knocked her second meal off the table just the same as she had her first. Kaito could practically see the cat ears drooping atop her head. The Torture Princess was a peerless sinner, it was true, but she had a certain childish side to her as well. Eating delicious things filled her with an innocent joy, and tasting unpleasant food made her so dejected that it was almost pitiful. Kaito nodded sympathetically. It was a sorry sight. Elisabeth snapped her head up. "Answer me this nowâ€”why do you have a look on your face that suggests you're not the one to blame?!" "Miss Elisabeth, please put down the knife. If I lose too much blood, I really will die." Elisabeth growled menacingly. Kaito decided to make a break for it. His blood was full of the Torture Princess's mana, and losing too much of it would cause his soul to leak right out of his body. It was his one true weakness. Even if not for that, though, he still wanted to avoid angering Elisabeth any further. Otherwise, I'll end up on the Iron Chair! "Best to let sleeping dogs lie." Choosing to heed that idiom, which he'd heard back when he was alive, he headed to the kitchen to clean up the mess he'd made while cooking. Elisabeth had summoned Kaito because she needed someone to take care of her chores. In fact, that was the only reason she summoned him. When you got down to it, the story was actually kind of absurd. The thing was, Elisabeth herself hadn't had any intention of summoning someone from another world. She needed a servant so she could fully devote herself to her battles against the demons, but she also had conditions as to who they could be. If she accidentally ended up hiring someone evil, the Church might suspect her of trying to rise up against them. So to avoid drawing any unwarranted suspicion, Elisabeth made sure to summon someone who was "sinless." Because nothing Kaito did in life had warranted his brutal death, he fit that criterion. The fact that he got drawn from another world was purely a coincidence. Unfortunately, though, Kaito's domestic skills were downright nonexistent. His disastrous cooking hardly needed to be mentioned, and he wasn't particularly great at any other chores, either. He was in no way the right man for the job. As far as everything other than food was concerned, though, Elisabeth was actually pretty lenient. She never ordered him to do anything more complicated than "clean this room" or "wash what laundry needs washing." Kaito took full advantage of this fact, and most of the work he did was fairly sloppy. However, the one thing he did make sure to do every day without fail was clean Elisabeth's bedroom. He was lazy, but he wasn't an idiot. Even though it belonged to the castle's master, Elisabeth's bedroom was fairly plain. Kaito knew that touching any of her belongings was a dangerous proposition, but the cleaning itself was relatively painless. Each day, Kaito dusted the few pieces of furniture she kept, then changed her bedsheets so he could hand-wash and dry them. Then he would work around Elisabeth's afternoon catnap and look for a chance to carry her down mattress and pillow to a room with a balcony so he could air them out. He had no idea how people were actually supposed to clean those kinds of things, so he was basically just playing it by ear. Once he was done with all that, he would generally then get to work cleaning the hallways and other rooms. Sometimes, he would end up getting chased around by moving suits of armor and have to hide in the reservoir, where he would gaze in awe at the undines swimming about. That would usually last him until the evening. Then he would get to work preparing dinner, drawing Elisabeth's bath, and picking out wine for her to indulge herself in. Such was his routine, day in, day out. Today, though, he had a different plan. He headed to the rear garden. The reason for that was simpleâ€”the weeds were making a play to expand their territory. If he didn't act fast, they would overtake the garden in no time. However, he quickly began doubting that decision. "Whew... Man, first the oversleeping, and now it feels like I've been nodding off all day..." Kaito let out a big yawn as he wrenched the weeds from the ground. That area was often overcast, but the sun had decided to show its face that day. It was the kind of warm weather that made one's eyelids naturally droop. Plus, because of his nightmare, Kaito hadn't exactly gotten a good night's rest. It would probably be smarter to go back inside, where it was cooler. However, he had just started to make some decent progress on the weeds. "Still, how carefree does a guy have to be to nod off in...yaaaawn...the Torture Princess's castle?" Kaito began muttering to himself to try and stay awake. The sheer thought of doing something like that would be enough to make anyone from this world gape in horror. Ever since he died, though, Kaito had been having a difficult time registering emotions like fear or alarm. "Now that I think about it, I had to do a lot of messed-up stuff back in my old life. Moving around bodies that I wasn't sure were alive or not, selling drugs, spreading quicklime over rooms that were covered in blood... If it weren't for the demon battles, this life would probably actually be nicer than my last one. Sigh. Man, screw those demons." Kaito shook his head in annoyance and rose to his feet. With a large bundle of weeds tucked under his arm, he turned around. There, atop the ground that he'd just finished clearing, was a dead body. The