Chapter 306

“Damn it, this is a loss now. Even if I tear this bastard and Kinuan apart, it’s still a loss!”

Maria grumbled as she approached, looking down at the assassin I had subdued.

“I’ll leave the finishing blow to you. He’s your enemy, after all.”

I stepped aside as I spoke.

Maria placed the muzzle of her sniper rifle against the assassin’s head as if she were stamping it down.

The assassin waited for his end with a calm expression, not even furrowing his brow.

Instead, Maria’s expression became even more vicious in his place.

“These are the ones I hate the most. The kind who act like their own lives don’t matter at all. Killing them doesn’t bring any satisfaction. But…”

Maria pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The assassin’s head, pressed under the barrel, burst apart in a gruesome mess.

“…it’s still better than not killing them.”

Maria muttered as she ground her heel into the shattered remains of his head. Bits of torn flesh clung to her shoe, dangling loosely.

“Quilia, help Maria clean up the body here. We can’t just leave Raphael and Uriel behind. Maria, do you have people to move the corpse?”

“We’ve got non-combat personnel on our side. I’ll call them over and have them take care of it.”

Maria picked up her communicator and started contacting someone.

“I’ll check upstairs and come down. And I’ll be borrowing Sariel as well.”

At my words, Maria gestured for Sariel to follow me.

I went upstairs with Sariel. Something had been bothering me for a while.

Clatter.

Parts of the wall and floor on the staircase were broken. The debris remained undisturbed on the floor, meaning something had happened here recently.

“The scent of blood… and Mama.”

Sariel lowered his massive body, pressing his nose close to the floor.

“And?”

“Metal, oil, burned silicon…”

I expanded my senses as I pushed open the door. The doorknob was broken.

Creeeak.

I stared inside without blinking.

As soon as I opened the door, a familiar scent of death filled the air.

Not all death smells the same. The scent changes depending on who died, how, where, and when.

‘A familiar scent of death.’

I looked inside.

The first thing I saw was a full-body prosthetic and combat suit I recognized. My heart thumped hard.

Sizzle, crackle.

The sound of electricity sparking filled the air.

‘A destroyed full-body prosthetic.’

The prosthetic lay in ruins, shredded and broken beyond repair. Stray electrical sparks flickered intermittently, causing its fingers to twitch from the residual signals.

‘A Force explosion occurred inside the prosthetic. There was no way he could have survived it.’

The scattered furniture, scorch marks, and the damage to the full-body prosthetic made it clear what had happened.

And… the destroyed prosthetic belonged to a Special Operations Trooper.

One of Ilay’s subordinates. I recognized his face and equipment. Earlier, I had been shaken because I thought the corpse belonged to Ilay himself.

Since arriving in Border City, I had been moving separately from Ilay. His Special Operations Unit had also been tracking Kinuan independently, which led them here.

‘No… to be precise, they got caught in Kinuan’s trap.’

I narrowed my eyes.

Kinuan had been hiding his presence all this time, deceiving everyone. Yet now, he was leaving traces everywhere, leading people straight to him. This was intentional.

‘If Kinuan had truly wanted to remain hidden, neither Maria, the assassins, nor Ilay’s Special Operations Unit would have found any trace of him.’

And yet, they had all followed his trail and gathered in the same place.

This was Kinuan’s plan—he was deliberately making his enemies clash.

‘Here, Corite assassins and Accretia’s Special Operations forces crossed paths.’

There wouldn’t have been any room for negotiation. They would have instinctively recognized each other as mortal enemies and started fighting on sight.

Unfortunately, the Special Operations Trooper had been the one to lose. His brain had been caught in a Force-based attack, turning into mush. Thick, pinkish fluid was seeping out through the cracks in his artificial skull.

‘Lars needs to regroup with Ilay immediately.’

Taking the risk of interception, I attempted to contact Ilay directly. It was unclear whether he even knew his subordinate had been killed here.

Beep.

The transmission led to nothing. There was no response. Ilay was currently unreachable.

I quickly typed out an encrypted message for both Ilay and Lars.

Clatter.

Sariel suddenly moved on his own, smashing open a cupboard.

“M-Mama’s… scent… sniff.”

Sariel had grabbed a large piece of underwear—undoubtedly Maria’s.

‘Maria’s group must have found the artifact Kinuan needed by sheer coincidence. But Kinuan exploited that coincidence.’

Kinuan also knew about Gabriel. Upon seeing Maria’s group, he must have realized they had some connection to Gabriel.

‘He exposed his own information to Maria and drew her in—to use me.’

With my personality, I wouldn’t be able to simply let Maria’s group, who were blood-related to Gabriel, die. As much as I hated to admit it, I was soft when it came to things like this.

