Chapter 69: A genuine bunch of lunatics
"Run! Hurry!"
The man, Soni the traveling merchant, ran through a dark alley. Behind him, the woman playing his wife, Ellya, followed close, her face pale.
"I-is someone chasing us?" Her voice trembled as she followed Soni, fleeing through sharp turns crammed with trash that could easily trip them up with one wrong step.
Soni let out a frustrated groan. "There’s one! My earrings are picking up someone chasing us!" He bit his own lip, venting his fury by smashing through a flimsy wooden board blocking their path. "Damn it! If only they’d let us keep the teleportation artifact, we wouldn’t be getting chased down like this!"
The two of them kept running in a panic. But no matter how fast they fled, there was no way they could actually outrun, or even match, the speed of someone with a stigmata.
Ellya herself wasn’t a stigmata user at all—everything she’d been doing back at the restaurant had just been a staged act, built on a simple trick. That was exactly why, the moment she heard footsteps closing in behind her at a terrifying pace, her face went pale.
"N-no...! Hey! Soni, he’s gonna catch us, damn it! Do something!"
"I know!" Soni snapped back sharply, cold sweat dripping down his face. "I’ll toss a smoke bomb, get ready!"
Right away, Soni pulled out a smoke bomb tucked in his pants pocket. It was a smoke bomb crafted with the help of magical tools—one that produced thick smoke over a wide area, lasting quite a while too, expensive enough that Soni would’ve preferred not to use something like this if he could help it.
But their lives were on the line here.
"What are you waiting for?!!"
Hearing Ellya scream, he clenched his jaw and spun around.
"E-eat this! You bastard!"
Right in front of him, he saw the young man chasing them. A young man with messy black hair and sharp red pupils.
But what made Soni freeze in place was the moment he spotted a massive sword hovering there, tearing through the air with every path it carved, red lightning crackling nonstop alongside it.
"H-huh?!"
Soni didn’t get the chance to react.
Whoosh—!! Slash—!
Spurt—!
"Ah-aarghh!!"
The sword sliced clean through his arm. Blood sprayed out wildly, accompanied by Soni’s tragic, agonized scream.
His severed hand dropped to the ground, still clutching the smoke bomb. Luckily, the bomb didn’t go off, staying in a stable enough condition.
"S-soni...!"
Ellya, standing across from Soni, went utterly pale with panic, not knowing what to do, when suddenly...
She saw a shadow fall over her body.
Eiros was here.
***
Eiros lowered himself, ignoring Soni, who writhed on the ground, tears and snot streaming down his face. He picked up the smoke bomb, pressing it against his palm for a moment, feeling its texture.
Then, he tucked it into his own pocket, turning his gaze back toward Soni and Ellya, both trembling in fear.
"W-why are you chasing us? We’re innocent! P-please, please let us go...!"
Eiros looked at Ellya coldly, his mind entirely elsewhere. It was the hand he’d just sliced off Soni—something he’d done purely on reflex—that left him questioning whether he’d handled that correctly.
His heart pounded hard. He understood there’d come a day when he might have to kill someone, since that was simply how this world worked.
But even after all that reasoning and understanding, he still felt stiff and deeply uncomfortable.
So, seeing that severed hand left Eiros feeling genuinely sick. He stayed quiet, his expression darkening, letting out a breath before closing his eyes.
’I need to focus. Whatever happens can happen after I’m done with this.’
He then opened his eyes, sensing a threatening movement. The woman, Ellya, had apparently taken advantage of Eiros’s brief moment of distraction.
She raised a dagger, hidden inside her clothes, and lunged at him with clear intent to kill.
"Die!"
Of course, to Eiros, that was painfully slow. He was actually a bit surprised, especially since he’d sensed earlier that this woman had been in the Awakened realm, nearly breaking into the Luminous tier.
So what was going on here?
Why did she seem so panicked?
Why wasn’t she using her stigmata at all?
That left Eiros feeling increasingly uneasy and unsettled. So, carefully, he dodged the attack. The dagger swept right past his face, and Eiros raised his hand, gripping the woman’s wrist.
