Unable to repay my student loans, I had no choice but to work part-time as a demon hunter.

After hearing Vera's description, Charlotte completely deflated. Forget solving the problem tonight, she'd even have trouble swallowing her meal.

Just as Gordon was about to offer a few words of comfort, he suddenly felt the chair vibrate very slightly. He quickly glanced around; no one else had noticed.

thump.

A muffled thud came from beneath the floor, and the candlelight flickered.

thump.

Now everyone can clearly hear something huge, heavy, and furious, pounding wildly against the foundation of the old house from deep underground.

Monster. Gordon realized he had noticed it sooner than they had. The tremors from the floor lingered deep within his body, as if the power of the "Unbroken String" had forever altered his senses.

Charlotte's face was deathly pale, her shoulders tense. The servants waiting nearby exchanged glances, trembling all over, and several maids covered their faces with handkerchiefs, hiding tears of fear.

Vera quickly stuffed the last piece of bloody beef into her mouth, swallowed it forcefully, stood up, picked up the black longsword beside her, and dragged the chair leg across the floor with a long, grating sound.

"Wait a minute," Gordon said.

"What?" Vera looked at him, like a sword that had been drawn from its sheath, with the back of the blade being held down by two fingers.

"I think we can't continue with the 'kill them one by one' approach. You just said you've already killed five. Can you keep going?"

"Yes," she said readily.

Five Deepclaw Demons. An ordinary person would find even one difficult to deal with. But judging from Vera's tone, it was as if she were asking if she could have half a roast chicken.

"Can we keep fighting until dawn?"

"As long as there's food, that's fine," Vera said.

"...The problem isn't about appetite," Gordon said. "Deepclaws don't like visiting aristocratic ancestral homes. They usually stay at the bottom of the Blackwater River, in the sewers, or in the drainpipes. There are other old houses along the river in Lundnim besides Montfort, so why here of all places?"

"The ancestral home was just old and in disrepair, the water pipes—" Evans said.

"If you're still blaming the water pipes, it just means the water pipes are more important than all of our lives," Gordon interrupted him.

Evans fell silent.

"You want to find out the reason?" Vera asked.

“Right,” Gordon said. “First, figure out why they’re here. Otherwise, you could spend a whole night killing in the basement and only end up with three things.”

"First, the ground is littered with stinking monster corpses." Gordon held up a finger, and Vera frowned.

"Second, a stomach that's completely empty from the intense fighting." Gordon held up a second finger, and Vera's eyes widened.

"Third, a bill that the Monford family is unwilling to pay in full because the crisis hasn't been resolved." Gordon held up his third finger, and Vera was already wiping away sweat.

"I'll listen to you." Vera sheathed her sword with utmost decisiveness.

  

Gordon put down his knife and fork and dried his hands with a tissue.

“I’m going to dissect them,” Gordon said. “Mr. Evans, is there a room in this old house that’s willing to sacrifice itself for the family?”

……

Under Gordon's arrangement, the small reception room was converted into an anatomy room, a room used to receive guests who were "not important enough but could not be driven away".

The chairs were moved to the corner, the patterned rug was rolled up into a fat python, and a waterproof cloth was laid on the table. Silver candlesticks were temporarily requisitioned and placed on either side for lighting.

Five Deepclaw demon corpses were piled up against the wall, their skin bluish-gray and their claws bent. The room soon filled with the smells of damp mud, fish, and rotting flesh.

Gordon picked up the meat cleaver, holding the handle close to his palm as if it were his own arm.

The first cut landed.

The Deepclaw Demon's hide was tougher than I'd imagined, covered in a slippery, sticky membrane. When the knife tip cut in, it slipped slightly, like piercing a piece of old leather coated in fish oil.

Gordon changed his angle, cutting below the gill slit on the side of the neck, slicing along the muscle fibers. When the blade touched the cartilage and fascia, the subtle resistance traveled back up the arm layer by layer.

Vera watched from the sidelines and felt that Gordon was very confident in his actions.

