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Chapter 106

Upon inhaling the mist, the woman let out a grotesque scream and her eyes rolled back. The spell engraved on the ring seemed to have been a curse of hallucination. If it had been a curse of fainting, she would have fainted before she had the chance to scream.

"Khaak, kahak, kkk, kkk...!" The woman cried out in what was indistinguishable between a scream and laughter. She stomped her feet in agony and tore at her hair until...

Crack.

She twisted her neck.

Squelch, squelch, squelch, snap...

The woman stood with her neck completely frayed backward, staring at the empty sky. She began hacking away at her arms with her broken and torn fingernails. Her skin turned white where her nails had glided by, then swelled up red and eventually tore apart, dripping bright red blood.

Thump.

There was no time to panic or escape. In a blink of an eye, the woman approached me and placed her bloody arm on my shoulder. Her head hung from her broken neck and swayed from side to side with every movement she made. It was as if she did not have a neckbone.

"Crushing cans is scary, metal shards are dangerous to touch, and the sound of glass breaking brings you to your senses."

"What are you saying...? Hey, can you let go of this and then talk--"

"Remember. Crushed cans, dangerous metal shards, and the sound of glass breaking. Glass bottles, cans, metal shards. Remember. Don\'t forget. Remember. Don\'t ever forget..."

Was she babbling while having hallucinations? No, it didn’t seem like it. She had been rummaging and throwing trash everywhere, and she was still talking about garbage. Her actions and words were somewhat consistent. She wasn’t simply crazy. It seemed like she had become crazy in some complex manner.

"Don\'t forget...."

Thud.

With those last words, the woman finally collapsed. The blood that flowed from her arm had turned black and stuck to her shoulder. The bitter and disgusting smell of blood lingered at the tip of my nose, enough to make my face squint from disgust. The woman had fainted, but her eyes remained open. Black tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks and fell to the earth.

[Although we live in a chaotic world where it would be strange to not go crazy, this is....] Legba\'s voice, filled with sighs, was soon cut off.

A man and a woman were running toward me from the opposite side of the road. The woman wore a white gown with a yellow cross, and the man wore a black cassock.

Judging by their attire, the woman seemed to be a paladin, and the man seemed to be a priest. Nothing seemed to be out of place, as paladins and priests often worked together.

“This old lady is at it again... Kid, you okay?" The paladin raised her hand to her waist and clicked her tongue, scanning the fallen woman with a frown.

The priest, holding a Holy Book in his right hand and rolling prayer beads with his left, was muttering something. I couldn’t tell if he was praying or just muttering to himself.

"Are you on patrol duty?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. I was on patrol duty when...." The paladin trailed off before she answered my question. She looked me up and down, smiled slightly, and patted my shoulder. It seemed like she was trying to brush off the blood, but the blood had already dried on my clothes and wouldn\'t come off.

"You\'re an F.A. student, right? No wonder you speak so eloquently. Anyway, can you tell me what this woman did to you?"

"She just threw trash and said strange things. That was it. Is she like... a mentally ill patient?"

"Hmm, something like that. It’s good to hear that you weren’t hurt... You said she said something strange. Can I ask what she said?"

Older paladins often had an authoritative manner during questioning. However, this person had a very kind tone, perhaps because she was still young. But that didn’t mean I could let my guard down. I had to think twice, even three times before I opened my mouth in front of a paladin.

"I don\'t remember well. It was something like don’t forget or something."

"Don\'t forget? Hmmm..." The paladin pretended to ponder and subtly scanned my face.

It was a gaze that seemed to attempt to discern whether I truly couldn\'t remember or if I was just making an excuse because I didn\'t want to answer.

"You’re saying you don\'t remember much other than that?"

"Yeah, I was overwhelmed and surprised..."

"I suppose... You must have been quite surprised. I apologize for pulling you away unnecessarily from your way back home. You can go now..."

At that moment, the paladin\'s words abruptly stopped.

