After confirming what had happened, his lips curled into a wicked grin.
The Grand Marquis’s neck was snapped horizontally. Blood spurted out of his torn carotid artery with every heartbeat. A massive hound was resting its leg lightly atop the nape of his neck, as though holding down a plaything.
The black dog, whose eyes burned with hellfire and who had attacked the Grand Marquis from behind, grinned as it bit his body from the head down. The Kaiser then tossed the Grand Marquis casually into the air and caught him in its mouth. As though it were eating a snack, the Kaiser crunched down on the Grand Marquis’s body.
Kaito finally listed the “one other thing” he’d mentioned earlier.
“Like Vlad, I can call upon the Kaiser for help.”
“The Kai…ser? Why is the Kaiser here…? Damn you, Vlad! Vlad, are you listening? No…you should be dead. But this situation! Surely you must have made a copy of your soul or something, no? Oh, this is just dreadful… What in the blazes have you done?!”
The Grand King was screaming. The fact that she’d immediately suspected Vlad, despite the fact that he was dead, went to show just how well she knew her old friend. In response to her cries, Kaito drew the clear stone from his pocket.
…Is he planning on coming out?
As he wondered, Kaito ran magical energy through the stone. The next moment, black feathers and azure rose petals swirled, and an aristocratic phantom appeared nonchalantly.
As he stood grandly atop the battlefield, he gave a light shrug.
“Well, well, it’s been a while, Grand King. I’ve been hearing quite a bit about you. You’ve been running a bit wild, haven’t you? Good to see you’re doing well.”
“Is…is that all you have to say?”
“Hmm? That was a fairly conventional greeting, no?”
“What do you think you’re doing, Vlad?! Allowing Elisabeth’s servant to form a contract with the Kaiser?! Because of you, demons are fighting other demons! You’ve gone mad!”
“Well now, this is a surprise. I’d rather not think that anyone who made a contract with a demon was could possibly be considered sane.”
Vlad stroked his chin in contemplation. The Grand King clutched her broken fan even tighter as her lips quivered in hatred. Seeing her bald-faced indignation, Vlad nodded once and loudly clapped his hands together.
“While it seems that you’re rather displeased, I ask that you do overlook this! After all, I currently find myself sealed within a stone, nothing more than a pitiable replica of a soul—indeed, an inferior version of what ‘I’ once was. Given my current situation, I’m more loathe than ever to give up sources of entertainment.”
“Even so, you—you wretch—you mean to say you’re betraying me?”
“Betrayal is such a rude way to put it, I should think. When I was alive, I put a great deal of thought into the future—and of course, into you as part of that—as I commanded the demons. However, you refused to rescue me, instead choosing to live freely and value yourself above all else. I believe most would describe that as breaking off our friendship. And more power to you! People should live their own lives. I died, you lived, and you chose to use our brethren to your own ends. And it was your right to do as such. But for you to do so and then accuse me of betrayal for simply living as I see fit is rather vexing.”
“You abomination, that’s your logic?!”
“I mean, just look at the boy!”
After having carefully laying out his shameless reasoning, Vlad suddenly pointed at Kaito.
He then began boasting, like a breeder who’d just found a good puppy. His expression seemed practically innocent.
“If Kaito Sena descends into evil, that would be splendid—he will no doubt become my successor. However, if he sees his obstinance through, then my investment will have been for naught. It’s an all-or-nothing gamble. I was never much of a gambler in life, but this is rather entertainingly mindless fun. If there ends up being a victim or two or several along the way, then so be it. Indulging and stealing are at the core of demon philosophy, are they not?”
“You plan to steal from me, too, then?”
“You pierced your own comrades with your needles when you could have simply taken over in my stead and unified them. Don’t you think it’s odd, then, that you so fervently wish not to be betrayed? And it’s not as if I intended to betray you—as a side note, shall I tell you my true feelings on the matter?”
