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The iron door creaked open, revealing a staircase leading downwards.

As the door swung open, a chilling breeze wafted up from the underground. And mixed within that air was the faint, metallic scent of blood.

I slowly descended the stairs. The darkness obscured my view, but it posed no problem for me.

After taking one step at a time, I finally arrived in a spacious area that seemed to be underground.

About twenty men were waiting for me in the ominous shadows.

Unlike the ruffians above, the atmosphere of the men here was remarkably different. It was reminiscent of the Scarred Man I had encountered on Market Street.

Ex-soldiers, mercenaries, adventurers… all of them radiated an aura of familiarity with combat, unafraid of killing.

Whether they had some artifact or were using night vision magic, they glared at me from within the darkness without any discomfort.

But the same could be said for me. As I clearly surveyed each man in the shadows, those who met my gaze twisted their faces in shock and tension.

Surprisingly, I was able to spot a familiar face among them.

The loquacious coachman I had taken a cargo cart from to come to Sangria.

He looked at me with the same friendly smile he had when we first met.

This seemingly ordinary coachman turned out to be the highest authority in this place. The other men were all acting with caution around him.

With a friendly face, the coachman raised his hand and said, “Hey there. Long time no see.”

I did not respond to his words and glanced around. The coachman’s expression, which had been cleanly ignored, hardened for a moment, but I paid it no mind.

The underground warehouse was quite vast. It appeared that this extensive space was entirely used for storage, filled with sturdy iron cages.

The narrow iron cages, just big enough for a single person, had vivid red stains indicating what had been trapped inside them. The rancid smell of blood filling the underground stemmed from those very cages.

Most of the cages were empty, but some were not.

Inside the cages where people were locked up, the scene was devastating.

A dwarf, unconscious with his wrists severed. A ratkin woman, so brutally beaten that her face was unrecognizable. A foreign man, bound from head to toe in chains. In addition, there were several others, perhaps from different races, trapped in deplorable conditions.

As I gazed at the grim sight, I felt my earlier thoughts shift.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have had any thoughts of killing anyone.

But these guys… it would be better to just kill them all.

I concealed my killing intent as I slowly took a step forward, prompting the men to drawn their weapons and prepare for battle.

Just as the tension in the room peaked, the coachman urgently raised his hand and shouted, “Wait! Hold on!”

“What if I don’t?”

I continued walking indifferently, intent on breaking the neck of the first one to approach. However, I had no choice but to stop when the coachman uttered his next words.

“We know who you are!”

“…”

They know who I am?

If they did, they wouldn’t be acting this way.

As I looked at the coachman with a gaze mixed with suspicion and inquiry, perhaps mistaking my pause for interest, a grim smile spread across his face.

“I never imagined the soldier we met back then would become an instructor. I underestimated the strength of a mere instructor. Let’s negotiate.”

Ah, that was it.

Since I was the one who brought Titania to the market, if Titania was their target, it was only natural that they had already investigated those around her. They would have quickly discovered that I was an instructor at Philion Academy.

Realizing it was no big deal sparked a nonchalant expression on my face. Misunderstanding my intent to dismiss the idle chatter and get to the point, the coachman hastily added.

“No matter how strong you are, taking down all of us here is going to be tough. Even if you could, we’re not all here.”

The coachman boasted among the men.

“What we need is an elf. If you can deliver that elf, we can grant you unimaginable wealth and power beyond your imagination. Don’t you want to become a noble?”

“A mere coachman?”

“I may be a mere coachman, but the one I serve is different. If you bring the elf princess, he will surely reward you magnificently. He’s a person of great capability and position.”

The coachman looked as if to say, “How could you refuse this offer?” He seemed to believe there was no way a commoner could pass up such an opportunity to become a noble.

I responded with indifference.

“Then that guy must die, too.”

My words plunged the area into a chilling silence.

The coachman let out a long sigh and said, “That was a grave mistake.”

The coachman gestured to his subordinates, and at that signal, the men slowly readied their weapons and began to approach me.

They behaved like seasoned warriors, not rushing in like third-rate villains, gauging my ability since they knew I had taken down the Scarred Man, exchanging glances and carefully tightening their encirclement.

Before they could fully tighten their trap around me, I dashed forward first.

A man who seemed to be a fairly skilled adventurer was slow to react to my speed and raised his shield. However, my fist crushed through the man’s shield and struck him in the jaw. With that blow, the adventurer’s jaw shattered and head snapped backwards, causing him to die on the spot.

As the adventurer crumpled to the floor, my arm shot out like lightning, grabbing the iron sword he had dropped and swung it at the mercenary who was charging in from behind with an axe. The mercenary was unable to react to the sword’s speed and was split open with his armor.

