The Men of the Kingdom Part I

by Kugane Maruyama

  “Ooh…”

  There was sticky red blood clinging to his fist as he slowly brought it up.

  Staffan was on top of a naked woman.

  Her face was hugely swollen, and here and there, the skin was mottled from internal bleeding. Her nose was crushed, and the blood that had run from it had coagulated there. Her lips and eyelids were seriously inflamed, and her once-pleasing features were now nowhere to be seen. The signs of internal bleeding on her body were not so bad compared to her face. The sheets around the pair were also discolored with blood.

  Up until a little while ago, the woman had been desperately holding up her arms to shield her face, but they now flopped limply on the bed. The way her hair was spread out over the sheets made it look like she was floating in water.

  “Hey! What’s wrong? Done already? Huh?”

  It didn’t seem like she could possibly be conscious.

  Staffan raised his fist and brought it down.

  He slammed it into her cheek and the bone beneath it, and pain shot through his hand.

  He grimaced.

  “Tch! That hurt, bitch!”

  In his anger, he hit her again.

  The bed creaked, and there was a splorting noise. The woman’s skin, swollen like a ball, had popped, and he got blood on his fist. Fresh, thick red blood spattered the sheets, dyeing them crimson.

  “…Urgh.” The woman no longer moved even when she was struck, and her body barely responded.

  This was enough beating to be life-threatening. The reason she was still alive was not because Staffan was going easy on her; it was because the mattress was absorbing some of the shock. If she had been taking these blows on the hard floor, she probably would have died already.

  But Staffan wasn’t hitting with all his strength because he knew about the effects of the mattress—it was because he knew that even if the woman died, it was not a problem. If he paid a certain amount for the disposal fee, the matter would be considered settled.

  In fact, he’d already beaten several women to death at this establishment.

  It was possible that thanks to the dent in his pocketbook from those accumulating disposal fees, Staffan might have been unconsciously holding back a little, after all.

  Gazing at the woman’s body, which didn’t so much as twitch, he licked his lips.

  This brothel was the best place to satisfy special kinks. In a normal brothel, this sort of thing would never be allowed. Well, maybe it would have been, but Staffan didn’t know.

  It had been great when there were slaves.

  Slaves were assets, so there was a tendency to view those who used them roughly with disdain, in the same way that people earned contempt for spending their fortunes in showy, wasteful ways.

  But for Staffan and others with peculiar fetishes, slaves were the quickest way to satisfy their lust. With that avenue taken from him, all Staffan could do was come to a place like this for relief. What would have become of him if he hadn’t found out about this?

  Unable to bear the desire, he probably would have committed a crime and been imprisoned.

  He couldn’t thank the noble—his master—enough for introducing him to this brothel. Although in exchange, he had to use his authority to do his master’s illicit biddings.

  “I’m grateful to you, master.”

  There was a calm in his eyes. It might have been hard to believe considering his fetish and personality, but toward his master, and only his master, he was truly, deeply grateful.

  But…

  A flame steadily grew in the pit of his stomach—fury.

  The emotion he felt toward the woman responsible for the loss of slaves as an outlet for his desire.

  “That little bitch!” His face flushed with rage, and his eyes took on a bloody tinge.

  He saw the face of the princess he was supposed to be serving superimposed over the woman he was straddling. He concentrated the irritation building inside him in his fist and hit her.

  With the sound of flesh being pounded, fresh blood went flying.

  “I wonder how amazing it would feel to crush her face…”

  He punched the woman’s face again and again.

  Perhaps it was due to a cut inside her mouth from the impact of his fist on a tooth, but a surprising amount of blood suddenly flooded out of her burst lip.

  Now she only twitched when he hit her.

  “Phew…” After the flurry of punches, Staffan’s chest was heaving. His forehead and body were covered in an oily sheen of sweat.

  Staffan looked down at the woman beneath him. She’d gone past looking awful, even half-dead, and was a few steps away from lifeless. She was a puppet with broken strings.

  Staffan swallowed audibly.

  Nothing aroused him as much as sex with a woman beaten ragged. The more beautiful she was before the beating, the better. Nothing satisfied his sadistic hunger more than destroying beauty.

  “How great would it feel to do this to her?”

  He remembered the haughty face of the mistress of the house he visited earlier. She had a beauty equal to that of the princess, and the princess was said to be the loveliest woman in all the kingdom.

  Of course, he knew he’d never get to do anything with a woman like that. The only women who would satisfy his fetish were the ones who had fallen far enough in life to end up in this brothel and were one step from being thrown away.

  For a woman that gorgeous, one hell of a noble would have to spend one hell of a fortune to buy her and keep her locked up in his domain so word of the sale wouldn’t get out.

  “I’d like to hit a woman like that someday…beat her to death.”

  How fun, how satisfying that would be.

  Needless to say, it was an impossible dream.

  He glanced at the woman beneath him. Her bare breast was moving faintly up and down. Confirming that, he curled his lips into a nasty smile.

  He clutched at her breasts, and they deformed to extremes under his grip.

  She didn’t react at all. She was no longer in a state where she could register even such excessive pain. The only difference between the woman beneath him and a doll at this point was that she was soft.