Vlad looked at the Grand King with eyes full of affection. When he spoke, the camaraderie in his voice was probably the exact same as it had been back in the days that they had livened up balls together.
“I would love if you let go of your grief and died to your heart’s content for me.”
“Oh, I’m well aware… Oh yes, I knew, Vlad; I always knew! I knew that was the kind of man you were! That’s right… Ever since then, there hasn’t been a single person deserving of my trust…! Oh, my poor, ugly gardener…”
The words tumbled out of the Grand King’s mouth. Deep hatred and a complicated sadness crossed her face.
“…Why did you have to die on me?”
Her lip trembled a little bit.
With the Grand Marquis and Marquis having met their untimely ends, the Grand King was out of pieces to play. She had no demons left that she could force to spit out their hearts.
From her perspective, although the foe before her was far lower-class then she was, he was endowed with the Kaiser, whose abilities would normally be far greater than hers. However, her expression suddenly did a complete about-face.
She laughed proudly and then grabbed the collar of her dress with both hands.
“Fine, then—good, evil, it’s all the same.”
Then the Grand King pulled her scarlet dress down. Her bountiful breasts popped out. As her surviving underlings began raising their voices in excitement, she revealed her ample bust. However, her flesh started making a ghastly creaking noise, caving in, and dissolving.
Her naked body, which looked like that of a goddess or a personification of beauty, was breaking down.
Her skin rotted, her flesh peeled off in chunks, and her ribs became exposed. Her atrocious transformation spread. From within the frame of her crinoline dress, her legs rapidly became slender and skeletal as well.
As she shed her unseemly flesh, what remained of the Grand King’s lips curled into a sweet smile.
“No matter how I amuse myself, live out my days, and die— that’s all there is to the world. That’s all there is to me. As such, I shall smile till the end. Oh, and lover boy? Make no mistake…”
For the first time, the Grand King turned her gaze to Kaito. Her scarlet eyes pierced through him. Her cheeks continued to erode, and her soft lips had split vertically and were dripping away.
But even though only her skull remained, her voice called out from somewhere and made her declaration.
“…You may have become a decent man, but the fact remains that I hold the advantage.”
She laughed. By this point, her top half was completely skeletal. Suddenly, her scarlet dress began expanding. Her skeleton and the cloth grew in sync. Her rings popped off, and she loudly crushed her palanquin.
A few of her underlings got caught beneath it and were crushed to death. Their screams were ecstatic. The surviving underlings fell to their knees and prostrated themselves.
What remained was a massive skeleton wearing a fluttering crimson skirt, its birdcage-like frame peeking out.
Her form was grotesque, yet somehow, she retained her elegance.
While releasing an aura that would drive fear into any who saw her, her teeth rattled and clattered.
“Now, lover boy, rejoice. I, Fiore, the Grand King, have forsaken my unparalleled, world-famous beauty in order to face you.”
The skeleton gave a refined bow as she made her declaration. Still holding Hina, Kaito’s whole body went tense. Vlad, who was standing beside him, shrugged and spoke in an exasperated tone.
&
nbsp; “Forsaken her beauty, eh…? Now see, this is what makes women so troublesome.”
“Y’know, Vlad… I’m pretty sure this happened because you pissed her off.”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, perish the thought. This was bound to happen sooner or later. So what do you intend to do? The Grand King’s power is mind control. In a one-on-one battle, her power is far below that of the Kaiser. However, that was only the case when I was his master. With you at the helm, the Kaiser is fairly clearly inferior—oh, careful there.”
“Cease your falsehoods—you say I would lose to that fool?”
The black dog’s jaws gouged Vlad’s back once more. Ignoring their little comedy routine, Kaito gently set Hina on the ground. Before she could say anything, he snapped his fingers.
The strengthened bones from earlier danced and then formed a protective hemisphere around her. Hina frantically called out:
“Master Kaito, I can still—”
Her voice faded to a mumble as she was enclosed in bone. After casting a lingering, affectionate gaze toward the bone wall, Kaito wrenched his eyes free.
