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Chapter 341

He lay collapsed as Luna kept kicking him; he let out a painful moan.

She grabbed him from behind as if to hold him.

“Hey, hey! Stop! Stop!”

“Stop? What do you mean stop. Don’t you know this traitor is worse than a possessed man?”

The possessed people were eaten against their will, but the defining feature of a traitor was that they kept their sanity while committing such acts.

“No. I don’t mind beating him. Just want to confirm a few things.”

Of course.

I felt other people’s gazes go cold.

Maybe they realized I wasn’t stopping her out of some humanitarian sentiment.

Their expressions were odd, but I ignored them and crouched in front of the fallen man.

“Talion Fedmore.”

“…….”

He didn’t resist.

Or rather, he was unable to resist.

“What kind of contract did you make with that thing?”

I pointed to the empty red sky.

Luna added a comment to my question with a little nudge.

“I can make him want to tell us.”

Her fist shimmered with multicolored energy.

“Speak. Do you see that thing?”

I threatened him while pointing to Luna’s head, and he slowly opened his mouth.

“I was born the thirty-second prince of the Fedmore royal family—”

Smack!!!

My hand flashed like lightning and I delivered a sharp smack to Talion’s head.

“Ugh!!”

“Who asked about your family? Nobody cares. Just tell me the contract.”

I grabbed his struggling body and asked again.

“…….”

“You won’t speak? Looks like you still don’t understand the situation.”

People sometimes mistakenly assumed I wouldn’t commit a certain level of cruelty.

Crack!!

I drew a dagger like lightning and drove it into the back of his hand, pinning it to the floor.

“Aaaaargh!!!!”

“I’ll ask only once. You don’t seem to know what you’ve done. If you keep silent like a mute one more time, I promise your very existence will become an agonizing torment.”

“Guh… To have killed the crown prince of a nation… the one confirmed as the next king… like this…”

“Even if you die here, nobody will notice. Considering what you did, think about how annoying Fedmore will be from now on.”

Puh!!

When I pulled out the dagger, he clutched his wounded hand and gritted his teeth.

“I’ll ask again. What’s the contract?”

He remained silent for a moment, then spoke.

“In exchange for giving up my talents, I received an overwhelming talent with the sword. It was a temporary contract, but after this is over they said they’d make the talent permanent.”

Bound by ropes made of mana, he continued.

“Power is everything in this world.”

“Enough. I don’t care about that. A few more questions.”

“My palace where I grew up—”

“Enough, did I ask that?”

“Damn it, speak!!”

He shouted loudly and I delivered another sharp smack to his head.

Wham!

“Ugh!”

I grabbed his collar and spoke with an expressionless face.

“Hey. Do you understand your situation now?”

“…….”

“Whatever your circumstances are, they don’t matter. What you did is at a level that circumstances can’t justify.”

“…….”

“Maybe we should at least hear him out.”

Katya timidly suggested, and I shook my head.

“If the scum to be killed has an excuse, it only makes me feel worse.”

“That is…”

She who had been quietly silent cautiously offered an opinion.

“Still. If there’s a truly important reason—”

Luna took the pendant from me and thrust it toward her.

Of course, the pendant did not react.

“You…”

Katya made an unpleasant face.

“The first step of making a pact with those damned extra-dimensional monsters is killing the one you cherish most.”

“…….”

“And the sacrificial offering used in the ritual is usually someone whose death would cause immense misfortune.”

“What do you mean—”

“Someone who lived only for their children waiting for them. Someone who believed they would spend their life headed for happiness with a promised marriage.”

Luna was not referring to Talion’s offering.

Maybe it was an example from the ancient great war long ago.

“You must lose your humanity without knowing it to get this far.”

She glared at Talion with a cold expression.

Others fell silent and looked at him in shock.

“Is that really true?”

Talion pinched his face and shouted.

“Nonsense! They said it’s about killing people who deserve to die!”

