Chapter 65 The Fate Of The Neithardt Family - Part Ii
Neil, having caught some of the screaming servants and extracted information about the whereabouts of Roland Neithardt, discovered that he had headed towards the underground passage of the mansion, and caught up with Roland along the way.
"Damn it, you've come already!! Useless bunch!!"
Aside from a girl hiding herself in a robe, Roland had no guards with him.
He shouted in frustration and immediately gave orders to the girl.
"Hey, you!! Hurry up and deal with him!! Don't let him get close to me!!"
The girl, who had been carrying an unusually large load, reacted to Roland's words, throwing it aside and revealing her body hidden beneath the robe.
The moment Neil witnessed this, he opened his eyes wide in shock.
"That, body is..."
"Hahaha, surprised, kid!! This is the result of the research that our Neithardt family has been conducting for years!!"
The girl's arm was not human.
It had been forcibly shaped into an arm by connecting numerous features of monsters with metallic magical tools, to the point where its original form was unrecognizable.
Around her neck was a collar indicating a slave status that should not exist in this country, and half of her face was discolored darkly as if it had been eroded by the monstrous arm, with crimson eyes shining.
Standing before the grotesque girl, who seemed to be a patchwork of monster and human, Neil stood frozen, forgetting even to breathe.
"...Run, away..."
"Huh?"
It was the deformed girl who called out to Neil.
As he stood frozen, the girl pleaded with tears streaming down her face... in a desperate voice.
"I... I don't want to kill anyone anymore. So please, run away. If you can't, then at least... kill me."
"......"
Neil suddenly wiped the expression from his face.
Did she think he had given up?
With a look of delight, Roland shouted.
"It's too late to regret now!! Regret defying Neithardt in the afterlife!! Kill him!!"
At Roland's command, the girl attacked Neil with her deformed arm.
However, that arm was intercepted by the sword Neil had quickly drawn, preventing it from reaching his life.
In the face of such an unexpected turn of events, both the girl and Roland widened their eyes.
"Huh...? No, that can't be possible, right? It should have more than ten times the strength of an ogre!? How could a kid like you...!?"
There was not much of a size difference between the girl and Neil.
However, the girl's arm had swollen to be larger than her own body, with a flowing Magical Power that surpassed steel in durability and weight.
Additionally, it was endowed with enough strength to swing it around.
In fact, the ground beneath Neil's feet had cratered from the impact of the blow he had blocked with his arm.
Even so, Neil's body had not budged back even a single step.
Without boasting about such an impossible reality, Neil began to speak calmly.
"I'm glad. You're just an irredeemable piece of trash."
"Huh...?"
In truth, Neil felt a bit of hesitation about this operation.
He couldn't forgive the fact that Yumie was hurt, but he wondered if it was right to unleash his anger on the Neithardt family, who were not directly involved and not the main culprit, Alvine.
Rather than doing that, he thought it might be better to go to Yumie, who must be suffering more than anyone else, and support her by her side.
However, that hesitation completely cleared at this moment, and the emotions that had been suppressed by reason began to surface.
He was determined to end this here today, no matter what.
"It's because of scum like you that Yumie can't live in peace! I will definitely cut you down with my own hands!!"
The Magical Power that overflowed with his emotions wrapped around Neil's blade, forming a sword that was a size larger.
It was almost the same amount of Magical Power that had obliterated the Belmont Forest before.
This time, it was condensed to a reasonable sword size, sharpened and refined.
It was astonishing how much he had grown in less than a year since the incident in the forest.
What would happen when it was swung was clearer than seeing fire.
"Haah!!"
Neil's sword cut off the girl's monstrous hand, sealing the wound with light Magical Power.
Perhaps the overwhelming pain that surged through her body severed her consciousness for a moment, as the girl collapsed without even having time to scream.
Neil gently caught the falling girl.
"...I'm sorry, if it were Father, he might have done it better, but this is the best I can do."
