Scum!

"Bastard! Are those sentries all dead?"

Dalami roared at the soldiers around him, but they were all as jumpy as startled birds.

That sudden explosion had killed or wounded more than thirty of them in an instant, and another dozen or so were lying on the ground, groaning in agony.

Dalami stared fixedly at the ruins where the grenade had just been thrown. His eyes grew vicious, and he pointed that way and roared:

"Blast the hell out of it!"

A few seconds later, a sparse volley of gunfire rang out. The booms and blasts quickly leveled the ruins.

Just then, a soldier came running over from where the shots had been fired. He hurriedly said, "Sir, we only saw one person over there. Should we pursue him?"

Dalami's eye twitched. He turned to look at him, his eyes bloodshot beneath his protective mask. "Pursue him? Why don't you go?"

Dalami's voice was hostile as he pointed toward the buildings ahead, engulfed in flames.

The soldier fell silent at once.

Merlin had no idea what was happening behind him. By now, he had already run to the roof of another building.

He calmly watched the highly alert crowd three hundred meters away.

"Didn't die?" Merlin didn't feel disappointed. It made no difference to him whether they lived or died.

This time, though, Merlin didn't approach them again.

Time passed, minute by minute.

Night had fully fallen. The moon was dim tonight, its light obscured by clouds.

But to Merlin, everything looked even clearer than it had during the day.

The soldiers hadn't withdrawn. They were still advancing into the city, setting fires as they went.

After watching them for a while, Merlin thought it over, then headed toward the three other parts of the city where fires were burning along the outskirts. It didn't take long to find three more groups of soldiers from other countries.

He greeted each group with another round of grenades.

They didn't pursue him, either.

Afterward, he went to find Yol and the others.

He took six grenades from Yol and told them to wait for him by the fountain in the city center.

Meanwhile,

Merlin returned to Dalami's group. They were preparing to rest around a two-story house three hundred meters away, one that hadn't been touched by the flames.

"Looks like they plan to camp here tonight. Is that so-called Sir Dalami inside the house?"

Merlin took a pocket watch from his pocket and checked the time. It was eight in the evening.

"Let's do another round."

His nostrils flared as he searched for suitable spots to throw grenades from around the open ground, keeping an eye out for sentries.

He soon chose a four-story building about eighty meters to the left of the house. The two-story house stood directly in front of it.

Merlin left the rooftop and ran over. Light on his feet, he soon reached the ruins beside the building.

He distinguished the different scents in the air around him and quickly determined that ten people were inside the building.

A thoughtful look appeared in his eyes.

Should he go in?

He was already here.

His gaze hardened. Moving quietly through the dim surroundings, he quickly reached the back of the building and pressed himself beside a ground-floor window. He could hear faint voices coming from inside.

Merlin looked up at the outer wall, a cold smile appearing at the corner of his mouth. A window ledge jutted out from the wall every three meters or so.

Without hesitation, Merlin jumped up and caught the nearest ledge. Moving with remarkable lightness, he climbed upward, shifting from ledge to ledge until he reached the eaves beneath the roof.

He reached up, grabbed the outer edge of the eaves, and pulled himself up in one smooth motion.

Merlin stood on the gabled roof and made his way across. Before long, he was peering toward the house in the distance.

He counted the eighteen grenades he had left, then looked at the soldiers gathered in six or seven clusters outside the house.

With a calm gaze, he took six grenades from his pack and neatly lined them up in front of him.

He took a deep breath, gripped one grenade in each hand, and pulled their pins with his teeth.

His eyes narrowed. He threw the two grenades, then quickly tossed out the remaining four in succession.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The deafening blasts suddenly rang out beneath the night sky.

They shattered the silence.

Merlin leaped down from the roof. He hit the ground with a thud, rolled once to absorb the impact, then immediately charged toward another stretch of ruins.

Since it was night, by the time the sentries inside the building realized something was wrong, Merlin had already vanished.

