Chapter 144 - The Academy’s Weapon Replicator

Chapter 44: Resurrection

Obsidian’s guards moved swiftly at the sound of the alarm. Warden Esther led the way. The mirror Esther, of course.

[Intruder alert. Intruder alert. The intruder has killed three guards in the morgue. Respond immediately. Intruder alert—]

Following the announcement, the guards headed for the morgue. The prison’s entrance had already been sealed. They formed a cordon, cutting off escape routes from the outside in.

But then...

RIIIIING!

Another alarm rang out, different from the one activated manually by the staff. At the same time, water sprayed from the sprinklers installed in the ceiling.

‘A fire?’

The intruder had started a fire. But why? Esther and the guards strode steadily through the pouring water.

The morgue door had locked automatically the moment the alarm sounded. That meant the intruder was still inside.

It was hard to understand why someone would start a fire in a confined space, but this was a lunatic who had broken into Obsidian in the first place.

BEEP!

CLICK.

At the head of the group, Esther opened the door without hesitation. The locking spell recognized her registered fingerprint.

She had already unleashed her Aura. It was not just her; every guard at Obsidian could use Aura. That was a basic requirement for the job.

“Damn...”

But the intruder was already gone. Renzo’s corpse was nowhere to be seen either.

More guards followed her inside and searched the room, to no avail. The culprit had already escaped the morgue.

‘Teleportation magic. An exceptionally powerful version, too. Most likely a portal.’

Checking the surveillance footage would confirm it, but she was almost certainly right.

Esther had assessed the scene and deduced the method of escape.

The culprit had entered through the front door, spouting bullshit about owing Renzo a debt of gratitude. If the intruder’s ability had been on the level of spatial teleportation, none of that would have been necessary.

They could simply have taken Renzo out of his solitary cell before he even died.

In other words, this teleportation was a one-way trip that only allowed a return.

But that left one question unanswered.

‘Then what were the sprinklers for?’

Esther had been concentrating on her sense of smell for a while now. Though the sprinklers had extinguished the fire, she could detect a faint burned smell. The culprit had definitely set a fire here.

Why would someone capable of returning through a portal bother starting a fire inside? The answer did not come easily.

‘Perhaps creating the portal requires fire. Or water...’

While Esther pursued that line of thought, the guards put the morgue in order and continued searching the prison.

If she was right, the intruder had already escaped, but she could be mistaken. Even if she was correct, that was no reason to stop the search.

“Warden, I have something to report.”

A guard approached Esther.

“What is it?”

“According to the employee who sounded the alarm, the culprit changed their face on the morgue’s surveillance footage.”

“Changed their face?”

“Yes. They were a slender woman when they came through the entrance, but apparently changed to a more androgynous face in the morgue. The employee said their face was kneaded like clay.”

“Hmm. Then the culprit didn’t know about the cameras?”

“No. They were looking directly at the camera. Apparently, they showed it deliberately. I believe they were making a point: they could change their appearance whenever they pleased, so we would never find them.”

Esther’s eyes grew somber.

She brushed her fingertips over her chin and lips, then spoke.

“Then it must be a monster from the Outside.”

“... A monster from the Outside.”

“If it not only changes its face but flaunts that ability, its very existence has probably never been discovered in the Empire. That slows our response, and no one knows what it is. That is what its taunt means.”

“I see. So this was a monster’s doing.”

The guard nodded, seemingly impressed.

Esther, however, still looked doubtful.

‘Even so, that isn’t enough reason to taunt us. I’ve heard the monsters of the Outside are highly intelligent. And with monsters just as powerful all around them, they have to be wary of one another. That supposedly makes them all the more cautious and devious on top of their intelligence.’

Had it been a simple beast, she could have put it down to a desire to show off its abilities.

But if it was a monster from the Outside, even that display might have served some purpose.

‘Renzo’s corpse. A portal. Shapeshifting. Showing off...’

The condensed keywords passed through Esther’s mind in sequence.

‘Something that needs fire, or water.’

A cold gleam soon entered her eyes.

‘A monster from the Outside.’

The fire or water was not needed for the portal.

Perhaps the monster itself...

Reaching a conclusion, Esther spoke quietly.

“I understand now.”

“Pardon?”

“It flaunted its ability. A display of confidence that we could never find it. But look at it another way. What does that tell us? Only a monster could do such a thing. An unidentified monster we’ve never seen before, at that.”

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

“In other words, it deliberately told us it was a monster. There is no reason to take that risk.”

“But it isn’t human. Couldn’t that explain it? Who knows how those things think?”

Esther shook her head at the guard’s words.

“You say that because you’ve never encountered a monster from the Outside. Who knows how they think? Exactly. But that doesn’t mean they’re stupider than us. It means their thinking goes beyond ours.”

The intelligence of humans and monsters from the Outside was roughly equal. Esther knew that. She had actually encountered those monsters and barely escaped with her life.

But unlike humans, whose choices were heavily influenced by emotions, logic, convictions, values, and the like, the monsters of the Outside had none of those things.

They had neither people nor feelings to protect. Their exceptional intelligence served their own goals alone.

If one failed to understand that way of thinking...

