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- “I think you need to have a little more faith in me.”

“Even if you could split a planet with a single stomp, I couldn’t help but worry about you,” Davey replied.

- …

There was a pause before she spoke again.

- “Sorry. I’ll explain everything more clearly next time, so don’t worry.”

Hearing the frustration in her low-toned voice, Davey threw the dagger he had taken from Pocket Plane straight at Duke Neto La Lili, who was trying to crawl away.

“Gaaa!!”

The dagger pierced the Duke\'s leg, making him collapse to the floor. He gritted his teeth, eyes bloodshot, but didn’t scream.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Davey taunted.

"A-Arrest him!" Marquis Peiltris belatedly shouted after coming to his senses. The soldiers subsequently subdued him, made easier when he was still weak and tightly clenching his teeth in pain.

“How is this possible… I fed her a drug that disrupts her mana flow…”

He seemed bewildered, unable to comprehend why Perserque was unharmed.

She had lost the authority of the Abyss, and Illyna’s power came from mana. Even Aeria, who possessed a small amount of spirit mana, should have been vulnerable to poisons that interfered with mana as they were designed to subdue elementalists.

The Duke had been counting on the fact that before coming to the trial, he had drugged Perserque, Illyna, and Aeria to capture them. But reality didn\'t quite go according to his ideal plan.

“Hey, psychopath,” Davey said calmly as he walked up to the Duke. He grabbed him by the collar with a cold smile.

“I’m just a simple man who worries too much.”

“...”

“If there had been any real problem with Perserque, you wouldn’t even be able to breathe here at this trial.”

“Grrr…”

Bang!!

Davey threw the Duke to the side after sealing his blood flow.

People with special abilities generated power through their souls, but that power had to circulate through their bodies. Davey quickly sealed the Duke’s abilities, then clamped his mouth shut with one hand while giving him a cold look.

“I do owe you some thanks.”

‘As I’ve now considerably expanded my devil mana.’

And there was one more thing.

Ssss…

“Hmph?! Grrr! Ahhh!”

The Duke screamed desperately, collapsing to the ground. His body trembled violently, his eyes wide open and bloodshot.

“Put him behind bars.”

“Your Highness, should we prepare the troops?” a soldier asked.

“I’ll signal you later. Be ready to join me then,” Davey replied, walking out of the courtroom.

“Prince Davey! I’m coming with you!” Sullivan called out, unable to hide his concern for his sister any longer.

“Why don’t you just wait here?” Davey suggested.

“Prince Davey…”

“Your younger sister isn’t someone that needs to be helped as much as you think,” Davey remarked.

In fact, if she unleashed her full power, no one on the continent could subdue her except Davey—the Continuum-Attacking Blade she wielded was incredibly powerful to boot.

* * *

Boom!!

The red flash cut through the air like a cannonball and sliced through the black knights who were charging with weapons in their hands.

Fire Fox Kathryn Carabella, the Grand Duchess of the Lyndis Empire, mercilessly cut down the enemies with a cold face, not even breaking a sweat. She crushed the iron doors with her bare hands and shattered their swords. Her battle energy was beyond one’s imagination, clearly reflecting her fury.

They had tracked their way to a small villa on the outskirts of the capital, following the trail from the ring both Perserque and Davey wore. Even though it was a villa, it was larger than most noble estates.

Kathryn had insisted on coming with Davey. There had been dozens of the black-uniformed guards, but by the time Davey came to his senses, all that remained were either torn up bodies or enemies who couldn’t get up.

“You bastards...”

Kathryn growled, her body emanating a fiery battle energy. She then pounded on the villa’s massive door.

Thud!!

Surprisingly, the door withstood her attack.

“Oh? What’s this? A magic barrier?” she muttered with a cold smile, seemingly amused that the door was able to handle her attack. She struck again, but the door, reinforced with a magical barrier, held firm against her assault.

As she grew ever more frustrated, she made a dangerously gleaming smile and raised her foot to make another powerful kick. Davey stepped forward, stopping her.

“Move aside.”

Pow!! Thud!!

Davey stepped up and unleashed a tremendous amount of energy from his fist. His fist instantly shattered the door and its magical barrier.

“...”

“Hmph,” he snorted.

"Wow… You just had to show off like that, didn’t you?" Kathryn muttered, clearly jealous of what he was capable of, but Davey ignored her comment.

As they slowly walked inside, Davey noticed that the interior was surprisingly clean. He assumed that if Illyna had gone on a rampage, the whole place would’ve been in chaos. It seemed that the three weren’t in this building.

But then,

“Prince!” Kathryn shouted loudly. At that moment, figures in black uniforms suddenly charged out from the shadows and went for Davey. They moved swiftly without the slightest hesitation, wielding barrier daggers from Heins Territory.

Clang!!

However, their attacks didn’t last long. Something snatched them out of mid-air, restraining their movements.

“What… Strong Shots?!”

Kathryn looked at Davey in shock as Strong Shots that reflected light spread out from all directions, tying up the attackers.

“When did you set these up?” she asked, astonished.

