Chapter 43 – Buffalo Dungeon (7)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Before we entered this dungeon, the secret favor I had asked Chloe for was this.

‘Chloe, if we run into that checkpoint employee inside the dungeon, beat the hell out of him.’

Naturally, Chloe accepted the request without much question. I was not used to dealing with people, but there was no rule saying I could not make use of her infinite trust in me.

For the record, there were two reasons I asked Chloe.

First, Chloe was an assassin from the House Auditore. Ordinary cadets could not harm other people, but members of Auditore could be exempted as long as their reason was justified.

Second, that employee was clearly involved in the truth behind this incident. That meant I could not simply kill him without mercy. Well, that would be a different story if I learned everything.

If I handled it personally, the man’s head would come off in a single blow, so I intended to make him only half-crippled if possible and ask him a few things.

I did not even bother considering the possibility that he might be uninvolved.

That bastard was rotten inside. The sharpened intuition given to me by the Blessing of the Sword God clearly saw through the employee’s foul intent.

Anyway.

Pak.

Chloe kicked the employee in the stomach while the katana was lodged in one of his legs. The employee writhed violently, tears and snot streaming down his face.

“Aaaaaaaaagh!”

“Be quiet!”

Creak.

Chloe pressed her foot down hard on the leg with the katana stuck in it. The employee howled at the top of his lungs, pain saturating his screams.

Pak.

When he showed no sign of quieting down, Chloe’s low kick slammed into his side. His waist folded like a shrimp.

“Ghk!”

Despite the weapon he had brought, he could not offer the slightest resistance. Hugging his leg, he stammered as though sobbing.

“Y-you little bastards! Wh-why are you doing this to me?! What did I even do?!”

I laughed low and crouched down in front of him.

“That’s what we’re about to find out.”

The moment our eyes met, the employee’s body stiffened. Behind me, Speed Weapon asked in a pale voice.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I asked Chloe for a favor earlier.”

I gave a shrug and continued.

“Weapon, Saki. Think about it. Do you really think the buffalo herd going berserk and the stone gate here being open were just coincidences?”

“…Right. No matter how I think about it, it definitely was unnatural.”

Weapon stared at the employee with an uncomfortable expression for a moment, then took a deep breath.

“But there’s no proof that this employee is the culprit.”

“That’s what we’re about to find out.”

“Kang Geom-ma, just what are you….”

Pressing at his brow and shaking his head as though fed up, Speed Weapon looked exhausted. In contrast, Saki Ryozo peeled the wrapper off a piece of yokan and agreed with me.

“Kang Geom-ma’s right. Honestly, it’s suspicious enough that this employee showed up with such perfect timing, like he had been waiting for us. It’s not like there were security cameras inside the dungeon. And looking at him, he was holding an anti-personnel weapon in one hand, right? In a dungeon, there’s only one reason you’d carry an anti-personnel weapon in to use on a person, isn’t there?”

Taking a large bite of yokan, Saki Ryozo explained things point by point and made Speed Weapon, who still could not readily accept the situation, understand.

‘…But in this situation, can yokan really go down that easily?’

Saki Ryozo swept her hair behind her ear and stepped up right beside me. With the side of her skirt wide open, she addressed the employee in a voice as calm as still water, as if it were nothing.

“Who’s backing you?”

Her attitude was languid, yet coldly cynical. It was not a threatening tone, but one that weighed the other side.

“Th-that….”

At that, dismay spread across the employee’s face. He tried to speak, but only his lips moved. Meanwhile, a bloody seepage was running down the backs of his knees.

She watched him after taking a breath. As if she had already roughly grasped what kind of situation this was, she chewed her yokan without emotion and shook her head.

“Looks like he has no intention of talking. What are you going to do?”

“……”

Shrugging, Saki asked me. In this kind of atmosphere, where it would be easy to get worked up, I was grateful for how calm she was.

Of course, even Saki had frowned at Chloe’s ruthless handiwork, but she did not deny its necessity.

Weapon turned his horrified eyes away.

Looked like the only male bastard in the party besides me was more soft-hearted than I expected. I said nothing and met the employee’s eyes. His pupils were shaking violently.

Given that he could not even protest, it seemed certain the employee was involved. But judging from that hesitant look, I could roughly infer the circumstances.

That employee was more afraid of the one who had ordered him than he was of us, who had driven a sword through his leg.

Then there was only one method. We had no choice but to keep feeding him fear until he opened his mouth. Scratching lightly near my brow, I leaned a little closer to the employee and said.

“If you have no intention of talking about the one behind this….”

“…!”

I gestured with my chin toward Chloe. She nodded.

Dragging the katana that sang with a savage blade note across the floor, she approached the employee. Killing intent scattered outward. It was unmistakably that of an assassin.

“I-I’ll talk!”

The employee shrieked, eyes rolling white. Chloe glanced back at me once more.

With my arms crossed, I gave a disinterested nod. The employee wetted his dry lips with his tongue and started talking.

Mixed into the blood running from the backs of his knees was a yellowish fluid.

* * *

“…So what you’re saying is that a person who looked like an instructor from Hoakin Academy handed you a mana stone a few days ago, and specifically mentioned Kang Geom-ma by name?”

Listening with a baffled look, Speed Weapon asked in a bitter mutter. As he bit his lip, a deeply complicated emotion crossed his face.

