Chapter 134: Over the Edge

"Please!" the guy begged tearfully. "They'll kill me if they find out I was the one who told you!"

"Then we just have to make sure they don't find out, right?" I responded flippantly as I watched the guy dangle from the edge of the cliff. "And what makes you think I won't kill you if you don't tell me?"

"No!" the guy pleaded desperately. "Please, don't! I'll do anything!"

"Anything?" I repeated with a raised eyebrow. "Then why won't you answer my question?"

I loosened my grip a little and he yelped as he slid down a few centimeters. From his point of view, the vast open space billowed up below him, showing him the full fury of the sheer drop. Almost a kilometer up from sea level, it would take him quite some time to plummet downward before he crashed onto the ground and ended up as little more than a bloody stain.

Just like the poor Mountain Trolls Capricorn had knocked off the trail earlier.

"NO! Please!"

"Feel like talking now?" I asked as I watched him dangle precariously from Canis Major's mouth. "After all, there's no use keeping you alive if you can't give me what I want."

"Okay! I'll tell you! Please!" the guy was crying now. "It's Frank Franklin! He's the one who hired us! And he's the one who created the Foundation Research Group! That's the group those researchers belong to!"

For a moment I paused, and then I nodded at Canis Major. Without me voicing a word, he obeyed my mental instructions and pulled the poor guy back from over the edge, dropping him down on the cliff roughly. He landed on firm rock, stunned for a moment, then realized how close he was to the edge, and quickly scrambled inward gratefully.

Troy stood in front of him, barring his way.

"We didn't say you can go," he said.

"But…but…" the guy spluttered.

"What? Don't worry, we aren't going to take your life. Unlike your boss and friends, we will honor our words." The murderous expression on Troy's face seemed to say otherwise, but I wisely didn't mention that. Instead, I tilted my head thoughtfully.

"Foundation Research Group? Have you heard of that before?"

"No." Kureha shook her head. "But Frank Franklin is my uncle. My mother's cousin. I did hear that he wanted his nephew, Fred, to succeed the title of the Sword Saint, but to think that he will go as far as to assassinate me and my sister." She sighed and shook her head. "I didn't know he established a group outside the Franklin Conglomerate."

The Franklin Conglomerate was known more for producing arms, weapons and Divine Devices, and not exactly for research. Certainly not research on trying to control rank A monsters such as dragons. At least not from what I had heard about them.

"Hmm…I might have."

Both of us turned to Troy in surprise. He shrugged.

"My brother's part of that group."

"No shit?" I demanded. Troy nodded.

"I'm not kidding. I had to infiltrate a facility belonging to this Foundation Research Group to locate him. Apparently he was heading a huge project there." He scowled. "Something to do with weapons of mass destruction."

"Like Richard's spells?" Kureha asked sarcastically.

"Worse than Richie's spells." Troy looked much grimmer than I had ever seen him be. "Biological weapons. Viruses. Good thing I intervened and stopped him before he finished creating a sample, so he used more conventional weapons to destroy the city."

I remembered Troy's frustration when his brother escaped from his fingers. The latter had accomplished that by razing a city and forcing the former to save innocent civilians over capturing him. What a bastard.

"Good thing you stopped him before he developed those bioweapons," I said with a shudder. I didn't want to think what Troy's brother intended to do with those. Probably destroy the world. The lucky ones would be those who died.

I then turned to the guy, who was trying to crawl away without us noticing. If he thought we wouldn't realize, he must be more stupid than I thought.

"Hey."

"Eek!"

He shrieked and jolted upright, flipping over to stare at me in fear. I glared at him.

"So what were the researchers doing? Were they really trying to control a dragon?"

"…yeah." The guy saw no point in denying it, and nodded frantically. "It's true! We overheard them talking! The boss and everyone thought they were crazy, but they set up all that equipment in the cave to monitor the dragon."

"I'm surprised the dragon didn't attack you guys," Troy said, frowning. "You were literally camping out right next to its nest."

"It's part of their experiment." The guy's lips were so loose he was practically rambling now. "The researchers…they found a way to affect the dragon's brainwaves. Not to the extent of controlling it, but at least to hypnotize it into thinking that we aren't there."

"Ho…they succeeded in hypnotizing a rank A monster?" I found that intriguing. "That's pretty big news."

"It's not practical." The guy was shaking his head. "Boss was impressed at first, and wanted to use the technology. But…it only works with all those large, unwieldy equipment." He waved toward the cave and grimaced. "The machines that you destroyed. Even if you only just wrecked one small component instead of the whole thing, the system will fall apart and fail. It's also impractical to bring along to actual battlefields and missions because of the immense size and amount of power required to run it."

"Wait a second." Kureha frowned. "That's the same kind of technology that we use to create the barriers for our cities. That's how we keep our cities safe from monsters. We construct barriers that not only keep them out, but also to deceive them into thinking we are not there."

"That's right." I nodded, finding the technology familiar. It was the exact same type of barrier that Alicia and her friends used during the campfire party. "But the more powerful the barrier, the more energy you require to sustain it. For it to affect a rank A monster means that you need an enormous amount of power from somewhere."