“A little while ago,” Davey replied, holding a sword with silver strings tied to it. He twirled it swiftly in his hand to show it off to her.

“Wow… I didn’t even see you throw it… But why didn’t you kill them?”

Davey answered by pulling off their masks.

“Kids?”

Surprisingly enough, beneath the masks were young girls, barely out of childhood.

“I did think something was off, considering they were short and had hardly any muscle,” Davey remarked.

But one of the girls kept trying to attack him with a blank face.

“Wait… Were the ones I just killed also children?”

“Not all of them, but likely a lot of them,” Davey replied grimly.

“Duke Lili, you fucking monster...” Kathryn hissed.

Hero Reina had mentioned that women and girls had disappeared in areas where traces of the special trait of manipulating the five senses were detected. Davey assumed they were probably the Duke’s victims.

The entire mansion was eerily quiet, except for one room: Duke Lili’s office. It looked like a war zone, the embodiment of total chaos. On one side was a bed with several restraints, clearly meant to hold someone down. There were people with miserable faces collapsed around it.

“Illyna, you crazy bitch. Just how much damage did you cause?” Davey muttered.

“It’s not appropriate for a prince to say those kinds of remarks,” Kathyrn retorted.

Inside the office, they found a hidden passage that led further in. As they entered, they began seeing traces of someone deliberately destroying the place. There were men and women in black uniforms strewn about, their bodies left in grotesque positions.

The two kept walking for a while. Then, suddenly a flash of silver light made its way through the darkness in an instant.

Clank!!!

“Ugh?!”

Grand Duchess Kathryn managed to block the attack reflexively with her arm guard, but she couldn’t help but frown.

“Fire Fox Grand Duchess? How did you…?” Illyna said as she emerged from the shadows with Caldeiras in her hands. She came running while making a surprised face. As soon as she saw Davey, she sighed with relief.

“Oh, Davey, it was you… I’m sorry, Grand Duchess. Those guys, wielding weapons that disturbed my energy perception, happened to appear out of nowhere.”

“Princess... I almost got hurt,” Kathryn scolded.

“I-I’m sorry! I was just destroying everything out of fury! I just…”

Davey looked at Illyna, who didn’t seem to know how to sort the situation out. Fortunately, he was able to see that she didn’t appear hurt.

“Are you okay?” Davey asked as he applied healing magic to Kathryn\'s arm. She nodded, her eyes wide.

“Davey! You should come see this!”

He couldn’t help but wonder what she had found in a place like this.

“I’ll be fine. You should go, Prince Davey.”

“Sorry, Grand Duchess,” Davey said.

“It’s okay. Considering the situation, I understand,” Kathryn replied calmly.

Following Illyna’s lead, they moved deeper inside and ended up in a massive laboratory. On one side was Aeria lying unconscious, while on the other was Perserque reading documents.

"Oh my god… That bastard…" Davey muttered.

The entire lab was a horror show.

“It’s like a slaughterhouse...”

Davey couldn’t decide whether the word slaughterhouse or giant biological lab was more suitable. Either way, there were girls hanging from chains. It was hard to tell if they were even alive or not, but seeing them hanging was truly a grotesque sight. The fact that they had blood all over them seemed so insignificant and tame compared to the scene as a whole.

“How could a human being…”

“Manipulation of the senses. By controlling the senses, he rewrote commands and modified both the souls and bodies, using drugs to change both,” Perserque murmured. “He’s been using his power to reshape people however he wanted.”

He hadn’t just modified them simply by using drugs. He tapped into the very core of human beings and even performed what was a borderline taboo, human transmutation.

“Perserque, is this what you were talking about on the call?”

“There’s more than just this, Davey. Here is his experiment log.” She handed him a small notebook.

Davey read through the pages filled with words. It contained horrifying details as such:

[ Valdis Calendar, Year XXX, Day XX.

Secured three test subjects from the Duchy of Felicity. They appear to be triplets. All three grew up in the same environment, thus having similar tendencies. When subjecting their souls to extreme situations and amplifying their emotions to the limit with drugs and special powers, their bodies and souls began to change in different ways.

However, side effects were severe, causing mutations beyond predicted range. Experiment failed.]

[ Valdis Calendar, Year XXX, Day XX.

Secured the daughter of a fallen noble family. Considering his proud status as a man of noble character, I ordered my subordinates to violate him sexually for several days. As his mind broke, I detected his emotional energy immensely surge, which I then amplified. The extreme fear, anger, and hatred made his overwhelming soul energy take over his body. His skin color changed, and his muscle tissue transformed.

He mutated into a cruel and monstrous being. The results suggest that the more thoroughly a noblewoman is broken, the stronger the transformation.]

He had been experimenting with amplifying the shame and fear one experienced under horrific circumstances, hoping to affect their soul and see what changes it brought upon one’s body.

The corpses strewn around the lab were no longer human in any recognizable way. Some had their chests cut open as if they were dissected after transformation; others were missing legs with their bodies twisted into grotesque shapes. Davey couldn’t even fathom how many people had been experimented on.

