The Devil’s Cage

His name was Larcy.

His name was given to him by his powerful instructor back in the organization’s camp when he had graduated top of his class.

In the ancient language of the world, it meant tensile and great.

As for his original name?

He didn’t know. He was an orphan, adopted for as long as he could remember and before he received the name Larcy, he was known as the number 21.

Therefore, he cherished his name a lot, showed tenacious efforts to make himself stronger and greater.

Each time a mission that was dreaded by others was posted, he would always be the brave one to receive it.

This time was no exception.

Alkender City had lost its balance, so he was here to tip the scale back.

There was no justice or evil involved, just the mission.

At first, Larcy and his group carried it out smoothly, the whole city falling into a mess with just one Mordin’s Statue but after that guy showed up, he was caught off guard.

2567!

A normal person should not even be qualified to appear in his sight and yet he ultimately became the important figure who tipped the scale of the entire plane.

Glutton Emperor! Just listen to that title!

EMPEROR!

Larcy admired it, he admired it very much. He wanted to be someone powerful and exist above the commoners.

As for his other feelings for the Glutton Emperor? None.

He wasn’t afraid, he didn’t feel fear. In Larcy’s view, 2567 was just a lucky bastard who had acquired special powers.

Larcy had seen a lot of commoners acquire powers overnight, causing them to lose themselves and ultimately be devoured by their own powers, similar to those overnight millionaires.

Larcy was different from those people. He received harsh training since young and grinded his skills, raising his strength in the harshest reality.

If those Extraordinary individuals who had awoken their powers were overnight millionaires, Larcy was a noble heir who inherited his family’s power.

He controlled his powers like his own arms. Each baptism ritual he went through, each inheritance that he got, it made him proud of his background because he realized he was the best, the only one in his training camp, hence the name that was presented to him.

Tensile and great.

Therefore, he deemed himself to be more worthy than 2567, bearing the title of Emperor.

Although no one knew about him now, he would be known by many with the title in the future.

With a strong belief in his mind, Larcy initiated his backup plan.

His backup plan acted as a contingency for unexpected events but… it wasn’t going smoothly.

An ignorant clown disrupted his arrangements and he didn’t think he should hold back at the provocations. Other than the insults, he was ready to make his entrance to the public in a direct way.

What about the illusory realm he was in now? The library?

It may seem dangerous, but it was nothing to him. He had been through a lot in his simulation battles.

He knew that as long as he located the keypoint, he could break through the difficulties with ease and he might be able to use it to his own advantage, to counter the people who created the illusory realm.

When he saw the little girl in a pink lolita dress squatting down while sobbing, Larcy halted in his steps.

She looked cute and soft in his eyes, his instinct telling him the little girl was very weak.

But in his perception, aside from the weak and pitiful look, she was stronger than a common man but not absurdly so.

This little girl was without a question the best keypoint to break through the illusory realm.

“Will you tell me where the exit is?” Larcy asked heavily.

“Sob sob sob, scared.”

As though the little girl was frightened by his words, the sobs turned into a loud cry, chipping at Larcy’s patience because he had no time to waste here.

With the little girl’s delicate face and blue eyes making her look like a doll, especially the misty look in her teary sapphire eyes, one would have the urge to protect her at a single glance, but that was for the commoners.

For Larcy, a trained professional, he neglected the little girl’s charms and landed a dagger in her neck.

“Tell me or I’ll kill you!” said Larcy coldly. To prove that he wasn’t bluffing, he pushed his dagger a little bit deeper into her neck.

He wasn’t really going to kill her, all he wanted was to make her bleed to scare her, but… the tip of his dagger didn’t feel like it had poked through fragile skin. It felt more like it had struck iron-plated armor!

His left hand, which held the little girl by the neck, suddenly felt extremely heavy, unable to continue grabbing the little girl, forcing him to let go.

As the little girl fell out of his hand, Larcy saw the little girl grow in size rapidly and transform into a giant. Larcy was jolted before he smiled in disdain.

“Illusions in an illusory realm? I’ve seen this many times in the training camp! The more you resist, the more it proves that I am right about you being the keypoint!”

Larcy charged the giant who he thought was an illusion without pause.

It was just an illusion! It would break with a single blow!

He would never feel that kind of resistance again like his dagger hitting some iron-plated armor!

DING!

Larcy’s dagger landed on the giant’s calf. It didn’t feel like he had hit some iron-plated armor. Out of his expectation, it turned out worse because it felt like he was striking a tank’s armor and Averdore Lily was much scarier than a tank!

Wung!

The giant palm clenched tightly into a fist and swung down at Larcy, accompanied by a violent wind which messed up his expression.

BANG!

Larcy was almost crushed into a pile of meat with that single punch, as though he was an egg hammered down by a mullet. The tremendous force tore his muscles, broke his bones, and crushed his organs. It even smashed through the floor and sent Larcy back down to the second floor.

He saw Agernessa again.

“Do you think I’m pretty?”

Agernessa asked again when she saw him but Larcy, whose bones were all broken, didn’t even care about her. His eyes went blank at the big hole at the ceiling.

Larcy was in a daze and in the last moments of his life, he heard faint sobbing enter his ears.

“Sob sob sob, so scary, I punch you on the chest with my punchy.”

Larcy widened his eyes, twitching a few times before dying a restless death.

The old broken car stopped in front of an unfinished farm in the outskirts of Alkender City.