"The researchers built a large-scale plasma generator at the bottom of the mountain. An underground generator." The guy looked glum. "That was what they were using to power their machines. Not that it matters now, since you've wrecked all their equipment."

A bloody plasma generator. Something that generated enough electricity to feed an entire city. And they built it just for their research. It was chilling how far they would go just to control a monster. To what purposes? What ends?

"Why do they want to control monsters?" Troy demanded, apparently reaching the same conclusion as I did. "What are they scheming?"

"I…I don't know! I'm just a grunt! A hired hand! We're just hired to protect them while they carried out their experiments. We wouldn't know anything about their motives or plans!" he glanced fearfully at the cliff, as if afraid we would throw him off it. "I swear! I'm telling the truth! We really don't know anything beyond their experiment here!"

I believed him. I mean, at this point there was no reason for him to lie. Furthermore, what he said made sense. If I was a researcher, I wasn't going to spout my company's goals and secrets to an outsider hired solely to protect my team while I was conducting experiments. I could see how they found out about the attempt to control a dragon since they were literally on the site, but the scientists wouldn't tell them anything beyond that.

"Well, now that I know who was behind the ordered hit on me and my sister, I can go confront him." Kureha was scowling as she placed a hand on the hilt of her sword, her fingers curling over it tightly in rage. "Uncle Frank and Cousin Fred, huh? I'll be paying them a visit."

"Okay. We've to report the presence of a dragon as well, while at it." I nodded in agreement. The city council would organize an army of mages to exterminate it. The dragon might not have bothered the city so far, but I was highly aware that we couldn't count on it to leave us alone for long. Like all monsters, their instincts were to seek out humans and destroy them.

Worse, the Foundation Research Group or whoever they were had their own motives for experimenting on the dragon here. If they succeeded in finding a way to control it, there was no mistaking that they would set it upon innocent civilians or cities. After all, this was the same group of people who hired criminal mercenaries to assassinate a girl and abduct her sister. I wouldn't be surprised if they were aware of what the mercenaries did to poor Kurenai, but turned a blind eye to it because they wanted her dead anyway.

Frank Franklin had ordered the deaths of both sisters, after all.

Something occurred to me at that point.

"You said that this Frank Franklin dude is your mother's brother?" I asked Kureha. She nodded.

"Yeah. My father married into the Franklin family." She smiled proudly. "He was a master kendo practitioner from the east. He taught me how to integrate his dojo's swordsmanship with the Franklin sword style. It's also one of the reasons why I defeated Cousin Shawn to become the Sword Saint of our generation."

That made sense. I turned to Troy, who was roughly kicking the poor guy we had captured up and dragging him.

"W…wait! I told you everything! Let me go!"

"We only promised to let you live. We never said anything about letting you go."

The guy turned frightfully pale. The poor dude looked as if he was about to wet himself.

"We're just handing you over to the authorities. You'll be safer with them." I shrugged. "Your clients or whoever aren't going to be able to target or attack you while you're in the police's custody. And they shouldn't be stupid enough to wage war on the police, not unless they want the Federation to hunt them down with armies of mages and mercenaries."

The guy relaxed a little, but I could tell that he wasn't pleased with the prospect of being arrested and imprisoned.

"Did you think you could get away scot-free after raping and murdering a young girl?" Troy snarled. "If I could, I would castrate you right here and right now. In fact, you're lucky my friends are here to restrain me, or I would have already killed you myself."

"Hi…! No! I didn't kill her! I swear! I only…only…"

The guy squeaked in horror and stagger back, tears forming in his eyes. His voice trailed off, but I knew what he was about to say, even as he broke down and sobbed. How pathetic. He probably acted all high and mighty when taking advantage of Kurenai's vulnerability and taking part in her rape, but now that he was the one abducted and helpless, he was acting all victimized. I felt my lip curl in disgust. My heart told me to kill him, but if I did that, I would be the same as those murdering bastards.

Don't get me wrong. If he attacked me, I would happily kill him in self-defense, but murdering a person without the will to fight in cold blood, while he was helpless? Even if he deserved it, I wasn't a murderer. I wasn't going to take the law into my own hands and pass judgement on other people. That was what the city council was for. Heavens willing, the guy would be locked up for the rest of his life, and prevented from committing similar crimes again.

Speaking of which, even if he did participate in the rape, he might not have been the one who murdered Kurenai. He didn't look like he had the guts to do something that bold. But from the guilty expression he displayed, and his fear that we would visit vengeance upon him, I could tell that he did indeed rape Kurenai along with the others. The fact that he didn't bother to deny it further sealed the deal. He only denied murdering her, but the moment he trailed off, as I said, I knew what he was about to say. He "only" raped her.

As if that let him off the hook.

"Let's go," Troy growled, suppressing his rage. "We had better leave before the dragon comes back."

"…that might be a little too late."

At Kureha's tense voice, the both of us – along with our prisoner – spun around. A massive shadow suddenly engulfed the entire area, throwing the mountain peak into darkness. Raising my head, I watched in horror as the dragon returned to roost upon its nest, its golden eyes gleaming as it glared at us ravenously.