Chapter 162: Eradication, Ugliness

It was too late. The velocity of an alchemical bullet far outstripped the reflexes of a knight. While one might dodge by anticipating the trajectory, once the momentum of a movement was committed, there was no pulling back in time.

"Boom!" A crimson streak of molten light tore through the dim space, a blinding, ephemeral scar that vanished the moment it blossomed against Morak’s body.

The specialized round, saturated with immense mana and energy, detonated in a violent eruption of heat and radiance, its kinetic force and corrosive power unleashed upon him without mercy.

This was a charged shot capable of warping even reinforced iron doors; catching Morak in a moment of vulnerability, it delivered its ruinous payload at point-blank range. His light armor offered no resistance, melting and twisting before shattering into a thousand fragments.

The residual energy surged through the ruined plating, slamming into his frame and obliterating his forward momentum. He was sent flying, his skin instantly scorched and ruptured, his muscles and bones disintegrating under the sheer ferocity of the impact.

"Clack! Thud!" Morak skidded across the floor, leaving a trail of armor shards, charred fabric, and melted metal in his wake, before slamming into the wall and collapsing in a heap.

The "Furnace’s Fury" could inflict grievous, life-threatening wounds even on a Grand Knight; for someone like Morak, who had yet to reach that rank, the damage was catastrophic. His chest was a horrific ruin, a massive chunk of flesh seared away to reveal shattered, protruding ribs.

The shockwave alone had pulverized his internal organs. Not everyone possessed the monstrous regenerative capabilities of Wang Yu; Morak was, for all intents and purposes, a dead man.

But Gilbert, a veteran of the Night’s Edge, never left room for chance. Seizing the opening Wang Yu had created, he lunged forward, his longsword veiled in the shimmering shroud of the Nether Blade.

As Morak’s broken body slumped against the wall, utterly incapable of resistance, Gilbert drove the blade home.

The ethereal edge bypassed all defenses—the shredded armor, the torn muscle and skin that left his viscera exposed, and the fractured bone—to pierce the heart that still struggled in a final, defiant rhythm. Under the control of the Nether Blade, the tip solidified. "Puff!"

"No, save... me, I am... of the... family..." Blood surged uncontrollably from the heart, spraying from the jagged wound left by the blade. A knight’s constitution allowed him a few final, gasping words.

At the precipice of death, Morak tried to invoke his noble connections, hoping to buy his life. But regardless of whether he could be saved, Wang Yu would never grant him that mercy.

"Bang!" A standard bullet from the alchemical revolver entered Morak’s temple, extinguishing his consciousness and silencing his final pleas forever.

"I don't know anything about your other identities. We’re just purging a cult, that’s all." Wang Yu holstered his weapon and curled his lip.

No matter what others thought, the Night’s Edge would classify this operation solely as a cleanup of a Shadow City cult.

As for the relationship between the Abyss Cult and the nobility? Don't be ridiculous. How would the Night’s Edge know such things? Stop talking nonsense.

"Lord Wang Yu, your strength is truly impressive. Without your help, taking down this cult leader would not have been so easy."

Gilbert glanced at the horrific, gaping hole in Morak’s chest—the signature of a point-blank Furnace’s Fury—and marveled at the power of the strike. Even without a finishing blow, Morak would never have survived.

"Two against one, it’s only natural," Wang Yu replied nonchalantly. He walked to the mechanism Morak had been guarding and pulled the lever that had been channeling the Abyssal corruption.

As the gateway to the Abyss slowly sealed, the concentration of mental pollution in the stronghold began to wane.

"The ability to divert mental pollution is a tremendous help to us. Praise be to the great Lady of the Night."

As he signaled the other members of the Night’s Edge to enter and sweep the battlefield, Gilbert felt his own mind. There was no discomfort.

The dizziness and confusion that usually accompanied combat in such environments were absent. Closing his eyes, Gilbert offered a sincere prayer to the Lady of the Night for her divine grace.

"Let me see..." Wang Yu walked to the counter where the cult leader had stood. A ripple of energy scanned the wood, revealing a hidden compartment. With a forceful shove, he shattered the casing, and a ledger tumbled out.

