Connla was having the worst day of his life. Well, not that he could tell if this was just a day or if it already turned into a week or even months by now. Time stopped making sense for Connla as he was forced to endure twisted and terrifying torture over and over again whenever he wasn’t prompt enough about his answers or tried to lie.

Keyword being ‘tried’ since absolutely no lies worked. Even telling half-truths would send him straight back to the torture inside his mind where the ‘kindest’ one was feeling his entire body being flayed before having the raw flesh smeared with honey so paraponera ants could feast on it. And that was one of the less violent ones he went through until now! ​​

This whole experience made Connla come to an understanding, if Cao Cao is the great hero and savior of mankind that represented all that there was of good and just in the world (or so Connla thought, the damn fanboy), then Soma is the ultimate evil of humanity that was able to chill the bones just in a look and was cruel to the extreme. Even if Connla survives this ordeal he is sure to get extremely debilitating PTSD, such was the terror that he was currently going through.

As he screamed in pain and asked for forgiveness that would not come, Soma thought about it.

///—///

Soma’s P.O.V.

This guy is kinda annoying, if he just spoke promptly instead of lying and telling half-truths he would be able to have a clean and easy death, but NOOOO the indoctrinated idiot seems unable to even think like a normal coward like he is should, he truly was useless.

Well, not that this matters. I am still getting the information I need even if it takes slightly longer to do so even if it means giving more attention to this idiot would be unnecessary.

At least the information was a bit interesting, even if it really is quite absurd and pathetic.

Hero Faction, what a nonsensical organization. Not the fact it was a human organization that focused on the desire to make humanity important in the supernatural, what infuriated Soma was how, well, WRONG they were going about it.

They had no interest in protecting normal people. They kidnapped and mind-controlled people, thought that Sacred Gears are the Be All and End All of humanity (which is pathetic), and to complete the cycle they acted as if being a descendant of a hero was supposed to be something great.

It isn’t.

Being a descendant of a hero means only that one of your ancestors deserved to be called a hero, nothing more and nothing less. These descendants also have parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and many others and most are likely normal people. That they even arrogantly acted as if they were those heroes of humanity reborn was just, well, pathetic really.

Do they really lack so much confidence in themselves that they have to depend on the name of someone who died hundreds of years ago? And people like that call themselves heroes?

It was offensive really, here I was trying my best to improve myself to one day deserve to carve my name in history, and they call themselves heroes while borrowing the names of their ancestors.

Yeah, I could tell without a shadow of a doubt that people like that would NEVER deserve to enter the Throne of Heroes and, thus, could never be an actual hero of humanity. They were kids born with unique items given to them simply by sheer stupid luck and decided to play pretend that they are some great person from the past, no different than 5 years old putting on a cape made out of his mother’s sheets and calling themselves batman or superman.

If it was only that, then maybe I could just ignore them, I would not go out of my way to teach people with brain damage about how stupid they are, but they were trying something they shouldn’t. They involved the normal civilians of this town and, in particular, they were targeting Aya and Kiyoharu.

That would not do at all, I could never just allow a friend to die like that and both girls are most certainly my friends. Trying to kidnap them and mind control them into being a disposable weapon, yeah those fake hero bitches are gonna get the good old Soma special. Meaning, something between Jigsaw and Jason with perhaps some Freddy Krueger mixed in.

I also got some other intel, like the weapons and abilities of several members of the faction, who are in town, the details of the plan including the meeting place, and also locations of some of their warehouses and such.

“Well, I can at least mount a few raids on those places, I guess.” I mutter while continuing to shoot. By now I must have killed more than 30 stray devils and the number is low like that mostly because some have some freaking vitality. I swear, some of them got, like, five heads and I had to shoot each of them to kill it and those heads regenerated so I couldn’t take long.

And one of them was shooting lasers from her tits… yeah this world is a bit insane.

At least there is not yet any sign of a ghoul outbreak like in a Dead Apostle attack, that would be significantly more annoying to deal with.

Anyway, as this guy finishes telling me all the information he knows I decide to end his misery. Since there are now just around 7 or so strays running around and there are the devils of town that are dealing with them. I already killed most of the strays and even gave the finishing blow to some of them. I am not being paid to do all the clean-up anyway and now it is time to hunt for the best game in town.

