Chapter 161: Captain |
Without the slightest warning, without even the tiniest bit of buildup, the head of a Bloodfiend noble had been simply and cleanly plucked off.
Standing nearby while eating candy, Karon had only managed to catch Edith's microexpression when Nio placed a hand on her shoulder. His mind had still been analyzing the matter as yet another trite story of a younger sister secretly loving her brother-in-law.
He had never expected that Nio had placed his hand there only to make it easier and faster to take her head off a moment later. He had killed a man's daughter right in front of him. Not only that, Nio could still speak as though nothing had happened, as though he was utterly unbothered.
The sheer brutality of the image was suffocating. For a moment, Karon found himself unable to imagine which was the real Nio. One moment he had been the cautious clerk following Deputy Director Mion around. The next, he had been a captain sitting behind his desk, stuffing Karon with a pot of cheap chicken soup before handing him an even cheaper ring. Now, he was a man commanding an elite squad of the Whip of Order, and had casually ripped off the head of the daughter of the very person he was ordered to protect, just to send her to the grave with his lover.
Karon unconsciously rubbed his ring with a fingertip, feeling its presence. Who, exactly, is the one truly wearing a mask?
Thump!
Because the head had been removed too quickly, Edith's headless body remained standing for quite a while before finally losing its balance and toppling backward to the floor.
She was dead, truly dead. The severed neck was pitch-black, which meant the blade had been coated with a horrifying poison. Even if Bloodfiends were said to possess extremely strong regenerative abilities, there was no way any miracle could happen to reverse this damage.
Dinkom and Pike instinctively moved closer to each other, as though only the other's presence could give them a little warmth at a time like this.
Such unimaginable speed caused even Karon's gaze to tighten slightly. He had already felt from the start that Nio's squad was far superior to Tirsen's. Now, he had no choice but to raise his assessment yet another level.
Was it because the first squad he had come into contact with, Tirsen’s, had simply been too useless? After all, they had been rotten and corrupt. A whip rotted at its core could never crack with any real force.
Yet Nio's squad was definitely not a normal Whip of Order squad.
Karon remembered what the earl had said earlier. For many years, because of his relationship with Elisa, Nio had been suppressed by the Church of Order. Yet, even so, after the Zeric scandal had erupted, the higher-ups had still transferred Nio and his squad to York City to clean out the long-standing corruption in the area.
It was the equivalent of a man with major political review problems not only avoiding dismissal and not getting shoved onto the cold bench, but continuing to serve as a captain of the Whip of Order, and even getting transferred to a core district, practically the capital circle itself.
That could only mean one thing: Nio and his squad possessed such undeniable power that even the higher-ups had no choice but to take them seriously.
At that instant, Karon found the ring Nio had given him looking much better again. So what if it was plastic?
The earl spoke, "At one funeral, I lost two daughters."
Nio did not even look at the earl. He indifferently stated, "Doesn't matter. You have a lot of children anyway."
The earl asked, "You can consider this in that way?"
"Yes. You only lost two of your many children, while I lost my only one."
"Earlier, I already had Edith kneel in front of her sister's coffin and apologize." Clearly, the earl had long known who had switched the Dormancy Serum, because he had handed over a real serum. However, since it had passed through the hands of another of his daughters, by the time he had arrived at the funeral, the earl had already known the real cause of Elisa's death.
"If apologies were useful, then what would be the point of the Whip of Order?"
The earl looked at Nio and said, "I regret it, Nio."
Nio glanced at the clock hanging on the mourning hall wall. "This funeral is over."
The earl continued, "Edith died during an ambush by forces from House Bocart and House Magna in York City. She died protecting me."
Then, the man turned his face slightly to look at Edith's bodyguards, who were still being held in place. "One last favor…"
Nio waved his hand.
Pfft! Pfft!
The two bodyguards' throats were slit open. Poison from the daggers entered their bodies immediately, and under its suppression, they could not even struggle. In the end, they collapsed and died on the floor.
The earl straightened his collar and looked at Karon. In the capacity of a mourner, he saluted the funeral host with a half bow. Karon returned the salute.
The earl then turned around. His figure soon disappeared into the dark night outside.
Holding Edith's head, Nio walked to the bier and placed it inside the coffin. Then, he reached out and gently smoothed Elisa's beautiful hair. "I like how she looks now. Where is Inquisitor Pavaro?"
