The sight of Yuri’s meandering trek caused some of the followers to shriek. That was simply how menacing the air about him had become.
Fresh blood dripped from his sword. His clothes were stained a sticky dark red, and with each step, parts of the dried blood clinging to his face would crumble away.
In such a ghastly, horrendous state, Yuri cheerfully grinned.
“A pleasure, Mr. Navie. It’s been...perhaps a few hours?” Yuri greeted him as casually as if he was meeting an old friend.
“Hey, hey, hey...what are you doing out here, pipsqueak?” Navie dubiously furrowed his brow.
“Oh? Is my appearance not telling enough?” The boy flaunted his blood-smeared clothes and laughed. “I came here to kill all of you.
“Not just you, Mr. Navie,” Yuri went on, the bone-chilling smile never leaving his face. “Those who helped you, those who sympathized with you...such folks are all equally the enemy of duelists everywhere. So I decided I would kill everyone who wasn’t a real duelist.”
Seeing Yuri calmly take his stance, Navie mockingly snorted. “Hah! Kill us all? Do something like that, and city management won’t—”
“Oh no, as a duelist, I won’t be held accountable.” His eyes filled with madness, Yuri joyfully spread his arms.
Once upon a time, there were the incidents where the God of Destruction, Wallis, ended up killing duelists.
“If I make my intent to duel clear enough, even if I attack with enough force to kill, it can be written off as excessive provocations—and I will say it loud and clear: I want to duel you. Do you know what that means?”
Slowly, Yuri trickled blood with another step.
“If you do not accept—it doesn’t matter if I do kill you.”
The smile of a lunatic on his face, Yuri looked at everyone gathered.
“I’ve already finished taking care of your comrades. Everyone who agreed to duel was bound to a contract, ‘I will confess everything I’ve done,’ but...those who refused to duel to the bitter end were killed by my hand.”
He painstakingly wiped away some of the blood.
“Go ahead and check if you doubt me. Of course, the people who dueled are being interrogated by city management, and the rest are either heavily wounded or dead.”
Navie continued to look at him suspiciously, but he eventually began working with his own Proof. Indeed, no one was answering his calls. Not a single one.
“Oh right, I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘we’ll be safe so long as we can return to the city,’ so I’ll tell you in advance. City management personnel are already on standby at the entrance to this dungeon. They will apprehend you the moment you’re out.”
“Tsk... Aren’t you coming out a bit too big for a bluff? My underlings are all bound by contract. They can’t say a single thing against me.”
“Yes, but what about everyone else?”
It was the surrounding tag-alongs who were flustered by those words.
“Certainly, they can’t testify about Navie Ionesca. But they can talk freely about their other comrades. You made it that way specifically so your men could take the fall for you. But if everything your little group ever did comes to light, you won’t be able to escape your crimes.”
If everything was put out in the open, the end of their dueling careers would be the least of their worries. They all understood what they had done well enough.
“And as everyone testifies, there will be a gaping hole left, the perfect size for a certain someone to fill... If it were only a few people, you’d get off with suspicions, but what about dozens of them? City management will be forced to conduct a thorough investigation of Navie Ionesca and keep him under constant surveillance.”
The individual known as Navie Ionesca would face societal death.
“I see now...but aren’t you forgetting something?” Navie said, nodding his head at Haring who was still a prisoner of the shadow hands.
“If you’re going to tell me it’s all over, I’m going to contort this guy to death, right? That is, only if you intend to sacrifice your precious friend to convict me.”
Navie had no need to lose his composure. He still had a usable hostage in Haring.
“—Mr. Haring, you can move now.”
Shortly after Yuri said that, Haring raised his lowered head.
“Well, thanks for that, I almost couldn’t hold in my laughter anymore.”
Haring went on to tear off the arms covering him with brute force. Navie’s eyes opened wide as he watched the man lightly land on the ground.
“It ain’t enough to damage me...I already told you.” A creaking noise came as Haring clenched his fist.
With his normal Dragonification made from dirt and sand, he wouldn’t have gotten off unharmed. That was why Haring made sure to prepare in advance.
“Ain’t no one gonna crumble this body of magic ores.”
He had brought plenty of high-quality ores along with the money. Not only did they disperse physical force, they were stones imbued with all sorts of properties. And Haring wore them as his armor for Dragonification.
“With your piece-of-shit personality, I knew you’d start tormentin’ me the moment you knew I’d been defeated. Slowly...takin’ your smug time to enjoy it.”
Navie grit his teeth. “From the start...you were just the decoy...”
Haring’s role was to call out Navie and stall him for as long as possible. During that time frame, Yuri and the others would take care of Navie’s other goons he had lured out.
With his comrades gone and nowhere to run, Yuri had snatched away all his options.
“Now...you can’t run away anymore.” Yuri informed him with a smile, holding up his black sword. “If you return to the city, you’ll be condemned for your crimes and face societal death. If you do nothing, you’ll be killed by me. Meaning you only have one option remaining.”
His smile widened as he took another slow step forward.
“There is only one path left for you to survive.”
He riled him up with maddened eyes.
“All you can do is fight us and win. It will do little besides protect what little dignity you have left, but fighting us is the only way you have to console your vile heart.”
Yuri’s deranged grin was as if he had been possessed by battle itself.
“You’re not just going to give up and die, are you? You’re not going to let a pipsqueak like me get one up on you, and run with your tail between your legs, are you? I mean, you’re Navie Ionesca, the guy who went on and on about how you’re the best.”
Each utterance out of Yuri’s mouth caused Navie’s fists to shake. Finally, Yuri turned to him with the decisive words.
“If you don’t fight here—you’ll be a pathetic loser for the rest of your life.”
The moment the words entered his ears, Navie held his left arm high. “Fine, have it your way. Damn pipsqueak!”
Consent on both sides established the duel, muting the color palette of their surroundings.
“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you!! You’re dead, pipsqueak!” His malice on full display, Navie brought his eight arms close, like they were appendages attached to his body.
But this wasn’t a one-on-one battle.
“He’s all yours, Mr. Haring.”
“Got it...then I’m leavin’ those annoying arms to you.”
“Of course! Leave it to me!”
Still holding his sword, Yuri smacked his fists together. “It’s my job to open a path for my allies!”
Seeing Haring race forward, Yuri forcefully punched the ground. “Dragonification Armament,” he muttered, and his arms gave off a strange sound. Something was sprouting from inside of them, the creaking and cracking of bone and flesh torn apart. Jet-black branches—thin, like twigs—burst forth from both his arms, growing out as if to spread their roots into the ground. “Engorger.”
While this was going on, Navie kicked into action. “I’ll slaughter every last one of you!” He manipulated his eight wriggling arms, shooting them out at a charging Haring. The moment one of the arms was about to grab Haring’s neck—
A black branch shot up from the ground and captured it as if it was swallowing it whole. Sharp spines dug in as twigs grew to coil around the arm like a snake, until the shadow arm had been greedily devoured.
The sight caused panic to cross Navie’s expression. “Dammit, dammit, dammit! Nix Negate!” On Navie’s scream, a shadow arm crept up behind Yuri, but—
“It won’t work.”