The person who backstabbed Buer was none other than Marco.
His playful voice was an exact mirror of the tone Buer had used earlier. Buer's entire body stiffened as he turned his head slowly in disbelief.
"How is this possible... I saw you beheaded with my own eyes. I saw your blood splash onto my face. How could that be fake?"
At this moment, Marco's chest bore no wound. It was as if the earlier scene of his head being severed by the chain-blade and the geyser of blood had been nothing more than a vivid nightmare.
"Is what you see with your own eyes necessarily true?" Marco sneered at Buer's shocked expression. As he spoke, he applied slight pressure to his wrist, driving the light blade a few inches deeper.
Perhaps due to some special restriction, the moment the light blade entered him, Buer felt as though he had fallen into a quagmire, unable to move a muscle despite the stinging pain. Marco leaned down slowly, whispering coldly into Buer's ear, "You're an expert at using deception to disguise yourself. Did it never occur to you that I might have a trick up my sleeve as well?"
Black blood leaked from the corner of Buer's mouth, his eyes filled with resentment and confusion. "You... what kind of method did you use? That corpse..."
"I'm sorry, I'm not much of a talker. You'd better just die in ignorance."
Simultaneously, Marco raised his left hand, and another blade of light emerged. Then, mimicking Buer's previous action, he swung it directly toward Buer's neck.
Buer let out a frantic roar, the purple light in his eyes flashing wildly as he exerted every ounce of strength to break free from the restraint. However, no matter how hard he tried, it was in vain. Looking at the approaching blade of light, Buer's face contorted with terror and regret.
He finally understood that he had fallen into Marco's trap from the very beginning. Marco had sensed his abnormality long ago and deliberately played along, allowing Buer to lead the group to the abandoned plaza just to take him down at the most opportune moment.
In this moment, Buer felt a surge of regret. But there is no medicine for regret in this world.
The golden light blade fell without hesitation, severing Buer's neck cleanly. This time, there were no false illusions or eerie clones. Warm blood erupted, splashing onto Marco's sleeve. Buer's head hit the ground with a thud, rolling several times before stopping at Byrne's feet. The purple light in his eyes extinguished completely, leaving only endless bitterness and deathly silence.
Buer's body collapsed. The Chaos energy on the surface of his skin dissipated rapidly, eventually turning into a lifeless corpse without a trace of Chaos aura remaining.
Only after dealing with Buer did Marco breathe a sigh of relief. He walked over to Byrne, but before he could speak, he was interrupted by Byrne's complaint.
"I say, Captain, why didn't you come out sooner? I almost checked out right here."
Marco replied, "My apologies, Byrne. As you know, he possessed a puppet body. I had to confirm his true self and find the perfect window to strike to ensure a one-hit kill. So..."
Before Marco could finish, Byrne let out a dry chuckle and squinted. "So, you just used me as bait, didn't you?"
Byrne arched an eyebrow, his tone teasing. Having his intentions called out, Marco scratched his head, dropping his usual composure for a moment with an apologetic tone.
"Sorry, sorry. You were indeed wronged. Buer's art of deception was too bizarre; there was no flaw between his puppet clones and his true self. If I hadn't used you to distract him, I would never have found an opening. After all, his guard against you was much lower than it was against me."
He paused, looking at Byrne with a hint of praise in his eyes. "However, you did well. Even in a desperate situation, you kept your cool to disguise yourself and even seized a fleeting chance to counterattack. You're more composed than I expected. If it were any other team member facing that ambush, they probably would have panicked long ago."
Byrne rolled his eyes, leaned down to pick up "Black Fire," and wiped the dust off the barrel with a helpless sigh. "Forget it, Captain. Next time there's something like this, please give me a heads-up so I can be prepared. If my reaction had been a beat slower, I'd be the one lying on the ground right now."
Marco nodded. "Next time, for sure."
Byrne shook his head helplessly and put away "Black Fire." Then his gaze shifted toward the center of the plaza, his voice growing solemn. "Captain, Lacy's ritual is probably reaching completion. We should hurry and stop him."
Marco, however, crossed his arms as if he were just a spectator. "No need. Director Meow is here. We can just wait and watch from here."
Director Meow?
At those words, the scene from his first day at work immediately flashed through Byrne's mind—the black cat with heterochromatic eyes. He instinctively scanned the surroundings. Aside from the unconscious Gary, the fallen corpses, and Lacy immersed in his ritual in the center of the plaza, there wasn't another soul in sight. Even during the time from the hotel to the ambush at the plaza, he hadn't seen Director Meow at all.
"Captain, quit joking. When did Director Meow get here? Was it before you were by Buer..."
Byrne stopped mid-sentence as he realized something, looking at Captain Marco. Marco adjusted his glasses with one hand and looked toward the center of the plaza. "That's right. Just wait for the show to begin."
Rewinding time slightly: at the same moment Marco appeared to backstab Buer, Lacy was half-kneeling before the statue pedestal in the center of the plaza. His hands were raised high, cradling the dark green Heart of Soul-Devouring.
The blood-colored aura of the sacrificial array had already risen several meters high, enveloping the entire plaza in an eerie red glow. The runes on the ground flashed frantically. Each pulse of the heart was accompanied by a dense power of rot, distorting the surrounding air into black ripples.
Suddenly, Lacy's brow furrowed. He seemed to sense an anomaly. He snapped his head back, his eyes scanning the area before finally landing on Marco's corpse.
At that moment, the body—whose head had been separated and was as dead as could be—dissolved like an illusion into a wisp of golden psychic energy, vanishing into the air.
A fake death?
Damn it. Buer, that useless trash, couldn't even handle a simple task like this and still dared to negotiate with me.
Where is that Marco hiding?
Lacy let out an angry roar, his eyes darting around to flush out the hidden figure.
"Heh. Little one, are you looking for me?"
At those words, Lacy's pupils shrank. He instinctively took a step back and slowly lowered his gaze. There, on the ground not far in front of him, sat a black cat.
The cat was pitch black without a single stray hair of another color, her fur as smooth as if it had been groomed with oil. She possessed a pair of mismatched eyes: the left pupil was a deep, dark red, and the right was a cold, silver-grey.
Director Meow—she was here.