Karon took the initiative to step forward and stood beneath the mourning table. "The boss isn't here. He is very busy."
Nio nodded. He knew why Mr. Pavaro was busy.
If some other Inquisitor had been absent on this day, Nio might have believed the man to be trying to dodge a bit of trouble, having left just a few Divine Servants behind to watch the house while slipping away himself. But Mr. Pavaro would never do that. Most likely, he was genuinely busy.
On the other hand, the scene offered a very different impression to Pike and Dinkom. They did not know Nio, nor had they even recognized that this man was the same one who had once accompanied the deputy director to deliver documents and a bonus to their boss.
However, they saw that Karon actually dared to walk over and speak to this man in a normal manner, so they could only marvel that those in the same system really were different.
In truth, though, the two of them had misunderstood Karon. This was something he had not even realized himself. Earlier, when Edith had come in, she had asked if he was the Inquisitor. When the earl had come in, he had asked Karon the same question.
This was because after taking just a single glance around after entering, any normal person could tell who was an errand runner and who was the one in charge. With Karon's experience and bearing, no matter how nervous he might be inside, he could still outwardly appear calm. It was not an act, nor a performance. If you asked him to imitate Dinkom and Pike at this moment and act like a terrified, trembling quail, Karon would really not know how to behave.
"You knew all along, didn't you?" Gros looked at Nio as he asked.
"Yes," Nio gave a quiet response.
Gros looked at the coffin, then lowered his head to stare at his own hands. He seemed to realize something.
Nio calmly stated, "This morning, negotiations ended smoothly. So long as nothing unexpected happened, the earl would have come to me tonight on his own and placed the Dormancy Serum into my hands."
"So... so it was me..." Gros was in utter disbelief. "It was me... it was my fault..."
"Yes."
Originally, Nio could have taken the Dormancy Serum from the earl himself, which would have eliminated the possibility of Edith switching things. More importantly, Nio would certainly have checked that the serum was genuine.
But Gros had gone to ask for it in advance. The earl might have assumed that Nio had sent the man. Even though they had still been in the middle of negotiations and the final outcome had not yet been decided, the earl had still handed the serum over, and that had given Edith the chance to switch things.
Gros had then taken the Dormancy Serum straight to Elisa. Elisa, overcome with emotions toward her family, had not doubted the authenticity of the serum in the slightest and had drunk it immediately.
By the time Nio had entered the room at midnight, what he had seen was Elisa, already dead by her own hand.
For her sake, Nio and his squad had endured years of suppression, unable to receive any sort of promotion or advancement. Yet just as they had finally arrived at the moment when their relationship could be made public, when their union could become a bond of cooperation between the Church of Order and the Anavas family, fate had cruelly played a ridiculous joke on them.
"I'm sorry..." Gros knelt down. "I have failed you, and I have failed the young miss!"
Nio shook his head. "I do not blame you. Truly. Because I know that after taking your revenge tonight, you planned to follow Elisa. You were afraid that after her soul went to the Blood River you believe in, there would be no one there to take care of her. For her entire life, aside from leaving her family for my sake, she was just a simple young girl who knew nothing of the world.”
“Go to her. She is afraid of the dark, and afraid of loneliness. Do not make her wait too long.”
Gros nodded, tears streaming nonstop down his face. "Yes."
Then he pulled a handgun from his chest, raised it, and aimed it at his temple.
Bang! The bullet went right through. Blood splattered, and Gros fell to the floor.
A funeral had been held for one person, yet there were now four extra corpses on the ground.
"Has the burial plot been reserved?" Nio asked Karon.
"Yes."
Nio's gaze swept over the various bodies on the floor. "Clean this place up."
Pike and Dinkom assumed he was speaking to the two of them, and they hurried forward, trembling slightly. However, they quickly realized that they had misunderstood. A group of masked figures entered the mourning hall and removed the bodies. They cleaned the floor, and then finally used purification Arts to erase the last traces. They displayed truly professional skills. Clearly, they were thoroughly practiced in handling scenes after killing people.
Once everything was done, a row of Whip of Order members stood quietly in place. Nio said, "Dismissed."
All of the squad members began to retreat in an orderly fashion, their figures gradually vanishing into the darkness.
Nio lowered his head and looked at the woman lying in the coffin. "I am going to bury her."
