the people's heads fell from their shoulders. "...Whâ€”?" Kaito was dumbstruck. As it stood in the middle of the shower of blood, there was no change in the saint's expression. It crossed its arms once more and then spread them out again. As the heads rolled, the noise of the instrument someone had been playing stopped as well. The young girl's head lay beside the fallen roast hare. The old woman's head slid from her wrinkled neck and then plopped down onto the ground. Elisabeth prepared to mercilessly click her heels a second time. Returning to his senses, Kaito grabbed her shoulder tight. "Elisabeth, cut it out! They're just ordinary people!" "Indeed, and when ordinary people find themselves invited to a demon's banquet, what do you think becomes of them?" "What are you talkingâ€”?" "Look at what they were eating. Look closely." Spurred on by Elisabeth's calm remark, Kaito ran his gaze across the round tables and then found himself at a loss for words. Even under the rancid downpour of blood, the banquet's guests were still gorging themselves. A plump man was shoving muffins into his mouth. He chewed on them with pleasure and then pressed down on his stomach after swallowing. "Rgh... Ah, ah... Gah, gah, arrrrrrrrrgh!" His eyes wide and blood and phlegm streaming from his nose, the man regurgitated a sickening substance. Red vomit poured down upon the food. Kaito had finally ascertained the true identity of the red sauce. "...'Tis their own dissolved organs." Without hesitation, Elisabeth voiced the conclusion he'd just reached. Racked with agony, the banquet's guests vomited up their own organs, which had been dissolved by the powerful poison in the food. However, unable to resist the addictive nature of the demon's feast, they continued gorging on the food along with their own ruined entrails. The banquet laid out before them was Hell masquerading as Heaven. "'Tis too late to treat any of them. The poison itself is incurable. Death is a mercy." Elisabeth made her declaration and then clicked her heels. The Saint of Beheadings obeyed the Torture Princess's cold command and swung its arms. The heads of all in attendance went flying. The spray of blood painted the ceiling a vivid shade of red. A number of heads rolled across the ground like fruits, and the headless corpses collapsed. Though Kaito desperately wanted to beg Elisabeth to stop, he restrained himself. As if in consideration for his feelings, Hina gently touched his arm. Elisabeth returned the saint to petals and then strode forth among the corpses. "Cease your dawdling. We need to seek out the Governor." "Yeah, I know. We gotta find himâ€”find him so we can kill him." His voice thick with rage, Kaito followed after Elisabeth. The banquet now over, none raised a voice to stop them. In order to kill the Governor, the three of them began making their rounds through the manor. It didn't take long for them to realize that although the Governor ranked low among the fourteen, his deeds were no less horrifying. The Hell he had created didn't end at the entrance hall but continued on throughout the manor. "This is messed up. I had no idea that it was gonna be this bad." After confirming the situation within, that was all Kaito could say. In the dining hall, people covered in the Governor's spices were eating one another, all of them on the verge of death. The kitchen featured a man afflicted by poison, dead after cutting open his own chest and slurping at his innards in search of food. Down in the dungeon, a young mother had committed suicide after leaving a note detailing how she'd eaten her own baby. A young girl was slumped over a couch, her organs shredded after she'd eaten pastries filled with nails. And the courtyard's pool was filled with the bodies of children who had drowned in a sea of cake and suffocated. As they made their way up the main stairs to the second floor, Elisabeth responded. "The Governor is looked down upon as the weakest of the demons, his power even less suited for combat than the Knight's. He takes his frustration out on humans and schemes to gather their pain in order to grow stronger... He's akin to a child who tries to grow taller by taking in nutrients." "That's all kinds of screwed up." "From the bottom of my heart, I agree with Master Kaito." Hearing Hina's words, Kaito nodded mutely. His rage had been so overwhelming that he'd achieved a strange calm. He searched for the Governor in absolute silence. But while every turn revealed a new victim, the most important young man was nowhere to be seen. After going out of his way to give the Torture Princess an invitation, the Governor had vanished. Where...where is he? Huh? As he walked across the second-story cloister surrounding the entrance hall, Kaito scrunched up his face. He smelled something rotten. The hallway was filled with the fragrance of food, but the difference in that stench was conspicuous. The rest of the rooms and hallways on the second floor had the sweet smell of pastries and the savory scent of meat to cover up the stink of the corpses. But the smell drifting from the corner room on the second floor alone refused to be covered up. Just before, Kaito and the others had confirmed where the smell was coming from as they made their rounds. There was a single room on the second floor blanketed in the stench of decaying flesh. Elisabeth had declared that it was most likely storing food designated for people with repulsive tastes. However, the room's existence tugged at Kaito's mind. His rage-enhanced mind selected freely from its available information, and the Butcher's words floated to the surface of his thoughts. "He had a peculiar smell about him. The smell of foul meat." "...The smell of foul meat." As he parroted the words, Kaito broke into a run. Not pausing to tell the others where