Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 2

by Keishi Ayasato

  Elisabeth prepared to mercilessly click her heels a second time.

  Returning to his senses, Kaito grabbed her shoulder tight.

  “Elisabeth, cut it out! They’re just ordinary people!”

  “Indeed, and when ordinary people find themselves invited to a demon’s banquet, what do you think becomes of them?”

  “What are you talking—?”

  “Look at what they were eating. Look closely.”

  Spurred on by Elisabeth’s calm remark, Kaito ran his gaze across the round tables and then found himself at a loss for words.

  Even under the rancid downpour of blood, the banquet’s guests were still gorging themselves. A plump man was shoving muffins into his mouth. He chewed on them with pleasure and then pressed down on his stomach after swallowing.

  “Rgh… Ah, ah… Gah, gah, arrrrrrrrrgh!”

  His eyes wide and blood and phlegm streaming from his nose, the man regurgitated a sickening substance.

  Red vomit poured down upon the food.

  Kaito had finally ascertained the true identity of the red sauce.

  “…’Tis their own dissolved organs.”

  Without hesitation, Elisabeth voiced the conclusion he’d just reached.

  Racked with agony, the banquet’s guests vomited up their own organs, which had been dissolved by the powerful poison in the food. However, unable to resist the addictive nature of the demon’s feast, they continued gorging on the food along with their own ruined entrails.

  The banquet laid out before them was Hell masquerading as Heaven.

  “’Tis too late to treat any of them. The poison itself is incurable. Death is a mercy.”

  Elisabeth made her declaration and then clicked her heels.

  The Saint of Beheadings obeyed the Torture Princess’s cold command and swung its arms.

  The heads of all in attendance went flying. The spray of blood painted the ceiling a vivid shade of red.

  A number of heads rolled across the ground like fruits, and the headless corpses collapsed.

  Though Kaito desperately wanted to beg Elisabeth to stop, he restrained himself. As if in consideration for his feelings, Hina gently touched his arm.

  Elisabeth returned the saint to petals and then strode forth among the corpses.

  “Cease your dawdling. We need to seek out the Governor.”

  “Yeah, I know. We gotta find him—find him so we can kill him.”

  His voice thick with rage, Kaito followed after Elisabeth. The banquet now over, none raised a voice to stop them.

  In order to kill the Governor, the three of them began making their rounds through the manor.

  It didn’t take long for them to realize that although the Governor ranked low among the fourteen, his deeds were no less horrifying. The Hell he had created didn’t end at the entrance hall but continued on throughout the manor.

  “This is messed up. I had no idea that it was gonna be this bad.”

  After confirming the situation within, that was all Kaito could say.

  In the dining hall, people covered in the Governor’s spices were eating one another, all of them on the verge of death. The kitchen featured a man afflicted by poison, dead after cutting open his own chest and slurping at his innards in search of food. Down in the dungeon, a young mother had committed suicide after leaving a note detailing how she’d eaten her own baby. A young girl was slumped over a couch, her organs shredded after she’d eaten pastries filled with nails. And the courtyard’s pool was filled with the bodies of children who had drowned in a sea of cake and suffocated.

  As they made their way up the main stairs to the second floor, Elisabeth responded.

  “The Governor is looked down upon as the weakest of the demons, his power even less suited for combat than the Knight’s. He takes his frustration out on humans and schemes to gather their pain in order to grow stronger… He’s akin to a child who tries to grow taller by taking in nutrients.”

  “That’s all kinds of screwed up.”

  “From the bottom of my heart, I agree with Master Kaito.”

  Hearing Hina’s words, Kaito nodded mutely.

  His rage had been so overwhelming that he’d achieved a strange calm. He searched for the Governor in absolute silence. But while every turn revealed a new victim, the most important young man was nowhere to be seen.

  After going out of his way to give the Torture Princess an invitation, the Governor had vanished.

  Where…where is he? Huh?

