"...Phew."
Looking at Daub collapsed on the floor, Rei finally let out a breath of relief.
Daub was not particularly strong.
Well, he was strong in a sense, but "hard to fight" was a far more fitting description.
At any rate, judging that he could not stay here forever, Rei called the Twilight Spear—still piercing Daub's face—back to his hand.
At times like this, the spear's ability to return to his hand whenever he wished was incredibly convenient.
With that in mind, Rei checked whether touching that bizarre black liquid—along with Death Scythe—had caused any abnormalities. Satisfied, he shook the dark fluid from the blade, spearhead, and shaft before storing both weapons in his Misty Ring.
After doing so, he examined Daub's condition once more.
Normally, given that the torso had been bisected vertically and the face pierced by the Twilight Spear, there should have been an intense stench of blood... and the smell of viscera and bodily fluids permeating the air.
Though, as far as the smell of blood went, there were already plenty of corpses in this room, so it had been drifting from them already.
The woman who had been throwing metal spheres was already dead, perhaps from excessive blood loss.
With new blood scent mingling in the rest, noticing the difference would have been difficult indeed.
"Well, at least I'm glad that the unease is gone."
As Daub's torso was split apart and large quantities of black liquid poured out, Rei could feel the dissonance that had plagued him since arriving in Gilm rapidly fading away.
"Still, what is this liquid...?"
The torso was split into two halves, top and bottom. Black liquid oozed from it, and he knew that was what had been causing the dissonance in both him and Set. But that was not the only reason Rei had frozen in place.
Between the bisected torso, a hand was visible.
...Yes, a hand.
Or perhaps this is Daub's true body? Rei wondered, lightly kicking Daub's lower half to separate it from the upper.
Then, in the next moment, something rolled out of the torso with a heavy thud.
Something.
No—it was not something so ambiguous. Rei could clearly make out human arms, legs, and a face.
Since it was covered in black liquid, he could not discern exactly what the face looked like.
But from the face and... the body that had emerged from inside the torso wearing no clothes, he could tell from the swell of the chest that it was a woman.
"What in the world..."
Is this woman Daub's true identity? Rei wondered again.
But if so, questions remained.
Despite the torso having been cut cleanly in half, the woman covered in black liquid was found inside Daub's body with her torso, limbs, and head each severed into separate pieces.
Rei tried to check the woman's face as a matter of course, but he had never seen her before.
Since black liquid coated her face, he had not examined it closely—but even so, there was no flicker of recognition.
Even if Rei had known that this woman was François, the one who had been ordered to assassinate him, she was someone he had never actually met face-to-face. And upon learning she had been targeting his life, he probably would not have felt any particular way about it.
At any rate, Rei did not know that the woman inside Daub's bisected body was that person. He simply thought she was a woman who had been killed by Daub for some reason... and the fact that she was inside his body, soaked in black liquid, probably meant she was somehow connected to the source of the dissonance he had been feeling.
In that sense, it could even be said that he felt pity for her.
Was it the woman's own ability that caused the dissonance in Rei, or was the black liquid itself the cause, and the woman's existence was necessary to make that liquid function effectively?
At this point, the details were unknowable.
All Rei understood was that Daub's corpse lay before him, a woman's corpse had been inside it, and the dissonance that had plagued him since arriving in Gilm had vanished.
"Well, calling it Daub's corpse is debatable, though."
Daub's head was destroyed, and blood was flowing from it.
Looking at just that, one might call it a corpse—but what was housed inside the torso was not internal organs. It was a woman's corpse and black liquid.
Seeing that, it was hard to believe that the Daub collapsed before him was actually a corpse.
"In that case, it really was a puppet after all."
Since Daub was not flesh and blood, it was possible that a small person had been inside the balloon-like body, operating Daub like a robot.
Such a question had crossed his mind, but looking at Daub in his current state, thinking anything further was pointless.
"...Well. What should I do?"
It was safe to say that Rei had all but annihilated the combat personnel of the Clown organization.
It was possible that a few capable individuals still remained inside the building, but if they were not coming out in this situation, their strength was likely insufficient to defeat Rei.
Of course, that assumed anyone was still there at all.
"If you don't want this building destroyed, come out."
Rei called out to that effect, but no one showed any sign of emerging.
From his exchange with the whip-wielding woman, it was nearly certain that somewhere in this building, there were personnel without combat ability.
However, figuring out how to find them was another challenge entirely.
With the dissonance gone, his ability to detect presences had returned to normal, but even so, Rei found it difficult to sense any signs of life within the building.
"If I knew where the Magic Items and treasure were, I could head straight there. But that's difficult too."
Haa, he sighed.
Rei wondered what he should do in this current situation.
Many of the Clown members had been using weapons that were likely Magic Items.
The ones that concealed one's appearance and prevented detection of one's presence were something Rei definitely wanted for himself.
However, without knowing where those Magic Items were stored, there was nothing he could do.
That was precisely why he had spoken—telling anyone inside to come out.
But even as Rei spoke those words, no one showed any sign of appearing.
