Chapter 182 (1/2)

Trace of the Monarch (5)

I left only one of my enemies alive as usual.

The last survivor shivered, having witnessed his colleagues dying instantaneously.

He looked at us with a face of despair and fear.

“Please, forgive me!”

Apparently, it wasn’t for his life that he was begging.

“This is not a matter of our species’ dimension, but a rogue act of each individual here. So, please, to the Union’s headquarters….”

It was a ridiculous thing to hear.

He was pleading to prevent the issue from developing into an interracial problem because he knew what kind of aftermath it would create if such agendas were to be relayed to the Union headquarters.

He just wanted us to end everything by killing them and punishing them.

“That’s funny.”

If they were worried about that, they shouldn’t have done that in the first place.

I glanced at Genograche, and he approached and held out the handle of his main body, the devil’s sword.

[Whisper of the Sword]

“Ahhh!”

That time, the brainwashing skill worked after so long when it didn’t, and thanks to it, we were able to get a confession quickly and efficiently.

When I heard the story, there was a reason why he, the sole survivor, was scared and blabbered.

It went without saying but behind the Roheem dispatched for the quest were the race’s political leaders and the Awakened beings’ Heads.

They sent the team to the dimension by buying expensive Leap Tickets because they were worried about their species’ future.

The Roheem people, like humans, didn’t have much Potential Mana Capacity.

They also showed keen interest in the traces left by the “Monarch of Evolution” for the same reason as me.

It could have been an opportunity to boost their power exponentially, after all.

“You didn’t want to share that treasure with the Terrans, the Earthlings.”

I thought they cheered when they saw that I wasn’t on the list of explorers sent by Earth.

And saying that it was the only chance they had, they tried to monopolize the Monarch’s traces.

“Okay, thank you for your confession.”

I turned my head after sealing him in an item that looked like a coffin.

The devil tied to a tree was rescued, and Hibiki’s healing magic and items had completely healed his wounds.

The Knight that represented the forest devils…

As I approached him, he wriggled with an uncomfortable expression.

“Ugh! What the hell!”

I belatedly understood why he was reacting like that.

“Oh, I see.”

I lowered the output of the divine power emitted by the Holy Sword.

He resisted the power of a god, not different than any other devils.

Then, as if the rock that was pressing down on his chest had been removed, the devil gave a sigh of relief.

While he was catching his breath, I looked interestingly at his face and exposed bare arms.

‘Tattoo?’

His skin was full of intricate shapes.

Nate explained as if he had noticed my gaze.

“They say it’s a tattoo that you have to get when you become the Knight in charge of representing the devils here. But even they themselves don’t know what it means. It seems like it’s a type of script because of the repetitions in the pattern…”

Among the ones present, Genograche and I knew the identity of that script.

Genograche clicked his tongue.

– You even forgot the ‘contract text’ that belongs to the devils?

I carefully examined the Knight’s body.

I observed that the text string wasn’t perfect. Grammar was wrong in some places, and there were broken letters as well.

“There must be some distortion or omission while it was being passed on to so many generations. I can’t read it like this.”

– Is that so?

Genograche also approached the Knight.

The Knight, who repeatedly thanked Nate and Hibiki for saving his life, as he was at least a bit familiar with them, turned his head again to the two of us.

Since he had witnessed the massacre that just transpired, it seemed that he was still sacred even if we were the saviors of his life. His eyes were even trembling.

But the moment Genograche took a step ahead of me and extended his head to read the text…

Whoooong!

“What?”

– Hmm?

The tattoo on the Knight’s skin began to glow.

And a strange change began that wasn’t normal for a common tattoo.

As if an earthworm was crawling on his skin or the text was alive, it began to wriggle.

White-flashing text strings were disassembled, recombined, and formed sentences. What happened afterward was…

“Huh? Huh?”

Nate gave off a baffled voice.

The Knight’s face was also dyed with shock, but his eyes were filled with awe beyond bafflement.

He seemed to know what the phenomenon was, but he didn’t expect to see it at that moment.

Soon, we all saw a curtain of letters falling out of the Knight’s body like light powder in the air.

I spoke.

“Now I can read it.”

Genograche mumbled in reply.

– This is a headache…. It used the entire skin of the devil as a ‘magic document?’

It was a kind of contract, based on the form of it.

In other words, the Knight’s body was used as a living contract.

The first to engrave such was probably the Monarch of Evolution they served.

Since then, whenever the Knight’s position was passed onto the next, they seemed to imitate the Monarch and inked the successor.

Each time, the contract’s magical effect was automatically passed on to the successor without their knowledge.

“However, it doesn’t seem like an approved contract, does it?”

The Knights only served as the paper for the original text of the contract. Nobody had placed their soul as collateral.

Genograsche read the first paragraph.