She swallowed and put a hand to her neck.
Her throat felt sticky and parched, so she went to get a drink. She covered up with a heavy robe that was lying nearby, popped her slippers on, and left the room.
She was Hilma, chief of the drug-trafficking division, and this building was her base in the royal capital. Her subordinates numbered in the dozens and should have been busy at work, but it was so quiet it seemed like no one was around.
She walked down the hall feeling uncertain. The facility was always quiet unless nobles were visiting. But isn’t this too quiet?
The reason she invited nobles to the mansion was to forge connections.
In noble families, the heir generally inherited the house rather late. By the time their turn came, many were already over thirty.
Until then, they had no choice but to receive money from the current head of the household to lead their lives—despite being married and having children. That was why she invited those heirs to her property and entertained them.
She supplied alcohol, women, and drugs to them and whispered things in their ears to tickle their pride. She brought them together with peers of similar rank to give them a sense of camaraderie. By entertaining them like that, she was able to build friendly relationships.
And after those nobles took over their houses, it was her turn to reap a bountiful harvest. If they tried to cut her off, she’d give them the stick. If they made efforts to be more useful to her, she’d give them the carrot. And so she wormed her way further into noble society.
She walked down the quiet hallway to get some water.
It wasn’t bad that it was quiet. She preferred silence over a noisy commotion. She didn’t even attend the nobles’ wild parties, but she was fed up with them anyway. Still, this lull was terribly strange. The chilly stillness made her feel like she was the only one in the mansion.
“…What’s going on?”
There was no way even her guards would go off somewhere without informing her first. She considered raising her voice to call for someone, but she realized giving away her position would be a bad idea if this was an unusual situation. She considered returning to her room and going back to bed, but that seemed too passive.
Anyone who couldn’t act when the moment of truth arrived would be eaten up like kibble. That was her belief, and it was precisely because of it that she had been able to ascend the social ladder from high-class prostitute to where she was now.
She glanced both ways along the hallway. Sure enough, there was no one, so she set off again.
Her sixth sense told her to head for a secret room only she and very few others knew about. The room contained several enchanted items, some jewels, and an escape route. This building was her main base in the royal capital, but she had others. It might be a good idea to escape to one of them.
As she walked stealthily down the hall, she noticed something.
“What…is this?” She spoke in spite of herself, though in a low voice.
She’d discovered something bizarre out the window.
The thin glass pane was covered with layer upon layer of ivy. As a result, barely any light was coming through. She tried to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge.
Confused, she looked to the other windows in the hallway. They were all blocked with thick vines as well.
“What? Who the heck…?”
It definitely hadn’t been like this when she’d gone to bed. The plants couldn’t possibly have grown so much in only an hour. It had to be magic.
So who was the perpetrator, and what was their aim?
She had no idea. But she understood that she was in an extremely bad spot.
“Dammit!” Cursing, she started to run. She didn’t have the wherewithal to worry about the hem of her robe. She just had to get to the secret room as fast as possible.
When she reached the staircase, she looked at the first floor. As expected, it was silent.
She made her way carefully down the stairs by the moonlight filtering through gaps in the ivy, grateful that the thick carpet muffled her footsteps.
“!” When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was so startled she gasped.
There was someone standing in the hallway staring at her. The figure melted into the shadows, not because it was lurking there like a thief might but purely because of its dark skin. It was a dark elf, and its two sparkling, differently colored eyes seemed to float in the blackness.
Her visitor let the black cloth around it fall to the ground. The clothes beneath were those of a girl. She had a black staff in her hand and was looking Hilma’s way with upturned eyes.
The secret room is right behind this mysterious girl. Recalling the floor plan of the mansion, Hilma inched nervously forward, determined.
How great it would be if one of the nobles just brought her as a joke. But she quickly rejected that naive idea.
When she’d heard Coccodor had been captured, she wasn’t sure how the powers that be would react, so she’d been making preparations to evacuate to a safe location. She had no subordinates who, under those circumstances, would bring an outsider here without reporting it to her.
“Hey, little miss—,” she began, then furrowed her brow.
As a former high-class prostitute, she’d met a large variety of people from every walk of life. Her experience told her that the elf before her was a boy, not a girl.
His outfit was extremely elaborate, definitely not the kind an ordinary person could get their hands on. It seemed to be the sort of luxury good even Hilma didn’t have.
Dark elves used to live in the Tove Woodlands but were rarely seen in the kingdom these days. Now one was standing before her cross-dressing in expensive clothing.
If everything hadn’t felt so odd, she would have assumed he was a slave brought by some nobleman to satisfy his self-indulgent tastes.
“…What am I doing here?” he asked.
She slowly approached him in a way she hoped would cause as little alarm as possible.
“A-auntie, are you in charge of this mansion?”
Being referred to as an older lady didn’t bother her. To such a little dark elf, that was likely how a woman her age appeared to be.
“N—,” she started to say but stopped. She had a bad feeling.
She’d always prized these sparks of intuition. She’d lived her life trusting her hunches far more than common sense. Even when common sense had betrayed her, her hunches never had.
