Wandering Mercenary in an Open World

Chapter 127

As Ruon crushed Gon Sallo’s skull, Kyle and Amella’s frantic fight outside was reaching its climax.

“Kyaak!”

The woman who had gone berserk stretched out both hands.

Sparks flew from her palms as if she had struck a flint, and soon a blazing flame poured out in front of her.

But Kyle, who had anticipated the trajectory of the spell by the movement of her shoulder, slid across the ground and let the flame pass over his head. Then he tripped the woman’s foot and knocked her down.

“Stop! Snap out of it!”

He climbed on top of the fallen woman and tried to grab her wrists, which were still spraying fire in all directions. No, he tried to.

“…It hurts. It hurts so much…”

The woman’s hands, engulfed in flames, began to melt like lava. Kyle flinched at the sight of her flesh and bones dripping down. Then the woman’s face cracked and a red light leaked out from underneath.

“…It hurts so much…”

With a faint voice, the woman exploded.

“Kyle!”

Amella, who had just subdued some of the rampaging residents, shouted as she saw the knight flying away with a loud bang.

She was about to run towards him when she saw a hand rising quietly from the rubble of the collapsed stone wall. She sighed with relief.

The fist that came out of the outside gave a thumbs up, as if to say it was okay.

After coughing and getting up, Kyle healed his scorched face with holy power and said.

“There’s no saving them.”

Amella tapped her temple with her index finger and replied.

“There’s nothing we can do. They’ve unleashed their power beyond their limits while being out of control. The ones who survived will live as idiots for the rest of their lives. Sadly.”

Her gaze moved to the residents who had lost consciousness. Fortunately, they didn’t die like the woman Kyle had faced, but they didn’t look very good either, shaking their bodies like epileptic patients.

Then the iron gate of the orphanage broke with a loud noise and Ruon appeared from the other side. Amella, who remembered that he had rammed into Gon Sallo’s body last, asked him.

“Did you kill him?”

Ruon nodded silently, and she smiled slightly, as if she had expected it.

“Yeah. No need for a miserable farewell.”

Then Kyle, who was rotating his arm that had hit the stone wall, opened his mouth.

“That mage tried to kill Amella by using Quin’s misunderstanding that she was dead. That means Quin is not in the orphanage, right?”

Ruon tore off the loose hinge and threw it away with the door and answered.

“Let’s go in. We might find something.”

With that brief remark, he led the way to the mansion, and the other two followed him closely.

After reaching the front door of the mansion, Ruon swung his fist without hesitation. The sound of the lock breaking was heard, and the door opened weakly.

“…The hottest knock in the world.”

Kyle muttered quietly and took charge of the rear of the party with the spell destroyer.

Ruon felt a bit strange to see that the woodcutter, who had been struggling to save his own body when he first came to the orphanage, had become a reliable shield for the party.

Of course, no one saw his faint smile on his face as he walked in the front.

The corridor, which smelled of rotten flesh, was strangely dark despite the bright daylight. He thought it was greedy to hope that a child who had spent a cruel childhood in such an environment would grow up to be a proper adult, and Ruon continued to move inside.

As he passed through the corridor, a spacious lobby of the mansion unfolded. He gave Amella the choice in the place where there were dozens of doors and a central staircase connecting up and down.

“Where to?”

“…Let’s go down.”

Ruon didn’t bother to ask why. He would find out anyway when he went down.

The spiral staircase that went clockwise seemed to suck the party in like a black hole. As they stepped on the floor in a strange dizziness, they were greeted by a huge cavity.

It was clear that it was not a natural cavity, but a place where artificial hands had touched, as the inside was smooth and oval.

“It’s the same here… Well, there’s no reason to change.”

Amella’s face hardened as if she remembered the past she had forgotten. She pointed to the large entrance in front of her and said.

“If I remember correctly, there should be Quin’s office there. It sounds nice to call it an office. In reality, it’s a place where all kinds of horrible experiments took place.”

It’s definitely a stinky place.

Ruon walked towards the entrance. The corridor without a single light was enough to make a normal person blind, but his senses, which had been sharpened by the previous battle, gathered all the information around him and presented him with an arbitrary scenery.

Thanks to that, Ruon was able to block the attacks that came flying even without Amella’s light spell.

He knocked down ‘something’ that flew faster than the arrow shot by the crossbow and moved his arm without stopping.

Ruon’s swordsmanship, which had naturally grown through breaking through countless lines, did not have a refined feel, as he did not have a teacher.

But his explosive movement, which had no waste at all, was intuitive and beautiful.

The red afterimage drawn by the Ego Sword in the air deflected all the sharp attacks that aimed at the vital points.

Ruon saw the wriggling existence behind the sparks that rose in a curve and kicked the ground hard. He gripped the sword with both hands and thrust it down with force.

Aaah!

The moment a piercing scream erupted.

Amela’s spell lit up the dark corridor. It all happened in a few seconds after Ruon entered the hallway.

Squish-squish-

The shapeless mass of slime writhed as if in pain, then burst with a gurgling sound.

Kyle muttered with a disgusted face.

“Damn. I can’t help but swear.”

Meanwhile, Ruon shook off the sticky flesh and blood that clung to his sword and felt a faint presence in the hallway.

He snapped his fingers at Kyle and Amela and moved on.

With a large stride, he crossed the hallway in an instant and saw a horrific sight in his eyes.

Inside the large glass tubes lined up in a row, creatures that were half-human and half-octopus rolled their dozens of eyeballs and stared at him.

