Chapter 283

“They’ve killed hundreds of thousands of us that way!”

“Why?! Why did we have to be subjected to that?! Hurgh!”

“Ahhh! Michelle! I can’t believe I will never get to see you again! Urgh!”

The people rescued from the central ancient palace were enraged, frustrated, and sorrowful. Their wails were filled with powerful resentment.

Good! Seong-Hwi thought.

Their resentment would stimulate Grandis’s emotions, assisting the persuasion.

He also needs intense stimulation!

Seong-Hwi stared at Scourgify with blazing eyes and asked, “Do you understand why I called it punishment now?”

“Bastard!” Scourgify mumbled and turned to Scite and Erzsebet as if asking for their help.

However, the two women said nothing. Instead, help arrived from somewhere completely unexpected.

“Human leader. I understand your frustration, but it is not your place to punish anyone. That is the role of the Sēmen,” said Abraxas, a former member of Daemonium. “You are not a consul. You have no right to judge or investigate. You should have reported Consanguineus’s atrocities to the Sēmen as soon as you found out.”

Seong-Hwi’s smile widened. “Did you truly not know what Consanguineus was doing in the dungeon?”

“What is that... supposed to mean?”

“If you truly did not know, then the Sēmen must be incompetent. If you did know and did nothing, then it is rotten to the core.”

The expressions of everyone in the room stiffened. They shifted their gaze to Grandis, who seemed to be in thought as he stroked his chin. Seong-Hwi had called the Sēmen incompetent and corrupt in front of the First Lord, the man who created it.

The expressions of the three consuls changed, each different from the others.

Meow! He’s as insane as always!

Oh? Is that how you’re going to play it?

Kekekek! It’s over for you!

Scourgify smiled nastily and pointed at Seong-Hwi, shouting, “Guilty! He is guilty, without a shadow of a doubt! I knew from the moment you people created the illegal confederation, Underground! You are all rebels trying to overthrow the Sēmen!”

“Overthrow the Sēmen, you say?” Seong-Hwi smiled mockingly. “I thought the Sēmen was a vessel large enough to embrace every race fairly, regardless of whether they were superior, intermediate, or inferior. However, I was wrong. The Sēmen is smaller than a plate for soy sauce.”

“The insolence—”

“The Sēmen sides with the strong, exploits the weak, creates hierarchies among the races, and mass-produces victims!” Seong-Hwi shouted, his eyes blazing intensely.

His rage had initially been fake—it had only been an act to stimulate Grandis, but the more he spoke, the more rage welled up from inside him, stemming from everything he had experienced before and after his return to the past.

He recalled what Choi In-Cheol, a lawyer of IJ Law Firm, had said to him in the past.

“Haaa, how should I explain this...? Are you familiar with the privileges of former post?”

Kang Hyun-Tae, a murderer, was not judged by the law even after he had brutally murdered Shin So-Eun. Hence, Seong-Hwi had taken matters into his own hands. Many people likely understood his circumstances, but might have shaken their heads as they rambled on about laws and order.

No, such people likely never truly understood. They would likely not have been able to say the same things if the same had happened to their loved ones. If they could, then they were either a moron or a cold-blooded animal acting like a saint.

Seong-Hwi gathered all the rage accumulated from his experiences and fearlessly shouted, “If that’s how tiny your vessel is, then forget overthrowing it—it must be destroyed!”

“Seong-Hwi!” Bafor quickly tried to calm him down, seeing that Seong-Hwi had crossed the line.

However, Seong-Hwi did not stop because his Destiny Force signaled him to keep going. He approached a man trembling in tears and raised his right arm, dried up after having so much blood taken. There were needle marks all over it.

“Is this the justice that the Sēmen proclaims to uphold?” he asked.

He then grabbed the chin of a woman whose head was lowered and raised it. Her face was covered in severe burns, with pus oozing from the wounds.

“Or is it this?”

He then forcibly opened the mouth of an old man beside the woman. His tongue had been ripped out, leaving nothing but a dark cave inside.

“Or perhaps it’s this. You rip out our tongues so that we stay quiet!”

The Absolute Crown appeared over Seong-Hwi’s head. He unleashed his caliber and mana, its waves filling the room. It was an act to show them that he would stand against oppression, authority, customs, and traditions.

“I can’t agree with that kind of justice! I am more than willing to tell you all everything that you’re uncomfortable with, you hypocrites!”