Her professional smile was tightly closed up. Her pupils were empty, without focus. She stared at me with a cold and eerie expression and looked at me with a piercing gaze.

I felt a chill, and soon after I felt dizzy. My heart was pounding like crazy. I could clearly see hostility in her gaze. Did she realize that I was the Cult Leader of the Voodoo Cult? No, that couldn\'t be. Not even the Holy See inquisitors could find me, so the possibility of a random paladin discovering my true identity...

Plop!

At that moment, a sharp sound of flesh colliding on flesh interrupted my thoughts. The paladin had suddenly roughly slapped the priest\'s cheek with her rugged hand.

The paladin was glaring at the priest with eyes filled with obvious resentment, just as she had done with me.

"You, what...?" The priest asked, rubbing his swollen cheek with the back of his hand, seemingly bewildered. The rosary he was holding had fallen to the ground, making a clattering sound.

Their gazes met. The paladin stared at the priest for a long time with bloodshot eyes, and eventually, tears streamed down her face as she opened his mouth.

"Why are you looking at other women like that...?"

"What, huh? What are you on about? What women?”

"There, that woman lying over there!!" The paladin pointed to the collapsed madwoman on the floor, her fingers trembling.

The priest, with a dumbfounded look in his eyes, half-opened his mouth and glanced back and forth between the woman on the ground and the paladin, furrowing his eyebrows.

A heavy silence hung in the air. Confusion gradually disappeared from the priest\'s pupils and was replaced with anger.

"And how are you any different?"

"What?"

"Look at you, touching other men\'s shoulders. And he’s a young one too."

"When did I do that?"

"Did you know? You looked very happy when you touched him. Do you really like these young kids that are not even adults?" The priest was also shedding tears.

Both of their tears were initially clear without a trace of impurity but suddenly turned dark and tainted.

I just stared blankly and watched the scene unfold. The situation was changing too rapidly, and my mind couldn’t keep up.

Slap!

"You bastard, how dare you speak to me like that...!"

The paladin grabbed the priest by the collar. Nevertheless, the priest kept staring at the paladin with empty eyes, showing no signs of surprise.

The two were similar in many ways. Black tears sprung from their eyes, and various emotions were mixed in their gazes, negative emotions such as anger, resentment, and emptiness.

"Bastard? Who was the one that slapped me out of nowhere? What, did you expect for me to turn the other cheek so you could slap the other side as well?"

"It’s always the way you speak that’s the problem. When you get upset, you speak so sarcastically..."

"Oh, you\'re resorting to shitting on the way I speak since you have nothing else to complain about? Do you think you’re always nice yourself?"

The paladin and priest’s voices grew louder. Despite their killer stares and venomous tone to one another, the content of their dialogue was childish. They were pouring out hatred without even knowing why they were angry in the first place. It didn’t seem like a fight I could stop, and honestly, I didn\'t even feel like stopping it.

"And are you a princess? Why am I always the one carrying the load?"

"Paladins should be doing the physical work. Otherwise, what use does a paladin have..."

Whoooop!

The sound of sirens interrupted their conversation. In the narrow alley that seemed to only have space for one car, two Paladin Order vehicles entered. The doors opened, and paladins and priests poured out of the vehicles. They were all armed with their own choice of weapons.

"What with all this commotion? You guys didn’t come back at the assigned time, nor did you report anything. And now that I\'m here, you guys are fighting?”

"Oh, team leader please shut up."

"...Which team does this bastard belong to? These idiots only listen when you call a direct superior..."

At that moment, the eyes of the so-called team leader lost focus.

It wasn\'t just the team leader. The eyes of the dozen or so paladins and priests who got out of the Paladin Order vehicles also lost focus. Gradually, anger began to flicker in their pupils. Their anger was simultaneously directed at each other.

"Huh, throwing these couch potatoes into the scene? Don’t they know that priests know nothing about being on the site of action?"

