Chapter 27

Venti with the cover of my Mitachurls was able to withstand a whole salvo of the half a dozen cannons aiming across the fridge they were across and as they attempted to reload Venti in a great demonstration of his skill sent a matching half dozen Anemo-enhanced arrows in a quick salvo by shooting three arrows at once on his bow before reloading.

The Anemo-enhanced arrows violently reacted with the fire essence within the cannons creating a series of powerful explosions that made the metal cannons into essentially large fragmentation grenades that shredded the Fatui that were operating the cannons.

We all swiftly made our way across the bridge with my Mitachurls taking the odd Pyro bullet being sent by the surviving Fatui agents that were a decent distance away and weren't crippled by the previous explosions.

"Kaeya, and Jean you take care of the wounded. The Mitachurls will help me clean up the rest of the resistance." Diluc ordered and I realized that he was meant for those two to mercy kill the already heavily wounded agents as they had already explained how and why we weren't going to take prisoners even if it left a bad taste in my mouth, I mentally ordered my Mitachurls to follow Diluc and after a moment I decided to simply follow Diluc as the others went about their grim task.

"You aren't going to comfort the girls?" Diluc asked quietly as my Mitachurls pushed aside a bunch of large crates that were pushed together to block off a door into probably the end of the Domain.

I shook my head knowing that Lumine was perfectly capable of taking care of herself emotionally as I doubted, she honestly cared much about killing others, especially enemies with her world traveling would dull her sense of thought towards people she considered 'unimportant'

"Lumine is a big girl so she can take care of herself, plus I need to order my summons pretty often as I, unfortunately, don't know I can just mentally order them to follow your verbal orders... Would be unfortunate if they just freeze up after they reach a room and refuse to help you fight." I said wryly as I realized I needed to test that as I could loan Lumine an Anemo elemental to fly if we ever needed to separate temporarily.

Diluc simply grunted in response and then as we entered the last room, I saw it was basically filled with the Fatui agents that weren't Delusion wielders and thus in the face of an invasion of enemy Vision wielders would only get in their way.

Diluc twirled his massive great sword and advanced on the agents with deadly intentions, but a thought struck me. "Diluc should we leave a few in order to ask where Signora is?"

Diluc froze for a moment but then ducked behind my Mita Churls shield as the Fatui agents shot Pyro energy balls from what looked to be steampunk-style flintlock pistols. For a moment I thought he was going to yell at me for distracting him, but he visibly took a breath and nodded. "Yes, I will smack aside a couple of the higher rank ones and I will later take some time to interrogate them thoroughly."

Then the next couple minutes were a whirl of violence as I set aside my prior inhibitions and slaughtered the Fatui agents going into a stupor as I ignored all of their words of pleas of mercy or threats of reprisals from the Fatui and their harbingers hunting me down.

I froze as I realized the room had gone silent except for the groans of pain coming from the few older Fatui agents that Diluc spared and then I dismissed my Mitachurls and just sat down on one of the surviving chairs that survived the purge and buried my head into my hands as I battled my nausea at the sight in front of me and what I had done.

Killing these Fatui agents even as they begged for mercy was me simply living fully in the moment and I recalled how Soldiers in World One as they fought in the Trench's had a zero-prisoner rule in reality as the battles were so closely fought and it was the closest, we came back to melee combat as people fought with shotguns and bayonets in those mud-filled trenches.

"I can truly say this stuff gets easier especially when you dehumanize them as monsters like the male mutated Fatui agents... But these ones not wearing their bandages and masks and you see their eyes as they realize their plead for their lives, never really get easier... If you want to talk, I welcome you to my winery or my bar if you want to just clear your head." He offered in a gruff tone before patting my back in consolation.

I knew that as a relatively non-psychopathic human whose only real prior experience with violent death was the gutting of a hunted deer, it would probably be good for me to do some sort of therapy even if it was just airing out how I felt and I knew that Diluc wouldn't disdain me for showing a moment of weakness once in order to get my head on straight.

"Damn!" Diluc cursed hopping backwards as he held his glove-covered hand with a grimace. "I found the Tear, please come get it and I will be escorting the Fatui agents to a safe house and collecting all the paperwork which I will send to Jean once I peruse them."

I nodded and then walked over to where Diluc was after taking Dvalins Tear into my space bag I waved to Diluc and went back into the large atrium where the other girls and Kaeya were investigating some of the chests that the Fatui had there as the prior room seemed to be only holding confidential documents and Dvalin's Tear.

"Jake! Paimon made sure to save you some of the loot from the Knights's sticky fingers!" Paimon said triumphantly as she saw me walk over and I couldn't help but weakly smile as I imagined our flying Baconater trying to steal a chest from these accomplished Knights, flying over them with said chests so they couldn't open them.

"Anything good?" I asked and Lumine nodded as she showed off her sword that seemed so dull previously and had taken up a bit of a sheen.

"A lot of materials and Mora for me to upgrade my sword," She said with a smile before she pointed at a trio of chests that they had set aside for me, and I noticed the chests were all 'luxurious chests' metal plated chests with magic gemstones that supposedly time locked the occupants within the chest and the chest itself so even if it was buried and forgotten for millennium so long as it was within a Domain filled with mana or buried near a Leyline the stuff within the chest would be internally preserved till the magics broke down.

I hummed with a bit of excitement as I practically skipped over to the chests, but I froze as I turned to the others. "Are these chests safe to open? I don't want to be cursed or something for my ignorance." I asked wryly as I remembered the fate of the people in the Mummy movies and how they all had pretty terrible fates and more importantly died horribly.

Paimon burst into laughter before she wiped her eyes. "Jake, why would people curse the chest? Not to mention only powerful entities like Archon's or Adepti can use curses to begin with and if they were here then we would be in for a huge fight!"

My face twitched as I thought. 'Yeah, what if this was the Tsartisa's underwear or something...' But I manned up and then opened my first chest and I whistled as I saw the contents within. A building diagram for what looked to be a high-powered hand cannon of all things, a collection of high-ranking magic crystals that I could add to my sword, and the prize of the chest...

"Lumine..." I called out dryly as I stared at the final item in the chest.

"What?" She asked raising an eyebrow at my deadpan look and as she looked into the chest, she couldn't help but giggle as I pulled out what looked to be a large corset a busty woman would wear...

"Did I fucking get Signora's traveling luggage..." I groaned and then after I opened the other chests, I confirmed my thoughts as even though there was valuable stuff like a lot of Mora and magic crystals and a couple more diagrams for the Fatui agents to work on their Delusions, the majority of stuff within the chests was Signora's clothes...

"Heh look at the bright side Jake, you didn't even need to sleep with the lady to steal her underwear, Haha!" Kaeya said before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

I face palmed and groaned at my bad luck before a thought came to me and I couldn't help a giggle escaping me. "Hey girls would you look down on me if I keep these to surprise Signora with later as she is certainly going to be a problem."

The girls all shared a look and a unanimous. "Yes!" rang out so I shrugged and nudged Lumine who was still giggling at my luck. "Alright Lumine you need to cover her panties in melted chocolate, and her corset in yellow food coloring, then should we fight her, throw her 'stained underwear' at her and her subordinates, and say how we found her dirty laundry literally." Eula's face twitched as she realized that I was the person she couldn't get her beloved 'vengeance' upon as I would drag her name through the mud should I decide to get my vengeance in response