"Ah, my dear friends. To that end, please leave this to me! This brute seems rather firm, so it may take just a little bit of time to whittle him down." "Got...got it." "W-we leave it in your capable hands." "Oh, and Master Kaito, is twelve children all right with you? Would you prefer more?" "L-let's leave it at twelve for now! W-we can iron out the details later!" "Aye-aye! This is an important matter for us! Oh, you're coming at me again? Very well! Die!" No matter how one looked at it, in her current state, Hina seemed unlikely to lose. Having decided to leave her to it, Kaito and Elisabeth broke into a run. As they quickened their pace, the sound of Hina pounding on armor receded behind them. And with that, the two of them finally infiltrated the mass of flesh and headed inside the demon. The tunnels inside the mass resembled the inside of a human uterus. Kaito and Elisabeth dashed down paths that resembled birth canals and esophagi. It was like they'd been swallowed up by a monster or were traveling back up through a mother's birth canal. Their surroundings were so permeated with the stench of blood it was stifling. And unsurprisingly, they could sense a powerful source of vitality farther down the path. Strangely, though, the mass's insides had an ephemeral frailty to them as well. Perhaps due to the damage it had sustained from La Mules's attack, the mass was clearly hemorrhaging mana. The weakened King and Grand Monarch should be somewhere down this way. That thought propelling him, Kaito kept a watchful eye as he strode inward. As the two of them ran, the slapping sound of meat on the soles of their shoes rang out. They went deeper and deeper down the path, as though they were descending into the bowels of Hades. "Did you notice?" "Yeah..." Eventually, the two of them perceived a change. The pulsating sound that quivered through the entire mass was gradually getting louder. Thump, thump, thump, thump. The rhythm of some malevolent being's exertions of breath rocked their bodies. We're probably getting close to the center. They ran down a passage that had started to call to mind thick blood vessels. A wide, open space lay at its end. The scent of blood and flesh grew stronger. As he stopped to look around, Kaito found himself assailed with nausea. "This is..." "How very strange and how utterly twisted." The fleshy walls surrounding them were hollowed out in a circle. They were propped up by crowded ribs and looked to be on the verge of collapse. Alongside them, two people's worth of massive organs were lined up. However, the way the organs were arranged was haphazard. The two hearts pulsed side by side as blood vessels wound their way around them. Their fused lungs lay scattered on the ground, and half-dissolved heaps of brain lay piled up around them. The spectacle surpassed grotesqueness and ventured into the realm of being downright bizarre. In fact, it was almost humorous. It was as if human organs had been enlarged and then put on display. After glancing over them all, Kaito's gaze returned to the hearts. Upon closer inspection, one right atrium and one left atrium each had a single person-shaped figure squirming within them. It was probably the King and Grand Monarch's true bodies, submerged in blood. Elisabeth wordlessly raised her right arm to call forth a torture device. But in a rare display, the Kaiser growled with his fur bristling. "Look at that, boy." "Huh? ...Wait, what is that?" Prompted by the Kaiser, Kaito looked toward the wall of flesh to his left. Two types of organs had sunken into it. However, Kaito couldn't make out what they were from their roundish shapes. But the moment he thought back to the three underlings, he instinctively guessed their identities. Between the King's, Grand Monarch's, and Monarch's replicants, two had been male, and one had been female. The Monarch and the King were men. That meant that the Grand Monarch had to be a woman. The organs were a uterus and a pair of testicles. But what the Kaiser was pointing at was something else entirely. "I know not. It is something that not even I know the identity of. And for me to not know of it, it must be abnormal in the extreme." The female organ was fused to the male organ. And at the point where they met sat a strange, fleshy, tumorlike cocoon. It was wrapped in soft, hypha-like fibers and filled with fluid. A small figure, one that belonged to neither the King nor the Grand Monarch, wriggled energetically within it. There was something living there that did not belong. Faced with that reality, Kaito froze, and Elisabeth scowled. "That thing...could it be...?" After thinking for a moment, she breathed in a small breath. With widened eyes, she gave voice to her terrifying hypothesis. "Are the demons trying to birth a child?" "...! Is that even possible?" "Mm, two contractors can theoretically bear a child. Of course, it would give rise to naught but a normal human... But two contractors merging with their demons, going beyond ordinary transformations and warping into a mass of flesh, and then having a child is unheard of." "Indeed, the girl speaks truth. Demons exist solely to destroyâ€”this is blasphemy! Blasphemy against our very existence!" "In my opinion, such a creature would be fascinating... It would go against not just the laws of our world but the very providence of God and Diablo. And it offends the Kaiser, as well. It would certainly be safer to return it to nothingness before it is born." The Kaiser howled, and Vlad spoke in an unusually serious tone. Kaito felt a cold sweat bead up on his forehead. Looks like we were right to rush over here. There was no way anyone could have known that such a thing