Chapter 169: A Philanthropist’s True Color (2)
“Grrr?”
A figure turned toward Javier, and he saw that it lacked a head. It then leaped toward him as its rotting neck jerked spasmodically, its two limping arms outstretched.
“Grrrrr!”
“…!”
He could hardly believe how fast it was, starkly contrasting its limp movement. It reached Javier in a blink of an eye, its tar nails bent on scratching his face. But the very opponent it went against was no other than Javier. In other words, it was out of luck.
Bam! Javier’s legs moved before the zombie could scratch his face, and he kicked it in the gut at the speed of lightning.
“Grr-!”
The zombie, whose voice came from what was left of its throat, let out a strange cry as it was sent flying by the blow, landing about five yards away. The blow shattered its spine when it crashed against the wall. The bone-cracking sound noisily rang aloud throughout the room, and at the same time, the doors on both sides of the corridor snapped open.
“Grrrrr!”
“Grr…!”
More headless zombies flooded out of the doors. There were about sixty of them. A bitter smile formed on Javier’s face.
“My… It looks like I’ll be a laughingstock in my fiefdom for quite a while.”
The sight called to mind the bet he’d made with Lloyd, who insisted Cannavaro was a dirty man with secrets. But he disagreed. He thought that the young master was doubting the man unnecessarily and his order to do a background check on the gentleman was improper. Cannavaro didn’t deserve such doubts. That was why he agreed to the bet.
Haa. I cannot believe I have to dress like this when I return to the fiefdom.
Lady Ella. An angel dressed in a modest apron. A goddess of the soup kitchen. Javier was to put on such a disguise the day he returned to Frontera fiefdom. That would be his punishment for losing the bet.
“…”
Javier shuddered, and his hair rose as he thought about it. So, he pushed it away and instead laid his eyes on the sight that was much less frightening than the praises he would earn as Lady Ella in his fiefdom.
“Grrrrrr!”
Roughly 60 headless zombies charged toward him, and the gurgling sound they created clamored in the air. Their hostility was more apparent than before.
Are these reinforced zombies?
They were too fast for an ordinary zombie, and it naturally meant that they would be on another level in terms of strength compared to ordinary ones. But it didn’t matter to Javier, who was a sword master. To him, both reinforced and ordinary zombies were nothing but walking corpses. It was the case even when he only carried a block of wood instead of his sword.
Crack!
Javier stretched out his hand and snapped off a leg from a table. Now, he held an excellent club. But did he prepare the club because he needed a weapon? No. It was as the thought of punching the zombies with his bare hands grossed him out.
Craaack! Crack! Pow!
Javier’s legs alternately moved across the floor, turning and twisting just in time to stab, jab, smack, smite, evade, and shake off the zombies.
Tumble! Kaboom!
Three or four zombies were thrown against the walls each time Javier charged forward through the corridor, and at last, every one of the reinforced zombies was cleared. And when he reached the end of the corridor, he kicked the door open.
Boom! The door snapped open in whole by force, and it landed on a man who was pulling out a weapon.
“Ack!!!”
Now, the door was metal and easily weighed more than ten pounds. Adding the velocity, it was as menacing as any other deadly weapon. The blow knocked him unconscious, but Javier was merciless.
Crunch! He smacked the man’s legs with his club and broke them. At the same time, he kicked his six o’clock.
Pow!
“Argh!”
A man, who was trying to ambush Javier from behind, got a blow in his lower chin. He was left unconscious as well. Next, Javier stretched out his club and aimed at the third man’s eyes. Javier gazed at him icily.
“Tell me. What you are doing here, and what you’re up to. And your relationship with Cannavaro.”
“E…eek!”
The third man shivered like a leaf. He was so surprised that he had wet his pants.
Wh-what is this monster?!
The man couldn’t believe it. When he heard the noise of someone walking down to the second floor, he thought it was Cannavaro. But it dawned on him that he was wrong when the first zombie got rammed into the wall. There was an intruder. So he immediately released the other zombies and observed the corridor from a small window attached to a door. The man was hopeful until that point. After all, these 60 zombies were reinforced ones, so he thought that they would be able to rip this intruder to pieces and that he would hear a live man’s scream after a long while. So, he remained in his room, watching the fight with an expectant heart. But he saw it. He saw how the groups of zombies were thrown into the walls in mere seconds and how this silver-haired intruder dashed over here afterward. And so, the guy racked his brain, and at last, the name of this intruder, who was pointing at him with a club, came to him.