A “No Entry” sign and a few pieces of giant rocks with fences around it blocked the way. The journey beyond this point must be on foot.

“Here it is,” the scared shooter said.

“Em. Get out,” Ferris nodded, getting out of the car and opening his black umbrella.

Compared to the rain in the city, it was a storm in the outskirts without the buildings as a buffer. The unfinished farm was muddy from the storm, shoes and boots sucked deep into the ground when one walked across it, extra effort required to pull them out.

The shooter, who acted as a guide, was struggling as he walked forward with unbalanced steps.

Ferris, with the umbrella, walked behind the shooter as though he was walking on a flat asphalt road. The mud beneath his feet was frozen into solid ice blocks, none of the muddy dirt tainting his shoes.

Wouldn’t he slip if he walked on ice?

After Ferris had woken his ability, he had never slipped on ice. Despite his ability beeing freezing air, he felt close and had an indescribable feeling to ice.

The duo walked from the entrance of the unfinished farm to the only building in the middle. They had to spend almost 20 minutes covering the distance. The shooter was pale and shivering after the difficult journey but he dared not slow down to the door.

Bang Bang Bang!

The shooter knocked on the door loudly.

“Boss, it’s me,” said the shooter.

No one answered though. The shooter thought it was the storm, so he knocked on the door harder and shouted louder.

There was still no answer and after a while, even the shooter, who felt uncomfortable under the storm, noticed something wasn’t right, let alone Ferris.

Even with the muddy smell and rain, Ferris managed to pick up a dense bloody stench from inside the building.

Based on his past experience, Ferris deduced at least three men had their throat sliced.

“Break in,” Ferris said without further ado.

“Oh, Oh!” The shooter hesitated for a moment, but when he saw the cold expression on Ferris’ face, he kicked down the door.

BANG!

A loud thud later, the door fell and the bloody stench came out.

The scared, uncomfortable shooter, who stood in front of the entrance, couldn’t hold back anymore when he was assaulted by the bloody stench, grabbing the door frame and throwing up badly.

Ferris walked past him, closing his umbrella and walking in.

The bloody stench got thicker after he entered but Ferris walked deeper without being bothered.

He walked through the corridor and saw the two bodies beside the dining table and one more near the stairs.

The two bodies at the dining table had lost their heads, the cuts clean and sharp, while the body on the stairs had his throat stabbed, the cut also clean.

Ferris glanced over the bloodstained milk and bread on the table, naturally painting the picture in his mind: when the shooter left in the morning, the rest stayed behind for breakfast and then someone infiltrated the building quietly.

The two having breakfast didn’t notice the infiltrator until their heads were cut off.

The noise produced when the heads fell on the floor startled the person upstairs. He called out to his accomplices before he walked down carefully and his throat was stabbed. Despite holding a gun, he didn’t get to fire it.

“Can’t tell whether the attacker had awakened his ability but he must be skilled in infiltration and very fast. He should be very skilled in handling a dagger or a short knife.”

Ferris was once a math teacher, so he was able to clearly analyse the clues at the scene. He then turned towards the corridor beside the dining area.

At the end of the mentioned corridor was an open underground vault.

“The things are hidden in the underground vault?”

Ferris went back and asked the vomiting shooter.

“Y-Yes! We hid all the things in the underground vault, at least it was there before,” the shooter answered with a stutter.

His partners died one after another and it inflicted quite the damage to the shooter, fear rising in his heart unknowingly.

Ferris then headed back to the opened underground vault. It was dark inside from where he was looking.

“Where are the switches for the lights?” Ferris asked.

“Beside your hand,” the shooter wobbled over and pointed to the switch on the wall.

Pak!

Ferris pulled the switch. A clear rustling noise later, the underground vault was lit up.

It was very messy inside, with many opened boxes, all the signs telling Ferris that he was one step too late.

He spent almost a whole day on this lead and he missed it?

The feeling was undoubtedly terrible.

Ferris frowned and wanted to step down for further investigation.

“I wouldn’t go in if I were you.”

A voice came from behind him.

Ferris turned around quickly while his freezing aura spread. He saw a smiling man holding the shooter in his hand.

Something had happened to the shooter, a very subtle change, a change that a common man wouldn’t notice but for Ferris, an Extraordinary individual, he noticed a dark and chilly aura on the shooter when he laid eyes on him.

Something must have happened to the shooter while Ferris was looking down at the underground vault.

But compared to the shooter, Ferris was more concerned about the man who appeared out of nowhere.

“It’s you?”

Ferris squinted his eyes at Bloody Mary. He knew about the Superior Demon, not that well but he knew both of them served the same person and it was enough.

The freezing aura went away as Ferris looked at Bloody Mary, waiting for a reasonable explanation.

“Something happened, you might become an opening for the enemy, so boss sent me here,” Bloody Mary threw the shooter on the ground.

The moment the body touched the ground, it turned into a cloud of supernatural darkness, swiftly dispersing into the air.

“This is that little ‘something’.”

Bloody Mary then walked to the underground vault.

“You are going down there?” Ferris furrowed his brows.

“Of course. Otherwise why am I here, waiting for the party to arrive? This is my job,” Bloody Mary shrugged with a helpless expression. It then continued with a smile, “Thank you for the concern but don’t worry, I am not like you. You should not go down there but me, I’ll be fine because I’m stronger than you.”

Bloody Mary then jumped into the underground vault.