perverse, and that means a lot coming from me." "...Huh." "A sea of knives and needles, eh...? 'Tis a veritable cage of pain, impossible to ever escape from." Elisabeth narrowed her gaze. The scene bore a disturbing resemblance to the atrocity the Torture Princess once put her fiefdom through. Her subjects' desperate pleas for the release of death had been music to her ears, and she'd savored them while sipping on the finest of wines. Elisabeth went silent as her mind turned back to that night of madness. Kaito didn't say anything, either. For a time, it was silent atop the tapir's back. Suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all, Elisabeth arched her back and stretched her arms all the way up. After bringing them back down, she exhaled. "To be frank, though, it doesn't matter to me in the slightest." "Don't you think that's a little too honest?" "Ha. You think your trauma is special? What you fear, what you find unpleasant, what weight you bear...I've no intention of asking the details, nor would they hold my interest if I did." "That's...fair, I guess." "That said, I do aim to obliterate this place now." "...Say what?" Kaito's reply was completely dumbfounded, a fact that Elisabeth found insulting. How utterly insolent. In a more righteous world, he wouldn't just be tortured for that; he'd be straight-up executed. Setting aside that this was how the magic device worked, the situation as a whole made their sole option abundantly clear. They had to break the cage. They had to kill the monster. For that was providence, as well as the merciful thing to do. "When you put someone in the device, it reproduces the symbolic cause of their nightmares. However, that alone is but the first step. The way it ends the nightmares is by having a third party destroy the reproduction, thereby freeing the subject's mind. A violent configuration, to be sure." "I feel like that doesn't make any sense at all. Is this really gonna make the nightmares stop?" "Oh, there's certainly no guarantee of that! Most of the developers of large-scale magic devices such as this end up going mad!" "I'm starting to sense a trend with these unfounded statements you keep making." "That said, ridiculous as the ideas behind it may be, 'twas well worth testing it out. We've not had any battles as of late, and I could feel my body growing duller by the day... Plus, I just went through a rather unpleasant experience." Elisabeth let out a biting murmur and cracked her knuckles. Now that she thought about it, this had been quite a day. Starting with Kaito's failure to wake up on time, one unpleasant event had occurred after another. To be quite frank, Elisabeth was a little fed up with it. It was high time she put an end to it all. "Bakuuuu," the tapir cried. It could clearly sense her violent intentions. However, Elisabeth ignored it. To the contrary, in fact, she treated its cry as a signal to let the destruction commence. She reached out into empty space, and a vortex of darkness and crimson flower petals formed around her pale hand. Then she drew a long sword from within. "Executioner's Sword of Frankenthal!" The unsettling epitaph inscribed on the sword's elegant blade flashed. Anyone who saw it would have the meaning of its phrase driven straight into their brain. Elisabeth swung the sword down like she was signaling an execution to take place. "Witches' Dance!" Its blade sliced through the empty air. As it did, the silver landscape began to change. The air shimmered with heat, and the ground, which had taken the wave of her magic head on, transformed into a vast sheet of burning metal. If anyone had been standing on it, the heat would have forced them to hop around like a madman. However, visible beings weren't the only ones who could feel its effects. Even now, there was a lone monster writhing atop the scorching plane. Elisabeth narrowed her crimson eyes. It hurts, doesn't it? Good! Savor the taste of my torture and, with it, remember. The pain of being burned was different from the pain of being torn apart. Once the monster experienced that new kind of pain, doubt would surely rise up in its mind. He was already dead. Why, then, should he have to experience yet another type of pain? And when that happened, that intense confusion should temporarily revive the monster's humanity. The metal plane's temperature rose mercilessly, growing higher and higher by the moment. Its silver flowers drooped and sagged as they melted. The intense heat was permeating every inch of this bounded world. And Kaito and Elisabeth were no exception. The tapir only barely managed to ascend in time. It flailed its stubby arms and legs about to protest the heat. Kaito had to cling tight to its round back to avoid being thrown off. He let out a panicked shout. "H-hey, Elisabeth! At this rate, you're gonna end up burning us to death, too!" "Hmm. That is a problem, isn't it? To be quite frank, I never actually considered that possibility." "Why wasn't that the first thing you thought of?!" Kaito's cry echoed with concern and indignation, but Elisabeth didn't pay it the slightest heed. She was listening to a different howl, one that was coming from the world itself. "No, no, no no no nonononono! It's hot, it hurts, help, someone save me!" The corpse's sanity had been locked in a stupor by its simple agony, but the new pain had revitalized it and brought it back to the forefront. And now that the corpse had its senses back, there was something Elisabeth needed to do. She parted her scarlet lips and, without a moment's hesitation, made her bold declaration. "Now, 'tis time to seal the deal." It was time for her to end all the nightmares. Destroying and