It was deep into the night.
Aside from a few specific areas, most of the Imperial Capital had already been swallowed by darkness.
Naturally, this cake shop had long since closed for the day.
But none of that mattered to Noah.
He arrived in front of the shut storefront, expressionless, and raised his left hand.
The spell formulas engraved on Crowfeather glowed crimson as mana flowed into them.
"Bombard."
BOOM!
The instant the ultra-short chant was completed, a violent blast of flame blew the cake shop's front entrance apart.
The terrifying impact, along with shards accelerated to supersonic speed by the force of the explosion, poured straight inside.
The thunderous boom and the clear tremor frightened the residents along the street.
Lamps began lighting up one after another as people peered out from their windows, curious about what had happened.
"Taeko."
Noah only called her name once, and the ponytailed girl instantly rushed inside.
A moment later, she walked out while dragging a struggling man.
There were several burns on his body.
Aside from that, fragments of glass, splinters of wood, and other debris were embedded all over him, making him look rather horrifying.
Taeko threw him to the ground, and her long blade flashed down with a swish, stopping precisely against his throat, not even an inch off.
Feeling the cold edge against his neck, the man endured the pain and no longer dared to move recklessly.
He was afraid he would slice open his own throat.
"Wait, help! Don't kill me! Take the money, take anything you want!"
The man looked utterly terrified.
Noah narrowed his eyes slightly when he saw him.
In truth, he was searching through his own memories, looking for his first impression of this man.
One week ago.
That was the first time he had ever seen this man in the corner of his eye.
Before that, this man had never appeared in his memories.
In other words...
Smack!
Noah grabbed the man's head, his eyes glowing faint blue.
This man was extremely suspicious.
"Taeko, go calm down the nearby residents. Tell them the law enforcement team is handling a case."
"Yes."
The girl put away her long blade, then ran toward the houses where the lights had come on.
Only Noah and the heavily injured man were left at the scene.
'Then, let's begin.'
The original owners of the cake shop had been a lonely mother and daughter, Imperial Capital natives who had never left the area.
Noah had passed by this place seventy-one times before and had never heard that they had any other relatives, nor that they intended to sell the shop.
Until one week ago, when this man and two other unfamiliar faces appeared in the cake shop.
There was no doubt about it.
This shop had already been taken over by Oarburgh.
Noah entered the man's soul corridor and looked at what had happened several days earlier.
First, there were the original mother and daughter who owned the cake shop.
They had been pitifully murdered, and their bodies were still in the cellar.
Starting from the day after the murders, these people had taken over the shop under the identity of distant relatives.
They had improved the cakes' taste by more than one level...
And as a result, business exploded.
Chelsea's method of exchanging information with them had been through the cake ingredients.
Different combinations represented different messages.
The insect-user named Merraid Oarburgh hid insects inside the cakes after arriving, then formally made contact with Chelsea by controlling those insects.
All of this had been to wash away Oarburgh's stain and avenge that old woman named Barbara.
All the intelligence had been provided by Chelsea, including the internal layout of the Science Division and even the routes of the ventilation ducts, which she had also mapped out clearly.
He really had underestimated her.
He had thought that without her Imperial Arms, she was just an ordinary, delicate girl.
Turns out she was pretty capable after all.
Noah murmured, "The other two left less than two hours ago. Chelsea left two hours earlier than that... Mm, I see."
"Urgh... agh!"
The man's eyes bulged wide.
His head hurt.
But it did not feel like the pain was inside his skull. It was something deeper.
"Stop, stop it!"
The man began struggling violently.
As a result, even Noah did not expect what happened next. By accident, he twisted the man's soul halfway around.
In that instant, the man's eyes dulled.
His entire body collapsed like a pile of mud, though his breathing and heartbeat remained normal.
Noah lit a small flame and placed it in front of the man's eyes.
The man's pupils trembled slightly, proving that he had not completely lost his instinctive response to danger.
Appraisal also showed that the man was fully paralyzed, but he was not a vegetable.
"So it can turn out like this."
Noah narrowed his eyes and observed the man for a while.
After he was roughly satisfied, he lowered one finger onto the man's forehead.
Before acting, he suddenly paused.
After hesitating for about ten seconds, he suddenly spoke, as though talking to the man and also to himself.
"No, this really won't do. As expected, the power to manipulate souls is taboo."
"As long as these hands touch another person's soul, I can easily erase them from soul to body. I can even turn them into terrifying monsters, leaving them without a next life, unable even to fall into hell."
"If I want to, I can freely peek at the secrets in someone else's heart, no matter how painful those memories are or how unwilling they are to mention them."
"I can rewrite memories, distort personalities, and even turn another person's soul into a Device, transforming it into my weapon until I exhaust its lifespan and allow it to be released."
"Even so, this power is still incomplete."
"In the future, I can imagine what heights this power might reach, and even I find it frightening."
"Of course, I'm not afraid of my own power. I'm not stupid enough to do something like that. But this is how I've always been. I think things through. Great power often comes with risks, and sometimes those risks can be seen. Other times, they can't even be noticed."
"Everyone likes convenient tools, and people naturally grow dependent on them, just like modern people and their phones."
"I'm only human. I don't have some noble character strong enough to suppress that desire, so every so often I need to reflect on myself and set rules for myself. It's just that clear enemies like you people often make me forget that."
Noah's tone was somewhat heavy.
A person's understanding of themselves needed to be actively updated.
This was a very interesting phenomenon.
