Chapter 169
No matter how powerful the Nostra clan was on the continent, they were nothing more than a petty criminal organization in front of the Draker clan name.
The only reason Draker left them alone was because it was too much of a hassle.
Skin, sweating, said to Zeke,
"Why would a noble like you get involved in this muddy situation? If there's anything you need, please let me know. I will serve you to the best of my ability."
Resistance was meaningless once he knew his opponent was a Draker.
Zeke didn't answer and looked at the curly-haired young man next to Skin.
"Are you a bloodline ability user from the clan?"
Skin answered instead of the young man.
"He was assigned as my nephew's bodyguard. He has a bloodline ability, but it's limited... I'm raising and using him because it was a waste to discard him from the main clan."
Zeke nodded. He threw daggers, finishing off the still-fighting Cyclops and Minotaur in an instant, and then turned towards Skin.
"Alright, Skin, I have something to ask you."
"Please speak."
"Tell me everything you know about Vincenzo Rossi, who manages Dario Tottrino's funds."
Skin's face turned pale at Zeke's words.
He shook his head and stepped back.
"Sir, I'm just a lowly underling who delivers goods. I don't know anything about the affairs of those high-ranking people."
"I know you're a low-ranking member. But you're related to Vincenzo Rossi on your mother's side, aren't you? It was Vincenzo who covered up the trouble you caused outside your territory. Am I wrong?"
Skin's face hardened at Zeke's words.
Only a few people knew about his relationship with Vincenzo Rossi. And most of them knew because they were family.
As Zeke approached the speechless Skin, Bisco drew blood from his palm and took a stance to spray it.
"You're thinking of using your bloodline ability. It probably won't work on me."
Ignoring Zeke's warning, Bisco sprayed his blood.
Splat!
It was then.
Woooong!
[Skill Curse Reflection reflects the 'Hallucination' curse.]
The bloodline ability was reflected, and Bisco himself was affected.
Zeke, seeing the message, found it unexpected that Curse Reflection had activated.
'It must have recognized the bloodline ability as a curse because of the hallucination effect.'
"Ugh!"
Bisco didn't seem to be completely affected, perhaps because it was his own ability. He looked at Zeke with a bewildered expression.
In an instant, a dagger appeared in Zeke's hand and flew towards Bisco.
Thud!
Bisco, with the dagger lodged in his shoulder, groaned and fell backward.
Zeke slowly approached Skin.
Skin rolled on the ground, trying to escape from Zeke.
"D-don't come! Don't come!"
He picked up the repeating crossbow that one of the gang members was holding and shot at Zeke.
Whoosh!
Zeke caught all the arrows with his hands. Skin, seeing his unbelievable sleight of hand, lost all will to resist.
Zeke approached Skin with a dagger and said,
"Whether you die slowly or quickly, you're going to die anyway. If you save me time, I promise you a painless death."
Contrary to his cruel reputation, Skin burst into tears in the face of death.
And soon, the crying turned into screams.
***
The first thing Bisco saw when he opened his eyes was Frank's face.
"M-my lord, you're awake."
Bisco, regaining consciousness at Frank's voice, sat up abruptly.
He looked around and flinched as he saw Zeke sitting on the chair, his hands trembling.
Zeke said to Frank,
"Get out."
Frank left the office without a word.
Bisco looked at Zeke with eyes mixed with wariness and fear.
Then, Zeke said to Bisco,
"I want to hear about the Nostra clan's bloodline ability users."
Bisco's eyes wavered at those words.
Zeke, seeing Bisco's reaction, put down his teacup and said,
"Are you saying you can't speak because you don't have a tongue?"
Just as Bisco was about to nod, he felt something strange.
"Huh?"
He could feel his tongue in his mouth, which had been cut off long ago.
"H-how...?"
It was the first time in ten years that Bisco could speak properly.
Zeke picked up his teacup again and said,
"Think of it as me receiving the price for the information you'll give me in advance."
Bisco looked at Zeke with a bewildered expression.
He had heard many rumors about Draker, but he didn't know they could even restore a severed tongue.
He got off the sofa and knelt before Zeke.
"Please spare me."
Bisco had a stronger survival instinct than anyone else.
Even when he was kidnapped by the Nostra clan and underwent harsh training, he survived.
Even when he was about to be disposed of because his bloodline ability didn't manifest properly, he found a way to be useful and somehow survived.
Even though he lost his tongue, he was content with just being alive.
Bisco prostrated himself and begged Zeke to spare him.
Zeke, looking at Bisco, said,
"It seems you don't have much loyalty to the Nostra clan."
Bisco raised his head and said,
"All I have left for them is hatred."
Zeke, staring at him intently, grinned.
"I like the look in your eyes."
Zeke gestured for Bisco to take a seat.
Bisco poured out the story of the Nostra clan's bloodline ability users without hesitation.
Zeke, listening to Bisco's story, asked with a serious expression,
"You're saying they injected you with drugs?"
Bisco nodded.
"Yes. They injected us with drugs every other week, and there were also pills to take. There were cases where bloodline abilities were strengthened after the injection, but if you were unlucky... you could go crazy, have seizures, and die."
Zeke's face hardened at the story of them kidnapping children who weren't even ten years old and conducting some kind of human experimentation.
Bisco continued,
"I was also administered the drugs, but my bloodline ability wasn't strengthened. Instead, its characteristics changed."
"How so?"
"Originally, my bloodline ability was to cause explosions with blood. It was a unique ability, and they seemed to think it would be useful, so I received special treatment in the lab at first. But after the drug administration, its characteristics changed to cause hallucinations."
"So they decided to discard you when your ability changed."
