"No… don't…"
"Help! Help!!!"
"Please don't kill me! I have money! I have a lot of money!"
"I—"
Under Lili's gaze, the men who had just been so vicious a moment ago were now begging desperately for their lives.
What she couldn't see was that the evil within them was being slowly peeled away.
Bit by bit, it was stripped from their bodies and devoured by the Flower of Evil blooming behind Cao Ye.
Meanwhile—
The smile on Cao Ye's face grew brighter and brighter.
These were only a few people.
Yet the evil inside them was already so dense.
If that was the case…
What would the entire Soma Familia be like?
The thought made Cao Ye even more excited.
Behind the prosperous appearance of Orario—
How much darkness was actually hidden?
As their evil continued to be extracted, the men's consciousness gradually became blurred.
Technically speaking, evil itself wasn't a good thing.
Removing it might even be beneficial.
But Cao Ye wasn't removing it gently.
He was violently tearing it away.
And that caused serious damage.
Both good and evil were part of a person's existence.
If either was forcibly removed, the person would suffer.
And the damage often occurred at the soul level.
Normal healing methods couldn't fix that.
"Do you want to kill them?"
"This is your chance to take revenge with your own hands."
Cao Ye said this to Lili while handing her a sharp dagger.
Lili looked at the dagger.
Then she looked at the unconscious men lying on the ground.
Finally—
She raised her head and glanced at Cao Ye.
Without hesitation, she took the dagger.
Stab.
The blade pierced straight through one man's throat.
The intense pain woke him instantly.
But with his throat torn open—
He could no longer speak.
No curses.
No pleas.
No one knew what he wanted to say.
The first.
Then the second stab.
The third.
The fourth.
One by one, the men who had bullied her for years were killed by her own hands.
Previously, Lili had used Fire Magic Stones and Magic Swords to kill people who had nearly killed her.
But that was different.
This time—
She had done it herself.
At that moment, the girl named Liliruca Arde had blood on her hands.
And that stain would never wash away.
But something else happened as well.
The girl had transformed.
The nightmares of her past had been cut down by her own hands.
"You're going to kill everyone in the familia?"
Lili asked.
"Kill them?"
"Why would I do that?"
"Wouldn't it be better if they lived a life worse than death?"
Cao Ye smiled.
Soul-level damage wasn't something that could easily be repaired.
What would happen to those former tyrants once they became weak?
Cao Ye didn't know.
But he was very curious.
Under Lili's guidance, the two of them left the Dungeon.
As for the corpses—
They weren't a problem.
The Dungeon itself would deal with them.
For centuries, the Dungeon had devoured countless lives.
It was practically a giant graveyard.
The Soma Familia was large.
And its members were numerous.
But under the influence of divine wine, most of them lived in drunken madness.
To taste even a drop of Soma's wine—
They would resort to robbery, violence, and murder.
They had committed countless crimes.
"What a… delicious place."
"Evil fills every corner here."
When Cao Ye arrived at the Soma Familia headquarters, he immediately sensed the overwhelming darkness surrounding it.
To him, it felt like a feast.
Beside him, Lili lowered her head slightly.
If she could choose—
She would never want to return to this place again.
"What a perfect flowerbed."
"In that case… let's begin."
"Technique Activation—"
"Flower of Evil: Bloom."
Buzz—
As Cao Ye activated his technique, the black Manjusaka flower manifested above the Soma Familia headquarters.
The accumulated evil within the familia began to rise into the air.
Then—
It started being absorbed.
Not only the evil within the building—
But the evil inside every member was forcibly extracted as well.
"Hm?"
Inside the headquarters, Soma suddenly raised his head.
He stepped toward the window.
And immediately saw the black Manjusaka flower floating in the sky.
He also saw the evil rising from his own familia members.
To a god—
Human concepts of good and evil were meaningless.
Humans couldn't understand the morality of ants.
And to humans—
All ants were just insects that could be crushed.
There was no reason to understand them.
Furthermore, Soma had long since given up on his followers.
So whatever happened to them—
He simply didn't care.
"What's going on? Why does my body feel so weak?"
"Did I party too hard at the Pleasure Quarter last night?"
"No… this is different."
"Something's wrong!"
"Something happened!"
"Where's the captain?!"
"I don't know!"
The entire Soma Familia quickly fell into chaos.
But no one knew what was actually happening.
At the same time—
The Flower of Evil devoured enormous amounts of evil energy.
Then it fed that energy back into Cao Ye's body, strengthening him.
For most people, a technique like this would be a double-edged sword.
Absorbing too much evil would increase their power—
But eventually it would crush them mentally and spiritually.
No ordinary person could bear that burden.
But Cao Ye was different.
From the very beginning, he had carried the power of All the World's Evils.
Compared to that—
This level of evil was nothing.
In fact, as he absorbed more evil, the foundation of All the World's Evils grew stronger.
In Fate, the reason All the World's Evils became so terrifying was because the Black Grail accumulated magical energy for decades.
That energy eventually transformed into a catastrophic curse.
Now—
Cao Ye was essentially doing the same thing.
He was accumulating power.
"What the hell is going on?!"
Inside the Soma Familia headquarters, Zanis shouted in fury.
Since Soma had grown disappointed with his followers, he had handed all management responsibilities to Zanis.
Zanis had become the true ruler of the Soma Familia.
The current miserable state of the familia was largely his fault.
Now this sudden incident had completely caught him off guard.
Even he was affected by the strange phenomenon.
In that moment—
The entire Soma Familia had become lambs waiting to be slaughtered.
If someone attacked them now, even a single fighter might be able to wipe them out.
And the person responsible for all of this—
Feeling the surging power inside his body—
Couldn't help but smile even wider.