Chapter 109: The Unfortunate Blondie (4)

A hollow voice echoed through the dark alleys of the slums. “What?”

The grotesque man blinked, seemingly unable to accept what he was seeing. He let go of Jules’s neck and stumbled backward, shaken. “A-a guy?

Huh

? Then that means I just...”

It seemed the memory of how he had been gleefully burying his nose into Jules’s golden hair had just hit him. His face froze solid, like someone who had bitten into a piece of bread only to find half a cockroach inside.

Freed from the man’s grasp, Jules spun around and delivered a clean roundhouse kick. “You disgusting pervert!”

While he couldn’t be compared to monstrous outliers like Yurina or me, Jules was still one of the top-ranking cadets in the academy’s overall evaluations. A perfect, textbook roundhouse strike smashed into the man’s chin. Jules’s skirt fluttered from the motion, and just above his shorts, something unmistakably blunt poked out.

The man clutched his jaw and screamed in pain. “

GYAAAAAARGH

!”

I, who had unfortunately witnessed that “blunt object” in motion, grabbed my eyes and screamed as well, struck by a wholly unintended ocular trauma.

“AAAHHHH!

You bastard! Why’d you have to attack me too?”

Jules looked at me with a deeply wronged expression. “

H-huh

? When did I even attack you?”

I shook off the lingering horror in my retina and grabbed Jules’s shoulders, pulling him back. “Anyway, just stay back.”

Sure, he had landed a clean hit thanks to the guy being caught off guard, but this creep’s power level was way beyond what a normal cadet could handle. Though, I wasn’t exactly the average cadet, either.

I stepped toward the man, who was still holding his jaw and trembling with rage.

“You! You dare mock my pure love?” he said.

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” I replied.

Since when did ambushing women in back alleys to satisfy twisted urges qualify as pure love? Even if the man hadn’t touched Jules beyond sniffing his hair, from the victim’s perspective, it was traumatizing enough to haunt them for life.

“There’s only ever been one real cure for bastards who think with their dicks.” I drew my sword and leveled it at him. “Ignite.”

Ashen flames erupted, curling around the blade like a living serpent. I lunged forward and swung the flame-wreathed sword with force. With a click of his tongue, the man twisted himself and slid back, narrowly avoiding my sword.

“Damn it!” he said.

He had probably decided he couldn’t win, and as such, he turned and bolted. Quick and agile, just like what I had expected from someone who had managed to avoid capture all this time. But it didn’t work against me.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I said.

I inhaled deeply. Lowering my stance, I pulled the sword behind me. The distance between us was about a hundred meters, way too far for a normal attack to reach, even if it was coated with aura to extend its range.

Mana Bullets,

I chanted inwardly.

Translucent projectiles formed along the sword. Unlike Berald’s classic Mana Bullets, these were long and blade-shaped, more like magical blades than bullets. Dozens of paper-thin mana blades layered over one another. The blades of flame flared to life around the sword, and the very air around me shimmered with heat.

“Ashen Flame Style Second Form: Flame Fang.”

With a powerful stomp, I slashed the sword sideways. Dozens of flame-infused mana blades shot forward, sweeping out in a destructive wave.

“

Tch!

Damn it!” the man said.

He sprang into the air, bouncing off walls to avoid the oncoming storm of blades. However, the blades twisted in the air, homing in on him as he jumped, crashing down like guided missiles.

A scream tore through the night as the flaming blades tore the man’s body apart in the air. “

GRAAAAAAH

!”

Then, he plummeted to the ground. Looking at this sight, I let out a slow breath and curled my lips into a satisfied grin. That was my first time using this technique in real combat. It was not too bad. This technique was born from the enlightenment I had gained watching Berald fight. At first glance, it resembled the Sun Sword Style Sixth Form: White Radiance, but in truth, it was entirely different. I could steer and change this technique’s direction mid-flight.

White Radiance focused the user’s aura into a single point and launched it in a straight line. Once it was fired, it couldn’t be recalled and its direction couldn’t be changed. But Flame Fang was fused with mana, which allowed it to curve, track, and redirect in midair, like guided missiles. And its power exceeded White Radiance, too.

Normal aura techniques based on the inner world lost power the farther they travelled, due to their reliance on the user’s internal force. In contrast, Flame Fang, like the Berald Combat Style, used a fusion of aura and mana, meaning it retained full power regardless of distance.

It was a perfect leveled-up replacement for White Radiance. Granted, it consumed significantly more mana than White Radiance. But even accounting for that, the pros far outweighed the cons.

The man lay crumpled on the ground, coughing and vomiting blood. “

Gugh!

Guh!

”

The flaming blade had torn him to shreds, and it looked as if he had been mauled by a wild beast. Half his limbs were severed, strewn across the street, and his intestines spilled from a gaping wound in his abdomen. Yet, his greedy, bloodshot eyes were still locked onto Jules as he tried to crawl toward him, inch by inch.

“The... blonde... give me... the blonde.”

Earlier, he had acted like he didn’t care about a guy’s hair. But now, with death knocking at his door, gender no longer mattered.

Jules let out a high-pitched shriek and scrambled away. “

Eek

!”

“Wow! Persistent little freak, aren’t you?”

Seriously, what was it about blonde hair that made this guy so obsessed? Even after taking mortal wounds that should have killed him ten times over, he clung to that desire. This wasn’t an obsession anymore; it was insanity.

As I frowned down at the creep, watching him inch forward while painting the ground red with blood, the groaning from his mouth grew weaker until his head finally slumped to the ground.

Jules asked in a trembling voice. “Is he... dead?”

I placed my hand on the back of the fallen freak’s neck and nodded. “Yes, he’s dead.”

He was persistent to the bitter end, in more ways than one.