Among them, he saw a shattered glass tube and a green liquid that soaked the floor below.

It must have been the one that attacked Ruon in the hallway.

At the end of the glass tubes, a young woman was slumped on a plush sofa, looking at the group that entered the room.

“Hello, Amela. It’s been ten years, hasn’t it?”

Amela, who was grimacing at the disgusting creatures swimming in the glass tubes, turned her head and said to the woman who pretended to know her.

“I don’t know who you are.”

The woman smirked.

“I understand. I was a newbie who was dragged here a month before you ran away from here. You must remember the moron who was addicted to Skar and drooled every day. Isn’t that strange?”

She chuckled and added.

“But I know you well. You were our queen who absorbed our father’s teachings without taking much Skar, weren’t you?”

Then, the light source that floated above their heads rose higher, revealing the space that was covered by a dark shadow.

“Crazy.”

Kyle cursed again.

No wonder, the back of the woman’s head was fused with a large lump of flesh that pulsed like a heart.

“Hahaha. Why? Are you disgusted? Compared to the kids who are addicted to Skar, I’m lucky. Thanks to our father who mixed his body with these things, my lifespan has increased.”

She withdrew her hand that pointed at the glass tubes and placed it on her chest, smiling calmly.

“Sorry for the late introduction. I’m Olivia. Friends.”

What a surname.

Ruon was speechless, but he didn’t bother to attack Olivia. She was already dying, even if he didn’t step in.

Her pale complexion and weakening pulse proved it.

“As you can see, I don’t have much time left. If you have any questions, I think I can talk to you. Do you have anything to ask?”

Everyone closed their mouths as if they were silenced by her natural smile.

Amela was the first to break the silence that weighed on their shoulders.

“Where did Quinn and the other kids go?”

Olivia pursed her lips.

“That’s disappointing. I thought you would easily guess, since you were our queen.”

“Listen carefully. I’m not your damn queen. So just answer my question.”

Anger was in Amela’s voice.

Olivia stared at her blazing eyes and opened her mouth with a blank expression.

“What do you think our father taught and raised us for? To establish a new school of magic? Or did he suddenly want to start a family?”

She got excited as she continued, and the flesh that was connected to the back of her head wriggled violently.

“We are his army. That’s how we were raised!”

A loud roar echoed through the glass tubes, causing them to crack slightly.

The disgusting creatures that only rolled their eyeballs might spill out at any moment. Ruon quietly gripped the handle of his sword.

Kyle was the same, as his rune hammer started to heat up white.

Olivia’s words continued.

“It seems, Amela, that you don’t know who we were trained to fight against. Yeah, I get it. You ran away before you realized our father’s true intentions.”

Amela slowly opened her mouth at the word that flashed through her mind.

“Don’t tell me… Quinn is going to start a war with the Tower?”

“I almost lost hope in you.”

Olivia grinned at Amela and growled.

“Don’t make me laugh. Even if you ignore the masters of the Tower, there are countless monsters that can change the course of the war with a single blow. Do you think he can face them all?”

Olivia started to giggle. She tapped her tear-stained eyes with her bent finger and answered.

“Hey, Amela. Do you think you’re the best magician that the orphanage raised, just because I called you queen? Can you imagine what kind of training we went through for the past ten years?”

Kyle couldn’t stand it and cut in.

“You saw it well. The skinny mage who calls himself Gonsalon. How do you think we got into the mansion?”

At his words, Olivier smiled faintly.

“Gonsalon is nothing but a discarded chess piece like me. I advise you not to judge the whole by his level.”

The weakest of the Four Kings. What a joke.

That’s what Ruon was thinking when Amela sighed deeply and said.

“Why are you telling us this?”

Olivier laughed silently.

From some point on, bright red blood was pouring from her nose.

“Well. Should I say I’m tired? Endlessly impregnating those octopus bastards to produce better seeds… And yet being abandoned in the end. I’m tired of everything.”

Her eyes gradually lost their vitality.

The lump of flesh connected to the back of her head also made a wheezing sound and shriveled up rapidly.

Judging by how fast she was dying, she must have been forcing herself to maintain her current state.

“…But I’m glad I had a companion on my way out. Actually, I, was, lone, ly…”

Olivier couldn’t put a period to her words that came out emptily and dropped her head.

Seeing her, Kyle dropped the hammer he had been ready to swing and muttered.

“She’s dead.”

Then Amela bit her lip and said.

“If the Queen is going to wage a full-scale war with the Tower… That must be because of the Philosopher’s Stone. Why didn’t I think of that? How stupid.”

As she blamed herself, Ruon raised his palm and said.

“Wait. Someone’s coming.”

“They don’t give us a break. Who is it this time?”

Kyle sighed lowly and lifted the hammer to his chest again.

Meanwhile, several footsteps were heard approaching their party.

And their voices too.

“…Do you know the way?..”

“…If you mess up the job by being reckless…”

“…Friends. Don’t you feel sorry for doing this over and over?..”

“…Caw. Scary. Scary…”

Caw?

Ruon tilted his head at the familiar feeling. The whispering voices grew louder.

“…Look. There’s a light. Let’s go!..”

“Hey, wait! Sto-”

As someone tried to shout in panic at the rash action. Running footsteps were heard from the other side of the corridor.

Soon, a bunch of someone showed up and yelled.

“Got you! You bastards! You thought you’d be safe after making the city like this- Huh? Ruon? Kyle?”

I knew it.

Ruon sneered at the stupid face of the dwarf who widened his eyes.

“Why are you here?”