My Wife is a Dead Villainess, and I'm Her Living Weapon-Chapter 72: Pen

"Huff... Huff..."

A dainty woman ran in the back streets in the dead of night. Her body, tense and exhausted, continued to run nonstop. She forced her tears back and ran harder.

"Keep it together, Sera. You can do this. Just a little more."

Pushing her legs as fast as she could go, she pushed through the shady crowd. Not that she looked any better.

She didn’t wear her priestess garbs, instead she wore a filthy-looking shirt and pants along with a tattered cloak. The girl even used mud and soot as part of her disguise.

"Hey! Watch it!"

Bumping into drunkards, ill-intended convicts and dirty vagrants, she made her way. Within half an hour she finally arrived at a rundown house with a gray-colored roof. It had a red circle with a yellow dot on one of the windowsills.

There!

The mark she had been desperately searching for. It marked a designated safe house for her party, Beacon. Finding renewed strength, she took out a key and entered. Pulling out a dagger she quietly closed the door and made her way deeper in the building.

Where is everyone? Have they all been caught?

The floor creaked with her every step, further adding to her terror. When she finally entered the kitchen, she saw a man sitting at the head of the dining table. It was someone she instantly recognized. The man who haunted her nightmares.

"Malric Thorne..." Sera whispered in fright.

He smiled and then gestured to the chair beside him. "Sera Dale. Sit."

Why is he here? What about Bridget? She was the one who sent me the message. Did he use her phone? Can I fight him back?

Sera quickly brought the dagger behind her back as she approached the seat. Seeing her hesitation the man scoffed before snapping his fingers.

A loud thud echoed behind him. Sera’s eyes darted towards the figure and instantly recognized it. Bridget’s long blonde hair was recognizable, but the rest of her body made Sera wish the thing in front of her was not Bridget.

Her left arm was cut off at the elbow, her legs were gone and Bridget only had half of her thighs remaining. She was covered in bandages. They were brown, caked in dried blood.

"B-Bridget..."

"She is still alive, Ms. Sera. Barely. Same as Charlie—same as Ryner. It is nothing a high-grade potion cannot fix. If, you decide to cooperate."

Sera’s body flinched. Malric was part of the Church’s hunter unit. A covert group of crazy sadists who acted as their cleanup crew. Anyone the religious order needed gone they erased.

They were notorious as potion-worshipers, they celebrated the impact of potions in torture and interrogation. And such a vile group had been hunting the Beacon party for over two weeks.

"I-I already told you everything... What more do you even want?!"

They didn’t even explain and just began harassing us. Is it because of the blockers?

Malric then threw a tablet onto the table, "pick it up."

Sera cautiously took the tablet and saw a video at the screen. She pressed play. The footage looked like a POV nanomachine recording. The scenery was familiar: a snow-covered wonderland.

[Ugh. I really hate this place. Why are we even here? Didn’t we just retrieve the wolf supply a few days ago?]

[Shut up, Thomas. The brass said something was up. We are here to clean it up. No survivors.]

[Then why send for crusaders? And an entire unit! Aren’t 60 breakers a bit too much? Isn’t this kind of job for the hunter unit?] Thomas complained.

[We aren’t paid to ask questions. Just do your job. Unless you want your nun harem to be exposed.]

[Tsk. Whatever... Say, aren’t we already close to the outer sanctum? Why aren’t there any wolves?]

[AWOOOOOOO!!!]

[There they are! I see two Alphas! Wait! They don’t have collars! Those are wild!]

Sera then watched a pair of wolves attack the crusader unit. But against that many breakers they were soon overwhelmed. The larger of the two wolves took a great magic meant for the smaller one and was blown back.

For all their disgusting behavior, the crusaders are still one of the most powerful elite units of humanity. Sera thought.

[Alright, mages, enslave these two. We will move deeper to...]

But as she wondered why Malric wanted to show this video to her, the scene suddenly turned chaotic.

The commander of the breakers who was still speaking suddenly stopped. And his head vanished from his shoulders. His headless corpse collapsed a second later.

[Commander!] Thomas in particular began to shake.

Because from where he stood, he saw what happened. A black figure with burning red eyes passed. It chomped down on the Commander’s head and tore it off. The brutal execution was so fast the figure vanished before the blood even spilled.

