I Become a Secret Police Officer of The Imperial Academy

Chapter 27

Though my life was miserable, I never said I hated it.

Most failures lead not to success, as the saying goes, but rather to a shortcut to suicide. 

Still, I decided to see them as the foundation for eventual success.

Whining and rotting away in a room didn’t suit my temperament.

Since being born into this world, I had never simply gone with the flow.

If things had gone as they would for most empty-headed noblewomen, I’d be giggling over romance novels and daydreaming about who my future husband might be.

But I left all that to Alicia.

From a young age, I worked hard to show those dreadful parents of ours that my mind was sharp by learning to read early and speaking as soon as possible.

I even begged to receive the grueling education meant for Julian or the eldest son.

At some point, even when I wanted to quit, I couldn’t.

Julian sacrificed everything to keep me alive.

For days, I wondered why he did what he did. But in the end, Julian was just weak.

The way he handled things at the end, knowing someone else would inevitably discover the truth, showed he had simply given up and wanted to die.

Considering he begged Theo, who had come to kill him, to let me live, it was hard to think of any other reason.

Even if I occasionally sank under the weight of my weary body and battered spirit, I would not give up.

For those who hadn’t experienced that night when the demons burned the city, it was just a distant, horrific memory.

Julian never witnessed that scene.

He simply stared blankly at Alicia, who lay dying in the mansion.

What could that bookworm, holed up in his study reading and researching, possibly know?

The idiot didn’t even understand what kind of beings the demons were before running away.

One day, if we burn together in hell, I’ll mock him as a pathetic loser and a coward.

Of course, that’s assuming I don’t fail.

“P-please, spare me! I-I’ll never cross over to your side again…!”

“You bastard! Where did you send them? Take off this blindfold and these cuffs right now, you damn piece of—!”

Ironically, the place in the slums where the most people gathered was known as the back alleys.

Maybe they weren’t physically dark but rather filled with people whose minds and souls were shrouded in darkness.

“P-please, w-water… Please…!”

“Do you really think you can stay alive here after kidnapping me!?”

“My boss will be here to save me soon!”

Those dim back alleys were full of things—drugs you couldn’t escape from once you tried them, stolen goods from nobles, mysterious meats said to boost stamina, and beautiful women.

Because of all this, the “dark” alleys always seemed to glow with activity.

“Who… Who are you!?”

Even the Speyer Family owned at least one house in these back alleys.

It wasn’t a basement, so Theo probably wouldn’t even know it existed.

It was a house above ground, so there was no need to confirm its location.

“I’m just a regular student who works in the evenings, studies hard in the mornings, and spends afternoons socializing with my friends.”

This wasn’t a basement.

It was on a hill, with windows positioned to let in sunlight. Clearly, its original purpose hadn’t been to detain criminals.

Oh, not criminals. Just beasts.

Perhaps Theo’s manner of speech was rubbing off on me.

Anyway, though a few stinking individuals had tried to move in while the place was unoccupied, I persuaded the humans to leave peacefully and dealt with the demons quietly.

“I used to have lots of colleagues working hard alongside me, but now I’ve got too much on my plate and have to handle things alone!”

“What does that have to do with me, you crazy— A-agh! Aaaaaaagh!”

I threw a dart into the eye of the beast that had cursed at me.

Perhaps my real talent wasn’t in anything grand but in darts.

The sharp spike pierced its eye in an instant.

Maybe it was thrashing around in its bindings, causing the dart to land, but no—it was definitely my skill.

“What does it have to do with me?”

Well, I needed to work hard at night, and your daughter wasted my time at lunch, leaving me exhausted.

Once this thing in front of me was dead, things should quiet down a bit.

The men tied up beside the dart-struck beast wet themselves, stinking up the place even further.

The house already reeked of blood; I didn’t want to add piss to the mix.

Thinking I’d cover the stench of urine with blood, I struck one of the screeching bats beside me—one shouting “How dare you hurt my boss!”—with a hammer.

His head was harder than I’d expected.

No matter how many times I struck him, my wrist ached, but his skull didn’t break.

They say there’s no tree that can’t be felled with ten strikes.

In truth, most trees don’t fall even after ten strikes, but I kept hammering away without much thought.

After about two minutes, my right wrist began to hurt, so I switched to my left hand. Around that time, his head started to cave in.

Blood began oozing from his head, which was now a mash of flesh and bone.