“Yes! Yes, I am in charge here!”
“O-oh, I see. Good.” The boy smiled. It was so pure that even under these circumstances, the desire to defile this clean creature flared up in her breast.
“S-so I guess it wasn’t a bad idea to ask those people.”
As if in response to the boy’s remark, a nearby door opened. A woman slowly appeared from inside. She looked like a girl wearing an odd maid uniform, but instead of the scent of perfume, there was a stench of blood and gore hanging around her.
Hilma put a hand over her mouth and suppressed a shriek.
A man’s arm dangled from the woman’s hand. Torn muscle fibers were visible, as if the whole thing had been ripped out of his shoulder socket.
“Wh-what…?”
“U-umm, er, it seems like some people are coming to attack this mansion, and there’s a lot we have to do before they get here, so I brought her along.”
“Don’t mind meeee. I got to eat my fiiiilll for the first time in a whiiiile, so I’m quite satisfiiiied.” She spoke, although her mouth didn’t move. That was extremely bizarre, but there were several even more pressing questions. Most shudder inducing was the mystery of what exactly she’d eaten her fill of. Hilma had a guess, but she didn’t want to believe it.
It was in that state of mind that she asked, “Hey, hey, a-are you gonna eat me, too?”
“Huh? Oh, uh, no. You’re different, Auntie.”
It provided no relief. She had a hunch—that an even crueler fate awaited her.
>
“H-heyyy, kid. Wanna have some fun?”
She slid the robe she was wearing off one shoulder.
She took pride in her body. When she had been a high-class prostitute, sleeping with her had cost an extraordinary sum. And even after that, she had maintained her charms and didn’t put on any extra fat. She was sure she could still get even the most antisocial guy in the mood, so she was confident she could easily arouse the interest of a child.
But there was no sign of any special feeling in the boy’s eyes.
She acknowledged that she wasn’t as attractive as the maid next to him. Still, despite having retired, she was a pro. She could get even the most halfhearted guy to burn up with desire.
She approached him slowly, so as not to cause alarm, with the smooth, graceful twists of a snake.
She didn’t sense any desire coming from the boy.
So she changed tactics. She slowly reached around his neck—and activated a magic item.
Tattoo of Viper.
The snake tattoos on each of her hands fleshed out, raised their heads, and struck at the boy’s body. If they bit him with their potent neurotoxin, he would immediately go convulsing into the next world. Hilma had no way to fight, so this was her trump card.
The snakes lashed out quick as whips, but the boy grabbed them dexterously and crushed them in his fists without a moment’s hesitation.
The Tattoos of Viper slithered back into her arms. The snakes themselves had been killed, so she wouldn’t be able to use them until a day had passed for recovery.
Now in the worst possible scenario—having taken hostile action without achieving anything—Hilma staggered backward. The most horrible thing, however, was that the boy’s expression hadn’t changed at all the entire time. He didn’t seem flustered after being attacked, and he didn’t look hostile.
“E-er…I’ll be…uh…going, then.”
Where? The moment the question entered her mind, a sharp pain shot through her knee. It hurt so badly she couldn’t stand, and she collapsed on the floor.
“Ahhhhhhhhh!” She let out an agonized cry and, in a cold sweat from the pain, looked at her knee—which she regretted. “My, my, my leeeeeeeg!”
Her left leg was bent the wrong way. Not only that, but her bones poked through the bright-red flesh.
Sobbing from the unbelievable pain, she thought to reach out a hand to hold it but hesitated. She was scared to touch it.
It was at that moment that the boy seized her by the hair—and set off walking.
He dragged her away with strength that didn’t match his boyish appearance. The young dark elf paid no attention to the sound of more than a few of her hairs tearing free from the scalp in his grasp.
“Ow! Ow! Stop it!”
In response to Hilma’s shrieks, the boy just gave her a quick glance. He didn’t stop walking. “W-we have to hurry!”
2
4 Late Fire Moon (September) 10:20 PM
After raiding the building, Entoma Vasilissa Zeta went out the door.
She gathered all the papers that had stuck to her feet, balled them up, and tossed them into the building.
Their original plan had been to dispose of any people inside, gather any important documents and items of value, and withdraw. It would have been best to leave no trace, like a bird leaving its nest, but they didn’t have time to go through the papers; since they simply seized everything, the aftermath made it look like a burglar had broken in.
Still, that in and of itself wasn’t a problem. Demiurge, who had sent Entoma and Mare out in the first place, had mentioned it as a possibility. The problem was that they were running far behind schedule.
None of the demons who had accompanied the pair from Nazarick were around anymore. Mare had captured the most important person in the building and gone ahead to their meeting before Entoma. The minions had taken the mountain of stuff responsible for the delay in their schedule and left.
Yes. The reason their calculations had gotten thrown off was that they’d discovered the basement just as it was time to withdraw. And it had been jam-packed with smuggled goods and what appeared to be illegal drugs.
Collecting all that had been slow going.
For one thing, the basement was split into a number of small rooms, and the valuable-looking items had been hidden among a huge mess of other things. A forest really did do a great job hiding trees. It was impossible for Entoma and the demons to carry out every single item, so they had to dive into the veritable jungle of loot and search for the best “wood.”
