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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0001.txt
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Torture Princess
1
Innocent Victims
Thanks to the efforts of the Torture Princess and her servant, the fourteen demons were successfully defeated and slain.
Humanity’s desperate fight had finally reached its conclusion. But the battle left the world acutely wounded, like a chessboard with cracks running down its surface.
The Capital, in particular, had been scarred and defiled. And that had brought forth a new problem.
The upper echelons of the Church, a number of their fanatics, and some of those who wished to escape the burden of having to restore the Capital sought to awaken the first demon, expand the destruction, and in doing so urge God to rebuild the world.
They believed that when the world was mended, the pious faithful would remain. But that line of thinking was naive in the extreme and shallower than the dreams of a child.
God created the world, and Diablo destroyed it. That was the extent of their existences.
Rebuilding was nothing more than the act of blotting out the current portrait, then painting a new one on top of it.
Other than the one holding the paintbrush, everyone would die. That was the answer awaiting them.
Also, in the underbelly of the world, there existed those who had worked to bring those events about, and there existed those who had worked to prevent it. The Butcher was the former, and he had sold Vlad demon flesh in order to bring calamity down on the world. The fourteen demons were destroyed, but the damage they left was more than sufficient to push people into desiring the world’s restructuring.
The flower of malice was blooming proud and vibrant.
The latter, those who worked to prevent it, were a group of alchemists, and they sacrificed their entire clan to bring forth a new Torture Princess. She was a maiden of salvation, a self-proclaimed oppressor of slaves, savior of the world, saint, and whore.
Jeanne de Rais.
On her guidance, Kaito and the others were currently deep in the sealed-away bowels of the Capital’s underground tomb.
The room they were in was modeled after a nursery. At first glance, it looked to be cutely adorned. But the decorations’ true nature was that of grotesque agony. Living human heads were embedded in the walls in place of a floral wallpaper, and intestines dangled from torn stomachs on the ceiling in place of ribbons.
And in the room’s center sat a cradle. It seemed almost cruel how pure a shade of white it was.
The cradle was rocking, as though to soothe the first demon slumbering within.
As she stood before that overwhelmingly powerful, wicked entity, Jeanne made her haughty proclamation.
“Now, dear Lovers, you understand the truth, and the gravity of the situation. Kaito Sena. Elisabeth Le Fanu. I know that the two of you are destined to fight each other to the death. But now you must throw that all away and serve me as faithful slaves.”
She turned her rosy gaze directly on the two of them.
And when she did, Jeanne de Rais, the artificial Torture Princess, went on as though it were only natural.
“At this rate, our world will be destroyed, and not so much as a trace will remain.”
Her words rang out through the chamber like a final verdict.
“…Hmph.”
“…Hmm.”
Upon hearing what Jeanne had to say, both Kaito and Elisabeth abruptly crossed their arms. Then they closed their eyes, as if to scrutinize her order-like request. Elisabeth’s beautiful face hardened, her expression serious, and Kaito’s youthful face did the same. A few seconds passed. Then the two of them opened their eyes in unison.
Neither of them had consulted the other. Without exchanging so much as a glance, they gave their replies.
Not even a breath separated their overlapping refusals.
Jeanne blinked repeatedly. Her head slumped as it tilted to the side.
“You made your decisions rather promptly, didn’t you, Lovers? Moreover, your answers themselves were outside my expectations. And ‘surprising’ hardly begins to describe the speed with which you responded. Please state your reasons.”
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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0002.txt
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Torture Princess
“First, ’tis wholly unclear what actions you intend to take hereon in search of this salvation of yours or what have you.”
Elisabeth raised her forefinger.
The black varnish on her nail glittered as she spun it aimlessly around in the air.
“Even if you tell me to become your servant, I have no intention of agreeing while unable to verify the validity of your plans and directions. And even prior to that, another problem arises. Do I look to you to be a laudable enough woman to labor like a slave under the direction of another?”
“Yeah, nope, not seeing it.”
Elisabeth pointed at herself, her face fiendish and cruel. Behind her, Kaito nodded earnestly.
The two of them then traded an inane exchange. “I have no desire to hear that from you. I shall kill you for that later.” “Wait, why?!” Seeing them on their normal behavior despite the time and place, Jeanne tilted her head to the other side.
“I see. That seems logical enough. Even the last section felt oddly persuasive. And your other reasons?”
“Second, you clearly have intentions of dragging us into some battle for the sake of salvation, do you not? And with no regard for our thoughts on the matter, at that. Why, then, should we content ourselves with being your servants? I see little benefit. We have little proof that your true motives are worthy of such faith.”
“I see, I see. And what else?”
“Third, Kaito, you tell her.”
Elisabeth turned to Kaito and gave a sharp gesture with her chin. The two of them still hadn’t consulted with each other. But in spite of that, he took over her speech with utmost ease.
“Thing is, we just don’t like you that much. That’s all.”
“I see. Illogical in the extreme.”
Jeanne bobbed her head up and down. But that was the extent of her reaction. She didn’t seem satisfied, but she didn’t seem dejected, either. She simply began spinning around on the spot, her left foot acting as her axle.
The chains dangling from her thin wrists like a prisoner’s jingled.
“Then I can assume that you have no intention of becoming my servants, but you plan on maintaining our collaborative relationship? After tellin’ you chucklefucks so many of the world’s secrets, having to be enemies with you meatheads sounds like a bad time! As you can see, I’m just a sweet little girl, after all!”
“The way you manage to offend is nothing short of superb, and your manner of speech is as disjointed as always. But I have no complaints with your conclusion. My servant’s foolishness and goody-goody nature know no limits, so I’m all but certain he’d have gotten himself involved regardless, of course. But I am not he. Normally, I’d have lost interest altogether the moment you mentioned salvation.”
“Oh, do you intend on seceding, then? I’d like to see you try, bitch!”
“Nay, I shall lend you my strength. And rejoice, for I intend to give it my utmost.”
A cruel smile accompanied Elisabeth’s declaration. Kaito nodded, his expression devoid of surprise. Even though she’d been the one to ask for help, though, Jeanne plopped her head to the other side again in puzzlement.
“For what reason?”
“I slew the fourteen demons. I put them down, each and every one. I destroyed them.”
Suddenly, Elisabeth’s tone grew cold and levelheaded. Her crimson eyes narrowed.
Sharp bloodlust danced atop her tongue as the words slipped from her mouth.
“But for that to be the mere opening act to the world being rebuilt? What an insipid farce. The ones who would laugh at the corpses I’ve left in my wake and accuse them of having died in vain shall perish by my hand. I shall kill them all. And in a manner befitting the name of Torture Princess, no less.”
Elisabeth gave a grand laugh. Her smile was beautiful, twisted, and evil.
Seeming half-likely to lick her lips, she gave voice to her blasphemous proclamation.
“Even if they are the Saint, even if they are Diablo, and even if they are God.”
“Bravo. I would expect no less from you. I would expect no less from the first Torture Princess, the woman who willingly gave herself to sin.”
Jeanne loudly clapped, the chains on her wrists jingling like a tambourine. Then, placing an open palm over her chest, she gave an elegant bow. With a great display of pride, Jeanne endorsed Elisabeth’s statement.
“Indeed, precisely. It would not do for us to be anything but haughty and proud. For without our human deeds surpassing those of God and Diablo, how could we possibly hope to bring about salvation?”
“Hmm,” pondered Kaito. On a basic level, Jeanne displayed the same arrogant disposition no matter who she was dealing with. But with Elisabeth, her reactions seemed to be of a slightly more positive bent.
The plan to create a Torture Princess must have started way long ago. But back then, they probably hadn’t arrived at the name “Torture Princess” yet. And it’s probably not just her speech—she likely used Elisabeth as a point of reference for her actions, too.
Perhaps Jeanne held a degree of respect toward the woman she’d used as a template. Elisabeth, though, seemed like she couldn’t care less about Jeanne’s admiration. She gave a small shrug.
As she did, Izabella interrupted their conversation.
“I apologize for the intrusion, but isn’t it rather dangerous to be making such an uproar down here? If you’ll forgive me, you’ve all been rather loud the last few minutes… What do you intend to do if that thing wakes up?”
At the moment, Izabella was being carried by Deus Ex Machina, the living, four-in-one weapon Jeanne had summoned as a servant. Sitting in its metal arms, she was looking at the cradle with a pallid expression on her face. Her eyes were filled with primal terror.
Kaito and Elisabeth turned their gazes toward the first demon as well. It was still deep in slumber.
But if it’s asleep, that means it’s eventually gonna wake up.
As a matter of fact, the group scheming to have the world rebuilt was actively hoping for that thing to awaken. But just as unease began welling up within Kaito, a voice suddenly called out from beside him to refute it.
“Put your mind at ease. You needn’t worry about that, I daresay.”
Kaito turned to look at the voice’s owner. A man wearing an aristocratic coat with a cravat was floating beside him, his legs crossed elegantly in the air. The man was Vlad Le Fanu, the Kaiser’s previous contractor and Elisabeth’s foster father—or, to be more precise, a replica of his soul. The smile that spread across his face bordered on beautiful.
“After all, its contract with its master yet stands.”
Vlad was a mere phantasm, and as such, the forces of gravity held no sway over him. He floated gently through the air on his way to his destination, which was, of all places, directly above Diablo’s cradle. Izabella quietly called out, trying to get him to stop.
“Wait, stop, stop, that’s dangerous. You shouldn’t get any closer than that.”
“Good heavens, to think that the Holy Knights’ commander would be such a coward. Timidity and virginity go hand in hand, I suppose, which lends your reaction a certain charm to it.”
“I’m gonna need you to dial it way back, man. That was a pretty blatant HR violation there.”
“What exactly might an ‘ay-char’ be, my dear successor? I’m afraid that we of this world aren’t familiar with that word.”
Vlad calmly threw Kaito’s cold rebuke aside. Then he turned back to the entity before himself and peered at it, an act that would have been enough to drive any normal human mad. As he placed his hand on the side of the cradle, he let out a seductive whisper.
“Upon manifestation, higher-ranked demons use their summoners as references and obtain from them language and ego. And upon gaining ego, many, like our friendly Kaiser here, go against the wishes of their inexperienced masters. This thing’s summoner, though, was first-rate. The Church built it this devious little room, but even with the pacification from the room’s pain, it wouldn’t awaken. The order it received was so effective, it borders on a curse, you see.”
Kaito responded to Vlad’s words with shock. Then, still dumbfounded, he turned to survey the room.
The people embedded in the walls were screaming in agony. But their vocal cords had been taken from them, and their howls were silent. The only things coming from their faces were tears and saliva. And the people hanging from the ceiling with rent stomachs were the same. The entire room was perpetually filled with the pain of the living, designed to pacify the demon within.
But according to Vlad, all of it was meaningless.
“Wait, the Church went out of their way to build this torture chamber…and it turns out they didn’t even need to?”
“That they didn’t, my dear. Since time immemorial, it has been an occasional habit of the weak to fearfully give offerings to the strong despite neither party wishing it. It’s a tragic tale, truly, and I’m sure the unfortunate victims around us find it more appalling than any.”
Vlad chuckled, and Kaito clenched his fists. As they did, Diablo continued peacefully breathing. It looked like a satisfied child, one who had never so much as experienced sorrow.
Vlad drew his face close to the child’s, which was repulsive in a difficult-to-quantify way. This time, his laugh was tinged with irony.
“Heh, no matter how proficient its master’s order, seeing an entity with power enough to destroy the world merely sleeping like this after manifesting is wholly unprecedented. And I say that as someone who lives in that very world.”
“Nay, you were burned through and through till you were well and truly dead. I made quite certain of that.”
“Ah, right you are. Burned to death by my own beloved daughter, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Wait, no, I suppose that isn’t anything to laugh about. But, well, I exist in some capacity, in any case. And because of that, it would be rather bothersome if the world went and got itself destroyed. But at the same time, as a mage, leaving Diablo to its rest seems altogether a waste. At any rate, though, it won’t wake unless it receives a new order from its contractor.”
As she heard Vlad’s declaration, Hina narrowed her emerald eyes just a hair. As she stood beside Kaito, she laid her hands over the breast of her maid uniform and clasped them together tightly.
“Its contractor…”
Seeing her unease, Kaito drew himself closer to her. After exchanging a glance, the two of them nodded.
Jeanne had already told them who the contractor was.
The Suffering Saint revered by the Church.
She’s the one contracted to the first demon.
The long-sung legend of the world’s restructuring at the hand of the Saint had another, hidden side to it.
Before becoming known as the Saint, she’d formed a contract with the most powerful demon. While it’s unclear what her objective was, she was unable to maintain control and ended up destroying the world. In her regret, she summoned God, formed a contract with Him, and rebuilt the world. But she was unable to endure her two contracts, nor was she able to die, so instead, she fell into a deep slumber—and ever since, the truth had been perverted, leaving the focus solely on the fact that she’d carried God within her body as the savior who rebuilt the world. And because of that, she’d become worshipped as the “Suffering Saint.”
Part of the reason that the order she gave to the First Demon was so effective was probably because she used God’s power for it as well.
As that thought crossed his mind, a small question arose with it. The Saint was supposed to be the only one capable of waking up the first demon. That meant that the people plotting to set the world’s rebuilding in motion couldn’t wake it up, either. But if that was the case, then where was the woman who possessed that power resting?
An eternal slumber, huh?
Death and sleep were very different. And unlike Diablo, it was conceivable that any human would be able to wake up the Saint. If the Church got their hands on her, they’d be able to implore her to bring about the miracle of restructuring. That was something he and the others definitely needed to prevent.
But where in the world could she be?
“Hey, do we have any idea where the Saint might be? She isn’t dead, right? Because if she isn’t, then we gotta find her before the Church does.”
“You’ve asked an uncharacteristically pertinent question, mister. Allow me to answer it. We the Church, and for that matter all of humanity, have no idea where the Saint currently rests. And the Church has spared no effort in trying to locate her. But after all their investigations and expeditions, the only things they were able to locate were relics. And they were hunks of trash, the lot of ’em! And the other mages and believers looking for her found no more success than they.”
“Well…I guess that’s good news. That means that there’s no way to bring about the world’s restructuring. I mean, without the Saint, Diablo won’t wake up. And they can’t pray to God to start the rebuilding, either, right?”
Kaito felt a deep sense of relief. When he did, though, Jeanne’s eyes flashed as though she was looking at an incorrigible dunce. It was impressive, given that the rest of her face was as expressionless as always. Elisabeth heaved a heavy sigh.
Kaito tilted his head to the side, unsure of what had been so stupid about what he’d said. Even after running it all back through his mind, he couldn’t find any contradictions. Jeanne shrugged her bare shoulders derisively.
“You really are The Fool, aren’t you, mister? The Church desires the world’s restructuring due to their blind faith in the Saint. Despite knowing of the first demon’s existence, the reconstruction sect still believes the Saint to possess boundless mercy. Because of that, they believe that no matter how they go about destroying the world, the Saint will naturally appear amid the rubble and carry out the rebuilding. Diablo is but one method at their disposal. Of course, they would doubtless prefer to find her themselves and witness the miracle firsthand.”
“Wait, b-but are people even capable of such wide-scale destruction on their own?”
“With ease. And especially now that the Church can produce as much of the Monarch’s meat as they desire.”
Elisabeth responded matter-of-factly to Kaito’s doubts. Without a shred of hesitation, she put forth a cruel supposition.
“Let us say, as an example… All they’d have to do is cart a small army of transformed sinners to the border leading to the beastfolk and demi-human lands. War would break out, the forests would burn, and the earth would be shattered. And there’s no shortage of other methods one could conceive of. Just think back to your past life. You should be well acquainted with mankind’s capacity for tyranny, and the means of destruction at their disposal are legion.”
“The Church…the Church would never resort to such inhumane methods!”
Suddenly, Izabella cried out. Kaito and the others all looked at her. Kaito’s gaze was unconsciously tinged with pity. Her silver armor, what had once been proof of her status as a paladin, still shone. But she’d just defeated a monster created by a high priest called the Grave Keeper, and her armor now sported dark stains from its blood.
Ironically, her own body served as a rebuttal to her outcry. Even so, she continued her emotional appeal.
“I’ll concede that ever since the demon subjugation, a group within the Church has been acting suspiciously. Within the paladins, as well. And I’m well aware of how unusual this place is, along with the fact that they worked to conceal it. But the vast majority of the high priests are good, respectable people. Why are you all so unable to trust in their dignity and virtue? My paladins wouldn’t stand for the sorts of atrocities you speak of!”
The more she spoke, the more she affirmed the perversion lurking within the Church. Her voice was full of desperation, as though she was clinging to something. But Jeanne merely looked at her the way one would at a willful child.
“Would you mind being quiet, miss? It takes a thief to catch a thief, they say! Even if you and your friends get pissed off, it ain’t gonna change shit! Organizations are like centipedes. The body follows the head, even if it doesn’t quite know what it’s doing. And people would sooner discard their dignity and virtue than be left behind. To put it kindly, it’s proof of their loyalty. To put it less kindly, well, sometimes abandoning one’s judgment ends up working toward the greater good. This time, however, the head is beyond salvation. Shit’s rotten to the core.”
“B-but…”
“Godd Deos’s death was the turning point, no doubt. With nobody near the head to stop it from running wild, the situation can quickly turn for the worse, with little regard for the opinions of those involved.”
Izabella choked back her rebuttal. She was probably well aware of examples where organizations had undergone transformations without their members noticing. Still silent, she bit down on her lip.
Jeanne, on the other hand, went on. Her tone was that of an instructor.
“There exist shepherds who would gladly cast themselves into the fire just to catch a glimpse of a miracle. And most of their sheep will blindly follow after them. Only when the situation becomes irreparable will the people first cry out. How did things get to this point? they will say, one and all.”
Izabella offered no reply, instead choosing to remain completely silent. But she hadn’t given up—she was clearly thinking in earnest about something. Concerned about how deeply she seemed to be brooding, Kaito called out to her.
“Hey, Izabella—”
“Therefore, before the situation reaches the point of no return, we must locate and obtain the Saint.”
Jeanne, though, continued talking, paying no heed to Izabella’s mental anguish. Kaito went quiet for the time being.
At the moment, figuring out their next course of action was of utmost importance.
“If the situation degraded into a race war, reverting it would be nigh impossible, after all. It’d be like charging straight into Hell! Ain’t shit a group of our size could do about that!”
“But you have no information on the Saint’s whereabouts, either, aye? What do you intend to do about that?”
“True. But that’s not to say the information doesn’t exist.”
Jeanne offered an unexpected answer to Elisabeth’s question. Kaito frowned.
Who could possibly have information regarding the location of a woman who’d been missing since the very creation of the world?
“Her location may well be known to a single…or rather, perhaps it’s best not to try to count, but they do exist. I’ve spent some time investigating him. But upon learning the secrets of this underground tomb, I find my suspicions have finally turned to confidence.”
The chain on Jeanne’s wrist rattled as she raised an arm. Then she pointed at the wall they had broken the barrier on and passed through. It was currently functioning as a door and was resting ajar, and on its surface was an intricate carving of an apostle wearing tattered rags and standing alongside the Saint.