He would need an infinite supply of causality if he were to record every tragedy he had seen and heard since before his return, in the Akashic Records. Dragon King Regnator had simply been the physical manifestation of all that was unfair, descending on the Capital. In truth, humanity had long since been abandoned by the entire Mirror World.

Everyone in the room was shocked by the aura Seong-Hwi emitted, and once again by his madness. Seong-Hwi turned to Grandis, who was looking down at him from his chair.

“Now, then. Will you rip out the tongue of this noisy inferior race? Master Grandis, the onlooker?”

He had thrown down his chips. He had been more than righteous enough.

***

Deathly silence filled the room, no one knowing when it began or when it would end. The silence enticed the people in the room like the Devil, but no one dared to give in to the temptation and speak first. After all, they all knew only one person could break this silence.

Grandis, who had been staring silently at Seong-Hwi, swiped his face down with his hand.

“What in the world has happened to the Sēmen... while I was away reclaiming the nescius?” he said.

The silence was finally broken, but a pressure heavier than the deathly silence filled the room. It was the power of Titanic Force. The steel mansion Bafor had created started to be crushed, and the steel table was instantly flattened. However, everyone in the room was unscathed.

“Urghhh...”

“Monster...”

“This is... The First Lord...”

Those who sensed the aura unconsciously exuding from Grandis felt like ants, looking up at a mountain they could never climb. They felt so dizzy that they were about to faint.

“Dodo, Scourgify, Abraxas. Tell me. Is everything that human said true?” Grandis asked.

The three consuls remained silent.

“The Sēmen was the ultimate race conference, created to unite all races against the Chaos. Who created the distasteful hierarchy of superior, intermediate, and inferior races?”

The three consuls continued their silence.

“I had been clear. To enter the Sēmen, one must forget all worldly connections, like one's race, society, groups, and families. They must live only to protect the balance of the Mirror World.” Grandis then shouted thunderously, “SO WHY ARE YOU ALL HAVING TRIVIAL TURF WARS IN THE SĒMEN?!”

The thunderous echo erased all the color in the consuls’ faces.

“I was too negligent. I trusted you all too much. I was so busy running forward that I did not think to look backward.”

Grandis shifted his gaze to the trembling humans. All they felt when staring at him was fear. In their eyes, he was not a righteous or dependable guardian, but a plunderer who had come to take everything they had.

Underground... I see. This confederation wasn’t made only to face the Chaos. It was a measure that those who couldn’t trust the Sēmen had no choice but to take, he thought.

He felt bitter after realizing how naive he had been. He then turned to Seong-Hwi and said, “Onlooker... was it? I have no words to refute that. I apologize.”

Grandis’s apology shocked everyone in the room, including Seong-Hwi.

I had heard rumors, but I can’t believe they were true, he thought.

He had been certain to an extent, but it was different from actually experiencing it himself.

Grandis, the Guardian Titan, is genuinely righteous. Hah!

Seong-Hwi couldn’t believe someone as powerful as Grandis had acknowledged his mistakes and apologized. The world he had experienced was nothing like this. In the Mirror World that he knew, the strong were always right, so they did not need to be righteous. After all, the righteous couldn’t plunder the weak. However, Grandis, who could be considered the strongest in the Mirror World, was not taking anything from them.

In my past life, Grandis was severely disappointed in the corrupt Sēmen and disappeared from history, Seong-Hwi recalled.

Before Seong-Hwi’s regression, Grandis had taken much longer to return to the outer zones from the nescius. It had taken several more years from this moment for Creo to obtain the second Fruit of the World Tree after the World Tree War worsened. He then assisted Grandis in reclaiming the ninth zone, which also took several more years.

Once Grandis returned after the reclamation, the Sēmen was in a much worse condition than now. He was shocked by how corrupt his organization, which he had created himself, had become, and never appeared in the Mirror World’s history again.

If he were present, Regnator might not have invaded the Capital! Seong-Hwi shouted inwardly.

Hence, he resented Grandis. If he had been as responsible as he was righteous, the Capital would not have ended up that way.

“Is that all you have to say?” Seong-Hwi asked.

Bafor and Irura tried to calm him down again.

“Seong-Hwi! That’s enough!”

“Master Seong-Hwi!”

However, his Destiny force was still signaling him to go further.

