upward, he offered Aguina a proposal. "If I bombard them after we make it outside, the villa will remain unharmed. Most of the front garden will get blown away, but...given the circumstances, a sacrifice such as that seems trivial. That's my recommendation. How does that sound?" "I most certainly object, and that should go without saying! Please don't ask for my approval if you know I'm not going to give it." Aguina immediately let out a roar of protest. La Christoph tilted his chin down toward his neck and went quiet. It was difficult to tell given the way his body was slanted, but perhaps he was trying to hang his head. That was when the babies stormed into the entrance hall. Elisabeth clicked her tongue. "Tch, always so fussy over every little thing. Why not offer a plan of your own, then?" "With pleasure! Feel free to use that as you please." Aguina responded to Elisabeth's complaint by pointing overhead. His long claws glinted. Elisabeth looked up, then nodded. Aguina was rightâ€”it was perfect. "Ah, I seeâ€”then use it, I shall." She raised her right arm straight up and sliced her fingers to the side through the empty air. A biting gust of wind mimicked her motion and cut through the air overhead. Crimson flower petals burst in its wake, like blood gushing from a wound. The demi-human concubines were forbidden from going outside as they pleased. As a substitute, though, the villa was adorned with all manner of ornamentations for them to feast their eyes on. And the entrance hall was no exception. Unlike the temple's exceedingly practical lighting system, the hall's high ceiling was lit by an elaborate chandelier. However, the chandelier's design was somewhat peculiar. Its form was broad and elaborate, calling to mind the image of a vast piece of driftwood mounted in the air. Either that, or the inside of a snake nest. Its designer had used soft metal to depict a mass of various types of snakes all coiled around one another. From a human perspective, it was enough to evoke a sense of physiological revulsion, but the demi-humans probably saw it differently. Each of the myriad snakes held a magical light-emitting jewel in its mouth, and the cluster extended all the way across the wide ceiling, hung delicately balanced with a series of thin, firm chains. With one fell blow, Elisabeth sliced those chains clean through. After the initial loud snap, the chandelier made its descent astonishingly quietly. As it did, Elisabeth and the others all quickly leaped away. Elisabeth also gave La Christoph a forceful hurl. His expression was as calm as ever as he glided in a smooth arc across the floor. Then an earsplitting KSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH filled the air. The chandelier had come crashing down onto the babies. However, they didn't seem particularly affected. The most that happened was their springy flesh became a bit depressed. But for a moment, they stopped, as though a giant hand had pressed down on them from above. The ones near the outer perimeter had gotten caught up in the mess of snakes. That opening was plenty. "â€”'Tis done." Elisabeth tapped her shoe against the ground. The moment she did, the ceiling and floor slammed together, crushing the babies and the chandelier alike. Or to be more precise, a pair of large, flat stone slabs crushed them. The two round slabs were adorned with a single golden rod that looked like a barrel organ's handle. Elisabeth loudly raised her voice. "It has been some time since I deployed this one! The Wheel of Death! Let the grinding commence!" With that, the rod began spinning of its own accord. A horrible noise rang out as the two slabs started spinning in opposite directions. First, a screaming sound resonated from the chandelier as it creaked and shattered. Then the babies started getting whittled down as well. When their skin split, though, it came apart more like stone being shaved down than like meat being ground up. None of them screamed. They merely let out fretful little whines. Countless tiny hands scrabbled between the two slabs. The way the babies' gray arms were writhing, they looked like caterpillars about to be smushed. One of their heads popped off. It rolled between the slabs, only coming to a stop when it bumped into another head. A disturbingly viscous mixture of flesh and blood oozed onto the ground. Slowly but surely, the babies' heads were being flattened. Their eyeballs made popping sounds as they flew out of their sockets. If it wasn't so grisly, it would've almost been funny. But then all of a sudden, the scene reached its end. When the pressure surpassed the babies' ability to endure it, they exploded into darkness and azure flower petals. The two stone slabs thumped as they finished grinding together. Only silence remained. "Hmm, as abrupt as it was dull. 'Twould seem their mental faculties were low indeed." Elisabeth nodded, then snapped her fingers. When she did, the Wheel of Death transformed back into flower petals. Crimson, azure, and black all scattered around the room. The brilliant bouquet of colors then whirled up and vanished, leaving a flattened hunk of metal lying on the floor as the only proof the grim scene had even taken place. Upon further inspection, it was the remains of the chandelier. It was an odd sight, yet a perfectly normal one. And with that, the babies were no more. "Good heavens... I'm glad to see you took them all out. I was on the verge of losing my tail there." Lute breathed a sigh of relief and perked his drooping ears up. However, they slumped right back down once he saw how mangled his tail had gotten. "Oof. I don't exactly know what those things were, but they resembled demon underlings, and I could tell they were no proper bunch. Now we can finally focus on escaping." "Precisely. We need to make haste, as