If the woman Mare took had been present at the time, they probably could have figured it out much faster, but they’d already finished with her by then.
Entoma and the demons had decided to inspect the items and cram the garbage into one of the rooms. Even for a crew with far superior musculature than humans, it was still an annoying job. Nevertheless, it was worth doing, and they had most likely succeeded in hauling all the valuable goods out of the basement.
Entoma, who was the last one remaining after acting as overseer, looked up at the night sky and wiped her forehead in that special motion reserved for those who have done their job. Not a single drop of sweat had formed, but the gesture reflected how she felt.
“Okay, thennn. Everyooooone, hurry up and haul that stuuuuuff.”
At Entoma’s orders, a bunch of heavily laden insects larger than humans flew off into the night sky. They were giant beetles she’d summoned with a bug tamer ability.
With the deep, loud drone of beating wings, they soared straight across the sky toward their destination.
After seeing off the insects and their items, Entoma remembered the object in her hand.
“Oh, I didn’t eat thissss. Oh nooooo, that won’t doooo.” She gave herself a theatrical thump on the head and brought the severed arm of the man up beneath her lower jaw. With a few sloppy scarfing noises, she whittled the arm down, and her throat moved. “Urp.” Her dainty belch was accompanied by the smell of blood and gore.
“The soft fatty meat of womennnnnn and the lean meat of childrennnnn are both tasty, but for a diet, the muscly meat of a man is bessssst.”
After consuming some of the flesh while deftly avoiding the bones, she chucked the arm back into the building.
“Delicioussss. Thank you for the meal.” She made a little bow at the mansion and then began departing for the next destination detailed in her orders, albeit later than planned. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps, however, when a voice called out to stop her.
“Hey there, nice evening, ain’t it?”
“…I wonder about thaaaaat. Doesn’t seem like a very good evening for you at alllll.”
It was hard to tell if the human who had slowly come into the open was a man or a woman. While the newcomer had the likeness of a woman somewhat, that hulking physique led Entoma to the conclusion that “male” might be the correct guess.
“What’re you doing out here?”
“Taking a walllllk.”
“…What’re you munchin’ on? Looks like you’re enjoying it.”
“Meeeeeat.”
“…A human’s?”
“Yessssss. Human meeeeat.”
Something cold had emerged in the man-woman’s tone, but Entoma didn’t worry. She wasn’t about to consider some human’s feelings. If the creatures bothered her, she would stomp them; if they didn’t bother her, she would ignore them; if she got hungry, she would catch and eat them—she thought so little of their kind, it would have been strange to care about the feelings of one of them.
“Uh-huh. So a monster appears? I didn’t know the Eight Fingers were keeping pet monsters. Well, it seems like they screwed up with the keeping part.”
The man-woman slowly held up a war pick. That was when Entoma began to feel troubled.
“Heyyyy, how about weeee just decide we never saw each other?”
A strange expression appeared on the man-woman’s face. It was probably surprise at hearing her proposa
l.
“I’mmmmm also here for worrrrrk, so fighting youuuuu would be a painnnn. Besiiiiides, I’m full right nowwww.”
“…Sorry. I may not look it, but I’m one of the kingdom’s top adventurers. I can’t just be all ‘Oh, I see’ and let a people-eating monster off the hook. We can’t have you existing in the human world.”
“Ah, what a bother. But you’re stronnnng. So maybe I’ll eat you laterrrr.”
Entoma fixed her eyes on the man-woman head-on for the first time.
He-she appeared to be a pure warrior.
Hrmm, must be pretty stronnnng.
Entoma wasn’t a warrior by trade, so she couldn’t gauge the strength of her opponents very well. Still, she could tell this one outmatched her.
“Rahhhgh!” The man-woman charged, swinging the war pick.
Entoma gracefully dodged. But the war pick pursuing her abruptly changed direction mid-swing. It wasn’t a fluid motion making use of centrifugal momentum but a brute-force swing that altered the weapon’s trajectory with overpowering muscular strength.
While dodging again, Entoma activated a skill.
“Eh? You’re just gonna keep running away?”
The war pick swung around. The wind it whipped up by passing Entoma’s head ruffled her fake hair.
“Hmmm. You must love whooshing that thing around, huhhh?”
In response to the taunt, she heard a “Tch.” Just as she was activating another skill, the war pick came down, but she dodged it easily. With no target left to strike, its momentum drove the weapon into the ground.
Entoma scoffed at the repetitive, workman-like attacks. Her face didn’t move, but as her opponent, the human could sense her ridicule clearly.
The next second, however, Entoma realized that the man-woman had done something possible only with overpowering strength: aim for that careless moment.
“Break!”
The earth around the war pick in the ground shattered all at once. No, the cobblestones collapsed. It was as if a massive earthquake had occurred in just that one spot. For the first time, Entoma couldn’t maintain her stance. Meanwhile her opponent, through the effect of what magic item, she didn’t know, remained perfectly stable.
The Men of the Kingdom Part II Page 13