"Yes. Even after stopping the drug injections, the changed ability didn't return. After various experiments, I was eventually deemed to be disposed of, but luckily, I survived."
Zeke, hearing Bisco's words, recalled what Boris had said.
He had heard that they brought in bloodline ability users to strengthen their own bloodline abilities, but the atrocity of conducting experiments like this wasn't known.
'This smells like those Empire bastards.'
The Empire was creating weapons of war through secret human experiments, from stimulants and synthetic poisons to the Red Flower Plague.
The experiments on the Nostra clan's bloodline ability users could also be a plan to create weapons of war.
Bisco cautiously said to Zeke, who was lost in thought,
"There's something I want to tell you."
"Speak."
Bisco prostrated himself again and said in a desperate voice,
"Please take me in. Even as a slave. Please allow me to serve you."
Bisco, bowing his head, was like a fighting dog abandoned by its owner and not knowing what to do.
Zeke looked at Bisco and slowly opened his mouth.
"How can I trust you?"
Bisco raised his head and said,
"I'll do anything you want. You can take my tongue back, or you can take my eyes. Just let me serve you."
Zeke looked at Bisco and then gestured for him to come closer. Then, he placed his hand on Bisco's head.
"Stay still."
Zeke was thinking of testing Dragon's Sense on Bisco.
He had used Dragon's Sense to peek into the memories of objects, but this was his first time using it on a person.
Woooong!
As the Dragon's Sense skill activated, Bisco's memories instantly flowed into Zeke's mind.
Crash!
Bisco's memories and emotions flashed by quickly.
'Survival instinct, fear of loss, endless hatred...'
His heart was filled with negative emotions.
But even so, Bisco was prepared to do anything to survive.
Zeke, having looked into his past and emotions with Dragon's Sense, nodded.
"Alright. I'll take you in."
At Zeke's words, Bisco slammed his forehead on the ground and bowed.
"Thank you. I will devote my loyalty to you, Boss!"
Zeke was thinking of entrusting Bisco to Boris.
'If he's trained well, he could become a decent informant.'
The first requirement for an informant was a survival instinct.
Only with the will to live could one maintain composure and not lose their mind in extreme situations. Of course, there was also the possibility of betrayal, but Zeke wasn't one to be ruined by the betrayal of one or two people.
In that sense, Bisco already met the condition.
Zeke paid Frank a reward on his desk, then immediately left Argos with Bisco.
One of the established organizations in Argos disappeared without a trace, and Skin and the other members were reported to have died from encountering monsters in the dungeon.
There was no trace of Zeke's involvement.
***
Zeke entered Heli with Bisco.
Boris, who had already settled in, greeted Zeke.
Boris and the Rose Knights were waiting at the safe house prepared by the Syndicate.
Zeke handed Bisco over to Boris and said,
"He seems useful, so I picked him up. Raise him well."
Bisco, quick-witted, immediately prostrated himself before Boris and bowed.
"Please give me any task!"
Boris, looking at Bisco, whom he had to take care of unexpectedly, closed his eyes and trembled, his workload increasing.
"I should have just died by the Boss's hand back then."
"Boris, you need to look at the world more positively."
Boris sighed and briefly explained the situation in Heli to Zeke.
"It's cleaner than I thought. At least on the surface, it's hard to find any connections to criminal organizations. It seems they mostly do money laundering and fund management here."
Zeke nodded at Boris's words.
It was none other than the Siemens clan who managed Heli.
Siemens, one of the major powers among Draker's allies, along with the Graham clan, was one of the forces that controlled the central continent's financial world.
Thanks to that, many headquarters of famous companies and trading houses were concentrated in Heli.
The taxes they paid alone were a tremendous amount, so Siemens was always wealthy and used those funds to generate even more capital.
Zeke frowned as he looked at the data Boris brought.
"It's not obvious, but you're saying there are many companies with suspicious cash flow?"
Boris nodded.
"Yes. It's a method of laundering criminal funds by setting up dozens of shell companies and circulating money between them to make the source untraceable. It's a method mainly used by the Nostra clan."
The Nostra clan, being a long-standing organization, knew how to handle money.
Zeke looked through the list of shell companies that Boris had extracted and pointed at one.
"This is it."
Boris, surprised that Zeke picked one out right away, looked at the company Zeke pointed to.
"I didn't consider this one to be that important..."
Zeke closed the file and said,
"There's an accountant here who manages Dario's funds. A guy named Vincenzo Rossi."
Boris was surprised at those words.
"If we can catch that guy, it'll be easy to track the flow of funds in reverse."
Zeke nodded.
"If we cut off the funds, there will be a reaction from Dario's side."
Pascal, the leader of the Rose Knights, who was listening to Zeke and Boris's conversation, held up his mace with a determined expression and said,
"Then should we raid them now?"
Boris shook his head.
"Squad Leader Pascal, I keep telling you, this is their territory, so we have to be careful with our actions. Please be patient."
"Tsk."
Pascal and the other Rose Knights lowered their maces with disappointed expressions.
The members of the Rose Knights all had rough faces and scars all over their bodies.
They were those who had actually lived in the underworld, so although they were essentially holy knights, they acted no different from gangsters.
Boris pressed his throbbing temples with his thumb and said to Zeke,
"Boss, would you believe me if I said I was more at ease when I was a continental criminal?"
"Just think of it as your karma and give up, Boris. You'll feel better."
'If only he could keep his mouth shut.'
Zeke roughly appeased Boris, who was grumbling inwardly, and together they devised a plan to draw out Vincenzo Rossi.
But an easy method unexpectedly presented itself.
"Black Ore Mine Investment Briefing?"