Chương 13: ​CHAPTER 11: THE ASSASSIN’S CRADLE (PART 2)

Cold. An absolute, bone-chilling cold was the first thing that seeped back into my consciousness. My eyelids felt like they were cemented shut with dried blood and rust. Every single breath I drew felt like pulling jagged pieces of glass straight into my pleural cavity. I tried to shift my weight, to roll onto my side, but a sharp, heavy, metallic screech echoed right above my ears, followed by an immediate, agonizing pull against my wrists and ankles.

Clank! I forced my eyes open, the blurry darkness slowly resolving into the grim reality of a damp, pitch-black stone cell. Thick, runic iron shackles were bolted deep into the solid granite wall, anchoring my limbs. My tattered hemp clothes were encrusted in mud and dark crimson stains, but when my gaze drifted down toward my left lower extremity, a wave of profound, clinical shock slammed straight into my brain.' My left leg...

it's gone from the mid-femur down,' my mind calculated, staring blankly at the crude, scorched tourniquet binding the stump.' The shadow blade... it didn't just slice me. It completely amputated the limb before I rolled off the ridge.'

[SYSTEM: CRITICAL HEALTH STATUS ALERT!] [HP: 12% — SEVERE SYSTEMIC SHOCK / BLOOD LOSS STAGE 4] [MANA FLOW: 8% (CORE FRACTION CONSTRICTION ACTIVE)] [WARNING: BASELINE ADJUSTED MANA IS INSUFFICIENT TO EXECUTE CELLULAR REGENERATION]' Abey saale,' I thought, a bitter, dry laugh catching in my throat as a line of cold sweat broke out across my forehead.' The SSS-Rank system is awake, but without raw mana volume, it can't regenerate an entire skeletal structure or vascular network. I am sitting right on death's door.'

Before I could even process the geographical location of this subterranean cage, the heavy iron door of the cell groaned open. Two cloaked figures wearing the unmistakable silver howling wolf emblems stepped into the dim light. They didn't speak a single word.

They ruthlessly unlocked the wall bolts, dragging my broken, one-legged body across the rough stone floor like a sack of common freight. They dragged me through endless, winding corridors carved deep into the living volcanic rock, eventually throwing me onto a cold marble slab inside a massive, dimly lit ritual chamber. Standing over the slab was a hooded figure draped in dark purple robes—a High Mage of the underworld.

"Don't let him expire yet," a cold voice ordered from the shadows. The High Mage raised a gnarled staff, and a blinding, violet runic circle flared directly beneath my mutilated leg. Instantly, an agonizing, unnatural heat surged through my veins. On a macroscopic level, I watched in horrific fascination as muscle fibers aggressively elongated, blood vessels knit themselves together like writhing worms, and bone tissue calcified outward at an impossible velocity.

Within three seconds, my left leg was completely whole, fully restored to the micro-cellular level. But there was no relief. It wasn't healing—it was forced biological acceleration. The guards violently hauled me back to my feet, shoving me forward through a set of towering obsidian double doors that opened into a grand, terrifying throne room. The air here was so thick with dense, pressurized mana that it felt like standing at the bottom of a deep ocean trench.

Sitting on a massive throne forged from jagged black iron was the absolute boss who ran this entire unchecked empire of slaughter. The Supreme Leader of the Howling Shadow: Kaguro Orichi. His face was partially obscured by an ivory skull mask, but his eyes gleamed with a dark, suffocating authority that made my Level 8 status screen rattle frantically. Standing flanking his throne were the elite assassins of his inner circle, including the man with the crimson-red dragon band on his arm—Hades Malice.

I gritted my teeth, balancing on my newly forced leg as I stared up at the iron throne.

"Who the hell are you?" I demanded, my spoken words converting into sharp Japanese via the matrix while my internal thoughts raced.

"Where am I? And where... where are the two kids from the horse cart?!" This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Hades Malice stepped forward, a low, sickening chuckle echoing from beneath his mask. He raised his hand, playfully tossing two small, intricately carved wooden figurines into the air and catching them.

"The boys?" Hades Malice sneered, his eyes crinkling with a vile, sadistic pleasure.

"Oh, don't worry, Ghost Medic. I quite liked them. They were crying so loudly for their dead father, so I decided to make them into my permanent toys." My clinical brain short-circuited. My eyes went wide with a profound, paralyzed horror, my jaw dropping as the syllables caught in my throat.

"T... T... Toys?"

"It is my unique active skill, peasant," Hades Malice laughed, squeezing one of the wooden dolls tightly until a faint, muffled squeak of a child's voice echoed from the timber.

"I can compress the biological mass of any living lower-tier human, binding their consciousness into a localized wooden matrix. They are my toys now. Forever."' They made Rohanzu and Soshi into toys...' The image of Devoken's final, bleeding face flashed through my mind.

