Trash of the Count's Family Vol 2. Chapter 450: …Can I Take It All? (13)

“Yeah. He’s good at this.”

It was the moment Cale’s answer reached the Heavenly Demon’s ears.

“......”

He lowered his head.

A vibration trembled up through the soles of his feet.

Unlike before, it was a massive tremor born of violent impacts, growing closer and closer.

A grin spread across the Heavenly Demon’s lips.

Someone was coming up from below, smashing apart everything in the way at terrifying speed.

CRAAASH—

The sound of collisions drifted up faintly from below.

“The second floor.”

It looked as if, the instant Clopeh and General Mol had crossed the door, they had charged all the way up to the second floor in one sweep.

“......”

Looking at Hitelis’s drained white face, Cale whispered,

“You’re not very good at your job, are you?”

“......!”

Hitelis could not say a word.

She still had not reached the Pope’s room.

“No. Maybe you are.”

She swallowed against the tension.

Cale kept walking after Hitelis.

I lead the intelligence division as the Pope’s shadow.

He had said the Pope was someone who valued information immensely.

The life of information lies in secrecy, so after taking the castle in this rear garden, I immediately established a reporting route meant only for the Pope.

In order to avoid the eyes of the people inside Moraka Castle and Young Master Jimon,

they had created a path used exclusively for the exchange of intelligence within the Order of the God of Chaos.

“......”

Cale was walking that path now.

If the first and second floors had been secret routes passing from room to room,

the third floor was different.

In fact, Cale was moving with his body held quite low.

If we go this way, it connects to the ceiling of the room where the Pope is.

Hitelis did not move quickly.

She advanced slowly, checking her surroundings as she went.

That could have been stifling, but following her path meant they had not run into a single other enemy.

“Too slow.”

At the Heavenly Demon’s offhand comment, Hitelis’s shoulders trembled.

Watching Cale’s face as if terrified even her voice might be overheard, she hurriedly said, in the most cautious whisper she could manage,

“If we don’t want the people of the Order to notice us, we have to move discreetly. And in any case, don’t we only need to arrive before General Mol does?”

That was true.

“And—”

She hesitated for a moment, then met Cale’s eyes and continued with trembling lips,

“The highest-ranking holy knight’s senses have surpassed human limits. If we don’t want him to detect us, we have to be as careful as possible.”

Hm.

The Heavenly Demon gave a light nod, as if he accepted that, and a curious smile touched his lips.

He seemed to have taken an interest in the highest-ranking holy knight.

Cale did not care.

“Move.”

“Yes.”

At his order, Hitelis started forward again.

At the front of the group, her eyes sank into darkness.

She confirmed the traces I left behind properly......!

On the way here,

under the pretense of moving as safely as possible, Hitelis had left signs on the first and second floors that her subordinates would be able to identify.

There’s no one on the third floor.

The space between the roof and the third-floor ceiling. An attic-like place.

Ordinarily, countless subordinates of hers should have been stationed here to protect the Pope.

Especially now, when the Pope’s life was under threat, all of them should have been crowded here.

Because we are shadows.

The shadows that protected the Pope.

Before information, the work they did was to protect the Pope.

Their role—and Hitelis’s—was to die before he did.

My message got through......!

She had left a code.

It was not complicated.

The first one she had left behind:

“Vessel. Third-floor ceiling. Dead center.”

The moment the Pope heard those words, he would have understood at once and withdrawn all his subordinates before she arrived.

The highest-ranking holy knight must have realized it already too.

Through the evenly spaced holes bored into the floor beneath them, the room where the Pope was staying finally came into view.

Hitelis confirmed that Cale’s group was also peering down through those holes.

Thud. Thud.

Her heart pounded violently.

That was not fear.

There’s a way out......!

The Pope and the highest-ranking holy knight.

A great many holy knights standing beside them, forming a formation.

Not one of them was looking at the ceiling.

We won’t be discovered!

Cale Henituse.

There was a chance their true intentions could stay hidden from him.

She recalled the second code she had left behind on the second floor.

That, too, had been brief.

“Demon King. Bait.”

The Demon King.

Mol, leader of the Third Army.

He was the bait.

