“Human… do you know one thing? Losing someone important is an excruciating pain… I don’t know what your relationship is with my esteemed Princess, but if I kill her right in front of you, won’t you get to experience my suffering?”
Manson Montgomery had been a cadre of Red Gear in his youth—a captain-level figure with Platinum Tier strength.
He prided himself on having the power to slaughter everyone here, Sang included, yet he held back for the moment. He wanted Sang to taste the agony of losing a loved one.
After all… he had only this one son.
Manson Montgomery, a father who cherished his son above all else, now sought only to plunge Sang into despair.
“Let me go!” Iyefut Cape struggled fiercely.
Crack!
Unlike Morton’s immaturity, Manson as a father possessed iron resolve. He acted with ruthless efficiency, without a shred of hesitation. The instant Iyefut struggled, he snapped her wrist with a brutal twist.
“Please, just stay quiet for a moment, won’t you? Princess…”
“Hiss…” Pain brought tears to Iyefut’s eyes, but she held her noble poise and didn’t cry out. “Has the Montgomery Family lost its mind?”
Manson Montgomery merely swept a cold glance over Iyefut. Researching the 【Philosopher’s Stone】 was his decision, and he had long steeled himself to turn against the Cape Family.
Everything now, though sudden, fell within his expectations.
Only one thing did not: his son was dead.
Perhaps moved by Sang and Iyefut Cape’s actions, the slaves who had cowered silently in their cages began shouting one by one, demanding that Manson release her.
In an instant, however, Manson Montgomery slashed mercilessly with his iron sword, carving through both slaves and cages alike. Over a dozen perished on the spot, while dozens more suffered wounds of varying severity.
Sang glanced at the dead and injured slaves, his anger igniting for real this time. He fixed Manson with a venomous glare, grinding his teeth as he spat, “You’re a real piece of work. The pain you dish out to others? Natural as breathing. The pain they give back? An atrocity.”
“Of course… The weak exist to be crushed by the strong. Isn’t that the fundamental law of survival? That’s how I raised my son…”
This man was the polar opposite of Snow Hill’s Knight’s Way—and precisely the sort that turned Sang’s stomach.
As he spoke, Manson Montgomery clamped one hand around Iyefut’s throat and hoisted her into the air. He fully intended to kill her, but he refused to let her go easily.
Iyefut teetered on the brink of suffocation. Nearby, Bob and Nancy could only plead with Sang using their eyes; they didn’t want this beautiful big sister to die. Sang relented at once. “Stop! Your son’s not dead yet… He still clings to life…”
“And? He’s a dying ember in the wind. He’ll flicker out any moment…”
With that, Manson tightened his grip, as if determined to crush Iyefut’s neck outright. The girl fixed the boy with a gaze of helpless desperation. Sang bit his lip and pressed on. “I… I have a way to save Morton’s life…”
“Impossible!”
“It is possible… with this…”
Sang stepped forward and drew a glass vial from his bosom. Inside swirled a blood-red crystal—the 【Philosopher’s Stone】.
Manson Montgomery’s composure cracked at the sight.
A kingpin in the Dark World’s slave markets—one of its cornerstone trades—and a covert researcher of the 【Philosopher’s Stone】, he recognized the real deal in an instant.
A high-grade replica, perhaps, but brimming with potent energy. It just might save his son.
Sang seized the opening. “Release Yi Ye now, or I smash this thing right here. We both lose. Three… two…”
Before Sang could utter “one,” Manson dropped Iyefut and stormed over. He snatched the 【Philosopher’s Stone】 and hurried to Morton Montgomery’s side, where the boy lay in a pool of blood. Manson pressed the stone into the deepest part of the wound.
Meanwhile, Sang wasted no time. He scooped up the unconscious Shika and hurried to Iyefut’s side.
Her face was ghostly pale from prolonged oxygen starvation. She tried to speak, but only hoarse, garbled syllables escaped… Still, she seemed out of immediate danger…
Lost in thought for a moment, Sang teased her. “Iyefut, you big dummy!”
Her eyes flew wide at that. Mustering every ounce of strength, she shot back, “You… dummy… what… time… is this… to say… that…”
Sang grinned. “The more hopeless it gets, the more you need a joke…”
It was Sang’s go-to in the blackest moments. The day he left Kaen Town, he’d traded barbs with the whole populace. Facing Bruno in the Central or the Wolf King in the Northern Region, he’d done the same.
Iyefut Cape stared, stunned.
Just then, a commotion erupted behind them. Both whipped around.
Manson had embedded the 【Philosopher’s Stone】 at the heart of Morton’s deepest wound. The instant it met flesh, it pulsed with an eerie crimson glow. Then, like a parasitic horror, it sprouted countless tendrils—some burrowing inward, others coiling across the surface.