“Of course. From the monster’s point of view, those are the humans that should be killed. You were deceived.”

“What is—”

He opened his eyes wide, tried to deny Luna’s words, but something seemed to prick his conscience and he trembled.

By now the red moon really was an absolute evil.

“At least the contamination etched into your soul won’t come off even in death.”

He trembled in chaos, then forced a bitter laugh.

“—Ha. What’s the problem? The world is survival of the fittest. The strong devour the weak. The strong take everything!! That’s the way of the wo—”

Crack!!

A red sword flew in an instant and pierced his heart.

“Fine. Just show yourself like that. It’ll be easier on me that way.”

Even after killing the Fedmore crown prince, I spoke calmly.

“No… I didn’t see anything. I saw nothing.”

Katya answered quietly, and the others expressed the same opinion.

“Neither did I.”

Gordon.

“The fog is thick… you can’t see an inch ahead.”

Professors from Kona Academy and others all agreed.

Talion’s corpse slowly dispersed.

In the end, we learned little from him, but it didn’t matter.

It only meant the red moon had stolen some unique trait he possessed.

“If you go through that rift, you’ll be able to reach Lazarus. Probably. Since it’s the only place the rift opens, it should appear close to where you first came. This place is still too corrupted for you to stay.”

“Will you stay here?”

“This is my homeland. Even if it’s ruined, I can’t leave it to be taken by that corrupted invader.”

“But this is its domain.”

“The rifts in this space can’t be recklessly entered by it. Long ago, because of a certain being, its body was marked with countless seals.”

He explained, and I nodded quietly.

Others hurried toward the space’s rift as if desperate to leave the detested place.

Sizzle… crackle!!

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With a sudden sparking sound, the fully opened crack began to forcibly close.

At the same time—

[So you found us. Pathetic little creatures. Your struggles were only ever this much.]

It was natural, in a way.

This was the extra-dimension.

Even sealed, it was the realm of the red moon.

And—

Because the thing that had failed to find us had Talion Fedmore, it found our traces thanks to him.

After all, it was the red moon that had tempted him—so this occurrence was unsurprising.

At the same time, weird curtains wrapped around us from all sides.

“Damn it!! Fireball!!”

Gordon Hontail hurriedly fired a flame spell at the curtain trapping us, but it had no effect.

[Forget about escaping. All you can do is despair until I reach that place.]

A voice rang directly in our heads like a death sentence; the attendants and maidservants fainted, and the rest knelt, retching.

“Ugh… gurgle…”

“Gah!”

Is it lucky they didn’t lose their minds?

Or should we be glad they only felt nauseous?

It was a little odd that everyone except Luna and I was incapacitated simply from hearing the voice.

To express it more precisely: they were reduced to retching, surprisingly.

“Lucky. If it had stronger influence, most would have gone mad and died.”

Luna grimaced and struck the sealed wall that had trapped us.

Thud! Thud!

A heavy, bulletproof sound as the attack seemed to be absorbed and blocked.

“We’re completely trapped.”

She said correctly: this was not magic but a peculiar power.

It was the power of a sealer, a trait that manifests extremely rarely even on the Lazarus continent.

“Foreign beings cannot use a sealer’s power. But the fact that it used this power—”

There was no need to ask more.

From her words we could infer what the red moon had taken from Talion Fedmore.

“Talion Fedmore… it seems he was born with the sealer’s trait.”

Gordon staggered to his feet and explained as if he’d caught up with our conversation.

“Now I understand. The Fedmore family has long despised sealers because of a sealer who once ran rampant and caused the whole nation trouble.”

Those with the trait to become a sealer are so rare you could count them on one hand across the entire continent.

Because of that rarity, the merits of a sealer were intentionally unused by most groups.

If the heir apparent of the throne had a sealer’s trait… it would be a political threat.

What a laughable situation.

“Then why would that foreign thing want a sealer’s power?”

Sullivan closed his eyes at my question.