“E-Ella! Miss Ella?”
“…”
“What are you doing?” The man begged. “You know me, don’t you? It’s me, the guy who works in the kitchen during the morning-”
“Say that name again,” growled Javier, “and you shall never be able to speak again.”
Hiccup! Javier’s eyes held a glint of iciness, which was colder than an ice rink. The man immediately shut his mouth, intimidated by the former’s gaze. And he finally realized that no petty tricks would work. This silver-haired man standing before him was bent on making no concession.
“Wh-what do you want?”
“Truth,” said Javier curtly.
“…”
“I asked you a while ago. Your business here. Your plans. And your relationship with Cannavaro. Tell me everything.”
“…”
The man rolled his eyes, laying them on his two colleagues, miserably lying on the ground. But that was a mistake.
Bam!
“…!”
One of his knees was directly hit by a club that suddenly came flying toward him.
“Urghh!”
The man fell to the ground as he clutched his leg. But Javier’s gaze didn’t have any sympathy.
“I’m sure you guys made those headless zombies. But why are they without any heads? Where could they be used for? I think I know,” said Javier.
The things Lloyd had told him several nights before came to his mind. His young master had told him that the former had found plenty of skulls under the ground, which contained mana-loaded jewels. The skulls. The mana-laden jewels. The headless zombies. Javier desperately wished it wasn’t what he thought it was as the puzzles pieced together in his head.
“Speak now. Each time you hesitate, stall, or lie, I’ll break your bones.”
Javier’s gaze was filled with contempt and rage. The man could feel it burning through him as he sat on his knees. He knew that Ella was serious. Her threat wasn’t a bluff.
“I-I…”
The man immediately spoke as fear overwhelmed him by instinct.
“I am a mortician. S-So, are all these men…”
“A mortician?” blurted Javier.
“Yes, sir!”
“Am I the one that’s confused?” asked Javier. “I thought morticians conducted funerals for people, not make zombies.”
“T-the thing is that I learned it from Sir Cannavaro!”
“From Cannavaro?”
“Yes, sir!” hurriedly answered the man.
“Tell me more.”
Javier’s gaze grew bleak, and the man started to speak faster.
“A-as I told you, we were originally morticians. But around the end of last year, mister Cannavaro came up to me and asked if I could help with something that would be worth a lot of money. H-he promised to provide a generous compensation that’s better than I could even imagine…” the man explained.
“So, you learned how to make zombies?”
“H-how else could we have learned to use dark magic then? W-we simply were responsible for taking care of the corpses mister Cannavaro gives us,” defended the mortician.
“Then what about the magic that makes zombies?” probed Javier.
“Mister Cannavaro… And the others…”
“Who?”
“There’s mister Gordo… And mister Mikelan… And most of them work in the trading post. So, those who manage the post and write records with mister Cannavaro…”
“The workers in the trading post are dark magicians?”
“Yes, yes, sir! I didn’t believe it at first-”
“Then,” interrupted Javier, “why don’t the zombies have heads?”
Javier’s voice was as sharp as cut glass. The Adam’s apple of the mortician bobbed.
“Um…”
“Answer.”
Grip!
When he heard the squeezing sound, the mortician shook off all his hesitation.
“We took care of the head separately.”
“Be more specific,” ordered Javier.
“Um, you see, the thing is… when the corpses arrived, we removed the head first before we cleaned them up. We were told that the skulls were going to be used for a special purpose. So, we cleaned everything inside, leaving only the bone…”
“And?”
“We placed it in all sorts of different solutions. Yes, those were provided to us by mister Cannavaro. I don’t know the exact details either. He said that it was just a valuable magical potion… There were about 15 distinct kinds.”
“That many?”
“Yes, sir. I believe around two days per solution. It took a whole month to treat a single skull using all the potions. Unsurprisingly, we continued to treat a new skull every two days since there were a lot of different solutions…”
“Then what?”
“Mister Cannavaro and the men in the trading post cast all sorts of magic to it. But we didn’t notice any visible changes,” the man said. “Yet, they all took the skulls with a look of satisfaction. That’s all I know about the skulls… I am telling the truth.”
“No, that’s not all.”
Javier’s face turned stern.
“I get how the skulls are made and how those headless zombies were created. But there seems to be something you have left out. Where did you get the corpses for the skulls and zombies?”
“That’s…”
“Tell me.”