he was going, he rounded one of the cloister's corners and made for a section of the floor, a room that wasn't connected to any other hallway. Like a faithful hound, Hina followed warily behind him. However, sensing that Kaito had thought of something, she said nothing. When he opened the door, a putrid stench poured out into the hallway. "Good God, this room!" Kaito stood in the entryway of a lavish bedroom. At its center, a massive heap of decaying meat was sinking into the canopy bed. The sheets were stained a dark red and had been hardened stiff by the rotting fat, and the soiled room showed no signs of life. The window shutters were closed tight. But Kaito squinted as he took in the room's odd atmosphere. Looking closer, he could see that the top of the mass of half-melted flesh was moving up and down. The lump of meat was breathing. Beneath its transparent surface, stagnant blood could be seen pumping through its veins. Kaito took a step back in horror. The mass of rotting meat...was alive. "Foul...meat... Which means that's..." "Master Kaito, what's gotten into you? What is this room?" "What do you think you're doing? This room had naught but rotting meat in it." Elisabeth had caught up with them. In response to their questions, Kaito shook his head. Pointing at the hideous mass of flesh in front of them, he answered in a low groan. "...That's the Governor." "What?" "That pile of rotting meatâ€”it's the Governor!" Elisabeth pushed Kaito aside as she dashed forward. As Hina ushered him farther back, Elisabeth stabbed the mass with her finger. Her black fingernail dug deep in the flesh. The mass quivered a little but offered no other reaction. Elisabeth pulled her finger free. As she fiddled with the dark blood dripping from the wound with her finger, Elisabeth spoke in a puzzled voice. "'Tis true; this thing certainly has demonic power running through it." "So it really is him?" "Indeed... But the question then becomes why? When he visited the castle just now, he appeared as a hale young man, taking on a human form as contractors to demons are wont to do. Only when they release their power do they reveal their true, hideous forms." "Is that what that mass of flesh is?" "Nay, it's precisely because that isn't the case that the situation is so odd... I've seen the Governor's true form before. 'Tis a gray titan. Hideous as it is, it's no mass of flesh... Is this the remains of the titan crushing in on itself? Its power is running wild... Perhaps the result of being unable to maintain its ego? What on earth happened here?" Elisabeth crossed her arms, deep in thought. Suddenly, the mass stirred. Something that had been stuck to its skin fell off the bit resembling the nape of its neck. While it was discolored from the putrefaction fluids, it was still recognizable as the scarlet shawl that had been wrapped around the nape of his neck. Beneath where the stained cloth had peeled off from, something silver glistened. A decorative needle modeled after a brain was stuck deep in the nape of the Governor's neck. "That needle..." As Elisabeth murmured, the heap of rotting flesh began loudly breaking apart. The noise it made was horrible, and as it crumbled, the rotting meatâ€”the Governorâ€”opened its eyes. He looked up at Elisabeth, his eyes like those of a dead fish, and then opened his huge mouth wide and let out a monstrous roar. As he did, his remaining teeth tumbled out. Elisabeth snapped her fingers. Iron stakes appeared and then whizzed through the air toward the Governor's open mouth. Beside them, something dark and red slipped out from within the mass of flesh. Hina, not letting her guard down for a moment, quickly brandished the ax end of her halberd. Then she spoke. "...What?" It was something nobody could have expected. It was the Governor's heart. Elisabeth's stakes were unerring in their aim, and they impaled the Governor and ripped through his back. As they did, Hina tried to cut the heart in two, but it ruptured on its own before she could. The dark red viscera pitifully disintegrated. Then the blood flowing from within it transformed into hundreds of arms. The arms dodged around Hina as they grabbed for Elisabeth. "Whâ€”?!" The arms lovingly embraced Elisabeth and squeezed her tight. The discolored poison blood sank into her pale skin. Runes, similar to the Church's shackles, carved their way into her flesh. Elisabeth, eyes wide, collapsed to the floor. Hina propped up her shoulder. "...Hah, hah..." "Lady Elisabeth! Hang in there!" "Elisabeth!" Kaito ran to her side. Meanwhile, the Governor, having lost his heart and been run through by stakes, wept uncontrollably as he breathed his last. The rotting meat stopped moving and then transformed into a large quantity of black feathers. He vomited up his own heart? Perplexed by the situation, Kaito knelt beside Elisabeth as Hina held her shoulder tighter. Elisabeth spoke in a quiet voice, her sullied skin trembling like that of a violated maiden. "Rgh... Ah... This...this...can't be..." Then they heard a rattling noise as the sound of chains rang out. "Sacrificeâ€”a spell that, in exchange for a demon's heart, can partially seal away demonic powers." Kaito went stiff and then spun around. But even before he could confirm who was there, deep inside he already knew. Something terrible was coming. A woman with the majesty of a king was ascending the stairs. She wore a crinoline dress that made luxurious use of scarlet fabric. Her skirt's front half was left intentionally bare, leaving the unrefined birdcage-like frame visible. Within, her seductive, unnaturally white legs were on display. A large group of collared underlings followed behind her, their straitjackets covering even their faces. Chains extended from their overly tight collars, all connecting to the rings the woman was