Chapter 711: Knowing What’s Already Known
“Aaaaaaaahhh!!!”
Inside a prison painted red.
“Aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!”
A woman’s desperate scream echoed.
It was a sound as if someone was being decapitated.
And indeed, it was happening — at least in sensation.
The woman’s head was not actually severed, but she was experiencing the agony of decapitation, endlessly repeating.
“Where are Joe and Forest?”
“Damn you! I don’t know!! Aaaah... aaahhhh...!!”
Astonishingly, even though her head was not truly severed, Davidel Gabel, who was beyond the decapitated puppet, did not answer Oliver’s question.
It was the question of where Joe and Forest were being held.
Yet Oliver kept repeating the same question, like a broken radio.
“Where are Joe and Forest?”
“I don’t know! I told you, I don’t know...!! Just kill me!! Urgh...!”
As the unbearable pain of decapitation continued, Davidel’s scream gradually faded.
It was a rare phenomenon.
The greatest advantage of corpse puppetry, known as the pinnacle of Manipulation-type Black Magic, was its safety.
Handling a corpse puppet demanded exceptional skill, extensive knowledge, and enormous funding, but if one met those conditions, absolute safety could be guaranteed.
A sorcerer could control a corpse puppet from a safe location, performing tasks at a distance.
Pain could be blocked through the ritual, freeing them from suffering, and, if necessary, they could sever the connection and retreat at any time.
Just as Davidel had intended to do as her head was about to be torn off.
“Ahhh... ahh...”
But she had failed.
Oliver held her puppet head in his grasp, preventing her from disconnecting.
Davidel was screaming in agony, feeling the pain of her puppet’s decapitation for this very reason.
Because Oliver wished it so. He wanted her to suffer.
“Ahhh...”
This was dangerous.
Although the corpse puppet was technically independent of the sorcerer, the shared experience of pain changed things.
Just as the body affects the mind, the mind can, in turn, influence the body.
If Davidel continued to feel the pain of decapitation, her physical body would likely be unable to endure the stress.
Davidel knew this as well.
Yet she still stubbornly insisted she didn’t know where Forest and Joe were.
For her foster parent and Black Magic mentor, Puppet.
“How... complicated you people are.”
Oliver paused at a secluded corner of the blood-stained hallway, where corpses were scattered.
At that moment, Davidel’s pain-blurred eyes suddenly opened wide.
Why?
Was it because Oliver had found where Forest and Joe were imprisoned even though she hadn’t told him? Or was it the sheer malice of Oliver’s repetitive questions that had shocked her?
Whatever the answer was, she didn’t know.
Nor did Oliver — he was simply acting. Simply.
“Where are Joe and Forest?”
Even though he stood right at the entrance, Oliver shamelessly repeated the same question.
An inexplicable sense of despair, humiliation, and terror washed over Davidel.
Flash.
At that moment, Oliver lifted the head he was holding, forcing her eyes to meet his own.
Thanks to this, Davidel could see them.
Those empty yet unfathomable eyes of Oliver’s.
The moment she met that void, Davidel felt an overwhelming discomfort, as if her very soul was being dissected.
“...I don’t... know...”
Davel wished for death instead.
If she remained in his grip, she felt she would lose herself entirely. Something untouchably sacred within her felt twisted in his presence. This monster was capable of doing so.
So, Davidel found herself wishing for death. At this moment, while carrying out Puppet’s will, dying seemed to her a meaningful end.
‘...But, why?’
Yet death did not come. It was within reach, just an inch away, but it came no closer.
“Because I want it that way.”
Oliver, locking eyes with her, revealed the reason.
The reason why she couldn’t die.
Because Oliver wanted it that way.
He wanted this to go on forever.
...
“Ahh... ahhh...”
As he explained the reason behind his consistent question, Davidel let out a different kind of moan from before.
Oliver casually held Davidel’s head once more, then tapped the wall with the quarterstaff he held in his other hand to open a concealed door.
Creak...
A hidden door, disguised as part of the wall, slid open, revealing a staircase.
Descending these stairs would lead to a hidden underground prison used to detain prisoners for covert escapes.
“No, no—”
“Shh.”
When Oliver made a gesture for silence, Davidel’s lips sealed shut, as if stitched, preventing her from making any sound.
Because of this, Davidel, in her decapitated puppet state, could neither scream nor speak.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
In this state, Oliver descended the staircase, and soon, the entrance to the underground secret prison appeared below.
“Haa...”
Oliver let out a very soft sigh.
Joe and Forest, and surprisingly, Captain Hook were all here.
Realizing that he was about to meet them, Oliver recalled the time he had met Mari again.
When he had returned to Landa, filled with courage, to confront her and her sins.
Tap.
Oliver took another step forward.
“What... what happened upstairs...?”
From behind the bars of the underground prison, Forest cautiously poked his face out and began to speak but quickly fell silent.
It was no wonder, given that Oliver, who had disappeared to the Central Continent, now returned carrying the head of a female prison guard.
“Dave?”
Forest muttered reflexively, too shocked to stop himself. Hearing this, Joe and Captain Hook, who were also imprisoned in separate cells, poked their heads out to look at Oliver.
“Dave...”
They called out Oliver’s alias, just as Forest had.
It was an alias derived from Kent’s deceased son.
Why was he using that name now?
“Greetings.”
Oliver, who had left for the Central Continent with the Archpriest to bring down the Piper, suddenly appeared in the prison and greeted them.
It was the Oliver way of doing things.
To be honest, Oliver was the kind of person capable of almost anything.
However, this time felt different.
