Chapter 118 A Midnight Visitor
Killion stopped walking and looked back at her. He took Veronia in his arms and gently wiped her tear-stained cheeks. He put a hand on her slender, trembling shoulder and stroked it gently.
“It’s okay, darling. I’m here for you.”
“Hmph…”
Veronia’s tears continued for a moment longer. Even if they were enemies of humanity, demons to be destroyed, this kind of torture was still too much.
Experiments that didn’t kill, didn’t save, but caused pain that seemed to last forever.
“What did he hope to gain from such a cruel experiment?”
Veronia said, burying her face in Killion’s chest.
“If the substance obtained from it will benefit humanity… then this cruel experiment can be excused?”
“…”
A gloomy question trailed off in his tail. Killion, who had been patting Veronia’s back for a long time, finally spoke up slowly.
“The rightness or wrongness of using demons for experimentation is debatable. Demons are creatures that are harmful to humanity.”
“…”
“But using humans for experimentation is a different matter. It’s clearly wrong. There is no room for debate, especially when the test subject is a child.”
At Killion’s words, Veronia looked up at him, her eyes narrowing. The tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes glistened in the light of the illumination stone.
“So the needle marks on the children’s bodies were not…?”
“I think he used the demons as guinea pigs first, and then, once they had achieved a certain level of success, he used the children’s bodies as the next step.”
“Oh my God…!”
The tears that had stopped flowed again. Veronia remembered vividly the faces of each of the children she had met at the clinic yesterday.
‘To put their tiny, skinny bodies on those cold test tubes, to inject unproven substances into their bodies!’
A fiery rage rose from deep within her. Her body trembled with anger.
Veronia wiped away her tears. Now was not the time to sulk. Evidence had to be gathered, and the perpetrator of this atrocity brought to justice. If there was an Emperor behind the killer, then the Emperor deserved to be judged as well.
Veronia pulled a video sphere from her satchel and recorded the image of the creature in the cage. Before long, they had reached the end of the corridor.
Thud.
The brick Veronia stepped on creaked and made a strange noise.
“Huh?!”
And the very next moment, a cage descended from the ceiling with a loud clang!
“Ah…!”
“Oh no!”
It happened so fast that she couldn’t even run away. Veronia and Killion, now trapped inside the cage, stood there dumbfounded, but that wasn’t the end of the story.
Beep, beep, beep, beep.
Red lights flickered across the dingy cellar, and alarms began to blare loudly.
“What are we going to do? The Director will be here soon.”
Killion chuckled softly at Veronia’s nervous question.
“I’m hoping that Windler will arrive before the ledger does.”
“What?”
“I’ve told Windler to stand by, just in case.”
“Oh…”
Veronia’s heart sank as she watched Killion press firmly on the magic stone embedded in his bracelet to summon Windler. She was impressed that Killion had gone all out behind the scenes for what he called a covert investigation.
“Do you have any such thing in your arsenal, a universal key?”
Killion asked lightly, smirking. It seemed he was trying to help Veronia relax. Veronia shook her head with a relaxed smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t have any, but I’ll try to make some when I get back to the capital.”
“I look forward to it.”
Saying that, Killion didn’t remain still, but continued to inspect the cage.
“It’s an old structure, and I’m sure it hasn’t been used for a long time, so there may be some weaknesses.”
As he suspected, rust marks were clearly visible all over the cage. Thrumming, Killion unsheathed his sword and activated his aura, his aura-imbued sword glowing a faint blue.
‘That’s right. This was the original Swordmaster.’
With his head buried in papers, I’d forgotten that he was actually better with a sword than a pen.
“Stay back.”
Veronia did as Killion said and moved away from him. Steadying himself with both hands on his sword, Killion swung it straight at the bars.
Klang, klang, klang!
With one powerful blow, the cage crumbled to dust. Veronia’s jaw dropped in amazement at the sight.
“You can actually cut through a cage with a sword.”
“It was my first attempt, too, and it worked. Let’s go!”
With a triumphant smile, Killion held out his hand to Veronia. She didn’t hesitate to take his hand.