Shaking his head, Vlad continued speaking.
“Well then, shall we put an end to the tomfoolery and get serious for a moment? The only one who could hope to defeat the Grand King in that state would be Elisabeth, if she were freed from Sacrifice…so it seems there’s little left for me to accomplish here. Best of luck. Go give it your all.”
“Wait, you’re just gonna rile her up and then bail?”
Declining to respond to Kaito’s exasperated question, Vlad transformed into black feathers and azure flower petals and vanished. The Grand King puffed up her chest and cast her arms wide.
Kaito snapped his fingers. Abruptly, the executioner’s blade that decapitated the Marquis flew through the air. It split into four and then spread out around Kaito.
Kaito carefully stopped them and gave his orders to the Kaiser.
“Sorry, but I’m going to have to devote all my attention to protecting myself. You should just focus on snapping her spine. If we can’t break her stance, we’re doomed.”
“Now then—I look forward to seeing if you can defend against her attacks or not, boy. Mind the needles. If she pierces your neck, I shall eat you myself.”
With a “geh-heh-heh,” the Kaiser left behind a human laugh as he raced across the ground.
The Kaiser then circled around to the Grand King’s back and leaped. However, the cloth of her crinoline dress suddenly moved and took on the form of a human woman. Then, like a shadowgraph or a puppet show, it attacked the Kaiser.
He took a sharp turn to avoid the fabric twining around him and then calmly dug his claws into the scarlet curtain. But even after being shredded, it just took on a new, slender human form.
“Time for chaos! Time to play!”
As it did, the Grand King’s main body swung its arms. Her sharp fingers bore down on Kaito.
Kaito snapped his fingers a second time and then a third. As if driven by unseen threads, the executioner’s ax’s blades slid forward and loudly repelled the Grand King’s five slashing fingers.
It sounded like a sword fight, and the noise echoed across the battlefield.
As though he were playing the keyboard, Kaito focused intently on turning back the fingers’ terrifyingly fast yet elegant attacks. He repelled a finger flying toward his right arm, blocked an attack from overhead, and diverted a finger that had circled around behind him. At the same time, he had to swipe away thin needles that were aiming for the nape of his neck with his beastly left arm. However, at the end of the day, Kaito was no more than human.
If you were to ask him, he would say that he was carrying out his defense with obstinance alone. His level of battle experience was overwhelmingly lacking.
Seeing that Kaito was already at his limit, the Grand King opened her mouth wide. Her teeth flew out and then exploded at Kaito’s feet. His right leg got blown off. However, darkness and azure petals swirled and reattached it before he could lose too much blood. As they did, the Kaiser grabbed him by the collar in his jaws and jumped.
“—!”
“I shan’t permit you to die in as ungainly a manner as that! You fool! Dying to one as inferior as the Grand King is a disgrace!”
The Kaiser’s rebuke drilled into his skull. A bombardment followed after them, and Kaito blocked it with his blades. However, all he was doing was defending. Like it or not, he realized that he had yet to land a single blow.
To make matters worse, while the Grand King had abandoned her human form, she still wasn’t fighting seriously. She rattled her jaw to provoke Kaito.
“How adorable, lover boy—where is that charming demeanor of yours? When are you going to show me whatever it was that drove that girl so mad for you? I don’t like to be kept waiting, you know.”
“At this rate, I’m done for—I guess people have limits, after all.”
“Oh my, you’re giving up already? In that case, do you plan to let me make you cry?”
The Grand King asked her question in a voice oozing with honey. It was unclear if she was using magic for the sole purpose of giving herself a voice, but now that she’d taken on her demonic form and lost her vocal cords, her whispers shook the air.
Kaito briefly shook his head at her blatant provocation.
“Nah, I’ve got no reason to cry. I’ve already got a woman I admire, and I’ve already got a woman I love.”
“My, I’m jealous. What’s your plan, then, lover boy?”
