Chapter 110 — Is This Damian Valcor?

Zavier lowered his spear slightly, relief evident on his face.

He’d killed eleven people tonight. Each one had gotten slightly easier than the last, which disturbed him more than the actual killing did.

’Am I becoming like Boss? Is this what happens when you fight enough?’

His watch buzzed with new coordinates.

Edrin: All sections converge on the Iron Barrel pub. Mission complete. Boss is already there.

Zavier felt a mixture of relief and anticipation.

They’d actually done it. Swept the entire Outer Region in one night.

’Boss is going to be so proud of us.’

****

[Outside the Iron Barrel Pub - Two Hours Later]

The rain had finally stopped, leaving the streets wet and reflective under the dim streetlights.

All thirty-one student members of the Mafia converged on the pub from different directions, along with Marco and his sixty-three men.

They’d been fighting for hours. All of them were exhausted, blood-soaked and some were injured... all running on pure adrenaline.

But they’d succeeded. Every major operation in the Outer Region had been hit simultaneously. Every resistance had been crushed. Every territory had been claimed!

The Outer Region belonged to the Mafia now!

Edrin was the first to notice the bodies outside the pub.

He stopped walking, his hand going up to signal the others to halt.

"What the hell..."

Twenty corpses were scattered across the street in front of the pub entrance.

But calling them corpses was generous.

Some were barely recognizable as human. Bodies twisted at impossible angles. Limbs torn off. Heads crushed or missing entirely. One was embedded partially into a brick wall.

The brutality on display was beyond anything any of them had witnessed tonight, despite hours of their own killing.

"...Boss did this?"

Marcus’s usual cheerful demeanor was gone, replaced by genuine shock.

"Alone?"

Several of the students started feeling sick just looking at the carnage outside.

They’d killed people tonight. Some had killed many people. But this was completely different. This was artistic in its cruelty. It was too... excessive.

This was a message written in flesh and blood.

Marco stepped forward, his scarred face grim.

"If this is what happened outside, I don’t even want to think about what’s inside."

But they had to check. They had to confirm the mission was complete and Boss was safe.

Ronan pushed open the pub door.

An awful smell hit them first.

Blood... Lots of blood, mixed with alcohol and other bodily fluids.

Then they saw the interior.

"Oh God..."

Lysa turned away immediately and vomited, her stomach finally giving up after hours of holding it together.

She wasn’t alone. Over half the students and even some of Marco’s veterans were retching, unable to handle what they were seeing.

The pub’s main room was a slaughterhouse.

Bodies everywhere, but "bodies" was too respectful a word for what remained.

They were dismembered, pulped, broken or twisted.

Some had clearly been used as weapons against others. Some had been killed with furniture or bottles or their own limbs torn off and used against them.

One corpse had a metal pipe going completely through it from mouth to rectum.

Another had its head smashed into a support beam so many times the skull was just paste.

The walls were painted with arterial spray and the floor was sticky with congealing blood. The music speakers were still somehow playing, creating an eerie soundtrack to the horror.

"I’ve been in combat for fifteen years."

Pavel, one of Marco’s most experienced men, spoke in a shaking voice.

"I’ve seen battlefields and I’ve seen gang wars but... I’ve never seen anything like this."

Nobody wanted to move further into the pub.

They didn’t want to see what was in the private meeting room at the back.

But they had to.

Edrin forced himself to take the lead, his tactical skill completely useless in trying to prepare him for what he was about to see.

He pushed open the door to the meeting room.

Silence.

Complete and absolute silence.

Damian sat in a leather armchair that definitely hadn’t been in the room originally, probably dragged in from somewhere else.

He was sitting casually, one leg crossed over the other, his arms resting on the chair’s armrests, his chin supported by his right hand.

A lit cigar was held loosely in his left hand, smoke curling upward lazily.

He looked relaxed and almost peaceful.

Like someone enjoying a quiet evening rather than someone who’d just committed a massacre.

Then Edrin’s eyes moved to the table.

Five heads were arranged in a neat row, their faces frozen in expressions of absolute terror and agony.

He recognized them from intelligence photos. Viktor Slade. Chen Wei. Maria Cortez. Dmitri Volkov. David Lorenzo.

Every major criminal leader in the Outer Region, all dead, their severed heads displayed like trophies.

His eyes moved lower.

Kuro sat on the floor near the wall, his body expanded to the size of a large wolf, his feathers glistening with blood and gore.

The raven was methodically absorbing death energy from what had once been five human bodies.

Calling them "bodies" was extremely generous.

They were minced meat... Literally. Just chunks of flesh and bone and organs scattered across the floor in piles that were vaguely body-shaped if you squinted and had a very active imagination.

No limbs were intact and the torsos were unrecognizable. Just... pieces.

The level of dismemberment and destruction required to reduce five C rank criminals to this state was beyond comprehension.

More students entered the room behind Edrin, and the reactions were immediate.

Zavier threw up on the spot. Ariana’s face went completely white. Even Ronan, who’d killed the most people tonight and enjoyed it, looked disturbed.

The Mafia’s city veterans were stone-faced, but several had their hands clenched into fists so tight their knuckles were white.

Everyone was looking at Damian with expressions ranging from awe to fear to something approaching terror.

Even the students who’d followed him loyally from the beginning, who’d killed alongside him, who’d trusted him completely, were seeing him differently now.

This wasn’t their Boss who trained them and protected them and gave inspirational speeches.

This was something else... Something darker. Something that genuinely scared them.

Damian took a slow drag from his cigar, the tip glowing bright orange, before exhaling smoke and finally speaking.

His voice was casual, conversational, like he was discussing the weather.

"Tell me something. The sign on the wall behind you..."

He pointed his cigar toward the opposite wall, the one they’d all entered facing away from.

"Is it beautiful enough? Or does it need more color? I was going for a specific aesthetic, but I might have overdone it."

Confused, everyone turned to look at the wall Damian was indicating.

The wall was painted with a massive letter "M" that stretched from floor to ceiling, taking up almost the entire surface.

But it wasn’t painted with normal paint.

It was painted with blood.

Fresh blood, still wet in places, having been applied recently...

The "M" was bold, dramatic and impossible to miss. A declaration of ownership and a signature on the massacre.

The Mafia’s mark, written in the blood of everyone who’d opposed them.

Several more students threw up.

Edrin just stood there, staring at the blood-painted letter, his mind trying and failing to process everything he was seeing.

’This is our leader... This is who we follow... is this Damian Valcor?’

And despite the horror, despite the fear, despite everything screaming at him that this was wrong...

Part of him felt proud.

They’d actually done it.

The Outer Region belonged to the Mafia now.