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Chapter 08
What somehow survives even where war has swept through.
Those things are sewer rats, crows, flies, and orphans.
Sewer rats, crows, and flies can freely leave for somewhere else, but orphans cannot.
They must ultimately remain in the heart of hell and continue living their lives.
There was only one thing orphans could do.
The only method was to rummage through rotting corpses to find stolen goods and sell them on the black market.
Robespierre was an orphan born on the battlefield and raised following battlefields.
Those who wage war always say “this is a holy war,” but in the places left after war ended, there wasn’t a trace of the divinity they had claimed.
A life where you steal goods from corpses, kill to take what’s stolen, and must kill first to avoid being robbed.
Theft was culture, assault was etiquette, and murder was common sense.
A continuous series of situations where you could always kill someone and be killed by someone.
Young Robespierre lived like that.
By the time starvation and violence had overlapped to make his left arm and right eye unusable, Robespierre had become a notable demon even in that hellish crucible.
Tap-.
Robespierre awakened from his contemplation.
Because one of the Black Fangs was tapping his forehead.
“Hey, what are you spacing out for? How many beatings do you want?”
One large second-year student stood in front of Robespierre, loosening his shoulders.
Seeing this, the Black Fang members whistled and spouted various jokes.
“Wow~ look at that size difference.”
“Go easy. Leave some for me too.”
“Don’t hit his face. Tomorrow that class president girl or whatever will throw another fit.”
“Hey! Pierre! So, how many beatings will you take?”
But Robespierre himself didn’t react particularly.
He just extended his fingers forward and made a V shape.
“……?”
The big guy looked at Robespierre’s fingers and tilted his head, then burst into laughter.
“Ha, this bastard. He’s killing me. He doesn’t want to take one hit, and three hits would kill him, so he’s saying he’ll take two hits? Hahaha……”
However, the triumphant laughter couldn’t reach its end.
Because.
Stab-!
Robespierre’s fingers precisely dug into the big guy’s eye sockets.
“Aaaaah!?”
But it didn’t end there.
Robespierre’s knee struck the big guy’s groin directly.
Crack-.
A sound of flesh tearing that made you doubt your ears.
This time, not even a scream was heard.
Thud!
The big guy collapsed, foaming at the mouth.
Exactly two attacks.
“……?”
It took quite a long time for the Black Fang members to understand the situation before their eyes.
Meanwhile, Robespierre stepped on the fallen guy’s back and moved with slow steps.
“……Next.”
At those words, the guys who snapped to attention began rushing in.
“This fucking bastard!”
“You’re just Pierre!”
“Kill him!”
Robespierre, who was watching this quietly, pondered for a moment.
Grrrrrrr……!
The black mana inside his body sensed the opponent’s hostility and blazed fiercely.
The opponent’s anger or killing intent became kindling and oil rushing into the flames in his mana hole.
However.
‘There’s no need to use magic against mere things like these.’
If he used magic, keeping them alive would be harder than killing them.
It could be compared to catching flies with a flyswatter while keeping their form completely intact.
Whoosh-.
Robespierre dodged a flying fist diagonally downward.
Then using the force of jumping up, he lightly struck upward at the opponent’s elbow.
Crack!
A person’s arm bent in the opposite direction.
It was an angle that joints originally wouldn’t allow.
“Aaah-! My, my arm……!”
A scream mixed with terror and pain burst out.
Of course, that didn’t slow down the next movement.
Robespierre slightly dodged another guy’s fist and grabbed the opponent’s hair.
Then he put his weight into it and slammed him straight down to the floor.
Bang! Crack!
Then the guy who had been rushing at Robespierre’s side desperately shouted.
“This bastard! Cowardly grabbing hair like a girl?”
“……Is that so? Then let’s do it like a man.”
Robespierre stopped the hand that was about to grab hair and instead raised his elbow and shoved it into his mouth.
Crunch!
His lower jaw dislocated as blood, teeth, and clumped gums poured out.
“Next, you manly gentlemen?”
“……”
No one dared respond to Robespierre’s question as he shook off the blood.
5 seconds.
That was the time it took for all the Black Fangs who had rushed in first to become bloody messes rolling on the floor.
Naturally, with the situation like this, the Black Fangs had no choice but to feel something was strange.
“Wh-what the hell? That bastard……”
“Is that really Pierre?”
“Isn’t he majoring in cleric studies? Is, is that a cleric aspirant?”
“Th-there’s definitely no body enhancement magic or anything?”