Next, he lifted his leg and slammed it hard into the woman’s stomach.
Bam—!!
"Gah!"
The woman choked on air, her eyes going wide as her stomach was forced backward. Her body lifted slightly off the ground before she collapsed to the floor, saliva spilling from her mouth.
Once again, fear was plain on her face as she looked up at Eiros, crouched right in front of her, his expression genuinely hard to read.
"Tell me, why were you two in such a hurry to run?"
"I-if I answer, will you let us live?"
Hearing that, Eiros’s expression scrunched up slightly, and after a moment’s consideration, he shrugged.
"Depends on your answer."
Ellya’s eyes widened, seeing a glimmer of hope, and she squirmed in fear, starting to cry, immediately begging in front of Eiros.
"T-this isn’t our fault! W-we were just following orders! We never intended to sell that fake artifact at all, we were forced into it, we had no other choice.. So...."
"...I asked, why were you two running in such a hurry."
"Ah, that’s..." Ellya paused for a moment, her expression turning grim, tears spilling. "It’s because he showed up, a stigmata user sent to catch us...!"
Hearing that, Eiros finally understood a little. Still, that one answer only led him to another question.
"How did you know? Who gave you the order?"
"I-it’s... we were just following what they told us. If we saw someone snap their fingers and tap their finger on the table, they told us we had to run immediately, or we’d be killed."
Ellya paused, taking a few breaths while rubbing her stomach, then continued:
"We don’t know who gave us the order. We just did what we were told because... because we were paid... p-please let us go, we genuinely don’t know anything."
Watching Ellya sob made Eiros’s expression darken even further. If the two of them really were just pawns, that meant he’d made the wrong call, chasing down someone with no actual connection to the real Black Genesis.
He clicked his tongue, making Ellya flinch, a shiver running through her. Across from them, Soni still looked like a complete mess, beyond saving at this point.
"What else do you know?"
The moment Eiros asked that, Ellya seemed to have already anticipated it, seizing this as her one and only shot at survival.
"T-they kidnap people! Right! They always kidnap whoever buys that fake artifact. We don’t know how, but whoever buys it ends up hypnotized and heads off somewhere. A place where we always meet up...! Right! If you let us go, I’ll tell you—"
"—Haah... you know, don’t you? You’re not exactly in a position to negotiate. Whether you two live or not depends entirely on my decision, and how satisfied I am with your answers."
Hearing that, Ellya froze, her face going pale, and she lowered her head, slamming it against the ground several times until it scraped raw.
"I-I’m sorry! Please forgive me! T-they’re in an abandoned warehouse! Right on the western side of Clathria, y-you’ll find an abandoned bread factory there, please forgive me... pleaaase...!"
Ellya stared at Eiros, pale-faced, biting her lip as she noticed his expression looking utterly uninterested. That made her think it probably wasn’t enough yet, so she quickly kept talking:
"R-right...! Those people mentioned something once, that he came from some kind of organization, yeah, I overheard it by accident, but, but, but, I think he said it was—ah..! Aaah...! Aaaahhh...!"
Eiros froze.
Ellya, who’d looked perfectly fine just moments ago, suddenly vomited black blood from her mouth, her eyes, her nose, and her ears. Her body suddenly convulsed, writhing in agony, letting out a pitiful wail.
"Hey?! Are you okay? Damn it!"
Eiros flinched, leaping back. Watching Soni, in the same condition, both of them vomiting an enormous amount of disgusting black fluid, writhing like tiny snakes, swallowing the last of their lives whole.
Eiros felt his heart go cold watching that, holding back his nausea as he turned away. His expression had hardened completely.
’A genuine bunch of lunatics.’
Only about thirty minutes remained, leaving Eiros in a genuinely tight spot.
He didn’t waste any more time. Even watching those two die right in front of him like that, he refused to let himself sink into that negative state, feeding the seed inside his own body.
His hands trembled, but he clenched them into fists and shot off, leaving that dark alley behind.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, right at the location of the very building in question.
The dark-skinned man who’d just bought that necklace walked forward, his eyes completely hollow.
His destination was the abandoned bread factory.
***