## Chapter 718 – Paladin Kim Kat

“Guheueuk…!”

Despite having its belly ripped open and its entrails spilled out, the Manticore was still `alive`. Truly astonishing vitality.

It must have been a strong monster in its own right.
It’s just that Risha was too strong.

“Hehehe, how does the taste of retribution sit with you?”

I approached the faintly groaning creature, crouched down, and asked.

“Keuk… Agony! Kahaaak…!”

Even though I didn’t know the paladin’s face, he was like a comrade and friend to me. I would have preferred to slice him up myself, but Risha made it even more painful, so that’s good enough.

I sentenced the beast.

“Monsters like you can never defeat us humans. Curse your fate, and despair at your promised defeat. You can never escape your miserable end.”

ㅡTtaak!

I imbued my inner energy and flicked the monster’s nose.

“Kehek!”

The long nose’s bone broke, and it drooped down limply.

“This is the retribution for you eating the paladin.”
“Geuhauk…! Keulleok! Hu, human…!”

The Manticore tried to say something, but no coherent words came from its mouth, torn to the ears. It could only groan and cough up blood.

It barely managed to complete the word “human.”

“Hey, Darkie, stop posing and quickly clean up the guts. Risha, sis, let me know if you need anything here.”
“Let’s see.”

Wienia said, using the ring of her staff to pull out the entrails floating on the blood-soaked ground.

“Darkie, come quickly.”
“Hey, who’s posing?”
“You were just spouting impressive-sounding words. You really love that kind of thing.”

They weren’t impressive-sounding words…!

“Eing… Okay, I’ll be right there.”

First, I need to clean up the guts.
I need to take anything useful with me.

As I was looking for tools to clean up, Karin said to Risha,

“Our witch-nim? You said it was a Manticore, right? I want to take its head as a souvenir. Can I just cut it off?”
“Could you extract the brain? If possible, I’d like it to remain intact. If we can get the brain, I don’t care about the head.”
“Super easy. Honey, come over here and watch before you clean that up.”
“Wait for me, Wienia.”

I immediately went to Karin’s side.

“What are you going to show me?”
“Head splitting.”

Head splitting?

ㅡTaak.

Karin, lightly gripping her learmetal sword, stood in front of the Manticore’s head. I already knew her skills well. A true powerhouse, almost unmatched even in the kingdom.

The execution of her technique was instantaneous.

ㅡPaaat!

Karin, after briefly assuming a stance, suddenly swung her sword, cleanly severing the Manticore’s scalp and skull as if opening a lid.

Even opening a can of tuna wouldn’t be this clean.

“Heomi.”

Even though half of the skull was severed, the brain was intact. The Manticore’s brain, which had slid out, was now contained in the upper skull, which had become a lid.

“This is also a skill.”
“Noona, that’s too inhumanly cruel. It’s like a technique used by serial killers.”
“It is a technique used by serial killers.”

So it is.

“You need to be cruel on the battlefield. It’s helpful to be able to use these kinds of tricks. Can you do it, honey?”
“I don’t think I’d be able to do it even after trying a few times.”

How did she do that?

Not only did she cleanly sever the Manticore’s skull lying on its side, but she didn’t damage the brain at all.

“It’s all about the difference in skill. Instead of just practicing what Liz taught you, you should practice swordsmanship more diligently, and then you’ll be able to do it too, honey.”
“I can already hear the sound of my training time increasing.”

What can I do? The Manticore died with its eyes rolled back.

Anyway, after that, Cloudi personally skinned it. It was a huge monster, but Cloudi stabbed it with her knife and quickly skinned it all.

“I’ve been catching these kinds of large monsters for a long time. Then we can put the guts in here.”
“Great!”

That’s how we cleaned up the chaotic scene.

We flattened the appropriately cut leather and placed the entrails on top. Hilde was able to move all the entrails very cleanly with her levitation magic, making it easy. After moving everything, we weaved the ends of the leather together like making dumplings, storing the entrails inside the leather, which had become like a sack.