moment he saw it, Kaito realized something. Huh, I guess I really did nod off. This was a dream. It had to be. The corpse in front of him couldn't possibly exist. Everything about it was just too damn strange. The body was definitely dead. Yet even so, it was moving. All its skin was brutally stretched out, and one of its sides was covered in thin strings. Now, the phrase all its skin wasn't totally accurate. The corpse was split in half down the middle, and the cross section had been torn to shreds. It was like it had been attached to something before being forcibly ripped off, like a caterpillar stuck to a roll of sticky tape. Its fluttering scraps of leftover skin swam hazily through the air, accompanied by a series of black strings. The corpse tilted its head and peered at Kaito from a strange angle. It looked like it was in constant agony, and tears dribbled from its bare, lidless eyes. Kaito couldn't help but let out a low gasp. But it wasn't out of fear. It was out of sympathy, and out of affection. Man...it hurts, doesn't it? An eternity of pain with no hope for salvation was a cruel thing to have to suffer through. It was a scary, scary fate. "C'mon now, don't cry." It was supposed to be a dream, but when Kaito let out his murmur, his voice had a strangely clear ring to it. He looked down at the ground. It was covered in red. Blood was gushing forth from the corpse without stopping. The viscous way it was spreading seemed oddly graphic for a dream, but Kaito couldn't quite put his finger on what felt so strange about it. He tilted his head to the side and took a step forward. "Don't worry, I'm coming." Something was off. However, he couldn't tell what. He approached the corpse with long strides. His gait was oddly brisk and nimble, to the point where even he could tell something was off. The corpse extended its one remaining arm toward him. He reached out for it in kind. The fingers of the dead and the fingers of the living were about to meet. The moment before they could, though, the ground exploded right in front of Kaito. "Whoa!" The force from the impact knocked him back, and the weeds he'd been carrying got scattered all around him. Right before his vision shot upward, he saw the body get impaled by stakes. However, no new blood came flowing from it. Instead, the grisly corpse merely vanished without a sound. Now that he was sprawled out on the ground, Kaito looked up at the clear blue sky. An idle thought drifted through his mind. See? I knew it was a dream. No demon attack would ever take such a pathetic form, and the only other way that such a strange event could take place was in a dream. Why was it, though, that he'd felt as if it were his duty to rush over to the corpse, touch it as quickly as possible, take its hand, share its pain, and assimilate it? Surely, there was no good reason for him to have been so bizarrely impatient. Wait, hold on a sec. What the hell was that about "assimilating" it? A chill ran down Kaito's spine. However, that emotion quickly grew dull and got replaced with a crushing wave of fatigue. A thought passed through his thoroughly confused mind. Well, no biggie, I guess... It was just a dream, after all... Now then, gotta figure out how I'm supposed to wake up. Suddenly, Kaito remembered an old wives' tale he'd once heard. Apparently, if you went to sleep in a dream, it would make you wake up in the real world. Kaito took a deep breath, then relaxed his arms and legs and slowly closed his eyes. The blue sky was overtaken by darkness. Then his vision cut out entirely. "Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!" "Hurgh!" An absurdly carefree voice rang through the air, and as it did, an intense blow struck Kaito straight in the chest. The shock from the blow immediately snapped him awake, and his limbs went stiff as he contorted in pain. He blinked, then realized that he was lying on the hard ground. There was a pile of uprooted weeds by him that was pricking him in the arms and legs. The clear blue sky above him filled his view. Kaito frowned. Where was he, and what was he doing there? He gingerly glanced at the spot where the strike had landed. Atop him was the exact person he'd expected. She was looking down at him with a catlike beauty, and her arm was buried in Kaito's gut. It was a brilliantly executed elbow strike. "You know, I figured you'd go for another leg attack, but it's the arm this time, huh?" "Hmhm, know now that I am a master of every combat technique known toâ€” That's not important right now, Kaito! First you oversleep, then you see fit to take a siesta on top of that?!" "Huh, yeah, I guess I did." Elisabeth hopped to her feet, then crossed her arms as she shouted her accusation. Kaito hurriedly rose as well, and Elisabeth angrily arched her eyebrows as she went on. "And what's more, you didn't even take it in a proper bed. The garden, Kaito?! Just how sleepy were you?!" "Uhhh, yeah, you got me there." "In a more righteous world, you'd be in Thumbscrews this very moment! Go on then, weep in joy at my mercy and magnanimity!" "And which world's the one where that logic makes sense, exactly? ...Wait, huh? I was asleep, right?" Everything Elisabeth just pointed out should have been true. He himself remembered having been asleep. However, he tilted his head to the side. Something didn't add up. All of a sudden, he remembered how bizarre the entity he saw in his dream was. What was that thing? He glanced around the garden, but the bisected corpse was gone, and