Translator: Pai_

A barren land where only dry winds blew.

Turan could read complex emotions on the face of Monarch, dyed red by the sunset.

Displeasure, anger, humiliation, shame.

Perhaps the fact that Turan had not clearly explained how he came to know of Monarch’s movements, or perhaps the fact that he had successfully deceived that ability, had deeply wounded Monarch’s pride.

“Yeah, I don’t know what trick it is, but you can deceive the contract, right.......”

Grrr, the sound of grinding teeth could be heard from here.

Turan suppressed the urge to mock, to say he hadn’t deceived the contract but truly didn’t know anything, and that Monarch was just tripping over his own feet.

It was always better when an enemy misunderstood something.

And once the mutual questioning and answering was over, it was time to fight again.

Turan leaped slightly and realized there were still restrictions on flying, so he briskly moved forward to approach Monarch.

“Ugh!”

Monarch, in response, stretched out his hand and once again poured out massive chunks of flesh.

Chunks made only of bright red muscle without any skin.

Connected to his hand, they squirmed like independent creatures, stretched out, and attacked the enemy.

However, despite their size and dynamism, they were helplessly repelled with a bang as the arm was bounced away.

It was the result of a single kick by Turan, who had activated the Ruvan bloodline.

‘As expected, his raw combat power isn’t all that impressive.’

One might be misled because of his ability to instantly turn the flesh of his loyal Nagin wizards or that scattered in the plaza into monsters, but the combat ability Monarch himself possessed wasn’t particularly remarkable.

He was nowhere near comparable to Badal and could hardly be considered superior to Reshion.

Still, he seemed to have gained some decent combat experience somewhere, as he always came up with appropriate methods when needed, but his fundamental offensive and defensive capabilities were lacking.

Even after that, Monarch continued retreating by rolling the wheel beneath him and repeatedly formed chunks of flesh to launch attacks, but Turan blocked all of them purely with his physical combat skills as he closed in.

At last, when Turan broke through all the attacks and grabbed his neck, the captured Monarch let out a deep sigh and spoke.

“Ah, I’ve been caught.......”

“That’s right. So what now? Gonna kill yourself? Or I could let you taste every bit of suffering the people of Orem endured.”

“I’m a sadist, so I’m not into receiving it.”

Turan listened closely, not wanting to miss a single word from Monarch.

The very reason he hadn’t broken his neck the moment he caught him was the hope that Monarch, shaken, might spill some useful information.

But contrary to expectations, once caught, the bastard seemed to lose all drive and even calmed his anger as well.

“Didn’t expect I’d be spouting such cliche villain lines......well, just you wait, Turan. Next time, I’ll get the real answer.”

A statement that seemed to acknowledge defeat.

Along with that, Turan realized Monarch’s body temperature was rapidly rising, so he quickly threw him away and covered his face and torso with both arms.

With a loud bang, the body of the man once called Kovach Nagin exploded into pieces, spraying blood, flesh, and bone fragments in every direction.

“Ugh.......”

Something had been done to the body along with the explosion, for even with the protection of the Ruvan bloodline, known for its strongest physique, and the use of a Guardian magic artifact, some bone fragments still pierced through his clothes and lodged into his skin.

After catching his breath for a moment, Turan used healing magic to treat his body, then focused even more intensely on the Spiritual Perception he had activated.

However, he could not sense any movement of a spirit form nearby.

‘I expected as much......as I thought, even if you catch the puppet, you can’t catch the spirit form. It wasn’t even here in the first place.’

Using the perception of the sacred relic to locate and gather the flesh infused with magic power, Turan deeply contemplated the ability he had discovered this time.

‘He probably doesn’t have the ability to completely move between multiple bodies without limit at will. If he did, he’d have been able to do much more.’

Just considering the previous surprise attack by the Carmine-mermaids and the coordinated operation by the Ruvan was enough to tell.

What if Monarch had left a puppet of the Nagin family head at the main base, and placed one puppet each with the Carmine and Ruvan armies to communicate in real-time?

The Carmine-mermaid army would have immediately retreated the moment Turan disappeared and they would have realized something had gone wrong.

In other words, it was clear that transferring consciousness from one puppet to another involved constraints such as time and distance.

‘If I could catch one of Monarch’s subordinates, I could probably learn more.......’

So far, except for Cadrum, all the gods Turan had captured were either distant from Monarch or had a bad relationship with him, so none knew the details of his abilities.

Originally, with abilities like this, the more the opponent understood the principle behind them, the harder it became to deceive, so it was only natural.

Just as Turan was thinking he should capture Ymir next time, he discovered something and let out a surprised exclamation.

“Oh.”