Now we can carry it home as is.

We’ll also need to take the limbs, tail, and head separately.

With this, the mission was accomplished.

ㅡWe found out the paladin’s whereabouts.

The moment the Manticore mentioned `Verde` to mock me, the evidence was complete.

“But.”

There’s one more thing left to do.

“I need to drag all those villagers out.”

The Manticore clearly enslaved the people of the village, tricking people into becoming prey. That means… the villagers cooperated in this series of murders.

And for a long time.

“…”

The village was still silent.

Even with such a commotion, no one came out to check. As if… it had nothing to do with them.

“Are you done cleaning up? Sit over there for now. I need to interrogate all the bastards here from now on.”
“Should I just block them from escaping?”

I nodded at Cloudi’s words.

“Yeah. Please do that. Thank you.”

My women split into groups and spread out throughout the village. ㅡKwaang! I kicked down the doors of all the buildings in the village, checking the inside.

They were all empty.

The last one left was the village chief’s house.

ㅡKwaang!

I broke down the door to his house and went inside, but as expected, the inside was empty. Only the door leading down to the basement was shyly welcoming me. Everyone seems to be hiding down there.

ㅡKkieeek.

I removed the crudely made door and stepped down the dirt stairs into the basement. It felt like a Kobold’s dungeon. Dark and small. Only a faint light was leaking from the room below.

And then I reached the basement.

Inside the basement, all the villagers were gathered.

“…”

Dozens of villagers, relying on only one small fire, were sitting densely together, looking at me, an uninvited guest. No one made a sound. They were just staring up at me with wide eyes.

“Come out.”

That’s all I had to say.

“…”
“…”

ㅡSilence.

“The Manticore…”

Just as I was about to draw my sword, the village chief, whom I had seen earlier, cautiously spoke. Judging by the way he spoke, he already knew everything.

These bastards dared to deceive our paladin?

“I killed it. I won’t say it twice. Everyone crawl out. If you don’t cooperate, I’ll kill you all in the name of the Brass Holy Order’s Paladin.”
“…I understand.”

The village chief, as if resigned, answered.

“Everyone, get up.”

At his command, the villagers stood up.

“…”
“…”

That’s how I dragged all the villagers hiding in the basement out into the open. As soon as they came out, I dragged the dozens of villagers to the center of the village, right in front of where the Manticore had died. Their eyes widened, and they cried out in small voices.

“Heueuk…!”
“That, that’s finally…!”
“Keuheuueuk…!”

Did he say they were slaves?

“Stop whining. Everyone kneel down.”

At my command, the humans all knelt down.
I had the village chief come in front of me.

“Village chief. I won’t say much. Do you admit to the charge of collaborating with the Manticore to murder travelers? You better not lie. I already killed that monster and heard everything.”
“…”

The village chief bit his lip for a moment and answered in a voice that seemed resigned.

“…That’s right.”
“You admit it readily.”
“…”

The village chief was almost about to cry.
He swallowed his tears and spoke with difficulty.

“The Manticore… first appeared several years ago.”

Several years ago?

“That monster suddenly invaded the village, slaughtered half of our villagers in an instant, and then told us. From now on, become my slaves and offer me food.”

The village chief calmly recounted the story that had happened in his village.

It was a common story.

The Manticore appeared, and it was impossible to defeat a monster that even a decent paladin couldn’t handle. So they succumbed and did as they were told.

“The monster said that if it hunted comfortably like this, it could avoid troublesome things. That is… avoid being chased by the army, and laughed cruelly. So he told you slaves to work hard.”

It settled near the village, and with the cooperation of the enslaved villagers, it fed the travelers food laced with drugs, making it very easy to catch and eat them.

Of course, not all travelers were targets. Only those who looked like easy prey. If they seemed strong or likely to leave traces, they would pass them by.

