Midnight.
The moon over the Eternal Night Peninsula looked like a dead man's eyeball—pale and lifeless.
A black shadow, like a drop of ink blending into the night, silently scaled the clinic's seemingly crude wooden fence.
He landed without a sound.
The shadow's movements were as light as a feather.
Crouching low, he warily scanned his surroundings.
The courtyard was quiet, save for the low chirping of unknown nocturnal insects. Most of the windows in the three-story clinic building in the distance were dark; only the ground-floor lobby emitted a faint, dim light.
'A bunch of idiots.'
A disdainful sneer rose in the shadow's heart.
He was Black Blade, the sharpest tool of the Corvinus family and a gold-rank assassin.
Before coming here, he had read the intelligence sent back by Night Owl—reports that the family's higher-ups dismissed as 'mad ravings.'
Possession by an evil god, enslaving a vampire...
In his eyes, those were merely excuses made by the incompetent to justify their own failures.
What kind of waves could a cripple, cast out by his family with broken legs, possibly stir up?
As for that so-called Blood Queen, she was likely just a low-level vampire with the same name, controlled by that waste through some underhanded means.
'Make it quick.'
Black Blade's objective was clear.
Infiltrate, slit the throat, take a photo, and leave.
Young Master Lancelot had paid a high price—high enough that he was willing to make a trip to this godforsaken place.
Like a ghost, he hugged the base of the wall and crept toward the clinic's main entrance.
According to the intel, that waste Victor lived in the room furthest back on the first floor due to his mobility issues.
The courtyard was open, with almost no cover.
For an ordinary soldier, this would be a death zone, but for an assassin of his caliber, it was only a few steps away.
Black Blade took a deep breath, his body turning into a blurred afterimage as he instantly crossed ten meters.
He had calculated precisely; his landing spot was a patch of soft lawn that wouldn't make a sound.
However.
The moment his toes were about to touch the grass.
A faint, almost imperceptible tightening sensation came from his ankle.
'Hmm?'
Alarm bells rang in Black Blade's mind.
A trap!
As a top-tier assassin, his reactions were lightning-fast. He immediately prepared to spring away using the momentum.
But it was too late.
A thread finer than a strand of hair, nearly invisible in the night, tightened instantly.
The force transmitted through it was no ordinary tripwire!
It felt as if he had been death-gripped by the tail of a giant python. An irresistible, massive force surged through, violently shattering his balance.
"Damn it!"
Black Blade cursed inwardly as his body lost control mid-air, falling forward in a pathetic heap.
This was a humiliation he had never experienced in his entire career.
Before he even hit the ground.
A sweet, bloody red mist surged from all directions without warning, instantly enveloping him.
'Poison gas?!'
Black Blade immediately held his breath, but it was already too late.
The mist seemed alive, burrowing into his pores.
His vision began to blur.
A buzzing tinnitus filled his ears.
Even his pride and joy—a nose that could smell blood from three miles away—had completely failed him.
Sensory deprivation!
This was an effect only found in the highest grade of alchemical poisons!
'Not good!'
Black Blade was terrified. He forced himself to bite the tip of his tongue, the sharp pain granting him a flicker of clarity. He immediately prepared to erupt with Qi to force his way out.
But at that moment.
Click, clack, click, clack...
A rhythmic, grating sound of bone rubbing against bone rose from all around him.
Six low-level skeleton soldiers wearing black security uniforms, their eye sockets burning with eerie blue soulfire, had surrounded him at some unknown point.
They held no swords, only thick iron clubs.
There was no tactic, no finesse.
Just the simplest, most primitive... group beating.
"Get lost! You pieces of trash!"
Black Blade roared, his gold-rank Qi erupting in an attempt to blast these bone frames away.
However.
Thwack!
An iron club slammed squarely and unceremoniously into the back of his head.
Agony surged.
Black Blade's vision went dark, and his Qi was instantly scattered.
He discovered to his horror that the bones of these skeletons... were impossibly hard!
His protective Qi had actually been shattered by a common iron club?
Before he could process this.
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
A rain of iron clubs descended.
They struck his head, his back, his legs.
They targeted his joints and vital points specifically.
The poor gold-rank assassin, Black Blade, hadn't even drawn his daggers before he was pinned to the ground by a squad of skeleton guards that looked like they could fall apart at any moment. In the most thuggish, dishonorable fashion imaginable, they beat him unconscious.
...
"Tsk, you went a bit heavy on him."
Victor walked slowly out of the clinic, carrying a hurricane lamp.
He looked at the man on the ground, bruised, swollen, and slumped like a dead dog, and shook his head.
"I told you to take him alive. How could you beat up such precious experimental material?"
The skeleton captain scratched its polished skull sheepishly, making a creaking sound.
"Carry him in,"
Victor waved his hand.