As Monarch’s body exploded into pieces, his clothes and belongings were all shattered by the impact. Yet, amidst the wreckage, one thing alone remained intact: the large-capacity pouch.

An item said to have been created and scattered in over a thousand copies by the Lame Goddess long ago, which had become one of the most common sacred relics even after thousands of years.

Monarch, being a family head of a great noble house, naturally carried one as well, but what surprised Turan was the item inside it.

“This is.......”

A black orb about the size of two fists combined.

On the surface, it looked ordinary, except for the feeling that if you stared at it long enough, you might get sucked in.

But under the perception of the Mimic Sacred Relic, it was anything but ordinary.

This perception, which recognized the magic power contained in all creatures and magical artifacts as flames, showed the orb glowing brightly like the sun.

'Could this be the god's power that was maintaining the library?'

The light was so overwhelmingly bright that when holding it, it became difficult to even recognize there was someone beside you.

On impulse, Turan tried to absorb its magic power, but fortunately or unfortunately, the power did not get drawn in.

If it could be absorbed, he might have truly become a wizard powerful enough to overpower even the family heads.

It seemed clear this wasn’t the kind of item meant to be used in such a way.

In truth, even if he couldn’t find a way to use it, it was still a significant gain.

Monarch’s goal in nearly exterminating the people of Orem City and destroying the library must have been this power, but now that it had ended up in Turan’s hands, the goal would go unfulfilled.

Planning to examine it more thoroughly later, Turan placed the orb in the pouch, issued separate instructions to Bije, and then flew himself toward Orem City.

Before long, as he crossed the city walls, he saw Solif and Armania who had finished the battle and were now restoring order.

“Oh, it’s over?”

“Roughly. Now comes the cleanup. Did you catch the bastard?”

"I killed him. Couldn't catch him though."

Just the pile of monster corpses next to the collapsed library was enough to easily tell how the battle had gone.

The ones burned by Solif were at least better, but the ones Armania had meticulously crushed emitted an even more terrible stench than they did while alive.

"Well, that's that. The real headache starts now though."

With a groan, Solif gestured with his chin toward a group of people emerging from iron cages and hastily throwing on whatever clothes they could find.

Their number was around five to six hundred.

These were the survivors of Orem City.

Considering that Orem City had originally boasted a population in the tens of thousands, making it one of the largest cities in the western wastelands, this was barely a handful.

Turan noticed there were no wizards among them and frowned.

“The lord’s family......”

“Of course they were all massacred. Honestly, the fact this many are still alive is a miracle in itself. After all, the head of a great noble house personally committed a massacre in cooperation with the Dark Elves.”

It might be something the survivors wouldn’t want to hear, but it was the truth.

Besides, didn’t the Nagin wizards possess the Ruler bloodline, which boasted overwhelming power against ordinary people?

If just any high-ranking noble among them had stepped forward and ordered everyone to gather in the plaza, no one would have been able to escape.

Just like long ago, when Turan freely controlled the sheep on Hisaril Hill.

With only a brief sigh, Turan turned his head in response to the presence sensed through the sacred relic’s perception.

“Armania.”

At the stern voice, the mermaid boy who had been hiding in the corner timidly stepped out.

Turan stretched out both hands, grabbed his head tightly, and lifted him up.

“Ah, ugh, i-it’s breaking! My head! It’s breaking!”

“I told you before. What happens if you eat a human?”

“Sorry! I was just too curious -ack!”

“So, was it tasty?”

“Not really! It was awful! I’ll never eat one again!”

“Good.”

When Turan released him, Armania rubbed his throbbing skull and shed a few tears.

Though it seemed a bit like a joke, with Turan gripping him while the Ruvan bloodline was activated, the threat must have been real.

“I’ll let it go this time, but if you get caught again, you’ll really die.”

"I understand..."

“That aside, you fought well this time. You did great.”

With the carrot that followed the stick, the tearful Armania grinned foolishly.

Watching the training scene in silence, Solif suddenly turned his head as if sensing something.

“What- it's Bije? But why is she carrying someone?”

"I gave her orders a while ago, but if she's already here, they probably couldn't have gone very far. Well, those dark elf bastards can only run so much."

Just as he said, the approaching Bije had grown to an enormous size and was carrying several Dark Elves in her claws and beak.

*

After sending the survivors of Orem City, who trembled just from seeing the faces of the Dark Elves, to rest in the largest remaining building, Turan herded the captives into another structure and began full-scale interrogation.

“Name?”

“Ban.”

While the names of White Elves were often six syllables or longer, these guys were all the opposite, every name was a single syllable.

Easier to remember, sure, but confusing nonetheless... though, that likely wouldn’t be a problem.

