Chapter 56: Roy’s Infiltration [2]
Few minutes ago
The spiked whip crack-echoed through the alleyway once more, but before it could strike flesh, the lead Ogre grew impatient.
With a guttural grunt of pure, mindless frustration at the spy’s absolute silence, the brute hoisted his colossal iron cleaver.
CHOP.
The heavy blade sheared through the air and slammed into the stone.
"Praise the God of Beasts" the Fox-Man smiled.
The beastman’s battered head rolled into the pristine, white snow, his eyes glassing over, his lips forever locked over the secrets of Tempest City.
Now....
"Huh?"
In the deep shadow of the crumbling wall, the tiny lizard vanished.
The air within the dead-end courtyard didn’t just turn cold; the local physics of Norona City violently fractured.
A suffocating, pitch-black void erupted from the ground as Roy returned to his human form, his tailored black coat snapping violently against a sudden, swirling hurricane.
His golden-crimson eyes didn’t just flare—they exploded into blinding columns of raw, divine light.
BOOM!
A shockwave of pure, unadulterated crimson divine energy detonated from his core, instantly pulverizing the stone walls, the frozen garbage, and the very snow beneath his boots.
The ambient mana channels of the slum district violently warped and curdled, screaming under the sudden weight of a cosmic authority that was swirling entirely beyond control.
The space around Roy fractured into hairline fractures of red static, the raw code of the world buckling under his absolute fury.
The four Ogres didn’t even have time to scream.
The sheer, physical weight of Roy’s peak killing intent struck them like a falling moon.
Their knees shattered against the stone, their massive, eight-foot frames pinned flat into the dirt as the immense gravity of his rage began to literally crush their internal organs.
"Should I just kill them?" Roy stretched forth his arm.
’I am the architect.’ the thought roared through Roy’s consciousness, a tempest of dark, primordial fire.
’I authored their loyalty.’
’I wrote their paths. And these bugs dared to delete one of my own?’
The crimson divine energy flared higher, threatening to expand across the entire eastern sector, an apocalypse waiting to wipe Norona City off the map.
His fingers curled, claws of red light extending from his fingertips, ready to unravel the souls of every creature within three kilometers.
But then, at the absolute precipice of total devastation, Roy’s jaw locked.
His pupils contracted into sharp, needle-like points.
His crimson eyes shimmered, he suddenly remembered his conversation with Telvanus.
If he unleashed this strike now, the Troll King would notice. Whatever’s hidden in this city would be alerted.
Even Damascus, the God of Misfortune would notice him.
"No" he shook his head, "Control it" he commanded himself, his inner voice a chilling, absolute law.
The infiltration must be flawless.
The fury inside him didn’t vanish—it was forcibly compressed.
Roy drew a sharp, agonizing breath through his teeth, his chest heaving as he actively wrestled his own divine essence back into his divine sea.
The swirling, white-hot crimson fire that had filled the alleyway began to violently reverse, imploding backward into his body with the force of a collapsing star.
The red fractures in the air snapped shut.
The local hurricane ceased.
Within three agonizing seconds, the alley returned to a terrifying, unnatural quiet.
Roy stood perfectly still in the center of the ruined alley, his hands slipped slowly back into the pockets of his coat.
The crimson light in his eyes faded back into a calm, dual-colored glint, though his pupils remained dangerously dark.
The only sound left was the ragged, terrified gasping of the four crushed Ogres bleeding into the dirt beneath him.
He looked down at the headless form of his follower, then shifted his gaze to the trembling brutes at his feet.
The storm was gone, replaced by a cold, mathematical calculation that was infinitely more terrifying.
"Tch" he inhaled deeply, "Killing all four of them would surely make things worse, so I’ll only need to kill one"
He took a step forward, "The one who killed my follower" the moment he locked eyes with the Ogre who had beheaded the Fox-Man.
He activated his divine authority.
Divine Authority of Mindcraft!