As he gazed at the apostle’s familiar figure, Kaito muttered meaningfully.
“…The Butcher, huh.”
“This, too, is a reason I sought the assistance of you two Lovers. He is the merchant of legend, one of the founders of the original Five Great Guilds, and known by all with even a passing involvement in trade. And he is also the Saint’s apostle, the Butcher. After working to build the foundations for the circulation of goods within society, he went into hiding for countless ages. But there have been sightings of him in recent years, all of which have been located around the two of you.”
Kaito instinctively cast his eyes downward. He still hadn’t gotten his emotions in order over this whole ordeal. Hina, standing beside him, was much the same. The Butcher had saved them a number of times, so it was difficult to think of him as an enemy. But according to Elisabeth, he’d declared himself the enemy of no one individually but of every person living in the world.
And he’d supposedly said something else as well.
“They are of little consequence to the result. I’d never thought someone would rise to oppose the dreadful end of the story that the fourteen tragedies mark the beginning of. And Mr. Dim-Witted Servant is the same. Though your two tales may be small in the scope of things, the results they bear may be monumental indeed… Who knows, after all, how the world may turn from here on?”
That doesn’t sound like something the “enemy of the world” would say, does it?
That thought stole through Kaito’s mind unbidden. The Butcher’s words didn’t sound like they’d come from someone who wanted the world to end. But he swallowed down the doubts welling up inside and asked a different question instead.
“Where is the Butcher right now?”
Elisabeth responded to his inquiry by crossing her arms. When she spoke, her voice had a mysteriously quiet ring to it.
“He’s inside a Gibbet within my castle.”
“You, uh, you did mention on the way down here that you’d captured him. But you didn’t just leave him like that, did you?”
“I did. What of it? I can hardly release a man who proclaims himself my enemy. ’Twould be folly.”
“I mean, I guess…”
Surely there are options other than just leaving him chained up, thought Kaito to himself. But the Butcher was notably elusive. Any lesser restraints would probably have ended with him just slipping out.
Finally satisfied, Kaito turned his gaze away from Elisabeth. It landed on the first demon.
It doesn’t matter if it wakes up or keeps sleeping, huh. But we can’t let them destroy the world, no matter what method they try to use… Wait, hold on a second.
If that was the case, then just finding the Saint wouldn’t be enough to stop the Church from running rampant, would it? Was Jeanne perhaps hoping to get the Saint to persuade the fanatics to stop? That plan seemed altogether dubious, so Kaito posed Jeanne a question.
“Hey, what’s your plan for after we find the Saint?”
“Duh, we’re gonna kill her ass.”
Kaito found himself at a loss for words, and his eyes went wide with shock. He hadn’t thought that their plan involved killing the Saint. Jeanne’s lips curled upward a smidgen. Then, in order to completely crush his naïveté, she elaborated.
“Why do you seem so surprised? If we kill its contractor, Diablo will be unable to stay manifested and vanish. And God, who yet dwells within her body, is no different. When that happens, the two of them will return to a state where mankind’s desires cannot possibly reach them. Furthermore, if we deliver her head to our foes, they, too, will understand. ‘The miracle is lost to us.’ ‘Even if we destroy the world, it won’t be rebuilt.’”
“But we don’t have to kill anyone… If we just get her to make the fanatics see reason—”
“Oh my, you would have us rely on the woman who once destroyed the world? Please don’t tell me you only just now realized, Hanged Man. The praiseless road we walk down is paved with thorns, and at its end, we shall become true enemies of this world.”
Jeanne shook her head in exasperation, her thick honey-blond hair gently scattering across her shoulders.
She still bore no expression, but her rose-colored eyes opened alarmingly wide as she made her declaration.
“Our salvation lies in murdering Diablo, murdering God, and, yes, murdering a human.”
A heavy silence spread throughout the dimness of the underground tomb.
Kaito still offered no reply. Hina gently placed her hand atop his arm. The Kaiser let out a deep, humanlike laugh. As she scratched gently at her own black hair, Elisabeth spoke in an annoyed tone.
“Hmm… The Saint bears God within her body, so I have concerns about our ability to actually kill her. I suppose we’ll know once we try. Steady your resolve, if naught else.”
“Yeah, no, I’m okay. I’d be fine even without you telling me that.”
“Very well, then.”
“I do appreciate it, though.”
“Ha. Appreciate what exactly?”
Elisabeth scoffed at Kaito’s words of thanks. Even so, he nodded back at her. Jeanne’s declaration had come as a blow to him, but he was already over it. He’d seen grisly mountains of corpses before, and starting with Marianne, he’d killed his fair share of people.
There was no reason for him to be fixated on the Saint’s survival.
And besides, once we meet her in the flesh, everything might change on the spot. Right now, we should just worry about getting the Butcher to talk.
“It seems there are no objections to our current course of action, then, so I think we’d best be off. Going back the way we came ain’t too glamorous or anything, but them’s the breaks. All the barriers are destroyed, but the building itself is designed to block teleportation. To go to the Torture Princess’s castle, we need to first make our way outside.”
And with that, Jeanne practically danced her way out of the nursery. The Kaiser scoffed in displeasure, but he, Vlad, Elisabeth, and Izabella, who was still being carried by Deus Ex Machina, followed after her.
Accompanied by Hina, Kaito started walking out of the nursery as well. But as he approached the doorway, he stopped in his tracks. His leather soles screeched against the ground. Then he turned back, the hem of his military-style long coat rustling as he did so.
As he stared fixatedly at the horrific nursery, he called out to one of the people behind him.
“Hey, Vlad. You said that even without this room’s messed-up setup…even without the pacification from the pain, the First Demon won’t wake up, right?”
“Verily, my dear successor. This room was crafted out of an overabundance of fear. It’s meaningless, and dare I say even comical…so I have my suspicions as to your intentions.”
“You’re not going to stop me, even though you’re onto me?”
“Perish the thought! True, your actions are hypocritical, grounded in a trivial sense of mercy! Yet, at the same time, they will lead you one step closer toward becoming a worthy vessel to inherit my will—after all, what you’re thinking of doing is a privilege extended only to the strong! Hypocrisy leads to arrogance, and from them flower the origins of all sadism and tyranny! Please defile them all you wish!”
“Huh… Well, if that’s the way you see it, at least you won’t get in my way.”
Kaito nodded as he gave his blunt reply. Then he cast a fleeting glance outside the room.
Vlad was spreading his arms exaggeratedly wide. At some point, Jeanne and the others had stopped as well. Elisabeth was shrugging at the very edge of his vision, as though calling him a fool. But Kaito knew.
If I hadn’t stopped, you’d have come up with some excuse to do this yourself, wouldn’t you?
The only bewildered member of the group was Hina. She looked back and forth between Kaito and the nursery. Before long, though, her expression stiffened with resolve. Gripping her halberd tightly, she stepped in front of Kaito.
“My dear Master Kaito, I, too, have grasped your intentions. You are far gentler than any other and far more merciful…and that is precisely why it will hurt you so. Please let me do—”
“No. This isn’t something I should be foisting off on my wife. I’m gonna do it. I have to.”
Her offer was kind, but Kaito turned it down. With Hina looking to be on the verge of tears, he patted her head, then gestured for her to leave. After waiting until Hina was a safe distance away, Kaito took a deep breath and raised an arm above his head.
Then he snapped his fingers.
Six blades appeared out of the empty air, deploying in a circle with the cradle at their center like the middle of a flower. They glittered sharply as they turned toward the walls and ceiling. After coming to eerily precise stops, they waited for their master’s cue.
Kaito murmured quietly, as though trying to persuade himself.
“It’s a job befitting the enemy of mankind.”
Then he snapped his fingers again.
“La (kill them all).”
The blades shot out with the speed of a guillotine dropping, the six of them carving up the walls and ceiling in unison. That is to say, they sliced up the victims installed therein.
They’d all been cursed so as to avoid letting them die. But the curse wasn’t nearly effective enough to protect against Kaito’s magically empowered attack. Their lives, which had been held perpetually just shy of death’s grasp, instantly came to an end.
One after another, the soundless screams faded.
But the slaughter went on.
Blood sprayed in all directions, drenching the room in a ghastly shade of red. It looked almost as though six beasts had leaped from Diablo’s cradle and savagely sliced their way through the room. And the noise of the walls and ceiling sounded like an orchestra. Kaito, in his black uniform, played the role of the conductor, waving his arm both violently and delicately. The blades were his instrumentalists, and they wove their shearing melody in accordance with his directions.
The time it took felt like it lasted an eternity. But every performance must eventually come to an end.
Ten or twenty seconds later, Kaito swung his arm wide, then brought it to a sudden stop.
All at once, the blade disappeared. Silence descended upon the room. The only sound left was the faint trickling of blood.
The nursery-like chamber had been completely ruined. Chunks of flesh and viscera littered the floor, and everything in sight was red. A thick, rusty smell began filling the air.
Amid the tragic spectacle, the first demon slumbered gently, as though nothing had changed. Kaito averted his gaze from it, instead looking at the blood gathering at his feet. As he faced the vast pool of red, he let out a gentle whisper.
“Good night, everyone. Sweet dreams.”
In a sense, his words were tinged with madness. But they came from the heart.
After all, he’d heard a continuous scream from the moment he’d first set foot in the room. It was a striking, sorrowful plea, one that only someone who’d experienced extreme pain could perceive.
Please kill us, they’d been saying.
Please make it all end.
The people being used to pacify Diablo had long since gone mad from the pain. But in spite of that, they’d never stopped their desperate supplication. And now Kaito could hear their pitiful cries no more.
He cast his gaze around the room, his expression full of affection and sadness. He looked to make sure they were all dead, that there were no sacrifices left in the room. After determining that to be the case, he let his face turn serious again.
Having coldly wiped away his expression, the Kaiser’s contractor turned on his heel. Then, alone, he began walking.
Hurriedly, Hina rushed back into the nursery. Clutching the hem of her skirt, she faced the grisly spectacle and offered a deep bow. After closing her eyes for a moment as though in prayer, she ran back over to her companion’s side. Nestling close to Kaito, Hina squeezed his hand in hers.
He stayed facing forward, as though nothing had happened. But he returned his wife’s grasp and intertwined his fingers with hers.
Ever so faintly, his hand was trembling.
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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0003.txt
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Torture Princess
2
The Little Lady’s Choice
Officially, the underground tomb’s sixth floor didn’t exist.
Everything past it was blockaded off by a colorful barrier, and the architecture took a turn for the bizarre. But once Kaito and the others ascended the seemingly endless staircase and returned to the fifth floor, the rest of the tomb was as calm and sanctified as ever.
They walked down the long passageway. Individually crafted mausoleums of the kings of old lined them on either side. Even with the tomb’s innermost secrets laid bare, the resting kings on the upper floors were unperturbed.
As he cast a sidelong glance at the extravagantly decorated mausoleums, Kaito posed a question to Jeanne.
“Did any of the kings know about the First Demon?”
“Who can say? I imagine it depends on how close to the Church and how devout they each were. For example, I think the odds that the third king, hailed as the ‘Faithful King,’ was informed are quite high. He gave his generation’s Grave Keeper special rights, after all, and their relationship was rather cordial. They’re all crazy!”
“Makes sense. Still, though, for some of the kings to find out about it and still give it their endorsement… Fanaticism’s a hell of a drug, I guess.”
Kaito turned his gaze toward what appeared to be the third king’s mausoleum. Compared to the other kings’ mausoleums, its design was rather plain. It didn’t even sport flowers, although the uncouth suits of armor surrounding the sarcophagus within hinted that the third king had specialized in battle. The only piece of ornamentation that could be described as beautiful was the statue of the Saint hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Perhaps the cause of his faith had been a desire for divine protection in his countless wars. Now the Saint was always watching over him. Red gemstones were embedded in the sarcophagus’s lid, even replicating the Saint’s tearstains.
That’s one messed-up charade they’re pulling.
Kaito leveled a blunt rejection of the king’s beliefs that he was clearly adhering to even in death. But he chose not to voice that impression of his. Instead, he asked a different question.
“What about the current king, then?”
“His predecessor died early, so he is still a whelp. I’d wager they haven’t told him a thing. Ha, he’d likely faint on the spot.”
This time, it was Elisabeth who answered. Jeanne then offered a follow-up.
“He also entrusted the battle against the demons wholly to the Church and has done little in the way of mobilizing troops on his own. As a result, the Royal Knights generally just obey the Holy Knights’ orders. The Church no doubt saw that as an opportunity to seize greater power, but Godd Deos refused to use their strength as a pretext to meddle in domestic affairs. That geezer was a pain in the ass, but I gotta give him credit for being a decent guy. At some point, though, the king’s advisers began tithing more and more, and their ranks grew flush with the pious. That being the case, it’s anyone’s guess as to what would happen if the king found out about the first demon.”
The two Torture Princesses exchanged a glance, then shrugged. Their billowing blond and straight black heads of hair shook.
Kaito sighed. He knew almost nothing about the current king. But unlike the third imperial beastfolk princess, Vyade Ula Forstlast, he didn’t seem like he’d be particularly reliable if things got down to the wire.
It’s gonna be rough, not having any influential humans who are sympathetic to our cause.
Kaito sank into thought. Once he stopped talking, his surroundings grew quiet as well.
Eventually, the group approached the stairwell to the entrance. As they did, Kaito looked up, thinking he’d heard something. Noise from the surface was finally starting to reach them, running down the stairs and echoing off the thick walls.
Someone’s shouting orders. And that’s a lot of armor, swords, and footsteps I hear.
Kaito cautiously strained his ears to make out the intermingling sounds. As a consequence, he found himself inadvertently frowning.
“Sounds like they’ve got quite the crowd up there, huh.”
“I should certainly think so. Izabella and I originally came on orders from the Church to kill you, after all. And I did happen to destroy Yah Llodl’s communication device before we entered the tomb, not to mention the fact that we left the paladins behind. ’Twould have been stranger if they hadn’t called in reinforcements.”
“…Oh, right. That makes sense.”
As he bore the brunt of Elisabeth’s exasperation, Kaito thought back to their battle from a few hours ago. He and Elisabeth had traded blows directly in front of the underground tomb. However, he’d been so engrossed in the fight that he hadn’t spared much thought as to what would come afterward. And afterward, their entire worldview had been turned on its head.
Everything just changed so quickly.
Kaito’s gaze grew distant. As she stood in front of him, Elisabeth went on.
“The only reason we weren’t attacked while we investigated this place was the strict orders the paladins received not to enter it. The fewer people who know the truth, the better for them, so the reconstruction sect no doubt plans to destroy us the moment we pop our heads out. However, therein lies a problem.”
“A problem?”
“Indeed. Our foe is the Church.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“You forget so quickly, fool. The Church has me bound with shackles.”
Kaito’s mouth hung agape in realization. Now that she mentioned it, he remembered.
Elisabeth had been ordered to slay the fourteen demons as a chance to atone for her sins. But because she was a sinner without peer, the Church had placed shackles on her body so that she couldn’t betray them. If one of their priests recited scripture, the shackles would activate.
That meant that Elisabeth’s ability to oppose the Church was diminished. But Jeanne merely shook her head.
“I don’t think we’ll find that to be much of a problem. This is the Capital. The reconstruction sect won’t be able to deploy their transformed paladins. And even if they wanted to use a saint, it would take them too long to get a permit issued. In other words, the force at their disposal is currently quite low. No matter how much cannon fodder they call out, cannon fodder is still cannon fodder. After Deus Ex Machina tosses them aside in one fell swoop, I can activate my teleportation circle. Hunting mice is a specialty of mine, y’see. I don’t mind taking the lead this time.”
“I see, how reliable of you. I’ve no objections.”
Elisabeth readily nodded to Jeanne’s suggestion. Kaito, too, was relieved.
Jeanne’s Deus Ex Machina was even more robust and powerful than him, the Kaiser’s contractor, and Hina, an automaton. Buying enough time to activate a teleportation circle would be a piece of cake for it. But although he gave the plan his approval, he made sure to add a warning, as well.
“Just make sure you don’t kill any of the paladins. They’re only following their beliefs, after all.”
“Given the current situation, that alone is foolhardy in the extreme. Abandoning critical thought is a crime. Ignorance is sin. Sheep end up as mutton, as they say. But if we consider what’s to come, it’s true that unnecessary bloodshed will likely prove disadvantageous. And my little lady would object, as well. Agreed. We should avoid letting things get too complicated here.”
Surprisingly, Jeanne obediently nodded. Behind her, Izabella went slack as she breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that she’d been on the verge of shouting out. If things had gone poorly, it might have even ended in a fight.
Kaito was glad it had gotten resolved peacefully. All in agreement, they headed toward the entrance. Light from outside streamed down onto the stone stairs. Kaito then stopped, calling out to Jeanne as he did.
“Hold up a minute. Before you send out Deus Ex Machina, we should have one of us get a visual on the situation up there. I’ll go—if they fire off some kind of long-range attack, I can block it with my blades.”
“…Well, I suppose that’s true. Your doll has a rather anxious expression on her face, mister, but you are in fact qualified. Guess you finally get to be useful for once, huh? After you, then.”
Despite the verbal abuse he was receiving, Kaito climbed up the stairs.
Because they’d been made from a different material, the steps near the top had been melted when the demon attacked the Capital. Making sure not to fall, Kaito carefully jumped over the pit. Then he popped his head out through the entrance.
“Let’s see, here… Man, that’s quite the crowd.”
The silver troops were lined up atop the gray earth at regular intervals like chess pieces. There was also a group Kaito wasn’t familiar with beside them, covered from head to toe in scarlet cloth. Due to the way their faces were covered, they looked almost like executioners.
Man, I’m not getting a good vibe from those guys… Hmm?
At that moment, a sense of incongruity washed over Kaito. While it was true that the underground tomb was completely surrounded, their enemies were all standing strangely far away. Kaito frowned as he tried to find the reason.
Then he noticed the bizarre-looking man standing in front of the assembled troops.
Say…what?
The man had a sturdy frame, enough that Kaito could make out his gender despite the distance between them. He had broad shoulders, and his height was on the taller side. In spite of that, though, the hem of his white robes reached all the way to the ground, as did his thick, bristly black hair. That alone would have been enough to qualify his appearance as strange, but his most conspicuous feature was the thick chains binding his arms around himself in an embrace.
Kaito couldn’t help compare him to the other bound saint he was familiar with.
H-huh? He…looks kinda like La Mules, doesn’t he?
As that thought crossed through Kaito’s mind, the chains binding the man’s top half came loose without warning. He slowly spread his arms wide. When Kaito saw what was between them, a shiver of terror ran through his body.
“…!”
The man’s chest had been excavated, clothes and all. The red flesh within had been shaved down, and his white rib cage lay bare. For some reason, though, there was no blood pouring out. The heart, lungs, and other organs a rib cage was normally designed to protect were missing as well. In their place were a large number of white feathered creatures.
A second later, realization hit Kaito. The man was using his rib cage as a birdcage.
