C252: The Truth of That Day (2)
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The officers were bleeding, no, the criminals dressed as policemen.
Rudger looked down at them coldly.
He did not feel comfortable even though he killed them more brutally than anyone else, causing them great pain.
'What a terrible world.'
Rudger thought to himself.
He thought it was a place where he would wander while hiding his identity, and even if he left, he would not even have any regrets but the world didn't turn out the way it wanted.
There was a small relationship that passed by and Rudger didn't bother to knock it down. He thought it would be good to have it, and he would be fine even if he didn't but when he looked back it was gone.
Torn and trampled by the vicious touches of others, the beautiful things fell helplessly.
Would the results have changed if he had kept paying attention from the beginning? Could Sally not be kidnapped, and Arte could have survived?
He didn't know.
Difficult mathematical formulas and magic spells can also be solved in time but this had no answer.
Even so.
'I'll do what I have to do.'
He vowed to eliminate all those involved in this incident.
It wouldn't make him feel better, but he still had to.
With this level of secrecy and with the involvement of the police there was something big happening.
Since Hans said that there were movements at the national level it was obvious that more than one person was involved.
Even if he condemns those people loudly, will anyone listen to him?
Rather, his voice will be buried in the soil.
The top brass of the country have done this and they will bury Rudger at all costs so he needed to do something else.
"You…!"
At that moment, a familiar voice came from behind him and Rudger turned his head slowly.
Casey Selmore was staring at him and her distorted face was full of complex emotions.
"Casey Selmore……."
"What the hell is this? Why are you here, and this body……?"
Casey's trembling eyes passed through the red blood on Rudger's white gloves, and soon headed to Arte's body, which fell in front of him.
Rudger immediately felt wary at her appearance.
"No, right? It's not like that, right?"
Rudger looked around at the surroundings that were filled with policemen's corpses and blood everywhere along with Rudger in the center of it all.
"Obviously, some misunderstanding……."
"Casey Selmore."
Rudger called her name and then shut up for a moment. What he has to do in the future will be so absurd and absurd that no one will ever understand him and this includes Casey Selmore.
Rudger intended to use her and for a moment he seriously thought about asking her for help after explaining everything but he couldn't do that.
The child was dead and he had to hold the people who did that accountable until not a single one remained.
"I thought you were smart, but you're asking an unexpected question."
His voice was cold and dry.
'I don't need your understanding nor do I want any recognition or empathy.'
He decided that he had to act as a thoroughly evil man. Not as Professor James Moriarty, but as James Moriarty, the Godfather of Crime.
"How can humans live according to those who are worse than themselves? Casey Selmore, don't you know that?"
"What?"
"The world is so boring and the people who live in it are so insignificant……."
If only he had stopped talking here there may have been a chance for him to return but Rudger didn't know that.
He didn't know, so he completely threw away the opportunity.
"It's suffocating, it's frustrating, and it's driving me crazy."
Casey Selmore choked at his words.
"So, you've done all this just to feel better? Killing the people here?"
"Is that so wrong?"
Rudger shrugged his shoulders.
"You know that, don't you? Deep inside you, there's a voice like me."
Casey hung her head low.
"…You know, I didn't want you to be a bad person."
With the desperation of betrayal and anger in Casey's voice, Rudger silently waited for her next words.
"The whole situation is just……Yes, that's right. Misunderstanding. I wanted it to come from an inevitable misunderstanding. If we talk to each other well, we can definitely solve it somehow……Such a small misunderstanding."
"That's ridiculous."
"Because we're similar with each other I believed that we could understand each other if we talked."
"That's nonsense."
Rudger stared coldly at Casey Selmore, uttering insincere words.
Casey Selmore looked like she was about to cry but she was also a superhuman.
She overcame the sadness of betrayal immediately and burned her fighting spirit as a righteous detective.
"James Moriarty, I'll arrest you here!"
Her eyes were filled with sublime determination to punish the evil in front of her.
"Try it if you can."
James Moriarty finally smiled.
"……Don't move. If you show any suspicious behavior, I won't hold back."
"Oh, my. Are you warning me kindly even in this situation?"
At the same time as he said so, Rudger lightly tapped the floor with the cane in his hand as a vortex formed on one side of the ground, and a piece of stone was shot from the center.
Casey took a back step without realizing it and the wand that collided with a piece of stone fell out of her hand. However, water suddenly formed in the air, and soon it became as long as a whip then picked up the fallen cane and brought it in Casey's hand.
'Single attribute user.'
She could control the moisture in the air without a want.
It was true that a single attribute user could not use other attribute magic, but only had control over the element.
'For now, fight moderately and step down.'
At the moment Rudger tried to use magic again the screw of the thick pipe flowing over the ceiling fell out and white steam erupted.
The Kaga River!