"W-What?"

[Contact! Prepare for... ARGGGH! Get back! Where is it! NO!!!! TOBY!!! FORM UP!]

Even seeing it in real time Sera couldn’t believe her eyes. She grabbed the tablet and brought it closer. The 60-man crusader unit were virtually annihilated. Sera kept looking at the video’s duration in astonishment.

F-Five minutes. It killed over fifty in the time it takes to cook instant noodles.

[THERE IT IS! MAGES, USE YOUR STRONGEST SPELL!]

At the man’s instructions the last five mages chanted their strongest spell. Sera saw the glyphs and grew surprised.

The Truthsong Sword? That great magic is powerful enough to kill A-Ranked monsters in one hit! Do they have enough time to finish the spell? The figure is...

The video finally saw the one murdering the crusaders. It was a 10-meter-tall canine. It looked like a snow wolf but was made of metal and had flaming eyes. And stood like a statue. At that moment, Sera remembered a figure that had the same qualities.

It looks like Sir Pen.

She remembered the black knight—Sir Pen. It felt like a lifetime ago.

"[My name is Pen. Pen Valestra.]"

"Valestra? Are you perhaps related to the Valestra Institute?"

"[Do not ask.]"

"SHUT UP, Bastard! If he is truly with the institute, we shouldn’t mess with him! Anyone who dug too deep in that topic has mysteriously died or vanished! I have no intention to join them! Let’s just get as much experience as we can and go home."

So it was because of Sir Pen. Ryner was right.

The video continued and what happened next was just as unbelievable. The A-Rank great magic—Truthsong Sword—fired. But then it was ripped apart by the metal wolf.

[It ate a Dusk tiered great magic... it ate it...] Thomas began to murmur deliriously.

In the next seconds, the last members of the crusader unit all were beheaded. Until only Thomas was left.

[For what you did to my sister... I’ll erase every last one of you.]

[No...please spare us.]

Then the video abruptly ended.

Sera was about to question Malric when she felt her arm suddenly twist. The pain caused her to drop her dagger. He slammed her face into the table.

"Sera Dale. I saw your reaction earlier. You know what this thing is don’t you? Your comrades all made the same reaction. But why won’t any of you talk? Honestly it is frustrating."

Stab.

Sera felt something bury itself from the back of her thigh. Like a hot branding iron, the pain seared her flesh from the inside.

"ARGHHHH!!"

Crack!

Then Malric made her elbow snap.

"AHHHHHH!!!!" Sera shrieked.

"Feel like talking now?" Malric asked as if he was offering tea. "Of course you can resist, and we can spend our sweet time together. At least that would originally have been the case. But the higher ups are hounding me you see. I need results."

Through tears, the priestess confessed, "I-I don’t know anything...I am not lying..."

"Wrong."

Malric twisted Sera’s arm forward and stabbed his knife into her index finger.

"ARGHHH!!!"

But then a violent impact erupted from the front of the house. The immense pain caused Sera’s mind to grow foggy. She heard faint sounds of combat and the unique scent of ozone.

Malric panicked, "What do you mean it’s the Purple Lightning, she has retired!"

Sera then felt the ground under her violently erupt. Her body tumbled and crashed along a nearby wall. But the pain running through her body dulled her senses.

W-What is going on?

"YOU! Why are you here? Ack!"

Who is Malric fighting? He should be an A-Ranked Breaker, isn’t he?

Then Sera felt a large hand checking her injuries. Her vision, which could only make out faint shapes saw a huge man, his voice was calm and steady.

"Sera Dale? You are going to be okay. My name is Marcus Steel. Commander of the Breaker unit under the Bloodright of Conquest. You are safe now. We also rescued your family, Charlie Fisher and Ryner Hollow."

Marcus Steel? An S-Rank from the first generation? Why is he here?

Sera felt her injuries heal as a soothing fluid soak her skin, "Tess, how is your side?"

A beautiful voice answered Marcus, "She’ll live. Luckily, we got here on time."

Bridget is alive? That’s so great.

"Luck had nothing to do with it. The Ryner kid sent an anonymous tip to us weeks in advance. No doubt the church is panicking right now. Look—they even had the same video on them. The metal wolf."

Sera’s mind gave up trying to understand. Relief blurred into pain, pain into sleep.