  As he walked across the second-story cloister surrounding the entrance hall, Kaito scrunched up his face.

  He smelled something rotten.

  The hallway was filled with the fragrance of food, but the difference in that stench was conspicuous. The rest of the rooms and hallways on the second floor had the sweet smell of pastries and the savory scent of meat to cover up the stink of the corpses. But the smell drifting from the corner room on the second floor alone refused to be covered up.

  Just before, Kaito and the others had confirmed where the smell was coming from as they made their rounds.

  There was a single room on the second floor blanketed in the stench of decaying flesh.

  Elisabeth had declared that it was most likely storing food designated for people with repulsive tastes. However, the room’s existence tugged at Kaito’s mind. His rage-enhanced mind selected freely from its available information, and the Butcher’s words floated to the surface of his thoughts.

  “He had a peculiar smell about him. The smell of foul meat.”

  “…The smell of foul meat.”

  As he parroted the words, Kaito broke into a run. Not pausing to tell the others where he was going, he rounded one of the cloister’s corners and made for a section of the floor, a room that wasn’t connected to any other hallway. Like a faithful hound, Hina followed warily behind him. However, sensing that Kaito had thought of something, she said nothing.

  When he opened the door, a putrid stench poured out into the hallway.

  “Good God, this room!”

  Kaito stood in the entryway of a lavish bedroom.

  At its center, a massive heap of decaying meat was sinking into the canopy bed.

  The sheets were stained a dark red and had been hardened stiff by the rotting fat, and the soiled room showed no signs of life. The window shutters were closed tight. But Kaito squinted as he took in the room’s odd atmosphere.

  Looking closer, he could see that the top of the mass of half-melted flesh was moving up and down. The lump of meat was breathing. Beneath its transparent surface, stagnant blood could be seen pumping through its veins.

  Kaito took a step back in horror.

  The mass of rotting meat…was alive.

  “Foul…meat… Which means that’s…”

  “Master Kaito, what’s gotten into you? What is this room?”

  “What do you think you’re doing? This room had naught but rotting meat in it.”

  Elisabeth had caught up with them. In response to their questions, Kaito shook his head.

  Pointing at the hideous mass of flesh in front of them, he answered in a low groan.

  “…That’s the Governor.”

  “What?”

  “That pile of rotting meat—it’s the Governor!”

  Elisabeth pushed Kaito aside as she dashed forward. As Hina ushered him farther back, Elisabeth stabbed the mass with her finger. Her black fingernail dug deep in the flesh.

  The mass quivered a little but offered no other reaction. Elisabeth pulled her finger free.

  As she fiddled with the dark blood dripping from the wound with her finger, Elisabeth spoke in a puzzled voice.

  “’Tis true; this thing certainly has demonic power running through it.”

  “So it really is him?”

  “Indeed… But the question then becomes why? When he visited the castle just now, he appeared as a hale young man, taking on a human form as contractors to demons are wont to do. Only when they release their power do
they reveal their true, hideous forms.”

  “Is that what that mass of flesh is?”

  “Nay, it’s precisely because that isn’t the case that the situation is so odd… I’ve seen the Governor’s true form before. ’Tis a gray titan. Hideous as it is, it’s no mass of flesh… Is this the remains of the titan crushing in on itself? Its power is running wild… Perhaps the result of being unable to maintain its ego? What on earth happened here?”

  Elisabeth crossed her arms, deep in thought.

  Suddenly, the mass stirred.

  Something that had been stuck to its skin fell off the bit resembling the nape of its neck. While it was discolored from the putrefaction fluids, it was still recognizable as the scarlet shawl that had been wrapped around the nape of his neck.

  Beneath where the stained cloth had peeled off from, something silver glistened.

  A decorative needle modeled after a brain was stuck deep in the nape of the Governor’s neck.

  “That needle…”

  As Elisabeth murmured, the heap of rotting flesh began loudly breaking apart.

  The noise it made was horrible, and as it crumbled, the rotting meat—the Governor—opened its eyes.