though we were pursuing a white rabbit... Oh? La Christoph, I must say. Saint or not, your hair is in quite a sorry state. It's hardly befitting a man of your stature. Why, what kind of example do you think you're setting for your people in that state? With your permission, allow me to straighten it out for you." By then, La Christoph was back on his own two feet. Thanks to his rough treatment at the Torture Princess's hands, though, his hair was thoroughly disheveled. Aguina smiled in exasperation and circled behind him. Using his long claws in place of a comb, he began working the knots out. Apparently, he had an unexpectedly doting side to him. Lute looked warmly at them as he sheathed his long sword. Elisabeth's expression reflexively softened. But the moment it did, she was struck by a tremendous feeling of discomfort. Why was I about to smile? Elisabeth was perplexed. It was odd for the Torture Princess to be smiling in the first place. But there was also a bigger, more pressing problem. Alarm bells were going off in her mind that this was no situation to be smiling in. Elisabeth closed her eyes to try and get her thoughts in order. Suddenly, she imagined someone wrapping her in an embrace. A man's white-gloved fingers were creeping over her skin as though caressing her. Then her beautiful foster father brought his lips to her ear. "Whenever did you go so soft?" *** The voice was dripping with scorn. Vlad wasn't actually there, of course. He was still confined in the royal tomb's basement. In short, the voice was Elisabeth's own, mocking herself for her idiocy. She quickly flipped through her memories to try and track down the source of her unease. Eventually, an image of Alice drifted up through the darkness. The white ribbons on her hat swayed from side to side as she spoke her incomprehensible gibberish. "And then down, down, down. Alice fell down a very deep hole. Even though I wasn't chasing a White Rabbit. But at its end, I found Wonderland. See, it's simple, right?" "Alice, I've told you time and again. People from this world aren't familiar with your Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass stories." Afterward, Lewis had scolded her. And remembering that reminded Elisabeth of something. The reincarnated girl's stories, Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, were completely foreign to people from their world. And yet a certain someone had just said something that sounded awfully like a quote from one of them. "...'We need to make haste, as though we were pursuing a white rabbit.'" As Elisabeth murmured the words back to herself, she pictured the vast desert. The demi-human lands were home to golden sand, harsh winds, burning liquids, myriad minerals mass-produced in the Dragons' Graveyardâ€”and towering stone walls. But they certainly aren't home to any white rabbits. So then why was that the first analogy that had sprung to Aguina's mind? And now that she thought about it, that wasn't the only strange thing that had happened. Given the man's standard routine, it was perfectly plausible for him to have escaped the tragedy due to being abroad. But then...what of his claim, when he said, "As I hear it, the people in the temple have already been saved"? Maybe Jeanne and Izabella had made their way back to the World Tree, but given the time frame, there was no way Aguina could have possibly made it to the villa if he'd gone to their arrival site, confirmed that all the demi-humansâ€”including all the ones from the second sectorâ€”were all right, and only then recruited Lute on his mission. And besides, Jeanne had known she wouldn't have finished in time to help Elisabethâ€”that's why she'd told her she was on her own. How had Aguina known that the rescue mission in the temple was complete? How had he known that Elisabeth would be in the villa, rather than the main palace? Whom had he heard the phrase white rabbit from? But because of the dramatic entrance he'd made, nobody had thought to ask those questions. "Aguina... Aguina Elephabred!" Elisabeth called out his name, omitting the specifics of her concerns. The demi-human high official slowly raised his head. In that moment, Elisabeth realized a number of things. Or rather, she couldn't help but realize them. Aguina's thin-pupiled eyes had lost their usual sarcastic gleam. Instead, his golden gaze was as still as a lake shore. The look in his eyes was serious and tinged with a hint of sadness. Yet even so, it was curiously sharp. It was the gaze of a man pitying the world from on high. And it was the gaze of a man who knew he had sinned. Something black softly grazed Aguina's cheek. Long hair rustled by him as the man before him collapsed. Elisabeth's eyes went wide. However, she wasn't particularly surprised, nor was she particularly angry. For all the scene's cruelty, it made a certain kind of sense. For that was simply how he was. And thus, this was the natural result. As La Christoph crumpled to the floorâ€” â€”the gleaming, scale-handled dagger buried in his back came into view. "Huh?" At first, Lute merely let out a dumbfounded cry. Elisabeth and Aguina faced each other in silence. La Christoph lay facedown on the ground, unmoving. His partially open lips were faintly visible through his mane of black hair. He silently coughed up blood again and again, the thick red droplets falling feebly to the ground. Elisabeth took another look at the dagger in his back. The entire length of its blade was covered in purple liquid. She flipped through her memories of Ragnarok, then identified it. 'Twas when the three races faced off against the underlings surrounding the Diablo pillarâ€”they started the battle with a volley of poison arrows. And they hadn't just been any old poison arrows, either. The poison had come from the underlings themselves. The