Ch 27

Chapter 27

8. Trist, The City of Sin

“Ha, haha……” Luke continued to run while breathing heavily.

“Aa, why did this happen…”

If he delayed even a moment to stop, that terrible monster would attack him in any flash.

‘Nonsense. This must be a dream, so this can’t be happening…….’

The darkness that chased him from behind wouldn’t go away no matter how much he tried to deny that reality.

“U-Uh…….”

Suddenly, a black shadow enveloped the entire alley. There was nowhere else to run. Luke’s knees gave out.

“Ah, Goddess…….”

He sat down as if collapsing and prayed. Calling on the goddess who protected the world, he faced the fear before his eyes. A black-haired young man appeared in the swaying darkness. The young man made a puzzled expression.

“Hey, are you qualified to find a goddess right now?”

Stretching out both hands, Luke screamed.

“Get out of here, you terrible devil!”

To the left and right of Luke, seven-horde evil spirits surged. The young man Karnak snorted as he saw the flying demon.

“Who’s the one that’s looking horrible now?”

He was the one who killed 30 humans, raped twice as many women, and even sacrificed children to terrorize the Delard area. That kind of guy acted like an innocent commoner because someone took action.

“Is this why people change depending on where they stand? No, isn’t that a different story? Well, it’s very hard to understand human emotions.”

Karnak stuck out his finger while tilting his head. The evil spirit got annihilated with a light flick of a finger. Luke’s face was stained with despair.

“My demons…….”

Another shadow appeared on the other side of the alley.

“Ahhh, he’s so fast. Why is this necromancer so good at jumping around?”

“Originally, he was a petty thief. He should definitely be good at running away.”

Karnak beckoned while surrounding Luke from the front and back.

“Just grab him real quick.”

“Yes!” Barros threw himself.

Luke resisted by trying to draw out the demon but to no avail. Karnak’s necromancy already bound his darkness tightly. The current Luke was just an ordinary petty thief. There was no way he could stop the fist of a knight who had trained as hard as he could.

Puck!

Luke collapsed with a heavy blow. Barros made him faint with a body blow and asked while holding the man by the back of his neck.

“Are we taking him there?”

Karnak replied as if it mattered.

“Yes. We have to pull out the darkness of the end.”

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

In the past, when Karnak caught a necromancer, he immediately drew out the darkness of the end and then slowly refined it into chaos magic. However, now that he had found a more efficient method, he was using that different method.

A shabby warehouse outside Derat City. Luke was hanging and dangling in the air in this dark and deserted space with his shirt on.

“A-Aaa…….”

There was a large bucket of water underneath, and Barros was firmly holding on to the hanging rope.

Karnak’s voice rang out, “Soak.”

The rope loosened, and Luke fell into the bucket. Of course, only the head.

“Blurgh! Bluurgh!”

Luke struggled while growling. Of course, it was useless as his whole body was tied up tightly. It wasn’t until he was about to choke to death that Karnak spoke again.

“Get up.”

It was when Luke, who had barely tasted the air, gasped.

“Soak.”

Growl!

“Get up.”

“C-Cool! Cool!”

Luke wept while breathing heavily.

“……W-Why?”

He first caught him, put him in this warehouse, and continued torturing him like this. So he just waited for the interrogation. He was fully prepared to reveal any secret without hesitation. But they just recklessly continued torturing him without questioning him.

“What do you want, cool, what?”

They didn’t ask any questions! Was he perhaps thinking whether he would answer any question?

Karnak’s reply was truly savage.

“Soak.”

“Whoops! Whoops!”

He didn’t care what Luke said. He just continued to torture. At the same time, he was only saying things that Luke couldn’t understand at all.

“As expected, this way is more efficient.”

“No, what kind of efficiency are you talking about?”

In doubt, Luke sank into the bucket again. But in fact, Karnak wasn’t really torturing.

“Evil aura is falling apart.”

Because he was just doing the ‘wash’. Thanks to Alius, Karnak found out how to purify evil aura with divine power. He developed a new method by using holy relics instead of paid priests. A lot of holy water was prepared through Alius.

Up to this point, it was good, but a problem arose when it was put into practice. The quantity was too small. Even pouring ten bottles of holy water was not enough to purify the necromancer’s entire soul. That’s why he chose this method.