Magicians and clerics are relatively weak in physical combat.
That statement was mostly correct.
Magicians and clerics raised in greenhouses like Lykeion Academy didn’t need to go through the trouble of training in physical combat, nor did they have reason to.
……But the dark magician Robespierre envisioned was different.
Those who walked the path of dark arts immediately became targets for ‘purification’ by the holy order.
Holy knights and clerics who followed day and night.
Physical strength and combat skills were essential to face them.
Avoiding pursuit to grave-rob corpses and breaking through encirclements to construct magic circles.
In this process, the only one protecting a dark magician’s body was always the dark magician himself.
The previous life’s Robespierre, who survived in such carnage, could employ physical combat skills strong enough to subdue ordinary knights without mana.
Robespierre looked at the two students rushing toward him.
He could hear Melberik shouting from behind them.
“……Gang up on him all at once! That bastard’s somewhat suspicious!”
But Robespierre didn’t react particularly this time either.
He just kicked a piece of lumber on the floor and sent it flying.
The guy in the lead bent his waist to avoid the lumber.
“This bastard, always being cowardly from earlier……!”
However, in front of the guy who was raising his bent waist, a knee was already flying toward him.
Crack-! Thud thud thud thud-.
The jaw hit by the knee spun around.
Blood poured out like a fountain from his strangely twisted nose and mouth.
Seeing their comrade collapse while maintaining his rushing posture, the other guys had no choice but to stop in their tracks one by one.
“……”
“……”
“……”
If they rashly attacked, they wouldn’t escape the same fate.
The moment they realized this perfectly coincided with the moment fear arrived.
Eventually, Robespierre leisurely looked around at the frightened lambs.
“Next. Hurry up.”
Playing with fishy-smelling children in a place like this naturally brought back old memories.
An eternal truth learned while roaming battlefields in childhood.
That was that in the hell swept by war, valuable things always lay scattered about.
And among them, the most profitable were undoubtedly the defeated soldiers.
One day, Robespierre, who was wandering the battlefield, had encountered a defeated soldier whose legs had been cut off.
He couldn’t remember his name.
But he could still clearly remember his face.
He was the general drawn on flyers with the phrase ‘This war is a holy war. Therefore we will be victorious. God protects us.’
The vanguard of war and simultaneously a noble knight who boasted of being undefeated.
That same person was desperately running away upon seeing him.
Thud-.
When Robespierre quietly stopped in front of him, he began bargaining.
‘I, if you send me to my territory, I’ll give you 1 million gold. No! I’ll give you more than that! I, I can receive commendations and medals from the country! I’ll get a house too! Right? Please……’
He trembled while vomiting blood.
Of course, Robespierre just quietly, as he always did, stuck the dull knife in his right hand into his neck.
And as payment, he collected the clothes he was wearing.
‘……Well anyway.’
There was only one law that worked in the hell swept by war.
The frightened one gets everything taken away.
That was the same whether you were a hero, king, or orphan.
Thud- thud- thud-.
In the sports warehouse, only the sound of one person’s footsteps and the groaning of the rest could be heard.
Melberik, left alone, was sitting on the floor trembling.
While looking at Robespierre approaching him.
“Mon-monster……”
Melberik crawled backward while sitting on the floor.
Beyond his field of vision, he could see the pained expressions of friends rolling on the floor.
Black Fang members rolling around with their arms, legs, and faces all broken.
……And now his turn was approaching.
Thud-.
Melberik’s back, which had been dragging backward, soon hit the wall.
There was nowhere left to retreat.
Pure white moonlight streamed down through the window.
Thanks to that, he couldn’t properly see what Robespierre approaching him looked like.
Eventually, Melberik spoke desperately.
“Don’t hit me. Pl-please, I’ll die if I get beaten like that. Right? Save me. I’ve never even been hit by my dad. Please……”
But Robespierre’s expression couldn’t be read at all because it was hidden in shadow.
Only his two pupils, strangely burning red from how the moonlight was reflected, were fixed on Melberik.
Eventually, Robespierre’s voice was heard.
“Once you bite, you don’t let go?”
“……Yes?”
Honorifics that came out naturally.
Melberik soon realized that Robespierre’s words were lines he himself had uttered before.
And before Melberik could make any excuses, Robespierre’s words continued.
“Me too.”
Today was Lunastium, the day with the longest night of the year.
They had a very long night remaining.
One that would probably never be forgotten in someone’s memory for a lifetime.
