Chapter 109: Extracurricular Activity (8)

I hurriedly chased after the Guard Captain.

He had already climbed to the third floor and slipped into his office.

Click, the sound of the office door locking.

Boom!

I smashed the door and entered, only to see the Guard Captain trying to escape through the window.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

My outstretched fingers grabbed his hair.

The Guard Captain screamed in pain as his scalp was torn.

“Arghhh!”

By now, Roenberg’s citizens had gathered in front of the City Guard Office.

The crowd below murmured as they watched us.

It lingered like that for a moment.

A public execution.

The horrific crime of the Guard Captain, kidnapping a child and sending him to a biological lab, was something every person in this city needed to know.

‘And I don’t plan to stop here.’

I yanked the struggling man up and threw him back into the office.

Thud!

“Ugh…”

The Guard Captain, rolling across the floor, tried to stand, leaning against the wall.

But his legs kept giving out, and he collapsed repeatedly.

His face was a mess, covered in blood from his torn scalp, and his eyes, staring at me, were filled with fear and dread.

Yeah.

This was the true face of the man representing Roenberg’s law enforcement.

Even with a sword at his waist, he didn’t think to draw it.

He sent his men forward but didn’t know how to fight himself.

A coward who ignored the pleas of the citizens he was supposed to protect and succumbed to temptation.

I approached him slowly.

“H-Haha. Let’s do this. I’ll talk to the Academy. I’ll say you perfectly resolved Bedrock’s request.”

“No need.”

“There’s more! I’ll personally ask the mayor to ensure you’re rewarded for your merits. How’s that?”

One mystery was solved.

I’d always wondered how, in the original story, they found Kimi when he was nowhere to be found.

‘So that’s how it was resolved.’

Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work on me.

“P-Please, just let me off this once. I have a family waiting for me at home.”

He grabbed my shoe, looking up with a pitiful expression.

I felt no sympathy.

Just amusement.

“What did you do when Bedrock begged like that?”

“T-That… I had no choice!”

“No choice?”

“Yes! I may be the Guard Captain in name, but I’m just a commoner living in Roenberg, aren’t I? I have four kids to feed and my sick parents… You don’t know how much money it takes to support a big family, how hard I have to work!”

Pathetic emotional manipulation.

I tilted my head.

“What nonsense. Why should I care about that?”

“……!”

“Nobody held a sword to your throat. You chose to live like this and this situation is the result of your choices. Right?”

“Y-Yes. I… I was wrong a hundred times. I’m begging you.”

The Guard Captain knelt and pleaded.

“Just spare my life, please. Okay?”

“Who said I was going to kill you?”

I smirked and grabbed his collar, forcing him to stand.

“I’m going to ask you a few questions. You’d better answer well. Your fate depends on it.”

The Guard Captain nodded, his face filled with fear.

“Good. Is the mayor of Roenberg in on it too?”

“N-No. That idiot doesn’t know anything.”

“Then what about those knights earlier?”

“Those… They were people infiltrated into the Roenberg Knights, just in case. But there aren’t many of them.”

Unexpected.

I thought the Roenberg mayor, or even the Roenberg Knights, would be compromised by the Demon Council, but it seemed that wasn’t the case.

“You’re not lying?”

“Absolutely not! I swear on my family…”

That’s when it happened.

The Guard Captain, pouring out his sincerity, suddenly clamped his mouth shut.

“What? Why’d you stop talking?”

I furrowed my brow.

‘Is he trying some clever trick?’ I suspected, but what followed erased that doubt instantly.

“Ugh! Uwaaah!”

Suddenly, the Guard Captain’s face swelled up like a bright red balloon.

At the grotesque sight, my jaw dropped.

At the same time, a chill ran down my spine.

A warning from [Instinct].

I quickly kicked the Guard Captain away and it was the right call.

His head, crashing against the wall, exploded, splattering blood everywhere.

Hiss…

The wall, touched by the blood, melted like it was doused in acid.

A shiver ran through me.

This was clearly the work of a suicide worm parasitizing his brain.

Suicide worms.

Hermaphroditic creatures that self-impregnate and bear only one offspring, they were vermin raised by the Demon Council.

Suicide worms had a peculiar ability.

If their offspring died, the parent worm would explode its own body in self-destruction.

Even as mere vermin, their love for their young was profound, transcending species—a strange creature that made you realize that. But seeing the Guard Captain fall to it felt oddly poetic.

‘Karma, huh.’

I gave a bitter smile, looking at the headless Guard Captain.

I felt no pity or regret.

Just disappointment.

Because there were still things to confirm.

‘The Demon Council cut off its tail.’

Meaning they’d realized something went wrong at their bio lab.

There was no time.

To uproot the bio lab completely, I had to move now.

“Senior!”

Just then, the others came up from below.

Yuria spoke.

“The Roenberg mayor is here.”

“What? The Roenberg mayor? Here?”

“Yes. Karina’s dealing with him.”

The Guard Captain had said the mayor wasn’t involved with the Demon Council.

It seemed he was telling the truth.

The mayor, coming up and seeing the Guard Captain’s body, was immediately outraged.

“That damn bastard, causing such a disgrace!”

The Roenberg mayor quickly asked me,

“What can I do? Tell me anything. I’ll help fully.”

