After hearing Jietisikoki's veiled confession, Sainsai's face filled with shock. After a moment of silence, he finally lowered his head and sighed:
"Now I understand."
"No wonder everything you did before was so baffling."
"I'd been wrong all along."
"You weren't some loyal-to-a-fault traitor, enduring humiliation to lure us at the Delight Theater in while secretly serving the Hunter Corps as a despicable spy."
"Nor were you some psychopath who loved causing trouble and did everything on a whim."
"When all is said and done, you're merely a dog chained in iron, restricted at every turn and forever unable to truly strike at the hunters."
Leaning against the sofa with a cigar between his teeth, Jietisikoki wore a gloomy expression and mockingly retorted in a low voice:
"Although that's a rather unpleasant way to put it..."
"You're completely right. That's exactly how it is."
"Before, I could still kill freely under the pretext of earning your trust. But now that this war has fully erupted, there's naturally very little I can interfere with."
"Sainsai, even after becoming a crippled human stump, your brain is still as sharp as ever."
Sainsai paid it no mind and continued asking in puzzlement:
"But how did you end up like this?"
"You were clearly a Divine Artifact holder too, just like the Headmaster. Not to mention that, when it came to escaping and surviving alone, your Divine Artifact was obviously even more formidable than his."
"With such powerful advantages of your own, how did that iron chain around your neck come to be?"
Faced with Sainsai's question, which struck straight at the heart of the matter, Jietisikoki fell silent. Then, almost unconsciously, he reached up and touched his eyes.
Bathed in moonlight, the Butcher Hunter's eyes immediately revealed countless sharply faceted crystalline patterns, emitting