I pulled back the hood that had been deeply drawn over his face. “Well then, let’s see who this creep really was.”

Underneath it was a face I had never expected to see. “Rascal?”

Among heroes who were usually more interested in personal gain, Power Man Rascal Jo stood out as a true protector of the weak and punisher of evil.

I looked down at his corpse, my eyes filled with confusion. “Why? Why Rascal?”

He had blond hair and a chiseled jawline. While I had never seen him in person, I had seen enough photos. This was unmistakably Rascal.

Jules, who was standing beside me, widened his eyes in disbelief. “By Rascal, you mean the Power Man? No way, he was the culprit?”

The very idea that the twisted pervert behind these assaults in the slums was this man, the one the people hailed as a “Hero”? It was hard to swallow.

Jules fumed with rage, glaring down at Rascal with pure disgust. “

Ugh

, I knew you can’t trust rumors! All that crap about him being a hero, when behind the scenes he was just assaulting women to satisfy his filthy desires!”

I fully agreed with Jules that rumors couldn’t be trusted. But still, something didn’t sit right. It was too simple, too clean, to dismiss Rascal as just some perverted freak obsessed with blonde women.

In my past life, Rascal had died protecting the people of the slums from the Demon God’s forces. If he were some hypocrite, pretending to be a hero while hiding his evil nature, would he have given up his life to protect others? I doubted it.

Moreover, this whole incident, the attacks targeting only blonde women, had never happened in my previous life. Sure, it was possible for an incident to fly under the radar and never spread to the academy. But something like this? It would have made headlines even within the academy.

Compared to the average murder case in the slums, this was way more sensational. If anything remotely unusual happened even in some backwater imperial town, it still made its way into the Hero Academy gossip mill. A crime of this scale, happening in Valhalla City, right at our doorstep, being ignored? There was no chance of that happening.

This means only one thing. Someone was pulling the strings. Someone had driven this beloved Hero straight into the gutter.

I narrowed my eyes and examined Rascal’s corpse closely.

“What’s wrong, Dale?” Jules asked.

I shook my head. “It’s nothing.”

I reached out toward Rascal’s corpse. Ashen flames rose, engulfing the body and reducing it to nothing but dust. Not a scrap of flesh remained.

Then I said, “Jules. Let’s keep it a secret that Rascal was the culprit.”

Jules tilted his head, clearly not understanding. “What? Wouldn’t it be better to tell people and expose this scumbag for who he truly was?”

I thought about explaining my suspicions that someone could have manipulated Rascal from behind the scenes, but I shook my head. To someone who didn’t share the memories of my past life, it would just sound like wild speculation.

I let out a deep breath and finally said, “The world of heroes... needs at least one Hero people can believe in.”

Jules went silent.

“Anyway, can you keep this between us?” I asked.

Jules hesitated but eventually nodded. “

U-um

. Okay.”

Leaving him behind, I turned and walked away. The future was changing. The signs had been there for a while. But now it was undeniable. This was no longer the same future I remembered. It was evolving, becoming something unpredictable.

A small flame flickered to life in the palm of my hand as I narrowed my eyes. Since I was caught in this violent, chaotic current, there was only one thing I could do. The Ashen Flame flickered out in my palm, and I turned back toward the orphanage.

***

A boy smiled darkly under the moonlit sky and said, “You know, madness is kind of like gravity.”

The open field was cloaked in darkness. The boy, youthful in appearance, curled his lips into a chilling grin.

He hummed a little tune as he continued, “Once you start falling, there’s no end. You just keep going down. And it’s only when you hit rock bottom that a person finally gets to meet their true self.”

With a giggle, he spread his arms wide open. “The real you.”

An old man, who had been silently listening to the boy, clicked his tongue. “What brings you here, boy?”

“

Hm

? Are you not happy to see me, Jackal?”

The Archbishop of Beasts, Jackal, turned his head away from the boy and sighed. He didn’t mind dealing with most of the other Archbishops. But this one, the madman known as the Archbishop of Madness, was someone even he didn’t want to get involved with.

“What happened in Valhalla City?” Jackal asked.

The boy’s grin widened unnaturally. “Ah, you mean Power Man? Wasn’t it fun? Watching a so-called ‘Hero’ fall all the way down into the filth?”

Jackal didn’t reply.

“

Heehee

. And for the record, I didn’t even do anything as drastic as Mephisto. I didn’t corrupt him or anything.” The boy shrugged casually. “I just... gave him a little push.”

He chuckled as he stretched out his arms in front of him. “Just enough for him to face his true self.”

A deep sigh escaped Jackal’s lips. “It’s not wise to cause such a scene right in front of the Hero Academy.

“

Hehe!

I never expected you, of all people, to say that. Ah, wait! Don’t tell me it’s because of that Spider?”

Jackal kept quiet yet again.

The boy spun in place like he was dancing, laughing softly. “

Mmm!

So, the rumors were true. You did mess up this time,

huh

? Don’t worry about the Spider. I didn’t come to see her this time.”

“Then why are you here?” Jackal asked.

“Because Mephisto told me something very interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“Yeah. Apparently, a cadet went head-to-head with the Helios family and crushed them. It ruined his whole plan.”

Jackal snorted. A cadet taking on the Helios family and winning? That was news even Jackal hadn’t heard before.

The Archbishop of Madness said, “You probably know this cadet too, Jackal.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. You know, the one who’s rumored to be close with the Spider you’ve been chasing? He was there with her when you botched your last attempt.”

Jackal finally realized who he was talking about and nodded. “

Ahh

, the gray-haired cadet.”

The boy licked his lips like a starving predator, drool practically dripping. “Dale Han. I wonder... what you’re going to show me.”

The Archbishop of Madness, Seto, grinned ear to ear. It was a smile stretched so wide, it looked like it could split his face in two.