Chapter 71: Field Work

"...Hearken to your new leader, you foolish mortals! I am Haruna Haruta Harley!!" Haruna addresses the small village of monsters she’s stumbled upon, though her speech goes unheard by nearly everyone, since almost all of them are dead and the few who aren’t dead are incapacitated.

She has the appearance of a cute girl, with long purple hair and deep red eyes, dark brown skin with a red rose tattoo on her cheek, stands only 90 centimeters tall with small breasts and an almost scrawny build, carries a giant cleaver on her back, which is part of her own flesh, measuring one meter in length with eyes along the blade.

She’s dressed in an elegant red dress, though most of the garment’s details are obscured by the liters of blood that have spilled onto her.

Being a monster of the Cryogen Carmesin race, she happens to be extremely strong, so the river of blood in the village formed by her ends up being a common scene wherever she goes.

"I am an Apostle of the 2nd Floor!! Someone divinely powerful! So bow down, mortals!! And perish before my blade." She speaks while dragging the cleaver, violently and completely unnecessarily cutting through already dead people.

Talking to people who can’t even react, the movement of the giant cleaver produces a "vusshhh" sound slicing through the air, also generating a crash when the cleaver hits the ground.

"Miss Haruna, I think that’s enough, you’ve killed nearly everyone, we need a few of them to discover things for Miss Nio." A maid speaks to Haruna while looking at the many dead monsters on the ground, purple humanoids with single long horns.

"Cristina, do not interrupt me, I’m busy conquering this village!!" Haruna says to her maid. Cristina is a girl with dark blue hair, black eyes, and extremely pale skin, with large breasts and curves accentuated by her maid attire.

The clothes have black and blue tones instead of white. Since Cristina serves Haruna, she simply obeys and remains silent. Although she seems extremely weak when compared to Haruna, her level, even being just a maid, is 50, and she is an Ice Spirit, so she’s not weak at all.

"Haaa..." She sighs, seeing the bloody mess around, blood and flesh scattered everywhere as Haruna crushes already dead bodies with her cleaver like some kind of bizarre butcher.

’Cleaning Miss Haruna’s clothes is going to be difficult... blood is always such a frustrating thing to wash out, and Miss Haruna hates when we use cleaning magic, so we have to clean manually...’ She licks her lips for a moment, thinking about what to say.

"Miss Nio will be displeased with this, knowing you’re killing everyone we were supposed to bring, Miss Haruna. We’ve lost more than half of the people we should have taken to the palace..." Cristina murmurs as Haruna finishes what she was doing.

"Cristina, stop complaining! I left some alive! Nio won’t have anything to complain about, I think!! Besides, this time I didn’t even eviscerate them, I was really fast!! It was bam, boom, tcham, and Splash! All crushed." She spins her cleaver, the movement cutting the ground and creating a gash where the blade passes.

"That’s not the problem, Miss Haruna. You killed the village chief... not to mention that... that man over there who is now just a pile of mangled meat was the person who knew about Runes that we were supposed to bring..."

"Haaahhh!!! Fine, fine, fine! I’ll pay more attention next time. I killed him by accident!! They all look really similar to each other!!!! Besides, Nio only asked for information!! And I discovered something relevant, so that should count, right!!!? The races of this world use a strange power system called Runes!! Even though it’s rare, it seems pretty powerful." Haruna speaks with a confident smile.

"Even if it’s rare and the focus is still clearly magic! Magic is everything! Magic has always been incredible, so it’s not like this strange Rune system would surpass magic! By the way, they’re different runes from the runes we know! As far as I know, Runes were inscriptions on objects to use a power, but among the beings of this world, a Rune is more like a skill!"

"Well... I suppose that deserves a little treat then. You did so well." Cristina speaks with a smile, pulling from her inventory a table full of various prepared sweets.

"Oh!! Now there’s an upside to this!! You’re right, I was amazing, I deserve sweets! Nio will be happy to learn about the Rune system! Even if the information is incomplete! Those idiot humans didn’t know how to explain how it’s made, and the monsters didn’t answer properly either!! But at least I know that Runes are divided into types."

"Since both humans and monsters can use them to locate things, hunt things, increase their strength, defense, attack, among other abilities! So it’s like magic, but it does NOT use magic!!"

"Maybe I’m a bit slow, so I didn’t understand how it works! We need more Rune users for me to learn! Imagine how many new attacks I’ll have." Haruna says, sitting on the chair and swinging her little legs while Cristina serves her sweets.

"Hmm... you cook so well... I wonder if Nio would like to eat with me... she only gives orders, but she didn’t even come to see me in person!! I would love to eviscerate her!! Maybe with Runes I can challenge Nio."

"..." Cristina gives a broken smile, saying nothing to Haruna’s extremely offensive remark. Cristina is both a servant of Nio and a servant of Haruna, so her loyalty is quite divided, and because of that she doesn’t know what to do.

"Well, I think we should gather some more information. Monsters seem to know more about runes than humans, so how about we hunt more monsters?" Cristina proposes to Haruna, who eats a piece of cake thoughtfully, the bloodstain on her cheek mixing with the cake’s frosting.

"Monsters!! Yes, monsters seem to use runes more than humans! Maybe it’s a matter of affinity? Humans proved to be very focused on magic, while monsters, though they also use magic predominantly, have a clearly elevated use of Runes." She stands up from the chair, stuffing the whole cake into her mouth at once and getting frosting all over her face.

"We should go immediately!! Before I have to return to the palace! It’s fun out here!! Azalea said Nio wants to conquer the world, so I can kill as many as I want when the time comes, right?! Hehehe."

"I think so... though we didn’t receive orders directly from Miss Nio, it was only Miss Azalea who said we should do this." Cristina is a bit suspicious of Azalea’s orders, because Haruna has never received orders from Nio this way. After all, Haruna is terrible at gathering information, and the current bloodbath proves that.