902: Tremors

After knocking the dragonkin out, we turned over to the evil crystals. They kept radiating a dense fiendish aura, as usual.

The evil contained in these crystals was way more than the ones we saw in Bulbora. Now that I think about it, that’s not a surprise considering all the energy-packed antidemons here.

This continent was basically the perfect environment for gathering evil energy. There’s no way we can let anyone perform a ritual here.

『Shatter it, then put the fragments in storage. We won’t leave anything behind.』

「Nn. I’ll destroy them.」

I thought about saving some as evidence, but that would be pretty scary. Especially since we don’t know who we can trust here.

We’ve already got the dragonkin as living proof, so we can give them a shard later or something.

「Black Lightning Princess, can we leave it to you?」

「Nn.」

Drulay and the others moved back out of the way.

They knew the evil crystals wouldn’t break easily.

Fran took a deep, quiet breath, holding me at waist height. Then, she swung down her blade.

With a high pitched noise, the evil crystal was split in half by Fran’s Sheaths of Wind.

『Whoa!』

（Master? Are you okay?）

『Y-Yeah, I’m fine. I was just a little surprised at the evil energy flowing into me.』

（Evil energy? Did you cannibalize it?）

『No, nothing like that…』

The evil energy got sucked into my blade as if it was a sponge absorbing water. It didn’t heal me or anything, it just vanished into thin air.

Could it be because of my Evil Domination skill? Or did the Evil God Fragment sealed inside me affect something?

This made me a little uneasy, but I didn’t feel anything in particular from the Evil God Fragment’s seal. What in the world just happened…?

I turned my attention to my inner self, but I still wasn’t able to figure it out.

『Announcer-san, do you know what’s going on?』

《Negative. Confirmed the disappearance of evil energy. Individual Master did not sustain any damage. Currently investigating the presence of further anomalies.》

If Announcer-san has no clue what’s going on, there’s not much I can do. Still plenty of crystals left, so I’ll keep――

「Urgaaaaaaaaahhh!」

Suddenly, a crazed roar echoed through the room. Like I had worried, the dragonkin were affected.

「They’ve gone berserk again.」

『It seems the hypnosis has been broken too.』

The captive dragonkin woke up and began writhing violently. They attacked us with skills and magic despite being tied up.

If I had destroyed the evil crystals during the interrogation, we would never have been able to get them to talk.

After that, we couldn’t manage to knock them out again, so they just kept on rampaging. Some of them even broke their own arms trying to tear off the ropes that bound them.

And even then, they did not stop. They’ll escape sooner or later at this rate. All we could do now was put an end to them.

It’s a pity, because I would have liked to turn them in as witnesses.

『Let’s deal with the rest of the evil crystals for now. Since we failed to get any witnesses, it might not be a good idea to destroy all of them though.』

（Then what do we do?）

『I’ll grab one of them first.』

I really wanted to avoid to putting these in storage, but it’s the only way. After securing one evil crystal, we destroyed the rest. Like I saw earlier, the evil energy still got sucked into my sword.

（Master. How is it? Do you feel strange?）

『I don’t feel any different.』

（Good.）

We also split up and destroyed the magic circle on the floor together. I used Magic Disruption, while the others attacked by chipping away at the floor.

I couldn’t sense any more mana in the room, so we should have completely thwarted the Dragon King’s plan.

We’ve destroyed his ritual completely, but there’s still another passage. I really doubt the Dragon King will be down there, but we need to check it out.

The group moved forward with Fran in the lead. Well, they tried to, but――

Boom! Roooar!

Suddenly, a huge impact shook the underground passageway, stopping Fran and the others in their tracks. Immediately after the impact, there was another tremor.

Pebbles fell from the ceiling of the tunnel, with dust flying through the air.

It didn’t feel like an earthquake, so what the hell just happened?

「We hurry and leave.」

「O-Okay!」

Unlike the previous tunnel, this passageway was very makeshift. To be honest, it might collapse at any moment.

We decided to cancel the search and rush back to the entrance.

Fran and I cast a support spell on all of us, after which we dashed through the underground passageway as fast as possible. By the time we returned to the plaza, all but Fran and Urushi were drenched in sweat.

『I don’t see the outlaws anymore.』

（Nn.）

Did they just leave? Or was it something to do with the tremor? We checked out the branch office of the Dragon King Syndicate, but the building was deserted too.

Perhaps they left in a hurry, since there were half-eaten fruits and unfinished drinks on the table. We looked upstairs, but no one was there either.

「What happened?」

「Not even a liaison left behind…」

The dragonkin who followed us back through the underground passage growled with a look of annoyance. It seems they found the situation at their base unusual as well.

That’s when we heard Drulay’s voice, who was waiting outside.

「Sis! I heard what’s going on!」

「Really?」

「Yes.」

It seems he and his buddies went asking around instead of just waiting outside.

We returned to the plaza and asked them to tell us what they learned. That’s when we found out about the terrible occurrence.

Although it was impossible to see from here because of the buildings in the way, a part of the city wall had collapsed.

We rushed up to the rooftop of the building and confirmed that one section of the huge wall surrounding the city had indeed been destroyed.

The incident happened near the east gate. Even from this distance, I could see a fairly large portion of the wall missing, a length of more than 100 meters.

The wall’s collapse probably caused the tremor from earlier.

The dragonkin at this branch must have been dispatched to deal with the issue. Then, the remaining dragonkin went to their headquarters to ask for instructions from their superiors.

The beastmen likely did the same.

「Sis! We’re going back to the hideout too. Sorry for all the trouble we caused you.」

「Nn. Say hi to Bryne and the others.」

「Sure.」

We’ll have to get back to the guild. We need to let them know what happened to the attackers, and maybe we can get some more information about the collapsed wall.

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