have you failed to notice? Good and evilâ€”all the same? What a riot. Evil carries with it retribution. What you try to play off as the truth of the world is naught but your own arrogance." Elisabeth stared straight at the Grand King, her gaze filled with deep, frigid scorn. With her animosity as bare as a wolf's, the self-proclaimed sow carried on. "Don't use the past to justify yourself. All you're doing is taking a single convenient aspect of it and speaking as if it is a unilateral truth. You know, Grand King, I pity you. You can't bear to sit by and watch? Spare me your mercy. If you wish to torment me, then do so. If you wish to kill me, then do so. In any case, my death will be a cruel, solitary one. So be it. However, I've no intention of going down quietly. Should you cut off my head, I shall latch on with my teeth and rend you limb from limb." Her position was overwhelmingly disadvantageous, and Elisabeth's face contorted even further. With a smile the very picture of evil, she made one more declaration. "I look forward to it, Your Majesty the Grand King! Let's see just how far the face of a hag who forces others to praise her can twist!" "...Don't get all cocky at being shown a bit of kindness, little girl." The Grand King's mask ruthlessly peeled off. Her beautiful, composed, showy-but-merciful expression had vanished. As she turned toward Elisabeth, her sinister appearance truly befitted the demon she was. "I'll make a declaration, then. I won't let you die peacefullyâ€”I will ravish you, violate you, rip out your intestines while you yet live, put them back, and grant you all the pains this world has to offer until you desperately beg and plead to me, cursing your own existence." "Splendid, what a fitting end for a torturer! But as you have your fun, the world will no doubt strike back at you...and I would have it no other way, Grand King. Here in my castle, I shall wait for my death and for your blood to be spilled." "You bark well! I hope you won't regret this, Elisabeth Le Fanu." The Grand King snapped her fingers, and the light faded from the mirror's surface. As it did, the Marquis pitched forward. His whole body trembled and convulsed as he groveled on his hands and knees. However, he suddenly placed his hands on the ground and then leaped high into the air like a grasshopper. Worried that he was planning to vomit out his heart, Kaito and Hina put up their guards. However, the Marquis successfully landed on his feet, gave a deep bow, and began awkwardly walking toward the window. Hina aimed her halberd at his back but then lowered it. Kaito nodded, agreeing that she'd made the right decision. The Marquis has the power to control minds. Honestly, I'm not sure if he can use it while the Grand King is controlling him, but...we shouldn't carelessly attack him. The Marquis scrambled over the window's frame and then vanished from sight as though he'd fallen. At the same time, Elisabeth collapsed to one knee atop the bed, her power spent. Kaito and Hina gasped. The first one to react had been the Butcher. He'd leaped out from the shelves that he'd hidden himself in to support Elisabeth. He shouted as he held her shoulders in his scaly arms. "Madam Elisabeth, please snap out of it! Look, it's me, the Butcher! Your friendly neighborhood Butcher has you! Come now, Mr. Dim-Witted Servant, Ms. Lovely Maid, make haste!" "I'm coming! Elisabeth, are you okay?!" "Lady Elisabeth, please don't push yourself! You must lie down!" "My apologies. I've caused you all trouble... These runes truly are an annoyance." Elisabeth laid down on the bed, and Hina pulled a blanket over her. As her head sank into her pillow, Elisabeth gazed at her two servants. Her face lit up a tiny bit. For an instant, her eyes softened with the distinct shape of a smile. She then let out a small breath. She spoke softly, almost as if she were an aged king discharging an important adviser. "The situation is as you heard. Over a thousand foes now make for the castle. I intend to fight, but I've no wish to get you lot mixed up in it. If you wish to flee, then do so. I've lived the solitary life of a wolf, and I shall die the pathetic death of a sow. All on my own. There's no need for you all to come with meâ€”you may help yourself to whatever riches you please as you go." "What're you talking about, Elisabeth?! That's nonsense!" "I concur. Think about what you're saying, Lady Elisabeth!" "Hina, you've served me well. I shan't forget your delicious cooking, nor how devoutly you nursed me... From here on out, live as you wish, with as much energy as your heart desires. I wish nothing but happiness upon you... And as for youâ€”" Elisabeth then looked up at Kaito. She snorted and then spoke quietly but firmly. "You fool... You utter imbecile..." "Geez, Elisabeth, even now, of all times?" "You had the fortune of obtaining a second life... Just stop already. It's...fine." Kaito swallowed. A gentle smile spread across Elisabeth's face before him. "You've done enough." For a moment, Elisabeth reached out. Right as her elegant fingertips were about to touch the wound Kaito had inflicted on his palm, though, she stopped and tightly grasped her own hand. Gazing at Kaito and Hina both, she continued speaking in a distant, hazy voice. "Don't let yourselves be chained down by anything... Serve only...yourselves... 