“Do you remember what I said earlier? That the corrupted invader was sealed by some power.”

“Yes.”

“The sealer’s power could be the key to unsealing it.”

No way.

Could such a strong seal be undone by the peculiar trait of a single human sealer?

It sounded absurd.

“There’s reason. I don’t know exactly what sealed it, but if my guess is right, it had to obtain that power to undo its own seal.”

I was dumbfounded. It was actually plausible.

“Sealers are unique, and you can’t reach that by effort alone. Even if you tried, your limit is clear.”

“Impossible,”

Gordon said.

“Not within a short time,”

Another agreed.

A peculiar trait means effort can’t change it.

“Then it’s hopeless. Even you can’t use the sealer’s power unless you have that trait.”

Gordon said gloomily.

Sullivan offered a suggestion.

“There’s a way. I could stake my life to make a tiny opening. This is the first time I realized it can use sealing magic.”

“Why?”

“When we fought, I felt like you weren’t simply gaining power but recovering lost strength.”

Hm… not exactly wrong.

This fellow is perceptive.

“Maybe you could gain much more power in a short time. Maybe even enough to kill the corrupted invader. My limit is clear.”

So he was willing to bet on a probable outcome.

I tapped the sealing wall with my hand.

Since this was a seal used by the red moon, its influence was substantial.

Even ordinary magic couldn’t fully dissect its structure.

It was fundamentally different, so even magic or aura would take time to break it.

The sealer’s power belonged to that formidable category.

Then—

[You achieved a specific achievement and your privileges have risen. As of now, you may download any memories from the General Hall in any order.]

That was meaningless; only a sealer could instantly undo a sealer’s power.

Maybe it read my thought.

[Special Achievement: By unlocking a limit breakthrough, you may inherit the power of the special hall you selected. There is currently one hall available for transfer. Would you like to confirm?]

While people around me despaired, I focused on the librarian’s message.

‘Now? What’s a special hall?’

[The name of the special hall you can inherit is the Hall of Inky Gold.]

Hall of Inky Gold?

It sounded strange at first.

But—

[The Hall of Inky Gold is the hall that pioneered sealer’s power in ordinary human bodies.]

As soon as I heard that, I made my decision.

‘Transfer. Immediately.’

A sudden nauseous wave hit me and my whole body felt limp.

My body wasn’t physically changing.

Originally, the sealer’s power could only be used by those with the peculiar trait.

But in the memories, I had finally found a method—without the peculiar trait—to use a sealer’s power through long thought.

[Contract mana has been granted to you who have witnessed the core of sealing magic.]

A special kind of mana, contract mana, which only those with the sealer’s capacity could use, settled into my body.

Then the other energies—aural, elemental mana, spirit mana—reacted.

What the hell.

As if a novice was being trained?

A white energy disciplined the new contract mana.

The white energy that swathed the contract mana spat it out like something distasteful, and the contract mana settled in clusters throughout my body, circulating.

And a horrific span of memories poured into my mind at once.

“Damn. How are we supposed to unseal this without a sealer—”

“No sealer could place such a powerful seal in such a short time—”

People despaired.

Sullivan prepared himself to sacrifice.

But among them, Luna watched me silently.

“Leon. Something’s changed since a moment ago.”

“Yeah. Wait a bit.”

At my words, everyone focused on me.

The newly settled power within me moved.

[Foolish ones. Give up. There’s no path here.]

[Haeju]

At my gesture, the very seals the red moon had placed crumbled.

“Huh?”

“Why is the seal—”

“What the—!”

Everyone had stunned faces as the sealing wall suddenly broke.

What on earth are you?

Now even a sealer’s power?

Gazes filled with that question, some shaking their heads in disgust.

“Too easy.”

The astonishing thing was that even without the peculiar trait, I could gain a sealer’s power this way—just from the memories.

I let the contract mana swirl inside me and sneered at it as if mocking the red moon.

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