The Strongest Villain Sets Out: Reincarnated into a Merit-Based Clan, I Become the World's Strongest Swordsman

I kicked the mysterious black-clad man. He bounced off the ground once while flying far backward. Cornelia and I chased after him.

“Ow ow ow…! You do terrible things. That attack had quite a lot of aura in it, didn’t it?”

“I kicked intending to break bones.”

He was surprisingly tough. An ordinary aura user shouldn’t have been able to move or speak properly. Despite putting that much force into it, the man continued conversing while writhing in apparent pain. He could apparently still move.

“I won’t be taken down so easily. You’re not the only one who can use aura.”

The black-clad man also displayed aura. The quality wasn’t that impressive. That he could minimize damage from my earlier attack wasn’t due to aura but intuition. Meaning his intuition was sharp.

“You’re a beastman.”

“Tch!”

The black-clad man showed slight agitation at my words.

Bingo?

There was a possibility he was deliberately pretending to fool me. Since I couldn’t see his face, I should suspect everything.

However, assuming he was a beastman, how had he used curses that should be his weakness? Had Astaroth noticed? I glanced at Astaroth floating behind me.

[It seems he’s hiding a powerful cursed tool in his breast pocket.]

Astaroth answered readily.

“I see. Well, that makes sense.”

A tool to supplement power he couldn’t use himself. Anyone would use it that way.

But did he want to let that lion beastman escape so badly? Though I’d known from the start, he was on the coup side.

What bothered me was that this black-clad man hadn’t appeared in the original. At least from the protagonist’s perspective, no such suspicious guy had appeared. I wanted to see his face even more.

“What should we do, Luka? He’s not that skilled, so should we just kill him quickly?”

“As I always say, you should capture opponents alive when possible. In cases like this, information is most valuable.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

Cornelia chuckled.

“But I’m bad at holding back.”

“No problem as long as he doesn’t die. Even if you cut off limbs, you and I can use prayer magic.”

“Ahah. Then I’ll rampage as I like?”

“Don’t hold me back.”

“Roger.”

Answering, Cornelia kicked off the roof. She closed in on the aura-clad black man.

The black-clad man couldn’t keep up with Cornelia’s speed, let alone mine. If we carefully cornered him like this, we could capture him without problems.

But if something happens once, it happens twice. If it happens twice, it happens thrice. Unpleasant things often repeat many times like that.

“Hmm?”

Cornelia was carving up the black-clad man’s body when black smoke was dropped on them. The smoke’s momentum was tremendous. The moment I thought a smoke mass had fallen to the ground, I detected a curse reaction, and the surroundings were instantly shrouded in dim darkness.

Another tool of some kind. Not from the black-clad man. Smoke had suddenly been dropped from above. Probably—there were other companions.

“Be careful, Cornelia. There’s not just one opponent.”

“Okaaay. But this is the worst. He escaped at full power.”

Cornelia shrugged in the smoke. I approached her and placed my hand on her shoulder.

There were already no human presences around. They’d used a terrifyingly sophisticated tool to erase even their presence and escaped in that opening. It wouldn’t work repeatedly, but was convenient for first encounters like this. Unfortunately, I’d been careless.

“Sorry, Luka.”

“It’s not Cornelia’s fault. I was careless too. But no problem. Just learning the opponents are coup-side is a harvest. Besides, I didn’t really intend to interfere much anyway.”

I’d been following the lion beastman mainly to grasp beforehand where their hideout was. In the original, the coup occurred and there were fights with beastmen throughout the city. Their hideout location wasn’t discovered. If I’d grasped that information first, suppressing the coup would have been easier.

“That’s good then.”

Cornelia grinned without seeming to care anymore.

While patting her head, I looked around and returned with Cornelia to where Lucia and the others were.

Now then, how would they move after receiving this interference? I might have caused some ripples.

▼△▼

“Phew, you saved me, Captain. I definitely would have been caught alone.”

The black-clad man who’d escaped from near Luka expressed gratitude in a frivolous voice to another man in the same outfit and mask.

“For them to corner you that much, they must be quite skilled.”

“Yes. They had about the same combat sense and aura amount as the lion beastman.”

He nodded to the other man’s low voice.

“But the lion beastman is our ally. Did other forces stick their noses in? No… that’s just speculation.”

“What should we do? Change the plan?”