Even when one did laundry, he wouldn’t do it with only soap. He would rinse with water to remove dirt evenly. Likewise, after diluting holy water with regular water, rinse the whole body and slowly remove the evil aura.

Essentially, it was really ‘washing’. The only difference was that the object being sucked was the soul, not the cloth.

“Get up.”

“Uh-fu, uh-fu!”

Thanks to that, Luke was literally dying, but of course, Karnak didn’t know. Only Barros was a little embarrassed.

“Can I really do this? You said that we won’t live like we used to.”

Capturing innocent people, torturing them, and corrupting their souls to extract their command power was something Karnak often did in the past. Similarly, since people were being tortured to gain strength, wouldn’t this kind of life be the same way as before?

Karnak insisted adamantly that it wasn’t the case.

“At that time, innocent people were tortured, and now this guy is a bad guy, isn’t he?”

Well, the number of people this Luke had killed was to the point where he even got a separate title.

“…By the way, what was his title?”

“Another dark lord.”

There was a reason why the modifier was attached. This guy is the ‘third dark lord’ captured by Karnak’s party.

“Anyway, necromancers all have their titles there.”

“Apart from that, they also called the young master the Lord of Darkness before…….”

“Yeah, I had one when I was young!”

“After that, he’s the ruler of the plague…”

“You were young then too!”

“It seems like you were called the Lord of Death even after you were over 30 years old…….”

“……shut up.”

Translator: Anom

Proofreader: Orange

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“Yes.”

Anyway, there is no doubt that this man who is submerged in a bucket of water is called the Lord of Darkness and has committed all kinds of evil. That was true. That’s why Karnak was so confident.

“Catching the bad guys and making them pay for their crimes is definitely a good deed!”

“……is it?” Barros made a strange expression.

He guessed there was no problem with the logic……. Still, when he saw the man hanging upside down and writhing in pain, he didn’t think it was something good…….

“Since it looks difficult to hang it upside down, should I hang him the other way around?”

“Barros, are you really a bad guy? If you hang yourself, you’ll suffocate! You’ll have to hang by your ankles.”

“Is that so?”

The expression of Barros, who had gained realization, brightened.

“You’re worried about the other person’s life, so you’re indeed doing a good deed!”

“Then!”

It seemed that they hadn’t even thought about tying their wrists together. Thanks to that, Luke was the only one who suffered to the point of death.

“Woo-woo! Cool, please!

Between the desperate screams, Karnak’s idle voice rang again.

“Soak.”

⋆﹥━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━﹤⋆

In the end, all of Luke’s tableware fell out. The darkness of the end possessed by him neatly reverted to Karnak. At the same time, Luke, who was drained of energy, also died.

Since they were concerned about the other person’s life, they killed him mercilessly and neatly after being done with him. However, neither Karnak nor Barros paid much attention to that part.

They didn’t intend to show mercy to the other person in the first place. It’s just that it’s easier to refine the darkness if you just leave it alive. Thanks to this, Luke died slowly in all kinds of pain and despair. In a sense, it can be said to be an offering to those who were sacrificed to him.

Barros murmured while looking at Luke’s corpse, “If we contact the Hatoba Church, they will deal with it as usual, right?”

“Yes. Let’s just go back.”

After leaving the warehouse, the two headed back to their inn.

Barros suddenly asked as he moved his steps.

“Did you collect a lot of darkness?”

It had been more than three months since they stayed in Derat City. In the meantime, they had hunted a considerable number of necromancers.

“The ones we’ve caught…….”

Barros counted with his fingers for a moment.

“Three Lords of Darkness, two Lords of Disease, and one Person Who Loves Death?

“It’s a bit unusual to be naked.”

“Summarizing it makes the nuance strange.”

Anyway, they had hunted quite a few necromancers in the meantime, and thanks to that, Karnak had collected quite a bit of the darkness of the end.

So maybe it was time to go home soon?

“Is there any change?”

“Not yet.”

“How much more do you need to collect? Surely we don’t have to collect all the darkness of the end scattered worldwide, right?”

“Are you crazy? It wouldn’t be enough even if we gave it a lifetime.”

After thinking for a while, Karnak opened his mouth.