“I-I’m sorry. I really am sorry. Please forgive my crime,” the man said and broke out in tears.
Javier’s eyes remained stern, unmoved. His icy gaze continued to pierce into the man, who flinched and quickly wiped off his tears with a shudder.
“They are… refugees,” the man finally confessed.
“What?” Javier’s voice grew by a pitch.
“They are the refugees mister Cannavaro looked after. They were already sick. Diseased or fatally injured-”
“So, you killed them?”
“Yes…”
“You do know that them being sick doesn’t justify your actions?”
“Th-that’s…”
“And you must have lied to the remaining refugees.”
Javier felt dehumanized, and his mind flew back to what had happened a few days ago. The refugees talked among themselves in the kitchen, how some were being transferred to a protective facility, and how it would be helpful as the place was warmer and more comfortable. But not everyone could be taken there due to its capacity limit…
Most refugees wanted to be taken there. They wished that those who went ahead would be healed completely to open up some slots for them. They waited. Counting down for their day to come.
But it turned out that the place was here. This place of death. The comfortable protective facility didn’t exist in the first place. Javier, wrinkling his nose, asked.
“I heard that there were almost 200 of them,” Javier said.
“Sir?”
“The jewels. The number of skulls that contained those jewels.”
“…”
“I didn’t hear that there were almost 200 terminally ill patients among the refugees.”
“Th-that’s…”
“You couldn’t have possibly killed those that weren’t terminally ill, right?”
“…”
“You did,” Javier said.
“Th-the thing is!” the mortician shouted in a hurry.
“You see! I was told that it was a medicine that makes them comfortable! I really thought so! That’s why, that’s why!”
“You gave it. That is, to the refugees. That’s how you killed them.”
“I really didn’t know!” the mortician pleaded.
“Really?”
“Yes, sir! Yes!”
“Really”?
“Sir…?”
“Who brings a patient to be treated by a mortician? A medicine that provides comfort? What, does the mortician nurse the patient after they take the medicine and get comfortable? Doesn’t that sound ridiculous even in your ears?” demanded Javier.
“Um…”
“Enough with your lies and excuses.”
“Please… Don’t kill me!”
The mortician fell flat on the ground and burst into uncontrollable sobs, his back flinching.
“I sincerely didn’t know this was the job! I just did what I was told. S-so please, extend your mercy-”
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“Sir?”
“I’m not going to kill you,” said Javier again.
“Then that means… T-thank you, sir! Thank you!” The man shouted as he bumped his head to the ground several times in gratitude.
“I am not going to kill you,” said Javier, whose face had grown icier than before. “But do you remember what I told you a while ago?”
“Sir? What are…”
“Each time you lie, I’m going to break one of your bones.”
“Um, I-I…!”
Thwack! The club swung in the air, and it smacked the mortician’s shoulder. The mortician’s face crumpled at the sound of his broken bone.
“A-ack!!”
The mortician collapsed to the ground as he clutched his shoulder. But Javier’s eyes were merciless as he gazed down.
“A medicine that gives comfort? You did not know anything? You merely did what you were just told…? Your excuses are too sloppy and crude. Did you want to try being a good person even in the end? But I don’t think the fairly large amount of money you’d have accepted from Cannavaro reflects that.”
“A-argh! Please d-don’t kill me-”
“I told you,” said Javier coldly,” I am not going to kill you.”
“…!”
Javier lifted his club again. And soon after, the sound of three or four consecutive thrashes rang aloud.
A little later, Javier went out of the basement. He was now dressed in something else. His silky hair and modest apron had disappeared. Instead, he wore a black hood that the dark magicians left hanging on the wall. Javier’s face was stern and serious under the hood.
I don’t have any time to waste.
The truth he had discovered in the basement. The situation he had uncovered through punishing the morticians.
It’s more serious than I’d thought. Cannavaro and the dark magicians in the trading post are up to something. I can’t leave them like this.
Informing Lloyd and Count Namaran crossed his mind. It was the right thing to do in principle. But he decided that right now was an exception.
Cannavaro and the dark magicians might catch on if the count gets involved.
That would really be the case. If the knights and forces moved to Cannavaro’s manor to search and apprehend him, they would lose the opportunity to catch the dark magicians. They might hide and run away.
Master Lloyd, please forgive me. I need to take care of them first.
Act first, report later. Javier made for the trading post after he reached the decision, carrying a sword in his chest covered with a hood and cape.