Chapter 57: Roy’s Infiltration [3]
Roy was tempted to kill the Ogres.
In the end, he didn’t.
The gory, liquefied remains of the Ogre commander vanished from the blood-soaked snow, entirely dissolved.
Burned away by Roy’s divine essence.
In his place stood a perfect, towering replication.
Roy stretched his massive, calloused hands, testing the weight of the eight-foot Ogre frame, before sliding the massive iron cleaver smoothly onto his shoulder.
His dual-colored eyes shifted, settling into a dull, flat yellow that perfectly matched the brute he had just deleted.
Turning my gaze downward, he looked at the three surviving Ogre soldiers still pinned to the dirt.
Their minds were wide-open books, completely shattered by the absolute terror of his divine authority.
Bypassing their physical skulls, his [Mindcraft] swept through their neural pathways like a localized virus.
With surgical precision, he targeted their active memory cells, deleting every trace of the execution, his human form, and the devastating crimson aura. In the blank, smoking craters of their minds.
He flooded their consciousness with a completely fabricated memories.
The three Ogres blinked in unison, their terrified, trembling posture instantly resetting.
Their eyes glazed over with a dull, vacant obedience before shifting into an artificial expression of pride.
They were no longer living soldiers; they were flesh-and-blood puppets tied completely to his cognitive strings.
"You," Roy grunted, using the deep, gravelly voice of the dead commander to point at the first Ogre.
"Heave the carcass. You, grab the head. We’re presenting the trash to the lower keeps."
"Yes, Captain," they chimed in perfect, synchronized harmony.
The first Ogre bent down, lifting the heavy, battered, headless body of the Fox-man over his shoulder, while the second carefully gathered the severed head by its matted red fur.
With a sharp tilt of my head, Roy led the squad out of the narrow, ruined alleyway and back into the freezing, bustling thoroughfares of Norona City’s lower rings.
The morning streets were teeming with the Northern Coalition’s war machine.
Squads of heavily armored Orc vanguards, massive frost-giant scouts, and blue-skinned Trolls moved through the slush, checking equipment and shouting battle orders.
As Roy’s small unit marched past, carrying the bloody trophies of a dead spy, several passing battle hardened soldiers slowed their pace.
"Hah! Good catch, boys!" a massive, tusked Orc captain barked, slamming his fist against his breastplate in approval. "Show those northern weaklings what happens when they sneak into our frost!"
"Hope you tortured that bastard spy before wasting him? Hahahahahaha" another spoke.
"A fine piece of hide, Captain Toti" a blue-skinned Troll general called out from a nearby smithy, eyeing the Fox-man’s severed head with hunger. "The King will be pleased"
’Toti..’ Roy noted, ’So that’s this trash name huh’
He kept my yellow, slitted eyes fixed straight ahead, completely ignoring the compliments as they navigated the maze of bone-brick architecture.
The puppets behind him marched in a flawless, rigid lockstep, completely immune to the surrounding distractions because their minds existed only to serve his current line of order.
They bypassed the crowded public plazas, veering deep into the industrial sectors until we reached the yawning, dark maw of a subterranean transit tunnel.
This was a forgotten, unmonitored mining route that cut deep into the permafrost roots of the city—dead silent, freezing, and entirely devoid of life.
The moment the distant echoes of the city streets faded into absolute silence, Roy came to a halt in the pitch-black depths of the tunnel.
He spun around, mhis Ogre disguise instantly melting away like vapor.
Roy’s tailored black coat snapped into place, and his true, dual-colored golden-crimson eyes flared in the darkness, illuminating the icy cave walls.
The three Ogres stopped instantly.
They didn’t gasp at my sudden transformation.
They didn’t panic.
They simply stood there in the dark, staring blankly ahead, one still balancing the headless corpse of my follower, the other holding the head.
"Drop the body," Roy commanded smoothly.
The two Ogres immediately laid the Fox-man’s remains gently onto the frost, handling the body with a reverent care that their false memories would never have permitted.
Once they stood back up, Roy looked at the three of them with a cold, absolute detachment.
"Your role in this story has reached its conclusion," Roy whispered, his voice carrying the chilling authority of a system decree. "Kill yourselves"
"Understood, Master," they spoken in unison.
Without a single moment of hesitation, fear, or doubt, the three Ogres moved with terrifying efficiency.
The two soldiers drew their heavy, serrated combat daggers, while the third gripped his massive iron club.
In a single, synchronized motion, the first two plunged their blades deep into their own throats, twisting the iron until their spinal cords severed, while the third violently swung his club inward, crushing his own skull in a spectacular explosion of dark blood.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The three massive, eight-foot bodies collapsed heavily onto the permafrost floor, their life forces instantly extinguishing as their blood pooled around the feet of my dead follower.
Roy stepped forward, looking down at the quiet ruin of the tunnel.
The northern spies were protected, the loose ends were flawlessly deleted, and the bodies of the executioners were piled right where they belonged.
He knelt down beside the Fox-man, his golden-crimson eyes reflecting the dim, icy light of the cavern.
"Why do you sleep so comfortably?," he murmured softly, reaching out to close his glazed eyes.
"Your job here isn’t done"
[Ding!]
The system interface flickered before his eyes once again.
[Conversion Phase Successful]
[1,000 Faith Points have been converted into 10 Beads of Creation Essence]
[1,000 Faith Points have been deducted from your balance]
"This should be enough" Roy smiled.
The quiet in the subterranean tunnel was absolute, broken only by the faint, rhythmic dripping of condensation freezing against the dark stone.
The three Ogres lay in a tangled ruin of iron and bone, their roles in the script finished.
He turned my attention entirely to the frozen remains of the Fox-man.
Kneeling in the stained slush, he placed the severed head back against the jagged, frozen ruin of the neck alignment.
The contrast was stark—the pristine, unyielding code of his own existence pressed against the fragile, broken clay of a mortal follower who had died to protect his people’s secret.
Roy was going to resurrect the Fox-Man
He had no idea if that would work.
But he wasn’t going to let his follower die without accomplishing his task.