Chapter 727

Unlike Tionis, the Illuminati had only appeared on Earth recently. The rumors regarding them on Earth were just simple mysteries and somewhat different from the real organization.

Despite being an ordinary commercial building, the basement was spacious. A mysterious, shivering man with a strange gaze walked toward his destination.

The secret organization operated in multiple locations across the world. However, even a group like this still needed a command tower. Their headquarters, which was just a place where the leaders from the continent of Peslisa gathered, was in Shanghai, China.

The Illuminati's leadership valued Park Soo-Hyun's abilities highly. Hence, they used him for either special missions or to protect their branches. The mission he was given was a special one, with simple instructions—bring in the target that leadership had designated.

However, he had failed to accomplish his mission. In a way, it was obvious that he would fail. He didn't think that a disruptor would show up, much less that the disruptor would surpass his expectations.

"You're back. How was the mission?" a girl in a qipao asked with an expressionless face. She spoke in fluent Korean instead of Chinese.

Soo-Hyun frowned and grabbed her by the collar. "Bitch, what do you think happened?"

"You've failed. I see."

Despite being threatened, the girl's expression didn't change one bit. Her poker face had once annoyed him so much that he had tried to scare her by stabbing her thigh with a knife. Even then, she remained void of emotions.

'She's like a fucking leech,' Soo-Hyun thought. He then roughly shoved her to the side.

"That crazy son of a bitch Tionis came. I thought the trails had been completely erased. How come he still managed to track us down?"

"He interfered, huh... That should've been within your expectations, though. You should have considered—"

Bang!!

"What I'm saying is that those damn old men's toys didn't work on him."

For the first time, the girl's eyes seemingly widened a bit. Having never seen her expression change, Soo-Hyun quickly noticed it.

"That doesn't seem possible. How could the Demon God's artifact not work on—"

"Hmph. Anyway, I failed. Hurry up and guide me to those damn bastards already."

"Alright. You haven't been tracked, have you?"

"Why are you asking the obvious?"

The girl guided Soo-Hyun deep underground, where several men and women were playing poker.

Soo-Hyun's brows furrowed. "Seems like you bunch of geezers are having a blast."

"Ah, you're here."

"Great Elders, he failed," the girl reported. The young men and women gulped.

"Failed? Why?"

"That damn Saint of Tionis showed up," Soo-Hyun said.

Despite the Saint of Tionis being mentioned, the elders remained calm.

"We previously entrusted the problem of summoning Malicious Spirits to a member from Korea."

"Hmm. Another failure it is. No one could have expected the Saint of Tionis to get involved. Still, if we keep failing, we will lose face."

Annoyed, Soo-Hyun was about to say something when a young man pointed to a seat at the large table.

"Would you like to sit down too?" the young man offered.

Soo-Hyun frowned and raised his middle finger. "Fuck you, old man."

"Hmph. What a well-mannered boy."

They then dealt each player a hand and started talking in a language that Soo-Hyun had never heard before.

[Does the Demon God's Artifact not work?]

[This was bound to fail anyway. The artifact could only borrow a portion of the demon's power, and only the leader could use it properly.]

[Hmm... the leader is down. What should we do?]

[We've sustained too much damage. It would be better to ask for help from the Malicious Spirits...]

[They said they couldn't intervene because they were preparing to summon a monster. That aside, haven't we already suffered too much from the Saint of Tionis?]

[Hmm. A monster? Who are you talking about?]

[Who else but that scary kid called Eclipse?]

Everyone stiffened. They all turned to a young man with black hair and red eyes. He was smiling and had cards in his hands.

"You... You talk the continental language of Peslisa?" a startled woman asked in broken Korean.

"The Demon God you serve is my teacher."

"Oh...."

Silence enveloped the room for a moment. Those who found this situation strange then jumped up and readied their devil mana.

"Saint of Tionis?! How did you get here?!"

As the astonished young man and woman shouted, Davey, the young man holding the cards, revealed his hand. He had the two of hearts, three of clovers, seven of diamonds, and a jack of hearts. Everyone watching him quickly realized that he had a bad hand.

However, Davey deftly took back the cards, folded them, and then unfolded them all at once. The cards were now a perfect spades sequence: a ten, jack, queen, king, and ace.

"How about it? Impressive, right?" He smiled, getting up from his seat. "Although I started with a bad hand, I ended up hitting the jackpot..."

"Get him!" one of the leaders shouted.

Everyone concentrated their devil mana in perfect unison. They were so well-coordinated that Davey was surprised. Nevertheless, before they could move, their devil mana disappeared all at once.

Terrified, they froze. Reapers made of black mist appeared afterward, their fingers around the leaders' necks.

[That's not how Rho Aias' magic is used. Your magic is nothing more than a pale imitation.]

Davey smiled as he approached them. "I know for a fact that Eclipse can't descend to this place unless all the humans on Earth die."

"Y-you..." the muscular young man stammered, trembling.

"Hmm, I'm guessing you folks have a trick prepared that I'm not aware of? You people also have a side of Neltarid on your side though, so that wouldn't be impossible at all."

"How is the devil mana—"

"Because the hierarchy of devil mana is clear. You can tell by the curses."