Namely, gears in the hands of people who don’t deserve it, starting with this guy right here.

“So, this is goodbye. For your sake, I hope you have better luck in your next life and that you stop being a fucking braindead fanboy idiot. If I see you again in your next life and you are still pathetic I will cut you, kay?” I said with fake cheerfulness before putting my hand in his chest, repeating the process I used with Kaname before to take away Connla’s gear.

It took me a much shorter amount of time since I had no real need to do it carefully or pay attention as to not damage his soul during the removal. With his soul leaking energy like that he will perish soon enough, but it will be entirely painless and that is all the mercy I am giving him.

Looking at the gear in my hands I frown, this is so weird.

This gear looks like one of those totems one can find amongst the aboriginal heritage, only made entirely of a black substance I can’t quite place just yet. It was almost like a physical shadow, but I am not quite sure it is that.

Maybe I should break this one down to see what the materials are like? Well, thoughts for later I guess.

Standing up from the dying male in front of me I look ahead and activate the communication mystic code.

“Rintaro, go five streets ahead, turn left, walk two more streets and then turn right, on the four-story building is an archer. Capture him alive if at all possible, limbs are not necessary.”

“Okay, I can do that.” Rintaro replied, he seems to be having fun with the sword and gun I modified for him since they are way better than the ones he had originally.

“Mittelt, there is another archer I want you to get, he is six streets in ahead and four to the right of where you are. Capture alive if possible, but if it is a risk to your life then you can retreat.” I said.

“Leave it to me.” She says and I smirk. If the two manage to capture the bow users as I want then that would mean that I would have three of the seven Starling bows. I might be able to get more from Azazel later, but the more I have now the less I will have to bargain with the fallen angels later.

With that taken care of, I turn to the door of the roof and speak.

“So, will you just keep on watching or are you gonna try and fight me now?” I ask out loud.

“Hehe, so you felt me. That is quite surprising.” A woman’s voice rang out and from what seemed like nowhere a woman appeared. A buxom young-looking woman with a slender figure and breasts that are big but not so much that they should cause back pain. With wavy, golden hair that is cropped short, reaching only the base of her nape as well as golden eyes and a relaxed expression with quite a beautiful face.

But that wasn’t the most relevant, instead what mattered more was that she was releasing a considerable amount of magic energy right now and she had a sword in her belt. She clearly was a fighter and looked almost hungrily at me, eyes that I knew well.

The eyes of a battle junkie.

“Hey, how did you find me? I was using special equipment to hide my magic signature and should be invisible while it was working.” She spoke in a tone as if she was curious.

“The smell.” I answer easily enough.

“You know, telling a girl she smells isn’t normally a good thing.” she says playfully while eyeing me. Ignoring her words I continued.

“I could smell a scent that wasn’t mine or of this piss poor imitation of a hero nearby.” I explain, while she managed to hide her demonic powers under whatever effect she used, the smell of her own body was not disguised and even if it was faint I could still smell it perfectly well. “Besides that, there was also some noise from your breathing coming from close by so you were hardly hiding in my opinion. A piece of advice, if you want to play as an assassin, you should try a bit harder. Honestly, I would say you were quite blatant about your presence, if you wanted to hide it you should have tried harder.”

“Haha, true enough. You look like fun, shame I will have to take you in for questioning.” she says as she puts a hand on her sword. I feel like she doesn’t want to talk so trying to question her is out of the question. She smells of magical energy but I doubt she is related to the Hero Faction, she is most likely related to the devils in town and I can guess the reasons for wanting to capture me, but I don’t have the time to deal with this bullshit right now.

I rather doubt I can remain hidden after this whole event, the devils of the town would have to be a special type of useless to do that and I am quite sure I’ve seen both Riser and that bitchy student council president (what was her name again?) amongst those fighting so completely hiding would not be truly feasible in the long run. But even if I will have to expose myself I refuse to do so in a position of weakness, so being captured here is a big no no.

“I would rather not, there are still plenty of things to take care of in town tonight and while I never like to turn down a woman wanting to spend the night all up in my business, I do have more important things to take care of right now.” I answer casually, putting a hand in my own sword.

We stare at one another for a moment before we both strike. Our swords meeting in the middle as we trade blows at speeds that would be darn near invisible for normal humans.

