Conquering the Academy with Just a Sashimi Knife (Novel) - Chapter 108 - End of the First Semester (1)

Chapter 108 – End of the First Semester (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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“Kuaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

Cladi screamed as if his throat would tear open. No, more precisely, his vocal cords had already gone out, so all that really came was blood gushing in thick spurts.

Cladi was sprawled across the floor, reduced completely to a blood-soaked wreck. Dim eyes, arms and legs severed one by one.

It was the handiwork of the two interrogating him, Altair and Nox. Perhaps because they were assassins by nature, their skill at torture was extraordinary. So much so that even I, watching from a distance, found it chilling.

“P-p-please just kill me.”

Cladi moved what was left of his tongue. A little earlier, his jaw had been shaking so hard that he had bitten through it with his own teeth, and now it was like that.

Altair let out a short chuckle, then brightened his expression and gave a small flick of the hand.

The blade of the cane sword swept across Cladi’s last remaining hand. A wet slicing sound followed, and blood burst upward.

Cladi let out another shriek. A scream loud enough to rupture the ears echoed in every direction.

Nox frowned. Interrogating him right in front of his face, his ears must have been hurting. He grabbed Cladi’s jaw in one hand.

“Ugh, mmph!”

Cladi swallowed his scream inside his own mouth. Suddenly Altair pushed his face close to Cladi’s and opened his mouth with a bitter expression.

“…I don’t enjoy doing this either. True, I have loathed you for a very long time, but do you think I’m doing this because I like it? If the end of a traitor is too clean, order cannot be set aright. More than anything, Cladi, you betrayed humanity itself. The punishment for a traitor to the nation ought to be somewhat cruel.”

Altair said this while taking out a handkerchief and wiping away the blood that had splashed onto him.

Cladi tried to protest, half a body trembling, but he couldn’t say a word with Nox’s hand clamped over his mouth.

Thus one-sided words continued to pass back and forth. As the time dragged on, the light slowly drained from Cladi’s eyes.

‘He’s given up.’

The angle of his lowered head sank further and further. For an elder who had spent his entire life treated with privilege, the end was infinitely shabby and miserable.

Well, considering what that bastard had done, it suited him perfectly.

He had tried to harm academy cadets, and he had betrayed humanity by clinging to demonkind.

Soliciting murder and treason.

The more I thought it through, the more it seemed that even killing him twice would not be enough. As Altair had said, perhaps it was excessive, but this was the sort of thing that had to be done if you didn’t want the root sprouting again.

‘Ah, right.’

Thinking about it, there was something I wanted to ask Cladi. There might not be anything more to squeeze out of him, but even a dry rag could give a drop if you twist it again.

I stepped toward the two of them.

Having finished wiping all the blood from his blade, Altair turned his head. With a benevolent smile he addressed me.

“Oh, this will be over soon enough. Just wait a moment. This is our specialty. And it’s rather an embarrassing scene for an outsider to watch.”

“I suddenly thought of something I wanted to ask that bastard.”

At my words, Altair tilted his head.

And fair enough. Looking at Cladi, whose eyes were only fluttering, he probably wondered what the bastard could possibly say. All the more so since the man had already given up on life.

But Altair readily nodded. He gestured with his eyes to Nox to uncover the mouth he had been sealing shut.

“Gueok, gueok.”

Only then did Cladi begin breathing in thin gasps. Blood was oozing from wounds all over him like squeezed juice. I crouched down in front of him.

“Hey.”

Cladi’s neck had gone limp, and he couldn’t lift his head. He only raised his eyes slightly to look at me. Meeting the gray film clouding his pupils, I spoke again.

“Before you die, answer this one thing. Among the elders, no, among the nobles, who sided with you?”

“……”

“For you, with this scene and all the evidence here, there’s enough. But not for them, right? If you confess, I’ll ask them to send you off quickly.”

At those words, Cladi’s eyebrows twitched once. He knew it himself too. That he was already as good as dead.

So he would want, as much as possible, to cut off this chain of agony. Even this offer to kill him cleanly would sound like a sweet temptation.

Everyone present knew the disposition of that bat-like bastard. And since I wasn’t used to scenes of torture like this, a part of me felt this had gone far enough.