  He looked up at Elisabeth, his eyes like those of a dead fish, and then opened his huge mouth wide and let out a monstrous roar. As he did, his remaining teeth tumbled out.

  Elisabeth snapped her fingers. Iron stakes appeared and then whizzed through the air toward the Governor’s open mouth. Beside them, something dark and red slipped out from within the mass of flesh.

  Hina, not letting her guard down for a moment, quickly brandished the ax end of her halberd. Then she spoke.

  “…What?”

  It was something nobody could have expected.

  It was the Governor’s heart.

  Elisabeth’s stakes were unerring in their aim, and they impaled the Governor and ripped through his back. As they did, Hina tried to cut the heart in two, but it ruptured on its own before she could.

  The dark red viscera pitifully disintegrated.

  Then the blood flowing from within it transformed into hundreds of arms. The arms dodged around Hina as they grabbed for Elisabeth.

  “Wh—?!”

  The arms lovingly embraced Elisabeth and squeezed her tight. The discolored poison blood sank into her pale skin. Runes, similar to the Church’s shackles, carved their way into her flesh.

  Elisabeth, eyes wide, collapsed to the floor. Hina propped up her shoulder.

  “…Hah, hah…”

  “Lady Elisabeth! Hang in there!”

  “Elisabeth!”

  Kaito ran to her side. Meanwhile, the Governor, having lost his heart and been run through by stakes, wept uncontrollably as he breathed his last. The rotting meat stopped moving and then transformed into a large quantity of black feathers.

  He vomited up his own heart?

  Perplexed by the situation, Kaito knelt beside Elisabeth as Hina held her shoulder tighter. Elisabeth spoke in a quiet voice, her sullied skin trembling like that of a violated maiden.

  “Rgh… Ah… This…this…can’t be…”

  Then they heard a rattling noise as the sound of chains rang out.

  “Sacrifice—a spell that, in exchange for a demon’s heart, can partially seal away demonic powers.”

  Kaito went stiff and then spun around.

  But even before he could confirm who was there, deep inside he already knew.

  Something terrible was coming.

  A woman with the majesty of a king was ascending the stairs.

  She wore a crinoline dress that made luxurious use of scarlet fabric. Her skirt’s front half was left intentionally bare, leaving the unrefined birdcage-like frame visible. Within, her seductive, unnaturally white legs were on display.

  A large group of collared underlings followed behind her, their straitjackets covering even their faces. Chains extended from their overly tight collars, all connecting to the rings the woman was wearing.

  With her scarlet eyes and dress, she looked like a roaring flame when she laughed.

  “The Governor’s manor is dreadful, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a fitting end for that child, dying as a heap of meat in the middle of his own playground? I wanted to crush his heart, which is why I invited you all here. Did you enjoy yourselves? If you did, I’m sure he’d have been pleased. Buffoonery is buffoonery precisely because it inspires laughter, no?”

  “You witch… You used the heart of a demon, one of your own comrades?”

  Elisabeth, still in agony, posed the question in a voice dripping with hatred.

  The scarlet woman nodded brazenly and seemingly proud rather than ashamed.

  “Precisely, Elisabeth. Up until now, I’d respected the lives of my comrades out of regard for my dear friend Vlad. But with his death, there will be no more of that. By consuming the lives of the weaker demons, I can use them for particularly effective attacks. Isn’t that just splendid? …Oh my, how rude of me. I became so caught up in idle chatter, I neglected to introduce myself. My sincerest apologies.”

  The beautiful woman smiled with all the composure and magnanimity of a queen. She gave an elegant curtsy.

  As she did, she pulled on the chains connecting to her rings, causing the people behind her to bow deeply.

  “I am the Grand King, Fiore.”

  Her introduction complete, she raised her head and smiled. Kaito and Hina stood in awe of her elegant demeanor and overwhelming presence. Even so, they tried to protect Elisabeth when the Grand King made her declaration.