The overheated high-pressure steam blocked the view, and the pipes on the ceiling collapsed because they could not withstand the overheating, and debris poured out.
"This is…!"
Casey tried to chase Rudger through the steam, but the wreckage of collapsed pipes stood in her way and even pieces of stones began to fall one by one from the ceiling supported by the pipe.
Rudger was also surprised by the unexpected situation.
"Brother!"
Just in time, Hans's cry from afar revealed who exploded the pipe.
"Come on, this way!
Rudger saw Arte's body on the floor while trying to escape, immediately grabbed it with both hands and ran to where Hans beckoned.
Shortly after, the ceiling collapsed with a loud sound.
Rudger, who barely overcame the crisis, joined Hans and headed deep into the coal mine.
"Brother, that kid……?"
"……."
"… Whoo. I won't ask you the details. However, there is something you should see."
"Something I need to see?"
"That's right. After breaking up with brother a while ago, I sneaked deep inside by myself, and I found something amazing."
If Hans said so, it was certainly not ordinary.
"What should we do?"
"……I have to see it."
"I'll guide you. The road is complicated, so be careful."
Hans guided Rudger to the depths of the coal mine. At first, he thought it was an abandoned coal mine but the large warehouse where the policemen were gathered a while ago, and the pipes flowing through the walls and ceilings showed that there must be something else here.
In fact, as he headed further inside, there was no coal mine, but rather a well-modified secret laboratory.
"This way."
Hans guided him to a huge laboratory. No, it was more like a factory, to be exact.
It was full of complex mechanical devices, and metal in human shape was being suspended one after another through rails attached to the ceiling.
"Brother, did you see that?"
"Yes, that's……an automaton."
Automatic doll also known as automaton.
But the automaton they were looking at was different from the normal automatons.
There was an automaton factory in a secret place like this. Then why did they kidnap kids?
The answer to the question was revealed as the two went deep into the laboratory.
"This is…"
Hans and Rudger silently watched the scene.
What the two saw was a large glass tube filled with green liquid and an adult man was inside it with his eyes closed.
The glass tube was connected by complex wires, and at the end of the wires was a steel capsule. Inside the capsule was an automaton modeled after a human being.
At that time, a change occurred in the green glass tube that the man was in.
The man, who was asleep as if he were dead, opened his eyes and began to twist his whole body but the change did not stop there. The man's face was seriously distorted and his body began to swell like a balloon then he exploded.
"Oh, my God…"
Looking at the glass tube now completely red, Hans managed to swallow the swear words.
"Brother, this is……."
"Yeah. I can see why they kidnapped people."
It was easy to tell what this place was made for just by looking at the laboratory.
"The transfer of the soul. They are trying to transplant the souls of the kidnapped people into automatons."
"Why would they do this?"
"We'll have to find out why."
Rudger's eyes turned to one place.
The fact that the experiment continued meant that there were still people here.
He swore that no matter who the other person was, he would make sure to make them pay for their crimes but at the same time Rudger felt some hope.
He didn't know if it was right or wrong but at least he could bring Arte back to life.
"Hans hold Arte, please."
"Brother?"
Rudger left Arte to Hans and soon after, his body began to be covered in a dark shadow.
After Aether Nocturnus covered Rudger's body he stared somewhere and following that will, the magic beast spread its long arms and turned them into wings.
* * *
"Ahhhh! Run away!"
"A monster, a monster! What the hell did they do at the entrance?"
The guards inside the secret laboratory shot at the monster in front of them. However, the black monster killed everything in front of it, regardless of the gun.
People died every time a huge arm that stretched out flexibly was swung. Blood and corpses lay bare on every path through which the shadows passed shadow.
Some tried to escape quickly, but the monster didn't miss any of those people.
The gunshots and screams that seemed to continue endlessly stopped. In time, most of the people in the laboratory were organized, and the survivors gathered in the center of the laboratory and trembled.
Rudger covered by Aether Nocturnus appeared in front of them.
"This is everyone who survived."
"G, help me!"
When human language emerged from the creature that they thought was a monster, one of the hopeful researchers shouted but shortly afterwards, the shadow's hand penetrated his chest.
"I haven't allowed you to speak."
The body was then flown to one side of the lab as the remaining people turned pale at Rudger's warning.
They noticed that it wasn't good to annoy Rudger since they were smart people.
Rudger looked at the scene with satisfaction and released the shadow on his body as his body was revealed in front of the researchers.
A handsome man with a sharp impression wearing a black Inverness coat and a gentleman's hat appeared.
The people who saw him were surprised that the monster was such a young man, but they couldn't breathe the moment they saw his eyes.
Rudger ignored the researchers' reactions, sat in an empty seat and crossed one leg.
"Well then, let's hear it."
Rudger's eyes shone viciously.
"Tell me everything you've been doing here."