It wasn’t mercy. I just had a feeling I’d sleep restlessly afterward.

I turned my head left and right to ask the two assassins what they thought. The answer was naturally yes.

In fact, Altair happily nodded as if that was the right course.

Cladi moved his lips. Blood spurted from the stab wound near his solar plexus. It seemed his lung had been pierced, and he couldn’t get the words out.

Nox swiftly wrapped cloth around that spot and stanched the bleeding. Only then did a voice spill out between Cladi’s teeth.

“…Y-you mean that?”

Sticky blood linked his upper and lower teeth like threads. I answered with a small tilt of the head.

“I know you’re the kind of bastard who deserves to be chewed up twice over. Still, I’ll give you one last chance to atone. Spill everything you’ve got.”

“……”

Silence fell for a moment over the room. The thick dust settled, and moonlight that had been hidden by the clouds swept the blackness away.

So several seconds passed. I started to grow a little irritated.

For a bastard on the verge of death to be sitting there picking and choosing his thoughts, it looked like if he delayed even a little longer, his breathing would stop.

Just as I was about to furrow my brow and press him again.

“Puhahahahahahahaha!”

Out of nowhere, Cladi burst into wild laughter. Perhaps he had squeezed the sound out of the last of his lifespan, because it rang out thunderously.

At that unexpected reaction, everyone’s expressions cracked. A man who had been all but dead was suddenly laughing like a madman, so of course everyone looked stunned.

Nox reflexively raised Hongryundo. Altair reached out a hand and stopped him.

I unfolded the knee I had been crouching on and crossed my arms. Then I lowered a cold gaze on him.

Pulling up the corners of his mouth, Cladi said:

“No matter how close to death I am, did you really think I would accept a proposal from some lowborn trash like you? Ridiculous. And besides, I’ll be dead soon anyway. And you think you can threaten me? You, a filthy special advancement student? What a joke!”

A laugh slipped out of me from sheer disbelief. So the bastard fancied himself a villain with principles, was that it? With a mind like his, why had he betrayed humanity in the first place?

And in the middle of all that, he was still preaching his elitist worldview. They say people weren’t meant to be fixed, and today once again I found myself learning from the wisdom of the ancients.

“Once I’m dead, do you think the elders, no, all of the nobles will just leave you and Auditore alone!? When that time comes, Kang Geom-ma, you’ll be the one begging for death!”

I had a feeling the phrase `I’m used to this by now` was made for moments exactly like this. I’d shown him a bit of generosity, and this was the way the bastard chose to speak.

They say even a rat would bite a cat when cornered.

I let out a deep sigh inwardly. Then I pressed my foot slowly down on Cladi’s last remaining ankle.

“Looks like the pain receptors are gone too, since you don’t even seem to feel pain anymore. Go on, try a little harder.”

Cladi even bit his lips, forcing a brave expression onto his face. I let out a short laugh and manifested the Blessing of Transference and the Blessing of Regeneration.

Originally I had intended to reach out with my hand, but touching a bug like this with my own hands made my stomach turn.

Ssssssss-

At once, a pure white aura flowed down through my foot into Cladi’s body.

Bubbles rose from the broken and torn wounds all over him, and the severed surfaces began to close.

“……!”

At the sudden healing, Cladi’s eyes widened until they looked ready to split. The two assassins standing nearby also stared at me with blank expressions.

Once a bit of life returned to his fading pupils, I cut off the blessing. It looked as though countless emotions were crossing through Cladi’s eyes as he gazed up at me.

Then I spoke in a cold voice:

“Hold out for as long as you can.”

In an instant Cladi’s complexion turned deathly pale. His brain seemed to have frozen, because his eyes and mouth no longer matched each other.

I sharply turned my gaze away and addressed Altair and Nox.

“The obvious wounds should have enough flesh back on them now. Since he has no intention of talking, I’ll leave the grilling and roasting to you two. As you said earlier, the sprouts ought to be cut down before they grow, no?”

“…Understood.”

As soon as I finished speaking and turned away.

“W-wait!”

Cladi called to me in a desperate voice. I turned only half my head and looked at him from the corner of my eye.