"Understood." Karon was about to call someone over to transport the coffin, but Nio merely raised a hand. A faint black sheen emerged from it, and the coffin was wrapped in a layer of black. It then rose up.
"The hearse is over there. I'll open the door." Karon walked over and opened the back door of the hearse. Nio carried the coffin over on the invisible lift. The coffin remained steady as it was placed inside the hearse, and then Nio himself climbed in and sat down as well.
Karon walked to the front of the shop and told the others, "We don't need too many people, so I'll drive."
Hearing that, Pike and Dinkom felt as though a heavy burden had been lifted from them.
"The keys." Alfred handed over a spare set of keys. Karon already had the hearse key, but what Alfred handed over was actually a spare key to his own second-hand Pons. When Karon took the keys, he noticed it came with his Whip of Order ring, which had already been repaired and glued back together.
Karon nodded, slipping both the keys and the ring into his pocket. He walked back to the hearse, got into the driver's seat, started the engine, and drove out of the funeral home.
He had assumed that the trip to Ivy Cemetery would remain silent the whole way, but Nio took the initiative to speak first. "Do you have someone you like?"
Karon glanced at Nio through the rearview mirror. The man was sitting in the back, facing the coffin. "Yes."
"How did you meet?"
"Our parents arranged for us to meet. What about you, Captain?"
"We met because of an accident. At the time, I was carrying out a mission in a city near her home, and her family was tacitly permitted to operate there."
"The way you met must have been very romantic, then."
"I was badly wounded at the time, close to death and covered in blood. She saved me. Very cliché, isn't it?"
"No. Looking back on it now, it must have felt very romantic."
"Yes." A faint smile appeared at the corner of Nio's mouth. "You are luckier than I was."
"Yes. Since our matter was arranged by both sets of parents, there would be no resistance from either side's family. All we need to resolve are problems between the two of us."
"So, do you like her?" Nio asked.
"I do."
"You sound a little reluctant."
"That’s because I don't know what it feels like to truly fall in love with someone. But I think... I probably do like her."
"I hear a sense of responsibility in your answer. Are you taking responsibility for her?"
"Yes. Responsibility," Karon answered with certainty.
"Do you think responsibility can also count as a kind of love?" Nio asked.
"I don't know, but I do believe that if there is no responsibility, then it definitely cannot count as love."
Nio nodded.
A brief silence settled in the hearse. Karon simply continued driving.
"You are not an ordinary Divine Servant."
The moment he heard those words, Karon seemed to hear his own heartbeat in his ears. Even so, he still responded, "Everyone favored by God is not ordinary."
"The more you answer me in a proper way, the more you remind me of just how unusual you are. That is not your fault." Nio opened the window, letting the outside wind blow in to ruffle his hair. "It was obvious when you were sitting in the mourning hall. No matter how well a piece of gold hides itself, even in the dirt, it still stands out."
"Mr. Pavaro trusts me very much, so the Divine Servants below all listen to me."
"See? You are still choosing the most proper answer."
"Captain, I am used to being like this."
"Do you know what kind of people get used to making their every action and word seem reasonable? People with secrets to keep."
"But who does not have secrets?" After saying that, Karon himself laughed first. This damned propriety!
"Heh." Nio laughed as well. "When did Inquisitor Pavaro leave?"
"Very early."
"So you are the one to arranged the funeral?"
"Yes."
"Why did you make an extra phone call to me, specifically to tell me the details of the funeral arrangements?"
"Because during my first call, I noticed the change in your tone. I felt that you cared a great deal about this funeral."
"The change in my tone?"
"Yes."
"From that alone, you concluded that I was connected to this funeral?"
Karon was now certain that Gros had not shared the content of their phone call with Nio, so the man did not know that Karon had tricked his identity out of Gros. "Yes, Captain. Also, the identity of the deceased explained a great deal."
"Just from that?"
"Yes."
"What about Inquisitor Pavaro's two daughters and his wife?"
"I arranged for them to stay at a hotel tonight. The boss's two young ladies spend all their time at home, so occasionally changing environments is good for their condition."
"You arranged things very properly. See? We're back to 'proper' again."
The hearse arrived at the entrance to Ivy Cemetery. Karon opened the door, got out, and walked over to the management office by the front gate. The groundskeeper was already asleep. Being woken by Karon, the man was irritable, but rels were always the best medicine for one’s lowering blood pressure. Once Karon handed over 200 rels, the man’s frayed temper recovered. He opened the cemetery gate, told Karon the location of the reserved burial plot, and motioned for him to drive in himself.