They were all going to die after the interrogation anyway, what use was remembering their names?

“Alright. Ban, Tol, Rab, Kel... if you answer my questions honestly from now on, I’ll let you die painlessly.”

Not “I’ll let you live”, but “I’ll let you die painlessly”, and that was supposed to be a threat?

The Dark Elves, who looked bewildered at first, soon came to understand the true meaning of those words.

“Please, stop! Aaaaaargh!”

“Hik, hiiik-”

“Devil, devil, devil.”

Turan had always been a skilled torturer, but after gaining the power of the Lavitas bloodline, he had surpassed even the few limits he once had.

Where else could you witness something as mentally shattering as seeing a severed ankle reattach like clay, only to be cut off again?

Through a few trials, he discovered that Dark Elves had extremely sensitive ears, and after repeatedly channeling electricity through them, they eventually broke.

What finally crushed their will was when Turan revived one of them, who had died from the pain, using electric shocks and healing magic.

They had realized that if the captor didn’t allow it, not even death could be an escape.

“We were originally nobles of the underground kingdom.......”

According to Ban, the strongest necromancer among the prisoners, they had originally belonged to the most powerful faction in the Dark Elves' underground world, centered in the western forest region.

They occupied the area closest to the surface and, in return for the abundant resources they enjoyed, served as guardians to prevent demons from the surface from descending into the underground.

“But one day, we were ordered by our monarch to ascend to the surface.”

The reason was that their monarch, the Dark Elf king Turan had just trampled to death, had his one and only daughter kidnapped.

By Monarch, or so they believed, specifically, by the Nagin wizards under Kovach Nagin.

The kingdom formed by the Dark Elf king, the necromancers who followed him, and the commoner-class Dark Elves possessed enough power that, if they went all out, they could fight against a great noble house. But even so, they couldn’t truly oppose them.

They would be exterminated by the human great noble houses scattered across the surface, and the kidnapped daughter of the king would surely be killed.

In the end, the Dark Elf king made a contract, he would serve under the orders of the Nagin family head in exchange for getting his daughter back.

“Come to think of it, wasn’t the ruler of that underground kingdom supposed to be the Necromancer King or whatever he was called?”

“That guy was the monarch of the deeper lands who opposed the king. He took over during the king’s absence.”

In other words, the truth behind the Dark Elf invasion that once swept through the western forest region was that the Dark Elf kingdom, which had been lucky enough to first obtain land in contact with the surface, had acted recklessly and blindly.

Of course, the direct trigger had been Turan killing what amounted to their royal family members...

"Dark elves seem to have strong attachment to family."

“Seems like all elves are.”

The White Elves also showed strong attachment to ancestors and descendants, much like the Dark Elves.

Even the half-elves of Ruvan had reshaped their identities into full elves rather than maintaining the ambiguous identity like those of the House Varaha half-elves, just because they had descendants remaining.

Turan continued to extract various information from the Dark Elves after that.

He asked about the kinds of things they had done while following Monarch and his subordinates on the surface.

After a round of initial questioning, he separated them and interrogated them individually to cross-check their answers, which took almost two hours.

“Alright, that should be enough.”

“Then...”

Before the captive could finish his reply, Turan immediately drew a wind blade from his hand and sliced through the neck.

Despite one of their kind being mercilessly killed, there was no trace of hatred or fear on the faces of the other Dark Elves.

To the very last one, they stretched their necks with a look of relief, waiting for death to come.

They simply hoped to die even a moment sooner to escape the demon before their eyes.

*

After finishing the torture and purifying even the undead spirits they had with them, Turan exited the building. Outside, Solif, who had waited due to his weak stomach, was there to meet him.

“Did you take care of everything?”

“Roughly.”

While Turan had been engrossed in interrogation, Solif had been organizing the city.

It wasn’t anything grand, he was just burning away the piles of flesh in the plaza and the corpses of the monsters Monarch had created.

If left to rot, a terrifying plague would surely break out, and who knew what Monarch might try again by slipping into another body.

“I almost forgot, we’ve got another issue to deal with.”

“What is it?”

“The survivors saw Armania.”

“Ah.”

The fact that Armania was under the care of the House Parsha was a publicly kept secret.

Everyone who needed to know within the house already knew, and even the enemies could mostly guess as much.

But if rumors spread among the common people that House Parsha was raising and using a mermaid who could transform into a Great Sea Serpent, it would inevitably damage their reputation.

“Killing them all to cover it up is out of the question...”

“Well, let’s just announce it now. Say it’s a mermaid who doesn’t eat people, and we’re treating him well.”

“Would that really be okay?”

