The deep darkness receded like a tide.
Number 99 looked as if nothing had happened at all.
Soros and Javier walked out.
Just as they reached the doorway, Javier’s eyes suddenly sharpened, and he stopped in place.
Soros, who was walking ahead, noticed at once.
"What is it?"
Then Javier’s face changed.
He shouted.
"Move!"
Soros did not hesitate. He followed Javier’s warning on instinct, pulling back the right foot he had just stepped through the door with and retreating violently.
A dagger reflecting a cold glint sliced down past Soros’s cheek.
It stabbed into the black tide beside him, which had blended into the night, and tore open a cut.
In an instant, the black tide surged wildly, then vanished like smoke.
Geraldine, who had lost consciousness, fell out from within and rolled onto the ground.
Soros had no attention to spare for her.
His face tightened, and even more black tide poured out behind him, sweeping toward Caelum in an attempt to devour him in one move.
It still had no effect.
Caelum swung his blade once.
The curtain of black tide was split in two and disappeared in the same instant.
This was not ordinary dispersal.
It had been erased completely from its root.
Killed in essence.
Anything that could be seen and touched, no matter what it was, fell within the erasure range of One Hit Kill.
The black tide was no exception.
"What is going on?"
Soros’s expression turned extremely grave.
But behind him, Javier’s face was even worse.
No, Javier’s face could almost be called frightened.
Under the faint moonlight, he saw Caelum’s familiar face.
There was no mistake.
This was the person he had met in Legend of the Empire.
Owl.
At the same time.
The instant they met Caelum, the hostile system also detected his existence.
Without hesitation, it issued a pursuit mission to every player of its faction in this world.
Mission: Death of the Investigator
The target of the pursuit mission was clearly Caelum.
The hostile system had not forgotten.
In the previous world, this kid had actually dared to make a move against it.
If it allowed him to keep growing in this world, who could say whether he would try again?
The appearance of the mission made Soros’s eyes light up.
A mission delivered to his door had no reason to be refused.
Excitement rose in him at once.
"Javier, let us kill him together."
Javier shook his head with an ugly face. His tone was firm.
"Run."
"Hm?"
Javier roared.
"We will die. Split up and run!"
As someone of the Prophet Sequence, Javier’s words carried great persuasive force.
Although Soros badly wanted to kill Caelum here, complete the mission, and obtain the reward, he still chose to trust Javier’s judgment.
All of this seemed long, but in truth, only a few breaths had passed.
Javier made the decision immediately and turned toward the window behind him.
Soros used tentacles formed from the black tide to smash through a wall, trying to avoid a direct clash with Caelum.
Caelum said nothing.
He drew the flintlock musket at his waist and aimed at Soros’s back.
When Javier crashed through the glass window, he still turned his head for one glance.
Seeing this, he did not forget to shout a warning.
"Soros, dodge!"
Soros looked back.
The instant he saw Caelum raise the gun, panic and fear rose in him for no clear reason.
The black tide behind him surged toward Caelum again.
He knew this would be useless.
But even if it bought only a little time, that would be enough.
The black tide rushed in, blocking Caelum’s line of sight.
Soros used that chance to turn and charge toward another street.
It had no effect on Caelum at all.
He followed his intuition and shifted the muzzle.
Then he pulled the trigger.
A gunshot cracked through the night.
Fire flashed.
The metal bullet shot out, piercing the black tide in an instant.
Soros, who was just changing direction, happened to run straight into the bullet’s path.
The shot landed.
The bullet passed directly through Soros’s head.
One Hit Kill triggered, destroying every trace of life in Soros in a single instant.
He fell at once.
Caelum looked again.
Javier had already disappeared.
That kid belonged to the Prophet Sequence.
Caelum’s bullets could not hit him.
His intuition told him there was no way to kill Javier here.
So he had only attacked Soros.
At least it counted as a gain.
The sound of hooves came closer.
Owen drove a carriage quickly to the scene and helped Caelum load the unconscious Geraldine and Soros’s corpse onto it.
Then he drove Caelum away.
He could not help muttering, "I am a tenured professor of Cton Royal Academy, yet here I am helping you do this kind of thing. Life really is unpredictable."
"You look like you are enjoying it."
"Hahahaha."
Owen laughed.
"This sort of thing is rather fresh to me. Besides, I saw something interesting tonight. Consider it payment. We agreed on that earlier."
"Are the things I wanted ready?"
"All here."
Owen patted the package in the carriage and gave a thumbs up, showing that everything was prepared.
No one knew how much time had passed.
Geraldine’s consciousness gradually returned.
The instant she woke, dizziness, nausea, panic, headache, and every other unpleasant symptom burst out all at once.
They rushed over her together.
"Ugh!"
She retched and slowly opened her eyes.
There seemed to be the sound of a saw beside her ear, echoing in a dull rhythm.
Was it cutting through bone, or something else?
At last, Geraldine fully opened her eyes.
Her vision slowly adjusted to the surrounding light.
Inside the dim basement, the smell of blood rushed into her nose.
She looked up.
Caelum had taken off his suit jacket.
The white shirt he wore had been splashed with spots of red.
His sleeves were rolled up, and in his hand was a saw.
A corpse lay on the table.
Geraldine herself had been tied to a chair.
No matter how one looked at the scene, it was terrifying.
Her pupils tightened.
This man was dismembering a body?
Seeing that she had woken, Caelum put down the saw and very naturally lit a cigarette.
Then he asked casually, "How do you feel?"
For a moment, Geraldine had no idea how to answer.
Was he asking her thoughts on seeing this scene?
Then she realized that Caelum was asking about her physical condition.
"Nauseous. And my head hurts terribly."
As a detective, she had seen all kinds of scenes.
Naturally, she would not scream like an ordinary young woman at what was before her.
She remained so calm that she could almost be called unaffected.
"It is fine. The first time is always like this."
Sequence power came from the ancient gods, after all.
Geraldine had been swept into Soros’s black tide. Having these symptoms was entirely normal.
Caelum took out a cigarette.
Geraldine paused, then opened her mouth and bit it.
Click.
The sound of the lighter opening was crisp and pleasant, especially clear in the basement.
Caelum lit the cigarette for Geraldine.
This action left Geraldine completely baffled.
What exactly was he doing?
She could not understand Caelum’s logic at all.