***
It was late at night, but the rector, Lars Kohen, was not yet asleep; he sat at his desk, typing furiously. At the Emperor’s words that he was looking forward to seeing results, he had been working through the night with less and less sleep.
For the past ten years, he had been hypothesising, combining drugs, experimenting with them, and recording the changes in his subjects.
Based on this, he revised his hypothesis, combined new drugs, and repeated the experiment again. With the Emperor’s expectations high, he was confident that with a little more determination and focus, he would soon see results.
He was concentrating for a while. Beep, beep, beep – the little alarm light on his desk lit up red and made an unfamiliar sound.
‘What the hell?’
Lars froze in his tracks as he was confronted with the situation for the first time. It was an alarm that hadn’t gone off in the last ten years, so it was a natural reaction.
‘That’s right! The basement alarm!’
Lars jumped to his feet as the meaning of the unfamiliar alarm suddenly dawned on him. An intruder had entered the basement lab.
“Oh, shit, What kind of people were they?”
Bent at the waist but swift in his movements, he rushed out the door, panting but quick.
First he had to get down to the director’s office on the second floor and use the secret passage there.
He kept his footsteps as quiet as possible, as waking the sleeping teachers would only make matters worse. Lars was descending the stairs at a brisk pace.
Bang, bang, bang!
A loud knock came from the building’s front door.
‘What the hell? Who’s there at this late hour?’
Lars was dumbfounded by the lack of context. But the people standing outside the door didn’t seem to want to wait patiently for him.
Bang, bang, bang!
Bang, bang, bang, bang!
The midnight visitor pounded relentlessly on the door. The still air vibrated with commotion.
Several teachers came out into the corridor, still in their pajamas, awakened by the noise. Their eyes widened in surprise when they saw Lars standing on the stairs.
“Director, you’re awake.”
“Who could be here at this hour?”
The bewildered teachers came to Lars’ side. Lars took the lead and walked to the door.
‘This is getting really… annoying.’
More important than who was outside the door was the situation in the basement lab, but there were many eyes on him now. For now, he had to deal with the situation at the door.
“We’ll see who it is when we open the door.”
Lars undid the latch and pushed the door open. The heavy door creaked open with a grating sound.
Outside the door stood several soldiers. Lars and the teachers’ eyes widened at the sight of the soldiers in the middle of the night. They wore armour emblazoned with the sun, the emblem of the imperial family, suggesting they were Imperial Knights.
“What can I do for you?”
Lars asked in a shrill voice, to which Windler, standing at the front of the room, replied stiffly in a businesslike tone.
“We have a report!”
“A report… what?”
Lars’s heart sank for a moment. Cold sweat formed in his tightly balled fists, but he kept his expression impassive and spoke slowly again.
“You’ll have to tell me exactly what you’re reporting, and from whom.”
Lars narrowed his eyes and looked up at Windler. Their gazes met sharply in the air.
Windler was nervous, too. He’d been dispatched on a distress call, but he didn’t know the details; his instructions from Killion had been to knock on the nursery’s door as soon as he received it.
Windler took a deep breath, hoping Killion would show up as soon as possible, and called out in a booming voice.
“You!”
It was important to raise his voice when he had to go out in the open. If he had nothing else to show for it, he had to use his voice.
“What are you hiding, and if you don’t tell me the truth right now, I’m going to start an investigation!”
“What do you mean I’m hiding something? There is no such thing, I swear!”
Lars barely managed to reply in a shaky voice as Windler’s momentum took over. Windler was inwardly relieved to see that.
There was a brief commotion behind him, and then a voice of great authority cut through the cold night air.
“You have the audacity to spout falsehoods.”
It was Killion, a late arrival, stumbling forward, pushing past the soldiers.
He looked relaxed as he slowly swept back his tousled hair, which had been disheveled by his hasty run from the cellar to here. Lars, on the other hand, was breathless and tense at his sudden appearance.
“Director, I need you to escort us to the basement right away. There have been reports of illegal bio-experiments being conducted there.”
