NOVPUBLudger—no, Moriarty, as he now called himself—had made a declaration that Dutrieu understood all too well.
In a world like this, the first tool of survival was awareness.
Dutrieu immediately grasped the situation.
“Kill them all!”
His order came without hesitation.
If Moriarty had come here to wipe them out, there was no point in pretending anymore. There would be no deal—only a brawl to the death.
At Dutrieu’s command, his men sprang into action.
They tossed aside their useless guns and drew daggers instead.
But things weren’t exactly in their favor. Because of the location, many hadn’t brought proper weapons—and that shortcoming now came back to bite them.
“Hyaaaaah!”
“Die!”
But their opponent was a mage.
Hesitate even a second, and they’d be the ones to die.
Still, if they all charged at once from every direction, there was a chance they could win.
More than anything, the distance wasn’t great—Moriarty was sitting dead center in the tavern, as if inviting them to try.
The only obstacle was that hulking black werewolf standing behind him like a bodyguard.
But they had the numbers—nearly a hundred.
“As expected.”
As the Red Society gang members rushed in from every direction, Hans glanced toward Ludger, asking silently with his eyes.
So what now?
To be honest, Hans had been impressed. These guys didn’t even flinch at the sight of him—they didn’t run, didn’t falter. Instead, they rushed forward with bloodthirsty resolve.
Loyalty? No. It was more like a rabid instinct—a willingness to sink their fangs into anything, no matter who it was.
Just like their namesake—the Red Snake that slithered through the southern jungles.
That was the Red Society.
Ludger didn’t answer Hans’s unspoken question.
He simply acted.
Thunk.
He raised the cane in his hand and gently tapped it against the floor.
Immediately, shadows surged outward from ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) where the cane struck, rippling across the entire tavern like a living tide.
“W-What the...?”
“What is this?!”
The Red Society members recoiled in confusion, trying to move—but their bodies refused to respond.
Or rather, their bodies did move, but their senses couldn’t keep up. They couldn’t perceive their own actions.
The darkness swallowed all light within the tavern.
Even the alleyways outside, unlit by streetlamps, weren’t as pitch-black as the void Ludger had summoned.
A total eclipse.
And within it—only one.
Only Ludger could move freely in this realm of shadow.
“Aaaaagh!”
“W-What is this?! Agh!”
“I can’t see anything!”
Screams echoed in the dark—death wails, every one of them, all from the Red Society members.
From within the cane, Ludger drew his swordstick. Blade in hand, he moved swiftly, cutting them down one by one.
“P-Please! Spare me!”
“Boss! Help us! B-Boss!”
As comrades fell around them and their dying screams filled the air, the remaining thugs began to lose what little grip they had on reality.
The terror of total darkness.
The sound of death creeping closer, louder.
Their minds couldn’t withstand it.
“Aaaah! Die! DIE!!”
“Grahhk!”
“He’s here!”
Madness overtook them.
Unable to endure the fear, they started lashing out in all directions, blindly swinging their weapons.
But the ones closest to them weren’t enemies—they were allies.
In an instant, the bar descended into chaos, members of the Red Society turning on one another in a frenzied bloodbath.
This wasn’t just a simple spell.
It was a fusion of darkness, shadow, and psychological manipulation—a curse layered atop the magic to exploit fear and weakness.
An elemental manifestation spell.
A 3rd-circle dark magic.
[Fool’s Dream]
It wouldn’t work against someone with strong mental fortitude or real combat experience.
But in a room filled with thugs and bottom-feeders?
It was devastating.
“Goddamn it! What the hell are you all doing?! STOP HIM!!”
Dutrieu grit his teeth and roared.
He couldn’t see anything, but he wasn’t shaken. His willpower wasn’t so easily rattled.
After all, he still had a trump card.
At his command, the two men who had been standing silently by his side like bodyguards stepped forward.
Shiiing!
As the two drew their swords, their blades gleamed with aura, cutting through the magic darkness in powerful arcs.