The Illuminati were a group of lunatics, but this guy took it to another level. Davey, who had kept on reading the experiment log in silence, looked up and turned to Perserque, who was glaring at the notes with fury.

“Are you hurt? Why did Aeria faint?”

“She couldn’t completely endure the medication they used to drug us. I don’t blame her; she was so worn out, and to then see all of this horrendous stuff…”

Davey knew it was a lot for a young woman to handle.

“Thank goodness. I was beginning to think something bad had happened,” Davey said. He hadn’t told the Grand Duchess, but she knew that the Duke had tried to make the three fall into his trap.

“Do you have any idea what that twisted, perverted bastard planned to do to all of you?” Davey asked.

“We never trusted him to begin with. You didn’t have to worry, Davey,” Illyna replied.

“Don’t put yourself in that position again. Let me handle them from now on.”

“I’m not some child who needs to be protected forever,” Perserque said.

“I’m just worried, that’s all!”

Some could see it as him being overprotective, but he didn’t care. He didn’t see anything wrong with a husband being worried about his wife.

“But.. If all the victims here were failed experiments... what about the successful ones?”

“You probably saw some of them on your way in here,” Illyna answered.

He then remembered the girls in black uniforms and men with blank faces. Most of them were young girls or women, but there had been a good number of men mixed in.

“It looks like he froze up the souls of the ones that showed little to no response, using them as puppets, and took away those who experienced stronger mutations.”

Illyna walked up to Davey with a blood-stained sack in her hand. It looked like she was taking care of the corpses.

“So he took the stronger ones away…”

“When I acted like I fainted, I remember him saying that he was going to start a war between the Pallan Empire and Lyndis Empire.’”

If two of the three empires that maintained peace went to war, the Continental Alliance would quickly fall apart and conflict would spread across the continent. Once trapped in a vicious cycle of hatred, it would be almost impossible to break free... Davey realized what the Duke had been aiming for.

“He just didn\'t seem like some sort of war-crazed maniac,” Davey muttered.

“Maybe… it’s because of this,” Illyna suggested, showing him a small photograph from one side of the laboratory. It was a photo of a blonde girl smiling, with Duke Neto La Lili standing beside her, his expression soft and warm.

“Is this the wife that passed away?” Davey asked.

“It seems so. That’s what his memoir mentioned.”

“Memoir?”

“The story goes that some criminals from other countries broke into the Duke’s villa while he was at the palace. They raped and murdered the Duchess who was resting there to recuperate. According to what Aeria knew, she died of illness and was buried quietly, but this… This tells a different story.”

This was probably the reason why he wanted to create chaos and upheaval. Davey now realized where his twisted madness had come from—he wanted the ones who were responsible to pay, but had no way to get revenge.

“Still, the power he possesses is breaking the rules of this world more than just excessively.”

The power to manipulate the senses had a lot of potential, but the extent to which he could reshape living beings was beyond what ordinary Special Ones were capable of. There were many special abilities, like imbuing hallucinations, but they had their limits. However, the power Davey had taken from the Duke was on a whole different level, having a remarkably higher limit. He couldn’t tell if this was because the Duke was just extraordinarily talented.

‘But that also…’

As Davey was lost in thought, Illyna found an old, dusty notebook and brought it over.

“Davey, I found a box over here. There’s no end to this bastard; it’s one after another… Seriously, this guy…”

She opened the box, Davey having no clue where she got it from. It contained magic stones that recorded voices.

“What is this?” Davey wondered aloud as he activated the magic stone. A voice crackled through the static.

[Bzz. You promise me the power to get my revenge? Power that no one can stop?]

[Beep...]

[Then give me strength. If you can really give me power like that of a god…]

Davey couldn’t hear the other person talking due to the static noise. He assumed the Duke had tossed the stones in the box, since he couldn’t hear it from the beginning either.

‘He probably had these as a backup plan,’ Davey thought.

[Beep... Beep!!]

Again, the noise filled the air—almost as if to verify his desire to have his story told in the case of his death.

[Amplify my instincts… I don’t care. Do whatever to my instincts or whatever. I just need that power.]

With that, the magic stone went dead. As expected, there was something unnatural about his special ability; it was far too strong.

But Davey couldn’t figure out who had given him his power. He figured that if the being could create static in a magic stone that recorded voices, they were capable of embedding mana within their very words.

Davey thought this was the clue that could lead him to the traitor that Eclipse had warned him about. Without a moment’s hesitation, Davey raised his hand and gathered his mana.

[Photon Cannon]

Boom!!!

A light green beam shot through the ceiling, blowing a hole right through it. Then, Davey launched flares from his Pocket Plane into the sky and gently picked up the unconscious Aeria. He couldn’t help but think that she was too weak to come to such a dangerous place.

“What did you do?” Illyna asked.

“I called the soldiers waiting at the palace.”

The traitor\'s trail was clear now. He knew he just needed to interrogate Duke Neto La Lili to uncover more.

But then,

[Prince Davey! There’s been a disaster! Someone just killed the guards and took the Duke…]

Davey clenched his fists, frustration boiling over.

‘Damn it.’