A user of Akies Victima pulls in even the most fleeting coincidences, shaping circumstances in their favor. For Kinuan and me, it was as natural as breathing.

Step, step.

Maria followed us upstairs. Below, the noise was growing—more people had gathered. They were likely retrieving the corpses.

“Maria, from here on, this is beyond your ability to handle. If you keep getting involved, you’ll end up in an irreversible situation.”

I spoke coldly.

Maria scowled as she took the underwear Sariel handed her.

“Because of my mistake, I lost two sons. This is about revenge now.”

“Revenge? These people are part of a state-sanctioned black ops unit. A mere grave robber has no place interfering. I don’t mean to dismiss you, but the people involved in this case are on an entirely different level from you.”

Maria ground her teeth.

“That’s exactly what dismissing me sounds like. You think we don’t have some secret weapons of our own? When you rob Arcane artifacts, you inevitably run into state-level violence. And we haven’t just run away every time.”

“Then stop talking and show me something real. I doubt Sariel is the so-called secret weapon. And tracking by scent is no longer an option. If Kinuan left behind enough of a scent trail to be followed, he would’ve already used chemicals to erase any trace of you from the artifact.”

Maria smirked darkly.

“No, the scent trail is still there. Don’t underestimate Sariel’s nose. Even if the scent was erased, the residual trail leading up to that point remains.”

She rummaged through the bag at her waist and pulled out a syringe filled with some kind of drug.

“M-Mama?”

Sariel, who had been standing beside her, flinched in fear and backed away, step by step. He only stopped when his back hit the wall.

“It’s time for your shot, Sariel.”

“N-No… It hurts… My head… hurts a lot. Sariel… hates… shots.”

“Uriel and Raphael are dead. We need to avenge them. Are you just going to let it go when your brothers were killed? Mama didn’t raise you to be a man without loyalty.”

I watched in silence.

This wasn’t my place to interfere. Sariel was an adult, responsible for his own decisions. Without Maria’s protection, he would’ve ended up in a far worse…

Damn it. Enough with the justifications.

Sariel was being injected with a drug he didn’t want, and I was nothing more than a complicit bystander.

Squeeze.

Maria grabbed Sariel’s forehead, pulling him forward as she pressed the syringe against his neck.

The liquid rippled as it seeped into his veins.

Tremble.

Sariel’s limbs shuddered violently, and his head jerked back as if it were about to snap.

“Ghhk—”

A pale breath, mixed with saliva, leaked from Sariel’s mouth. His bristling fur stood on end, sharp enough to pierce.

His nostrils flared as blood surged into them, and the muscles and veins around his nose writhed grotesquely.

"Sariel, follow the scent trail."

Maria had injected him with a drug that stimulated his sensory organs.

Sariel grimaced in pain, likely overwhelmed by the flood of olfactory data his brain was struggling to process.

‘A dangerous method.’

As a Crawler of the Nomads, Sariel had never undergone chemical neural enhancement. Yet Maria had forcefully amplified his sensory perception and cognitive processing capacity with the drug.

‘He's exceeding his threshold for information intake.’

Without biological neural reinforcement or brain-training techniques like Akies Victima, he wouldn’t be able to endure this.

"Khrr… sniff."

Sariel crouched low like a four-legged beast, pressing his nose against the floor before moving to the walls, stairs, and pillars.

"Scent… trail… footprints of smell."

Clinging to the wall, Sariel even stuck out his tongue, trying to taste the scent. It was a disturbingly bizarre sight.

"Good, Sariel. Once this is over, I’ll play with you as much as you want."

Maria grinned, following after him. She shot me a look, tilting her chin—a signal to come along.

"Quilia, can you move?"

"Of course."

Without hesitation, Quilia followed.

I briefly fidgeted with my communicator. There was still no reply from Ilay or Lars. Ilay was one thing, but Lars had never ignored my messages, even in the direst situations.

‘This isn’t good.’

The more dangerous and uncertain the situation became, the hotter my mind burned. What a ridiculous thing.

*         *         *

Sariel was practically a creature designed only for scent. His intelligence was low, and he had even lost vision, the most sensitive of the five senses.

‘His brain functions are entirely dedicated to olfaction.’

Sariel began tracking, following the invisible trail left by scent. If we traced the path of the lingering smells, we’d eventually find Kinuan’s trail.

‘Did Kinuan anticipate scent tracking as well?’

I couldn’t be sure.

Kinuan wasn’t omniscient. He didn’t plan everything, only what fell within his range of experience and knowledge.

He likely didn’t have a complete grasp of Maria’s crew’s full capabilities.