'Tis...for the best. I..." Her eyelids slowly drooped. Kaito and Hinaâ€”Kaito in particularâ€”swallowed down the words that were leaping into their mouths. Elisabeth, as if in a dream, continued speaking, her eyes hollow. "I killed, I killed... And I continue to kill... My father, the...demons..." Then she gently fell asleep. Even assailed by pain and extreme fatigue, she had rejected the Grand King's invitation. She fell back into a comatose state. As he looked at her sleeping face, Kaito ground his teeth so hard they could have cracked. He desperately fought against himself to avoid letting out the anger bubbling in his chest. What do you mean, there's no need for me to come with you?! What do you mean, I've done enough?! We've still got plenty of time left together, right? I told you that, didn't I?! "And hey, you bringing me back to life and summoning me here must have been some kind of fate... So until you start walking the road to Hell, I'll try and stick by your side for as long as I can, even if I'm the only one." Kaito had once said that to Elisabeth. Elisabeth would die alone. Not even a demon would be by her side then. But perhaps it wouldn't be so bad for one human to stay by her side until that time came. Throughout Elisabeth Le Fanu's bloody life, she was accompanied by a single foolish servant. Kaito had thought that sounded just fine. And there was one other important truth that he recalled. The Torture Princess had taken pleasure in killing and slaughtering her people. Perhaps her heinous deeds, committed without fear of God, were all for the sake of extending her own life. Or perhaps they were for the sake of defeating her "father," whose power and allies had grown well past the point where any normal person could stand against him. Her motives would remain a mystery. She hadn't once said. "Mr. Dim-Witted Servant...are you all right? That's quite the face you're making." "...Master Kaito, pardon me, butâ€”" Hina and the Butcher cautiously called out to Kaito. However, he wasn't listening. He clenched his fists and then took off in a dash. "Mr. Servant!" "Master Kaito!" Kaito left the two of them and Elisabeth behind as he ran off and pulled open the door. He raced down the deserted hallway. His breath was ragged, and his eyes were burning with passion and fixated on the end of the passage before him. He felt that something was wrong. He didn't know what it was, but he knew that there was something off about the whole situation. The gray sky peeked in through the hole in the throne room's wall. It was overcast again. The thick clouds looked like the belly of a whale as they sat above the trees. Buffeted by the damp wind and dim light, Kaito stood in the center of the room's stone floor and held a knife over one of his hands. He spread out his palm, which he'd split open slightly during the Marquis's raid. After giving a short nod, he deliberately plunged his knife into the cut. The knife buried itself in his flesh with a horrible squelch. After cutting to the depth he needed, he held the knife directly over the floor. His overflowing blood fell in a line on the stone. Using his blood as ink, Kaito drew a rectangular symbol. "â€”La (open)." At his command, the blood loudly transformed into crimson flames. The fire burned fiercely atop the stone floor and then vanished without a trace. A black door appeared in its wake. Kaito didn't touch it, yet it opened on its own from within like clockwork. A dimly lit space spread out inside it. It was the entrance to Elisabeth's Treasury. "Oh, good, that worked. Go me." Kaito breathed a sigh of relief. He'd seen before how Elisabeth opened the Treasury. However, that alone wouldn't have been enough to let him unlock it. In spite of that, though, he'd spontaneously trusted his intuition and managed to open it up. Elisabeth had said that "all it takes to become able to use magic is a small trigger." Until then, whenever he'd been on the verge of death, his soul had resonated with the powerful mana in her blood and played back her memories. Now that he was able to call forth the mana in her blood that flowed within his body, perhaps some information had spontaneously passed through it as well. Kaito took a step inside the Treasury. Rectangular steps floated in the gloom at fixed intervals, forming a gentle spiral. When he peered down from the edge, nothing but the steps were visible. A tepid wind simply blew upward. Kaito nodded once and then leaped down onto the second step. "Here we go." The stairs had no handrails, but Kaito took wide, unfaltering strides down them. After a short while, rubbish and torture devices began coming into view around him. "...Somewhere around here maybe?" Kaito stopped and then began looking for something. The thing that he was looking for was something that didn't get used incessantly but not too infrequently, either. Elisabeth had probably tossed it in the Treasury's upper levels. Eventually, Kaito spotted his target at the feet of a bloody, rusty Iron Maiden. It was an orb made of thin paper, a magical device that the Church had used to contact Elisabeth when they were ordering her to carry out the Kaiser's subjugation. "There we go. Now, as for turning it on... Although even if I can, there's no guarantee it'll connect..." Kaito nervously set it atop his bloodstained palm. Blood soaked into it, turning the paper crimson. However, it suddenly made a noise and then returned to its original shade of white. The blood had vanished, pigment and all. The orb then began emitting a pale-blue light, as though it had used the vanished blood as a power source. It then floated in the air, shining as it began rotating. Eventually, a figure appeared on the orb's surface. Having won the first of his gambles, Kaito clenched his fist. The transmission had connected with someone. The next problem was where and who it was connected to. Kaito