Chapter 229 Despair In Its Purest Form
"Oh! You're that new teacher who helped me that day... what was your name again? Muka? Lucas? Luka? I don't really remember." Vinigo said as he saw the half-wolf appear in the light. "Well, it doesn't matter. How did you find us?"
Luke looked at him with overwhelming contempt. Seeing Meredith with frightened eyes and fear of dying for that scalpel in her neck fizzled the half-wolf's nerves to the point that he actually wished to torture Vinigo to the most painful death in existence.
"Shut the fuck up, you sick bastard!" Luke shouted so loudly that the walls of that dungeon shook, and the aura of Luke's previously controlled aura became terrifying, making the old man's lungs heavy.
Startled, Vinigo took a step back, carrying Meredith too. "Calm down and think properly." He spoke quickly, in desperation. "I have this beautiful girl as a hostage. You won't dare lose your patience, will you?"
The half-wolf knew that he could neither be patient nor calm with this crazy old man, but he couldn't be rash either.
In that secret cellar, there was a smell of blood everywhere. In addition, Luke could hear breathing in several corners of the wide, dark space. Some of these breaths seemed to be of people, and others of animals.
Gradually, Luke controlled his breathing.
Seeing the half-wolf calm down and his aura becomes less oppressive, Vinigo boldly smiled.
He also knew that he couldn't falter in front of the Champion of the Tournament of Legends, but everything should be fine while he was with a hostage. "You did very well to calm down. Let's talk... How did you find us? How did you know she would be here?"
When Vinigo asked that question, Luke took a deep breath.
At this point, Meredith realized that the half-wolf was using the Legendary Skill <Eye of Horus>, because his eyes were momentarily lost and unmoving. To cover it up, she was the one who answered the old man.
"He is my partner; we are Adventurers. We received a Guild Mission from a Family who wanted to find out the whereabouts of their daughter, who disappeared a few years ago in the Academy. They paid well, so we accepted even at the risk of it being a waste of time. When we joined here, several clues began to point to the underground, so we investigated all the teachers with rooms around here. You were our main bet of all of them, so I went into your office." Meredith blatantly lied, but her diction was so fluid that it was hard to tell if it was an invention or not.
"Hahaha! That makes sense! That would explain why I had never heard of any half-beasts in this Academy until last week, and of two popped up right away!" Vinigo exclaimed with a smile. "But... I never left clues behind! I've always managed to cover my tracks well! In other words, you're lying!" He brought the scalpel even closer to Meredith's neck.
By the time Luke returned from the World of Horus, he could only hear the end of Vinigo's sentence. He didn't know what he and Meredith were talking about, but he went along with the flow of the idea.
"You just forgot to disguise your rotten smell." He said, looking up with the eyelids of his eyes drooping a bit, and with a calm calmness.
"What did you say? I didn't forget! I purposely left my scent! You're only a half-beast, a half-monster, you'd never understand... What morals do you have to say that I forgot something?" He said with an angry frown and pointed the scalpel at Luke's face, "I'm an Alchemy genius, and you're just a fortysomething Adventurer; we're not on the same level..."
As anticipated by Luke through his dozens of tests, attacking Vinigo's ego was the most crucial action to make him let down his guard.
At that moment of Vinigo's distraction, Luke evoked his Behemoth Axe and threw it against Vinigo's right hand, which was severed in a single second.
The Alchemy Professor looked to the right as Luke made a very quick movement and as he heard a buzzing sound pass next to his head. Then, he saw that he was suddenly missing half of his right arm, which was bleeding profusely.
Vinigo could now see even the very bones of his dominant arm.
"AAAAAHHHH! WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?!" He screamed in desperation when he finally began to feel pain.
Taking advantage of this desperation, Meredith stomped hard on one of the old man's feet and leaped forward, releasing his hair easily from Vinigo's hands. She instinctively ran into Luke's arms, who welcomed her with indescribable relief in his heart.
"Are you okay? Did he hurt you?" Luke asked, looking into her startled eyes.
The first thing Meredith did was to deny it with her head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I shouldn't have come to his office without telling you, but I wanted to show you that I'm strong too." she said with tears in her eyes.
The half-wolf stroked his best friend's red hair. "That doesn't matter now... He is strong, isn't he?"
"He uses a magic wand. Bastet and I fought against him, but we couldn't beat him. He is very powerful." She stated, and Luke could see in her eyes that this was very serious.
Luke was also aware that he could only hurt him because he let his guard down, and now that he had already used that trick, he knew that Vinigo wouldn't let his guard down anymore.
Hence, Vinigo got up from the ground, drawing the attention of the two half-beasts again because he had stopped agonizing in pain.
Luke looked at the old man's right arm and noticed that it was practically healed. However, this healing seemed to have been improvised at a high temperature. Then, he looked at Vinigo's left hand and saw a small wand, whose crystal on top was red and glowing.
'Shit! If he can use fire, we'll turn into raw meat at this distance.'
After the half-wolf thought this, Vinigo looked at them with bulging eyes and pointed his wand. "Die, you bastards! <Flame throwerrrr>!"
The crystal of Professor Vinigo's wand glowed, and thanks to the slowness in the world caused by yet another use of the <Eye of Horus>, Luke could see this momentary crystal glow travel the path from the old man's left arm to his throat. The old man's throat gradually gained a characteristic high-temperature glow, and the half-wolf saw flames forming on the tip of Vinigo's tongue.
These flames were even hotter than those that burned Bastet until he was destroyed, due to the boost that the glow of the wand's crystal provided.