Had they heard his words and still chosen to hide?
Or were they simply hidden somewhere, unable to hear him?
(In that case, it would be better to burn this building to the ground after all? That way, it would also be difficult for anyone other than me to obtain the Magic Items the Clowns possess.)
Letting someone else take Magic Items that he could not obtain himself was unappealing.
It was, in a sense, Rei's selfishness—but it also stemmed from his belief that the Clown organization should be destroyed sooner rather than later.
There was also the fact that he could not afford to spend time searching for Magic Items and treasure here.
With those considerations in mind, Rei resolved to destroy the building.
"If someone came out and peacefully handed over the Magic Items and treasure, I wouldn't destroy the building, you know."
Rei murmured those words with deliberate meaning, hoping someone was listening—but as expected, no one emerged.
For the time being, he stored the corpse of Daub—the puppet—though whether "corpse" was even the right word was debatable, along with the woman's corpse that had been inside Daub, into his Misty Ring and exited the building.
Perhaps Set had captured some of the Clown members outside.
That thought crossed his mind, but unfortunately, only Set was outside. There was no one unconscious or dead on the ground.
"Set, judging from the looks of it, no one came?"
"Gruu..."
Set let out a disappointed purr in response to Rei's words.
But the reason he immediately began purring happily a moment later—different from before—was naturally understood by Rei.
"I see, so the unease is gone for you too, Set?"
"Gruu!"
That's right! Set cried out, rubbing his head against Rei.
Rei patted Set's head, glad that killing Daub had not only erased the unease for himself, but for Set as well.
"Well, for now, the main objective for coming to the Slum District is accomplished, but..."
"Huh? Then, are we done for today?"
The one who called out to Rei was Lazaria.
Seeing Rei emerge from the Clown hideout and talk to Set with a relieved expression, she must have judged that everything was safe now.
But Rei shook his head at Lazaria.
"No, I want to crush the organization that's distributing those drugs. Given the time, we'll destroy that organization and call it a day."
Rei stated it so casually, his tone like someone doing farm work and deciding to push themselves just a little bit more at the end.
In truth, unlike before, Rei had no intention of taking his time with the drug-running organization.
"You say that so easily, but... um, are you sure it'll be okay?"
"Yeah, just watch."
Saying that, Rei drew Death Scythe from his Misty Ring.
"O flame, thou shalt exist only within the domain I designate, and shalt not exist in any other domain. As compensation for thy brief life, thou shalt feed upon my magical power within the domain, and in an instant, sublime thy life."
As he chanted the incantation, red lines were drawn on the ground centered around the Clown hideout, and those lines eventually formed a red dome.
"Wild Dance of the Fire Spirits."
The moment the magic activated, fire spirits in the shape of lizards began to materialize inside the red dome—one, then tens, then hundreds, then thousands...
Suddenly, one fire spirit exploded, and the rest followed in a chain reaction.
Each individual explosion was not that large, but when there were thousands of them, it was a different story entirely.
The instant all the fire spirits exploded, a searing inferno was generated within the red dome, burning everything inside to nothing.
Without the dome, the power of the flames might have dispersed—but the fire was contained within the red barrier, burning everything inside without losing any of its intensity.
In less than a few minutes, the building was completely consumed, and nothing remained inside the red dome.
Not even a single fragment of charcoal was left behind—everything had been reduced to ash.
Naturally, the corpses of the Clown members inside the building were all incinerated, not leaving even a single bone fragment behind.
Furthermore, if someone had been hiding inside the building as Rei had suspected, they too would have been burned to nothing.
"..."
Lazaria, watching the scene, was literally speechless. She could only stare as the red dome vanished, leaving behind nothing but an empty lot where the building had stood mere moments ago.
Lazaria knew that Rei was a highly skilled mage—one who bore the alias of Crimson—and had even seen him fight, albeit briefly.
But... even so, the magic she had just witnessed was an unbelievable sight.
That said, he could not leave her standing there in a daze forever, so Rei called out to Lazaria.
"How about it? If I use this magic, the organization that brought in those drugs will be wiped out in no time."
"Uh... that... but, is it really okay? Weren't you collecting Magic Items and such, Rei-san? An organization dealing in drugs would probably have Magic Items and treasures beyond anything I could even imagine, you know?"
"Yeah, I don't really mind. I don't like drugs and things like that."
Rei did not have any personal experience, like a friend using narcotics or anything of that sort.
For that matter, where Rei had lived in Japan was nothing but countryside, not a city.
Naturally, there had been no flow of narcotics or the like coming through.
...Well, perhaps drugs had been there and Rei simply had not noticed.
At any rate, narcotics were never something familiar to Rei.
Even so, at school, he had been taught about the dangers of drugs on numerous occasions.
Rei's aversion to drugs probably stemmed from that.
In a way, this too could be called a result of education, but... the teachers and police officers who had taught Reiji about the dangers of drugs never imagined that Reiji would end up burning down a drug-selling organization's entire building in another world.
"I-I see. Then, um... please do."
Lazaria nodded, somewhat taken aback by Rei's words.