"Dark Bind, darkness, restrain these guys!"
"Black hands are coming up from the ground!"
"I can't move! Magic specialist, break through!"
"No good! I can't resist this! How much magical power does he have!?"
Oh, all that daily training is paying off.
I've been constantly activating magic to keep honing myself.
They'd never guess that I've already cast a five-times gravity spell on myself right now.
And yet my capacity has grown enough that I can still cast other spells on top of that.
So, there are roughly twenty people in this fairly spacious basement.
I'll restrain all of them.
I doubt there are many Mist-type users among them, but better safe than sorry.
Part of me thinks it'd be better to just finish them off quickly.
Well, let's get to questioning.
"Where are you hiding it? Ah, never mind that for now. Who's the client?"
I already know where it's hidden.
It's inside the magic bag carried by the scarred guy with the distinctly boss-like face all the way at the back.
"………"
As if they'd answer.
Then I'll inflict pain worse than death.
'Memory Plunder'
I approach him leisurely, place my hand on his head, and activate the dark magic.
Memory stealing apparently consumes quite a bit of magical power—I had to temporarily undo the gravity spell I'd cast on myself.
"GYAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
A bestial roar erupts from the man.
But this is still just the beginning.
Right now I'm still in the stage of rummaging through his memories to dig up information.
What I found: this tough-looking scarred man is the president of the Grimm Trading Company.
The Grimm Trading Company is one of the public faces of the Dark Guild.
A front company, basically.
Their rank within the Dark Guild is seventh.
The client is the Vice Master of the Adventurer's Guild.
And the mastermind behind it all is Lean—the one who first handled things back when I brought in the White King Tiger Wolf.
Lean, it turns out, is the daughter of the top brass of "Diamond."
Ah, so they've planted people all over the place.
As for why the Adventurer's Guild's Vice Master is the client—one reason is that the Vice Master and Lean are lovers, and the other is that Lean wanted to stay out of the spotlight just in case.
Seriously though, isn't it way too cozy that someone from the Dark Guild and the Vice Master are an item?
Even if we recover this, the aftermath is going to be a pain.
"Hmm, so Diamond has people in the Adventurer's Guild too. Not just Lean—they've even infiltrated a Gold-rank adventurer party and had them contribute to the guild to keep up appearances. People do the same things no matter what world they're in."
One of the restrained men reacts in shock.
"Impossible! There's no way someone like this could use Memory Plunder—a forbidden spell only someone ranked third, a 'Dark Master,' can use—"
"You know about it, magic specialist!?"
"This is insane! Anyone who gets hit with this ends up with total mental collapse afterward! Even the Dark Master can only use it once a day!"
Oh, so it destroys the mind.
Guess you don't know until you actually use it.
When I acquire magic through [Reverse], a certain amount of knowledge about how to use it flows into my head, but I don't get any info on what happens after you use it.
After extracting the other information I needed, the next step was to pull out his memories.
The instant I did, the boss here let out a roar even louder than before, then wasted away like a different person—all his hair falling out.
Yep, the neatly styled short side-part was gone, leaving him completely bald.
Well, it does suit him in its own way.
I look around at the others.
Their eyes staring back at me are drenched in terror.
They probably think I'm going to use Memory Plunder on them too.
I won't waste it on anything so frivolous.
I channel the resources left over from Memory Plunder into Dark Bind's magic, then use the hands of darkness to physically bind and crush them to death.
"Kagh" "Gweh" "Ueh"…
Some have their necks twisted, some are torn apart between upper and lower body, and some have only their chest crushed.
The one called the magic specialist took a little extra time.
I glance at him with [Divine Eye] and see he's rank twelve—somewhat strong.
And then, all that remained was silence.
◇◇◇◇◇◇
Skills: [Reverse] [Divine Eye] [Sword God] [Phantom Thief Gentleman] [Dark Magic] [Rock-Iron Magic] [Holy Magic] [Spacetime Magic] [Blazing Magic] [Frost Ice Magic]
Rank: Bronze