Those Who Live Without the Law

Chapter 219

The End of Hypnosis (2)Right in front of the charging children, Irena immediately made her judgment. She clenched her fist tightly and brought it downward, and in sync with that motion, a powerful downdraft formed.

“Ghh… ugh….”

The children rushing at them could not withstand the descending wind and were slammed flat against the ground.

‘Sorry.’

Thinking that, Irena immediately turned her head. There was no helping it for now. More importantly, Melvin—

But at that moment.

Crack.

The sound of bones breaking came from behind her.

“U… hegeek….”

The children crushed beneath the downdraft desperately tried to force themselves back up. In the process of enduring the overwhelming pressure, their still undeveloped bodies failed to hold together and slowly collapsed.

The sight was so horrifying that, for just a brief moment, Irena’s steps came to a halt.

And then, boom.

With a monstrous sound like the ground itself sinking, the struggling children stopped resisting.

It was not Irena’s doing. Kairus had strengthened the downdraft she created, and this was the result.

“Irena, there’s no turning them back anymore.”

Even if the hypnosis were undone, those children were no longer in any condition to live normal lives. If that had been possible, there would have been no reason for Melvin to lock them away. Their brains had already died from the hypnosis.

Was death when the heart stopped, or when the brain stopped?

Kairus belonged to the camp that believed death came when the brain ceased functioning.

“Y-you damned bastards!”

Along with Melvin’s shout, Irena and Kairus’s bodies suddenly staggered.

Through repeated experiments, Melvin had already become more skilled than Tapas in using Sopor’s abilities alone. An unbearable drowsiness surged like furious waves.

Human will was nothing more than a tiny rowboat drifting through the storm of those primal desires.

“….”

Kairus endured it. Experience truly was important. He had already gone through it once before, so he knew the feeling, and because he knew it, he could withstand it.

But Irena?

As her lightless pupils trembled, Melvin pulled out a syringe and stabbed it into the back of her neck.

‘Temporary, but still.’

Originally, the perfect brainwashing Melvin pursued involved implanting several keywords deep into a person’s subconscious.

It required meticulous work over a long period of time.

In other words, the brainwashing done through fast-acting drugs and Sopor was temporary, lasting no more than ten minutes at best.

Nor could it issue detailed commands.

“Good… this is enough for now!”

Still, commands of this level could be attempted by using sudden drug injection and a trance state induced through Sopor.

Maybe things would have been different if he had tried it directly on Kairus. But Irena, who had never experienced Sopor before, could not resist.

“Kill that man.”

Within Irena’s consciousness, submerged in overwhelming drowsiness, a single sentence seeped in. Like rain soaking into dry land, it would engrave itself as a temporary but clear imprint.

At least, it should have.

But deep beyond Irena’s consciousness, in the very place where Melvin had just attempted to carve in an irresistible order, another sentence had already been engraved first.

‘Irena cannot directly or indirectly harm Kairus.’

The words she had written countless times in order to master the Featherwing battle gear and break free from the hatchery egg.

It conflicted with the sentence already rooted there through Melvin’s brainwashing. The previously engraved command and the new command trying to carve itself in clashed against one another.

Which should take priority?

Irena’s subconscious fell into confusion, and she became incapable of taking any action at all.

“…? What are you doing?! I said kill that man!”

But Irena did not move. She merely stood there blankly. Behind the unmoving Irena, Kairus slowly approached with the sound of turbine engines roaring.

“Dr. Istovan. Ever since the first time I saw you… you always looked like rotten trash.”

Veil of Plumed Mist swung down.

With the brainwashed Irena no longer moving, Melvin was completely defenseless.

Even in a dazed state, Kairus had not trained with the sword so half-heartedly that he would lose his way.

The wrist holding Sopor was severed cleanly. Immediately afterward, the drowsiness clawing through his mind melted away like snow.

“Ahk… my head hurts.”

Irena returned to normal again. She still looked confused from the suddenly injected drug, but that also meant there was no longer any need to ask Melvin how to restore her mind.

Kairus picked up the syringe Melvin had been holding.

“W-wait, wait a second, Kairus! No, Survivor-nim! I can be useful. No, no. I want to help!”

“Hah, bullshit.”

“You’re trying to kill the Emperor, right? I can help with that!”

He probably could be useful. But—

“You’re dangerous.”

“No, where in this city is there anyone who isn’t dangerous?!”

That part was true. In this city, who wasn’t dangerous?

But that was not what Kairus meant.

While Kairus briefly stared at Melvin, Melvin himself was also desperately spinning his thoughts.

‘If I can just get one chance to press it.’

He had gathered all sorts of things and prepared countless measures. If he could just press a single button, everything installed throughout this basement would activate.

At the very least, it would buy him time.

The problem was that he had no opportunity to press it.

The moment he did anything suspicious, his head would fall instantly. Pressing the button before Kairus moved was impossible.

“Well, fair enough. You said you could help, right?”

Kairus smiled as if agreeing with Melvin’s words. The turbine sounds gradually died down. Now, if he could just seize the chance—

In that instant, a flash of light flickered.

Then Melvin’s head fell to the floor.

“Don’t need it.”

Thud. The severed head rolled across the ground.

If Melvin had merely been an ordinary criminal, there would have been no reason not to use him. He was even offering to cooperate on his own accord, so why refuse?

But Melvin Istovan was not just a criminal. He held hostility toward Kairus.

‘And it was hostility without reason.’

According to the letter Nora sent, Melvin had discovered a method of brainwashing using Sopor. What he needed were drugs to use alongside it.