Even so, the stench didn’t go away.

“…I’ve been lying low for a while, but you—who hired you?”

Lying low, huh?

He must’ve been hiding behind some crime syndicate, afraid of being dragged under the Speyer Family mansion.

The people I caught in the slums were always just petty criminals.

Still, did this guy think I was a hired killer?

At least officially, I was still the head of the Speyer Family.

Even if the Intelligence Bureau had disappeared somewhere.

“Hired? Please.”

“And to think, I didn’t realize it was your father who was the hairy beast. What should I call your mother, then?”

A half-demon needed immense talent to get into the Academy.

Judging by this man’s appearance, he was quite the thug in the back alleys.

“…What nonsense are you spouting?”

“Dear Mr. Olga, your daughter has been exhibiting some very poor behavior at the Academy lately.”

I spat a blood-tainted glob of spit in the direction of the voice, but fortunately, the blindfold kept it from hitting me.

The stench of beasts was absolutely disgusting.

“You… You laid a hand on Olga!?”

It was just my opinion, but in this world, beasts seemed to care more for their offspring than humans did.

Based on the examples I’d seen so far, anyway.

Even Julian, who lacked any sense of familial love, abandoned me in the mud and ran off to hell on his own.

Taking a tightly rolled piece of paper from my pocket, I lit it on fire and inhaled the smoke.

“Phew, this doesn’t even feel like anything.”

Stress made me crave a cigarette.

But I couldn’t smoke.

I had to keep my promises.

“Answer me!!”

Thanks to the herbs I bought in bulk from the general store, I rolled them up like cigarettes and started smoking.

The aroma was pleasant, but it lacked the distinctive sensation of my mind snapping awake.

The creature began trying to wriggle its hand out of the manacles on its wrist.

Even if it managed to escape, its hands would be mangled. But since it was a demon, I couldn’t be sure.

I pulled out the pistol I had hidden and fired several rounds into its knees.

The sound didn’t escape the room.

The enchantment surrounding the area was far superior to the crude magical device Theo had used.

“I didn’t touch her. I won’t touch her either.”

“…Then what exactly—”

“Well, come to think of it, if she’s half-demon, that means one of her parents must be a demon, right?So, if I find her parents, I can find the demons! I must be a genius. Even in the midst of losing everything, I’ve come up with such a hopeful, brilliant idea!”

Handling the bullying at school and the demon issue simultaneously was an efficient plan, wasn’t it?

There was no need to release people or cooperate with those guard dogs to find demons.

Not that I had the power to do so anyway.

There were limits to what I could accomplish alone.

I couldn’t keep wandering aimlessly by myself forever.

Skulking around the capital, avoiding the eyes of the guards, was exhausting.

If I had a body as strong as Theo’s or at least some decent magical ability, it might have been a different story.

But all I had was a moderately healthy body, some basic self-defense skills, and a pistol that wasn’t all that effective when fired.

“…You’re one of those lunatics from the Duke’s faction, aren’t you? Another massacre of our kind is coming, isn’t it?”

“Regrettably, I’m all alone. That’s why I’m working so hard, single-handedly.”

Even when lighting the incinerator, I had to drag the heavy oil cans myself, pour them around, and toss in oil-soaked wood.

Because of this, I spent most of my days sleeping instead of attending classes.

Since my parents burned to death and my last remaining family—my brother—died in a fit of madness, I seemed like a tragic girl.

The teachers didn’t bother me much because of that.

Theo, ever the protagonist, looked like he’d been swept up in some incident again and didn’t seem to care about me.

Thanks to that, I could resume my work uninterrupted.

When they realized I was acting alone, the bound men, forced to kneel, seemed to see a glimmer of hope.

They struggled even more, trying to free themselves from the manacles, even if it meant mangling their hands in the process.

Had they not heard the gunshots?

Olga’s father, tied up with the others, shouted at them.

“S-stop it. Just stay still, you fools…”

Bang.

A sharper sound than a pistol rang out seven times.

I had spent a bit more money to acquire a quality rifle.

Apparently, it was enchanted to remain in top condition without any maintenance.

The rifle made a difference—if I had used a pistol, it would have merely dented the skull. This time, it left a massive hole.

“Do you have any last words?”

“Tell Olga I love her.”

“No.”

Bang.

Since he was part beast, his durability seemed similar to a human’s.

His head half-exploded, sticking to the wall.

Cleaning up was going to be annoying.