Davey could tell that they were just mimicking the power of the Death Lord. Moreover, unlike their leader, their imitation was shallow. They didn't know about its weaknesses, and even if they did, they couldn't have done anything about them. Hence, it was only natural that Davey could incapacitate them in an instant.

One young man screamed, forcibly releasing his power. "Grrr!!"

He appeared to be refusing to acknowledge their lack of understanding of the power they were using. However, when he tried to charge toward Davey, he lost control of his devil mana.

"The magic of Rho Aias was made for and to symbolize peace."

[W-what do you know?!] the young man shouted. He then stiffened and rose into the air.

"What do I know?" Davey scoffed. "At the very least, I know more about this magic than you do."

He knew there was no way that they would recognize the original when they had only recreated its power with its traces.

Davey thought about suppressing their devil mana using higher-level devil mana. Although he was aware it wasn't the best option, he knew it'd be effective in subduing everyone.

He walked toward the floating man and placed his hand on his chest. "Now, tell me. How do you plan to bring over Eclipse, that damn ancient dragon?"

"Ugh... I won't—" The man suddenly let out a horrible scream. "Gaaah!!"

"By the way, it's probably better for you not to wait for support. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this on my stream before."

Davey was referring to shadow cloning. Even though using it would cause him to temporarily lose strength, it was one of the best magic for committing massacres.

As Confucius once said, no man stood a chance when they were ganged up on[1], and this magic was the definition of ganging up on someone. By distributing one's power, his two arms could become four, eight, sixteen, and so on.

Bang! Bang!!

Loud noises echoed all over the place.

"I have nothing to say to you," the young man said.

"Then you leave me no choice," Davey replied. "Torture it is."

'This is good. I was getting sick and tired of confessions anyway.' he thought.

Grinning, He slowly lowered the young man to the ground. He then summoned a black flame on his palms. "This is called the Fire of Interrogation. It's going to be a little warm."

"W-what?!"

Crackle!!

"Gaaaaah!!"

Along with a desperate scream, he fell to the ground. Nothing happened to his body, but his mind was burning. While the man suffered, Davey glanced at the others.

"Let's see. Who's next?"

"H-how on earth did you learn about this place?"

"How? I followed my handy-dandy map, of course," Davey snickered. He then threw a mana whip and tied up Soo-Hyun with it, who was trying to run away. Afterward, he violently threw him to the ground.

"Ugh!!"

"You didn't even know I was right next to you."

At that moment, Soo-Hyun looked as if he finally realized what caused the deja vu that he had felt. He was right, after all. Someone had been gazing at him earlier.

That strange feeling he had when he used the transfer magic circle, when he came here, and when he harassed the expressionless girl—Davey had caused it all. He had been right beside him this whole time. He just didn't realize it until now.

"Y-you wouldn't have been able to hide like that with invisibility magic..."

"Well, you can't expect me to share all my secrets with you."

Crackle!!

Kwaaah!!!! Argh! Argh! Aaaaa!!"

Davey went past the second young man who was struggling in despair. This time, he walked up to a woman.

"Hmph! Y-You're barbaric! Burning people for torture!"

"I don't think that is something you can say. Don't you put people in containers and basically pickle them?"

"H-how about you forget about all this and join hands with us instead? Once you learn of our cause, you too—"

"Your cause?"

"Exactly! We're different from our leader! We have our own purpose—"

"Tell me."

"If you join us, I will."

"Huh... You do know I'm on the verge of creating a bloodbath, right? What makes you think withholding information from me will give you the upper hand?"

Davey put his hand into the Pocket Plane and pulled out a lump of flesh covered in tentacles. It was still writhing as if it still had some life left in it. It was the flesh of Olga, the Malicious Spirit of disease.

"Sometimes disgust is scarier than pain."

"W-what are you doing?! Aaaah!!"

Davey plopped the lump of tentacles on her, then approached the last remaining young man.

"How about you?"

"Aaaah!!"

The desperate screams made Davey smile, but he wiped it off his face just as quickly as it appeared. "Let's play a game."

These people were related to Eclipse's summoning. Hence, he knew he had to do something about them—to draw the truth out of them. At the same time, he thought he should take this opportunity to track down the roots of the Illuminati.

The man who looked the most likely to keep quiet stared at Davey.

"You're going to regret this."

"Whatever man."

Davey held Megatron's attachment, the Mana Chainsaw, with both hands and revved it up.

Vroom!! Vroom!!

"You all seem to be pretty confident with yourselves..."

'Torture isn't something that you can endure just because you want to, though.'

"...until you get beaten down."

"M-magic circle! The ninth-ranked Malicious Spirit is holding a large-scale summoning ceremony! Our task is to launch attacks all over the place to keep you distracted!" the man suddenly confessed. He had a surprisingly loose tongue.

"You won the game. I'd say you just earned yourself a couple of chips."

Squish!

The iron swords turned to telekinetic blades and instantly killed the three elders who were screaming.

"So, where is it?"

The young man kept his mouth shut this time.

"You're not going to tell me?"

Vroom!!

Davey pointed the Mana Chainsaw at him, making him scream.

"W-wait! I'm the only one who knows where it is now!"

1. It is not verified if Confucius actually said this. This is a metaphor to make it seem like a wise man had said this. ☜