With just that much written, the Pope and the highest-ranking holy knight would have understood that Hitelis had become a hostage and was obeying Cale’s orders, and they would also have grasped the kind of plan Cale had in mind.

The Pope was extremely clever.

BOOM!

The vibration below came closer.

The bait, Mol, was drawing near.

Slowly, Hitelis raised a hand.

It was a signal that they had arrived.

At that, the Heavenly Demon looked down through the hole.

BOOOOOM—!

Mol was approaching.

The Pope’s gaze turned toward the door, and the highest-ranking holy knight, seeing that look, made a gesture.

A few holy knights moved at once, tightening the guard around the entrance.

Everyone’s attention was fixed on the oncoming tremors.

I have to endure it.

Thud, thud, thud.

Trying to calm her shaking heart, Hitelis repeated to herself,

I have to endure it.

I have to hold back the laughter trying to come out!

Hitelis recalled the terror she had experienced in the basement level two prison.

She never wanted to go through that again.

So Cale Henituse—

has to die.

And he had taken away her precious divine relic, her power.

So he had to be punished.

The means to resolve all of this was now right in front of her.

Cale Henituse. You will now have to become the vessel to be offered to the God of Chaos.

If you stole something precious from someone, then you had to be prepared to lose dozens of times more yourself.

Hitelis waited for the moment the bait, General Mol, arrived.

BOOM—

It was close.

BOOOOM—

The instant that bastard came in here to attack the Pope—

Cale Henituse expected the highest-ranking holy knight to rush at Mol.

But Hitelis expected otherwise.

The Pope was strong.

And he placed the God of Chaos above himself.

With the vessel for the god right in front of him, he would never let it slip away.

The moment the bait, Mol, arrives, the Pope’s side will move too.

To seize Cale Henituse—the sacrifice.

Hitelis barely forced down her racing heart and the laughter threatening to burst out.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Her heart pounded.

BOOOOOOM—!

Along with an enormous tremor—

“Aaaagh!”

“Gah!”

“Urk!”

Screams came from the corridor beyond the room where the Pope was.

Mol had arrived.

He was coming this way.

They’re getting ready!

Hitelis could see Cale Henituse and the others exchanging glances.

The moment Mol arrived, they too would go for the Pope.

Because they intended to steal the divine relic he possessed, the one called Wind-Borne Chaos.

CRASH! BANG! BOOM!

“AAARGH!”

“AAAH!”

The screams and crashes grew louder.

BANG!

At last, something struck the door.

No—

BANG, BANG!

It was trying to break it down.

“Hold them off!”

“Hold the line—!”

The holy knights inside the room tried desperately to keep the door secured and protect the Pope, but—

BANG, BOOM! BANG! BANG!

The force hammering at the door only grew fiercer.

“Urgh!”

“Ugh!”

Then, through the groans of the holy knights—

“Fall back.”

The highest-ranking holy knight gave the order calmly.

Standing directly in front of the Pope, he angled his sword toward the entrance.

“.......”

“.......”

The holy knights looked at one another, then withdrew at once.

Hitelis’s heart pounded harder than ever before.

The moment that door opened—

I’ll live.

Cale Henituse will be put in danger.

And the God of Chaos will gain his vessel.

She feared the presence of Cale so deeply that she could not help but think of him as something beyond human, and yet—

The Pope is the same.

Yes.

The Pope too was someone who had gone beyond human.

And in Hitelis’s judgment, the highest-ranking holy knight was someone fit to stand beside the Three Emperors of Five Colored Blood.

And lastly—

Me too.

That pressure had crushed me earlier because it came so suddenly.

But my power is nothing to scoff at either.

Controlling her tension, Hitelis waited for the moment to subdue the vessel.

And then—

BANG!

Something slammed violently into the door the holy knights had stepped away from.

Mol’s sword, no doubt.

And since there was no one left bracing that door—

BANG!

The second time it hit—

CRAAASH—!

The door shattered into pieces.

And Hitelis did not look at that.

Instead—

Just as I thought!

She looked at someone else.

The highest-ranking holy knight.

He swung his sword.

Toward the ceiling.

More precisely, toward the dead center of the room’s ceiling.

Because that’s where Cale Henituse is!

The moment delight bloomed across Hitelis’s face,

her gaze shifted at once toward Cale.