He picked it up and flipped it open. One of their goals was to uncover what the cult had traded with the nobles and what tasks they had performed. This was what the Night’s Edge needed to know.

"Tsk..." Wang Yu scanned the pages quickly, then clicked his tongue and handed the ledger to Gilbert, signaling him to read it.

Gilbert took the book, his eyes moving with more deliberation than Wang Yu’s. As the entries unfolded before him, his face darkened, and his grip on the ledger tightened until his knuckles turned white.

Had Wang Yu not tapped his hand to urge calm, he might have shredded the paper to pieces.

"These... animals..." Gilbert’s voice trembled. The fury within him was impossible to suppress. "Boom!" He slammed his fist onto the counter, snapping the wood, but the physical release did nothing to quell the fire in his soul.

Even a man as seasoned as Gilbert, who had seen the most depraved criminals and the indescribable horrors of the Void, was pushed to the brink of madness by the entries. The senseless malice toward his own kin filled him with a nausea that was as profound as his rage.

One entry in particular caught his eye—he recognized the victims.

They were a family living in a slum near a Night’s Edge outpost. The father was an aging gang member, crippled by old wounds, bedridden and unable to work.

They survived on the labor of his wife and young daughter, who took on dangerous odd jobs in alchemical workshops—smelting steel, synthesizing catalysts—risky work that required a steady hand.

The Night’s Edge occasionally needed locals for intelligence or errands, and they had hired this family a few times. Gilbert remembered them well; in this city of greed, they were reliable, decent people—a rarity in the Shadow City.

There had been a period where he hadn't seen the mother and daughter, and then silence. Until one day, passing the father’s shack, Gilbert had peered through the boarded-up window.

Inside, there was only a gaunt corpse curled on the bed. Starved to death, no doubt.

As a member of the Night’s Edge, an organization dedicated to protecting the kingdom’s people, Gilbert was a good man. The image of that man dying of hunger had haunted him. He had assumed the mother and daughter had abandoned him, unable to afford the food required to sustain a knight’s constitution. He had felt a pang of sadness, but nothing more—until he read their fate in this book.

There were no detailed reasons, just cold, clinical text: a noble had taken a fancy to the mother and daughter, not for any grand purpose, but for a "thrill" unavailable on the surface. They had commissioned the Abyss Cult to abduct them.

After being subjected to the Abyssal corruption, their minds had shattered. The text described, with sickening detachment, the "games" the noble played with them after the cult had broken their spirits.

The locket they had clutched to their chests—containing a photo of the three of them—was described in the ledger as the cultists' favorite "toy."

As the item was tossed into the Abyss, to the cheers of cultists shouting about "new believers," the broken mother and daughter had chased the locket into the bottomless void.

The coldness of the record made Gilbert’s blood boil with a chilling, indescribable hatred. The perverse amusement hidden between the lines made him feel a visceral disgust.

"Damn them... we should have slaughtered these scumbags sooner, no matter the cost." Gilbert forced himself to stay calm, gathering the intelligence he could use.

The individuals involved would be held to account by the Night’s Edge.

"No one knows what these so-called madmen did under the guise of insanity. It might be late, but at least they are gone now."

Wang Yu shook his head. Some things could not be undone; all they could do was kill these animals to the last one.

"Yes..." Gilbert nodded, closing the ledger. He walked to a corner of the stronghold, pried up a floorboard, and revealed a deep, dark shaft.

Mental pollution drifted up from the passage leading to the Abyss. Gilbert did not pray; he let the stinging pain of the corruption wash over his soul. This physical ache was easier to bear than the disgust in his heart.

"Throw the corpses down, then purge this place with fire. If you find any other remnants of the cult, notify any Night’s Edge team immediately for liquidation."

Wang Yu walked to the shaft—the very one used to dispose of those who were meant to "disappear"—and issued his orders in a cold, detached tone.

One by one, the mangled bodies of the cultists were kicked into the abyss. These animals, who had masqueraded as servants of the dark, finally received the "embrace of the abyss" they had so craved. It was, unfortunately, far too late.