Neil, having gently laid the girl down, turned to face Roland again.
Seeing him like that, perhaps Roland thought he was a grim reaper or something.
With a gasp, Roland fell back in fear, desperately trying to retreat.
Not allowing that, Neil's sword pierced his shoulder.
"Ugh... Ahh!?"
"Shut up. Compared to what you did to that girl, this is nothing. At least act a bit more noble in your final moments. My sister stood up to protect the princess, even after having her limbs broken and her face burned."
"E-Eek...!!"
Perhaps overwhelmed by Neil's intense anger, Roland wet himself in fear and tried to flee, blood flowing down his body.
However, he must have had enough sense to realize he couldn't escape like that.
In a last-ditch effort, he unleashed magic.
Not at Neil, but at the girl behind him.
"Ugh...!!"
He must have noticed that Neil felt sympathy for the girl and was trying to protect her.
To shield the girl from Roland's despicable attack, Neil exposed himself to the attack.
"Hahaha! Good, now's my chance──huh?"
"...What a truly pathetic guy."
Neil's cold mutterings conveyed a deep sense of disdain.
Immediately after, fresh blood gushed from Roland's back as he tried to turn and flee, and he collapsed to the ground.
"If only you had shot your magic at the ceiling to collapse the underground passage, you might have been able to escape... Well, I guess it's a fitting end for a scumbag."
Neil, unscathed by Roland's magic, said this to him, who was likely no longer listening, as he lifted the girl to care for her.
At that moment, the ceiling suddenly collapsed.
In front of the astonished Neil, Carlot, wielding a sword, came crashing down.
Additionally, 2 knights from Granbell, who seemed to have been caught in the collapse, also fell down.
"Father? Why are you coming from above?"
"Hmm? Oh, Neil. No, while I was fighting up there, the ground suddenly cracked for some reason..."
"It's not 'for some reason'..."
"Lord, if you flatten Neithardt's mansion with a sword and magic of that ridiculous power, of course this would happen... What were you planning to do if you had caught the young master in it?"
"...Well, Neil wouldn't be buried alive just from the collapse of the underground passage. It's all according to plan."
After receiving criticism from the two accompanying knights, Carlot quietly averted his gaze.
In short, it seemed that he had overdone it in his anger, blowing away not just the Neithardt knights but the mansion itself, causing the underground passage to collapse as a result.
He probably couldn't withstand the immense pressure of his Magical Power.
Just by looking at the shattered remnants of the sword, Neil could easily understand how much power his father had wielded.
What is he doing, Neil thought... but he himself had his sword in tatters after just 2 swings, so he couldn't really say anything about others.
Moreover, it is true that a cave-in of the underground passage wouldn't be a problem for him.
However, that only applied to Neil; the girl who was with him was not in the same situation.
"More importantly, I'm glad to see you made it out safely, Neil. ...Um, what about that girl?"
"I think she's the girl who was used as a test subject by Neithardt. I cut off her arm, so please treat her quickly."
Hearing the situation from Neil, Carlot also looked at the girl with sympathetic eyes.
However, when he noticed a "certain feature" of the girl, his expression changed and he spat out.
"Damn it!! Neithardt is cursing us until the very end!!"
"Huh, what's wrong, Father? Is there something wrong with this girl?"
"Look closely at her head!"
At Carlot's words, Neil looked at the girl again.
She had long, bluish hair and skin that had darkened, possibly due to the experiments.
Her original skin was as white as porcelain, like Yumie's, but it showed noticeable scars in places, likely from repeated experiments.
And most notably──her head, which had been hidden under a hood until now, was revealed.
There were wolf ears growing from it, different from both monsters and the people seen in Ortria.
"This child is a citizen of the divine beast country, Euphemia...! The people of that country have a strong sense of kinship and will never forgive those who harm their kind. Moreover, if it becomes known that she was treated as a slave and used for such inhumane experiments... it will undoubtedly become an international issue...!!"
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