Chapter 219
The End of Hypnosis (2)
Right in front of the charging children, Irena imdiately made her judgnt. She clenched her fist tightly and brought it downward, and in sync with that motion, a powerful downdraft ford.
“Ghh… ugh….”
The children rushing at them could not withstand the descending wind and were slamd flat against the ground.
‘Sorry.’
Thinking that, Irena imdiately turned her head. There was no helping it for now. More importantly, lvin—
But at that mont.
Crack.
The sound of bones breaking ca from behind her.
“U… hegeek….”
The children crushed beneath the downdraft desperately tried to force themselves back up. In the process of enduring the overwhelming pressure, their still undeveloped bodies failed to hold together and slowly collapsed.
The sight was so horrifying that, for just a brief mont, Irena’s steps ca to a halt.
And then, boom.
With a monstrous sound like the ground itself sinking, the struggling children stopped resisting.
It was not Irena’s doing. Kairus had strengthened the downdraft she created, and this was the result.
“Irena, there’s no turning them back anymore.”
Even if the hypnosis were undone, those children were no longer in any condition to live normal lives. If that had been possible, there would have been no reason for lvin to lock them away. Their brains had already died from the hypnosis.
Was death when the heart stopped, or when the brain stopped?
Kairus belonged to the camp that believed death ca when the brain ceased functioning.
“Y-you damned bastards!”
Along with lvin’s shout, Irena and Kairus’s bodies suddenly staggered.
Through repeated experints, lvin had already beco more skilled than Tapas in using Sopor’s abilities alone. An unbearable drowsiness surged like furious waves.
Human will was nothing more than a tiny rowboat drifting through the storm of those primal desires.
“….”
Kairus endured it. Experience truly was important. He had already gone through it once before, so he knew the feeling, and because he knew it, he could withstand it.
But Irena?
As her lightless pupils trembled, lvin pulled out a syringe and stabbed it into the back of her neck.
‘Temporary, but still.’
Originally, the perfect brainwashing lvin pursued involved implanting several keywords deep into a person’s subconscious.
It required ticulous work over a long period of ti.
In other words, the brainwashing done through fast-acting drugs and Sopor was temporary, lasting no more than ten minutes at best.
Nor could it issue detailed commands.
“Good… this is enough for now!”
Still, commands of this level could be attempted by using sudden drug injection and a trance state induced through Sopor.
Maybe things would have been different if he had tried it directly on Kairus. But Irena, who had never experienced Sopor before, could not resist.
“Kill that man.”
Within Irena’s consciousness, subrged in overwhelming drowsiness, a single sentence seeped in. Like rain soaking into dry land, it would engrave itself as a temporary but clear imprint.
At least, it should have.
But deep beyond Irena’s consciousness, in the very place where lvin had just attempted to carve in an irresistible order, another sentence had already been engraved first.
‘Irena cannot directly or indirectly harm Kairus.’
The words she had written countless tis in order to master the Featherwing battle gear and break free from the hatchery egg.
It conflicted with the sentence already rooted there through lvin’s brainwashing. The previously engraved command and the new command trying to carve itself in clashed against one another.
Which should take priority?
Irena’s subconscious fell into confusion, and she beca incapable of taking any action at all.
“…? What are you doing?! I said kill that man!”
But Irena did not move. She rely stood there blankly. Behind the unmoving Irena, Kairus slowly approached with the sound of turbine engines roaring.
“Dr. Istovan. Ever since the first ti I saw you… you always looked like rotten trash.”
Veil of Plud Mist swung down.
With the brainwashed Irena no longer moving, lvin was completely defenseless.
Even in a dazed state, Kairus had not trained with the sword so half-heartedly that he would lose his way.
The wrist holding Sopor was severed cleanly. Imdiately afterward, the drowsiness clawing through his mind lted away like snow.
“Ahk… my head hurts.”
Irena returned to normal again. She still looked confused from the suddenly injected drug, but that also ant there was no longer any need to ask lvin how to restore her mind.
Kairus picked up the syringe lvin had been holding.
“W-wait, wait a second, Kairus! No, Survivor-nim! I can be useful. No, no. I want to help!”
“Hah, bullshit.”
“You’re trying to kill the Emperor, right? I can help with that!”
He probably could be useful. But—
“You’re dangerous.”
“No, where in this city is there anyone who isn’t dangerous?!”
That part was true. In this city, who wasn’t dangerous?
But that was not what Kairus ant.
While Kairus briefly stared at lvin, lvin himself was also desperately spinning his thoughts.
‘If I can just get one chance to press it.’
He had gathered all sorts of things and prepared countless asures. If he could just press a single button, everything installed throughout this basent would activate.
At the very least, it would buy him ti.
The problem was that he had no opportunity to press it.
The mont he did anything suspicious, his head would fall instantly. Pressing the button before Kairus moved was impossible.
“Well, fair enough. You said you could help, right?”
Kairus smiled as if agreeing with lvin’s words. The turbine sounds gradually died down. Now, if he could just seize the chance—
In that instant, a flash of light flickered.
Then lvin’s head fell to the floor.
“Don’t need it.”
Thud. The severed head rolled across the ground.
If lvin had rely been an ordinary criminal, there would have been no reason not to use him. He was even offering to cooperate on his own accord, so why refuse?
But lvin Istovan was not just a criminal. He held hostility toward Kairus.
‘And it was hostility without reason.’
According to the letter Nora sent, lvin had discovered a thod of brainwashing using Sopor. What he needed were drugs to use alongside it.
And those were items he could easily obtain by using people with dical licenses. Yet he had deliberately contacted the Emperor to report the discovery.