I understood why the Guard Captain called him an idiot.

The Roenberg mayor was an upright man.

Uncompromising against injustice.

That was fortunate for us.

“For now, can you take care of the city guards downstairs?”

“Got it.”

The mayor went back to the first floor with the knights he’d brought.

That left just us in the Captain’s office.

“What now?”

At Ivan’s question, all eyes turned to me.

“Hm.”

Truthfully, I was thinking it over.

I came to the City Guard Office to judge the Guard Captain but also to extract information from him.

Where the lab was hidden in Roenberg and its scale.

I meant to find that out, but the Guard Captain died unexpectedly.

‘What do I do?’

There was no time.

At this very moment, the lab’s people were likely erasing all traces and preparing to flee.

The Demon Council’s bio lab was, shockingly, in the abandoned mine.

‘Ridiculous.’

The abandoned mine was the first place we searched when we arrived in Roenberg to find Kimi.

Naturally, we found nothing there, nor did we sense anything off.

‘And it was hidden here?’

I looked at the mine’s internal map and finally understood.

‘There was another hidden entrance inside.’

No wonder.

If I’d known this earlier, I could’ve solved it without all this trouble.

‘Good thing I found out now. Let’s go.’

I memorized the necessary information and left the Captain’s office.

Before going, I stopped by the first floor, where the Roenberg mayor was detaining the city guards.

I had a request for him.

“Mayor.”

“Oh! Gerard.”

“Could you take care of Kimi?”

“Kimi, you mean…”

The mayor’s eyes turned to Kimi.

“And where are you cadets going?”

“To catch the ones kidnapping citizens.”

“Oh.”

“As I mentioned, the group that bought off the city guards might be after Kimi. Please protect Bedrock and Kimi.”

The mayor nodded readily.

“Don’t worry. I’ll arrange guards with only my most trusted people.”

“Thank you.”

It didn’t stop there.

“Rachel.”

She, standing there dazed, tilted her head at me.

“Yes?”

“You stay and protect Kimi too.”

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

I didn’t fully trust Rachel, but recalling the expression she showed briefly in the backyard, I doubted she’d do anything reckless.

‘And her skills are the real deal.’

Yuria set Kimi down and Rachel cautiously called out to him.

“K-Kimi? Want to come to big sister?”

Kimi stared at Rachel, then looked back and forth between me and Yuria.

I smiled and nodded.

“It’s okay. Go ahead.”

“Yeah. Rachel’s my kind friend.”

Only then did Kimi approach Rachel, wrapping his arms around her slender waist.

Rachel’s face flushed red instantly.

‘She’ll be fine.’

Right after, I left Roenberg with the others, heading for the abandoned mine in the hills.

* * *

Step, step…

The inside of the abandoned mine was pitch black.

Broken tracks and extinguished lanterns.

Only abandoned pickaxes hinted that this was once a mine.

We pressed forward, relying on the light of Karina’s magic.

The five factions of the Beltus Cult.

The Darkness Council specialized in assassination, the Death Council in necromancy, and the other factions each had their own doctrines and traits.

The Curse Council dealt with disease and decay.

The Destruction Council focused on physical strength.

And finally, the Demon Council was about dark magic and development.

Among them, the Demon Council was considered the weakest in combat.

Because most of its members were developers.

Simply put, they were like a cult version of Dayle.

Most clerics were researchers contributing to the cult’s advancement, with few actual combatants.

“Dieeee!”

So their ambushes were pathetically weak.

Clang!

A bottle flew in an arc through the air, shattering on the ground and sparking flames.

But no one in our party was foolish enough to get hit by it.

“Ugh!”

Five clerics ambushed us.

It took less than ten minutes to deal with them.

“What are these guys? Why are they so sloppy?”

The clerics we encountered afterward were the same.

We took down a total of fifteen clerics, matching the lab’s scale as noted by the Guard Captain.

Meaning we’d dealt with all the researchers except the head administrator.

But.

‘Why does this feel so uneasy?’

At first, I thought we’d barged in so quickly that we caught them fleeing.

It made sense since we were still at the mine’s entrance.

The same place we searched on our first day in Roenberg.

As expected, a second ambush came, and by the third, I was certain.

‘They’re deliberately luring us in.’

We reached what seemed like the end.

No, what we thought was the end of the mine’s entrance.

We found a space carved between the rocks.

That was the entrance.

One we hadn’t seen before.

“…….”

So we stood there, looking at each other.

Until now, the entrance had been hidden, but now it was wide open.

As if begging us to come in.

A trap, with a 58,000 percent chance.

“What do we do?”

Karina asked.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s obviously a trap.”

“So? Turn back?”

“No, but we don’t have to rush in right now, do we? Better safe than sorry.”

Ivan and Yuria looked at me, seeming to agree with Karina.

They were right.

Normally, I’d have made that call before Karina.

But this wasn’t a normal situation.

‘I’ve got a feeling.’

Something was still in there.

Something [Gaius’s Insight] was telling me about.

A rising sense of anticipation.

Mixed with the urgency and pressure that it might disappear if I came later, it pushed my feet forward.

Step.

That single step completely separated us.

Rumble!

The entrance collapsed.

“Senior!”

Yuria’s face, reaching out to me urgently, was completely blocked by falling boulders.

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