“La (fly)!”
Spurred on by instinctual fear, Kaito snapped his fingers. A blade went soaring toward the man. At the same time, white light flared up in the man’s chest, then burst out. The two collided head-on. While the blade was successfully blocking the light, it melted like candy in the process before evaporating. Kaito shot out his second attack. But to his disbelief, the man was faster. He shot out more light, this time even brighter than the first. The white entity swallowed up the blade, but this time, it didn’t stop.
Kaito’s eyes widened in shock. The light bore down on him.
An unpleasant blasting noise rang out.
As it did, the light burned away the tomb’s entrance.
“Master Kaito, no!”
“Wh—?”
It all happened in a single moment.
Right before the light made impact, something grabbed Kaito by the scruff and yanked him backward. His back toppled into Hina’s chest. After embracing him, she leaped back over the melted pit in the stairwell, then crouched down.
White light burst over their heads, accompanied by the sound of an explosion.
Kaito looked up. When he did, he saw that the metal decorations at the tomb’s entrance that had miraculously survived were glowing red and dripping. If Hina had been even a hair slower, he would have died on the spot.
“Th-thanks, Hina… Geez, I seriously misjudged that guy’s power.”
“Oh, Master Kaito… Thank goodness, thank goodness you’re safe… I was so worried for you.”
Still sitting firmly on the ground, Hina squeezed Kaito tightly.
As one might expect from the fact it had survived the demon invasion, everything from halfway up the stairs down was unmarred. The building material itself must have had a powerful anti-magic effect to it. But the bombardment showed no signs of letting up.
They’d lost the ability to carelessly go outside. Jeanne blinked, her rosy eyes flashing.
“…Well now. This falls outside my expectations.”
“Aye, it boggles the mind. What exactly is the meaning of this? Forgoing all the proper procedures to deploy a saint, then a summoned beast bombardment without so much as passing a verdict on us? Have they gone mad? No, wait… Ah!”
Elisabeth clicked her tongue, looking as though she’d just realized something. When she spoke, her tone was filled with vexation.
“The completed request, the one they submitted as part of the plan to defend the Capital immediately after La Mules’s death! Blast, we overlooked it!”
“I suspect your hypothesis is correct. We should assume they used the permit we obtained back then. Under the pretext of killing the Kaiser’s contractor and putting an end to the battle against the demons, fast-tracking its transfer would certainly be possible. And as for that light…”
The one who replied to Elisabeth was Izabella. Still cradled in Deus Ex Machina’s arms, she thoughtfully observed the exploding white light. Kaito followed her lead.
Now that he looked closely, he could see that the light was made up of tiny skylark-like creatures. Saints’ power came from sacred beasts. The man’s birds were clearly far weaker than the one La Mules had been able to deploy, but in exchange, he was able to shoot them out repeatedly.
Jeanne shook her head in annoyance.
“As far as the reconstruction sect is concerned, the end is nigh, after all. They’re starting to move more brazenly. ‘The sky is falling; the sky is falling! Let’s all dance, guys, memento fuckin’ mori!’”
“Ugh, I feel like destroying that communication device didn’t do us any favors.”
Kaito prefaced his comment with a groan as he thought back to the device Yah Llodl had been using to communicate.
The orb that Elisabeth had mercilessly skewered had been needlessly extravagant and flashy. He didn’t know where Yah Llodl ranked in the Church, but the man’s pride was all too evident.
Kaito had no doubt that Yah Llodl’s anger was only worsening his animosity toward himself and the others. That said, figuring out what their foes were thinking wasn’t going to help them much at this point.
This is a problem… If we can’t get outside, we can’t activate the teleportation circle.
Kaito furrowed his brow. The bombardment showed no signs of letting up. Elisabeth clicked her tongue in frustration.
“Tch, the intervals are too short. What to do. Send out Deus Ex Machina, perhaps? ’Tis fast and sturdy. Even so, it would doubtless be whittled away in short order. And you have to temporarily disassemble to activate the teleportation circle, eh… On the off chance they have a second saint in reserve, that would prove troublesome indeed. I wouldn’t mind activating the circle myself, but if they set off the shackles midway through, maintaining it would be no mean feat.”
“I concur. We seem to have quite the problem on our hands. If the Kaiser offered his help, it would make things a deal easier, but… The bad doggy’s got a lot of pride, if nothing else!”
“Hmm? Did the puny human say something? Seems to me like you fancy getting yourself bitten in two.”
“Quit fighting, all of you. I will go.”
A dignified voice rang out, remonstrating them. Everyone turned to look at the speaker: Izabella. Still sitting in Deus Ex Machina’s grasp, her arm was raised and her face was earnest.
Jeanne blinked her eyes rapidly a few times. A few seconds later, her head slumped sharply to the side.
“Have you lost your mind, miss?”
“I suppose I probably have. But I suspect my odds of success are better than you think. Now, let! Me! Down!”
Izabella contorted her body, her cynical remarks accompanied by a smile. Somehow, she was able to slip out from Deus Ex Machina’s arms. After gracefully hopping down onto the floor, she gave a long exhale.
Then she turned her blue and purple eyes toward the incessant explosions of light going off above them. She narrowed her gaze.
“I know the man who summons those beasts—La Christoph, the Modest Birdkeeper. I’ve had the honor of visiting with him a number of times. He possesses a firm spirit. Even after formally becoming a saint, he still recognized me and offered me kind words of advice.”
“That’s…impressive.”
Izabella’s words filled Kaito with earnest admiration. After all, La Mules, a similar saint, had lost her reason and humanity and become little more than an animal. Maybe it had just been the case that La Christoph’s connection to God was weaker than hers had been, but odds were that his force of will was astounding.
At the same time, being reminded of how brazenly the Church retained their saints caused Kaito to realize just how perverse of an organization it was.
The cracks were always there—the current situation just tore them wide open.
The time had finally come. The Church’s shell had cracked, and the terrible monstrosity within was now free.
That was really all there was to it. While the twisted imagery was floating through Kaito’s mind, Izabella continued laying out her plan.
“Even after being recognized as a saint, La Christoph persisted in his deep love for the people. I strongly doubt he knows anything about the plan to reconstruct the world. I’ll need someone to block two or three of his attacks for me, but if I call out to him, I believe there’s a good chance he’ll stop.”
Izabella was totally serious. But Elisabeth crossed her arms and shook her head.
“You expect a saint to see sense while firing off a bombardment? The odds are lower than low.”
“If I die, then all it will mean is that my work up until now was unworthy of being remembered. In that event, I will accept my fate. And I apologize, but you’ll need to come up with a new plan.”
Izabella’s voice was calm, and the evenness of her tone served to illustrate just how composed she was. Kaito reflexively shuddered. The degree of certainty in her voice was alarming.
“Izabella, no!”
“Oh, Master Kaito—”
Kaito hurriedly stood up, wrenching himself free from Hina’s arms. Then he turned to face Izabella.
He stared straight into her mismatched, gemstone-like eyes.
“Izabella, you can’t! Whether or not that saint guy will remember you isn’t the problem! It’s what’ll happen to you afterward. If your plan works, you won’t be able to go back to the Church. Hell, even trying to will be off the table. I’m not gonna let you go through with some plan that’ll get you killed, whether it works or not!”
Kaito’s voice rose to a shout. When Izabella replied with silence, Kaito clenched his fists.
The odds were low that Izabella’s callout would stop the bombardment, but they weren’t zero. But if they wanted to use that opportunity to activate a teleportation circle, it would mean leaving her behind. The moment Izabella showed signs of fleeing, the saint would no doubt recommence his attack on the spot.
She was, of course, a member of the Church, and the commander of the Holy Knights to boot. But given the Church’s current state, even someone of her standing wouldn’t be able to return safely. The situation over there was anything but upstanding.
That was just how deep the roots of evil had sunk into it. The entire organization had gone completely mad.
“Even if it was just because Jeanne kidnapped you, you still ended up going into the underground tomb. You can pretend not to have seen anything, but there’s no way they’ll believe you. And I bet the Grave Keeper will be especially pissed.”
Kaito’s thoughts turned to the perverse nursery down in the depths of the tomb. There had been a monster with a snowy owl’s head and a huge mass of tentacles stationed in front of it as a guard. It had been made by taking a holy summoned beast, feeding it demon meat, and mixing in human parts.
That torture room, its guardian… It takes more than run-of-the-mill fanaticism to make messed-up shit like that.
The Grave Keeper must not have had a moral bone in their body.
And back in Jeanne’s hometown, Kaito had seen those hideously transfigured paladins, too. It was unclear whether they’d done so willingly, but all of them had eaten demon meat.
Either way, even if they’d left them alive, there was no way to save people who’d undergone transformations like that.
“If you go back, they’re just gonna dispose of you. If you’re lucky, all they’ll do is kill you. You can’t go back; it’s over!”
“I refuse to believe that! Or rather, I want to…but even I can see the truth.”
Izabella answered frankly. Her voice was calm. So calm, in fact, that it filled Kaito with ominous premonitions. Izabella wasn’t even trying to deny the evil lurking within the Church anymore. But even so, her smile remained.
“There would normally be no shortage of people who would defend me and ensure my sentence was just. But at this rate, I’m likely to be judged behind closed doors, without my allies knowing about it. Even so, there are things I still must do. You see, I want to go back to the Church.”
“That’s crazy talk…”
“I have to make sure as many of the Holy Knights know the truth as possible. If things continue as they are, they’re liable to be taken advantage of.”
“But you can’t seriously think you’re gonna get a chance to—”
“Even if I don’t. I can’t just sit back and watch my subordinates die.”
Izabella’s words were matter-of-fact. She’d clearly had her mind made up for some time now.
It was at that moment that Kaito realized something. He and Elisabeth didn’t have that many people they needed to protect. At the end of the day, both of them were criminals. But Izabella was different. Many people had placed their trust and loyalty in her.
“The Holy Knights’ main force has to receive any untoward orders. But it’s only a matter of time. It’s as Ms. Jeanne says: Organizations are, for better or for worse, like long centipedes. I refuse to let my people unknowingly destroy the very people, the very world they’re trying to protect.”
“Even so, you still—”
“I understand how you feel. Or rather, allow me to pretend to sympathize despite being wholly incapable of understanding. Still, though, foolish little lady, I must ask that you stop.”
An unexpected voice called out to restrain Izabella. Jeanne stepped forward and stood beside Kaito. She, too, didn’t hesitate to give her warning. Deus Ex Machina stooped over, as though trying to scoop Izabella back up.
Falling away a step, Izabella took on a defensive pose.
Jeanne pointed a pale finger at her. It hung in the air as Jeanne tried to elucidate the situation.
“I didn’t bring you along just to let the Church pass judgment on you, miss. I needed someone besides the Torture Princess and her servant who knew the truth of the world and was able to help convey it. Someone who was affiliated with the Church yet could accept the truth without breaking. That was what I chose you from among the stray sheep for.”
“So I supposed. I had the sense that your expectations for me were something along those lines.”
“It wasn’t so you could die a dog’s death. Don’t forget. Death is absolute. If you die, that’s it. Game over.”
“…Forgive me. I understand the importance of the task you’ve given me. But would you be able to find someone else to carry it out? I have my own task I need to finish, you see.”
Izabella flatly refused to heed Jeanne’s warning. Narrowing her rosy eyes, Jeanne made to set Deus Ex Machina into motion. As things were, Izabella had no means to resist. But with a gentle expression, she repeated back the words Jeanne had once thrust at her.
“I am a commander, though perhaps only in name.”
“…”
For once in her life, a look of surprise crossed Jeanne’s face.
Izabella began walking. It was easy to make out the unwavering pride in her gait, as was the fact that stopping her would accomplish nothing. She walked past Jeanne, practically daring her to act. Her silver hair nearly grazed Jeanne’s honey-blond locks.
Standing straight up, Jeanne let out a quiet whisper.
“…What a fool you are.”
Taking her cue, Deus Ex Machina sprang into motion. But instead of trying to capture Izabella this time, it strode directly forward. It seemed that the steel giant intended to serve as Izabella’s shield, just as she’d requested.
“You can’t…”
Still refusing to give up, Kaito raised his voice. But the timing with which Izabella turned around indicated that she’d seen that coming. As light continued to explode at her back, her voice was the image of composure.
“Farewell, ladies and gentlemen. Dreadful as it was, I’m glad I was able to learn the truth. Even now, I still hold that the Church’s teachings are wonderful. Using faith as a way to support a life lived nobly and properly is an honorable thing. People are weak. They need something to believe in. So as a member of the Church, I will fight to my last to right its wrongs.”
Kaito sucked in his breath. Even after learning so many ugly truths, Izabella retained her piety and pride as the commander of the Holy Knights. Her next words were stern, and her voice rang with conviction.
“That is why, Kaito Sena, Elisabeth Le Fanu, Jeanne de Rais, even if history ends up validating your actions, I cannot become like you.”
With quiet yet unfaltering words, Izabella issued a complete rejection of Kaito and the others.
The ebony and gold Torture Princesses said nothing. Kaito, too, gazed silently at lacerations running across Izabella’s skin and her tranquil eyes. His thoughts turned to the metaphor he’d just heard.
There exist shepherds who would gladly cast themselves into the fire just to catch a glimpse of a miracle.
And their sheep would follow after them, blind to the foolishness of their own actions.
Even though she was just a lone sheep, Izabella was trying to shout out warnings to the rest. She was likely to find herself cut down in the blink of an eye. But even so, she refused to abandon her flock.
Izabella Vicker is a noble person through and through.
Authority and cajolery would utterly fail to make her falter. And she had the rare power to not only believe in her own sense of justice but to put it into action, too.
Which means that there’s no way she’d ever become an enemy of the world.
Kaito now felt that fact keenly. In other words, it was pointless trying to get her to stay by their side any longer.
Kaito and the others were enemies of the world, and the road before them was paved with thorns.
At the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is kill God and the Saint.
Trying to coerce someone who was living their life nobly and properly wasn’t possible. Satisfied with that fact, Kaito threw in the towel.
Elisabeth quietly clicked her tongue. Her sleek black hair rustled as she shook her head.
“Ha, do as you please. If one persists in their foolery, that, too, is a form of conviction. If you have no regrets, then go forth and die unburdened. Your brand of idiocy may differ from mine, but we are both idiots nonetheless.”
“That we are, I suppose. Idiots, one and all.”
Izabella’s smile was tinged with a hint of embarrassment. The lacerations running across her face twisted unattractively.
Yet, even so, Izabella Vicker was beautiful.
The next moment, she dashed up the stairs. Her silver hair fluttered as she broke into a run.
Explosions of white light rocked the entrance she was heading for.
With surprisingly fluid motions, Deus Ex Machina took the lead from Izabella.
The steel giant was the first to rush outside. Izabella followed unflinchingly after. The bombardment exploded across Deus Ex Machina. Protected by its massive body, Izabella shouted out.
“Please stop, La Christoph! It’s me, Izabella Vicker! I have something I wish to report! Everyone, please, you have to listen to me!”
Tragically, her voice was drowned out. It looked as though the attacks would continue. But she didn’t give up.
“Rgh!”
Seizing the tiniest of gaps between explosions, Izabella made her move, leaping out from behind Deus Ex Machina. Having abandoned her shield, Izabella laid herself exposed before La Christoph.
“It’s time for us to move.”
“Indeed.”
If they didn’t leave then, they wouldn’t make it in time. With no room to doubt whether or not Izabella would succeed, Jeanne and Elisabeth dashed forward. Kaito and Hina followed after them. With a singularly nonchalant air, the Kaiser shook his head in exasperation and did the same. Vlad floated along behind, a wide grin plastered across his face.
Together, they passed through the entrance.
Unbelievably, the bombardment had stopped. It was almost miraculous how quiet their surroundings were.
They could see a priest wearing a lavish vestment shouting something at La Christoph. He was undoubtedly trying to get him to resume the bombardment. But as he gazed at Izabella in bewilderment, La Christoph obstinately refused to open his arms. The priest shouted again, even louder.
“What the hell are you doing? Why show mercy to someone who’s been won over by the demons?”
As he did, Izabella’s subordinates started moving at once. They all rushed over to the priest. The group that looked like executioners tried to get them to fall back, but the paladins gave determined shouts.
“Please, that’s not it! Our commander was taken against her will!”
“Bah! Back, you lot, back! What are you thinking?!”
“You’re the one trying to dispose of our kidnapped commander all on your own! What are you thinking?!”
“She’s fallen into the demons’ clutches!”
“We told you, she was abducted! We’re not going to just let you blow away our commander!”
Disorder swelled through their ranks. Taking full advantage of the opportunity, Deus Ex Machina collapsed into pieces. The steel giant’s body separated into a number of chunks. From them, four machines landed atop the ashen earth.
One of them was a beast made of nothing but fangs. Another was an automaton, shaped like a human except for its fatally warped frame. One of the other monsters was a lizard with limbs made from pipes and wings of glass. And the final one was a bipedal suit of armor with no visible seams anywhere on its body.
The chains on Jeanne’s wrists jingled. Taking their cue, the machines began spinning.
White light started glittering in a circle around them, and golden flower petals danced up through the air. The teleportation circle began activating, leaving Izabella behind. The priest went slack-jawed. La Christoph continued looking solely at Izabella. She made no motions to flee, so La Christoph chose not to resume his attack.
“Get ahold of yourselves! Don’t let them get away, dammit—stop them!”
As he shouted orders at the fighting paladins, the priest began chanting to activate Elisabeth’s shackles. As she stood beside Kaito, her skin started burning, and she let out a small cry of pain.
“Urk—”
“Elisabeth…”
“Lady Elisabeth.”
Kaito and Hina supported her shoulders. However, Elisabeth wasn’t the one giving the chant for the summoning circle—Jeanne was. The light gradually grew in strength. The paladins and the executioner-like group frantically rushed toward them.
As they did, Jeanne gently extended her hand. Making sure she wasn’t seen by the people closing in on them, she lifted a tuft of Izabella’s hair. Then she kissed her, like a knight kissing a princess’s hand.
Izabella’s shoulders twitched. But she didn’t turn around.
Finally, Jeanne offered a surreptitious murmur to her dignified back.
“I don’t hate seeing a mere human trying to oppose them. After all, such actions are the ones that are supposed to change the world. You may be an idiot, a dunce, and a fool, miss, but I choose to believe that your actions helped delay the clock hands in their march toward the end. You did catch my eye, and the eyes never lie.”
With slight vestiges of sorrow, Jeanne let go of the silver hair. As she did, she offered a quiet farewell.
“Good-bye, my stupid, gallant little lady.”
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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0004.txt
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Torture Princess
3
Something Left Behind
The gold petals and white light dissolved together to form a solid, cylindrical wall. Then, immediately afterward, it crumbled. The fragments gently melted, transformed into droplets, and crashed against the stone floor. When each one landed, it sent a small crimson splash into the air.
“…Crimson?”
Kaito tilted his head to the side in confusion. Then he noticed the second magic circle at their feet.