Alchemical fuel, scattered throughout the stronghold, was ignited by the wizard-fire in Wang Yu’s palm. The flames spread rapidly, a roaring, searing inferno that would consume everything.

The traces of their sins, the evidence of the ties between the cult and the nobility—all would be reduced to ash.

This operation would have nothing to do with any noble. The Night’s Edge would not know whose lapdogs these cultists were, nor would they know that these "madmen" had been using their status to commit such atrocities.

Whoever inquired or reviewed the records would find only the conclusion of a standard anti-cult operation.

The reason for the sudden purge was simple: the Night’s Edge had discovered a way to ignore the cult’s mental pollution, and thus had moved to eliminate a threat that had previously been difficult to handle.

As for the evidence connecting the cult to the nobility, it had vanished in the roaring fire that consumed the stronghold…

……

"Hey, when did you lot go in there? Let me check if you stole anything from the tavern." The bartender frowned at the Night’s Edge members emerging from the back, his tone dripping with dissatisfaction.

They kept their faces hidden in hoods. The bartender assumed they were just petty thieves who had used the Lady of the Night’s power to sneak into the cult’s hideout. As an informant for the Abyss Cult with powerful backers, he had no fear of a few nameless thieves.

"Clang!" Gilbert’s longsword flashed through the air without hesitation. The bartender’s head, still wearing a look of annoyance, soared into the air, trailing a spray of blood before landing beside his headless, collapsing body.

Amidst the panicked screams of the tavern’s patrons, the members of the Night’s Edge walked out of the den of iniquity, silent and resolute.

When Wang Yu had heard the conversation between the suspected royal and Gilbert over the prayer-comm network, he had already guessed why the Shadow City existed as a chaotic, incongruous scar on the prosperous capital. Now, he was certain.

Did the royal family have the power to manage the Shadow City? Yes. If the nobles could reach into this place, the royals certainly could. The same went for the slums.

But why didn't they? A memory surfaced—the first time he had come to the Shadow City, the intersection with the nascent "Abyssal" will atop one of the three lighthouses. The malice and chaos contained within, while unable to affect Wang Yu, had told him that something was hidden beneath the Abyss.

"What exactly are you trying to gestate..." Wang Yu curled his lip. The Abyss was the ocean of mental energy shed by the city’s residents, twisted and funneled downward by the artifact known as the "Reflection of the Stars."

The negative psychic energies festering in the shadows of the Royal City and the squalor of the walled districts will be particularly potent, and these sectors shall be cast into the abyss, as if they were fodder to nourish that consciousness; could it be that this is precisely what they crave?

...

Shugyin gazed at the ledger of the Abyssal Cult transmitted via the communication crystal; his expression did not shift as dramatically as Gilbert’s, but he remained silent, observing the vile deeds recorded line by line as he exhaled plumes of smoke from his pipe.

The smoke curling from his pipe drifted through the room, blurring his features until it began to churn and coalesce into the form that most frequently haunted Shugyin’s side.

The Smoke Demon’s shrill voice rang in Shugyin’s ears, laced with a mocking, incessant tone.

"Good heavens, Shugyin, look at what your kin have wrought; I daresay they are more demonic than we are—at least most demons, myself excluded, lack the wit to devise so many ways to torment mankind."

"Isn't that what your Night’s Edge is for? Dealing with Void creatures, demons, and criminals that threaten the kingdom’s subjects? Will you not dispose of the people listed here... oh? They are family members, are they? My apologies, for you cannot openly oppose them, can you? How pathetic."

The Smoke Demon’s words flowed on, each syllable a jab at Shugyin’s impotence, just as it had always been; yet, usually, Shugyin would have dismissed it into silence long ago. Why, then, did he leave it manifest to speak today? It glanced with suspicion at the silent Shugyin.

"Perhaps Father Fang is right; this kingdom has accumulated too much rot, and it requires change—a process that demands blood. Night’s Edge cannot play that role, but a fabricated organization should have no such trouble..."

Shugyin’s tone was frigid, as memories dragged those wretched scenes back before his eyes. He did not wish to see them reenacted, and so, perhaps there ought to exist something akin to the fictional "Assassin’s Brotherhood" that Wang Yu had once mentioned to him.