Sometimes, he wondered whether the old god Ouranos had already seen through this point when he brought Falna to the lower world.
Perhaps that was why ability values could only be improved through updates.
A person's understanding of themselves could stagnate.
If a twenty-eight-year-old still understood himself as the person he had been at eighteen, then even if the effort he had put in over those ten years was completely real, he would not be able to bring it out at the critical moment.
An eighteen-year-old boy, when suddenly faced with responsibility, would panic and think, 'I can't do this.'
And the opportunity would slip away.
When he was twenty-eight, if his understanding of himself still remained at eighteen, then that panic would not disappear at all.
At this moment, Noah clearly understood what his current abilities could do, and he could also infer what effects they might produce.
This kind of inference did not require preparation either. It would inevitably lead toward "some result."
He could push this world's civilization forward by fifty, perhaps even eighty years in one breath.
He could establish a new social system among the people through methods such as enlightenment movements.
He could even... use the power to manipulate souls to brainwash every official in the Empire, including the emperor and the minister, making himself the eternal and sole emperor.
These thoughts had all crossed his mind at some point.
But they had all flashed by in an instant.
It was like a child wanting to become an astronaut.
Because of one advertisement, when a schoolteacher asked the children what their dreams were, forty-eight out of sixty students in the class said they wanted to become astronauts.
It did not even count as a joke.
"Mm. Talking really is the strongest therapy. I suddenly feel much clearer."
Noah rolled his neck.
Strange.
He had not felt stiff anywhere before, yet now there was an inexplicable sense of relaxation.
He stood up, made a pistol gesture with his hand, and fired an air bullet through the man's head, granting him release.
At the same time, he saw Taeko jogging back from the street.
At first, he had wanted to test whether the power to manipulate souls was absolute.
After all, he had seen plenty of scenes in the past where someone broke through brainwashing or something similar with sheer willpower.
However, after observing Taeko for this period of time, there seemed to be no sign of that happening at all.
At least for now, it appeared impossible to break through Weaver's soul-level alteration through personal willpower alone...
Or perhaps Taeko's willpower and attachment were simply not strong enough.
He had previously indulged Chelsea and allowed her to keep mentioning Barbara and telling Taeko about her past for the sake of this test.
For that reason, he had not altered Chelsea's soul.
Another reason was that he feared her compatibility with her Imperial Arms might drop.
As a result, Taeko only treated Chelsea as a madwoman.
As both a swordswoman and an assassin, Taeko had reached first-rate skill in both fields, and she had not been shaken by Chelsea's words in the slightest.
She firmly believed that Chelsea was nothing more than a crazy woman.
"It's about time to end this," Noah murmured.
"Mm? Did you say something, senpai?" Taeko asked in confusion after coming closer.
Noah merely shook his head and said, "It's nothing. Go back and rest."
"Huh? We're not chasing them right away? With your flying tool, senior, we should be able to catch up immediately, right?"
"No need."
Noah glanced at the man he had just killed.
"This guy was only a disposable piece. Everyone else has already withdrawn, leaving only him behind. Any information he had must be false. Chasing after them would only lead us to an empty location."
That insect-user named Merraid was quite good, both in strength and brains.
She had probably discovered something from Taeko's behavior.
Leaving this man behind was most likely a test.
If Noah had read his memories and immediately chased after them, the other side would have confirmed that he had some kind of "mind-reading" ability.
Next time, she would take that into account and prepare countermeasures.
Oarburgh really did live up to its reputation as an assassin organization with a long history.
"Besides, those people came to our home and wrecked it. As the victim and the commanding officer, I'm going to have a lot of work to deal with tomorrow. For now, I'm going back to sleep."
Noah waved his hand, telling Taeko to return to the apartment, while he himself went back to the Leiden household.
...
At the same time.
In an abandoned castle forty or fifty kilometers away from the Imperial Capital.
Cassandra was anxiously treating the two people lying on the bed.
Both Merraid and Gilberda had been badly injured, and since Gilberda had acted so recklessly at the end, her injuries had become even worse.
"Lady Merraid!"
"Gil!"
"Hold on! I'm using the medicine!"
Even with four hands, Cassandra was still so busy that she looked almost frantic.
Like Gil, she had been a monster who was different from ordinary people since birth.
Gil's natural brute strength had grown more terrifying as she grew older.
She often broke things, was ostracized, used, feared, and hated by others.
They had not asked to be born into this world, yet they still had to bear all of this.
Cassandra's abnormality was obvious to anyone at a single glance.
After all, she had four arms.
She had nearly been killed by her own mother the moment she was born.
Their similar, tragic fates had changed because of Merraid.
Merraid did not despise them. She even doted on them, allowing them to experience happiness and joy.
At this moment, Cassandra felt for the first time that it was truly fortunate she had four arms!
If not, she might not have been able to save them in time.
After a full three hours of treatment, Merraid's condition finally stabilized. Her breathing became steady, and she fell into a deep sleep.
Assassins like them had undergone all kinds of brutal training since childhood, so their self-healing ability was far beyond ordinary.
The troublesome one was Gilberda.
The burned areas prevented her self-healing ability from functioning properly, and several places had already become necrotic due to the burns.
In this situation, the dead tissue had to be cut away.
But there was so much of it.
Gilberda might be tortured to death by the pain!
Even if Cassandra successfully anesthetized her, with so much flesh being cut away from her body, Gilberda might still...
"Damn it!"
Cassandra clenched her fists, her eyes filled with rage.
He had actually hurt the two most important people to her!
She would absolutely make that man pay!