Forest sensed something unfamiliar about Oliver as he stood there, watching them.
This was unlike when he returned emaciated, or with a burnt arm.
One’s outward appearance changes easily, but the interior is not so simple.
This time, something within Oliver had changed. Whether it was for better or worse, Forest could not tell.
“Captain Hook, what brings you here?”
While Forest was deep in thought, Oliver turned to ask Captain Hook.
This man was supposed to be in Bin City.
“Let's just say I made the wrong choice of ally.”
“What about Mr. Ewan?”
“Yes, it’s a long story.”
“We’re here to help you.”
Joe, who had been listening in, interjected.
“When the zombie army attacked Landa, Captain Hook came to help us. He even brought a flying ship. Though things didn’t go as planned...”
“Is that so?”
It was quite a touching tale, but Oliver’s reaction was indifferent.
However, no one dared question his reaction.
Partly due to the strange, indescribable tension that Oliver emitted, but even more so because they were filled with questions of their own.
Questions about what had happened on the Central Continent, if he had truly defeated the Piper, whether it had any connection to the disappearance of holy magic, and the origin of the prison guard’s head he held, how he had entered the prison, and most importantly, why he had come.
“Nora asked me to.”
Oliver answered the questions no one had dared to ask.
As if he could read their thoughts.
When Jo heard him mention the young girl he’d been looking after on behalf of a deceased friend, she reacted.
“Nora?”
“Yes... She told me I didn’t need to apologize. Instead, she asked me to save Joe. Perhaps if not for her, I wouldn’t have come here.”
As Joe, trapped in the prison, tried to make sense of his words, preparing to ask what he meant...
Rumble, rumble, rumble!
The entire structure began to shake.
The prison, which had been designed to withstand even the rampages of superhumans.
The ominous tremor only grew stronger, advancing closer and closer. Before long, it became clear that this was no mere illusion.
Boom!!
A monstrous surge of blood and flesh, impossible to count, surged into the underground prison like a tidal wave.
“...!”
The sight was enough to make even the most hardened underworld broker, enforcer, and sea-roving pirate recoil in horror.
Only Oliver remained unfazed.
As the wave of flesh, blood, and bone rushed toward him, poised to engulf the entire underground prison, it halted just before it touched Oliver’s body, then gradually receded.
As if it possessed its own will.
Writhing... writhing...
Made of human blood, bone, and flesh, it twisted like clay, beginning to form into a shape. Foaming and shifting, it eventually took the form of a human.
An elderly man around sixty-three, bald on top, with prominent earlobes, thick eyebrows, and a mustache and beard.
A face that seemed stern yet kind.
Facing this eerie figure, Oliver greeted him.
“Hello, Puppet.”
...
The blood that had painted the prison, along with the scattered flesh and bone, gathered together in the underground prison and took on the form of a person.
The sight froze the expression of the pirate who had searched for Neverland his whole life.
The enforcer who survived in Landa’s roughest W-District turned pale.
And the underworld broker, who risked his life at every misstep, gagged in revulsion.
No matter how tough a life one had led, such a sight was beyond anything they had ever seen.
Yet, to Oliver, it was a familiar scene.
“You’ve learned an interesting trick.”
Oliver recalled the elderly man on a horse and the woman on a camel.
A power that used human sacrifices to manifest consciousness in the real world.
“Being proficient in Manipulation, I don’t like waste. I didn’t come here to occupy Landa, but since I’ve taken control, I thought I’d put it to good use. Including the Hell’s Fissure.”
Now, he understood what Hell’s Fissure was.
Since his arrival in Landa, he had sensed a familiar energy from hell.
And Mari had filled him in on what had happened.
As they worked to clean up the aftermath of the Piper’s devastation, hell’s fissures had appeared in various places across the city beyond the reach of administrative control.
Puppet was taking advantage of that power.
The hellish energy seeping from the fissure.
Considering his existence over hundreds of years, it was hardly surprising.
But Oliver was more intrigued by something else.
“You didn’t want this?”
Oliver asked again, knowing it was true but wanting to hear it directly from Puppet’s mouth.
“Yes, I didn’t want to invade Landa. It’s far too risky.”
Puppet admitted.
That he feared Oliver.
Nonetheless, Puppet overcame that fear and invaded, effectively seizing control of Landa.
“Because you broke your promise first.”
“I never broke any promises to you, Puppet.”
“But you did break it with the Piper. You left Prince Albert unprotected, despite your promise not to interfere.”
It was a shocking revelation for anyone hearing it for the first time — Puppet had ordered the Piper to kidnap Prince Albert.
“I kept my promise to you, through Unyielding Knee.”
“It doesn’t matter who made the promise. The point is, the promise itself was broken. And here’s proof — you’re already breaking the promise by holding her puppet head.”
With a gesture of flesh and bone, Puppet pointed at the decapitated puppet head Oliver held in one hand.
Inside the head was the consciousness of Davidel Gabel, whom Puppet had raised and trained as his disciple.
Without hesitation, Oliver threw Davidel’s head straight at Puppet.
Whizzing through the air, her eyes widened in terror, and Puppet swatted it aside as though it were trash, shattering it.
It all happened in an instant.
No one could fully comprehend what was going on, yet it was clear that none of these were acts befitting mere mortals.
Every person present was no longer human but something else entirely.
“...You’re not even surprised.”
Puppet observed Oliver’s impassive expression, even after he had destroyed Davidel’s head.
It was less a question than a means to continue the conversation.
“It was just a puppet, trying to mimic a person. Hardly surprising.”