With a slash of their swords, the spell was torn apart—and light returned to the tavern.
And with it came the full view of the carnage.
Dutrieu’s lips trembled.
“Wh... What in the...”
The tavern was a scene of total horror.
Of the nearly one hundred men, barely ten remained alive.
And even they were bloodied, shredded, and barely clinging to life.
Dutrieu’s bloodshot eyes fixed on Moriarty—standing at the very heart of it all.
Where’s that damn werewolf?
The creature had vanished without a trace.
Only Moriarty remained.
He stood calmly among the corpses, swordstick in hand, not a single drop of blood staining his clothes.
He looked like the Grim Reaper himself, appearing moments before death.
The entire room was painted in blood, and yet Moriarty stood untouched—as if he didn’t even belong to this world.
The sight sent an involuntary shiver crawling across Dutrieu’s skin.
“Kill him!!”
Dutrieu’s command was immediate.
The two men charged forward.
One was huge and nearly bald, the other tall and lean with long flowing hair.
Splitting left and right, they raced toward Moriarty at blinding speed.
So fast.
To the average man, the moment they realized what was happening, they’d already be dead—decapitated in the blink of an eye.
They weren’t knights, but they weren’t normal men either.
Quasi-knights.
Not fully recognized knights, but still possessing physical abilities far beyond the average person.
So that’s what cut through my magic earlier.
They could wield aura.
Not quite elite enough to join an Imperial Knight Order, but close.
Stronger than apprentice knights.
Still... I’m not losing to these two.
Ludger took a step back and rolled a small vial at his feet.
Boom!
The vial burst open in a flash of violet smoke, spreading quickly through the air.
“Poison?!”
The long-haired swordsman immediately stepped back, shielding Dutrieu behind him. If the boss died, the game was over.
The larger man coated his body in aura, trying to resist whatever toxin was in the smoke.
Just then, through the haze—
Whoosh—
Throwing knives flew toward him.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The brute calmly deflected every projectile with his sword.
It had been a sudden, close-range ambush—but he countered all of it with near-superhuman reflexes.
But he’d made one mistake.
Among those knives was another vial.
BOOM!
It burst against his forearm, splashing him with a corrosive liquid.
“AAAAAARGH!”
Sssszzzzzt!
Even with aura shielding his body, the acid made contact with his skin—and no aura could stop that.
What Ludger had thrown wasn’t a poison meant to affect the body.
It was a chemical compound—an acid that melted through anything.
Unless you were protected by a full-body aura shield, there was no way to block it completely.
“Y-You bastard!”
Now unable to use one arm, the brute snarled and swung his sword with the other toward the violet haze.
SWOOSH!
A massive blade arc cut through the smoke, tearing it away in a single blast.
This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.
As the brute prepared to chase Ludger down, he blinked in confusion.
“Where is he?”
“Watch out! Below you!”
A comrade shouted from behind—but the warning came too late.
Shluk!
From the shadows beneath him, Ludger’s swordstick shot straight upward, piercing through the brute’s jaw and stabbing clean out the top of his skull.
“Just because I’m a mage doesn’t mean I can’t fight up close.”
Ludger calmly spoke as he yanked the swordstick free from the body.
The massive man’s corpse swayed once... then collapsed heavily to the side.
That was the fatal mistake—assuming a mage would keep his distance and prepare another spell. And that assumption had led straight to defeat.
Ludger had instead exploited that very opening, claiming victory in an instant.
The long-haired man, forced to watch his comrade’s death, grit his teeth.
“You... What the hell are you?”
“I told you earlier, didn’t I? Professor James Moriarty.”
“There’s no way a mage who fights like that wouldn’t have been the talk of the underworld. And you’ve been completely off the grid for years. Were you hiding your identity all this time?”
“Do I owe you an explanation? Especially when you’ll be dead soon?”
Ludger smirked, directing his sneer past the long-haired man to the pallid face of Dutrieu behind him.
Dutrieu’s complexion had gone ghost-white.