was being cultivated here. The fact that Elisabeth had marched here concerned that the demon would grow in power had ended up being important in an unexpected way. Kaito and Elisabeth nodded at each other. Then they changed their target. Aiming at the fetus, the two of them launched their attacks. When they did, the entire room squirmed, and the walls pulsed. Elisabeth and Kaito braced themselves for whatever was about to appear. But their vigilance ended up backfiring. The next moment, countless King faces appeared from all directions. *** The only things sharp about the sunken, squalid, muscled faces were the eyes. Countless eyeballs bore down on the two of them. Then strands of drool dripped from countless pairs of flaccid lips as they opened. All at once, they released multihued roars. Because they hadn't dashed away before the faces had finished appearing, there was no way for them to avoid the attack. "Elisabeth!" Kaito's scream was blotted out. He and Elisabeth were swallowed up by the vortex of gray noise. The ceiling crumbled; the floor crumbled; someone cried; someone laughed And then Kaito's vision went dark. 6 Her Feelings Pain. Pain was all that existed. Most of Kaito's memories from his previous life started and ended with pain. Assailed all over by that nostalgic agony, Kaito opened his eyes. When he came to his senses, he found himself lying atop a damp tatami mat. ...H-huh? Flies buzzed noisily over his eyes. He surveyed his surroundings. A dirty fluorescent bulb was swaying from the ceiling. The window was covered in packing tape, and his ripped-out teeth rolled about beneath the tea table. Then Kaito looked at his body. The shirt stuck to his scrawny torso was hardened from all the sweat and vomit staining it. His right arm was covered in shallow lacerations, and his left arm hung unmoving and was slathered in dark-red stains. His ankle was twisted at an odd angle, and his stomach was assailed by a heavy pain, as though one of his organs had ruptured. Kaito took a good, long look at the situation he was in. He was lying on his side in the room where he'd been killed in his previous life. It was almost as though everything that had happened after his resurrection had been nothing more than something he'd dreamed while on the verge of death. Faced with that desperate situation, a single thought crossed his mind. What, this again? Kaito remembered this. During his ceremonial trial with the Kaiser, he'd gone through the exact same experience. At the same time, he now understood why La Mules had died, as well as the nature of the King's mental attack. While their ranks were below his, first-class mythical beasts and spirits were similar in nature to God, and summoning them required dragging them down from a higher plane of existence. To do that, one needed to have a strong connection to God, but aside from the Suffering Saint, nobody could hold that power within themselves for long and still retain their sanity. That was what Elisabeth had said. Before she lost her senses, La Mules must have had her memories and will returned to her. Then, in her confusion, she'd ended up going insane and killing herself. Man, this is cruel, all right... It probably didn't do much to most of the paladins. But it'd be brutal on anyone with a traumatic past. If this had been my first time, I'd have been in trouble, too. Just like the last time, Kaito forcibly moved his body as he mused. His body was little more than skin and bones; even the act of breathing caused him to spasm with convulsions. But he staggered across the room anyhow, regurgitating gastric juices as he walked. I wonder how I'm supposed to wake up from this dream... Given what happened to La Mules, if I kill myself in the dream, I feel like my real body will probably die, too. As he thought through his problem in an almost insanely calm manner, he limped forward on his mangled ankle. As he did, he heard the sound of the front door opening and then the noise of stomping coming from the front hallway. His father was probably home. Looking up as though he'd been slapped, Kaito paused in his tracks. The screen door to the room slid open. Kaito's father was angrily shouting something. "Kaito, ya little shiâ€” Bluh?" As he did, Kaito matched the timing as his father stormed into the room and used it to bury his fist in his father's face. Kaito's own bones snapped, but the blow was clean. Blood gushed from his father's face. His nose had been crushed. Perhaps he'd even suffered a concussion as he toppled over onto the floor. Covered in blood from his own nose, his eyes rolled back in his head as he pathetically slipped into unconsciousness. "Outta my way." Kaito's voice was cold as he spoke over his shoulder. He then completely ignored the man who'd abused him for countless years and eventually even murdered him. Not sparing so much as a passing glance in his father's direction, Kaito exited through the screen door. Dragging his mangled body, he made his way down the damp hallway and opened the front door. On the other side of it, there was nothing but darkness. "...Huh, so that's how it is." Faced with a darkness that would have caused any human to instinctively succumb to terror, Kaito muttered those few words. Once, he'd spent hundreds of subjective years in a similar space. At this point, it would take more than that to scare him. Without an ounce of fear, Kaito strode into the darkness. He knew full well there was nothing he could gain if he didn't walk forward. This place really is like where the Kaiser tested me, Kaito thought. He'd gradually come to realize that, just where he'd been tested, his bodily sensations were fading away. He had become