Chapter 77 : Mercy and values
The basement was silent, save for the soft, rhythmic hum of the suppression runes embedded into the concrete walls. Each one glowed faintly, casting eerie halos of light around the sixteen bodies sprawled across the reinforced floor bound, unconscious, and muted. Their mana signatures were suppressed. Their spirits caged. Their threat neutralized.
Philip stood in the middle of it all, barefoot, quiet, and heavy with thought.
One by one, he had already interrogated them not through brute force, but through soul breach. It was a technique in the book he took from the libray. It bypassed memory blocks, enchantments, and even divine oaths. Under it, their spirits had no choice but to speak the truth.
Philip paced slowly.
The thought came to him more than once: "Kill them. Dispose of them. Clean this mess before it grows."
It would be cleaner that way. Safer.
But he couldn't.
He had never killed a human being before.
Three years ago, during a road ambush, he'd unleashed a reflexive strike that obliterated a creature targeting his car. It wasn't human. It didn't bleed like one. That was different.
This?
This was crossing a line.
Even though he had trained his mind, his spirit, and his body, that part of him his conscience remained untouched. A single step across this line could change him forever.
He sat down and breathed in.
"If the world… or the galaxy… ever finds out I'm the Emperor's candidate," he thought, "there'll be blood. There'll be war. And I'll have to do far worse than this."
But until then
he would hold onto the values he was born with.
Even in a world of monsters and mana,
he still believed in mercy.
After a long moment of silence, Philip made his decision.
The moment he connected, his stomach churned.
He felt it.
Rot. Filth. Blood.
Philip had expected the usual a few murders, some secrets, maybe betrayals. But this was different.
Seyi wasn't a man with blood on his hands.
He was a man who bathed in it.
Philip stood frozen as images rushed through him like a floodgate had burst.
Rallies turned riots. Schools burned. Markets torched. Women, children, families torn apart in chaos.
And worst of all, Seyi had done it with a smile. For pay. For ideology. For fun.
Philip saw the truth: this man had been behind dozens of incitements across Nigeria. The COVID-era protests. The SARS uprising. The Lekki shooting. All the heartbreak. All the flames. Seyi had stirred it. Amplified it. Fed on it.
Seyi had been the orchestrator. A conductor of chaos. He was a master of manufactured rage using mana illusion, voice amplification, and curse-laced propaganda to turn crowds into weapons. And he had done it repeatedly not for belief, not even for greed.
For pleasure.
Philip's body shook.
For the first time in his life… a killing intent burst out of him.
It wasn't anger.
It was justice.
And then
he felt it.
Death had come to see what he would choose.
Philip stood there, heart pounding, soul trembling. He had trained for years to face things beyond the human mind. But nothing had prepared him for the weight of this choice.
He whispered, "Not yet."
He wouldn't kill. Not now.
But mercy was off the table.
ut mercy was no longer an option.
Philip walked to the edge of the sealing circle. With a flick of his fingers, he summoned a spectral scalpel of concentrated willpower. Then, with the precision of a god-surgeon, he shattered Seyi's limbs, each crack reverberating through the man's unconscious frame.
And then he reached in.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
His hand pierced the fabric of the soul. Ethereal threads tangled with trauma and vice wrapped around his arm like barbed wire. But he was calm. Cold. Clinical.
He cut.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each incision severed one of Seyi's key soul-anchors his ability to use mana, to regenerate, to recover spiritual strength. The damage was surgical, deliberate. Each cut would take years, maybe decades, to repair requiring rare resources, divine intervention, or a miracle.
Philip pulled back.
Seyi collapsed, twitching, his aura in tatters. His body broken. His soul… dismembered.
It wasn't death.
It was worse.
A sentence one that ensured he would never again rise to hurt another.