“K-Kill him! Kill that bastard! I paid you, didn’t I?! Do your job!”
One of the Red Society’s strongest fighters was down. Now Dutrieu’s only hope was the long-haired man guarding him.
The man clicked his tongue and quickly assessed the situation.
Ludger had just killed someone as skilled as himself in one strike. From his use of psychological tactics to his fearless close-combat style—he clearly had immense combat experience.
There wasn’t a single aspect to take lightly.
“You’re not going to attack?”
“You going to let me go if I back off?”
“Hey!”
Dutrieu screamed, face livid.
“Y-You’re betraying me?! Now?!”
“Betrayal? Look around you, man. Someone as strong as me couldn’t even touch that monster. And you expect me to fight him next?”
“I paid you!”
“And money’s not more valuable than my life.”
“Fine! I’ll pay double! No—triple! Including your dead friend’s share! So just kill him!”
The long-haired man’s eyes twitched at that.
Triple?
That was tempting.
He was already being paid handsomely, so three times that amount was definitely worth considering.
Can I win?
At first, Ludger seemed overwhelmingly dangerous. But now, he had seen his fighting style.
Combat was about reading your opponent. About observing how they move, how they think.
If brute force didn’t work, you found a way to bait them. Exploit a gap.
That’s exactly what Ludger had done.
If he stayed cautious, he might have a shot.
But then—
Ludger suddenly pulled a gun from his coat and fired twice.
Bang! Bang!
“Gh!”
The long-haired man deflected both shots with his sword, but something felt... off.
Those weren’t ordinary bullets.
They were charged with mana.
Mana rounds? What the hell?! He’s using this kind of weapon too?!
This was far beyond anything he expected from a mage. Sure, eccentric mages did strange things now and then—but this was just absurd.
Then Ludger fired again.
The man realized he couldn’t keep dodging at this distance and leapt forward.
Ludger retreated.
Though the quasi-knight’s speed was superior, he saw something on the floor—another small vial rolling beneath Ludger’s feet.
You think I’ll fall for the same trick twice?
He’d already witnessed Ludger’s tactics.
That was the vial that released poison gas.
Before it could detonate, he swung his sword to slice it midair.
He was going to destroy it before it activated.
But the moment he cut it—
What the—?!
A thick, sticky liquid splashed out, gluing his sword to the ground.
He’d been trapped.
He tried to shake it off with aura reinforcement, but even that took a few seconds.
And that was all Ludger needed.
He raised the barrel of his gun and aimed directly between the man’s eyes.
If I can’t block it—then I’ll dodge it!
With reflexes that had saved his life more times than he could count, the long-haired man focused intently on Ludger’s trigger finger—
Only to suddenly feel a searing pain shoot through his gut.
“Huh?”
He looked down.
A black spear had erupted through his abdomen, piercing clean out the front.
He staggered and turned his head.
A lance of shadow had burst out from behind him—from his own shadow.
“W-What... How...?”
Mages didn’t cast spells from behind their targets. Their magic usually originated from their own body and projected outward.
Did he somehow curve the spell around me?
No. That would have required a visible trajectory. And he hadn’t looked away from Ludger once.
Which meant only one thing.
The spell had activated separately, from an entirely different direction.
Magic... from a disconnected origin point?
“This... I’ve never even heard of—”
Bang!
Ludger’s mana-infused bullet blasted straight through his forehead.
And just like that, both of Dutrieu’s quasi-knight bodyguards were dead.
Without landing even a single scratch.
Dutrieu, who had watched the entire scene unfold from start to finish, collapsed onto the floor like a man who’d come face-to-face with the Grim Reaper.
Step. Step.
Ludger slowly approached.
He looked down at Dutrieu, who was trembling in a heap on the ground.
With his face hidden in shadow, backlit by the flickering light, Dutrieu couldn’t even see his expression clearly.
But one thing was certain.
Ludger—Moriarty—was smiling.
“Well then.”
His voice, as calm as ever, cut through the silence.
“Shall we finish the conversation we started?”
