## Chapter 104 – Cultists in the Sewers
“Hey, Copson. Grab this bastard.”
“Hehehe, got it.”
Copson seized the limp man from behind. It felt like the kind of hold back-alley thugs used when ganging up on someone.
“Hey, Cultist. Snap out of it. Every dog has its day, doesn’t it? If you listen to your mother, good things will come your way.”
The man, presumed to be a cultist, hung his head, dark, bloody tears dripping down his face. Copson started offering some incomprehensible words of comfort, but they were meaningless, and it wasn’t even clear if they spoke the same language.
I bent down to meet his gaze and said, “Hey, can you hear me?”
“…”
“Sorry about hitting you. I had no choice… Can’t you hear me? No response? Hey, can you hear me? Let’s talk, okay?”
I grabbed his chin and lifted his head, and he glared at me with burning eyes. It was an unpleasant gaze, like looking into bubbling, rotten tar. I feared his dark stare held a curse. I cried out to him in alarm, “Don’t… don’t look at me like that!”
His lips were black, and his skin was as white as snow. His eyes had no whites at all, and above all, the evil tattoo on his face proved he was a son of a bitch. And to top it off, the bastard was bald.
He looked the part, and this guy was 100 percent involved in criminal activity. I, the righteous one, had to deliver judgment on behalf of the world. I had the authority to do so.
“Ah, ah. Ah. Try to repeat after me.”
I pointed to my mouth and made “ah, ah” sounds, trying to communicate with him, since he wasn’t speaking. I was going to try some primitive body language.
“Just say anything.”
“…”
Since he still didn’t speak, I grabbed both of his ears. His ears looked surprisingly normal. At least his ears looked human. I gripped them tightly, as if I would tear them off, and pulled, eliciting a scream.
“Sya!!!! Daoc!!! Daoc!!!!!”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“Daoc! Daoc! GurDat! Sadami!”
He was saying something, but I couldn’t understand a word of it. The idea that sincerity could bridge any gap was bullshit. These sons of bitches! People could never fully convey their true feelings! That was why humanity could never unite!
“Is there really no way to communicate?”
The only language I could understand was the common language of this world.
I decided to ask the others.
“Hey, can any of you understand what this guy is saying?”
I looked around, and everyone shook their heads.
Even the middle-aged Merman didn’t know, and Claudie also said she didn’t understand.
“Hmm, I see…”
It might be a language from another country, a magical language, or an evil language. It would have been good to have a mage or priest, but they weren’t here. I really needed Eliza.
Even if I wanted to interrogate him, I wouldn’t be able to find anything out if we couldn’t communicate.
Then Meria, examining the cultist’s face as if she wanted to tear it off, said, “Hey, maybe he’s pretending not to understand?”
“Really?”
“Maybe he is.”
It was a very plausible suggestion, and we nodded. Looking at the cultist’s bald head, which was bowed for a moment, I thought he might actually be doing that. It was common sense for criminals to deny everything, no matter what you asked.
I decided to steel myself.
“Well, I guess we have no choice but to beat him up.”
I muttered quietly, convincing myself.
“Yeah… maybe he’ll start talking if we beat him enough.”
Once upon a time, back in my hometown…
In the era of accelerating globalization, I saw news about parents educating their children in English from a young age so that they wouldn’t fall behind. Certainly, in modern society, not knowing English was like being naked in a thunderstorm.
I think I saw the news while I was eating. Anyway, I was curious about how they taught English to those young children, so I kept watching. Surprisingly, the method was to beat the kids with a stick until they learned English.
They believed that if they beat them enough, the children would naturally grasp the truth of English to avoid being hit.
That belief, like a kind of fanatical faith, led to the child being beaten to a pulp and killed, and the mother ended up behind bars. But at least it was an era when English was so important that such an educational method was once explosively popular.
English was as heavy as life itself.
Parents weeded out those who couldn’t speak English.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t a news report introducing exotic English education methods for children, but simply an urgent news flash about a terrible parent who caused their child’s death through child abuse.
Anyway, recalling the lesson from that time, I decided to use physical methods to get the cultist to talk.
If I was unlucky, I might end up dying like the thousands upon thousands of children who died learning English, but it seemed worth the challenge, just as the mothers who wielded the sticks had done.
“Copson, hold that bastard tight. The master of language, Kim Kat, will now show you a magic show.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m looking forward to it.”
“Meria, come here too. Claudie, do you want to join?”
Claudie shook her head, and Meria approached. She was the one who brought it up in the first place. It would be a bit much to do it alone, so let’s do it together.
“Like you said, I think this bastard is pretending not to understand.”
“You think so too?”
“Then we have to make him open his mouth.”
“How?”
Meria smiled wryly, dropped her shield on the floor, and tilted her head from side to side. Then she rotated her shoulders and started loosening her fists. I stretched similarly and said at the same time as her,
“Vio-“
“-lence.”
“You really are a barbarian.”
“Why don’t you guys just go up already?”
Copson was impressed, and Merman started fidgeting and begging us to go up. But we had already tasted the money. Even if we didn’t know for sure, the wands these cultists were carrying would definitely be worth something.
