sinister shade of silver. It looked almost like a school of small fish swimming together in the shape of a monster. Then it kicked off against a wall and pulverized the bones affixed to the surface as it leaped high into the air. A figure began to emerge from behind the building, and Bandersnatch sank its fangs into it. There was a hard, crunching sound. The initial blow had been stopped by a metal armâ€”its foe was wearing silver armor. But the beast's face collapsed, and its fangs began whirling freely. One by one, it drove them into the armor's joints. A dull scream echoed through the air. Blood gushed forth and trickled onto the cobbled ground. As the armored figure reeled back, the lily crest on their chest came into view. Upon seeing their foe's attire, Kaito let out a puzzled cry. "...A paladin?" He'd never have expected his pursuers to make it this far. In fact, he was fairly shaken. But Jeanne shook her head and refuted what he was thinking. "The paladins aren't here in pursuit of you, mister. I'm their target." "You? Wait, the paladins know about you? They know about the second Torture Princess?" "Yes. Or rather, a small group of them do, a group operating directly under a faction within the Church's leadership. To be even more precise, it could be said I'm at fault for the Church nudging you toward this territory." "...What?" Kaito shouted in sheer astonishment. As far as he was aware, he'd come to the beastman lands of his own volition. Before their eyes, the paladin had fought through the pain to draw his sword and was trying to use its handle to extricate the metallic beast from his flesh. Bandersnatch separated from the paladin; either it had thought the resistance disagreeable or had merely determined the situation to be inefficient. As it landed, its whole body trembled. Then, letting out a howl, it began launching fangs from its front like bullets. The paladin clumsily swung his sword, but the act was wholly inadequate to repel the veritable buckshot coming his way. Fangs pierced into the gaps in his joints and helmet in rapid succession. Blood burst out, staining the ground a ghoulish shade of red. Unaffected by the spectacle, Jeanne spoke dispassionately. "Belated though it may be, allow me to clear up one of your misunderstandings. I was not the one responsible for the beastfolk massacres. I accumulated all the pain I needed here. Also, like hell I'd have killed them in such a gross way." "What?! Then what was up with that machine in the village?" "I sent that one out to test how strong you were, mister. It would have killed you if you'd failed, but it seems you narrowly passed. And damn, do I mean narrowly! You cut that crap hella close!" Kaito was taken aback. Apparently, losing to that machine would have meant his death either way. Continuing on unabashedly, Jeanne laid out new information about the massacres' perpetrators. "My pursuers must have figured out my intentions to get in contact with you after I set out from here. Because of that and the fact that they needed to gather pain, they invaded the beastfolk territories, committed the murders, provoked Vyade, and intentionally leaked the information about the battle against the Earl. In doing so, they lured you away from the human lands and, in turn, away from the prying eyes of the rest of the Church. Then they deduced I'd take you here to give you your explanation. If things had gone well for them, they would have been able to kill both of us without having to make any overt public moves. That was their scheme." "Wait, hold up. If you're right about all that...then that means not only are the masterminds humans, but they're from the Church, too?" Kaito's blood froze. Even if they were just members of a fringe cell within the Church, if Lute and Vyade found out who the perpetrators were, then war was inevitable. But Jeanne shook her head. "Whether or not the killers were human is a difficult distinction to make. You noticed it too, right, mister, that the atrocities in the villages wouldn't have been possible for humans to commit? You were correct. After all..." At that moment, Kaito realized something. The battle between the paladin and the beast was unfolding in an unexpected manner. The way the paladin was swinging his sword didn't match up with the severity of his wounds. Upon closer inspection, each and every one of the fangs wedged in the openings of the paladin's armor was being pushed out from within. Trails of blood followed them through the air as they clattered to the ground. "...the slaughterers had undergone transformations." Bandersnatch let out a wary cry. Then it lifted its silver head and howled. To put it in terms from Kaito's old world, the way it proceeded to shoot out its fangs was like machine-gun fire. The paladin took them head-on. But even with his eyes crushed and swathes of his skin riddled with fangs, he still held his sword aloft and hurled it with deadly accuracy. The blow rippled across the beast's body as the sword impaled it through the midsection. After taking the attack, the beast lay in pieces. But the scattered fangs quickly resumed their original formation, and Bandersnatch reassumed its stance. The paladin stood before it, having somehow completely stanched his bleeding. Upon closer inspection, his flesh had begun swelling peculiarly. A grotesque pink shade had stopped up his wounds and was bulging out of the openings in his armor. Humans didn't metamorphose like that. Seeing the repulsive spectacle, Kaito found himself at a loss for words. Is he even human? Given the paladin's state, it was difficult to say for certain. Bandersnatch and the paladin squared off against each other. Then came an ominous rattling noise. A number of other silver-armored men had made their appearances. But something about them was off. All of them, the one Bandersnatch had just shot included, were emitting low groans from beneath their helmets. Then suddenly, one member of the group looked Kaito's way. "Urr...grr...ahh...ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" The moan turned to a howl, and the paladin charged at him. As he did, Hina stepped in front of Kaito. In concert with the sharp maneuver, she brought her halberd crashing down. "Not one step closer to my beloved husband, you wretch!" The paladin she was facing off against swung his sword up from below. Each of their weapons carved a wide arc before crashing into the other. Sparks flew. As they did, the impossible occurred once more. *** Hina had swung her halberd down, and the paladin had swung his sword up. The two of them were vastly different when it came to reach and stance. But despite having every possible disadvantage working against him, the paladin had managed to stop Hina's blow. No normal human would have had the strength to pull such a feat off. Perplexed as he was, Kaito snapped his fingers as calmly as he could. "La (dance)." A blade came hurtling out of thin air and flew at the paladin's flank. But the strike, which Kaito had carefully calculated to avoid being fatal, was knocked out of flight by another silver knight. The new paladin had stopped the blade with strength alone. Before Kaito could manipulate it again, the paladin hurled it. The blade cleft deep into the surface of the road. Hina and the paladin she faced continued trying to push each other away. With the distance between them having grown, Hina stiffened her guard. Kaito bit down on his lip. He'd been holding back during his last attack, but still, no human should have been able to stop it with brawn alone. Or to put it another way, no human was meant to be able to. "What's up with these guys? They look like paladins, but are they abnormal or something?" "Allow me to ask you a question, mister. Are you positive you saw the Monarch die?" A surprising question came from Jeanne. As soon as she spoke, Bandersnatch leaped in front of the paladin who'd blocked Kaito's blade, casually taking over Kaito's fight. Kaito was on the verge of giving Jeanne an answer, but he stayed silent instead. He'd tortured the Monarch, then killed him. Kaito was certain he'd decapitated the wailing, agonizing demon. But there was something tugging at him, preventing him from giving an authoritative answer. Then recollection of a certain fact jolted through his brain like lightning. After they die, demons collapse and turn into a cloud of black feathers. Kaito hadn't properly seen the Monarch's death through to the end. "N-no. I cut off his head, but I didn't make sure he did the final transformation." "I fuckin' knew it, ya stupid piece of shit. You are quite the Fool! Even if they're beheaded by a guillotine, human beings can survive for several seconds. And demons can take even longer than that to die. Someone must have reattached his head and kept him alive. I caught a glimpse of some Church documents detailing how you tortured him in order to amass power, mister, but did you by any chance leave behind a magical formula of healing?" "Yeah...I did." Everything Jeanne had pointed out had been right on the mark. Kaito had been done with the formula, but he'd left it beneath the cage regardless. The Church reviled dark magic. He'd assumed they'd erase it by the following day, but Jeanne refuted that notion. "Reusing that formula would have been feasible. They could have erased the part that transferred pain but left the part that healed. In doing so, they could shave off as much meat from the Monarch as they wanted, completing their magical rite. Wouldja look at that? The Monarch became a handy piece of livestock! A fine, good-lookin' swine!" "Using a demon as livestock and harvesting their meat... You can't mean that they...!" "That's right, budâ€”they chowed down." Jeanne's reply was blunt. As she pointed toward the paladin Hina was fighting, the chains on her wrists rattled. "Those men were induced to consume the flesh." Kaito's gaze swung toward the paladins so fast that it was like he'd been slapped. Their faces were all covered by helmets. There was no way for him to tell if any one of them had been a member of Izabella's squad or someone else he knew. The only thing he could make out was that they clearly weren't sane. The eyes peering out from within their helmets were bloodshot and tinged with madness, and crimson foam was frothing around their mouths. Kaito recalled something Jeanne had just said. They needed to gather pain. "If one must consume the flesh of demons, there is an optimal portion size, and it takes several years before its roots finish spreading through people's bodies to the point of being bearable. But they each ate more than double that amount. In their current states, they're little more than weapons, seeking out the pain of others to alleviate their own. They ain't nothin' more than pawns to be used up and chucked aside." As a result, the paladins hadn't hesitated in carrying out those massacres. The strung-up corpses flashed across Kaito's mind. Just like he'd suspected, that had all been assembly-line work dispassionately carried out with the intention of causing pain. And just as Vlad had suggested, whoever was designating the sites of the murders must have been selecting them with their own personal amusement in mind. In one sense, that was definitely a demon's doing, but in another, it was a human's. "I had no idea this was howâ€”" "Feeling personal responsibility for this would be both illogical and pointless. You're a very kind person, mister. And even though you might be an incorrigible asshat, this turn of events was bound to occur regardless." Jeanne gave him a