The blood it was comprised of was recoiling at Jeanne’s mana, causing it to bounce up off the ground. As a result, their surroundings were like a rain of light pouring atop a sea of blood.
After looking at the room he was in, Kaito furrowed his brow.
“Huh? Wait, don’t tell me this is…”
“Jeanne, you little… I must say, I was expecting we would arrive in the forest nearby. Why is it that you’re able to leap directly to my castle? When was it you interfered with my teleportation circle?”
Her skin still covered in burn marks from the Church’s shackles, Elisabeth crossed her arms.
They had all successfully arrived in the wide chamber beneath Elisabeth’s castle that sported her permanent teleportation circle. But teleporting directly to it wasn’t supposed to be possible for anyone who hadn’t themselves activated it previously.
Everyone turned to look at Jeanne. Her abundant golden locks shook as she tilted her head to the side.
“What are you talking about, miss? Why, you daringly left your castle exposed so as to invite attacks by the fourteen demons, did you not? Shit, you had openings everywhere! In other words, sending in a familiar to invade your castle and tamper with your teleportation circle was no grand undertaking. But hey, don’t sweat the small stuff!”
Her unabashed response earned her a murderous glare from Elisabeth. But it was true that, thanks to the fact that they’d traveled directly to the castle, their arrival had been quicker than they’d anticipated. Letting out a short sigh, Elisabeth started walking. Her heels clicked loudly as she went.
“Very well. I’m hardly pleased, but I shall overlook it this once. This once. Now then, let’s be off.”
“Um, Lady Elisabeth, we should treat your injuries first…”
Hina timidly called out to her. As she stopped in her tracks, Elisabeth’s harsh expression softened. But despite Hina’s frantic pleas, she just gently shook her head.
“How kind you are to the woman you once betrayed… No, no, stop looking at me with those teary eyes! It feels as though I’m kicking a puppy. I had no intention of being snide to you, Hina. What I was trying to say was that you needn’t worry, that I would cast healing magic myself later, when we have time to spare. Aye.”
“Wait…doesn’t that mean that if you were talking to me, you would mean it snidely?”
“How astute he is! I should surely think so. ’Tis your own fault for being so wholly unlovable. You’re a man; deal with it.”
“Well then, I’ll just have to praise Master Kaito so sweetly that it all balances out!”
“Uh… I dunno if ‘balances out’ is really the way you’re supposed to look at it…”
Despite the crisis situation they were in, the banter the three of them exchanged was light. Kaito took care to speak in the same glib manner as always.
By doing so, he managed to slowly but surely regain his lost composure. Eventually, he succeeded in shaking away the scene that had burned itself into his eyes.
My grieving isn’t gonna make things any better. We’ve gotta hurry, for Izabella’s sake, too.
“…Hmph, ’Tis time to cut the idle chatter. Let us be off in earnest. There’s no shortage of information we need to drag out of the Butcher, whether he gives it freely or not. And time is of the essence.”
Her words hinted at the possibility of torture. Elisabeth licked her scarlet lips, and Kaito quietly dashed after her.
They all ran out of the chamber. Groan-like noises echoed throughout the labyrinthine basement as they hurriedly made their way through it and on up the stairs to the first floor.
It was at that point that the Kaiser, who’d been dutifully accompanying them, paused. He raised his head high and sniffed at the air. Then, after shaking his head a few times, he let out a bored scoff.
“…Hmph, I thought as much. Already, eh?”
“What’s the matter, Kaiser?”
“You can’t tell, boy? I should think it’s a smell that you, too, would be familiar with.”
“Familiar…?!”
Then Kaito finally realized what was different. The rusty aroma of blood was wafting down the first-floor corridor. After sniffing at their surroundings some more, the Kaiser approached something hidden in one of the walls’ shadows.
When he realized what it was, a shock ran through Kaito. The Kaiser’s nose was right up against a large pool of blood. The supreme hound then poked at something dark sitting in the middle of the sea of red.
“This in particular. Its odor is like that of a demi-human, yet more mixed. What do you think, O unworthy master of mine? Surely you recognize it.”
The Kaiser let out a satisfied laugh, his expression hinting at ominous things to come. Kaito silently knelt down beside him. When he saw what his hound was pawing at, his face went white.
Resting half-submerged in the pool of blood was a scrap of tattered black cloth.
“…The Butcher.”
“Kaito, Hina, to my bedroom! Investigate the status of the Gibbet! Jeanne and Deus Ex Machina, go search elsewhere! You two are better at covering ground!”
“I have no objections, miss. We are at least twice as fast as you punks, after all.”
“Oh my, precious daughter of mine. Ignoring me?”
“You and the Kaiser, go search as well! And before that, the both of you need to muster up some determination! Especially you, Vlad, you deadbeat! You seem quite content to just sit there and do nothing!”
Vlad peevishly pouted upon receiving his orders and insults in the same breath. Like always, his expression was creepily innocent. He stroked his chin and crossed his long legs in the air.
“Hmm, given that you all are the ones who killed me, I’d say I’m contributing more than my share. Also, given that I’m quite literally dead, perhaps ‘deadbeat’ isn’t the kindest insult you could have chosen… Oh, I see—you’re choosing to turn a deaf ear to my complaints. Ah well, I suppose I can help you out with your investigation.”
Nobody present was paying any heed to his grievances; they’d all set off. Protest written across his face, Vlad floated on after Jeanne. The Kaiser, on the other hand, seemed to think it was none of his concern. He snorted, then vanished. Separating from the others, Kaito’s group made for the stairs to the second floor.
Kaito, Hina, and Elisabeth hurried through the oppressive cliff-top castle. Their footsteps echoed through the hall. Right before reaching the stairs, though, the three of them stopped in their tracks.
“…’Tis his handiwork, no doubt.”
“Yeah…”
Before them stood a blood-soaked suit of armor. It resembled the moving suits of armor installed throughout the castle, but just barely peering out from beneath the rusty bloodstains on its chest was a white lily coat of arms.
Elisabeth let out a murmur, her voice tinged with pity.
“Hello, transfigured paladin.”
“Uorrrgh, uorrr… Gah, graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah… Blagh, blegh, blargh—”
Kaito and the others hadn’t done anything yet. But in spite of that fact, the blood spurted forcefully from the openings in the paladin’s helmet. It would appear that all the blood staining his silver armor had come from his own mouth.
Upon catching a glimpse of the man’s eyes through his helmet’s eyeholes, Kaito gasped. The man’s left eye had ruptured, and a number of pink sacs were dangling from his neck and pulsating. It looked like some sort of strange, parasitic plant was growing off him. But the truth was even more revolting. The sacs were made up of the man’s own engorged flesh.
“Uorrr… Ah, ah, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
With a shout, the paladin hoisted up his weapon. They normally used swords, but his had been replaced with a crude battle-ax. It looked far too heavy for a normal paladin to wield properly.
Before charging at them, the paladin held his battle-ax directly at Kaito and the other two. Even in his current state, he was still making sure to pay respect to his foes.
“…!”
Kaito involuntarily bit down on his lip. Normally, that was a gesture one would perform with a sword. Perhaps due to haziness stemming from his hunger for pain, the paladin firmly believed himself to be holding a sword. It was, in a word, pitiful.
“Master Kaito…”
“Yeah, he’s beyond help.”
Even if they left him alive, there was no way to save people who’d undergone transformations like that. Kaito raised his arm, and Hina readied her halberd. But a cold voice spoke first, scoffing at the fact that they’d faltered even for a second.
“Gavel.”
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG!
A solemn, bell-like noise rang out. A mass of crimson flower petals scattered magnificently through the air.
A massive iron hammer swung down from empty space, the very air trembling as it fell. The transformed paladin was crushed, armor and all. The hammer’s head was covered in brutal-looking thorns, causing it to resemble a meat tenderizer as it flattened the man from the head down.
An invisible hand lifted up the Gavel’s short handle. An unsettling sticky noise accompanied it.
Crimson lines gently stretched up, then snapped. Beneath the hammer, iron plates and human flesh were all flattened into one. It made for a spectacle so far removed from the man’s original form that the action seemed retroactively less cruel.
“Hmph.”
Elisabeth snapped her fingers. The iron hammer transformed into a cloud of petals, then vanished. All that remained was a horrid, incomprehensible pile. It made a squelching sound as Elisabeth trampled it underfoot.
Ascending the stairs, she let out a low murmur.
“Hurry.”
“…Got it.”
She spoke but a single word, and Kaito’s response was similarly concise. After stepping over the pitiful corpse spread out before the staircase, the three of them resumed running. On their way, they encountered two more transfigured paladins and dispatched them just as quickly.
Having disposed of everyone in their path, the three of them then dashed through the corridor where high windows cast ominous designs on the floor.
Eventually, Elisabeth’s bedroom came into view. Kaito felt a shiver go across his body as he ran. A terrible scene surely awaited them there, as the door was wide open and the floor around it was covered in blood.
“Butcher!”
“Mr. Butcher!”
As Kaito and Hina shouted, Elisabeth stepped wordlessly into the room.
What greeted them was an overwhelming silence.
It was quiet in the room. Quiet and still.
Ever since a demon had broken in, the window’s slatted shutter had been left broken. A faint light streamed down onto the vacant floor. The spots where the plain yet refined bed and dresser had once been were now devoid of furniture. They’d gotten caught in Elisabeth’s battle with the Butcher and destroyed.
The only thing left was the knife-ridden map on the wall. That and the tall, narrow metal cage hanging from the ceiling—the Gibbet, one of Elisabeth’s summoned torture devices.
Kaito looked up at the iron cage in silence. It was empty. The Butcher was nowhere to be seen.
“Elisabeth…”
“…Hmm.”
Elisabeth snapped her fingers. Its chain rattled, and the cage landed on the floor.
The first thing she did was deliberately inspect the cage door. Kaito watched her work from the side. After running her finger across the scratch marks left on the lock and confirming their direction and shape, she nodded.
“These marks came from within. It would seem the Butcher opened the cage on his own, then fled.”
“You’re saying that he wasn’t removed by force? Could Mr. Butcher be all right, then?”
“No, there’s no way… Something definitely went down after he broke out.”
Kaito turned to look back toward the bedroom’s entrance. Drops of blood were scattered about by the doorway. And not only were there grotesque paladins prowling the castle grounds, there had been a scrap of black cloth floating in the pool of blood back on the first floor.
There was no way the Butcher was unharmed. Elisabeth sighed, as though agreeing with Kaito’s fears.
“I can probably surmise what happened. After breaking out of the cage, he had the poor fortune of running into those paladins. They probably brought a fair number of men here with the intention of capturing me on my return from the underground tomb. There were doubtless priests among them to activate my shackles, to boot. After capturing the Butcher, though, they returned to their headquarters. That gives us our reason why none of the ones we faced were in any state to fight.”
Upon hearing Elisabeth’s hypothesis, Kaito nodded. It was true that all the paladins they’d encountered had already been half-dead. The assembled manpower had been too half-assed to conduct any sort of proper purge. It seemed likely that the only ones left behind were those who’d had a poor affinity for demon meat and were on the verge of death.
Even though they weren’t as sure of it as Jeanne, the Church was probably looking for the Apostle, too… So it makes sense that they took the Butcher back to their headquarters with them.
“You mean to say that Mr. Butcher has been captured? The Church is… Oh?”
“What’s wrong, Hina?”
“My beloved Master Kaito, my dear Lady Elisabeth, what might that be?”
Forgetting how worried she was, Hina sounded flabbergasted. Kaito and Elisabeth turned toward the direction she was pointing. Something had been placed in the room’s blind spot, arranged so that the Gibbet would draw one’s attention in its place.
Upon seeing it, the two of them squinted in unison.
“That’s…”
It had a preeminent presence to it, which made the fact that it had evaded their attention for so long even odder. Once they saw it the first time, though, it was thereafter impossible to ignore.
Sitting on the floor was a massive slab of bone-in meat. It was so impressive, it practically deserved fanfare.
“’Tis meat.”
“Yup, that’s meat.”
“It’s meat, isn’t it?”
Despite themselves, all three of them said the obvious. The paladins had sunken into madness, so it made sense that they’d overlooked it. But its very presence was such that Kaito and the others couldn’t help commenting on it.
The three of them cautiously approached the meat. The closer they looked, the odder its countenance seemed to be. Kaito and Elisabeth exchanged a glance, then started elbowing each other in the side.
“Go on, then, Kaito. You’re the one with the wife, so why don’t you show her how manly you are, eh?”
“Oh, no, no, I wouldn’t dream of denying the opportunity to check it out to my world-famous master in action.”
“Allow me, then. As your intrepid maid, I shall go forth and investigate the meat! I’m off!”
““No, no, no, no, no, no, no.””
Kaito and Elisabeth both reached out, determined not to foist the task off on Hina. By sheer coincidence, Elisabeth’s fingers reached it quicker. She tutted at Kaito as she hoisted up the meat.
Then something about the sensation of grabbing the bone gave her pause.
“Hmm? ’Tis…loose? Perhaps… Rrrrrrrrrrr, rah!”
“Yikes!”
With a loud pop, Elisabeth yanked the bone free from the meat. When she did, something fell out from within and clinked against the ground. She picked it up and held it in front of her eyes. It was a slab of metal, twisted into an intricate shape. Even though it was covered in grease, it still sparkled. After pondering its design, Elisabeth tilted her head to the side.
“Some kind of key, perhaps?”
“Yeah, and there’s something on the side, right? Look—there.”
Elisabeth turned the key over as Kaito had instructed. One of her eyebrows shot violently up.
The words beloved dragon no. 2 were etched on its soiled metal surface.
“That’s…”
“Familiar words, indeed.”
Kaito and the others began whispering among themselves. Whatever it was, it probably had something to do with the dragons the Butcher kept. And keys were, by nature, designed to open things. As he considered those facts, Kaito remembered something else as well.
Oh yeah, Elisabeth knows where the Butcher lives.
Elisabeth had sent Hina on an errand there once, and on another occasion had brought golems and ice spirits there as a gift. The Butcher had many clients, albeit most of whom he’d probably picked for their lack of knowledge regarding the Apostle. Of them, though, the number who knew where he lived was likely quite small.
In fact, Elisabeth might well be the only one.
Elisabeth tossed the key in the air. Before it could fall, she snatched it back up.
“After we reconvene with Jeanne and the others, we’re heading for the teleportation circle. We make for the Butcher’s residence.”
“Got it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kaito and Hina nodded. Without another word, Kaito began pondering.
The Butcher had definitely left the key there on purpose. It was impossible to know whether his intentions had been benevolent or malicious. Even so, though, Kaito wanted to believe.
Maybe this will let us change something.
Kaito couldn’t help but wish for it as he thought back on the Butcher and the pleased way in which he would tell his tall tales.
The Butcher’s residence was home to no small share of danger. Specifically, it was in the deep heart of a vast, dark, remote forest. Nobody dared harvest its rare herbs and ores, and the closest human settlement was on the other side of a mountain. Thanks to that, the forest had been able to avoid human exploitation. As a consequence, monsters and man-eating plants thrived within its confines. It had long since become a place where no human dared tread.
However, everyone in their group had, in some sense, transcended humanity.
Kreeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Kree—
A strange noise erupted as a tangle of ivy made to take a bite out of Elisabeth’s head, but she ripped it in two with her bare hands. Its death wail was a sound no plant should ever make. As she tossed the ivy aside, Elisabeth sighed.
“Hmm, none of them poses much threat, but they do make it unpleasant to walk. ’Twould have been far more convenient if we could have but leaped there directly.”
“It’s set up so that you can only teleport as far as the forest entrance. It was like that when I came here, as well.”
“Huh. I wonder if the Butcher set it up that way in preparation for when we all found out his secret.”
Kaito’s voice was soft. “Nay, I suspect he merely wasn’t thinking at all,” groaned Elisabeth in reply. Beside them, Hina shouted, “Don’t you dare get near them, you insolent lout!” at a poisonous moth as she bisected it down the middle.
Leading the group was Deus Ex Machina, which had returned to being a steel titan and was currently trampling some howling plants underfoot. The chains on Jeanne’s wrists jingled as she gracefully followed after it. Vlad gently drifted along behind.
They all marched in silence, the only noises the gyaaahs and arrrghs of their would-be hunters. Eventually, though, they reached a clearing and stopped.
A fancy hut towered before them. It was so impressive, it practically deserved fanfare.
“……………………………It’s a mushroom.”
“It would appear to be a mushroom, yes.”
“Aye, and a toadstool, at that.”
“Hmm? Why, where is the meat? I must say, abandoning the sense of cohesion strikes me as a crime against aesthetics.”
Kaito was aghast, Hina merely nodded, Elisabeth was exasperated, and Vlad leveled a characteristically obtuse complaint.
Erected before them was a completely round house. Its red roof was the very image of a mushroom’s cap, and it was even mottled white. It was abundantly clear that the building was modeled after a mushroom—more specifically, a toadstool.
And at the bottom of the stalk was an adorable little round door.
Kaito grabbed its handle and pulled. However, the door refused to budge. It must have been locked. Elisabeth prompted him to move aside, then raised one of her shapely legs into the air and let out a casual shout.
“Hi-yah!”
“Welp, there she goes!”
Elisabeth had let loose a magnificently bold roundhouse kick. The door shattered. Inside, though, nothing seemed particularly amiss. While it was true that the massive chopping block, assorted knives, hand-operated saw, and miscellaneous hooks made the house seem a good deal more dangerous than the average merchant’s, given the vast array of meats the Butcher dealt in, it all fell within reasonable expectations. Suspecting that the room had more to hide, Kaito and the others got to work searching it.
Vlad alone stood motionless, still floating in the air. Kaito turned back to lodge a complaint.
“Vlad, c’mon. I know you can’t touch stuff, but you could at least try to help out.”
“I’m afraid I can’t, my dear successor. I’m rather preoccupied, you see, trying to figure out why the area around these shelves is the only place free of dust.”
“…Huh.”
“I see. I guess the dead guy ain’t a deadbeat after all.”
Vlad smiled, and Jeanne called Deus Ex Machina over. It moved the shelves aside with great ease. A secret door was installed beneath them. When they opened it, they discovered a staircase leading underground.
Nerves on edge, the group descended. At the bottom, they discovered what had once been an underground lake now being used as a storehouse.
A vast number of stone sheds were lined up atop the parched earth. Despite their master’s absence, golems and ice spirits were diligently managing the meat within.
There was nothing strange about that, either. And there certainly didn’t appear to be anything related to the Saint in there.
It feels like the nasty stuff we learned was all just a bad dream or something.
As doubts started creeping through Kaito’s mind, though, Hina started waving her hand about and shouting.
“Master Kaitooo! There’s another set of stairs leading up over here!”
Apparently, she’d found a different set of stairs than the ones they’d come down on. But given that they hadn’t found anything so far, the group’s expectations as they ascended were low. Upon opening the wooden door at the top, they saw dim light flooding forth.
Kaito popped his head out through the doorway. They were surrounded by trees. It was probably a backyard of some sort.
“Hey, over there!”
Then amid the dazzling light and vivid shades of green, Kaito spotted it.
