I can’t die alone.”
At the border of reason and irrationality, Shadin let out a bitter groan.
Cliff had stolen eight properties in the capital alone. Judith and Erne decided to visit each of them.
“This is just a piece of land. Why on earth did you buy this land?”
Tan tilted his head next to Judith.
“The royal family was planning to redevelop this area. I think he bought it then.”
Cain answered Tan's question. When they first came out of the mansion, there were only Judith and Erne.
But Erne suddenly declared that he would take Tan with him. The reason was that he was the quickest among the godmother's family members and could be of help in an emergency.
Tan, who was caught while coming out to see them off, was immediately mobilized to find the priest.
Cain followed on his own two feet. Although it was something owned by the Rhineland family, he couldn't just enter a place where people already lived.
Judith went to Cain to ask for letters from the police to enlist their cooperation.
“Search warrant? Why do you need that? I am the search warrant.”
But Cain readily followed along. The reason was that nothing was getting resolved and he was frustrated just staying in the office.
Judith did not refuse. People would listen more to the powerful Marquis of Mosley, who was favored by the Emperor and, of course, had been frowned upon due to some incident, than to the nameless Count and Countess of Rhineland.
“Why was the redevelopment stopped?”
“It was the imperialists who were pushing for the redevelopment here, and they were all ousted after the failed rebellion, so it's only natural that the redevelopment would come to a halt.”
As white smoke billowed into the room, which had no light at all, something stirred inside.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh.”
A foul stench as if all the filth in the world had been gathered together, mixed with the smoke, and the person lying at Shadin's feet groaned in fear.
“It won’t hurt much.”
Shadin winked and rolled the man into the room. The man, consumed by an unknown fear, rolled his eyes here and there.
As the white smoke slowly cleared and his eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness, he saw something stuck to the corner of the ceiling.
It has whitish wings, a plump body, slender legs, and unusually large, bulging eyes that glow red even in the dark.
“Ugh, ugh, ugh.”
The man wanted to run away somehow, but his paralyzed body would not listen.
At that moment, its white wings fluttered and then disappeared into the darkness.
“Huh?”
“Where did you go? Right above your head, up there.”
Shadin, who was doing something near the door, seemed to understand the man's question and answered.
Although he couldn't see it, the moment the man's eyes met the glowing compound eyes that had turned around without him knowing, its straw-like snout pierced the man's crown.
“Yes, thanks for your hard work.”
Shadin quickly closed the door without missing a beat. There was no screaming in the room. It wasn't a lie that he said it wouldn't hurt.
Since the stray flies suck out the brain after injecting a paralyzing venom, they probably wouldn't have really hurt. They wouldn't even know it hurt because they'd already sucked out all the brains and were already dead.
Shadin shook the poison he had scraped from the room where the spawning flies were. The pitch-black liquid shook as he shook it.
“Even a baby fly can be useful.”
Shadin put the bottle down for a moment, locked the door to the room where the flies were, and double-and triple-checked that it was locked properly.
Shadin had turned one room into a large solitude jar. Akan had left behind only the most useless of the solitude jars, the scattered flies, and his own remains.
Shadin had to survive somehow, and this was the result.
He blocked all light from entering the empty room, broke the jar that contained the flies, and fed them to living people.
The flies, which had never eaten humans before and were insignificant creatures that produced paralyzing poison rather than lethal poison, gradually became more ferocious as they sucked the brains of living people. Their toxicity also became stronger.
At first, the paralyzing venom that the fly spewed out was quickly relieved by using just a spoonful. However, it has now become so toxic that it must be diluted in water before use.
It was a poison that didn't kill people but left them paralyzed and stiff for eternity.
“Soon.”
Shadin, who was checking the lock for the last time, muttered quietly. He planned to release the scatter fly soon.
Let his flies roam the capital, feasting to their heart's content, and throwing the capital into total chaos.
It would be even better if they could mate with other flies and reproduce, although he's not sure if that's theoretically possible.
“Ugh...”
As Shadin walked back to his bedroom, past the room where Henry and Smith were locked up, he stopped because of the pain in his left leg. His left leg was still covered in blisters that kept popping.
He hurried to the pot on the fireplace. He dropped a drop of poison into the boiling water in the pot, and the poison soon turned into steam and filled the room.
“Whew.”
Shadin took a deep breath. Fortunately, the paralyzing venom from the fly worked on the nerves, so it was able to relieve the pain.
Dump.
He lay on the floor, taking deep breaths. His mind became hazy, his past life and this life mixed together, his anger boiling over and then cooling down repeatedly.
The wound on his left leg, which was caused by a curse, grew bigger with each passing day, but there was no way to fix it.
If this continued, the wound would creep up Shadin's leg and completely eat away at his flesh.
“...Ugh, I can’t die alone, ugh, I can’t die alone.”
At the border of reason and irrationality, Shadin let out a bitter groan.
***
Cliff had stolen eight properties in the capital alone. Judith and Erne decided to visit each of them.
“This is just a piece of land. Why on earth did you buy this land?”
Tan tilted his head next to Judith.
“The royal family was planning to redevelop this area. I think he bought it then.”
Cain answered Tan's question. When they first came out of the mansion, there were only Judith and Erne.
But Erne suddenly declared that he would take Tan with him. The reason was that he was the quickest among the godmother's family members and could be of help in an emergency.