“There’s no solution for soone who hates you for no reason.”
lvin simply hated Kairus. That was the decisive reason Kairus ignored everything he said and cut off his head.
If left alive, lvin would constantly seek chances to betray Kairus. The mont an opening appeared, he would start scheming, and one way or another, he would eventually beco a burden around Kairus’s neck.
“Hey, hey. Get yourself together.”
Irena, who had been standing there with a slightly dazed expression, snapped back to her senses at Kairus’s voice.
“Ah, sorry. If I hadn’t hesitated—”
Kairus let out a dry scoff at her words.
“When little kids are charging at you while breaking their own bones, it’d be stranger if you didn’t hesitate.”
“And you?”
Kairus answered coldly.
“Sorry, but if we’re being technical, I used to be a child soldier.”
Considering how old he had been before entering the labor correctional facility, Kairus unquestionably qualified as a child soldier. And he knew very well what kind of people beca enemy soldiers when defeat lood close.
The elderly, married won, children. Children who should have been playing pretend soldier in the streets with tree branches instead beca real soldiers holding actual blades, dying on battlefields.
“I’ve always been a ssed-up bastard anyway.”
After finishing the conversation, Kairus looked around the area.
“Let’s clean this up. Recover Sopor.”
“What about the research materials?”
“I don’t want to leave them behind.”
A thod for brainwashing people.
Kairus had no need to use sothing like that, and if it beca known, it would only create troubleso problems.
“Find every bastard connected to this, cut their heads off, and burn all the docunts and drugs. That’ll settle it.”
Since the Operations Committee mbers were all frantically running around outside the city, this incident had happened while their attention was elsewhere. If Kairus and Irena handled things wisely, this entire matter could easily be buried.
“What about Philip IV?”
“Well, even if he knows, what can he do? It’s a thod that can’t even be used without Sopor anyway.”
Kairus had recovered Sopor. As for the drugs and the brainwashing thods, every trace of them within this city had been burned to ashes.
“But there are still the docunts lvin sent to the Emperor. If those spread into the world—”
Kairus let out a snicker. Holding Sopor in his hand, he examined it from different angles before casually dropping it onto the floor.
“Then how about this?”
The mont he fully unleashed the output of Veil of Plud Mist, a violent exhaust roar erupted. Then dozens of strikes per second hamred into Sopor. On top of that, the blade of Veil of Plud Mist vibrated viciously like an enraged hornet.
No matter how extraordinary Sopor was, there was no way it could remain intact after enduring such rciless violence head-on.
“If this thing’s gone, then that solves the problem, doesn’t it?”
Once Sopor was destroyed, it was over. What was the point of knowing how to bake bread if there was no flour?
“Even so… I can’t believe you just destroyed it like that….”
Irena could not help making a regretful expression. It had once been battle gear used by a forr Operations Committee mber. She never imagined he would destroy it without batting an eye.
“Why? Did you want to try using it?”
At Kairus’s words, Irena let out a low hum.
“Yeah, no. It still feels kind of disgusting.”
Now that they had obtained Sopor, Kairus was technically its owner. But it was neither sothing he could resell nor sothing he had any desire to use.
People usually threw away things like that.
So Kairus threw it away too.
“Besides, imagine how happy Philip IV will be when he hears Sopor got destroyed.”
A bastard who spent his entire life suspecting everyone had finally found a thod to obtain blind loyalty, only for the required tool to be smashed beyond repair.
Just hearing that fact alone would probably make rage boil through his entire body. Kairus did not want to miss out on such an enjoyable experience.
“Well then, I guess this wraps things up.”
lvin Istovan was dead, and Sopor had been recovered and destroyed by Kairus.
Since they would need evidence to show, Kairus collected the shattered remains of Sopor before leaving lvin’s residence and heading toward the office.
By the ti the two finished cleaning up the situation and returned to the office—
Cecilia was receiving a guest inside her private train carriage. It was a man dressed in white garnts with a neatly grood beard.
“I deliver the words bestowed upon you by the sun of the Empire.”
“Thank you.”
The man’s eyebrow twitched slightly after hearing Cecilia’s response. Watching him, Cecilia gave a faint smile.
“I’m not very familiar with Imperial etiquette. So, what business does His Majesty the Emperor have with …?”
Bang!
With a loud crash, the man slamd his fist onto the table and abruptly rose to his feet. A mont later, water was splashed directly across Cecilia’s face.
“Were you watering a flower? How embarrassing.”
Drip, drip.
Water droplets ran down Cecilia’s cheeks and soaked into the floor.
“We know that within the filthy city where your kind parasites itself, the daughter of a traitor and her accomplice are hiding. Hand them over. Refuse, and you shall face three knight orders led by Dana Watson alongside countless forces of the Imperial Army.”
If Bennett continued protecting traitors to the Empire, they intended to crush the entire city.
“If you obey the imperial command and peacefully hand over those two traitors, you may at least escape the Empire’s wrath.”
“Understood. Then co and take them.”
Cecilia answered as though it were nothing serious.
This had already been agreed upon by all the Operations Committee mbers except Kairus.
A city harboring traitors—naturally, the Emperor would move against it. So how should Bennett’s leaders respond?
“If even a single Imperial soldier or knight order enters within a 100-kiloter radius of Bennett City, the Canal Operations Committee will regard it as suspicious intent from the Empire.”
In other words, they would assu the Empire was not coming to transport traitors, but to attack Bennett City itself. Naturally, they would not cooperate in transferring the traitors. Instead, they would oppose them with their full strength.
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