Evil Black Maria - Chapter 93. I Don't Want To Hurt You.

The morning sun shone through the bars of the window.

With the soft sunlight on her face, Izuru was pulled out of her slumber and into consciousness.

“….n…uh…”

As soon as she woke up, she realized that she had fallen asleep in a chair.

It was a hard, cold iron chair with armrests.

The next thing she felt was sluggishness, as if a haze was hanging over her head, and a strange feeling of discomfort in her body.

Before Izuru could figure out what was wrong with her.

A gentle tone softly stroked her ear.

“Ah, you’re awake.”(1)

A soft sounding voice that gives the listener an instinctive sense of security.

Following the voice that came unexpectedly, she looked up slowly.

When Izuru’s eyes widened at the sight of the figure she had spotted,

“…..You..”

It was Shizuru who stood there.

A few days ago, they met by chance, a young man with a face similar to hers, but with a gentle atmosphere that she didn’t have.

He was fiddling with something on a small table in the corner of the room, then looked back at Izuru, who was awake, and smiled.

Since he was in the shadows, it was difficult to see what he was doing from Izuru’s position.

“It’s best not to speak too loudly. Your voice has been healed to the point where you can barely speak.”

“What….ugh!?”

Halfway through her sentence, a needle-like wound pricked her throat, and Izuru flinched.

Fortunately or unfortunately, she remembered everything, as the pain had awakened her consciousness.

She saw Zack left with only his head.

She remembered the end of Keith, who was stripped of his limbs and brutally killed.

“A…ah…..what….why…Urgh…!!”

Her throat was a mess, and she couldn’t speak properly.

She gritted her teeth, feeling miserable at the fact that she couldn’t even scream.

Ironically, it helped Izuru to regain her composure.

Her memory right before she lost consciousness was vague, but she remembered it a bit.

In the middle of the battle, she must have collapsed due to general fatigue caused by the physical exhaustion that accompanied the release of magic power.

But why is she here in such a place?

Plus, why is Shizuru here, too?

Such a question that popped up suddenly swelled in Izuru’s mind in the blink of an eye.

And, having lived her life as a negotiator for a mercenary group, she always thought things through based on the worst-case scenario.

What is the worst that can be said about the current situation?

After a few moments of contemplation, Izuru asked.

“You… you are…….who….?”

That’s where the possibility arises.

“You don’t believe that …… I just happened to find you lying on the road and picked you up, do you?”

He stopped his work, turned around and smiled at her.

Apparently, he had no intention to blow smoke in her face.(2)

“It’s hard to explain this unnatural situation to you, who was the brains of the mercenary group, even if I were to use poor language. To be honest, we don’t have much time to spare.”

At the end of his words, Shizuru let out a melancholic sigh and moved a sad gaze towards Izuru.

He then bowed with a very composed, but not offensive, gesture.

“Let me introduce myself again. My name is Shizuru, vice-captain of the Black Maria 3rd Unit.”

“…..!”

Black Maria.

With that one phrase, which she had half-expected, Izuru understood the whole situation.

The previous encounter with him had been a set-up.

The group of assassins they had been luring had long since stabbed them in the throat.

If so, there is no way.

“What happened to……Roa,…..Hawk, Clarissa……everyone!”

“We killed them. The Fafnir Mercenaries are now wiped out, leaving you alone.”

A second after hearing those words, Izuru’s eyes widened and even her pupils constricted tightly.

It’s a natural reaction, Shizuru thought quietly, shaking his head.

“I’m sorry …… I know it’s wrong of me to apologize, but I do.”

From the bottom of his heart, he mourned the death of everyone.

That’s why Izuru – from the bottom of her heart – hated him.

“F**k you…!”

She spat out her resentment in a hoarse voice.

She looked at him as if she wanted to shoot him, asking him why he killed them rather than mourn.

—-If only there was someone to hate.

She glared at him, unaware of the anger and hatred that had been directed at Shizuru as she thought about this.

“Kill me, do it …… kill me ……!!”

She stood up with boiling rage.

She channeled all of her resentment against Shizuru for killing her friends, who were her one and only reason for existence, and reached out to strangle him.

That was how it was supposed to go.

“….eh?”

She couldn’t move.

Even though she was not restrained at all, Izuru’s limbs did not move in the slightest.

“Come on, …… [Neigh, the great raven of the Skies]……!”

However, she was an experienced mercenary who was used to the battlefield.

Before she could even think about why, she switched to using her magic.

As a spur-of-the-moment decision, it was a fairly good move.

However, Izuru had forgotten that it was already morning.

“………!”

“You should take it easy. Today is a blue day, a day when the power of lightning-absorbing water is strengthened. The yellow magic power is weakened. I don’t think you can activate magic just after sleeping a little bit when your magic power is depleted.”

The magic power weakly released from his palm dispersed without lingering on her palm.

It would be impossible to light a cigarette, let alone activate the bolt gun, the most basic of the lightning system spells.

“What…..is this, why can’t I move……!”.

She could still feel all her limbs. It was not a kind of paralysis.

So why couldn’t she move?

Izuru was annoyed by her limbs not moving at all.

In response, Shizuru gave an apologetic answer.

“You can’t move. I’ve severed the tendons in your arms and legs.”

It took her a few seconds to understand the meaning of the words as he muttered them in such a casual tone.

Eventually, as if she had been played, Izuru looked down at her arms.

A bright white bandage she didn’t recognize was carefully wrapped around her.

“I’m a doctor. I know exactly what to do with the human body.”

Then, with a clink, Shizuru lifted something from the table.

It was a well-sharpened, silver scalpel.

“You can’t move anymore. You cannot use magic. And there are forty-eight scalpels here.”

As Shizuru shifted slightly, the table that had been in his shadow came into Izuru’s view.

Dozens of scalpels were neatly arranged on a tray. These were the items that the Wicker Man had prepared in large quantities for the purpose of skinning the people he had killed.

“…..I don’t want to be cruel to you if I can help it. But as I said before, we don’t have much time. I’ll have to resort to force.”

Shizuru took a step closer to Izuru, turning the scalpel with his finger tips.

The current situation was that she could not move at all in front of her opponent who was holding a sharp blade.

A voice filled with fear echoed softly in the room.

“So, please.”

Shizuru whispered softly in her ear.

In spite of this situation, it was so seductive that it almost bewitched the brain.

“Would you mind telling me right now where the documents you took from the Seventh Unit is located at ……?”