And we could even take off these black robes and sell them.
I stood in front of the cultist with Meria. Sensing an unusual aura, he slowly raised his head and looked at us. I gave him one last warning, as if to warn him.
“Answer if you don’t want to get your ass kicked.”
“…”
“This bastard… his acting is pretty good, isn’t it? Still pretending not to understand.”
He pretended not to understand until the end. Anger surged in an instant. Why can’t you speak English, why! Do I have to go this far, Mom?! Ughhhhh!!!
“Copson! Hold him tight!”
Fueled by anger, I reflexively threw a punch at the cultist’s abdomen. Thwack! In an instant, my fist was buried deep in his abdomen.
“ㅡGwaekk!”
The guy started thrashing around, making a sound like a duck. But he couldn’t escape because Copson was holding him.
“Meria! You hit him too!”
“Okay! You evil bastard!”
It wasn’t anything new, but Taekwondo also had this punching technique. It was just my brain-fart, but the power of a punch fused with a gauntlet was enough to crush internal organs with a single blow.
ㅡThwack!
ㅡThwack!
I kept stabbing my fist into the cultist’s abdomen.
“Talk! You bastard!”
My big, big thing went in and out, back and forth, ravaging his flesh. He kept making duck noises. He was pretending not to be able to speak, but now he was imitating a duck.
There’s a limit to how much you can ignore someone…!
“Evil heretic! You bad guy!”
Meria also beat him with her gloved fists. The church was powerful here, so the general public also hated evil beings. There was no mercy in her punch, which sought to destroy evil. She was also a warrior.
“Get out of the way, I need to kick him!”
Since he still didn’t answer, I became desperate and decided to kick him like a punching bag. These greaves of the Salvation Heaven Church, which I received as a gift from Claudie at the last festival, were made of solid iron, which dramatically increased my kicking power.
Gathering my energy, I kicked with all my might.
“Spinning kick!”
ㅡThwack!
With a refreshing impact sound, my clean kick was deeply embedded in the cultist’s chest. I could feel my foot being wrapped in flesh, so I was sure I had broken a couple of ribs.
ㅡThud!
But I kicked so hard that Copson fell backwards with the cultist in his arms.
“Ugh, cough! Didn’t you hit him too hard, Barbarian!”
“Ah! Sorry! Are you okay!”
I apologized to Copson, who was frowning, and helped him up. He started grumbling, so I quickly dusted him off. And with him, I tried to lift the cultist up again. The English lesson wasn’t over yet.
“Kat. He’s dead?”
That’s what Claudie said as she examined the fallen cultist.
What? Dead?
“It was a good blow. It looks like the broken ribs pierced his heart. You should remember the feeling.”
“D-dead?”
“Yeah.”
“Eek!” Meria screamed at the accidental situation, and Copson, who checked the cultist’s pulse and confirmed his death, shouted at me.
“Hey, Barbarian! Why did you kill him!”
“Huh?”
“We haven’t found out anything yet! You’re killing him instead of interrogating him!”
“N-no!”
“What do you mean no!”
“No! I, I was just… just… English…”
I also looked at the cultist’s corpse. He didn’t move at all with his eyes rolled back. No, actually, I don’t even know if he rolled them back. He didn’t have whites in the first place.
“It’s okay. He couldn’t speak in the first place. Then it’s better to just kill him. We’re not going to let him live anyway, now that we’ve killed one of them, right? Even if we hand him over to the church, it’ll be easier to hand him over dead in many ways.”
Claudie said kindly to me, who was in shock.
As she said, that guy didn’t seem to be able to say anything we could understand anyway. I just wanted to vent my violence because of the stress of being swallowed up by the darkness of the waterway.
“So are we going up now? Or one more floor to the 4th floor? I like either way.”
“Let’s go up quickly. This request ends here… It’s too terrible!”
Claudie said with a smile, and Merman answered frantically.
I looked at Copson and Meria’s faces. To be honest, I don’t know what’s down there. But seeing that two cultists were holding wands, it seemed clear that there would be a pile of things worth money.
Could they be performing some kind of evil ritual?
If so, there might be a sacrifice.
“Copson, how about it? Are you satisfied with two wands?”
“Hmm… I’m a little worried.”
“Meria, what about you?”
“Me too… I wish we had a little more information.”
“Let’s go up quickly! It’s too dangerous there! You don’t know what’s there!”
Merman rebuked us, who were hesitating. As an ordinary citizen, he didn’t like the situation full of battles. To be honest, it’s a bit much to drag him around depending on our circumstances.
I tried to persuade him in a calm tone.
“Merman, calm down. What if those guys are ‘making’ undead? Then the undead will appear again, and the guild will definitely penalize us for asking what the hell you guys have been doing.”
By treating a successful quest as a failure.
It’s a bit painful for me, who is currently aiming to be a D-rank adventurer.
Around D-rank, you could get really good requests from the guild. That would make it easier to make money.
“I, I’ll take responsibility for that! Just go up right now!”
“Hmm… is that so…”
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him.
It was time to make a choice.
Whether to search the 4th basement floor of the waterway, or to go up as it is.
