that that make me love you so, young miss!" She shouted in ecstasy, her cheeks reddening. Her breath was heavy, as though she was trying to contain her excitement, and she squeezed on her supple breasts as she hugged herself. Elisabeth took a step back, her face visibly stiffening. Kaito, equally uncomfortable, felt a bead of cold sweat drip down his back. Marianne stood in front of them, her eyes burning. She was clearly not in her right mind. Marianne muttered gleefully, clutching her chest even tighter. "The sins you bear are beyond your ability to atone for, young miss. You will die unappreciated, unloved, cursed, and despised. I am the only one who can save you. I am the only one who would dare to try. But that is my duty, the one assigned to me the moment I failed to stop you. My mind is made up, young miss." Marianne licked her thick lips. Drool dribbled all the way down to her chin. "I will kill you with my own two hands!" "The Knight, eh...? You've picked up a rather strange talent. While I fail to understand his intention, that man doubtlessly instigated this. Just how much power did the Kaiser confer upon you?" Elisabeth had ignored her passionate confession, and Marianne simply smiled in response to the question Elisabeth posed. With a sound like a percussion instrument, the bones assembled themselves into a tower once more. A bonfire-like blue flame swirled up inside it. The scene resembled a bizarre ritual, and a new, grotesque Knight fell from the flames. The tower rose again and again, each time producing a copy of the Knight. In front of them, the tower created a row of smaller boxes. Out of each box leaped a meat-frog. Their countless soggy hands and feet slapped against the brick road, filling the area with venom and manure. At the forefront of this strange army stood Marianne, her arms spread wide as if in an embrace. "All for the sake of lâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹oâ€‹vâ€‹eâ€‹!â€‹" "You... You've gone mad." Marianne's shout dripped with affection, and as it echoed, Elisabeth spoke in a whisper, her voice strained as though she was enduring a headache. For whatever reason, Marianne's cheeks flushed even redder in embarrassment as she nodded. Hina held her halberd at the ready, her eyes trained on her foe. She didn't drop her guard as she spoke. "...I am deeply repulsed by her, and yet, I feel we share a certain affinity. I wonder why that is." "I'm begging you, Hinaâ€”don't follow in her footsteps." "Oh my, no! That's not what I meant at all, Master Kaito! While I can sympathize with the pain of seeing one's master go astray, and while I understand the strength of the emotions that cause her such madness, I would never dream of being so insolent as to kill my own master. Under such circumstances, it is all the more important for a servant to serve their master with unfettered devotion, to serve their master with every fiber of their being, and to serve their master even at the cost of their own life. For to love is to renounce one's self, and were it for Master Kaito's sake, I would gladly embrace death." "Hina, in front of you!" The army of meat-frogs all leaped at once. They paid no heed to the fact that they were crushing one another's tender decaying flesh as they charged for Kaito and Hina. Suddenly, Hina swayed and vanished. She appeared in front of the meat-frogs, waving her halberd. "How dare you..." The front-most meat-frog's chest burst with a splorch. Offal and venom rained down upon the meat-frogs behind it. Hina shot forward, almost dancing across the corpse as she did a half spin and swung her halberd. She eradicated every frog around her. She swung her halberd again to dash the venom from its blade, then brought it to a halt. "...lumps of flesh interfere..." Hina lowered her center of gravity, then broke into a fierce run. As she passed a Knight's horse, she drove her halberd into it, slashing it in two. Momentum sent the bottom half sailing into the distance, but it eventually toppled to the road. The top portion collapsed where it stood, and the Knight atop it glanced around anxiously. "...with my lovey-dovey conversation with Master Kaito!" Hina sent the horse's head flying. When the Knight fell over and landed with his head at her feet, she kicked it off into the distance. Hina's elegant steps resembled a dance as she returned to Kaito. She then twirled her halberd, sending chunks of flesh flying into the air. She retightened her grasp on the handle and smiled at Kaito. Her smile was angelic. "My apologies. To continue our conversation, were it for Master Kaito's sake, I would gladly embrace death. Rest assured: I won't let them lay a single finger on your precious body." "Th-thanks. That's a huge relief. N-now that I think about it, what's Elisabethâ€”?" Stuttering at Hina's intensity, Kaito surveyed the area. The mass-produced demons were charging at Elisabeth like ominous waves. However, she showed no signs of concern. To the contrary, she swung a spiked iron ball around freely, smashing the demons to bits. "What exactly are these, Marianne?" "One of the thirteen demons, one you already defeated. Alternatively, his underlings. Back when they were alive, I took a sample of their blood. Using that as an intermediary, I can summon a portion of their soul and duplicate it. This is the result of placing their twisted souls in temporary shells of meat." "This is no act of an amateur necromancer. Vlad is surely behind it." "Indeed. He has been a tremendous aid to me. I had to sacrifice many people to get this far. But it was all for you, young miss. What choice did I have? Those sacrifices were all necessary in order for a weak, ordinary woman like myself to go up against the Torture Princess." As