“Right now, there are three ways I can deal with the end of the world.”

“How to deal with the end? When you say that, don’t you sound like the savior of the world? In fact, you’re just diligently cleaning up the fucking mess that you made yourself…….”

“Shut up. Why do you keep throwing up things like that?”

“Yeah, Yeah.”

Karnak continued after glancing at the same attendant as ever.

“The first is to live without caring about what the world is like.”

That was impossible. The mishap done by him was too big to live without caring about it. Wasn’t that why he was running around like this?

“The second is to collect all the darkness of the end that was sown, just as you said, Barros.”

This was also too unrealistic. To collect all the vast darkness of the apocalypse that was spread at countless places all over the world? It was a process that would take a lifetime.

“I gave up everything to try to live like a human being and came back, but I can’t just wander and suffer for the rest of my life, can I?”

So the only possibility was the third plan.

“I must block the fundamental channel through which darkness is sown.”

He had somewhat understood the situation through the darkness of the end he had collected so far. The darkness that was being sown at that time was not randomly sown anywhere in the world.

“They say that the darkness of the end falls like rain, but the truth is that even that rain only falls when there are clouds.”

Any magic of Karnak couldn’t stop the rain from falling. However, it was possible to prevent the formation of clouds by preparing in advance.

“With the information we’ve gathered so far, we’ve figured out the existence of clouds. So, if we collect more information and find out the conditions for the creation and appearance of clouds, we can stop the darkness of the apocalypse from spreading further.”

Of course, there was no way to do anything about the darkness of the apocalypse that had already been sown in this way. However, that part is deliberately ignored.

“The Goddess Church is still at a level that can handle it, so things will work out somehow.”

Barros put on a blank expression.

“Ah, right……”

It was a difficult concept for him to understand as a swordsman. And honestly, he even had no desire to understand it. What he really wanted to know was something else. Wasn’t that when they would go home?

“How many more do we have to hunt?”

After a rough calculation, Karnak shrugged.

“Twenty more dark lords?”

Simply put, he said he just needed to catch 20 more guys like Luke. He didn’t know how some third-rate necromancers started to get the grandiose title of Dark Lord, but the atmosphere in the world was like this these days.

Barros sighed.

“I will have to stay in Derat City for at least three more months. I don’t know if the old butler is making a fuss.”

Originally, it was Karnak who said he would leave the territory for about 100 days, saying he was going to the capital. But that period had already passed. The capital wasn’t even close.

Karnak also hardened his expression, probably feeling sorry.

“I should contact the estate soon. Tell them that we’ll be a little late.”

“What are you saying? Will you lie and say that you’re staying in the capital?”

“Is that necessary? I can tell the truth.”

On his way to the capital, he discovered that necromancers were harassing people. With the name of Baron Zestrad in mind, how could he tolerate that behavior? Wasn’t it the noble’s duty to punish them?

For that reason, they were exterminating the necromancer with the support of the Hatoba Church. Thanks to that, he couldn’t even go to the capital. He would live like this for another three months, so wait.

“This is fine.”

“Did you tell the truth?”

“It’s not a lie.”

“Is it?”

Something was cryptic, but it was also ambiguous to refute. Barros also followed only Karnak all his life, so there was quite a gap between ordinary people’s sensibility.

“It won’t take too long anyway, will it?”

Hearing what he wanted to hear, Barros’ expression brightened again.

‘It’s about three more months of suffering. It’s worth enduring that, right? Plus, going on a food tour is fun.’

Barros’ eyes started shining after returning to gourmet mode.

“Shall we settle for Stahl Street for dinner tonight? I heard there’s a house that makes noodle dishes over there.”

He was already hungry. Karnak grinned as well.

“Let’s go, let’s go.”

How light was the steps to finding a good restaurant after a rewarding day!

He was just about to return to the inn, change his clothes, and go to bed.

“Are you Baron Karnak?”

Karnak found an ordinary boy.

“It’s a scorpion from the Hatoba Church.”

The boy handed over a letter. Since he usually exchanged information with Alius in this way, Karnak naturally opened the letter and Barros snooped from the side.

“What? Did a fourth dark lord appear?”

Karnak made a puzzled expression.

“Did Alius say he wants to meet you in person? Let’s meet and talk about the details.”

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