A scruffy man with tangled hair, who was known as the sewer rat, let out a long yawn before speaking.
“Yaaawn. This should have about wrapped up the underground city…”
As he sluggishly got up, he pulled a rat out of a small case and attached a tiny message container to its leg.
“I’m too lazy, so you go instead.”
As if it understood what was being said, the brown rat moved away while still holding the note case to its leg.
Before long, a woman entered the sewer rat’s lair.
However, she was not alone. The slaves were carrying in a throne-like chair she was seated on.
“Oh, you’re here?”
“Haah, no matter when I come, this place always stinks. You must be making a lot of money, so why not spruce things up a bit?”
Miss Sue.
She arrived with her subordinates. Then started scolding the filthy state of the sewer rat’s lair.
“It’s a hassle; what can I do? Anyway, how’s the job going?”
“I watched the fortress collapse. That dumb dog butcher is finished now.”
“Hmm… So that’s how it is.”
This operation felt more spontaneous than expected.
Originally, the sewer rat had no intention of sticking his teeth in so quickly, but someone used Count Salieri’s ledger to drive the entire underground city into madness.
Seeing this as both a crisis and an opportunity, the sewer rat immediately slipped some information to Miss Sue.
“There really is a way to get the method the King of Haiel is using to become younger?”
Like this.
Miss Sue had always been obsessed with age, and even more so, with beauty.
She was willing to betray even her only blood relative if necessary.
So the sewer rat figured that if he leaked the information this way, she might come over to his side…
I never thought she’d switch so easily as if flipping a palm.
Blood ties can be quite ambiguous.
Sometimes they seem unbreakable, as if nothing could sever them, but other times, they snap more easily than a twig.
In Miss Sue’s case, she had shared her struggles in this underground city with the dog butcher, so the sewer rat thought their bond was strong…
But it seemed that time had changed things.
“Of course. We also have the card that holds the King of Haiel’s weakness.”
“What is it?”
“Adam, the knight who returned alive from the Great Mezaiya Forest two years ago. The one who commissioned his assassination was that king. There’s solid proof of the transaction too.”
“Hmm… So that’s how it is.”
The Great Mezaiya Forest was still a hot topic. It was a cradle that had been opened for the first time in a hundred years, and praise for Raviata who led the expedition continued even now.
On top of that, the public sentiment in the Kingdom of Haiel was swelling with pride. Since they were celebrating the birth of a hero from their own land.
But what would happen if it were revealed that the hero’s death was actually part of an assassination plot by the king?
Not that public support matters all that much.
The real problem was the existence of the three princes, who had been waiting with their eyes wide open for the king’s mistake all this time.
Miss Sue immediately caught on to this and flashed a satisfied smile.
“But tell me, why are you using the dog butcher as a discarded pawn?”
“Hmph, he may be my brother, but he’s a coward, isn’t he? We’ve had countless chances to move above ground, but he never once considered leaving this place and keeps insisting it was safe here.”
Miss Sue then glanced at the wrinkled skin on the back of her hand and continued.
“You know what the ecosystem of this underground city is like.”
“If you get weak, you get eaten.”
“That’s right. No matter how much absolute power you hold here, if you grow weak, you’ll be devoured immediately. We don’t need any justification.”
Above ground, as long as one didn’t get greedy, they could look forward to a comfortable old age, but here underground, the moment you grew old and weak, all that awaited you was death.
Too much blood had been spilled on the way to reaching such a position.
For Miss Sue, a woman, she couldn’t bear the gradual loss of her greatest weapon—her beauty.
“That’s why I’m taking this chance to go above ground. Let the coward rot here. Or die.”
In truth, no one knew how far the dog butcher would be pushed back because of the recent underground auction incident.
The Goldmine family, which had also suffered damages, wouldn’t sit idly by, so he wouldn’t be completely destroyed… but at best, he’d end up beneath the Goldmine’s control.
If that happens, the dominance of the underground city will be firmly in our hands.’
The Goldmine family remained intact, while the dog butcher lost nearly half his footing due to the recent events.
Meanwhile, Miss Sue and the sewer rat were steadily maintaining their strength.
The outcome of this power struggle was obvious.
After the power structure of the underground city changed, Miss Sue would finally move above ground, as she had always dreamed.
When that happened, the true loser of the underground city would be the sewer rat.
Once all this is over, I’ll need to take a proper rest.
He felt worn out from moving hastily, which was unlike him.
At least for a while, there shouldn’t be any more bothersome issues.
“Haah… Why am I doing all this for that damned power….”
Just as he sighed lazily, the sound of footsteps echoed from the hallway.
“Boss, we’ve received a status report.”
Did the situation at the auction house get resolved in the meantime?
The sewer rat responded to his subordinate’s voice with a lazy tone.
“Yeah, come in.”
“B-Boss, we’ve received a status report.”
“I said come in! Huh…?”
“B-Boss, Boss, th-the status report, it’s here.”
At that moment, when the sewer rat saw the eyes of the subordinate who had entered, he felt an intense sense of foreboding and shouted.
“Damn it, stop him!!”
With that shout, assassins who had been hiding all around sprang out at once.
However, before their swords could strike the subordinate’s neck, the blood-red eyes of the subordinate who entered first began to glow fiercely.
***
Black rose petals tinged with purple fluttered softly in the air.