We trade strikes one after another, flashes and sparks flying everywhere as we keep trying to kill one another. It was a simple and easy to understand a simple and direct battle of pure swordsmanship and physical capacity, nothing more.

In terms of pure strength, she had a clear advantage, overpowering me easily in every clash. In terms of speed, we were mostly equal since my body now was much better than before and I was able to use more reinforcement. On technique though, I had a clear and near-absolute advantage, our techniques not even being a true competition.

It was actually a bit fun, if I had the time I would like to battle like this for a while further, but I still have things to do and people to steal from then kill for daring to try and hurt those I care about. So, yeah I am too busy for this.

While locking blades with her I push the two swords up using one hand while my other punches out, my movements using the same martial arts used by the saints to augment my physical capacity further.

“Guh!” She gasps as she is sent skidding back. The place I hit was now smoking and it was quite clear that she, as a devil, was weak against the power I borrowed from the hikikomori in the skies.

She looks at me in shock before narrowing her eyes.

“I see, so you are a member of the church. Why did you decide to come into this town unannounced like that?” She questions.

“Sorry, not a member of the church, I am not into little boys, you see. Anyway, there are more things to take care of right now so would you kindly step aside? I would rather not let the assholes that are putting the city in danger get away from here without paying a high price for their transgressions, so you either get out of the way so I can proceed or we can keep going and you try to stop me, and I kill you.” I spoke calmly before releasing my killing intent without restraint at her.

I have spent a long, long time just fighting in the Shadow Lands due to them being relatively close to the Throne of Heroes and it was the ideal place for me to gain experience while I trained under Scatatch and Chiron. I killed, and killed, and killed more while there. I lost count of how many I’ve killed while practicing there, as I was not as talented as the others who either Scatatch and Chiron trained I had to fight and kill more if I was to improve, I took longer to grow and my killing intent has been forged from all those experiences.

Even Big Bro Cu hasn’t gotten quite as potent or refined a killing intent as the one I have, and I directed it all straight at the woman blocking my path.

She froze as she felt my energy before she smirked and sheathed her sword.

“Very well, when this is over I still want that fight and you best not try and run away from this, I know your face now, and if you run I will make sure to hunt you down like a dog.” She says.

“Good, now get out of the way before I make you my bitch. I have more important things to do.” I speak plainly and when she steps away from the staircase I just smirk and jump from the roof.

Using simple wind magecraft it is very easy to slow my fall to manageable levels and I control my way down enough to fall somewhere without people nearby. I should go to the meeting place where they are putting all the Sacred Gear users to secure that location before finding out the location of the other members of the Hero Faction still in town to capture them.

I will kill most of them for sure, but one or two might have at least some other uses. It all depends on how much they piss me off, if they irritate me enough, well…

They will be amongst those who won’t have an easy ending. I do need some lively human magic users for my more special… experiments.

///—///

Moving through town it did not take me long to reach my destination, namely the place where the gear users in town are being taken to. Sneaking my way inside I see a few people in there already, some passed out and some wide awake and talking seemingly happily.

Three of those awake fit the description of the members of the Hero Faction, they must be Un, Deux, and Jeanne.

Un is a brunette with brown eyes, she looks rather mousy if I were to describe her, looks at her surroundings nervously. According to Connla, she has a gear that lets her see other people’s secrets including magic energy, Sacred Gears, and even to some degree their specialization in combat. She is not strong in combat, but a gear like that sounds quite interesting and maybe I should take it to investigate more of the details about it as to implement it into other projects.

Deux looks somewhat similar to Nero-sensei but somehow feels just less in every single aspect, her hair was not of the right color, being brown instead of golden, face not nearly as beautiful. A cheap knock-off at best, her claims of being Nero’s descendant might as well be baseless. She is a magic-user if Connla’s info is to be believed so I should be somewhat careful of her.

Jeanne, meanwhile, doesn’t even resemble the Jeanne I know from the throne. It is not a matter of being a cheap knock-off like Un, this girl just isn’t anything like her. Her expression, mannerisms, appearance, every single thing I can think of don’t relate to the happy and kind saint that helped teach me the worth of humanity and about devotion to a cause, and also the other version of her that taught me that God and the Church are general fucking assholes and to not have blind faith in either.