“Ahhhhhh! Ahhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! I’m gonna faaall!”
“Don’t worry, Master Kaito! I have your hand firmly in my grasp! Even if every gear in my body should stop, I will never let you go! Or would it be better if we simply traded places?”
“Nope, that’s a no-go! If we think about it rationally, I’m just as likely to fall from up there, so it works out better for both of us for you to keep supporting me like this, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s scary as shiiiiiiiiit!”
“Seeing you so scared is so heartrendingly cuuuuuuuuuuute!”
A strange shout erupted from Hina. They’d been in so many nerve-racking situations recently, she must have finally snapped. As she swayed and squirmed, Kaito’s legs were left practically floating in midair.
Furthermore, the two thin black wings beside him were flapping fiercely through the air. Each time they did, Kaito had to expend mana to maintain his stamina and avoid getting sent flying.
Below him, the forest spread out in every direction. The trees behind him vanished in a sea of green as they receded into the distance.
Currently, Kaito and the others were riding atop a majestic red dragon.
Upon leaving the Butcher’s house behind them, they’d taken to the skies.
It had all started a few hours prior. When they’d entered the Butcher’s backyard, they’d been met by three dragons. The first was the steel dragon that had previously brought Hina to the Capital. The second had been a female with four wings and a long, slender crimson body. According to Jeanne, it was called a “red dragon.”
The moment they’d used their key to unlock her collar, she’d begun violently flapping her wings.
They hadn’t been afforded a moment of hesitation. Jeanne, who seemed to have expected this development, had elegantly mounted the dragon’s saddle. Elisabeth followed after and reclined atop the dragon’s back. And bringing up the rear had been Hina, who’d grabbed the startled Kaito by the arm and jumped on board last.
Naturally, a red dragon’s body was tapered at the rear. In other words, there was basically nowhere viable to sit near her backside. As a result, Kaito had been wailing the entire time since.
An exasperated shout came from Elisabeth, near the front.
“Enough of your whining, Kaito! You’re immortal! Even if you do fall, you’re sure to survive!”
“Hell no, I’m not falling for that! I know full well that enough blood loss will make my soul fade away! I’m freaking out over here, and the bumpiness isn’t helping!”
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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0005.txt
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Torture Princess
“Your grumbling really is getting irritating, mister. Why don’t you make like a corpse and shut the hell up.”
“You’re sitting in the saddle; you’re in no position to talk!”
Kaito put forth no shortage of effort in making his objections known. Jeanne’s honey-blond locks fluttered in the air as she feigned ignorance.
Deus Ex Machina was no longer by her side. It was ill-equipped for long flights, so she’d temporarily dismissed it. Vlad, who was floating beside Kaito, gave a light chuckle.
“Well, well, well, my dear successor, it seems that you’re growing accustomed to the skies. And isn’t that what’s really important here?”
“Shut up! …But I, uh, I guess it’s not as bad anymore…”
Still trembling, Kaito caught a glimpse of the ground below.
The forest looked like a vast, vibrant green swath. Beastfolk, demi-human, human—it was impossible to tell whose territory they were above. Looking down on it from the sky, he felt land-ownership rights seemed almost petty and irrelevant.
The red dragon’s body weaved back and forth as she continued her flight. It was unclear where their destination was, but she clearly seemed to have one in mind. Her speed was steady, and she showed no signs of being lost.
Then the landscape below them started to change. The forest came to an end and was replaced by a series of houses and buildings that looked as small as toys. Then they, too, were replaced with a sandy yellow desert. As he gazed off into the distance, Kaito felt his breath catch in his throat.
Far away, he could make out a vast body of water, sparkling as radiantly as though it had fragments of glass sprinkled atop it.
“You’ve gotta be kidding. We’re gonna cross the ocean?”
“At this rate, it seems she intends to leave the very continent.”
Elisabeth sat up. Her voice carried an understandable hint of tension to it.
At some point, the air had taken on a different quality. It had previously been dry and parched but was now rife with moisture and the smell of the sea.
The ocean was approaching faster than they could blink. Then the red dragon soared over the glittering sea.
A gust of conspicuously fishy wind lapped at their cheeks. A flock of seabirds let out alarmed cries, then flew off. A line of white sailboats ran atop the waves.
At that point, the sun started sinking beneath the horizon line. The waters burned a vivid red.
The light was the shade of ripe fruit, and it scorched its way into Kaito’s retinas. The majesty and splendor of it all took hold of his eyes and soul. It was a landscape he’d never gotten the chance to see in the closed-off life he’d lived before.
Anxious as he was as to the nature of the red dragon’s destination, an uncharacteristic surge of excitement ran through him.
Riding a dragon through the skies, huh… Man, just look at how far I’ve come!
“Hmm. I’ll admit to not knowing why I know, my dear successor, but I think I have an inkling of where this dragon is heading.”
“W-wait, for real, Vlad? Then where—? Ahhhh!”
Upon hearing Vlad’s assertion, Kaito had turned his head to one side in earnest.
The moment he had, though, the red dragon had charged headfirst into a cloud. His sight stolen away from him, Kaito let out another yelp, at which an emotional voice called out, “Master Kaito, you’re so cuuuuuute!” Beyond the pale white of the cloud, Vlad quietly murmured his response.
“The World’s End, in all likelihood.”
At that moment, Kaito recalled something he’d once heard.
It’s a nonsensical little fairy tale, and one that’s gone on for a very, very long time.
Having first gotten atop a red dragon’s back, it would appear that they were now heading to a land straight out of a story.
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section-0006.txt
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Torture Princess
4
The World’s End
Someone once said that the world has no end. The world is round, they proclaimed, and as such it has no terminus.
Someone once said that the world has an end. It’s like a waterfall, they proclaimed, one that swallows up anything and everything.
Someone once said that the world has an end. For God created that place, they proclaimed, and designated it “the World’s End.”
Was the world, in fact, round? Were the seas all connected? Or was there nothing but a waterfall at the edge and an abyss that swallowed up anything and everything? To this very day, the truth is yet unknown.
After all, nobody ever actually undertook the voyage to find out for themselves. Even so, though, one of the three proclamations can currently be held up as definitely true. For in this world, there is a location that God designated as its End. It’s said to be a pure place, one crafted from snow and water, wind and mana.
And it’s a place that only those granted knowledge of its location were able to reach.
“‘Even if one were to walk the whole earth over,’ it’s said. Being a mage, I’d of course heard of it, but to think that while I live and breathe… Well, no, I suppose I’m dead now. Either way, I never dreamed I’d actually be able to reach it! Yet, now I stand with my own two feet…or to be more precise, I should say I float! But in any case, it’s quite moving.”
“That’s a lot of corrections you’re making there. Are you quite all right?”
“Ha-ha-ha, as satisfied as satisfied can be!”
Leisurely shrugging off his beloved daughter’s cold stare, Vlad gave a hearty laugh.
With grace befitting his noble bearing, Vlad cast a sweeping gaze over the snowscape before them. The ground was frozen and hard, and no amount of digging would turn up soil. The entire region was made of mana-rich ice. Because of that, everything as far as the eye could see was blue and faintly glowing. The snowflakes were big enough to make out their individual shapes, and they piled up everywhere like little handicrafts. Above them, the sky was milky and white. Strangely, it was also covered in an oil-like rainbow sheen, although that didn’t appear to belong to clouds, the sun, or the stars.
The sky was simply empty. It was like a giant lid was sitting over their heads. Consequently, it was difficult to tell whether it was night or day. In a sense, it resembled the demons’ world. However, the sky wasn’t sullied like it had been back there. The wind was frighteningly clean and pure, and the atmosphere was sparkling.
It was beautiful, almost miraculously so. But at the same time, there was nothing there.
There was just absolute emptiness.
It was like a hollow vessel, with all the desolate solitude of everything having ended and the faint hope that something new would begin.
It was a place truly deserving of the name “the World’s End.”
And in that legendary land, Kaito Sena was currently freezing to death.
“I’m s-so c-cold! Cold, cold, cold, cold, c-c-c-c-cold!”
“Please, Master Kaito, pull yourself together! Oh, if only my surface area were a hundred times larger!”
“Hmm, I feel as though I just saw a vision of Kaito being fatally crushed.”
Despite being wrapped in Hina’s tight embrace, Kaito was shivering.
For the last little while, Hina had been laudably trying to warm him up with her own body. Just as she’d said, though, she lacked the surface area to cover him completely. Other than his face, which was buried in her opulent chest, Kaito was suffering an utter defeat at the hands of the cold. As she gazed at his frozen visage, Elisabeth nodded.
“’Tis true, though. The temperature is such that no human would withstand it unprepared.”
“The World’s End is a place of purity. In other words, this ain’t no place for respectable creatures to try survivin’.”
“H-h-how the hell are you two not cold in those r-r-ridiculous getups?!”
Kaito couldn’t stop himself from crying out. Elisabeth and Jeanne, in stark defiance of what they’d just said, seemed to be perfectly fine.
Vlad was a phantasm, and Hina was an automaton. It made sense for the two of them not to feel the cold. But the fact that Elisabeth and Jeanne seemed unaffected as well made no sense.
After all, the amount of fabric comprising the Torture Princess’s bondage dresses barely even rose to the level of “sparse.”
Jeanne appeared dumbfounded by Kaito’s exclamation. She shrugged her exposed shoulders.
“Allow me to pose you a question, mister. Why should any mage complain about the cold in a land as rich in mana as this? What, you think you classify as ‘respectable’?! You’re like some sorta masochist perv who owns clothes but walks around naked anyway!”
“’Tis just as Jeanne says. Using your mana better would serve you well. Are you ready? Hold the sensation of a lit fire within the pit of your stomach. Then form a layer of warmth in the air around… Wait, no. Stop. You were just on the verge of immolation, no?”
“Y-y-yeah, that’s right, I a-a-almost caught on fire! I’m bad at that f-f-fiddly magic stuff, okay, and I’m cold!”
As smoke sputtered from the top of his head, Kaito continued shivering.
Then Vlad returned, seemingly having grown bored of observing the scenery. He shook his head in exasperation.
“I take it you intend to secede, then, my dear successor? It’s a pitiful way to die, to be certain, but it is what it is. Partings are always sudden and always sorrowful. As comical of a farewell as it is, perhaps that, too, lends it deeper significance.”
“Listen here, you. When I die, I’m smashing your stupid jewel on my way out if it’s the last thing I do.”
Kaito leveled a glare at Vlad through his shivers. It was unclear what he found so funny, but Vlad responded with a chipper laugh.
Exasperated as she was, Elisabeth gave Kaito a firm clap on the shoulder.
“Calm down, now. I daresay you’re at no risk of actually freezing to death.”
“I—I—I mean, you’re r-r-right, but I feel like it’d still be a problem if I s-s-stopped being able to move.”
Elisabeth did have a point. Kaito’s soul was currently housed inside a homunculus.
As long as he didn’t unintentionally undergo severe blood loss, his body was immortal. In fact, if he were a normal human, he would have already succumbed to hypothermia and died. But if Elisabeth’s blood running through his veins was to freeze, so would his motor functions. And given their current situation, he wasn’t particularly keen on asking someone to lug him around as a paperweight.
Hina clenched her fists in determination. Her face full of resolve, she grabbed at her maid uniform.
“Now I understand! Now that it’s come to this, we only have one option left! As his bride, I will take extreme, extreme pleasure in removing my clothes and pressing myself against my precious husband to better warm him up!”
“Settle yourself down, Hina. ’Tis true that you replicate a human’s body heat despite being an automaton. But stripping and clinging to him will change little. Also, do try to hide your ulterior motives a bit more thoroughly. Promise me that, if nothing else… In any case, the red dragon seems to have stopped moving. We have nothing to use as a guide, and Kaito is on the verge of freezing.”
“I d-d-don’t like where this is g-g-going.”
“The matter now becomes, ‘what to do?’”
Elisabeth crossed her arms and hmmed. Then she snapped her gaze to the side.
The red dragon was lying on its belly there, seemingly unaffected by the cold. Ever since they’d arrived at the World’s End, she’d suddenly stopped moving. She was instead dozing off, as though she’d come home for the first time in a long while.
Upon hearing what Elisabeth had to say, Jeanne shrugged again.
“A good question. Leaving the pathetic mister to freeze to death won’t exactly do us any good. Nevertheless, walking about randomly would be foolish. We need to avoid wasting our stamina. Our best option is to await good news from my children. If things go well, it will give us a direction for our next course of action, as well. And if they don’t, well, we can just give up and let him die.”
“D-d-damn, that’s harsh.”
Kaito lamented, his face pale. However, he didn’t have any specific objections to Jeanne’s proposal.
After Deus Ex Machina had rematerialized, it had split up and begun scouting. In accordance with Jeanne’s orders, its four parts had gone out to search the vast untrodden land. Waiting for the four to return was the best option they had available to them.
After all, there’s basically nothing to use as a landmark here. If we started walking, odds are we’d just end up going in circles. Given that the Butcher invited us here, there should be something we can reach before we freeze to death, but…
Despite his racing thoughts, Kaito chose to put his trust in the four machines. In other words, the only thing there was to do was wait.
They spent the next little while in silence.
Sandwiched between the luminescent sky and earth, even Kaito’s sense of the passage of time evaporated. Given the fact that he was able to successfully put up with it, the time he spent waiting couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, but to him it felt like an eternity.
Then, with a start, he looked up. He could hear the crunching sound of something scraping at the frozen earth.
A distorted mass of silver approached from the distance, chipping lightly away at the ice as it moved. Bandersnatch, the beast made from nothing but fangs, had returned. It bored holes in the ice as it came to a quick stop.
Sitting in front of its master with its feet all lined up together, Bandersnatch let its mouth click open and shut. Apparently, it was using the rattling of its fangs to somehow give its report. Jeanne responded with a theatrical little gesture and covered her mouth with her hand.
“My, my, this falls outside my expectations.”
“Wh-wh-wh-what is it, Jeanne? D-d-d-did something happen?”
“I’ll praise you for having the grit to ask your question despite your teeth shivering to their roots, mister, if nothing else. Listen and be awed. Bandersnatch found a soldier encampment down the way. Who’da thunk that someone’d beat us to the World’s End? Barely even feels real.”
“What? The Church’s goons, then? They must have dragged something out of the Butcher.”
“That isn’t it. The flag they’re flying isn’t the Church’s. I recognize the design, but…describing it would be difficult. Draw it, if you would.”
Bandersnatch nodded obediently at Jeanne’s order. With unhesitating motions, it set its bladed legs to work. It looked something akin to a machine outputting image data. Silver whooshed through the air, carving a delicate, flowing pattern in the ground.
The first things it drew were animals. Then flowers. Eventually, the drawing of a white deer, an ancient wolf, and a colossal hawk all wreathed in an extravagant ring of flowers was complete. Kaito’s eyes went wide. Momentarily forgetting about the cold, he let out a dumbfounded whisper.
“The Forest King and the other two… And wait, the flowers in the crest vary by member of the royal family, and that one is specific to…”
“Yes, Master Kaito, I remember it, too.”
Still nestled beside him, Hina gave an obedient nod. Elisabeth narrowed her eyes in confusion.
His tone serious, Kaito stated the flag’s owner.
“It belongs to the private army of Vyade Ula Forstlast, the Forest King’s third imperial princess.”
With that, a new mystery arose. After all, Kaito and the others were currently at the World’s End.
Without being told exactly where it was, it was impossible to even reach.
So why are the beastfolk here? And what’s their goal?
No matter how hard he racked his brain, though, Kaito couldn’t come up with answers. He didn’t even have enough information to come up with a reasonable guess.
He scrunched up his face. Elisabeth responded by crossing her arms and puffing out her chest.
“When thinking fails, all that’s left is to act. And one way or another, we need to figure out the beastfolk’s reason and objective in coming to the World’s End.”
“Indeed. We can hardly chalk it up to happenstance. Which leaves us no choice but to find out why.”
“Yeah…you two are right. Guess we should get moving, then.”
Jeanne interjected in the affirmative, and Kaito nodded as well. Odds were that the beastfolk weren’t their enemies. Kaito didn’t think of them as enemies, at any rate, and he chose to believe that they’d feel the same way.
And with that, their course of action was set.
They were going to head to the beastfolk campsite and make contact with them.
Without further delay, they followed Bandersnatch and set off.
As they walked, they trampled snowflakes underfoot. But just after they got going, a serious problem reared its head.
“E-E-Elisabeth, this isn’t g-g-good.”
“What isn’t? Ah. I think I have the gist of it, but go on and say it anyway.”
“A-a-at this rate, I’m gonna die. Or r-r-rather, freeze stiff.”
“Hmm. I’m afraid I don’t really see the issue. We can merely simmer you in hot water later, I should think.”
“Wh-wh-whaddaya think I am, f-f-frozen peas? I don’t wanna be a s-s-statue.”
As they were talking, Kaito’s body heat was mercilessly fading away. For a moment, the insane thought of burrowing into the Kaiser’s fur passed through his mind. After all, the one part of his body that wasn’t cold was his left arm, which had been transformed into that of a beast. If he clung to the Kaiser’s canine pelt, he was sure it would warm him up. But the Kaiser was a proud demon. Rubbing his soft fur would no doubt incite his rage. And for that matter, Kaito wasn’t sure if demons even had body heat.
All right, brain, back it up. Let’s try to avoid getting ourselves bitten in half.
Narrowly coming back to his senses, Kaito began trying to think of a more realistic solution.
The plan he ended up going with was trying to get magical tutelage from Elisabeth again.
No matter how many times he tried, though, success eluded him.
“…N-n-no dice, huh?”
“Hmm. How else to go about teaching you, I wonder?”
Having already tried out a number of different explanations, Elisabeth tapped a finger against her forehead. Thin beads of smoke were coming up from Kaito’s head. Elisabeth frowned as she gazed at his sorry demeanor.
“The problem seems to lie in the fact that thermoregulation magic doesn’t use pain as its fulcrum. To you, that makes the sensation comparatively hard to grasp. Even so, though, I’m at something of a loss as to how else to explain it.”
“D-d-don’t give up now; you’ve g-g-got my life in your hands.”
“Worry not. I’ve all but dropped it already.”
“H-h-how the hell’s that s-s-supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s okay, Master Kaito! Even if you can’t move anymore, I will make sure to dutifully carry you!”
“Hmm, transporting cargo under our present circumstances seems rather hazardous. Blast it, though! How can it be that a man who birthed a sword on his own strength has so impoverished an imagination?! One. More. Time. First, you—”
“May I, my precious daughter?”
“I’m sorry, does the charcoal briquette with delusions of grandeur have something to say?”
“Ha-ha-ha, as rebellious as always. Worry not, though; I’m a forgiving man.”
Vlad’s interruption was met with Elisabeth’s unconcealed scorn. However, he just laughed off her snide comment. He found his face riddled with stakes in reply, but he carried on undiscouraged.
“The reason your teachings are so ineffective is because they’re designed with a sane pupil in mind. If you want to teach him, then you’d best rethink your methods from the ground up… Now then, my dear successor, I want you to release fire and ice within your body at the same time. Don’t try to grasp the sensations. Actually release them. And put enough strength into both of them to kill yourself.”