killing were the sole talents the Torture Princess had to her name. As such, Elisabeth's role to was deliver a second violent death to the newly conscious soul. She swung her sword down without so much as a shred of mercy. Darkness and crimson flower petals surged forth, emitting a shock wave that got absorbed by the gaps between the ashen clouds. The sky creaked. Then the sound of glass shattering filled the air. That sound was the death knell of the world and monster alike. The world was broken, and death was the only fate that awaited any who were spread throughout it. The innocent villager had now met his second death. Elisabeth was certain of it. Shards of the sky cascaded down like shooting stars. Thousands of scraps of light rained down from overhead. And immediately thereafter, Elisabeth and Kaito got violently launched outside. "Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!" "Hurgh!" That marked the third attack Kaito's chest had suffered that day. It was getting to the point where Elisabeth felt she should start collecting a fee for services rendered. Kaito, on the other hand, seemed displeased with the wake-up calls. How utterly insolent. This time, though, Elisabeth decided to overlook his slight. Instead, she took a moment to seriously examine the broken ball. The damage was fairly severe. It had served its purpose just the way she'd hoped it would, but she had a bone to pick with its shabby construction. "What a flimsy piece of junk that turned out to be. For how dangerous a device it was, I'd have expected it to survive at least a single use." "I bet it would have if you didn't use it like a lunatic." Kaito gave her an exasperated reply. He wasn't just being insolent; now he was being downright rude. However, Elisabeth chose to overlook his irreverence once more, and the two of them shared a trivial little exchange. All the while, Elisabeth continued running her fingers over the device. The world of pain was broken. The monster was dead. However, it was unclear whether or not the device would ever be fit for use again. Well, I'm sure I'll fix it somehow or other, Elisabeth ultimately decided. She withdrew her hand and turned to Kaito. "And on another note, I take it your odd drowsiness is gone?" "Huh? Oh, actually, now that you mention it, yeah... I guess today's just been one weird experience after another." His answer was far vaguer than Elisabeth would have liked. She frowned. After being freed from the Knight's beast, the villager's soul had been left without a proper form. The only reason it had been able to materialize the way it had was because it had found such a choice piece of prey in Kaito. The sensation he felt once it started hunting him hadn't been drowsiness; it had been the sheer pressure of the monster's desire to drag him to his death. Elisabeth took another look around Kaito. The dark shadow was gone. It would appear that the monster really was dead. Or to be more precise, it was now properly aware that it was dead. As such, it had vanished off to wherever dead people normally went. If such a place even exists, mind you. The existence of the higher entities God and Diablo had been conclusively determined, but nobody had been able to prove where people's souls went when they died. That was why Elisabeth hadn't known if her choice would end up bringing salvation to the monster. The only things she had done were grant a dead man more pain and vanquish him as he screamed. 'Twould be arrogant to describe such an act as "sending it to its rest." The wicked Torture Princess had ended its existence. That was all. A dead man had vanished. Nothing more, nothing less. Elisabeth didn't regret her decision, nor was she ashamed of it. She gave a proud, haughty nod. "If so, then I daresay you have me to thank. If you wish to drop to your knees and express your reverent gratitude, I certainly shan't stop you." "Why? Just why?" Kaito shot her a resentful look. He truly was foolish, this foolish servant of hers. However, it was precisely that foolishness that made it such a bother to explain things to him when he directed baseless complaints her way. Elisabeth elected just to scoff. Then she suddenly remembered how famished she was. Meals were some of the highlights of her days. In fact, they were the only highlights. She crossed her arms. Then instead of complaining, she went on. "Now then, Kaito, 'tis almost dinnertime. Should my meal be late, I assume you've no objections to finding yourself atop the Ducking Stool." "Actually, I think I have an objection or two." Even after she threatened him like that, he was still probably going to present her with something utterly inedible. Even though she knew that, Elisabeth looked forward to her dinner nonetheless. Everything past here is nothing more than a digression. You could ignore it all, and not be the slightest bit worse off for it. The story started a good while back. Back when Elisabeth first installed the magic device designed to release people from nightmares. Why would she do such a thing? Every day, she would spend countless hours in idle slumber. She was the type that preferred to sleep au naturel. Never once had she tossed and turned due to nightmares, never once had she gotten insufficient sleep, and never once had her rest interfered with her daytime activities. However, the Torture Princess dreamed. And it was rather unpleasant, having a nightmare and being unable to wake up despite knowing it was a dream. In a world that she was unable to wake from of her own volition, she was bombarded with constant shouts. 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! Countless voices echoed out with scorn and maledictions.