Besides those two are a few others awake that I don’t recognize, most likely people who were approached earlier by the Faction and are willing recruits. There are only three there, two males and a female. The first male seems to be a high schooler with a big muscular build, glasses, short dark hair, and a serious expression who is looking after the people knocked out on the floor. The second male is an older man who seems to be in his early thirties who is very fit and has a refined appearance having a slicked-back hairdo with a curl at the front and sports a handlebar mustache along with a well-kept, medium-sized beard. As for the girl, well she is a very short young woman who has raspberry pink hair and a similar color of eyes, around said eyes are very dark circles and she also doesn’t seem to take exceptional care of herself.

Looking at their interactions I observe for a few moments, they seem to be talking about how one of theirs is taking too long to get back here. If I were to hazard a guess it must be Mami seeing as she was fighting Ravel and Kiyoharu, and if that is so then they will most likely send someone to go take a look and rescue her.

If that is what they will do then I may as well wait until one of theirs moves out, leaving me to strike the weaker link instead of fighting everyone here at once.

After a long discussion, Jeanne spoke up.

“Fine, you guys stay here and I will go and get Trois back to base. Tell Georg to start preparing for evacuation.” She said as she started to move out.

I watched all her actions and thought about them before thinking about my options. Pursuing Jeanne now would be more dangerous since her gear able to produce any sword she can think off sounds quite strong in the right hands and potentially less rewarding considering at most I would get my hands on one Sacred Gear. Meanwhile, if I attack this group here now I would get my hands on at least one gear and likely more of them to play with later while perhaps having the time to go and take care of Jeanne afterward.

… Though I have to go after Jeanne, if for no other reason than because I do not want to let her get to Ravel and Kiyoharu. The two girls have a LOT of explaining to do and the future is uncertain, but they are friends and I won’t ignore that, I can just return here after taking care of the situation regarding the knock-off Jeanne.

Moving swiftly after her I let her move some distance from the base. Fighting her close to where her allies are would be stupid and I can’t just assassinate her seeing as I want to take away her gear to produce resources for me so just killing her in an instant wouldn’t be quite as productive.

After about four minutes of moving around we were approaching where Ravel and Kiyoharu should be located, this should be far away enough for the others to not reach us instantly and I just need less than a minute after downing her to take away her gear.

Just as I was about to act, I saw something that made my brows twitch in profound irritation.

Why did Ravel and Kiyoharu decide to show up NOW right as I was about to strike at the enemy? I don’t want distractions in my hunt for materials… I mean, saving the people of this town. Yep, definitely focusing on saving people instead of my desire to take several powerful items to study and get a lot of useful materials from them later.

“I see, some devil scum has taken captive my cute little toy. Well, can’t have that now, huh.” Jeanne spoke as she looked at Ravel in disdain before creating a sword in her hand and stabbing it in the ground. “Balance Breaker: Stake Victim Dragon, my cute little weapon. Now, die please.”

The Balance Breaker manifested and it took the form of a dragon made out of holy swords. It was not that tall, being only about 6 meters tall but it looks quite intimidating.

The dragon jumps right at Ravel and Kiyoharu, Ravel launches a blast of fire at it but it is useless and the dragon just keeps pushing forward.

Not being able to just stand back, and not knowing if just killing or disabling Jeanne would stop this thing, I have no other choice. Using the mana from my rings I direct it to my feet and directly use Mana Burst to accelerate, dashing from my hiding place to right in front of the dragon just in time as it was about to hit both Ravel and Kiyoharu.

Using reinforcement to the limit I also concentrate and use Jacob’s Limbs, trusting my skin to not be cut by the dragon I hold it in place using pure physical strength.

“S-SOMA?”

“Yeah, Soma here. Short, sweet, rolls of the tongue, ladies love it.” I say, flashing a smile and a wink at a clearly distraught Ravel before pushing up the dragon and moving underneath it, punching it hard with all my strength.

Metal clearly bends at impact as I feel the plate upon plate of holy swords being smashed.

… Is it just me or are the holy swords used in this really weak? I just hope they can still be smelted to produce good materials, God really sucked in making useful items, huh.

Cracking my knuckles I smirk at the fake Jeanne and her pet dragon.

“So, ready to be put in your place yet, mongrel?”