“Wait, Vlad, are you mad? I mean, I’m well aware that you’re mad, but that’s—”
“Each one will offset the other. But of the two, your talent with fire is greater, and the difference should be precisely enough to warm your body.”
Kaito followed Vlad’s instructions and closed his eyes. He focused his mind, then tried burning up and freezing his innards. His mana immediately started flowing freely, as though all the lack of response up until then was but a distant memory.
Oh man, this is way nicer.
The two contradictory energies were clashing within Kaito’s body. It wasn’t without a degree of pain, but neither was able to fully take form without being quashed by the other. At the end, the only lasting effect was his body temperature successfully rising.
Kaito slowly opened his eyes. He then turned to Vlad, who was beaming triumphantly, and nodded.
“Yeah, the cold’s manageable now. Thanks, Vlad.”
“Y-you little… Do something about that irreconcilably twisted nature of yoooooours!”
Elisabeth evoked the image of a cat with its hairs standing on end as she screamed. As she did, she leveled a splendid roundhouse kick at Kaito’s back.
The attack itself was, by all means, no different than his usual treatment. Their location, on the other hand, was anything but usual.
As a result, the impact of the kick caused Kaito to lose his footing and slip.
“Wh—?”
“Oh?”
The frozen ground was all but devoid of friction. And to compound on Kaito’s misfortune, the ground had begun gently sloping up at some point. Without realizing it, they’d climbed up a little white hill.
One can imagine, then, what happened to Kaito when he slipped.
His black long coat acting as a sled, he began sliding down the hill at an alarming rate.
“Ahhhhhhhh, Elisabeeeeeeeeeeeeeth!”
“Kaitoooooooooooooooooo!”
“My beloved Master Kaitoooooooooooooooo!”
“Hmm. I seem to have lost my precious successor.”
“I don’t know if he was really all that precious.”
While the remaining members clamored among themselves, Kaito continued accelerating with no signs of stopping. He frantically thrust his beastly arm into the ground. However, he was unsuccessful in driving his claws into the ice.
So, uh, what exactly am I supposed to do now?
Although he wasn’t exactly being driven by negative emotions, the absurdity of the situation served to calm him just as effectively. Kaito narrowed his eyes and cast a glance over his surroundings. When he did, he realized something.
There were strange furrows in the ground right next to where he was sliding. The snowflakes had been carved up, and the ice had been shaved away. In all likelihood, this was where Bandersnatch had slid down the hill.
“Well, it looks like I’m headed in the right direction, so…I guess this is fine?”
After all, Kaito’s pace had been the slowest among the group. Deciding that continuing to slide was just fine by him, he stopped resisting. Of course, that said, it wasn’t like he had any way to stop. Growing slightly desperate, Kaito crossed his arms.
Maintaining that posture, he continued sliding away.
Eventually, the ground became flat again. Despite that, though, Kaito’s speed showed no signs of abating. He merely continued rushing along the ground beneath the milky-white sky. Then, suddenly, he got caught on something and came to a stop.
“Hmm? What’s that?”
Kaito squinted. It felt as though he’d been caught by countless pairs of transparent hands.
He then reached out and checked to see what it was that had actually stopped him. It turned out to be a fat bundle of wire-thin plants. Each one of the snow-white vines was covered in fuzzy, bur-shaped blossoms.
Narrowing his eyes once more, Kaito surveyed his surroundings. The ivy stretched out around the entire environs.
He tried giving the vine a tug. The more he pulled it back, though, the more it stretched. It didn’t look like it was going to snap, nor was there any end to it in sight. It was far longer and sturdier than he’d expected.
What’s a plant doing here, though? I thought stuff wasn’t supposed to be able to live here. What’s going on, then? And did Bandersnatch manage to avoid this stuff?
Faced with the plant’s contradictory existence, he cocked his head to the side and double-checked the shaving in the ice. Bandersnatch’s tracks stopped just before the ivy, then reappeared on the other side with deep holes at the very beginning. It must have noticed the ivy just before running into it, then jumped to avoid it. Kaito, on the other hand, hadn’t had such luck. Crossing his arms again, he tilted his head back to the side.
“What’s up with this ivy, then? I mean, there are definitely things that come to mind when I think plants, but…”
“I came to see who was caught, but this? To think that a human would make it to the World’s End. It would appear we were not the only ones invited… Who are you? State your name!”
“Huh?”
Suddenly, he heard a deep voice addressing him. Kaito’s eyes went wide. But the animosity present in the other party’s voice wasn’t what he was reacting to. The expression flooding his face wasn’t one of tension and alertness but one of shocked familiarity.
“…No way.”
He knew that voice. Flustered, he cast a glance at his surroundings.
It was then that he realized there was a group behind him leveling swords at his back. The approaching soldiers were all clad in vermilion armor. Its scale-and-leather aesthetic gave the same unique impression as always. In addition to their breastplates, though, they were also wearing thick winter coats. The coats had likely been made from the fur of their comrades, as that was their people’s custom. Just as Kaito had expected, masculine, inhuman faces peeked out from within their heavy hoods.
At the front of the group was a beastman with copper fur and a wolf’s head. And the subordinates standing behind him looked familiar as well.
Kaito somehow managed to avoid slipping as he stood up. Then, making no efforts to defend himself, he called out to the wolf-headed beastman.
“Lute!”
“Hmm? Why do you know my…? Wait, you’re—!”
Lute, the commanding officer of the first squad of Vyade Ula Forstlast’s private army, stopped dead in his tracks.
At that point, Kaito finally came to a realization. The reason the plants hadn’t withered away in this frozen world was because the beastfolk had brought them there. They must have been using them in place of a fence to keep out intruders. What beastfolk lacked in magical prowess they made up for in their peculiar brand of engineering. Armor and magical tools made from the corpses of their comrades and plants that could grow inside buildings without any soil were just a few examples. It made total sense for them to have developed breeds of plants that were resilient to the cold.
At any rate, Kaito found it a great relief that the beastfolk he’d run into had been people he knew. He opened his mouth, about to casually ask them how they were doing. At the last moment, though, he swallowed his words.
No, no, no, no, no… This isn’t some situation where I can just stroll up and say, long time no see.
This was the first time Lute had seen him after Jeanne had forcibly taken him away. And ever since then, the situation had gone completely pear-shaped. The relationship diagram of the people Kaito was involved with had grown more tangled by the minute.
And above all else, they were currently standing at the World’s End.
Under normal circumstances, people couldn’t even reach it without being told its precise location.
And I don’t have any idea what Lute and his men are doing here.
Depending on what their objective was, they could very well perceive Kaito as an enemy. And even if they didn’t, the way he’d just suddenly appeared was suspicious in the extreme. Having their reunion take place due to him getting caught in their guard netting could hardly be regarded as desirable.
Kaito clutched his head. He could feel a headache coming on.
Man, why couldn’t we have reunited under some easier-to-explain circumstances? —Wait, hwah!
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Sir Kaito, you’re alive!”
All Kaito’s concerns were blown away in an instant. A hearty smile spread across Lute’s face as he unhesitatingly wrapped Kaito up in an embrace, his thick, burly arms holding Kaito firmly in place. Perhaps getting slightly carried away, Lute swung Kaito from side to side as he spoke in a tone full of heartfelt delight.
“You’re alive, you’re alive, thank goodness you’re alive! Oh, could there even be a more joyous reunion?! How wonderful it is that you survived! Look, everyone, it’s Sir Kaito! He’s alive!”
Lute set Kaito down and gave him an affectionate thump on the back. Feeling woozy, Kaito pitched forward, nearly toppling to the ground. As he did, Lute’s subordinates surged toward him.
One after another, they thrust their oafish, gloved hands into his and shook.
“We missed you! Captain Lute is right; it’s wonderful to see you alive.”
“You look well. That’s good to see.”
“We were all so worried about you.”
“Oh, uh, thanks, you too, nice to see you all.”
Thoroughly flummoxed, Kaito did his best to respond to his overly enthusiastic welcome. While he did, though, another part of his brain coldly analyzed each beastperson’s reaction. However, much to his surprise, not a single one of them cast so much as a doubtful glance his way.
Wait, seriously? Should they really be welcoming me so openly?
Kaito was taken somewhat aback. At the same time, however, he felt a strong feeling wash over him.
Lute had once told him that beastfolk took much more pride in repaying debts than humans did.
It would seem that he hadn’t been lying.
The words of celebration eventually died down, and all the hands were successfully shaken. The mood was amiable and calm. “Very good, very good.” Lute nodded in satisfaction. At long last, though, he cocked his head in puzzlement.
“Hmm? But, Sir Kaito, whatever are you doing at the World’s End?”
“Wait, don’t tell me you only just started wondering that.”
“And for that matter, whatever became of you after you were taken away by that eerie golden girl?”
Lute’s questions were starting to come out in force. Kaito nodded. In the midst of the storm of greetings and handshakes, he’d been hard at work trying to straighten out all the information in his head. He opened his mouth, prepared to begin explaining the particulars.
“Okay, Lute. You gotta promise not to get too freaked out. Right after that, I—”
It was at that moment that the crunching sound of ice being shaved away began growing audible from afar.
The timing was atrocious. Oh, shit, thought Kaito as he spun to look behind himself. But he was already too late.
New colors were visible atop the snow-white hill. The silver, black, and gold were especially eye-catching.
Leading the group was a twisted silver machine. Right behind it was a young woman wearing a risqué bondage dress running alongside a maid, and floating a ways behind them was a man dressed like an aristocrat. And dashing along calmly directly beside him was a young lady wearing a white bondage dress comprised of little more than just belts.
When you see them from a distance, they look kinda weird, don’t they?
“Kaitoooooo! Are you okaaaaaaaaaay? I was a bit careless back there—I’ll admit to that! Having you die on me like this would haunt not just my dreams but my waking hours as well!”
“Master Kaitooooooooooooo, are you all riiiiiiiiiight? You’re okay, riiiiiiight?! If you aren’t, I’ll be sure to follow right afterrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
“Good heavens, what a troublesome man he is. Sheesh, it’s a miracle he managed to get himself a wife.”
“I find myself agreeing, but hold on a minute… A wife? Now that I think about it, did my dear successor swear an eternal oath with that automaton I made? Boasting of loving a doll is an absurdity among absurdities, but I suppose the same could be said of a human partner as well. Love is pleasant enough as a temporary indulgence, but it’s far too insubstantial a delusion to spend one’s whole life bound to. Human or doll, that fact remains unchanged. But that’s not the important part. That doll is a creation of mine, which means…that in a sense, he’s become my son-in-law both in name and in substance?”
The group’s ramblings were just as self-indulgent as always. There was no background noise to interrupt them, so their voices traveled well. Kaito especially wanted to declare his staunch objection to Vlad’s assertion. But now wasn’t the time for that.
Oh, shit.
The beastman’s eyes had come to a stop on the girl in the questionable white bondage dress—the golden Torture Princess with honey-blond locks and sparkling gold adornments, Jeanne de Rais. Their tails were jutting out from their coats, and they all puffed up in unison. The beastfolk grabbed for their weapons and went on high alert.
Elisabeth noticed their change in demeanor and came to an abrupt stop. Her expression turned grave, and she reached out and snagged Hina by the collar. Hina responded by kicking and squirming, wanting nothing more than to dash over to Kaito’s side.
“What are you doing, Lady Elisabeth? Master Kaito is right there in front of us, Lady Elisabeth. All I have to do to be with my beloved husband is walk straight forward, Lady Elisabeth!”
“Calm yourself. Look around him. He’s surrounded by beastfolk, but… I see. He must have gotten himself caught on the guard netting they’re wont to place around their campsites. Little matter, that, though… Although it seems we arrived a tad too early to join up with them and a tad too late.”
With only a glance, Elisabeth had read the situation like a book.
Back in the underground tomb, Kaito had told Elisabeth all about what had happened when he was on the run. In other words, she knew about the grave injuries the golden Torture Princess had inflicted on Lute and his men when she’d whisked Kaito away from the beastfolk lands. Jeanne herself, on the other hand, seemed utterly nonchalant about the whole situation.
Jeanne de Rais is the oppressor of slaves, the saint, the whore…and the self-proclaimed maiden of salvation.
According to Jeanne, salvation could be obtained only by human deeds. And she was haughtier than both God and Diablo. She probably didn’t even harbor a shred of guilt toward those she’d sacrificed with noble intentions.
As though to provide proof of that, Jeanne turned to the beastfolk and began casually tossing cruelties their way.
“Oh, why, it’s been some time. You seem to be in better health than I expected. How nice. Y’all are a bunch of sturdy old pups.”
“Positions!”
Lute shouted, his voice tinged with rage. The sounds of swords being drawn could be heard, one after another in succession. Bows stretched to their limits.
Dammit, they’re practically at each other’s throats already. If a fight breaks out, all this will have been for nothing!
Kaito immediately realized that he was going to have to be the one to stop them. Leaping out in front of the beastfolk, he spread his arms wide.
“Wait, hold up! Jeanne might not make any sense, and she might be a total asshole, but she’s not your enemy!”
“I feel as though I’m being mocked. Not that I’m disputing the charges, mind you!”
“Have you gone mad, Sir Kaito?! Why would you protect the monster who mercilessly wounded and cruelly slaughtered our people…? Curses, she must have brainwashed you! Or perhaps you were accomplices from the start… I truly don’t want to believe that, but…”
Lute ignored Jeanne’s comical interjection as he ground his fangs. Kaito gave a silent thanks for Lute’s rationality. If he hadn’t hesitated just then, arrows would already be flying.
Now, how should he go about breaking the deadlock? Kaito frantically racked his brain.
In the end, he decided to hit the beastfolk with the most appropriate card he had.
“The golden girl…Jeanne de Rais didn’t slaughter the people in those villages!”
“What did you just say?”
Lute was visibly shocked, just like Kaito had expected. He breathed a sigh of relief. The beastfolk were proper soldiers; they cared more about their people who had fallen victim than about the wounds they themselves had suffered.
He could take that to mean he’d been successful in buying them another chance to discuss things over and explain themselves.
In order to give both himself and the beastfolk a chance to calm down, he took his time laying out his next few points.
“Would you mind hearing me out? Right now, she and I are working together. And it’s to prevent the killer you guys are looking for from achieving their ultimate goal. If it’s okay with you, Lute, I wanna give you a proper explanation of everything that’s happened. Do you have somewhere we could sit down and talk?”
Kaito already knew that the beastfolk had set up camp, but he decided to feign ignorance. However, the response he got was lethargic. Lute’s subordinates seemed unsure as well.
Looks like they need another push. C’mon, think. How much information can I safely give out?
The terrible truths he’d come to learn floated through his mind one after another. Each and every one of them was like a bomb with the power to shake human society to its foundations. If he let them slip carelessly, he could very well end up bringing about an international incident. Despite the fact that he was short on time, he considered his options as carefully as he could.
I really want to be able to see eye to eye with Lute and his men here.
They had no idea what was waiting at the World’s End. Given that the Butcher had brought them there, it had to be something important, but they were critically short on preparation and manpower. They didn’t even have a home base to speak of.
We need to get the beastfolk to work with us. Because most importantly, if we lose Lute, we lose our connection to Vyade Ula Forstlast.
Kaito and the others were trying to face off against the Church, a massive, influential organization. It was vital that they get someone powerful to back them up, and there was no guarantee that they’d have another chance to negotiate with the beastfolk. At worst, the world might even be destroyed before then.
I don’t want to start a war between them and the humans. But right now, I need to maintain my relationship with the beastfolk.
Kaito clenched his fists. Steeling his resolve, he opened his mouth.
Then he threw down one of the most crucial cards available to him.
As far as humanity was concerned, it was a perilous card indeed.
“There’s something I want to tell you, something the Church has been working to conceal.”
That one sentence was more than sufficient to insinuate the Church’s involvement with the beastfolk murders.
Lute’s ears twitched beneath his hood. As they did, he stared straight at Kaito and studied his expression.
Kaito responded to Lute’s piercing gold gaze with silence. The shoe was on the other foot now. This time, Kaito was the one concealing information and asking for help. And he was well aware of how self-serving he was being.
But what we’re trying to do ends up being in Lute’s best interest, too.
Kaito’s conviction stemmed from his desire to stop the world from ending. Thanks to that, he was able to avoid looking away.
The two of them stared at each other, the way they had when they’d first met.
Eventually, Lute closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them. Having made some sort of decision, he raised his arm straight out to the side.
Kaito’s shoulders twitched. However, he made no motions to flee, nor did he ready himself to defend or counterattack. Staring fixedly at him as he did, Lute abruptly turned his palm down.
All at once, his subordinates lowered their swords and bows. They relaxed their postures.
Kaito let out a sigh of relief. The tension in his body had faded away so rapidly, in fact, that his knees began to awkwardly give way. As he looked at Kaito, Lute narrowed his eyes. Then he placed his palm atop his vermilion breastplate.
As he did, he spoke in a respectful tone.
“I suppose this marks the second time, then, that we extend an invitation to the enemy of mankind.”
Bright red flames crackled up within the stone-enclosed hearth.
In a sense, seeing light and heat in that closed-off world of ice and snow was practically moving.
On top of the fire was a pot filled with scooped-up snow. After slowly melting, the clumps had transformed into shockingly pure water. Hina was hard at work shredding flower petals and pouring them in. The water boiled, and as it changed to a vibrant shade of orange, she scooped the petals back up before they could go tart. Then she replaced them with some diced-up dried fruit. Beside her, a gray wolf beastman was setting out bowls.
As the preparation of the tea steadily advanced, Lute, Kaito, and Elisabeth sat down in a circle.
They were currently resting, having made their way to one of the portable dwellings of the beastfolk’s campsite.
The inside of the ceiling above their heads was supported by an umbrellalike frame. Comprised of wood and beastfolk hides, the hut had been prepared in advance so that it could be set up by anyone. After the planks that made up its round floor had been laid out, they’d been covered twice over with rugs woven from various types of fur. According to Elisabeth, they’d been made from the pelts of powerful mages, and the patterns woven within served to ward off the cold.
Given all the measures they’d taken, the inside of the hut was surprisingly warm.
With no need to worry about the cold, Kaito and the others sat cross-legged as they talked.
“After that, we went back to Elisabeth’s castle for a bit. But the Butcher had already been…”
As he relayed his story to Lute, Kaito cast a number of furtive glances to the side.
Jeanne was sitting in the corner hugging her knees under the watchful eyes of several guards. Her hip adornments interfered with her ability to sit, so she’d done away with them, but as a result, she was practically naked from the waist down. If they hadn’t been beastfolk, her guards would have likely been at a loss for where to look. Originally, the plan had been for her to be confined to a different room altogether. But with just a few words, Jeanne herself had gotten that plan amended.
“If confining me in name alone will satisfy you, then do as you wish. But if a couple of nobodies guarding me will put your minds at ease, then you’re all a bunch of dumb shits. Looks like living till old age just ain’t in the cards for ya.”