“As long as we persuade Lavitas properly. If we explain to Rida-nim that he’s like a version of Aikul who can speak, it should work somehow.”

Turan placed high value on the fact that this time Armania, though he had tasted human flesh, had not gone as far as to chew and swallow.

And besides, Turan himself was a powerful enough wizard to completely suppress him.

Even if he didn’t know how to extend the lifespan of the Soul Chain, he would likely outlive Armania anyway.

There might be problems if Armania ever had offspring with another mermaid, but… there was no likely partner around anyway.

“Armania, from now on, you don’t have to wear the hat anymore.”

“Oh!”

“Not here, though.”

Even if his identity had already been revealed, it would still be better not to show his mermaid form, as that would help put the survivors of Orem at ease.

Having roughly concluded the conversation, Turan went to meet the surviving people.

Since they couldn’t remain in a completely ruined city, it was time to discuss what to do next.

While he was explaining the situation, a man who had been shouting from inside the iron cage that he wanted to kill the Dark Elves turned to Turan and spoke.

"Excuse me, but I'd like to ask something..."

“What is it?”

“Those Dark Elves that the bird brought in earlier... what happened to them?”

“They’re dead.”

Since the man didn’t seem to easily believe just the words, Turan brought him into the building where the interrogation had taken place and showed him the corpses of the Dark Elves.

Although he had repaired them a few times with healing magic, the signs of torture were still plainly visible on their bodies. Upon seeing them, the man shed tears.

“T-these horrible, monstrous things... The gods have punished them...”

From what Turan gathered, the man’s entire family had been slaughtered by the Dark Elves and turned into part of the flesh pile stacked at the plaza.

Turan did not reveal that the one who had orchestrated all of this was actually one of the gods and that the Dark Elves had only been threatened into obeying.

Sometimes, ignorance truly is bliss.

“For now, the sun has already set. Let’s rest for the night and move out tomorrow.”

“Understood.”

Having finished a rough discussion, Turan finally headed toward the collapsed library with Solif and Armania.

“Hmm...”

Letting out a low groan at the wreckage, Turan tapped Armania on the head when he flinched beside him.

“This isn’t your fault, so don’t shrink back for nothing.”

“Got it...”

The bricks that had once been imbued with mysterious power now crumbled with a light squeeze.

Of course, that was only from a noble’s perspective, it was still a solid stone building for ordinary people.

When Turan released the Librarian from the jewel box, the Librarian let out a deep sigh upon seeing the ruined library.

“This must be what it feels like for a dead man to look at his own corpse.”

“Would you like to look inside as well?”

“I should. Who knows what might still be in there.”

What greeted them inside was a symbol similar in form to the one outside.

Dark red, presumably drawn in blood, the symbol began at the center of the tower-like structure and stretched along the inner walls. Unfortunately, due to part of the structure collapsing, the complete form of the symbol could not be identified.

“So, this symbol is what drained the library’s power?”

“That seems to be the case. By any chance, do you know anything about this kind of technique...?”

“I don’t. If I did, I’d have told you already.”

It seemed this was another mystery from ancient human civilizations or some other race’s technique, like soul magic.

However, even after summoning and questioning several gods, none of them knew what kind of technique it was.

“So it’s not even something Monarch originally used?”

[That kind of technique didn’t exist in that game to begin with.]

“Hmm...”

After sending Reshion back, Turan scattered a large amount of gunpowder and detonated it, neatly blowing away the remains of the library.

Anyway, the Librarian had seen everything that had been drawn there, so it could be recreated later if necessary.

“This really is a complicated feeling.”

“Kind of feels like I should apologize for some reason.”

“Apologize? Nonsense. That bastard did all the bad things.”

That was true, but in the end, Turan had been the one to destroy what was left of what could be considered the Librarian’s body, so an apology wasn’t entirely misplaced.

And technically, Armania, who had blown away the entire main body, was under his responsibility, too.

Finishing the cleanup, Turan suddenly remembered something and pulled out the item he had retrieved earlier.

“Could you take a look at this?”

“What is it?”

“I’m not completely sure, but I think it’s the power that was inside the library.”

Upon hearing that it was likely extracted using the power of that mysterious symbol, the Librarian gave a small hum and looked at the orb.

“Do you feel anything?”

“A little... It looks like a hole. One that absorbs all light.”

It was a contrasting impression, considering that Turan had seen it burning like the sun through the Mimic Sacred Relic’s perception.

After standing silently with arms crossed, staring into the orb for a few minutes, the Librarian carefully reached out and touched it.

The pitch-black orb suddenly emitted a bright light.

*****

For more chapters, you can check out my Patreon here –https://patreon.com/Pai_

If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