With tremendous strength, I split the mercenary’s armor, and although the sword eventually broke halfway while cutting through his body, the mercenary, dazed as he stared at his own spilling entrails, collapsed backwards.

I discarded the broken sword and seized the falling axe in my hands.

In a flash, the horrendous deaths of my two former companions froze the remaining men in shock. The coachman, witnessing the scene from behind, also shouted in alarm.

“…Kill him! Everyone, take him out!”

Now it’s getting a bit cliché.

Screaming, whether it was a scream or a shout, the men charged at me, and I swung the axe.

One man, with his head split in two along with his helmet, met an instant death, while I dodged a sword strike from behind and flicked the man’s wrist lightly with my fingertips.

“Ugh!?”

In that seemingly harmless move, the man with the sword twisted his shoulder, causing him to stab his comrade’s throat inadvertently. The unsuspecting man, caught by surprise, had his neck pierced and lost his life in the most pathetic manner.

The shocked man who had killed his comrade also met the same fate, as my axe split his head in two.

I swung my weapon in a straightforward manner without any fancy techniques or tricks. The fast and simple trajectory was more than powerful enough on its own.

If a weapon broke in the middle of my assault, I snatched another weapon and smashed my opponent with a single strike, occasionally using the enemy’s attacks against them to orchestrate mutual destruction.

The twenty men quickly crumbled to the ground. In the scene of bloody carnage, I alone remained standing.

The coachman spoke with a dazed expression.

“…They were all supposed to be skilled fighters. Are you perhaps a demon infiltrating the Empire?”

I slowly approached the coachman.

My footsteps were marked by blood staining the ground.

“You don’t seem to know what a demon looks like.”

“…What?”

Instead of answering, I brought down my mace on the coachman’s shoulder. The impact shattered the shoulder bone, causing him to scream and collapse.

“Gaaah—!!”

“Stop whining.”

It’s just a broken bone.

I could tell the coachman hadn’t been through such pain before and had not undergone training for torture. Whether he was a coachman, a spy, or an executive of a terrorist organization, he trembled in agony, gnashing his lips to the point of drawing blood.

“Ugh…! Who the hell are you? I couldn’t glean any information about you even with the elder’s power…! Why do both the Imperial Administration Office and the Imperial Army Headquarters refuse to look into you!? Where did you come from to interfere with our business!?”

With wide eyes, the coachman glared at me, bursting forth with pent-up rage.

“Don’t you think something’s wrong with the current Empire? It wasn’t the different races that fought alongside the Demon King but humans! That victory was earned by humans, so why should we share the price of victory with those scoundrels!? What’s really the point of unity and coexistence—”

“Enough.”

I struck down on the opposite shoulder of the coachman.

“Gaaah!!”

“I didn’t come here to convince you. I never asked for your opinion.”

I pressed the blood-soaked mace against his face.

“Just answer the questions I ask.”

The coachman’s face turned pale from pain and fear.

Bludgeons are highly effective for torture. Compared to bladed weapons, they cause less bleeding, so there’s less risk of death from blood loss during interrogation.

He could die from shock due to severe pain, but that was something I could control.

I relentlessly extracted everything he knew about ‘The Future of the Empire.’ If he failed to answer, I took more pleasure in breaking his bones piece by piece, inflicting more pain.

I learned the whereabouts of the people trapped in the cages. Most had died from torture, and some had been sold into slavery in the black market.

I discovered that those sold were sent to illegal gladiator arenas, brothels, or became test subjects for mad wizards.

Each piece of information I uncovered only made my torture of the coachman more persistent and brutal.

Soon, I learned that the elder he mentioned was the Marquess Raineyar, the chief patron of the merchant guild, and his objective was to abduct Titania to instigate conflict between the elves of the Linia Great Forest and the Empire, while also fulfilling his own personal desires in the process.

Having reached that point, I knew there was no more information to be gathered.

The coachman, continuously screaming and with a throat raw from shouting, struggled to breathe and wheezed painfully, “J-just kill… kill me…”

I fulfilled the coachman’s request and brought my weapon down on his head.

Bright red blood splattered, drenching my cheeks, but with my body already soaked in blood, it simply added another layer onto the dry stains.

The underground warehouse, once filled with screams, soon fell silent.

“Hah…”

I exhaled tiredly, having completed my task. My body felt completely fine, but the prolonged exposure to blood while torturing left me mentally a bit exhausted.

But there were still people left.

I systematically broke the locks of the cages where the abducted individuals were confined.

Most seemed to have lost their sanity after enduring torture without a single meal. Even those who were conscious appeared to be on the brink of insanity.

It would take quite some time to carry each of them by myself, but I had brought the guards for moments like this.

As I smashed the cages and searched for signs of life, one cage caught my eye.

Inside was a woman with blonde hair, dressed in ragged clothes.

 

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