'Save our children... please, mister…'" साले नीच, दरिंदे... इंसान के नाम पर कलंक है तू!" (You lowly, cruel man... you are a disgrace to the name of humanity!) The raw, unfiltered Hindi fury exploded in my chest. The System's translation matrix instantly caught the massive, dangerous spike in my vitals, converting my desperate, explosive rage into a freezing, razor-sharp Japanese declaration as I completely snapped.

Throwing away every single ounce of my submissive camouflage, I lunged forward across the marble floor, my fingers clawing outward like scalpel blades, aiming straight for Hades Malice's carotid artery to tear it out with my bare teeth.

Flick. Boss Kaguro Orichi didn't even move from his throne. He simply lifted a single, pale finger.

BOOM! An invisible, mountainous wave of gravity slammed directly into my chest. The physical force was so immense that the marble tiles beneath my knees shattered into dust as I was violently pinned flat against the floor, my face pressed into the dirt, unable to lift my chin even a single millimeter.

"Cool down, boy," Kaguro Orichi's voice rumbled across the throne room, carrying an unyielding weight that paralyzed my very vocal cords.

"It was our client's fault that you suffered this initial complication. We are a professional guild; we do not enjoy unnecessary waste. The driver's family was simply collateral to draw you out. We cannot undo what has been done to them." The iron leader leaned forward, his skull mask gleaming in the torchlight.

"There is a singular reason you are currently drawing breath inside this chamber, Shin," Kaguro Orichi stated coldly.

"My core is suffering from an advanced stage of Vascular Mana Engorgement. My internal reservoirs are eating me from the inside out—generating a high-density pressure that my alchemists cannot release. But you... you managed to mechanically drain the synthetic nightshade from Lord Kaelen Ryuma without breaking his circuits. You have the precise style we require. You are going to heal my illness." I struggled against the gravity block, spitting blood onto the polished stone.

"Where... where in the world am I?" Kaguro Orichi let out a low, gravelly hum as he lowered his finger, releasing the crushing pressure just enough for me to breathe.

"Do not distress yourself with surface geography, boy. You are currently in the true Underworld—three thousand meters beneath the territorial borders. You are ours." Before I could answer, the guards violently grabbed my shoulders again, dragging me backward out of the throne room. They hurled me into a lavish, heavily secured guest chamber at the rear of the base, slamming the massive iron doors shut.

"You have exactly twenty-four hours to prepare your mind," the guard's cold voice echoed through the iron grille.

"Provide your consent to operate on the Boss, or face permanent systemic dissolution. Choose wisely, medic." The silence of the room settled in like a suffocating shroud. I staggered toward the center of the chamber, my mind completely fractured. For the first time since reincarnating into this twisted, god-forgotten world, true, unadulterated despair slammed into my soul. The gold-blue light of my system felt distant, useless. I had no power, no magic circles, no S-rank vanguard strength.

I was a prisoner in a subterranean fortress of merciless beasts. I caught sight of my reflection in a large, silver-framed mirror against the wall. The face staring back at me was a fifteen-year-old kid—pale, smeared with dried blood, and utterly broken.' What's the point?' the dark thought crept in, tearing away at my remaining hope to live.

'I survived a grueling life in Delhi just to get crushed to death in a cave? I can't even save patients here. I am nothing.' In a sudden, manic fit of absolute desperation, I grabbed a sharp, shattered shard of a glass vase from the floor. I held it against my own jugular, my fingers trembling violently as the edge pricked my skin. One quick slash, and the chief consultant could finally sleep forever. No more contracts. No more corruption.

But as the first drop of blood trickled down my collarbone, a voice violently erupted inside my ears, echoing with an agonizing, haunting trauma.

"Save our children... please, mister..." Devoken's final, sobbing face flashed behind my eyelids. The image of the rustic horse-cart driver who had given me a lift, who had shared his family's bread with me, and who had brutally ended his own life just to save his children from defilement.' If I die right here, nobody will ever remember them,'my mind calculated, the cold, clinical sanity slowly fighting its way back through the despair.' Rohanzu and Soshi...

they are trapped inside those wooden dolls, stripped of the cheerful, happy life they lived once beneath the sun. They have no parents left. Right now, they are like weeds in a deep forest—nameless, discarded scraps that nobody in this world wants or cares about.' Slowly, my fingers relaxed. The shattered glass shard dropped from my hand, clattering harmlessly against the stone floor. I stood up straight, my chest heaving as I looked back at my reflection in the mirror.

The trembling vanished from my jaw, replaced by the razor-sharp, chillingly calm aura of a veteran practitioner who had just stabilized a flatlining patient. Despair was a useless emotion. It didn't clear airways, and it didn't fix trauma.' They want an operation?' I thought, a dark, terrifying smile slowly spreading across my face as my SSS-Rank diagnostic HUD flared back to life in brilliant blue.

'Fine. I am a chief consultant. I will give Kaguro Orichi the most precise, unforgettable surgery of his life.' The plan was already forming in the dark. The vacation was dead, and Shin the submissive apprentice was buried in Mizugaon. It was time to get absolute, clinical revenge for Devoken's innocent family.