“Nivalis’s invasion of the Capital left us with over ten million casualties. And this time, Consanguineus has kidnapped our people and treated them like livestock. Do you intend to compensate us for all of this tragedy with a verbal apology? Well... that’s quite the expensive apology.”

Grandis remained silent, maintaining his composure.

Erzsebet stared at Seong-Hwi and mumbled inwardly, Incredible.

She thought Seong-Hwi was extraordinary from their first meeting, but she did not expect Seong-Hwi to say everything he wanted to before Grandis. As righteous as Grandis may be, he was still the strongest person in the Mirror World. Going through with one’s will before such an individual was easier said than done.

However, Seong-Hwi had pulled it off. Because of that, the matter at hand had switched from Underground’s and Barbaria’s invasion of Consanguineus to corruption in the Sēmen. Instead of responding to the Sēmen’s judgment, he was using his eloquence to ask whether the Sēmen even had the right to judge them.

It looks like he’s going off fully on emotions, but I am certain it was all carefully planned, Erzsebet thought.

She looked at Scourgify, who was simply clenching his fists and shaking without a word.

I can’t expect any help from him. We’ve lost our justification, and the flow has completely shifted in their favor. In that case...

She would give up on what she couldn’t realistically obtain. However, there was one thing she absolutely couldn’t give up on, so she had to reclaim that, at the very least.

“Let us discuss the matter of Nivalis... at another time. Focus on the matter at hand,” Grandis said to Seong-Hwi.

Seong-Hwi felt the subsiding stimulation from his Destiny Force, realizing he should not push the matter any further. He was sure Grandis had gotten the message. Now, Underground’s innocence was practically proven.

Just then, Erzsebet said, “I acknowledge that Consanguineus kidnapped, detained, exploited, and murdered humans.”

Scourgify and Scite shouted at Erzsebet simultaneously.

“Sister Erzsebet!”

“Erzsebet!”

Erzsebet had become the new number one in the vampire ranking after Haema Sanguis’s death at the hands of Pseraslav. Hence, the representative of Consanguineus had acknowledged their sins.

“We will accept any punishment as per the World Law,” she continued.

Erzsebet Melos... What are you thinking? Seong-Hwi wondered, staring at the woman acknowledging the vampires’ sins out of nowhere.

Although he had practically driven Consanguineus into a corner, there had still been a way out for them. They could have shifted all the blame to Haema Sanguis. That way, Consanguineus would simply have had to offer Underground sufficient compensation, and that would be the end of it. However, she had decided to let Consanguineus take all the blame, even mentioning the World Law.

Is she saying she respects the Sēmen’s authority and leaves it to their judgment? Is it because they lost Haema Sanguis?

Seong-Hwi understood a part of Erzsebet’s thoughts. Since Consanguineus lost its absolute leader, it would have to remain on good terms with the Sēmen. However, that was not all there was to Erzsebet’s ploy.

“Since we are willing to be punished under the World Law, I wish for Underground and Barbaria to follow the World Law as well,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Grandis asked.

Erzsebet shifted her gaze to Seong-Hwi and said, “As per the World Law, every item obtained in a dungeon belongs to the one who obtained it.”

It can’t be! Seong-Hwi shouted inwardly, his expression hardening once he realized what Erzsebet was aiming for.

“However, Haema engaged in battle after leaving the dungeon and passed away,” Erzsebet continued.

“So?”

“Under normal circumstances, I would not have objected to the victor taking spoils from the corpse of the defeated. However... it would be a different story if the spoils were a race stone.”

Everyone in the room expressed shock.

“Gasp!”

“A race stone?!”

“The vampires’ race stone?”

“Yeah, it’s Haema Sanguis, after all.”

“It’s not a stretch for him to have it.”

“Meow? I didn’t hear anything about that from Ranko!”

“Then did Underground... take it?”

All eyes shifted to the members of Underground.

Erzsebet continued, “The race stone doesn’t belong to Haema Sanguis, but to the vampire race. Hence, it is wrong for it to be taken as the spoils just because they killed Haema Sanguis. There is no doubt in my mind that the Sēmen will ensure it is returned to us as per the World Law.”

This was why she had mentioned she would respect the World Law to the point she would have Consanguineus shoulder all their sins.

Seong-Hwi clicked his tongue inwardly, and he frowned. Although he was frustrated that Erzsebet had pulled the rug from under him, he was also relieved that they had discussed this in advance. Bafor and Irura looked at Seong-Hwi and nodded.