  But Staffan found this lack of resistance ever so slightly dissatisfying.

  Help.

  Forgive me.

  I’m sorry.

  Oh, stop.

  He heard the woman’s cries again in the back of his mind.

  Should I have fucked her while she was still screaming?

  Feeling a hint of regret, Staffan continued kneading her chest.

  Most of the women who ended up in this brothel were mentally absent, their spirits broken. Considering that, he could say the woman he’d been with today had been on the normal side.

  “Was she like that, too?”

  The woman he recalled was Tsuare. He didn’t want to know what fate the man who’d let her get away had met.

  But he couldn’t hold back the sneer that came over his face when he thought of the butler he’d met at that mansion earlier.

  The woman had been fucked by any number of men, possibly even some women and nonhumans—how could she possibly be worth protecting? It was all he could do to not burst out laughing at how that butler had seemed ready to shell out several hundred gold pieces for her.

  “Now that I think of it, that runaway screamed nicely, too.” He sifted through his memories and recalled her shrieks. Yes, she’d been fairly normal for someone he’d been with at this brothel.

  Staffan grinned and moved to satisfy his animal desire. He grabbed the women’s legs and spread them wide. He could see the bones in them, they were so thin, and his hands could wrap completely around them.

  He shifted himself into the space of her gaping nether regions.

  Then he grasped his member, now hard with desire, and—

  He heard a click, and the door slowly opened.

  “—The hell?!” When Staffan looked toward the door, there was an old man he’d se
en somewhere before. He realized immediately who it was: the butler from that mansion.

  The old man—Sebas—strode casually into the room, his steps clicking against the floor. His movements were so natural Staffan was speechless.

  What is the butler from that mansion doing here? Why is he coming into this room? Faced with a situation he could not account for, his mind went blank.

  Sebas stood next to Staffan. After glancing at the woman beneath him, he fixed him with a cold gaze.

  “You like hitting?”

  “Huh?!”

  The strange atmosphere compelled Staffan to stand up and move to grab his clothes.

  But Sebas went into action faster than he could.

  There was a smack, and Staffan’s field of vision lurched violently.

  A beat later he felt his right cheek growing hot as a throbbing pain spread across it.

  He’d been hit—no, in this case slapped was the word—he finally realized.

  “You pastarrrd. You think you can—”

  The smack against his cheek rang out again. And it didn’t stop.

  Left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right…

  “Zdap it!”

  Staffan was used to hitting, not being hit, and tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

  He brought both hands up to guard his face as he retreated.

  Both his cheeks were flushed with stinging pain.

  “You pasdawd! You zink you can ged away wizzis?”

  Talking made his red, swollen cheeks hurt.

  “I can’t?”

  “Of couwse nod! You idiod! Do you know phoo I am?”

  “Merely a fool.”

  Easily closing the distance Staffan had created, Sebas created the same sound from his cheek. Smack!

  “Sdap it! Pleazsdap!”

  Staffan shielded his cheeks like a child being beaten by a parent.

  He liked violence, but the people he’d been hitting had always been helpless. Sebas may have looked like an old man, but Staffan was too scared to hit him. He couldn’t strike anyone unless he was absolutely sure they wouldn’t strike back.

  Perhaps having inferred as much, Sebas seemed to lose interest in him and turned to the woman.

  “This is simply awful…”

  Staffan slipped past Sebas as he stood next to the woman.

  “Idiod!”

  His mind was feverish. What a foolish old man.

  I’ll call everyone in this building, and they’ll teach him a lesson. He’s not going to get off easy after doing all this to me. I’ll give him a good dose of fear and suffering.

  In the back of his mind was the butler’s master, that beautiful woman.

  A subordinate’s failure is the master’s responsibility. I’ll have both master and servant take responsibility for this pain. I’ll make them understand exactly who he hit!

  His flabby stomach jiggled up and down as he jumped out the door.

  “Somepodyyy! Issomepody dewre?” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

  If he screamed, some employee or another should have come immediately.

  But that expectation was betrayed. He realized it when he went into the corridor.

  It was completely silent.

  Not a soul was there.

  Staffan, stark naked, glanced around anxiously.

  The peculiar atmosphere in the corridor—the silence—terrified him.

  There were doors to either side, but it was only natural that no one would come out of those. The rooms of this establishment, for people with peculiar—or even dangerous—fetishes, were completely soundproof.

  But there was no way the employees couldn’t hear him.

  When he’d been led to this room earlier, he’d seen a number of them. They were all hardy, well-built men who Sebas’s old body would be no match for.

  “Why awn’t you coming?”

  “Because they’re either dead or unconscious,” a quiet voice responded to Staffan’s scream.

  Flustered, he turned around and saw Sebas standing there with a calm expression.

  “It seems like there are a few people in the back, but most of them are asleep.”

  “D-dad can’d be! Dewre’s lods of people!”

  “…There were three people who appeared to be employees upstairs. Ten downstairs. Then there were seven others like you.”

  What is this guy going on about? Staffan’s expression asked as he stared at Sebas.