Her words had evoked no small amount of displeasure from the beastfolk. On the other hand, she did have a point.
Locking her up would accomplish little. It took a thief to catch a thief, and it took a Torture Princess to stand up to a Torture Princess. Even so, they didn’t want to upset the beastfolk any more than they already had.
Having been given strict instructions by everyone to say nothing, Jeanne was currently sitting in silence. Next, Kaito had dispelled Vlad’s phantasm and thought back to the complaint Vlad had lodged.
“Hold on now, my dear successor. Lumping me in with her and getting rid of me as well is rather unjust, no? Respect might not be either of our strong suits, but we are different people, I’ll have you know. Hmm? ‘Did you forget all that you said back in the beastfolk village?’ Good heavens, is a man forbidden from enjoying a smart remark now and again? But very well. I am a dead man, after all; being forgotten about seems appropriate enough.”
Now that I think about it, was he being sarcastic back then? Eh, whatever.
Kaito then turned his focus back to the exposition he was giving to Lute.
At long last, the story reached the point where they’d arrived at the World’s End.
“…And so basically, we ended up flying here.”
“I…see. I must admit, it all seems rather implausible.”
Apparently at a loss for words, Lute stroked his chin. He had just gotten a huge amount of information dumped in his lap.
Kaito could certainly appreciate his bewilderment. After all, the entire story felt almost surreal.
If I hadn’t lived through it myself, I probably wouldn’t believe it right away, either.
After receiving Elisabeth’s approval, he’d gone ahead and told Lute almost everything.
Even while he was talking, he felt like he’d been spinning some sort of tall tale. Despite that, though, he unfalteringly laid out the truth. The one thing he did make sure to do, though, was stress the fact that the culprits behind the beastfolk killings were only a group of fanatics within the Church who’d taken advantage of the chaos of Godd Deos’s death to run wild, and that their wishes ran contrary to those of humanity as a whole. Furthermore, he added, he felt that they should be treated like demons and their contractors and viewed as enemies of the entire world.
If the beastfolk see that as an “act committed by humanity” and decide to retaliate, then even avoiding the world’s restructuring won’t be enough to stop the world from falling into an age of darkness. Both sides would suffer tremendous casualties.
Lute had avoided giving Kaito a firm answer to his request. Given his position, doing so made perfect sense. Even if he knew who the killers were, the choice of how to retaliate wasn’t Lute’s to make. Everything lay on the shoulders of Vyade and whichever other members of the imperial family to whom she chose to disclose the information.
Vyade’s the Wise Wolf. She holds harmony in high regard, and she desires peace for her people.
Kaito chose to believe that she wouldn’t start a war in retaliation. Before him, he could see Lute’s face growing more sullen by the minute. He looked as though he’d just bitten into a piece of meat that not even his beastfolk fangs could tear.
“The first demon slumbering in the royal underground tomb, the truth about the Saint, the Apostle yet living… It’s like something out of a myth or a fairy tale.”
“Man, tell me about it.”
“If not for the land on which I heard it, I’d have written it off as idle fancy.”
“If not for where you heard it, huh…? So you believe me?”
“It would seem I have little choice. You see, Sir Kaito, the way we arrived here, at the World’s End, was given to us abruptly and by a mysterious individual.”
Suddenly, Kaito recalled what Lute had said back when he’d been caught on the ivy that had served as guard netting. Even though he’d been astonished at the unexpected reunion, he’d heard Lute’s words loud and clear.
Back then, Lute said…
“To think that a human would make it to the World’s End. It would appear we were not the only ones invited…”
“You said you guys were ‘invited,’ right?”
“Precisely. It would probably be faster to show you the object itself. Have a look.”
Lute withdrew a piece of paper from the sack on his back. Kaito took it, then stared at it intently. Elisabeth, who was right next to him, peered at it as well. They scrunched up their brows in unison.
“This is…”
“…Aye.”
Complex magical runes were piled up along the left side of the paper. Together, they made up a formula designed to interfere with a teleportation circle. Even Kaito, who was generally ignorant when it came to magical matters, could tell how abnormally chaotic they were.
It reminded Kaito of the letter the Governor had once given them.
Back then, the formula dissolved, paper and all, after a single use.
This paper, on the other hand, had survived even after Lute and his men had teleported. Frightened by its incomprehensible construction as he was, he turned his gaze to the paper’s right side. A few words were written on it in a round scrawl.
The beginning, the middle, and the end all lie in the palm of His hand.
If you wish to reject those words, make for the World’s End.
The right shall be granted to all races impartially.
The invitation was almost reminiscent of a poem. The artwork at the end, though, stood out like a sore thumb.
A massive piece of bone-in meat was drawn on the paper. It was so impressive, it practically deserved fanfare.
“…Aye, the Butcher wrote this.”
“Yup, definitely the Butcher.”
“You can tell from so little information? Consider me impressed.”
Lute’s words rang with frank admiration. In truth, Kaito had come to that conclusion off the bone-in-meat drawing alone, but some things were better left unsaid. His expression turned meek as he handed the paper back to Lute.
After glancing over its contents again, Lute frowned.
“The first time I saw it, it seemed like some manner of practical joke. But it was impossible to write off as such, as the circumstances under which it was delivered were far too peculiar.”
Apparently, the letter had been delivered to Vyade’s third villa.
Ever since Jeanne’s invasion, Vyade had changed residences and fortified her defenses. But someone managed to not only find where she’d moved but also slip past the guard netting and invade her bedchambers.
The culprit had been a small dragon. After leaving the letter on Vyade’s pillow, he’d flapped his way out.
Afterward, one of the few beastfolk mages had immediately gotten to work analyzing the formula written on the letter. What they’d discovered was that there was an unknown set of coordinates recorded within it.
However, there were still many members of Vyade’s private army who had yet to recover from the wounds Jeanne had dealt to them.
Because of that, she’d chosen Lute, who was naturally resilient and deeply loyal, and put him and his subordinates through a round of intensive healing. While that was going on, she’d also sent out scouts to the designated location and had them bring back reports.
Then, armed with their newfound information, the squad had prepared themselves for the environment and set off.
Upon reaching the site themselves, Lute and his men had come to realize just where it was that they’d come to. Beastfolk held little piety toward God and the Saint, but even they were versed in their legends.
In this world, there exists a place that God designated as its End. A pure place, crafted from snow and water, wind and mana. A place that only those granted knowledge of its location are able to reach.
“Given everything you just told me, Sir Kaito, it follows that the first half of the letter—‘The beginning, the middle, and the end all lie in the palm of His hand. If you wish to reject those words, make for the World’s End’—refers to preventing the world from being restructured. But what is this ‘right’ it says will be granted? Why, it’s not even clear what the letter’s writer would have us do in order to attain it.”
“Yeah, it really isn’t… What does the Butcher want with all the races anyway?”
“In truth, we were at a loss for what to do after we finished setting up camp and laying out the netting. With only the letter at our disposal, we couldn’t make heads or tails of things.”
Lute scratched his head. Apparently, the arrival of Kaito’s group had been a great help to him as well. For a moment, the conversation came to a lull. Kaito and Lute crossed their arms, and Elisabeth immersed herself in thought. Silence filled the room. Then a bright voice piped up.
“Thank you all for waiting—it’s ready! Go on and drink it while it’s still hot!”
Hina was nearly prancing as she began passing out tea. Her smile was, to borrow an idiom from Kaito’s old world, like a breath of fresh air. Kaito and Lute thanked her as they received their bowls.
Kaito took a sip from his. It was as sweet as honey, and it had a fruity tanginess mixed in as well. Elisabeth, on the other hand, sat unmoving, her bowl remaining perched in her hand. Eventually, she let out a quiet murmur.
“‘The beginning, the middle, and the end all lie in the palm of His hand. If you wish to reject those words, make for the World’s End. The right shall be granted to all races impartially.’ Given that he used the phrase ‘all races,’ we can assume that, while their coordinates are unknown to us, the demi-humans must have received his invitation as well. And rejecting the notion that everything from the beginning to the end lies in God’s hand, eh?”
“What do you think it means?”
“In all likelihood, something exists here that would serve to hinder God’s restructuring of the world.”
It sounded like Elisabeth already knew what that was. Kaito’s eyes widened. The surprise of that realization almost caused him to drop his bowl. The moment before its contents spilled, though, Hina grabbed it from beside him.
“Are you all right? Not a single drop spilled on your leg, my dearest Master Kaito, did it?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, no, I’m fine. Thanks. Sorry about that.”
Kaito’s thanks was decidedly absentminded. Reflexively, he cast a glance toward Jeanne. The golden girl was as expressionless as always, but the corners of her mouth were ever so slightly curled up. She nodded, affirming his suspicions. Elisabeth went on, her voice low.
“’Tis but one thing I could imagine it to be.”
“Yeah, same.”
Kaito offered a brief agreement. But he left the role of saying it aloud to Elisabeth.
Lute leaned forward in anticipation. Elisabeth reverently opened her mouth to speak.
“Here lies—”
“Why, indeed, our revered Saint is here.”
A sweet, bell-like voice rang out.
Who the soft interjection belonged to, nobody there knew.
At some point, a petite individual clad in scarlet cloth from head to toe had taken a seat beside Kaito.
The long garment reached all the way to the floor, spreading out wide like a carpet of rose petals. Half-hidden within its folds, she was also wearing a gold-hemmed vestment of the same color. She looked to be affiliated with the Church.
The most surprising bit, though, was what lay beneath the clothes.
Their sudden intruder was a young girl. She looked to be less than ten.
She had simple flaxen hair and marvelously clear eyes the color of amber. Her short, evenly cut hair paired well with her attractively proportionate facial features. Her appearance was more than sufficient to classify her as cute. But there was just something about her.
There’s something…catastrophically broken about her.
No matter how you looked at her, she was nothing more than a sweet, simple little girl. But Kaito couldn’t dispel the strange impression he was getting from her. And the fact that she’d appeared out of nowhere without catching anyone’s attention served as proof that she wasn’t just anyone.
Due to the intrusion of a single young girl, the air in the room was stretched thin and tense.
Lute and his men reached for their swords. However, their opponent was simply too young to cut down or cross-examine. Hesitation welled up in their eyes. Hina alone assumed a battle-ready stance as she swiftly moved to protect Kaito. Jeanne merely blinked.
Still cross-legged, Elisabeth planted her chin atop her hands. Then she spoke, making no effort to hide her displeasure.
“As I suspect. And that’s why you’re here, I suppose.”
“Yes, exactly. Lovely to see you again, Elisabeth Le Fanu. I remember the last time we met, you know. You may have known my name, but you didn’t have the faintest clue as to the gravity of the role I play. You’ve matured quite splendidly, O ignorant sheep. I can hardly make light of you after you’ve come this far.”
The girl chuckled, clearly amused. Elisabeth’s brow furrowed even further. Kaito cocked his head to the side. It would appear that the two knew each other, although their relationship seemed anything but cordial.
Who is this girl? What is she?
Kaito opened his mouth, about to give voice to those questions.
Before he could, though, Elisabeth continued, spitting out her words with a look of utmost resentment plastered across her face.
“Is it really fine for you to be out of the Capital like this, Grave Keeper?”
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TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0007.txt
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Torture Princess
5
The Grave Keeper’s Zealotry
“Oh, no, it isn’t fine at all. It’s super not-fine. But we all have to do what we have to do. I serve at the pleasure of God and the Holy Mother. The tomb’s seal is broken, and the end is nigh. Soon, the living and the dead will both return to ash. We’ll be just fine leaving a handful of men to protect those worthless old kingly corpses, thank you very much. Besides, I had another part I needed to play.”
The girl’s voice was as smooth as silk. Abruptly, she stood up.
Her long scarlet cloak fluttered, and she continued her speech in an operatic tone.
“I may be the Grave Keeper, but I am also the Messenger. I am the one who blows the horn at the end of days, loudly hailing the sheep—‘behold, for she is awakened, and rejoice, for the devout have been granted a miracle.’”
Kaito squinted. Her speech was strangely verbose. Considering that she was a member of the Church and a fanatic, to boot, the actual contents of her speech themselves were fairly normal. But the fact that they were coming from someone who looked to be a ten-year-old girl was anything but. The most pressing issue, though, was how she’d addressed herself.
“…The Grave Keeper?”
Kaito thought back to the horrors he’d seen in the underground tomb.
Living people had had their pain harvested for pacification down in the cruel nursery. And the room’s gatekeeper had been a monster created by taking a divine creature, feeding it demon meat, and mixing in human parts.
The Grave Keeper had been the one responsible for all that.
As a result, Kaito had come to believe that the Grave Keeper lacked anything resembling morals or basic rationality. But the girl standing before him seemed entirely sane. That fact sent a shiver down Kaito’s spine.
You mean that the person who created that stuff, who was able to create all that stuff, knew full well what she was doing?
Kaito had assumed they had been the deeds of someone consumed by madness, but this notion was dozens of times more horrifying.
Then a sharp noise sliced through the air.
Kaito frantically looked up. When he did, he saw the tip of Lute’s sword resting on the Grave Keeper’s forehead from where he’d swung it. It looked capable of splitting her head open at any moment. However, the only response the Grave Keeper gave was a few blinks. When he spoke, Lute’s voice was full of loathing.
“Just what business does the rotting flesh of the Church have with us?”
“I’m rather disappointed. You seemed so magnanimous, yet your actions are most deplorable. Have you perhaps forgotten about the third peace treaty? Normally, we would not be so lenient toward pagans such as yourselves. But the beastfolk are not our people, nor are they even human. So the Church overlooks your sins and strives constantly to be good neighbors to you. Ah, but alas! Alas, you repay me with violence!”
“Don’t take me for a fool, girl!”
Lute howled. The pelts that made up the portable dwelling’s walls shook from the vibrations.
Kaito swallowed and looked back at Lute’s sword. Fortunately, it hadn’t broken the Grave Keeper’s skin yet. In an impressive display of rationality, Lute had carefully maintained the sword’s position.
“We know all about what you did to our people, how you slaughtered them! Our people place much higher pride in repaying debts than humans do! That, and because a friend of mine put in a good word for you, I have no desire to decry humanity as evil! But betrayal must be repaid with fangs! If you are the Grave Keeper, then you will not leave this place alive!”
“…Wherefore?”
“Wh—?”
“What right hath the likes of the third imperial princess’s private army to bellow at me?”
Her voice had a terrifyingly calm ring to it. She focused her clear, hollow gaze on Lute.
Upon seeing her apparent transformation, Kaito let a breath catch in his throat. Elisabeth gave a light scoff. Lute, like Kaito, had shock spread across his face.
The Grave Keeper continued her diatribe dispassionately in a strangely old-fashioned tone.
“Thou hast no right to take such a tone with me. What evidence doth thou hast of such killings? Didst thou misconstrue the testimony of a demon’s contractor and the Torture Princess as valid, perchance? Thou showest thy naïveté, knave.”
“You would treat me as a child?!”
“As such befits an immature mutt as thyself. A lesson, perhaps, for thee. If thou wishest to turn thy sword on the Grave Keeper, do come up with a better excuse. Vyade would surely do as such.”
“What do you know of Lady Vyade Ula Forstlast?!”
“Will it require an order ere thou understand? What an insufferable simpleton. Now, stand down.”
“Grrr—”
“Stand down, I did say!”
When Lute heard the Grave Keeper’s arrogant tone, his face contorted. His hands trembled in humiliation. A scratch appeared on the Grave Keeper’s forehead, and blood began to drip forth. Wholly unperturbed by that fact, she began speaking in another tone altogether.
“Well, if you really wanna take my head…then go on—go for it! Seeing one of the three kings have to take responsibility? Now, that sounds like a good time! And hey, don’t worry! The restructuring will be a grand repentance, a rite of absolute destruction where all sins get forgiven! Watching our races carve each other up in the meantime sounds like a blast! Everyone’s gonna die anyway, so hey, memento mori!”
This time, she spoke like a young punk, and an energetic smile spread across her face. Kaito was astounded all over again.
What the hell is wrong with her?
The Grave Keeper’s speech patterns were abnormal, and in a different way than Jeanne’s. Hers were incongruous, as though several different people were all mixed together.
The tip of Lute’s sword shook a little. The trail of blood had dripped all the way down to the Grave Keeper’s lips. In spite of that, though, her smile remained the same. Grinding his teeth, Lute raised his sword overhead.
“Hrgh!”
“Lute, no!”
Kaito called out to stop him. Killing the Grave Keeper could easily have drastic consequences. Instead of stopping, though, Lute returned his sword to its sheath. Then he collapsed cross-legged onto the pelt floor.
Kaito breathed a sigh of relief. The Grave Keeper sloppily licked at her blood. After cleaning the area around her mouth in the same manner a cat would, she spoke.
“Ah, how lovely. And the Church is quite magnanimous toward its neighbors. We will overlook your discourtesy this time.”
Man, there’s gotta be a limit to how shameless you can be.
Kaito frowned. Lute grimaced as well, but he looked around the room, seemingly having returned to his senses. His subordinates had been directing murderous rage toward the Grave Keeper as well. Even now, they still seemed poised to spring forward and go for her throat. Lute took a deep breath.
Then, having stiffened his resolve, he bowed to the Grave Keeper.
“I thank you for your generosity.”
His subordinates ground their teeth in unison. Their commanding officer had apologized, and they couldn’t let that apology go to waste. They forcibly choked back their rage. But Lute then continued, his voice practically a growl.
“But make certain you do not forget. This is the World’s End, a land that belongs to no race. If we all seek the same thing, then conflict is inevitable. And the battlefield is a place of many surprises. You may be influential, but I can make no guarantees for your safety. So take care. Remember, any old blackguard might fire the arrow that takes your head.”
“Oh yes, I’ve been aware of that for quite a long while. Why, I’ve seen it myself. That’s simply the kind of place that a battlefield is. Anyone and everyone might find themselves among the ranks of the fallen. The dead will form circles and dance among the skulls, waiting patiently atop God’s palm for the day when all returns to nothing. Such tranquility, such delight! But we are not yet on a battlefield, and I am but a simple messenger.”
The Grave Keeper gently laid her hand atop her chest.
Then, at long last, she displayed an innocent, age-appropriate smile.
“Now, let’s have a chat! Let’s talk peacefully and pastorally so that all God’s creatures can come to an understanding.”
“Have a…chat?”
Kaito let out a dumbfounded murmur. The Grave Keeper’s proposal seemed completely reasonable. But that was what made it seem so completely and utterly surreal. After all, their two camps were working under diametrically opposed goals and beliefs.
Jeanne, Kaito, and the others were trying to protect and preserve the world as it was. That was the salvation they were trying to attain.
The Grave Keeper and the rest of the fanatics, on the other hand, were trying to bring about the world’s restructuring. That was the salvation they were trying to attain.
Most conflicts had some sort of common ground the two sides could agree on. But here, no such thing existed.
There was no way for them to meet halfway. The chasm that lay between them was vast and deep.
Given the situation, then, what could there be to talk about?
“’Twould be meaningless. And surely you know that, Grave Keeper. Exchanging words would amount to naught but a waste of time.”