Marianne spoke, Kaito saw the group of demons re-forming. Their base material was probably human flesh. While this town was full of bones, not a single scrap of flesh remained on any of the corpses. From where was Marianne getting all that meat? His stomach churned just thinking about the quantity of materials her technique must require. Marianne clasped her silk-gloved hands together, as if in prayer. "Ah, indeed. I had no choice; I had no choice; I had no choice no choice no choice! I was left with no other choice! In order to become like you, I had no choice but to bear the same sins!" Blue flames raced alongside her as though in concert with her rising voice. The flames billowed up, as if re-creating the fire that once filled the town, and from them poured an army of Knights. The Knights charged at Elisabeth. A crowd of new meat-frogs advanced on Kaito and Hina. "How dare you all show your ugly faces before Master Kaito!" Hina swung her halberd, taking into account the path the venom would spray before she struck. But when she did, the bones that had been lying around now rose up as a shield to block her attack. The bones scattered, but the meat-frog she'd been aiming at narrowly escaped harm. "Hina, are you okaâ€”?" "...Such insolence!" Hina roared, then drove the sole of her foot into the frog's snout. She pulverized its head, and its body scattered against the ground. The hem of Hina's maid outfit fluttered as she made her graceful landing. "I thank you for your concern, Master Kaito. What a kind man you are... But that was a trivial matter." When Kaito looked back at Elisabeth, her circumstances seemed much the same as before. A number of skeletons were clinging to her iron ball. Even as their bodies shattered, they clutched the spikes and dug their feet into the ground to impede the ball's momentum. Kaito finally realized it. Marianne was planning on using the countless corpses Elisabeth had left to turn this into a battle of resources. "Ah, can you feel it, young miss? The regrets running across your skin, the anguish boiling in your chest? You are on the verge of being killed by the very innocents you killed long ago. Can you feel it? Can you feel it pounding away at you, young miss, pounding away at your flesh and blood? Can you feel the rage, the hatred, and the sorrow of those you murdered?" Marianne clutched her abdomen as she cried out with the intensity of an opera singer. Lances were being pointed at Elisabeth from every direction. She snapped her fingers in irritation. "Do you understand, young miss? Do you understand that those you killed lived normal lives, lives they wanted to protect? You didn't have the right to kill a single one of them, young miss, not a single one!" She was clearly unstable. The ecstatic flush vanished from her cheeks. She gripped her chest even tighter, breathing hard, as if to demonstrate her pain as she shed sloppy tears. "Why, young miss? Why? Why did you do such a terrible thing? Why couldn't you understand how wrong it was?! Young miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiss?!" "...Did her heart split in two or something?" Kaito couldn't help but mumble to himself. Everything Marianne was doing and saying was contradictory. She was gleefully trying to kill Elisabeth out of love yet at the same time tearfully trying to compel her to regret her actions and repent. "Young miss, why is it, why is it that you can't understand...? I will I will stop you. Doing such a thing will, all the people will cry, I have to kill, young miss, I have to stop her, I have to..." Kaito finally realized: Marianne's spirit was unraveling. She was being crushed both by the horrible spectacle Elisabeth had forced her to witness long ago and by her own guilt for not having been able to stop it. "...I, my, I, my young miss, my fault, so..." What stood before Kaito, Elisabeth, and Hina was nothing more than the shell of a broken woman. Marianne let out a high-pitched laugh and covered her face. It almost sounded like a scream. The lilies gently swayed atop her hat. Although Elisabeth clicked her tongue, she also whispered softly. "...What a miserable state you're in, Marianne. I suppose I'm to blame for that." Suddenly, she stopped walking. Kaito watched her. Then a skeletal arm reached out and grabbed her. At once, it pulled her into the throng of the dead. The Torture Princess was buried in the bloodlust and the hate of those she had brutally killed. Loathsome Elisabeth, repulsive Elisabeth, cruel, hideous Elisabeth! A curse upon you, a curse upon you, a curse, a curse, an eternal curse upon you, Elisabeth! Kaito felt almost as though he, too, could hear the scathing cries of the dead. He shouted, refusing to lose to them. "Elisabeth! Quit screwing around and get your ass outta there!" "Lady Elisabeth, I'm coming!" Hina shouted, too, then broke into a run. But before she could reach it, the pile of bones began writhing and clattering, driving into Elisabeth's body the same pain they once suffered. Marianne raised her voice once more. "Do you understand? Have you come to understand, young miss? Young miss, my dear young miss!" "I've understood that...since the very..." A small voice leaked out of the pile. Hina, flustered, stopped in her tracks. As she did, the voice exploded out. *** In concert with the enraged voice, chains exploded forth. The chains clattered as they snaked from Elisabeth. They coiled and spun like a tornado, mowing down the dead with reckless abandon. Bones fractured, snapped, and crumbled. The maelstrom of chains then spread, blooming like an iron rose. They scraped the ground, struck debris, and smashed the bones to splinters. They thoroughly pulverized all the people she'd once tortured, the people she'd once