Tan, who was caught while coming out to see them off, was immediately mobilized to find the priest.
Cain followed on his own two feet. Although it was something owned by the Rhineland family, he couldn't just enter a place where people already lived.
Judith went to Cain to ask for letters from the police to enlist their cooperation.
“Search warrant? Why do you need that? I am the search warrant.”
But Cain readily followed along. The reason was that nothing was getting resolved and he was frustrated just staying in the office.
Judith did not refuse. People would listen more to the powerful Marquis of Mosley, who was favored by the Emperor and, of course, had been frowned upon due to some incident, than to the nameless Count and Countess of Rhineland.
“Why was the redevelopment stopped?”
“It was the imperialists who were pushing for the redevelopment here, and they were all ousted after the failed rebellion, so it's only natural that the redevelopment would come to a halt.”
It was a surprisingly good choice to accompany Cain. He knew much more about the capital and imperial real estate situation than Judith, Erne, and Tan.
Thanks to this, Judith was able to learn two things she had not known before. One is that the economic ties between Cliff and the Followers were surprisingly strong.
Most of the real estate he embezzled was bought and sold based on information leaked from the Followers.
The next thing Judith learned was that very few properties had increased in value as the information became scraps of paper.
'At least this site is within the capital, the mine, oh my.'
Judith sighed inwardly. Her plan to sell the emerald mines to pay off her debts was doomed from the start.
Because Smith, who was supposed to collect the debt, went missing? No, no. Because the emerald mine itself was a fraud.
Cain says the Followers spread false information that the place was an emerald mine to raise funds.
Cliff falls over there, then Cedric falls over, and they go to find the moneylender...
Judith, angry just thinking about it, decided to think about something else for a moment. The first priority was to find Henry and Smith.
“Then let’s quickly go to the next place. The sun will set if we keep doing this.”
The sun above their head began to set in the west. They walked around diligently, but a lot of time passed. They rode a horse, but since they couldn’t speed up in the crowded capital, the investigation was slower than planned.
They moved to the next address, near Smith's office, on a street that bordered legal and illegal.
There was a three-story building rented by a certain merchant in that place where workshops, merchants, and black markets coexisted.
“They didn’t just steal the rent, they just moved out.”
Judith's gaze, which was looking at the old building untouched by human hands, suddenly became sharp.
“The doorknob.”
“It’s clean.”
“I guess that means people came and went.”
“I have a really ominous feeling about this.”
Everyone seemed to have found a particularly shiny handle.
Hee-ing
Even Gold cried briefly, expressing his ominous feelings.
Erne was the first to approach the door and listened. He tilted his head. It seemed like he could hear voices, but it also seemed like he was hallucinating.
There was a wariness in his dark green eyes. A beast-like feeling whispered that there was something inside him.
"Ma'am."
Cain, who was looking at Erne like that, gave Judith a badge that meant captain of the police force and said.
“It’s dangerous here, so we’ll stay here. Would you please call the security forces instead?”
“No, I’ll stay here too.”
Judith shook her head. If there was a priest here, Judith wanted to see him. Even if it was dangerous.
“Tan, you go.”
Judith put Cain's badge into Tan's hand.
“Me, me alone?”
“I think you can do that much, right?”
Judith pushed Tan's back. Meanwhile, Erne motioned to Judith and Cain to walk around the building and check if there was another door they could enter through.
Cain moved to the left, and Erne and Judith moved to the right. The windows were all blocked with wooden panes.
“...?”
But there was just one place where the window wasn't made of wood but was simply painted black.
Judith, who was following Erne, stood in front of the window and looked inside.
Something moves inside. It wiggles and peels away the black paint. The glass window, which has become as transparent as a finger joint, is filled with blackness again.
Judith, who approached him as if possessed, fell on her buttocks and let out a silent scream.
“...Who, your eyes!”
Through the glass window, his pitch-black, dilated pupils glared at Judith without mercy.
Erne was the first to approach the door and listened. He tilted his head. It seemed like he could hear voices, but it also seemed like he was hallucinating.
There was a wariness in his dark green eyes. A beast-like feeling whispered that there was something inside him.
"Ma'am."
Cain, who was looking at Erne like that, gave Judith a badge that meant captain of the police force and said.
“It’s dangerous here, so we’ll stay here. Would you please call the security forces instead?”
“No, I’ll stay here too.”
Judith shook her head. If there was a priest here, Judith wanted to see him. Even if it was dangerous.
“Tan, you go.”
Judith put Cain's badge into Tan's hand.
“Me, me alone?”
“I think you can do that much, right?”
Judith pushed Tan's back. Meanwhile, Erne motioned to Judith and Cain to walk around the building and check if there was another door they could enter through.
Cain moved to the left, and Erne and Judith moved to the right. The windows were all blocked with wooden panes.
“...?”
But there was just one place where the window wasn't made of wood but was simply painted black.
Judith, who was following Erne, stood in front of the window and looked inside.
Something moves inside. It wiggles and peels away the black paint. The glass window, which has become as transparent as a finger joint, is filled with blackness again.
Judith, who approached him as if possessed, fell on her buttocks and let out a silent scream.
“...Who, your eyes!”
Through the glass window, his pitch-black, dilated pupils glared at Judith without mercy.
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