Gluttony Demon King with the Swampman ~A Man with No Magic Power Who Dreamed of Magic, Wielding Knowledge from His Past Life Through Steady Research and Hard Work to Become the Most Vicious Final Boss~

Chapter 57: Flight Toward Death

There had been talks between Terranon’s medical guild and Haro—plenty of them.

For example, the guild had repeatedly offered, “If you’re going to practice medicine in this town, you must join us.”

Haro refused every time.

The sticking point was the price of treatment.

The guild set fixed rates for everything in town: so much for herbal cures, so much for surgery, so much for illnesses that only magic could heal.

Magic-based healing was especially expensive.

In this country, non-magical medicine hadn’t advanced much, and only a handful of people could use magic at all. The result was sky-high prices. Naturally, anyone who couldn’t pay was left to die.

From the guild’s point of view, Haro’s “ink-based reconstruction treatment” was nothing less than magic.

If it was magic, it had to carry the proper price tag.

Haro, on the other hand, had no reason to accept that demand. To him, these were simply human experiments. Making test subjects bear the risk and then charging them a fortune on top of it was beyond any code of ethics he could stomach.

“Surgery that opens up your insides really costs this much? That’s outrageous.”

Haro spat the words with open disgust.

Normally, the local lord would step in to mediate, and in most cases the lord would side with the guild that controlled the huge profits.

This time was different.

Viscount Chiltor, the lord in question, had already had a family member saved by Haro.

In exchange for a modest subsidy to the guild, the viscount ordered them not to interfere with Haro’s experiments.

The result: relations between Haro and the guild broke down completely.

“Alright, this is the district.”

Late at night, two figures dressed entirely in black moved through the darkness.

“Our target this time is some kid named Haro, right? Those medical bastards sure are pathetic, hiring assassins for a child.”

“Hmph. We’re no better—we took the job.”

Thanks to the Calm Silence spell, they made no sound at all, and their voices didn’t carry.
They bounded lightly from rooftop to rooftop, heading for their destination.

“We finish tonight and leave town. Got it?”

“Yeah.”

They were a family of assassins.

Not residents of Terranon, they had no fixed home. Like crows that travel the world, they took murder contracts wherever they appeared—mercenaries of death.

Using their clan’s secret art, they opened a tiny hole in the city’s barrier and slipped inside.
Once the job was done, they would collect their pay and vanish without a trace.

For the medical guild to hire them meant they desperately wanted to hide the route of the request.

Healers hiring killers was unthinkable for healers, of course—but still laughable, the assassins sneered.

Yet their smirking faces were quickly scolded by the single woman who stepped in front of them.

“I’ve been waiting for you, honored assassins. I am Oz, the slave who serves at Master Haro’s side.”

“—!”

Both men froze mid-step.

The woman standing calmly on the roof had clearly noticed them.

Half her face was covered by a black lace blindfold, and she leaned on a staff. On her back she carried what looked like an enormous coffin.

“…Blindfold and cane—so she’s blind? They say people born missing senses grow extremely sensitive to mana. No wonder she spotted us.”

“Thank you for the compliment. It’s not congenital blindness, and Master kindly adjusted this body for me, but I still keep my eyes closed like this. After all, glass eyeballs would be rather creepy, wouldn’t they?”

…Glass eyeballs?

The assassins had no idea what she was talking about.

Either way, since she had seen through layer upon layer of stealth magic, the only choice left was to silence her.

They exchanged glances, drew their swords, and charged—

The coffin on Oz’s back snapped open.

What slithered out was a gigantic mechanical doll.

Its body was a grotesque patchwork of different-colored wooden parts, countless magic circles and formulas carved across every surface.

It had no legs; instead it crawled on eight arms, yet it spread exaggerated angel wings. The only way to describe it was “a giant spider with wings.”

The limbs weren’t spider legs at all—they were mismatched pieces of beast, bird, lizard, frog, and other monsters stitched together in unbalanced, asymmetrical horror.

A bird-like forelimb and a beast-like forelimb swung razor-sharp claws, batting away the assassins’ swords.

“Guh!?”

“What the hell is this puppet…?!”

The huge doll blocked their path and raised its beast head—an exaggerated face Haro once described as “looking like a lion dance.”

“Thanks to all of you teaching me, I can now control dolls of this size and number… So, to repay that debt, I must be useful in moments exactly like this.”

Oz smiled calmly, and the doll moved.

One of its rear limbs suddenly flared with intense mana, and the puppet leapt forward like a spring. The assassins barely crossed their swords in time.

“W-What monstrous strength…!”

“To think Haro keeps a slave like this… The guild never told us!”

Eight limbs attacked in relentless waves. The assassins blocked, dodged, canceled blows with magic, yet the ferocious onslaught never stopped. The moment the word “retreat” flashed through their minds—

“—!?”

“Gah…!”

Countless black needles pierced their bodies.

“Hidden needles…? No—s-slime…?”

One died instantly. The other, clinging to life, finally understood.

Every joint of the doll, every gap between the giant wing feathers—glossy black liquid oozed from every seam. The countless long needles that turned their bodies into sea urchins were clearly liquid.

They had heard the rumors.

Haro Swampman could freely control an unknown black slime.

And now it made sense: all those countless magic circles and formulas carved into the doll’s body had been drawn with that black slime.

Using slime to draw magic circles, using the slime’s body as a medium for water magic—

“What heretical magic…!”

Those words of shock and reluctant awe were the man’s last.
A bird-like foreleg brutally twisted his neck and tossed the corpse aside.

“…”

Oz slowly approached the two rolling bodies and gently stroked the doll’s back.
The puppet folded its body and eight limbs small, then crawled back inside the coffin-shaped doll case on her back.

“A combat doll personally crafted by Master Haro, patchwork of ten kinds of monster parts with ink circulating inside as blood and fluid—‘Flight Toward Death.’ Ah, it’s wonderful, Master. You did splendid work again tonight.”

Not a single drop of blood stained her.

She tapped the roof lightly with the tip of her staff, then turned her face to the sky and looked around.

Her unseen gaze stopped at one point.

“…Something still feels unpleasant.”

It wasn’t a guess.

Having lived with her eyes closed since childhood, she was extraordinarily sensitive to the flow of mana.

The problem was the route the assassins had used to enter.

They had opened a small hole in the city barrier and climbed the wall like insects.

And something else had hitched a ride through that hole.

From Oz’s position she couldn’t see it, but on the far side of the outer wall—

Something was slipping through the tiny gap in the barrier right now, crawling upward along the stone.

Its single goal: to finish off the hero it had failed to kill before.