"Alice, Elizabeth, prepare for surgery."
"We're going to be busy tonight."
...
An unknown amount of time passed.
Black Blade woke up to a surge of intense pain.
He found himself lying on a cold metal table, his limbs tightly bound by wide leather straps, unable to move an inch.
Above him was a harsh, pale light that stung his eyes.
The air was thick with the smell of disinfectant and blood.
"Awake?"
A voice, both familiar and strange, spoke in his ear.
Black Blade struggled to move his eyes.
He saw the man who was supposed to be his target—Victor Corvinus.
He was wearing that legendary bloodstained lab coat and a pair of exaggerated goggles. In his hand...
He held no sword, nor a dagger.
Instead, he held a scalpel as thin as a cicada's wing, shimmering with a cold light.
"You... what do you want to do?"
Black Blade's voice was hoarse. He discovered with horror that the Qi in his body seemed to be sealed by some force; he couldn't muster even a shred of it.
"Don't be nervous."
Victor used the back of the scalpel to gently pat Black Blade's cheek.
The cold touch made Black Blade shudder.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am Victor, the Director of the Benevolent Heart Clinic."
"Looking at you, you must have been commissioned by my dear younger brother to take my life, right?"
Black Blade gritted his teeth and remained silent.
As an assassin, he had his professional code.
"Not talking? That's fine."
Victor smiled.
"According to my diagnosis, your current condition is very poor."
He picked up a freshly printed medical record and read it aloud with mock seriousness:
"Name: Black Blade (Codename). Gender: Male. Symptoms: Social impairment caused by long-term assassination activities, mild antisocial personality, and... an underdeveloped brainstem."
"You're talking nonsense!" Black Blade roared.
"Shh, a patient must listen to the doctor."
Victor placed a finger over his lips.
"See, you're very unstable right now. That's a sign of mania."
"But don't worry, these aren't major problems."
Victor picked up a long, hooked metal probe from the tray and waved it under the light.
"A simple prefrontal lobotomy will allow you to say goodbye to your troubles forever and become a... quiet, peaceful, and useful member of society."
Black Blade's pupils constricted violently.
A prefrontal lobotomy?!
Though he wasn't a doctor, he had heard of this infamous, barbaric surgery that turned people into idiots!
"You... you demon!"
He finally understood.
Night Owl's intelligence wasn't wrong!
The man before him wasn't human at all!
He was a lunatic who delighted in torturing others! A complete pervert!
"A demon? No, I am a doctor."
Victor corrected him.
He leaned down, bringing his mouth close to Black Blade's ear, and spoke in a cold voice only the two of them could hear:
"Since you've come, don't bother leaving."
"It just so happens the lighting at the clinic entrance isn't very good. Mindless insects are always flying in at night."
"I'm missing a street lamp."
With that, he straightened up and raised the scalpel.
"Alice, Elizabeth, prepare for surgery."
"The patient is extremely uncooperative. Administer general anesthesia first."
"Then, nerve block, vascular reconstruction, and skin preservation treatment..."
"Remember, keep the movements precise."
"After all, he's going to be hung at the door as a signpost. If he's too ugly, it will affect our clinic's image."
"NO—!!!"
A shrill, wretched scream echoed through the entire clinic.
But it was quickly muffled by a dense cloud of blood mist.
...
The screams continued intermittently throughout the night.
It wasn't until dawn that they finally subsided.
The next morning.
When the first pale rays of sunlight touched the Eternal Night Peninsula.
A new 'work of art' appeared at the entrance of the Benevolent Heart Clinic.
It was a humanoid sculpture, stripped of its black clothes and coated entirely in a transparent preservative fluid.
He was fixed to a tall metal pole, frozen in a pious pose—kneeling on one knee with both hands held high.
In his palms, he held a magic lantern crafted from some kind of glowing crystal.
The lantern emitted a soft, warm light, dispelling the darkness at the entrance and clearly illuminating the sign of the 【Benevolent Heart Clinic】.
The 'sculpture' was alive.
His chest still rose and fell slightly, and his eyes were open.
But those eyes, which had once been as sharp as a hawk's, were now empty and numb, like two glass beads that had lost their soul.
Victor stood on the steps, holding a steaming cup of coffee, looking at his masterpiece with satisfaction.
"Mm, much brighter now."
"And it serves as a nice little warning."
He took a sip of coffee, his gaze passing over the gold-rank assassin who had become a street lamp, looking toward the distant human kingdom.
In those calm eyes, the fire of 'revenge' ignited for the first time.
"Lancelot, Catherine..."
"I've received the first gift you sent."
"Now, it's my turn to return the favor."
Victor set down his coffee cup and turned back into the clinic, his bloodstained lab coat swaying slightly in the morning breeze.
"The show has only just begun."
Rate on N.U.