  “In any case, there is no one in the vicinity who is able to come to your rescue. Even if the employees have regained consciousness, I crushed their legs and snapped their arms. All they can do is crawl around like inchworms.”

  Staffan’s face registered his surprise. What Sebas was saying shouldn’t have been possible, but the oddly quiet atmosphere in the building told him it was true.

  “Now then, I don’t feel any need to leave you alive. I’ll have you die here.”

  He didn’t draw a blade or hold up any other weapon, nothing like that. He approached silently at a leisurely pace. Those utterly normal movements frightened Staffan. It dawned on him that Sebas was serious about killing him.

  “Waid! Waid! Led’s megh a deal. You won’d wegwed id.”

  “It’s hard to make out what you’re saying. A deal I won’t regret, you say? I see… I have no interest in that.”

  “Why awe you doing dis?”

  There is no reason for this to be happening to me. Why should I have to be killed? Finally, Staffan’s thoughts on the matter reached Sebas.

  “…Think about the kinds of things you’ve done. Do you still not know?”

  Staffan reflected on his behavior. Have I done something wrong?

  Sebas sighed. “I see.” As the words left his mouth, his front kick slammed into Staffan’s abdomen. “So this is what being unworthy to live looks like.”

  Several of Staffan’s internal organs burst, and an unbelievable amount of pain assailed him. Although one might have expected him to faint and die on the spot, he was somehow still dimly conscious.

  It hurts!

  It hurts!

  It hurts!

  He wanted to writhe around screaming, but the pain was so intense he couldn’t move.

  “Go on and die like that,” a cold voice said to him.

  He tried to shout, “Save me!” but his throat wouldn’t move.

  Sweat ran into his eyes, and his vision blurred. Through the haze, he saw Sebas walking away.

  Save me!

  Save me!

  If it’s money you want, I’ll give it to you—just save me!

  There was no longer anyone to respond to his voiceless pleas for help.

  Slowly but eventually, Staffan died in the agonizing pain coming from his abdomen.

  2

  3 Late Fire Moon (September) 12:12 PM

  “Climb, I’m going to kill the guys upstairs. We don’t have anything to tie them up with, and if they call for help, it’ll be a pain. We could knock them out, but as long as there’s a chance they’ll wake up, it’s gonna be dangerous to take control of this place, since we know so little about it… What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, uh, it’s nothing.” Climb shook his head and cleared away his anxiety. His heart was pounding as if he’d been sprinting at full speed, but he did his best to ignore it. “Please excuse me. I’m all right now. I can go anytime.”

  “Are you sure? …Mm, seems like you got your game face on. You’d been acting a little weird since we got here, but now you look like a warrior. I understand you’re nervous. There are powerful enemies here who you can’t beat as you are now. But don’t worry—I’m here and so is Sebas. You focus on surviving—for the one who keeps you going.”

  Brain gave Climb a hard pat on the shoulder and, blade already in hand, knocked four times on the door.

  Climb gripped his sword tightly.

  They heard someone clomping over and the sound of locks turning. Three of them.

  The moment the door began to open, Climb acted
according to their plan and yanked it as hard as he could.

  Brain rushed the man faster than he could raise a puzzled shout. Climb heard the sound of flesh being severed and the thudding of something crumpling to the ground.

  He jumped in a moment later.

  Ahead of him, Brain was cutting down their second opponent. There was one other man in the room, with a short sword and leather armor. Climb closed the distance between them in one swoop.

  “Wha—?! What’s with you, ya little shit?!” The man panicked and tried to stab Climb with his short sword, but Climb parried it easily. Then he brought his sword down from overhead in one swift motion.

  The man tried to block it with his short blade, but it was certainly not going to take the weight of Climb’s entire body in that heavy blow. Climb’s sword knocked away his opponent’s weapon, sliced into his shoulder, and came out near the base of his neck.

  As the fallen man groaned in pain, a profusion of blood spread across the floor, so much that one might wonder where it had all come from. The body jerked and twitched before lying still in death.

  Judging it to be a fatal blow, Climb kept his momentum and forged ahead into the room while still on guard. There were no enemies lurking to bring their swords down on him. He heard Brain racing up the stairs to the second floor behind him.

  All that was in the room was commonplace furniture. After confirming that, Climb ran into the next room.

  One minute later…

  Having inspected their respective floors and determined there were no other enemies, Climb and Brain met up at the entrance.

  “I took a look around the first floor, but I didn’t get a sense anyone was there.”

  “The same for the second floor. There weren’t even any beds, so no one spends the night here… There must be a secret passageway to the place where people sleep.”

  “Did you find it? I doubt it would be on the second floor, but…”

  “Nah, I didn’t see anything that looked like a trapdoor. But if what you said is right, then it’s down here.”

  Climb and Brain exchanged glances and then examined the room.

  Climb didn’t have any thief skills, so he couldn’t discover a hidden door by glancing around. If he’d had a fine powder like flour and some time to thoroughly search, he could have found the door by sprinkling it around and blowing. The powder would have collected in the door’s crack and made it easier to find. But he didn’t have any powder, and he didn’t have any time to scatter it. So he took some magic items from his pochette.