Karon returned to the hearse and drove into the cemetery, stopping at the plot. The cemetery would dig the grave in advance. "We're here, Captain. This is the place."
Nio carried the coffin out of the hearse on the same invisible lift, and then slowly lowered it into the grave.
Then he spread his hands. "Order—Purification!"
The aura of purification swept over Elisa's body, completely erasing all demonkin presence from her remains. Preventing potential corruption was only a minor part of this procedure. More importantly, this was a protection against grave robbers who specialized in stealing corpses with spirituality.
With the purification complete, Nio let out a sigh. "If I could, I would pay an enormous price just to wake her and speak with her for a little longer."
Karon could actually help with that, but he did not. This was not because he was afraid of exposing himself, but because Nio himself was capable of doing so, even though the difficulty and cost of Awakening a demonkin like Elisa would be extremely great.
The problem was that Elisa had died before right before entering derangement. Her expression at her time of death had been incomparably twisted. Even if she were to be Awakened, she would only become a bloodthirsty walking corpse. Nio himself understood that clearly as well.
Karon spoke in consolation. "She definitely would not want to have that side of herself appear before you, Captain."
"Yes. She loved beauty."
Karon took two shovels down from the hearse. He planted one beside him, and then used the other to start filling the grave with dirt. Nio picked up the second shovel and started moving dirt as well.
Compared to digging a grave, filling one was much easier. Before long, the work was done.
"Captain, what flowers did Miss Elisa like? In a few days, I'll send someone to plant them." Karon asked.
"Are you currying favor?" Nio asked.
Karon shook his head. "This is still work, as well as a bit of respect."
"She liked white roses."
"I'll remember that, Captain. Do you need me to drive you back?"
"No."
"Then I—" At that moment, Karon felt a hand settle upon his shoulder. It was impossible not to be nervous. After all, the last person Nio had set his hand on had ended up with her head removed.
"I have kept thinking that if I had not truthfully reported my relationship with her back then, would things have turned out differently?"
"Would that have meant that the Anavas family would not have stubbornly refused to give Miss Elisa the Dormancy Serum because of your identity as a member of the Church of Order?"
"Yes. If it had been Gros who had eloped with her, the earl might have even secretly given her the Dormancy Serum.
“But why didn't you ask whether I had not made our relationship public, if my squad and I would not have wasted away under suppression all these years?"
"Because I feel that was not the outcome you were referring to, Captain. You would not regret your own choice, nor regret what happened to you because of that choice."
"Heh."
Karon felt the hand pat him on the shoulder.
"I once thought responsibility meant that if two people were in love, they should choose to make it public and face everything together. That when I revealed my sincerity before God without reservation, God would see my devotion.
“Now, I suddenly feel that, if possible, preserving a few secrets is not unacceptable either." Nio turned his head and looked at the gravestone behind him, then continued, "Because God may not care about your honesty at all.
"Inquisitor Pavaro once told me that what he praises is Order, which is why he accepted the credits Adjudicator Vicolay sent him. Even Inquisitor Pavaro learned how to keep secrets.
“I have read the files on the Zeric case, and I have also read the report Inquisitor Pavaro previously submitted to the district, only to have it suppressed. I know what kind of situation he was facing back then, what kind of pressure he was under, and how heavy his family burdens were. That is why I respect him deeply."
"Then Captain, why did you still arrange for me to..."
"You thought I arranged for you to report to me so I could monitor Inquisitor Pavaro?"
"Is that not it?"
"Yes, it was. I did want you to help me monitor Inquisitor Pavaro, but because I hope that if he runs into such a thing again, I will know in time, and he won’t be left as helpless and unsupported as he was last time."
"I understand, Captain. I will help you keep a close eye on Inquisitor Pavaro."
"My energy is limited, and I can’t go investigating every person I see who has secrets. You can rest easy; I won’t concern myself with your affairs, nor waste even the slightest bit of effort in investigating you.
“Because Inquisitor Pavaro recommended you, I will unconditionally trust Inquisitor Pavaro's choice."
Once he said that, Nio's figure turned into a cloud of black mist and drifted away into the distance.
Karon remained standing where he was. He unconsciously reached up and touched the ring on the ring finger of his left hand. Then, he shook his head with a self-mocking smile. "Ah, this damned persona."