The Grand King asked her question while reaching out her arms and cleaving the earth in an attempt to crush Kaito and the Kaiser together, raising great clouds of dust as she did. The Kaiser leaped, barely avoiding her hand, and put some distance between them and the Grand King.
“Well then, boy, do as you please.”
The Kaiser opened his mouth and hurled Kaito away. Kaito almost crashed into the ground but was able to catch himself in a cloud of azure petals at the last minute. He stood upon solid earth once more.
Right before the Grand King could crush him flat, he spread his arms wide like a stage magician.
“I plan to do this.”
Then the executioner’s ax’s blade he was controlling sliced through his chest.
Blood spilled forth.
A massive amount of blood.
Kaito dropped to his knee as he endured the incredible pain that shot through him. The sensation was almost nostalgic.
Blood and viscera sloshed out of the wound in his chest he had made himself. His blood was tinged with heat, and it transformed into flower petals—this time, crimson—and danced into the air.
As she followed the trail of crimson up into the air with her hollow eye sockets, the Grand King let out a puzzled voice.
“You, what are you…? A suicide attack? No, that’s not it. What is this?”
The petals ignored her, flying off in an unexpected direction.
As they flitted through the air, they left the Grand King behind and eventually blew their way as one toward the fortified castle.
As though announcing the arrival of spring, the stream of petals entered a bedroom through its cutout window. The way the crimson petals surged together resembled cherry blossoms raining down from their trees.
At their destination—the top of a bed—slept a girl boasting peerless beauty.
The Torture Princess was in a deep, deep slumber. A single petal caressed her neck with a sharp motion and left a sizable cut on her pale throat.
Then the petals flooded the wound. They rushed into her body, one by one.
It was the exact same as the way Elisabeth had once forcibly given Kaito a blood transfusion upon Clueless’s torture rack at the Church. Kaito’s blood was flowing into her body.
Far away, down on the battlefield, Kaito donned a thin smile, his stomach still torn open.
“…Finally, huh?”
This was his true objective, the real reason he’d formed his contract with the Kaiser.
Kaito had realized a few key facts.
First of all, Sacrifice was a spell that dammed up the flow of mana in one’s body, rendering it unable to be freely used. But the mana itself was still there.
Second, the only way to dispel Sacrifice was to drive blood with mana more powerful than Elisabeth’s into her body.
Third, the blood running through Kaito’s body was Elisabeth’s, and thanks to his contract with the Kaiser, its power had been increased.
Eventually, almost all the crimson petals swarming around her pale neck had vanished.
The few remaining petals rested upon her face. Suddenly, the runes covering her skin began to crawl. After writhing like a snake in agony, they began gently fading away.
Before long, they were completely gone.
Elisabeth’s body was freed.
However, she was still asleep. Then suddenly, her lips parted slightly.
With a small puff, Elisabeth sent the flower petals that had been resting atop her face fluttering into the air. She slowly reached out a finger and traced the cut on her neck, closing it.
Then she scooped up a single petal and pressed it lightly against her lips.
Kaito’s blood gradually made her lips flush.
Finally, as though she’d awoken from a century-long slumber, Elisabeth Le Fanu opened her eyes.
She was silent for a moment.
Eventually, she made a deliberate noise and removed her finger from her lips.
Then she spoke in a calm, gentle whisper.
“What a foolish man. After this, it’s the Ducking Stool for him.”
The next moment, the Torture Princess vanished from atop the bed.
All that remained were a few crimson flower petals.
A storm had arrived. Anyone would have thought that.
After all, if not a storm, what else could it have possibly been?
Immense shadows and innumerable crimson flower petals whipped about, far more than what had appeared alongside Kaito. They magnificently, floridly painted over the space.
The maelstrom made a loud, rumbling noise as they forcefully permeated the space. It looked as though a thousand roses had scattered, like ten thousand flowers had been torn to pieces.
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 2 Page 19