The lead Ogre, his colossal frame pinned flat into the crimson-stained snow by the residual weight of Roy’s presence, looked up through bloodshot eyes.
His iron cleaver had slipped from his grasp, and his massive, calloused hands were shaking.
He could see no weapons in the human’s hands, no gathered elements of fire or lightning.
There was only that pair of dual-colored, golden-crimson eyes staring down at him with the chilling detachment of a god looking at a bug.
"W-Wait..." the Ogre gasped, his voice cracking as a sudden, sharp pressure pricked the front of his skull. "Mercy... Great One, mercy! We were only—"
"You don’t have permission to speak," Roy whispered.
With a slight, almost imperceptible tilt of his head, Roy unleashed the raw, unfiltered weight of his divine authority: [Mindcraft].
He didn’t target the Ogre’s flesh.
He targeted the underlying data of the creature’s consciousness.
Bypassing the physical skull entirely, Roy’s mental authority pierced the Ogre’s brain like a cluster of white-hot iron hooks, seizing control of his central nervous system and his sensory processing matrix.
The Ogre’s eyes instantly rolled back into his head, showing nothing but curdled whites.
A sound escaped his throat—not a battle cry, but a high-pitched, wet, guttural shriek of pure, unadulterated agony that rattled the crumbling walls of the slum alley.
Inside the Ogre’s mind, Roy wasn’t just inflicting pain; he was rewriting reality.
He forced the Ogre’s brain to register the sensation of his blood turning into liquid acid, boiling through his veins at thousands of degrees.
Every single nerve ending across the giant’s eight-foot body was systematically fired at maximum capacity, over and over, overloading his brain with the simulated trauma of being flayed alive, crushed by a mountain, and burned from the inside out all at once.
"STOP! PLEASE, MAKE IT STOP!" the Ogre screamed, his massive fingers clawing frantically at his own face, tearing deep, bloody furrows into his own cheeks and gouging at his own eyes in a desperate, mad attempt to claw out the pain inside his head.
"MERCY! KILL ME! JUST KILL ME!"
The remaining three Ogres watched from the dirt, paralyzed by a primitive, absolute terror that froze the marrow in their bones.
They had seen warriors disemboweled; they had seen clans eaten alive by trolls.
But they had never seen their strongest vanguard leader reduced to a thrashing, weeping infant without ever being touched.
They could see the invisible distortion in the air around his head—the red, static-like fractures of [Mindcraft] slowly tightening around his skull.
Roy’s expression never softened. His gaze remained flat, calculating, and completely ruthless.
"As expected, you are weak." Roy murmured.
He snapped his fingers.
The neurological command inside the Ogre’s brain reached absolute critical mass.
The sheer volume of simulated trauma forced the Ogre’s heart to beat so rapidly it ruptured inside his chest.
Simultaneously, the violent electrical storms engineered by Roy’s Mindcraft caused the blood vessels in the giant’s head to violently burst.
Thick, dark blood erupted from the Ogre’s eyes, nose, and ears in violent jets.
His jaw unhinged in a final, silent scream before his entire skull literally collapsed inward, the brain matter entirely liquefied by the sheer, devastating kinetic force of his own short-circuiting nervous system.
The massive brute slumped sideways into the snow with a heavy, sickening thud, his body twitching sporadically as the residual red data particles of Roy’s authority dissolved into the frozen air.
The alley fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
The three surviving Ogres lay perfectly still, staring at the gory ruin of their commander, their breaths coming in shallow, terrified gasps.
They didn’t dare to beg.
They didn’t dare to look up.
They knew that the man standing before them wasn’t a warrior of the north—he was the executioner of their entire world.
"Tch" Roy clenched his fist, "Just as I thought, killing this things myself won’t fetch me faith points"
He exhaled a deep sigh, "They must be slaughtered by my followers in other for me to benefit from their deaths"
He turned his head to see the Ogres quivering, their bodies shuddered the moment they noticed his gaze.
"Now....what should I do with you fools"