And in the process, she saw something strange below the ceiling.

CRAAASH—

Something came flying into the room after breaking through the door.

It was a shield with a hole punched through its center.

A dull gray shield.

Huh?

And the figure who stepped in after it—

That’s not Mol?

It wasn’t Mol.

Kase—

No, Cale Henituse’s subordinate!

“I brought him.”

After saying that—

“Hey, you crazy bastard!”

Through Mol’s startled shout, Clopeh seized him by the back of the neck and flung him forward.

As Mol’s body went flying, Clopeh said in a gentle, composed voice,

“I brought him before the Pope.”

Hitelis’s eyes snagged for a moment on the scene, which was nothing like what she had expected, but in the end she knew the gray light spilling from the highest-ranking holy knight’s sword was heading for the dead center of the ceiling—toward Cale.

Cale—

So she turned her gaze the rest of the way toward Cale Henituse.

It had all happened in the span of only a few seconds.

And—

“!”

Hitelis’s whole body went rigid.

Dark brown eyes.

Those calm eyes were already looking straight at her.

With the corners of his mouth lifted, Cale Henituse smiled and said,

“I knew this was how it’d go.”

When they were passing through the first floor—

“Human, that head steward’s expression and the way she’s acting are suspicious!”

When they were passing through the second floor—

“Kim Hae-Il, doesn’t it feel like the holy knights in the second-floor corridor are deliberately avoiding this area?”

And when they entered the third floor—

“Human, why is there nobody on the ceiling?”

“That’s strange.”

The things Raon and the Heavenly Demon had been saying to him without pause.

And the looks in On’s and Hong’s eyes, and in Choi Han’s and Sui Khan’s.

Cale had already been sensing it himself.

“It’s all ready.”

“We already prepared for this!”

The Ancient Powers raised their voices.

Most of all—

“Don’t overdo it. I’ll endure as much as I can today.”

The crybaby old man, the one with Heart’s Vitality and the power of regeneration, spoke calmly.

“We have to avenge our friends. Our family.”

The crybaby old man, who had spent his life longing for those who had gone before him and lamenting his own inadequacy, the one who had built stone towers, was in truth the angriest of all the Ancient Powers today.

“And what if you pass out for a bit?”

The moment the crybaby old man said that—

CRAAAAASH—!

With a deafening blast, gray light smashed through the ceiling.

“......!”

Still frozen beneath Cale’s gaze, Hitelis saw someone coming toward her.

It was the Heavenly Demon, smiling as though this were all delightfully entertaining.

Dark red internal energy coiled around him as his hand reached for Hitelis’s throat.

And over the Heavenly Demon’s shoulder, she saw the scene behind him too.

“Ah.”

The dead center of the ceiling shattered. No—it started there, then the entire ceiling began to collapse.

The ceiling, built of stone and timber and made extraordinarily solid, broke apart with absurd ease.

And yet Cale, and the area around him, were unharmed.

Hummmmmm—

A silver shield with wings had taken the place where the ceiling had been, shining brilliantly.

“We’re the ones guarding him.”

“You don’t need to worry.”

“Just trust us!”

While On and Hong, along with Raon, protected the unconscious Choi Jung Soo—

Tap!

Tap!

With the light sound of feet pushing off the floor, Choi Han and Sui Khan moved.

Wooooo—wooooo—

A sword carrying glittering, violent black power had already formed a black dragon.

Choi Han’s sword, bearing that black dragon, shot toward the highest-ranking holy knight.

Choi Han’s eyes were calmer than they had ever been.

And—

“......”

Following behind it came a sword with no energy clinging to it at all.

Team Leader Sui Khan’s sword.

Because it could cut through anything, he needed nothing else.

“Ah. As expected, the real thing really is different.”

Smiling brightly, Clopeh let pure-white aura blaze up more brilliantly than ever and moved in the direction his light was heading.

That direction was where Cale, after dismissing the shield, was moving toward the Pope.

The Pope, protected by countless holy knights dealing with General Mol.

Toward him, Cale advanced.

Wooooo—wooooo—

With his dominating aura released to the fullest.

If you laid a hand on someone precious to another person, then you had better be prepared to get hit back dozens of times harder.