Altair and Nox were drawing daggers whose edges had been ruined so badly they looked like saws. At their feet, Cladi was desperately trying to crawl away.

Looking toward the place where that carnage was about to unfold, I muttered:

“You chose this.”

So endure it with all the evil and stubbornness you could.

This time the screaming stretched out much longer than before.

About ten minutes later, with a wet splat, the noisy echoes finally died away.

* * *

The Sword Emperor and the Headmaster arrived at the scene thirty minutes after Cladi died.

An even thicker reek of blood than the open lot where they had butchered the five villains greeted the two of them. As if by prior agreement, both let out low groans.

“…Hah.”

It was a scene so horrific it seemed to lie on the border between reality and hell. Even to Seven Star heroes who had walked countless battlefields, it delivered a numbing shock. Such commotions were rare.

Looking around in confusion, the Sword Emperor saw Altair approach him.

“You’ve arrived, Sword Emperor.”

“…What exactly happened here?”

“What is there to explain? It is exactly as you see it. Fifty guardsmen, fifteen villains, and Cladi as well. All dealt with. Of course… we lost some on our side too……”

For an instant a gloomy shadow crossed Altair’s face. Media cut into the conversation with a look of complete disbelief.

“How does it make any sense that Auditore’s elites got taken out? No, before that, why the hell were there fifteen villains here in the first place!?”

He drew in one breath, then continued.

“It seems that professor fellow who acted as the leader of the villains that infiltrated the academy sent all his forces here. It would appear we were played by his shallow little trick.”

“No, this is insane.”

Media spat out a dying curse and clutched at her temples. Rather than anger, what she felt was stunned disbelief.

Altair explained what had happened, and the Sword Emperor and the Headmaster responded with increasingly hollow expressions. That cycle repeated itself.

So several minutes of conversation passed between the three of them before it finally came to an end.

“This is insane.”

That was Media’s honest assessment after hearing the whole story.

The truth was, her head still hadn’t fully processed everything she’d heard, and the back of her skull throbbed.

Such a reaction was hardly strange.

Because what had come out of Altair’s mouth went beyond mere shock.

If one were to summarize the explanation, it was Kang Geom-ma’s one-man show.

It could be reduced to that one short phrase.

The content was that he had practically slaughtered the suddenly appearing villains all by himself. And the proof of it was the dozens of corpses rolling across the floor.

The Sword Emperor carefully shifted his gaze toward Kang Geom-ma.

A chilling light flowed at the corner of his eyes. Cold, languid eyes that had completely cooled over. That attitude of his, unmoved even by this thick smell of blood.

The Sword Emperor felt a dreary dizziness cut through his whole body.

Kang Geom-ma looked as though he were a demon presiding over a hellish tableau.

‘…What exactly are you?’

As for his exercise of force, did there even need to be words? Had he not already cut down Agor on Avalon Island in the first place?

The Sword Emperor became certain that something incomprehensible had lodged itself within Kang Geom-ma’s body.

But this violence horrified him in a different way as well.

Suddenly, the Sword Emperor swept his eyes over the corpses cut apart by the sashimi knife.

The cut surfaces and blade wounds showed not the slightest hint of resistance or snagging.

How could there be no hesitation whatsoever in harming and cutting down lived to this degree? Even one who had reached the principles of the sword ought to leave some trace of emotion in the blade.

The questions and unease he felt toward Kang Geom-ma deepened further.

It felt as though he were facing something primal, a being with no distinction between good and evil.

In the long stretch of silence, Altair carefully spoke to the Sword Emperor.

“That young man Kang Geom-ma is truly a remarkable talent, is he not?”

Altair avoided being too direct and phrased it with a slight turn.

“The greater the talent, the more such a child needs a true teacher worthy of him. And did you not claim yourself as that boy’s teacher, Sword Emperor? Of course, having just retired from the Seven Stars, you were too busy to pass on any real guidance.”

The Sword Emperor slowly turned his head to the side.

Altair held the man’s gaze squarely and spoke again.

“And now vacation is approaching, is it not? How would it be to take Kang Geom-ma in for that period…? If guided well, that child truly may be able to accomplish it. The thing that has been passed down through House Nibelung for generations-”

Altair uttered the last short phrase.