Anyway, once they had a target, they would allow them to stay in the village and then send a young man to inform the Manticore of their hiding place.

Then the Manticore would sneak down at night and easily devour the human staying there. If they had been drugged, it would swallow them without getting hurt, and if they hadn’t been drugged, it would just subdue them and eat them.

Because it was happening secretly in a remote village, there was no way for the news to leak out. The Manticore settled down here in that way and lived very comfortably.

“The Manticore reigned as our god. It was impossible to resist or… escape. It caught and killed anyone who tried to escape in secret, and as punishment, it killed two other villagers. So we monitored and controlled each other to prevent each other from escaping. It was a quagmire. It was impossible to escape. It would have been very easy for that bastard to annihilate us.”

This was the whole story of this incident.

“So, for several years, we lived as slaves of the Manticore, offering travelers as sacrifices.”

…Wait a minute.

Then the Manticore wasn’t the monster the paladin was chasing? Did he get caught by the Manticore after being caught in an innocent village while chasing it?

It seems that way.

“So, did you offer the paladin that way too?”
“…Yes. It was a relatively recent event.”
“Did you drug him?”
“We didn’t at first, but… he stayed in this village for several days, saying he was tracking some monster. The Manticore ordered us to drug him no matter what, and we built a friendship with him over the course of those days… and eventually succeeded in feeding him soup laced with drugs.”

The village chief seemed to have given up completely and confessed everything.

“The Manticore said that if we didn’t drug the paladin, it would kill us all.”
“…”
“It’s all my fault. So please… only punish me. I won’t say that it couldn’t be helped. We have been killing other people to survive. I think we deserve to be punished.”

ㅡNeopjuk.

The village chief knelt down and bowed to me.

“I understand the situation, village chief.”

I organized this incident in my head.

ㅡHwareureuk!

The flames of Fusion Confucianism began to burn fiercely.

“But.”

What kind of judgment should Cheonma Kim Kat make?

“Don’t you think it’s too big of a deal to just let it go with the village chief dying alone?”
“…Th, that can’t be!!”
“It’s not just you.”

A paladin died, so will it really end with one person taking the blame?

“Everyone involved in this will die.”
“Th, that can’t be!!! It was all me!!! I was the one who ordered it! The villagers are only guilty of following my orders!!!”

At my words, the village chief shouted, kneeling.

“You said they were only guilty of following orders? If you think you can pay the price for selling travelers and paladins to the Manticore with just those words, you’re mistaken.”
“Then, then…! Then what! What should we have done!! We wanted to live too!!! Are you saying that we should have all died on the day the Manticore first appeared!!!”

ㅡKuoong!

The village chief slammed his fist on the ground.

“If you’re a paladin, tell me…!! What should we have done!!! What should we have done!!!”
“I’m not talking about what choices you made.”

ㅡSeureung.

I drew the Holy Sword Vugal.

“I’m just talking about the results and the phenomena. Don’t think that such a flimsy excuse will work on me.”
“We would have all died if we didn’t do as the Manticore ordered!!! We couldn’t escape!!! Are you saying that we all had to die because we were weak and didn’t want to die!!!”

The village chief cried out, weeping.

ㅡHeueuk, heueueuk…!
ㅡHeueuk!
ㅡKeuheueuk…!

The villagers also buried their faces in their hands and wept miserably.

“We wanted to live! We wanted to escape! I felt my heart dying as I sold people! Even so! No one saved us! So we just resigned ourselves, gave up, and had no choice but to follow!!! The Manticore was the god of this village, and it was impossible to even resist!!! What are we supposed to do when they say they’ll kill us all if we resist!!!”

The village chief, crawling on the ground, grabbed my ankle and sobbed.

“But why…! Why us…! Please…! I’ll offer my neck, so please don’t take the lives of the villagers I wanted to protect…! I beg you, Paladin-nim! Please! You can punish us, but please spare our lives…!”

The soul of Fusion Confucianism burns.