“Oh my, you state that so assertively. It saddens my heart, it does.”
“You lot endorse the restructuring, and we seek survival. The world will either perish or not perish. The two options leave no room for compromise, which presents us with a rare instance of pure, unadulterated opposition.”
Elisabeth gave voice to the same thoughts that had been going through Kaito’s head.
Still languidly resting her chin atop her palms and crossed legs, she bluntly continued.
“Mutual understanding is impossible for us. One or the other shall have to die.”
“Oh my, I should hope not. We at least have room to talk things over. Elisabeth Le Fanu, you especially should have little reason to want the world to continue.”
The Grave Keeper smiled. Elisabeth sullenly arched an eyebrow.
Kaito immediately picked up on what the Grave Keeper was trying to say.
Elisabeth’s going to be burned at the stake. So it shouldn’t really matter to her whether or not the world goes on… But wait. If we manage to prevent the world from being restructured and show everyone how corrupt the Church is, could we maybe get her sentence reduced?
It was the first time that Kaito had considered that possibility. But the Grave Keeper wasn’t finished yet.
“Let us assume for a moment that the restructuring fails to occur and that you are all successful in borrowing Vyade Ula Forstlast’s wisdom and denounce the Church. A purge would take place within it, to be certain. And Godd Deos’s equilibrium sect would rise to power once more. Even so, the first demon’s existence would still be hidden from the public, and the truth would be concealed once more. Why, I would bet on it. You all would choose to remain silent, and Vyade would, as well.”
Elisabeth offered no response to the Grave Keeper’s bold declaration. Although he was about to vehemently object, Kaito ultimately held his tongue.
The Grave Keeper was right.
She’s right… I won’t say anything. And Elisabeth’s probably the same.
After all, what would happen if he talked?
If he publicly announced the existence of the first demon, the world would descend into chaos. Destroying the very foundation of one of the world’s most prominent religions tended to have that effect. The Church, its followers, some of the aristocrats, and even the royal family would become the subjects of intense hate and distrust. History would be marked by an age of executions and torture.
The will of the masses could transform into a ruthless killing machine. Who knows just how many would hang?
Furthermore, the war against the demons had dealt a grave blow to the world’s economy. If society lost their leaders as well, it would plunge into an unprecedented state of disorder. And if a famine or plague hit, the disaster would be inconceivable.
It was all too easy to imagine. Which left them with but a single choice.
They couldn’t say anything.
“In short, even if your actions allow the world to persist, no grand accolades await you. For you yourselves will be the ones covering it up. Which all comes to mean that Torture Princess’s fate will be unchanged.”
If we made some sort of backroom deal with the Church… No, that wouldn’t work. Elisabeth herself doesn’t want amnesty, and the masses would call relentlessly for the Torture Princess’s head.
The sheep would come to a stop right before plunging into the flames. But then, unknowingly, they would burn their own savior to death.
Kaito clenched his fists. If that was the case, then the issue became which end was more honorable: the world’s restructuring or burning at the stake.
“As I said but moments ago, the restructuring will be a grand repentance. When the end arrives, all your sins will be forgiven. The time has come to ‘pray that God will be your salvation.’ Doesn’t that sound pleasant? It’s a more beautiful end than burning to death, at any rate. The Lord will finally reward you for your efforts.”
The Grave Keeper smiled, as though giving Elisabeth her blessings. As she did, Kaito was assailed by a particular doubt.
True, the Torture Princess is a grand sinner. But…
The masses had no clue how much good she’d done, nor did they even try to learn. That was simply the kind of creatures they were. They listened only to what they wanted to hear and saw only what they wanted to see.
Flocks of sheep were, fundamentally, stupid. And that was the way things ought to be.
…But isn’t that a sin in and of itself?
The ignorant had no right to cast blame, did they? Their entire way of life was fundamentally wrong, wasn’t it? Then didn’t that make the restructuring just a way to rectify that?
“Is that what you think? Then you’re an imbecile.”
A razor-sharp voice forcefully smashed through Kaito’s reverie. With a start, he came back to his senses.
Before him, Elisabeth still sat with her chin in her hands.
“Your premise is flawed, to start. The masses were not the ones who decided to cast judgment on me. ’Twas I. And grand accolades are the furthest thing from my mind. Your restructuring may well be more pleasant for me, but I care naught. In fact, ’tis quite the opposite.”
Elisabeth’s gaze bored down on the Grave Keeper. Her black nails glinted as she whispered.
“Any who say my sins can be forgiven shall die by my hands. ’Tis all there is to it.”
Elisabeth ran her tongue over her red lips. Then, with a sweet smile, the peerless sinner continued.
“Your cajolery has backfired on you, Grave Keeper. Your death shall come swiftly.”
That’s right. Elisabeth is strong.
Kaito had just been forcibly reminded of that fact. Her resolve came completely from within. He had yet to come to terms with that, nor did he fully accept it. But the way she refused to fear death was definitely admirable. Now that he thought about it rationally, Kaito, too, was opposed to the restructuring.
He certainly didn’t want Elisabeth to burn at the stake. But he saw no reason to endorse a plan that involved everyone in the world dying, either. Calling death “salvation” was nothing but base sophistry.
At the same time, Kaito realized something odd. The Grave Keeper’s description was mad from its very premise.
Most of the people who want the restructuring to happen believe that the pious faithful will remain in the new world.
At least, that was what he’d thought. But the Grave Keeper was different.
The whole time, she’d clearly been working under the assumption that all humanity would perish.
“What…the hell?”
Words of doubt spilled forth from Kaito’s lips. The Grave Keeper cocked her head to the side, curious as to what he was trying to say.
As he looked back at the young girl, the words practically leaped from Kaito’s mouth.
“You…you know that the restructuring is gonna kill everyone?”
“Oh no, not everyone. Our revered Saint will surely remain.”
“Still—you know? But then…how the hell could you endorse that?”
Kaito gave voice to his genuine doubts. Believing that their piety would ultimately be rewarded with a miracle and would grant them survival was at least something he could comprehend. And as twisted as it was, looking for validation of one’s devoutness and righteousness made logical sense as a desire.
But if they knew full well that they, too, would be reduced to nothing…
That kind of devotion is just too empty.
That would mean that all their wishes and prayers had been for nothing. Not a single thing they asked of God would end up meaning a thing. Not a single person would be saved.
“Wouldn’t that just make everything meaningless?”
“Why should we seek results from prayer?”
Her voice had a strange, dry ring to it.
Kaito’s eyes went wide. Ignoring his shock, the young girl made a firm declaration.
“That would be blasphemy.”
Kaito had nothing to follow up with. He had no idea what to say. But then, suddenly, a smile spread across the Grave Keeper’s face. To his surprise, her voice took on a gentler tone.
“Ah, I see. It rather makes sense that a man from another world would have difficulty understanding. We know full well of the truth behind our world, you see. That is why we believe. God and the Saint have been seeking this restructuring for many ages. With that being the case, then our annihilation, too, is a thing of joy.”
“What the hell do you—?”
“If God deems our existence a mistake, then that is what is just and proper.”
The Grave Keeper’s voice was solemn. She spoke calmly, as though proselytizing to an ignorant sheep.
“The next world will be God’s kingdom, a perfect, ideal land. And oh, what a marvelous thing that will be. Now is the time for us to repay the Saint for the love she so freely gave us. ‘All glory to God.’ ‘The miracle is upon us.’ ‘There is no need for us here.’ That is what it means to have faith.”
Kaito shuddered. The hair on Lute’s tail stood up.
Now Kaito finally realized.
So she’s one of the “shepherds who would gladly cast themselves into the fire just to catch a glimpse of a miracle” Jeanne was talking about.
At the same time, he ruminated on what Izabella had said: that the Church’s doctrine was necessary.
“Even now, I still hold that the Church’s teachings are wonderful. Using faith as a way to support a life lived nobly and properly is an honorable thing. People are weak. They need something to believe in.”
This girl wasn’t using faith to support herself. She was using herself to support faith. She didn’t even believe that her prayers would reach anyone. She sought nothing from God.
And if she was told to die, she would simply die. That was the nature of her love.
Kaito parted his trembling lips. Still shaking, he asked his question.
“How can you even think like that? You’re so young, but you’re—”
“Enough from you, Kaito. Asking such a thing of the Grave Keeper is nigh comical. Now you’re the one with the flawed premise.”
Sounding annoyed, Elisabeth interjected. She gestured rudely toward the Grave Keeper with her chin.
When she spoke of the adorable young girl she was pointing at, her voice was tinged with loathing.
“The Grave Keeper inherits the memories and personality of every Grave Keeper before them. However, the rite of succession is too great a burden for a baby’s mind to bear. As a result, the personalities blend together, and a kind of natural selection occurs. In the end, all that remains is a single common denominator: fervent piety toward God and the Saint. To put it in a few words, she’s akin to zealotry personified.”
She looks sane, but I guess she really, really isn’t.
Kaito could see that clearly. At the same time, he was reminded once more of the Church’s deep-rooted perversion. Preserving the Grave Keeper’s memories and personality was no doubt a necessary step for them to take in continuing to conceal the deadly secret that was the first demon’s existence. People who could maintain their faith after seeing that thing were probably rarer than rare. But that had resulted in her.
You know, that stuff Izabella said is probably closer to how the Church is normally supposed to be.
But instead, they’d gotten the whole world involved and had sunk deeper and deeper into their mistakes.
What had gone wrong? How had things gotten to this point? No matter how hard he thought about it, no satisfying answer was forthcoming. Ever since the world had been created, or perhaps even before then, thin layers of madness had slowly been trying to engulf everything. But even with the situation as tumultuous as it was, the trigger that had initiated the collapse was abundantly clear. Everything had started when the Butcher had sold Vlad that demon meat.
They really did need to talk to the Butcher directly. With that thought in mind, Kaito asked a new question.
“Where are you guys keeping the Butcher?”
The Grave Keeper completely ignored him, instead tilting her head to the side.
Still surrounded by Lute’s subordinates, Jeanne was sitting coolly on the floor. The Grave Keeper’s gaze shifted to Jeanne’s defenseless profile. Then, in a gentle voice, she called out to the golden Torture Princess.
“I’ve heard reports on you, you know. The other Torture Princess. The girl who proclaims herself the maiden of salvation, who rejects God’s will, who would pour poisoned wine upon the Saint’s lips. You’re a fool of a wholly different sort than we… Although I also hear that despite that mechanical impression you give, you took quite a liking to our Izabella Vicker.”
“So I did. She was my first love, you see.”
Jeanne’s response was instant.
The next moment, the eyes of everyone present save the Grave Keeper went wide.
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Excuse me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
The brief comment she’d given may as well have been a bomb.
Upon hearing the words first love, Kaito, Elisabeth, Hina, and even Lute reeled. Embarrassed by their reactions, they all then shut up, and an indescribable silence descended upon the room.
Other than the Grave Keeper, whose smile was unchanged, they all wore truly peculiar expressions.
Then Jeanne gave her continuation in the same emotionless voice as always.
“I’m sorry. That was a joke.”
“A joke?! I thought you were being serious! Now is hardly the time to be saying such things!”
Elisabeth slammed her fist onto the ground, and it sank gently into the bear pelt. Kaito rapidly nodded his assent. Jeanne’s so-called “joke” was tone-deaf in the extreme. However, she wasn’t done talking yet.
“However, I do feel that it was something similar. But hey, beats me! I was chosen by the alchemists to save the world and raised solely for that purpose. I was a princess and a sacrifice. I was created by them, and I destroyed them. For that was my contract with them. Neither of us resented the other. However, I had little direct contact with humans, so I was concerned as how best to interact with the stray sheep until I obtained a servant. So I went to some bandits in a neighboring mountain, snatched ’em up, and learned from their example.”
“Wait, so that’s why your speech gets vulgar at random intervals?!”
One mystery had been solved, at least. Now they knew the context behind the fact that Jeanne’s word choice would regularly take a turn for the incredibly coarse. But what they didn’t know was why she’d chosen then to share that seemingly irrelevant piece of information with them. Ignoring Kaito’s expression of bewilderment, Jeanne kept speaking.
“So that was my first time.”
“Your first time…what?”
“My first time meeting an ‘ordinary human’ like that.”
This time, Jeanne answered Kaito’s question. For a moment, her rose eyes went vacant.
Then she whispered in an uncharacteristically hazy voice.
“My li’l miss was foolish…but she was gallant, and she had honor.”
That simple sentence hit Kaito like a train. He gazed at her profile and ruminated.
Her interactions with people had been severely limited. That was what had made Jeanne the way she was today, into the maiden of salvation. She never looked back at those she’d trampled over, nor did she spare a thought for her victims. But if a single person she perceived differently existed, then…
If that’s the case, then…that basically is a first love, isn’t it?
Kaito almost said it aloud, but he held his tongue. Pointing it out now wouldn’t do them any good.
Izabella was currently far away from them. She’d carried out her will and returned to the Church. And it was anyone’s guess as to what had happened to her after being captured by the group of executioner-like people.
No, wait. There is one person.
There was a chance that the Grave Keeper knew whether or not Izabella was safe.
Kaito instinctively turned to look at her. As he did, a sleazy smile spread across her youthful face.
Upon seeing it, a chill ran down his spine. Frantically, he tried to ask about Izabella’s well-being. But Jeanne spoke first, as though to stop him. Her voice was coolheaded to the last.
“Even so, trying to use my li’l miss as bait to negotiate with me is a waste of your time, fanatic. I’m too late, ain’t I?! Jackasses like you always go by the same damn playbook!”
“Wait, hold on, ‘too late’? You mean Izabella is…?”
Kaito’s face went pale. The next moment, Izabella’s smiling face flashed vividly across his mind. White light had been exploding at her back, and she’d been smiling. Even with the cruel scars etched across her face, she’d still been beautiful.
Izabella is…
A chuckle slipped unbidden from the Grave Keeper’s mouth.
Kaito reflexively made to grab at her vestment’s collar.
Skreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Before he could, though, a shrill noise filled the room. As it did, the leather flap at the camp’s entrance violently flapped inward.
Everyone turned to look. Heaving a stately sigh, the Grave Keeper rose to her feet.
Her crimson cloak trailed behind her as she silently walked to the entranceway and unfastened its leather knot. When she rolled it up, an orb flew inside, along with a mysterious, cutting wind.
The orb was one of the Church’s communication devices. The wings on its sides softly fell out as it alighted on the Grave Keeper’s palm. Runes ran across its surface, ones far more intricate than those Kaito was familiar with.
It looked like the message the Grave Keeper had just received had been encrypted. After she read it, her eyes narrowed.
“Good work out there. Now convey this to the lookout: ‘It’s Yah Llodl all over again.’”
The Grave Keeper gently tossed up the communication device. A fresh pair of wings sprouted from its sides.
Then they flapped, and the orb took off. After watching it get swallowed up by the snowscape, the Grave Keeper returned the entrance to the way she’d found it. Turning back around, she placed a hand atop her chest.
Her scarlet cloak fluttered as she gave a deep bow to those assembled.
“I’m afraid I must take my leave. It’s quite unfortunate, but there are some rather troubling matters I find myself needing to attend to. While it was perhaps too short to glean much importance from, I believe that our little rendezvous was a meaningful one. Pagan hunts and inquisitions are so ineffective, and they leave such poor legacies, after all. Not even I wish to turn all the world’s creatures against me. Instead, I simply pray that you all will find it in yourselves to have a change of heart, even if it’s but a small one.”
The Grave Keeper’s words were chosen carefully. The scariest thing, though, was the fact that the sheer compassion dripping from her voice seemed entirely heartfelt. She placed her small palms together and closed her eyes, as though she was praying.
“‘You are free to act as you will. But pray that God shall be your salvation. For the beginning, the middle, and the end all lie in the palm of His hand.’ The blessings of God and the Saint on you all.”
Then the Grave Keeper raised her head and offered them a sweet smile. Not a single person returned it. Seemingly unhurt by that fact, though, she began walking. The beastfolk stared daggers at her as she rolled up the leather door once more. However, she stopped for a moment before heading out into the snowscape.
“But worry not. We’ll be enemies from here on out, just as you wish.”
With that quiet murmur, she began walking again. The entrance flapped back to a rest.
And with that, she was gone.
It feels like a typhoon just passed through.
Kaito surveyed the room in a daze. It looked no different than it had before, but it felt as though it had been draped in a thick film. That was just how badly the entity known as the Grave Keeper had thrown the mood into disarray. As he tried to shake off a numbing sense of fatigue, Kaito turned his thoughts to Izabella’s well-being.
So…what happened to her?
The Grave Keeper’s twisted smile flashed through his mind. He recognized that sadistic smile; he’d seen it time and time again back when he was alive.
He opened his mouth to speak. But before he could put his tenacious sense of unease into words, Elisabeth stood up.
“We’re leaving, Kaito. A clear target has presented itself to us.”
“A target? You mean we’re gonna tail the Grave Keeper or something?”
If they did that, they’d probably be able to find out where the Church had made their camp. But they also ran the risk of running into the Church’s main force. Kaito chose to leave those concerns implicit. However, Elisabeth shook her head as she replied.
“She knows me not, and as such, she was negligent. Ever since Godd Deos’s time, I’ve been carefully stealing secret records from the Church and breaking their cipher. As such, I was able to read that last message.”
“Wait, seriously?”
“Heh, seeing a code would make any mage wish to crack it. And I had my suspicions that the day such knowledge would become useful would arrive. And now it has. Rather impressive of me, if I do say so myself.”
As she sang her own praises, Elisabeth chugged down the rest of the tea that she’d been continuing to hold the whole time. Once she was finished, Hina, who was waiting on standby, took the empty bowl.
“Good work, Hina. ’Twas splendid as always. Your talents never disappoint.”
“You’re too kind, Lady Elisabeth. Your words fill me with such joy. But, um, if I may ask, what were the contents of the transmission?”
Hina asked this question in a nervous tone. Their next actions as a group hinged on the answer. Everyone swallowed as they waited for Elisabeth’s reply. Its contents, however, were unexpected.
“‘The cage in headquarters was opened. The lookouts were unconscious, struck in the back of the head.’ In other words…”
The scene he’d seen back at Elisabeth’s castle spontaneously flashed before Kaito’s eyes.
The Butcher had been able to unlock even the Torture Princess’s own Gibbet. There was no way any man-made cage could contain him. And what would he do after he escaped the cage?
Elisabeth went on, her voice echoing Kaito’s thoughts exactly.
“At present, the Butcher’s whereabouts are unknown. It would seem that he’s fled somewhere.”
|
TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0008.txt
| "Torture Princess\n\n\n\n\n\n6\nSearching for Answers\nNow that they knew that the Butcher had escap(...TRUNCATED) |
TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0009.txt
| "Torture Princess\n\n\n\n\n\n7\nHer First Love\n“You all were perfectly able to pursue me. Thus, t(...TRUNCATED) |
TorturePrincess_1190
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section-0010.txt
| "Torture Princess\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThere existed something that Kaito Sena had never thought(...TRUNCATED) |
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