"These swine. The Paladin Order exists because of us. So you should shut the hell up if you don’t understand the basic dynamics of our society—!”

"And that’s why we should keep our distance from these cockroaches."

"What! I dare you to say that again. You’re the one that would be nothing but a thin bastard without your badge—!”

As they joined in, the fight escalated even further. They grabbed each other by the collar, slapped each other, and eventually even threw punches. Their anger didn’t discriminate against anyone, but overall, there seemed to be a confrontation between the paladins and the priests.

"Who’s collar do you think you’re grabbing? Do you priests have no sense of hierarchy?"

"Oh, you want to talk about hierarchy? Then the paladins are below the priests, you ignorant cockroach!"

"Cockroach? Oh, I know you need a bit more than a regular fist—!"

In the midst of the heated fight, a paladin picked up a piece of metal from the ground. With a crazed look in his eyes, he aimed to strike the priest\'s forehead with the piece of metal.

Thud.

The paladin collapsed, almost looking like he had melted into the ground. His unclosed eyes were all white, and foam frothed from his mouth. The hand that had held the piece of metal was red, as if it had been burned.

Nevertheless, the paladins and priests continued to fight. The sound of slapping on cheeks, fists hitting jaws, screams, and shouts echoed from all directions. Even as their nearby comrade fell to the ground foaming at the mouth, they continued to mercilessly punch each other as if nothing had happened.

I unconsciously took a step back.

Crunch!

"..."

"..."

The fight ceased right after a sound of a crushed can from somewhere. The crowd, their faces red with anger, stopped in their tracks as soon as they heard the sound of a crushed can.

Time seemed to have stopped. A heavy and dense silence hung in the air and felt as if it would never end.

Caaw—! Cacaaaw–!

[...The ravens’ eyes are white. They also smell of sulfur.]

In the stillness, I could hear the sounds of ravens crying, followed by Legba’s voice. I lifted my head.

Two ravens were sitting on a lamppost, leisurely watching the fight between the paladin and the priest. The raven’s pupils shone dimly like stars in the darkness.

[It\'s similar to last time. They\'re Satanists. As to why they’re doing this... I can’t say.]

In the midst of the small war caused by the Satanists, I silently listened to Legba\'s words without nodding or shaking my head. I agreed the Satanists had orchestrated this incident. However, I couldn\'t agree with Legba\'s statement that he didn\'t know why the Satanist was doing this.

“Crushing cans is scary, metal shards are dangerous to touch, and the sound of glass breaking brings you to your senses.”

Those were the words the madwoman had said to me before she had fainted. Just as she had said, the paladin who touched the shards of metal lost consciousness and collapsed. As if they had agreed to do so beforehand, the paladin and the priests stopped fighting at once when they heard the sound of a crushed can.

The Satanist was deliberately giving me clues.

He caused an incident, gave me clues, and watched me try to solve the case using the clues that he gave me. And he was watching me do all this through the eyes of the ravens. The reason he kept causing incidents was simply for his amusement.

That was the reason why the Satanist caused incidents and deliberately left clues. He enjoyed watching me work to solve the cases with the other Florence Academy. students. He would have been feeling a sense of superiority, seeing all these people being manipulated by him.

I pointed at the two raven sitting on the lamppost.

"Sobo."

───!

Lightning struck.

The two ravens that had been watching me, tilting their heads as if to make fun of me, fell to the ground simultaneously. The lamppost, which had been struck by lightning, flicked for a bit, and finally lost all its light. Darkness descended on the alley.

Pssk.

I crushed the wings of the ravens, which had been fried to ashes, under my feet, making a dry and brittle sound. Yet, the ravens’ eyes still glowed white.

I lowered my head and stared into their eyes. I glared at the person who was looking at me through the eyes of the ravens.

I now vaguely knew who the Satanist was.

Crunch!

I crushed the ravens’ heads with my foot. The stars were setting.