Standing above a sea of corpses, a demon danced with his staff, adding more and more bodies to the pile he amused himself by stacking, while a discreet shadow had just reached the rooftop and slipped without hesitation into the building’s ventilation ducts. It was the Hermit. The moment he entered the dark, narrow ducts, a map of the ventilation system appeared inside his sophisticated helmet, guiding him toward the objective.
Inside the warehouse, the Knight had already finished the purge. He stood atop a pile of corpses he had gleefully stacked, calmly carving flesh on the opposite side. Throughout the building, several guards on patrol had been strangled and then tied to the ceiling, as if they had hanged themselves with a ribbon, and amid all of this, the Empress danced in the most graceful choreography while softly humming a song from time immemorial.
All these dead were certainly criminals, but the reason for their deaths was not simply due to the murderous urges of the members of Twilight. The reason was far simpler: all these people were potentially armed with the product responsible for transforming humans into monsters. And if they were cornered enough to use it, or received the order to do so, our young heroes would be forced to face a sea of monsters—and once they fell, the entire city would suffer in turn.
— Chariot reporting, the warehouse has been sanitized. I found documents concerning the manufacturing process of the product; apparently, it’s called Telos.
— Empress reporting, I’ve cleared a path inside the building. Be careful nonetheless: there are many security devices. Unless you master a stealth magic art like I do, it would be dangerous.
The Empress mastered an art that Thanatos himself had taught her: a magical art called White Night, which allowed her to blend into the ether and become undetectable. She could even become intangible.
— The Fool reporting, I’ve cleared the exterior of the building. I’ll enter as soon as the Hermit disables the security systems.
No sooner had the leader finished his sentence than the Hermit snickered, having just entered the control room and eliminated the person in charge of surveillance by plunging a knife into their back.
Pulling a kind of chip from his pocket and tossing it onto the control computer, he murmured in the shadows of the room:
— All those years in computer science won’t have been for nothing.
The moment those words left his mouth, all the screens turned green and displayed a logo depicting a small Buddha, with a speech bubble reading:
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Be at peace like Buddha, buy a new PC.”
— Hermit reporting, the security systems are now disabled. We can head to the vault; after all, we need to obtain the data.
He finished, turning his back on the screens as his allies all headed toward the basement.
The Fool was the first to reach the basement entrance—and the first to descend into the depths of the hell he was about to discover.
The basement itself was clean, well organized, filled with advanced equipment, and above all, evidence of human malice.
Operating tables were scattered throughout the room, holding elderly people and young children alike, their bodies opened, shredded, cut apart, and far worse.
Shin struggled to hide his horror, even behind the mask, in the face of this slaughter, as the metallic stench of blood filled his nostrils and bile rose in his throat.
He observed the bodies with disgust, realizing that all the victims likely came from impoverished districts and that their circumstances were surely far from ideal. These were people no one cared about in everyday life—and yet their lives were worth just as much as ours.
Furious, powerless, and nearly broken, the Fool reminded himself that he fought to change this kind of world—a world where death lurked around every corner, dragging us even lower than where we already stood, for the sadistic pleasure of another.
Hearing the footsteps of his allies and the sound of them swallowing hard, he realized the others had joined him.
— This is… horrible…
The Hermit finally managed to mutter after vomiting his dinner.
— Did they… use them for their experiments?
Donavan snarled, turning away, unable to bring himself to look at them.
The Empress, watching their faces, wore the saddest expression of all.
— Rubis is truly dangerous… Why do we let them commit such atrocities?
Perhaps it was due to this moment of emotional weakness that the princess did not immediately realize the reason—simple as it was: they feared offending a single person, the warrior queen.
— Simply because we’ve been too careless and allowed vermin to settle in.
Shin sighed. Suddenly, he delivered a powerful punch to one of the basement pillars, nearly cracking it.
— But we can’t afford that anymore. Look for yourselves at the consequences. Our fight isn’t just against Rubis; we’re fighting against this unjust world.
The Fool’s voice, filled with hatred and resentment, echoed throughout the basement. His smoldering rage was almost tangible to every member of Twilight present, calming his allies while restoring their courage.
They moved deeper into the floor, uncovering more and more discoveries that raised far more questions than answers.
There were gigantic transparent cylinders filled with a translucent solution, storing gestating monster embryos—or even hybrids between different species, or rather failed attempts, judging by the number of dead embryos our heroes discovered as they ventured further into the underground laboratory.
After a few meters, they stopped.
The Empress, usually so strong and impassive, burst into tears.
The Hermit didn’t even dare to look at what stood before him, overwhelmed by disgust and incomprehension.
Chariot lowered his eyes, holding back vomit with all his strength—before finally giving in.
As for the Fool, he froze, then burst out laughing at the product of human madness standing before him. He even began to wonder which of the two—himself or the one who had done this—was truly the more insane.