A short while later,

The soldiers withdrew from the house and moved to another broad, ruined area, with no nearby buildings to hide behind.

Dalami trembled with rage.

"I know it! It has to be that bastard again! Does he think I'm some pushover he can trample on?"

Merlin lay prone on some ruins two hundred meters away, watching the force, now reduced to just two hundred men.

He thought about the twelve grenades left on him, then slowly began crawling toward them.

They were on high alert, with bonfires burning around their temporary camp, but Merlin continued to creep closer at a steady pace.

Before long, he was within a hundred meters of their outermost positions.

He laid out four grenades and pulled the pins on two. Then Merlin hurled them toward the densest part of the crowd.

He threw the other two right after.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Several explosions erupted in the camp once again. The bloodcurdling screams of those caught in the blasts rang out once more.

At the same time, a wave of panic swept through the group.

After throwing the grenades in two rounds, Merlin quickly changed positions. But by then, they had begun to withdraw, heading out of the city.

At the sight, Merlin immediately made a guess.

"Have their spirits broken?"

Merlin stood up and hurried after them along another route.

Having more or less guessed which way they were going, Merlin sprinted around to get ahead of them.

Near the harbor, he lay down on the roof of a four-story building.

As expected, he didn't have to wait long before the fleeing troops hurried past.

Merlin scanned the crowd and quickly spotted the man with a sword at his waist.

He laid out his last eight grenades and gripped two of them. When the group drew within a hundred meters, Merlin bit down on the pins, yanked them out, and threw the grenades.

He quickly threw the next four as well.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Balls of flame erupted amid the crowd, accompanied by a chain of secondary explosions.

With the final two grenades in hand, Merlin looked down at the troops, whose ranks had been blown into chaos.

Then he threw another grenade at the sword-wielding soldier lying on the ground.

BOOM!

A ball of fire engulfed him, blasting his whole body into the air.

Merlin watched without blinking as the explosion tore off his right leg, then slipped away.

The blast finally broke the troops' morale. They scattered in panic, all fleeing toward the harbor.

At that moment, Dalami lay on the ground, blood seeping from his nose and mouth, his chest rising and falling faintly.

Before long, after watching the panicked troops flee beyond a distant barrier, Merlin quietly appeared on the street strewn with corpses.

He made sure of the soldiers who were still alive, then finally went over to the sword-wielding soldier. The man's leg had been blown off, and he had crawled more than ten meters forward.

Merlin kicked him onto his back, planted his right foot on the man's chest, bent down, and tore off his mask. Beneath it was a young man with blond hair and a hooked nose.

His bloodshot eyes were full of terror. Trembling, he said, "Spare me..."

Thud! Merlin punched him in the mouth. With a crack, his teeth were driven into his mouth.

As the man whimpered and groaned, Merlin said calmly, "You won't survive."

Dalami's eyes were now filled with terror. Merlin spoke coolly:

"You have two choices. One: I don't kill you, but I'll cut off all four of your limbs and infect you with a virulent case of Lead Platinum Disease. Two: tell me who's leading you, and I'll give you a quick death. Choose."

Now that he knew what awaited him, terror welled up in Dalami's eyes until it seemed about to spill over. He trembled as he answered:

"It's Laked..."

The commander of the Volgala Kingdom's army—the king's younger brother, Duke Laked.

A short while later...

Squish!

A dagger slit open his throat.

A spray of blood spurted out.

A faint, wet gurgling sound escaped him.

Merlin's expression remained calm. He glanced at the antique slender sword at the man's waist.

He took the sword from the man's belt and found a total of thirty grenades on the surrounding corpses.

Then,

Merlin quickly left the area.

Not long afterward, another force came through the barrier. When the leader at the front saw Dalami with his throat slit, his eye twitched.

He snarled furiously under his breath, "Scum! A bunch of scum! And you too, Dalami, you useless fool."