“As long as you dismiss a monster from the Outside as just another monster, you’ll ‘deserve to die’ even if it tears your body in half.”

“...”

The guard swallowed at Esther’s cold words.

Slowly, he asked another question.

“Th-then what do you think it’s planning, Warden?”

“This isn’t the work of an individual.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is a monster, as its own display proved. That much is certain. But if we become fixated on that fact, we’ll do nothing but hunt for a monster. That may actually lead us further away from it.”

“... Wh-what does that mean?”

The guard still did not understand what Esther meant.

She could hardly blame him; she realized she had left too much unsaid.

“It has joined forces with humans.”

“...!”

“That is why it knows the more it acts like a monster, the safer it will be. The more we look outside, the easier it is for it to hide within.”

Only then did the guard understand. His eyes trembled.

He was beginning to understand, if only a little, what the monsters of the Outside were like.

Meanwhile, Esther let out a small sigh.

‘I’ll have to contact the original.’

She would not have reached Constel yet, so there should still be time.

* * *

That day, Obsidian suffered an enormous blow to its reputation.

An intruder had stolen Renzo’s corpse.

It was a disgraceful failure, unworthy of its formidable reputation as the Empire’s greatest prison.

A single monster had accomplished all of it. Even accounting for the culprit being inhuman, it was difficult to believe, and it gave the Empire’s citizens all the more reason to fear.

The one responsible for that remarkable feat, however...

“... Lord Renzo, hear me out.”

...was staring at the man before them, tense beyond measure.

“Yeah, I’m listening.”

Renzo grinned at Kraken.

Kraken was smiling too, though that smile was undeniably stiff.

Renzo spoke.

“The Empress of this Empire once told me to stop barking. I was furious when I first heard it, but thinking it over, I really am a fucking animal. She was absolutely right.”

Renzo picked at his ear. Using his left pinky to scratch his opposite ear seemed decidedly awkward.

“So I listened very carefully to what you just said, you bastard. Bitch? Whatever you are. Since I’m an animal, I figured I’d understand another animal’s noises.”

But the moment Renzo uttered that word, his presence changed. His murderous intent shot toward Kraken. Even his bloodlust burned hot. If it swallowed them, they would burn to death. That was how it felt to Kraken.

“But what was that? You hold my life in your hands? You bastard-bitch. Isn’t that what you just said?”

“... My core is serving as your heart right now, Lord Renzo. If I decide to...”

“Huh. Well, now.”

Renzo shook his head slowly, as though he genuinely could not understand.

Renzo’s heart had indeed been replaced by Kraken’s core. That core belonged to Kraken, and they truly could stop it and kill Renzo whenever they decided to.

“Sure. Why don’t you try? I’m very curious to see how quickly you can ‘decide.’”

“...”

“You gave up your own core to bring me, Renzo, back to life, and now you think you hold my life in your hands? You bastard-bitch. You broke into Obsidian.”

“... Obsidian wasn’t all that impressive.”

At Kraken’s words, Renzo drew in a breath.

Then he burst into booming laughter. “Bwahahaha!”

“What’s so funny?”

“Not that impressive? Right. Is that the extent of the information that reaches the monsters of the Outside?”

“... What do you mean?”

“You seem to think getting out of that ‘building’ means you’ve successfully escaped ‘Obsidian,’ bitch. You couldn’t be more wrong. You just rang your own death knell. You have no idea what happens once that warden, that crazy bitch, sets her sights on you. You don’t know why all those vicious inmates sit there quietly.”

Of all the criminals on the continent, Renzo was unquestionably the most familiar with Obsidian. Naturally, the world’s worst criminal was bound to have a long and bitter history with the world’s strongest prison.

“You came whining that you needed my power, even giving up one of your own lives, and now you try to threaten me? You should’ve asked what happened to everyone who tried pulling shit on me before you came. You octopus bitch who doesn’t know her place.”

“?!”

Kraken’s face froze.

Octopus. The insult itself was offensive enough, but for him to mention it meant...

“... How do you know?”

“What, that you’re an octopus bitch?”

Renzo smirked. Kraken sensed something unusual about his presence.

Had Kraken been Frondier, they probably would have seen it.

The purple haze rising from Renzo’s body.

“He told me. Ares did. Said that if I died, you’d come save me for sure.”

“Ares? You mean Lord Ares, the God of War? You met a god?”

“Less a meeting, more him running his mouth and leaving.”

Kraken had no response to Renzo’s brazen tone.

Of course, Kraken was hardly in a position to criticize anyone’s manner of speaking. Still, to say the god who granted him Divine Power had been ‘running his mouth’...

“... Then you knew you would be brought back, and deliberately died to make that happen?”

“Yeah. That bastard Ares told me.”

Renzo’s voice remained as insolent as ever.

“He said that if I died, an octopus-head would come bring me back. And since he and I share the same goal, he’d lend me some ‘real power.’”

“... Goal?”

“Yeah. Isn’t it obvious?”

Renzo’s eyes flashed wide open. The murderous intent that had seemed ready to burst into flame now rose, bubbling like lava.

“I’m going to kill Frondier. It’ll be the most entertaining event of my life.”