And those were items he could easily obtain by using people with medical licenses. Yet he had deliberately contacted the Emperor to report the discovery.

“There’s no solution for someone who hates you for no reason.”

Melvin simply hated Kairus. That was the decisive reason Kairus ignored everything he said and cut off his head.

If left alive, Melvin would constantly seek chances to betray Kairus. The moment an opening appeared, he would start scheming, and one way or another, he would eventually become a burden around Kairus’s neck.

“Hey, hey. Get yourself together.”

Irena, who had been standing there with a slightly dazed expression, snapped back to her senses at Kairus’s voice.

“Ah, sorry. If I hadn’t hesitated—”

Kairus let out a dry scoff at her words.

“When little kids are charging at you while breaking their own bones, it’d be stranger if you didn’t hesitate.”

“And you?”

Kairus answered coldly.

“Sorry, but if we’re being technical, I used to be a child soldier.”

Considering how old he had been before entering the labor correctional facility, Kairus unquestionably qualified as a child soldier. And he knew very well what kind of people became enemy soldiers when defeat loomed close.

The elderly, married women, children. Children who should have been playing pretend soldier in the streets with tree branches instead became real soldiers holding actual blades, dying on battlefields.

“I’ve always been a messed-up bastard anyway.”

After finishing the conversation, Kairus looked around the area.

“Let’s clean this up. Recover Sopor.”

“What about the research materials?”

“I don’t want to leave them behind.”

A method for brainwashing people.

Kairus had no need to use something like that, and if it became known, it would only create troublesome problems.

“Find every bastard connected to this, cut their heads off, and burn all the documents and drugs. That’ll settle it.”

Since the Operations Committee members were all frantically running around outside the city, this incident had happened while their attention was elsewhere. If Kairus and Irena handled things wisely, this entire matter could easily be buried.

“What about Philip IV?”

“Well, even if he knows, what can he do? It’s a method that can’t even be used without Sopor anyway.”

Kairus had recovered Sopor. As for the drugs and the brainwashing methods, every trace of them within this city had been burned to ashes.

“But there are still the documents Melvin sent to the Emperor. If those spread into the world—”

Kairus let out a snicker. Holding Sopor in his hand, he examined it from different angles before casually dropping it onto the floor.

“Then how about this?”

The moment he fully unleashed the output of Veil of Plumed Mist, a violent exhaust roar erupted. Then dozens of strikes per second hammered into Sopor. On top of that, the blade of Veil of Plumed Mist vibrated viciously like an enraged hornet.

No matter how extraordinary Sopor was, there was no way it could remain intact after enduring such merciless violence head-on.

“If this thing’s gone, then that solves the problem, doesn’t it?”

Once Sopor was destroyed, it was over. What was the point of knowing how to bake bread if there was no flour?

“Even so… I can’t believe you just destroyed it like that….”

Irena could not help making a regretful expression. It had once been battle gear used by a former Operations Committee member. She never imagined he would destroy it without batting an eye.

“Why? Did you want to try using it?”

At Kairus’s words, Irena let out a low hum.

“Yeah, no. It still feels kind of disgusting.”

Now that they had obtained Sopor, Kairus was technically its owner. But it was neither something he could resell nor something he had any desire to use.

People usually threw away things like that.

So Kairus threw it away too.

“Besides, imagine how happy Philip IV will be when he hears Sopor got destroyed.”

A bastard who spent his entire life suspecting everyone had finally found a method to obtain blind loyalty, only for the required tool to be smashed beyond repair.

Just hearing that fact alone would probably make rage boil through his entire body. Kairus did not want to miss out on such an enjoyable experience.

“Well then, I guess this wraps things up.”

Melvin Istovan was dead, and Sopor had been recovered and destroyed by Kairus.

Since they would need evidence to show, Kairus collected the shattered remains of Sopor before leaving Melvin’s residence and heading toward the office.

By the time the two finished cleaning up the situation and returned to the office—

Cecilia was receiving a guest inside her private train carriage. It was a man dressed in white garments with a neatly groomed beard.

“I deliver the words bestowed upon you by the sun of the Empire.”

“Thank you.”

The man’s eyebrow twitched slightly after hearing Cecilia’s response. Watching him, Cecilia gave a faint smile.

“I’m not very familiar with Imperial etiquette. So, what business does His Majesty the Emperor have with me…?”

Bang!

With a loud crash, the man slammed his fist onto the table and abruptly rose to his feet. A moment later, water was splashed directly across Cecilia’s face.

“Were you watering a flower? How embarrassing.”

Drip, drip.

Water droplets ran down Cecilia’s cheeks and soaked into the floor.

“We know that within the filthy city where your kind parasites itself, the daughter of a traitor and her accomplice are hiding. Hand them over. Refuse, and you shall face three knight orders led by Dana Watson alongside countless forces of the Imperial Army.”

If Bennett continued protecting traitors to the Empire, they intended to crush the entire city.

“If you obey the imperial command and peacefully hand over those two traitors, you may at least escape the Empire’s wrath.”

“Understood. Then come and take them.”

Cecilia answered as though it were nothing serious.

This had already been agreed upon by all the Operations Committee members except Kairus.

A city harboring traitors—naturally, the Emperor would move against it. So how should Bennett’s leaders respond?

“If even a single Imperial soldier or knight order enters within a 100-kilometer radius of Bennett City, the Canal Operations Committee will regard it as suspicious intent from the Empire.”

In other words, they would assume the Empire was not coming to transport traitors, but to attack Bennett City itself. Naturally, they would not cooperate in transferring the traitors. Instead, they would oppose them with their full strength.