‘Maria’s group is a wildcard to Kinuan. He’s simply making the most of that variable.’

Maria’s crew, who were blood-related to Gabriel, had looted Holenergy Capsules and sold them at an auction house. This wasn’t something that fell within the expected range of events.

‘It’s just a coincidence—a variable.’

A user of Akies Victima pulls variables to their side and uses them.

But there was a limit to how much information I could extract about Maria’s group, who had entered the equation as an unexpected factor.

‘Kinuan doesn’t know the full extent of Maria’s hidden potential.’

That’s what I would believe. Of course, this was just another uncertain assumption, but I had to trust it and move forward.

But what if Kinuan had anticipated Maria’s involvement from the very beginning and planned everything around it? If he was truly that much of a monster, then there was nothing we could do—we’d just have to accept defeat.

‘The ones within Kinuan’s predicted range are Ilay’s Special Operations Unit and me. He’s already factored in everything Ilay and I can do and is acting accordingly.’

Maria’s group might be weak, but they were a wildcard. Whether that wildcard worked in our favor or against us would depend on what happened next.

“You’re thinking too much, kid. I can hear your brain turning from here.”

Maria spoke, glancing back at me as she followed Sariel. Sariel had reached a fork in the path and was sniffing the air left and right.

I changed the subject, masking my inner thoughts.

“Sariel’s behavior isn’t just a matter of low intelligence, is it? The more socially adjusted he became, the more his heightened sensory abilities would’ve dulled. You deliberately kept him in this state, didn’t you? Using drugs or whatever else it took.”

It was a common mechanism. When one function of the brain becomes extremely advanced, other functions inevitably deteriorate.

“Huh, this old lady’s not educated enough to understand all that fancy talk.”

Maria shrugged nonchalantly.

I resisted the urge to grab her by the scruff of the neck and slam her into the ground.

“Judging by how you treat your kids, I’m guessing quite a few ran away.”

I was subtly probing her about Gabriel. Gabriel believed he had been abandoned.

‘Maria isn’t the type to abandon her children. That’s not her personality.’

Maria raised an eyebrow. Meanwhile, Sariel seemed to have locked onto a direction and started moving again.

“Listen, kid. For over twenty years, I had a child every year. In the end, the only people I can truly trust are the ones I raised with my own hands. Husbands? They’re just outsiders. You probably think I’m an unfit parent, but not a single one of my children has ever run away.”

“…Have you ever abandoned one?”

Hmm. It might have been a rather blunt question. But Maria would never even consider the possibility that I had any connection to Gabriel.

"That’s a strange question. Are you an orphan who doesn’t know his parents’ faces, too? Too bad, but if a man came from my womb, he’d have a strong, masculine face. A weakling like you could never have been born from me."

Maria seemed to think I was looking for my mother. It was an amusing misunderstanding. Being called a weakling by someone was certainly a rare experience.

Step, step.

Maria walked ahead, following Sariel, her back turned to me. She hesitated slightly before speaking.

"…There was a time when an ex-boyfriend of mine stole my child and ran away. Claimed it was his kid. That was the only child I ever lost."

"What happened to the man and the child?"

"I tracked him down after a long search. But by then, he was a drug-addled wreck, completely ruined. He had no idea where the kid was anymore. Well, that’s enough of the depressing stories. Looks like Sariel’s nose is busy."

Sariel had stopped in front of a run-down teahouse located in a shabby marketplace.

Tea was a luxury—something completely out of place for beggars and vagrants.

That made this teahouse an anomaly in this district.Hmm. It might have been a rather blunt question. But Maria would never even consider the possibility that I had any connection to Gabriel.

"That’s a strange question. Are you an orphan who doesn’t know his parents’ faces, too? Too bad, but if a man came from my womb, he’d have a strong, masculine face. A weakling like you could never have been born from me."

Maria seemed to think I was looking for my mother. It was an amusing misunderstanding. Being called a weakling by someone was certainly a rare experience.

Step, step.

Maria walked ahead, following Sariel, her back turned to me. She hesitated slightly before speaking.

"…There was a time when an ex-boyfriend of mine stole my child and ran away. Claimed it was his kid. That was the only child I ever lost."

"What happened to the man and the child?"

"I tracked him down after a long search. But by then, he was a drug-addled wreck, completely ruined. He had no idea where the kid was anymore. Well, that’s enough of the depressing stories. Looks like Sariel’s nose is busy."

Sariel had stopped in front of a run-down teahouse located in a shabby marketplace.

Tea was a luxury—something completely out of place for beggars and vagrants.

That made this teahouse an anomaly in this district.