A mere replica, yet its power packed a punch.
Far weaker than the spectacle Sang had witnessed on Wolf King Gallo in the Northern Region, but that inauspicious aura still set nerves on edge.
At the same moment, every Titan in the warehouse grew agitated. The slaves shuddered in terror… Something dreadful was coming; they could feel it.
Moments later, Morton Montgomery lurched to his feet—a miracle, given his deathbed state.
Father Manson beamed with joy and pulled his son into a fierce embrace. “Hahaha! Worthy of the Montgomery Family heir! You won’t go down that easy!!!”
Sang and the other slaves alike found the display repulsive.
After all their atrocities, this sudden fatherly affection? Chilling.
People like you don’t deserve love.
You have no right to it—family, romance, friendship, fleeting bonds. None of it!
Suddenly, Morton Montgomery—who hadn’t uttered a word or stirred—reached for Manson. All assumed he meant to return the embrace.
They were wrong.
In the next heartbeat, he plunged his hand straight through Manson’s chest, piercing his heart.
In the one after, Morton bared Blood Race fangs and sank them into his father’s carotid artery.
Manson Montgomery was a powerhouse, true, but even titans falter when off guard. Two fatal strikes—heart and artery—left him speechless as he crumpled dead.
In his final throes, that mantra echoed in his mind: the weak must be crushed by the strong, kin or no.
Sang caught the whole scene and gaped in disbelief. He’d been racking his brain for an escape when father turned on son—and one dropped dead.
Had things taken a turn for the better?
Sang had beaten Morton once already; Manson was the real threat. Dead by ambush? That should be good news, right?
But as Sang peered closer, horror dawned. “No… something’s wrong…”
Morton Montgomery wasn’t right. He wasn’t just draining Manson’s blood—he was tearing into his flesh, a mindless shambling corpse… That knockoff 【Philosopher’s Stone】 had healed him, alright, but at the cost of his sanity.
“Wha… what’s… going on…?” Iyefut, propriety be damned, tugged at Sang’s sleeve in bewilderment.
She knew little of combat, but even she sensed the terror radiating from Morton Montgomery.
Sang moved like lightning. He snatched the key ring from Iyefut Cape’s grasp and freed the slaves as fast as he could. When he reached the cage holding that sister-and-brother pair, it lay half-smashed from Manson’s earlier sword stroke. Even so, they hadn’t emerged.
They still wouldn’t leave the cage.
They simply stared at Sang, confusion and fear etched on their faces.
The siblings especially, clinging to each other, refused to budge. They gazed at the short blue-haired youth beyond the bars, his gentle yet unyielding black eyes fixed on them. After a long pause, he fitted a key into the lock once more and extended his hand.
“Come out. It’s safe now… Take my hand. Step out!”
With those words, he offered his hand to every slave.
So slight and small, yet his presence carried an undeniable command that soothed the soul.
In that instant, the caged slaves broke down weeping, though they couldn’t say why. The little girl managed to ask, “Who… who are you, really?”
The little boy stared at the head of deep blue hair, stunned for a moment as realization dawned on him. “You… you’re the Northern Hero, aren’t you?”
He knew it couldn’t be true. After all, the blue-haired youth before him didn’t match the descriptions of the Northern Hero at all…
And yet.
In that moment, they all stubbornly clung to the belief, like a form of self-consolation.
A short while later, Sang seemed to think of something and chuckled. “I’m no hero—just a sword-swinging handsome guy.”
Just then, Bob and Nancy urged Teacher An. “Teacher An, that guy’s getting scarier by the second! We need to hurry and get out of here now!”
Iyefut Cape nodded frantically by their side. Her throat felt too raw to shout.
The pair of siblings asked, “Can you beat Morton Montgomery?”
At that, Sang just grinned and scratched his head. “I’ll do my best!”
After hesitating for a long time, the siblings finally took Sang’s hand and stepped out of the cage along with the other slaves.
Afterward,
Sang released all the slaves anyway. But there were simply too many of them—plenty of elderly, sick, and frail among them, along with a horde of children. Evacuating would take considerable time.
By now, the mutated Morton Montgomery had finished devouring his father. He… no… it turned its gaze toward the others.
Thus, a blue-haired youth stood alone before it, gripping his sword in one hand.
Sure, I’m usually a total slacker, but even I have moments when I can’t back down.
“Mad Rogue, what are you doing?” Iyefut Cape asked nervously.
Sang glanced at her and flashed a faint smile. “Whew~ Leave the rest to me. Get Shika and the others, plus all the slaves, out of here. I’ll buy you some time.”
It looked like this was finally the decisive battle!