“Th-that’s right. I was really shocked at the time too. I was ranting about how an educator could possibly do something like that to a cadet.”

“No, fuck.”

Weapon cursed, apparently anger surging up.

“What did that instructor look like?”

“…Uh.”

At the question Saki tossed out, the employee’s eyes darted around. When Chloe tapped him on the shoulder a couple of times with the back of her katana, he seemed to make up his mind and moved his dry lips.

“She was a female instructor with purple hair and eyes. Pretty tall too.”

The employee trailed off fearfully. Hugging his trembling shoulders with his own arms, he looked pitiful.

“Does anyone come to mind, Weapon?”

“Hmm, not sure. It’s not like I know the faces of every instructor at the academy. There are too many of them. At least in the Dragon Class I’m in, I don’t think there was an instructor with that appearance.”

Weapon said this while raking through his hair, his thoughts obviously in a tangle. Meanwhile, Saki, who had been pressing an index finger close to her lips in thought, spoke up one line at a time.

“That female instructor. She’s probably the assistant homeroom instructor for our class.”

“Saki, you barely even show up for class.”

“I don’t forget things once I’ve seen them.”

Saki gave one shrug, then popped a candy from her pocket into her mouth.

“And the look in that female instructor’s eyes stuck with me.”

“…I see.”

Weapon stroked his chin with a grave expression, sorting out his thoughts. Then a look of realization suddenly lit up his face.

“Then doesn’t that mean the incident during the midterm was also set up by her?”

“Midterm? What happened then?”

Saki Ryozo answered my question with one of her own.

Weapon glanced at me once. I nodded. Since we had already shared this incident, it was better to reveal it than to hide it.

“Ah, well. During the midterm, we suddenly ran into a demon mermaid.”

“What? Then does that mean Leon getting hospitalized right after the midterm was because he fought a demon?”

Saki opened her eyes wide in shock. Weapon awkwardly shook his head.

“This bastard Kang Geom-ma killed the mermaid by himself too.”

“Ah….”

Pointing his thumb at me, Weapon said it plainly. Saki let out a low sound and then made a face showing she understood.

At this point, it seemed there was no longer any need to explain anything if my name was brought up in any situation. I let out a hollow laugh.

“Well, if we discuss it again later, we’ll get an answer.”

“I guess. No point wrecking our heads over it here when it doesn’t seem like more will come out of it. We should head back for now.”

The situation had been settled to some extent. Even the face of the employee, who had been half-dead, regained some color. Then, as if something had occurred to him, Weapon asked.

“But why did you agree to do that female instructor’s favor in the first place?”

“……”

The employee’s expression flipped. The corners of his slimy mouth twitched visibly.

‘Looks like he doesn’t intend to answer.’

Then all we had to do was drag the answer out of him. I motioned to Chloe.

Nodding, she pressed down hard on the employee’s leg. Weapon frowned, apparently not liking the sight of her merciless touch.

“Aaaaaagh! I’ll talk, I’ll talk, stop!”

“So?”

“Th-that… I had some gambling debt, so I didn’t have any choice either.”

“This fucking asshole. He’s a total dog bastard. You can’t just let a bastard like this go!”

Weapon shouted savagely, his face twisting all at once. At the barrage of abuse, the employee’s brows twitched.

“…Still, I’ve got my age, so calling me a dog bastard is a bit….”

“Hey, you should apologize to dogs, you son of a bitch. You sold out students for money?! God, you’re worse than an animal.”

Clicking his tongue roughly, Weapon waved his arm dismissively. I lightly patted his shoulder and calmed him down.

“Don’t worry. I never planned on letting that bastard off.”

“What are you planning to do with him, Geom-ma?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and showed it to the others. The recording app was still running. Weapon and Saki both let out short exclamations, clearly not expecting it.

“We already got everything out of him that we needed. And wouldn’t you say a dungeon that should never have opened being open is the perfect kind of situation to make someone disappear?”

“W-wait!”

The employee’s face turned blue. He barely forced his wildly trembling jaw under control and asked.

“You can’t seriously mean that, can you?”

I looked him straight in the eye, gave a short laugh, and then turned my head toward Chloe.

“Chloe.”

“Yes, Geom-ma!”

Chloe’s eyes sparkled as if she had been waiting for me to speak. Sticky blood had soaked into her shoes.

“I’ll leave it to your judgment as an assassin.”

My request had only been to make the employee confess, so the rest was up to her as an Auditore. Chloe obediently nodded. Then she straightened her back and erased her emotions one by one from her face.

“I will pass judgment on you.”

Even the light in her eyes turned dull, and she fully entered yandere mode.

“N-no, wait….!”

At the sudden shift in Chloe’s atmosphere, the employee’s face instantly turned deathly pale.

Chloe tilted her head to one side. Then her shoulder moved.

Slice.

The blade passed through the employee’s neck and came out the other side.

Thud.

The head fell to the floor. Blood sprayed spectacularly. Weapon covered his mouth.

I immediately turned my steps away. There was another decapitated corpse over there. Turning only my upper body, I glared at the employee’s corpse.

“Worse than an animal.”

Muttering that, I picked up the coping saw and walked toward the Cow King. No matter how angry I was, there was still work to do.