In the midst of them, the figures of the dark elves and Shane appeared. Their presence seemed dreamlike at first glance, but the spectacle caused by the petals was anything but that.
“Grrr, ugh!”
“M-My magic…!”
The moment the fluttering petals caused scratches, magical power and life force were drawn out from the wounds, and new black flowers sprouted in their place.
Those who had fallen were helplessly slashed further by the petals, causing more flowers to sprout again.
A mass of flowers bloomed above the bodies of the dead.
It was truly a scene of terror.
Shane, who appeared to be the mastermind of this situation, gave an order to the dark elves.
“Take care of the survivors first.”
“Yes.”
Obern, the leader of the dark elves who had learned the human language over the past two years and was of the same bloodline as the Elf Queen Priscilla, nodded his head and the surrounding dark elves moved at once.
Those who belatedly protected their bodies with magical power were helplessly pushed back by the relentless attack of the advancing dark elves.
Just shielding their entire bodies with magical power to fend off the falling petals was disadvantageous enough, which made it impossible to avoid the swift attacks of the dark elves.
“……! ……!!”
The Crown Prince’s wild dogs who were cloaked in white flames burned the petals swirling around them while bracing against the incoming onslaught of dark elves.
The blades of the wild dogs and the dark elves clashed fiercely.
However, contrary to the wild dogs’ expectations, the dark elves’ swords did not easily shatter under the white flames; they were forged from the branches of the World Tree.
“Ha!”
Not only that, but the dark elves were also unable to use magic, yet they had the energy of the World Tree.
They strengthened their bodies with this energy and, unlike the wild dogs who charged like mere beasts, they demonstrated perfect teamwork by wielding their swords in unison with their comrades.
As a result, the wild dogs began to be pushed back one by one, and the tide of the battle gradually shifted.
“What are those bastards doing?!”
Meanwhile, Number One and the captain of the guards, who were facing Shane, glared at him with intense caution.
The favorable battle situation had rapidly turned against them.
Moreover, for some reason, the rabbit gentleman who had been rampaging moments ago did not charge at Shane.
Rather than looking at Number One and the captain of the guards, Shane turned his gaze toward the rabbit gentleman.
“Give my regards to your master.”
“…Like I’ve heard, you’re truly a fascinating person.”
The rabbit gentleman, who recognized Shane, looked at his monster rabbits who were still dying from the petals.
It was no longer the atmosphere for fighting, nor did he have any intention of continuing.
He looked toward the fallen fortress of the dog butcher and raised his hand in the air.
“Since master has given his command, let’s end it here for today. See you at the next show.”
When he lowered his hand, a teleport portal opened just like when they had arrived.
The rabbit gentleman quickly vanished inside, and the monster rabbits began to disappear like smoke.
It was as if they had gotten everything they wanted; they vanished without showing any regrets. Number One belatedly shouted into the empty air.
“Hey, this is different from what we agreed on! Where are you going?”
But there was no reply to his shout, and he glared at Shane with bloodshot eyes.
“I don’t know who you are, but know that you’ve messed with the wrong people.”
“Hoo, I’ll be suffering for a while.”
Following that, Number One and the captain of the guards pulled out a pill and swallowed it at the same time.
The change came quickly.
Number One’s huge frame grew even larger, and fur began to sprout from his once normal skin and the same happened to the captain of the guards.
Their height, which had seemed to be about 1.8 meters, suddenly swelled to nearly 3 meters. Shane watched this transformation as if he had expected it and just nodded his head knowingly.
“Gordon’s research seems to have progressed quite a bit. A drug refined from the blood of beastmen, I presume.”
Though Gordon was long dead, the traces of his work still lingered everywhere in the world.
“Not that it changes the fact that it’s still incomplete.”
When Number One and the captain of the guards, who were now transformed into beasts, charged at him, the dark elves began to gather around Shane.
Obern’s sword blocked Number One’s sharp claws, and the captain of the guards had his path obstructed by arrows flying in from a distance.
“There’s no need to drag this out.”
With that, Shane carved an expansion rune spell into the ground and activated it.
“What, what is this?!”
“Huh?!”
Number One, a wolf beastman, and the captain of the guards, a bear beastman, couldn’t hide their shock as the beastman magic quickly drained from their bodies.
“That’s what happens when you rely on an incomplete spell.”
“What have you done?!”
“Argh…!”
Meanwhile, the captain of the guard fell to his knees. He was overwhelmed by the side effects of being forcibly separated from the beastman magic.
Shane had no intention of lecturing them on the weaknesses of their magic. He summoned countless swords in the air.
“Then, let’s wrap this up.”
“Gaaah!!”
Arrows shot from all directions pierced the captain’s body, and soon after, Shane’s summoned wind blades took his life.
However.
“Did you think it would end like this?!”
For some reason, unlike the captain of the guards, Number One showed no signs of side effects; he threw a smoke bomb on the ground that obscured their view.
In the meantime, Number One who had taken the pill once again disappeared from his spot in the form of a wolf.
He had already sprinted far into the distance.
“A half-beastman, huh?”
“…Shall we pursue him?”
“Hmm. No, let him be. He’s just running toward his own death anyway.”
“Understood.”
Without questioning Shane’s words, Obern simply nodded his head.
“Now, shall we finish our transaction?”
“…That’s something I’m glad to hear.”
Meanwhile, Elliot who had been watching the situation unfold managed to lift one corner of his mouth and respond to Shane’s words.
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