  “Playtime is over, little princess—now, the chaos begins.”

  2

  The Kaiser’s Contractor

  Elisabeth’s castle sat atop a desolate hill, surrounded on all sides by dense forest. It was constructed firmly out of unworked stone, making it feel less like a castle and more like a fortress.

  Within one of its rooms—a cold room wholly unfit for relaxation—Elisabeth lay in shallow slumber atop a finely constructed yet modest bed. Sweat beaded across her forehead.

  Hina took a cloth cooled with ice water and gently wiped the sweat away.

  As he leaned against the hard stone wall, Kaito observed Elisabeth’s condition.

  She seemed frail, a far cry from her normal haughty, prideful behavior. She resembled a child, sick in bed with a fever. But compared to how she was a moment ago, her breathing was much more stable.

  Hina blinked her emerald-green eyes as she turned to face Kaito. He silently gestured with his chin, beckoning her into the hallway. Careful not to make noise, the two of them left the room.

  After waiting for Hina to close the door behind them, Kaito asked her a question.

  “So what exactly is wrong with Elisabeth?”

  “Well… I’m quite ashamed to admit it, but while I have stored within me all modern medical knowledge, I lack specialized treatment functions, so any hypothesis I could make would be imprecise at—”

  “That’s fine. I’m positive your opinion is far more useful than mine. Please let me know what’s going on with her.”

  “As you wish… It appears that Lady Elisabeth is suffering from a dramatic decline in the amount of mana within her body.”

  Kaito nodded, Hina’s assessment aligning with his suspicions.

  Having learned the basics of magecraft, he was better than he’d been before at understanding other people’s magical powers. Normally, Elisabeth gave off a sinister pressure as sharp as rose thorns, so cutting that even she herself was tormented by it. But now she seemed like a doll who’d had its insides scooped out.

  “While Lady Elisabeth freely wields magic strong enough to defeat demons, her body consumes mana to protect itself in order to withstand its overuse. As a result, her current situation is no doubt quite painful for her… Oh!”

  Suddenly, they heard a quiet groaning from inside the room. Hina and Kaito frantically rushed back in. Elisabeth was shaking her head and taking ragged breaths. Hina hurried to
her side.

  “Lady Elisabeth, my sincerest apologies. I’m back now.”

  Little by little, Hina poured a decoction into Elisabeth’s half-open mouth. Kaito placed the towel back in the ice water, wrung it out, and then passed it to Hina. She thanked him and then wiped down Elisabeth’s slender neck.

  There, too, ominous tracks pulsed. The red marring her pale flesh looked almost like an extra set of blood vessels beneath her skin.

  …I’ve never seen her in this much pain… Dammit.

  Biting his lip in frustration at his own powerlessness, Kaito thought back to the events from before she’d fallen asleep.

  “La Guillotine, Saint of Beheadings!”

  Propped up by Kaito and Hina, Elisabeth faced the Grand King and called out.

  Dripping with cold sweat, she had summoned the torture device. Crimson flower petals and darkness swirled, and the white saint appeared to protect the three of them. It closed its arms and then opened them and set loose its rectangular blade. The Grand King forewent defense, simply yanking on one of the chains in her hand. One of her underlings came flying forward.

  He became the Grand King’s shield, and his head and neck went their separate ways.

  It was almost comical how abruptly his straitjacket-covered head rolled across the floor.

  “Wh—?!”

  As Kaito reeled in shock, Hina made her move. With flowing movements, she vanished from his side. Dropping as low as she possibly could, she slid into the Grand King’s blind spot and swung her halberd diagonally upward. Not even looking at the blade, the Grand King pulled on her chains again.

  Another underling flew forward, and another underling lost his head, which rolled across the floor.

  Tired of waiting for their chains to be pulled, the rest of the underlings swayed from side to side.

  “Tch!”

  Her attack repelled, Hina decided not to pursue and instead fell back. The Grand King laughed uncomfortably.