The movements weren't as ruthless as Vera's killings, nor were they even particularly fast, but they possessed an unparalleled sense of calm certainty, like opening a letter whose contents were already known.

The third head, the fourth head, the fifth head...

Gordon glanced at the table full of fish; there was enough to open a sushi restaurant.

The words in front of me kept flashing and jumping.

[The Deepclaw Demon's hand. The number of fingers is correct, but the aesthetics are flawed.]

[A wound on the side of the neck. Strong evidence that could be used to prosecute Vera with the Paranormal Mage.]

[Niu Niu. Smaller than yours.]

Gordon raised an eyebrow.

[The stomach of the Deepclaw Demon. Lacking fingers, bones, and rats, it's utterly incompetent.]

[The intestines of a Deepclaw Demon. Blank. Even monsters can forget to eat because of something.]

After examining the stomachs and intestines of the five Otherworldly beings, Gordon put down his knife.

The stomach is empty. The intestines are empty. There are no fragments of citizens, no clumps of animal fur. This is interesting.

A group of carnivorous monsters living in sewage broke into the nobleman's ancestral home, killing people and dogs, banging their heads against the foundation, but not eating a single thing.

"These dead water monkeys look quite ordinary." Vera stared blankly at the table full of bloody, mangled entrails, losing patience with this slow-paced academic work.

"Miss Hunter, this is strange enough," Gordon shook his head. "They killed at least one person and one dog, why didn't they eat a single bite?"

"?"

"Look closely." Gordon thoroughly opened the stomachs and intestines of the five monsters, displaying them before her. "They're completely clean. They haven't eaten at all tonight."

"So?" Vera took a loaf of bread out of her pocket and took a big bite.

"This is not normal."

"The Otherworldly Demons are abnormal to begin with," Vera said dismissively.

"But demons have physiological rhythms. Deepclaws prefer damp environments and hunt by ambush. They crawl out of the sewers, grab what they need, drag it back into the water, chew it up, and swallow it—that's natural. Haven't you seen it eat anything all night?"

"..." Vera stopped eating and recalled the battle of the night in her mind.

As a hunter who frequently takes on jobs in the black market, she has seen Deepclaw Demons far too many times.

She had seen them drag drunkards away, and she had seen them bite the hind legs of hunting dogs and sink them into the water, leaving behind a fading mournful cry.

That thing is not picky about food. Rats, dogs, people, carrion, even the severed limbs of its own kind, as long as they can fit in their mouths, they will swallow them whole.

But tonight... these monsters are definitely different.

They desperately squeezed in from the sewers and drains, rushing into the house one after another, tearing the cook who was blocking their way to pieces.

Looking back now, their tearing at the chef wasn't like they were preparing to feast, it was more like...

To vent my anger!

To vent some kind of... anxiety and unease.

They didn't eat, nor did they fight over the corpses; their goal was remarkably consistent: to frantically crawl deeper into the house!

Vera felt a chill creep down her spine.

It's incredible that Gordon was able to deduce so many clues using only five stomachs.

She silently swallowed the bread in her mouth. For a hunting dog who had spent years walking on the edge of life and death, she looked down on her less muscular fellows, but she cared about those with brains.

Evans, the butler standing at the door, listened to the whole conversation, and his already unpleasant expression turned even worse.

In Evans's previous understanding, Otherworldly beings were just wild beasts. The invasion of this ancestral home by the Deepclaws was like a country farm being attacked by a pack of wolves—unlucky, but not surprising.

However, after listening to Gordon's analysis, it turned out that these demons had other "purposes".

Wild animals experience hunger, fear, and instinct.

However, for purposeful organisms, as long as the cost is lower than the consequences, they will stop at nothing to achieve that goal.

In short...

The wolves will not cross the sheepfold, leave the mutton untouched, and head straight for the study, unless they are going to school.

Evans had to admit that, based on Miss Charlotte's performance, he had never thought highly of the teaching quality at the Royal Academy of Sciences.

Now it seems like it's not a problem with the school.