Before he confirmed the nature of the figures, he closed his eyes once. The Kaiser’s eerily human laughter resounded in his eardrums. Hina made to step in front of him, but Kaito stopped her with one arm as he prepared himself for the worst.
Then he opened his eyes again and looked straight ahead at the tragedy.
As he’d suspected, the ones strung up were the village’s inhabitants.
The fox-headed beastfolk were decorating the village like spoils from a hunt.
A carnival. The aftermath of a fox hunt.
Imprudent similes flashed through Kaito’s mind. But eventually, he arrived at the most appropriate descriptor of all.
A massacre.
There was no other word that could describe the horrible scene before him.
Blood and bile ran along the length of the chains and dripped slowly to the ground. All the victims had their stomachs carved out, their empty abdominal cavities visible from the outside. White maggots were wriggling around in their flesh.
Clenching his fists, Kaito drew closer to the corpses. He looked up at their expressions. Their faces were all stiff and filled with a terrible sense of anguish. The intensity of that emotion was no different between humans and beastfolk.
“Yeah…I’m sure it must have been painful.”
Kaito spoke quietly. Rage and hatred toward the unknown perpetrator flared up inside him. But his experiences in life had left him well accustomed to those negative emotions, and he quickly regained his composure.
Looking back between the buildings, he posed a question to Lute.
“…What about the insides?”
“The insides?”
“What happened to their innards?”
Kaito gave his inquiry in a dispassionate tone. After being taken aback for a moment, Lute hesitated to answer.
Kaito waited for a response. There should have been a fairly substantial amount of other viscera. However, those organs were nowhere to be seen. He could make out little bits spilled here and there, but most of it was clearly missing.
A few seconds later, Lute gave his pained reply.
“It repulses me just to say it, but they were all shoved into a barn. There is no shortage of people who ridicule beastfolk for engaging in animal husbandry. We came to the conclusion that the way the killer dealt with the organs, too, was intended to provoke us.”
“Have they also been left the way you found them?”
“Given the state they’re in, we deemed it difficult to handle them individually. We plan to burn the entire barn to the ground later.”
“Let me have a look.”
Kaito made his request directly. Stooping over, Lute gave him a worried warning.
“…It’s really quite a dreadful sight, you know.”
“That’s fine. I’ve seen people who had their guts and brains fused together while they were still alive.”
With a sympathetic nod, Lute took the lead and began walking off. However, his underlings stood frozen in place. It looked as though they didn’t want to have to see the grisly scene in the barn a second time.
Kaito and Hina left the subordinates behind and followed after Lute. He stopped in front of a shed adjoining a small farm. After hesitating for a moment, he pulled off the bar sealing its door shut.
He doesn’t want to have to open the door himself.
Once he realized that, Kaito spontaneously took the initiative. Trading places with Lute, he placed his hand on the door.
Then he slowly pushed it open.
Flies buzzed around noisily. The stench of blood and rotting flesh ran thick.
Kaito nodded as he strained his eyes against the oddly subdued, dim red light.
Yeah, seeing this would definitely be traumatic if you weren’t used to this kinda stuff.
With Hina beside him, his stare was fixed on the grisly spectacle.
A mountain of beastman innards sat amid the muck, blood, and tallow clinging to the floor. Ravaged intestines and pulverized stomachs blended together, their contents spilling out. The stench they gave off was even worse than that of the corpses. The various lumps of flesh were so repulsive that it was almost unimaginable to think they’d once been inside people. Upon closer inspection, though, there were things other than innards mixed into the pile.
Kaito spotted pig heads and cow heads, garnishing the pile like comical decorations atop a macabre cake.
Kaito grabbed one of the pig heads by the ear and pulled. It made a grotesque sound as it came out. Mucus leaked from an orifice. After carefully examining the opening at the base of the severed head, Kaito looked back toward the mountain of innards.
A few seconds later, a quiet mumble escaped his lips.
“…There’s no meaning to this.”
Suddenly, Kaito released his grip. The pig head fell. After bouncing once off the floor, it sank back into the sea of guts like a deflated rubber ball.
Behind him, Lute spoke up dubiously.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I mean is that this isn’t any kind of provocation, message, or sacrilege.”
Kaito’s declaration was firm.
He pointed at the animal heads artlessly mixed in with the innards.
“If they wanted to give it some kind of meaning, there had to have been a better way they could have used the animal corpses. It’s too random, too crude to have been by choice. It relies too heavily on the viewer’s imagination.”
“But then…why use the barn?”
“Oh, that part is real simple.”
Kaito’s voice was lilting as he gave his answer. A spectacle on the scale of the one before him didn’t even faze him anymore.
Because of that, he simply described the situation as he saw it.
“There were stains on the ground from the extracted innards. In other words, the perpetrator started out simply leaving the guts on the ground after they yanked them out. But over time, they started to build up and get in the way. That’s the reason why the killer gathered them all up and shoved them in one place. Then the animals were noisy, so they shut them up. I know it’s a messed-up way to put it, but it was probably all just part of their assembly line.”
As he listened to Kaito talk, Lute’s fur stood on end. Kaito wondered a little if that was a normal reaction, or if Lute’s rage was simply that tempestuous.
Lute’s golden eyes were filled with loathing as he glared alternately between Kaito and the grim scene.
“You…you mean to tell me that that’s the reason they created this monstrosity?”
“Yeah, probably. And you don’t have to glare at me like that, you know. It’s not like I’m the one who did it.”
“…Ah, forgive me. How rude of me.”
Lute hurriedly looked away from Kaito. But the repulsion and disgust he’d directed toward Kaito for coming up with such a fiendish conjecture still remained in his eyes. Kaito, not pointing that out, just nodded and closed the barn door. He then made his way back to the chains between the buildings.
When he did, he resumed his examination of the strung-up corpses.
The victims’ shoulders had stiffened in an odd way. That was due to the fact that the chains had been run into their left shoulders, then behind their necks, and finally back out through their right shoulders. They’d each lost huge amounts of blood. And all that had probably happened while they were still alive.
“So whoever it was, they hung the victims up while they were still alive, then tore open their chests and ripped out their insides, huh?”
“And there isn’t any major damage to the chains, is there? They must have run it through with a single blow each time without any need to try again.”
“There’s no way a regular human could use a chain that way… This must have been done by someone else.”
Kaito and Hina were whispering to each other. Behind them, Lute straightened out his posture. At some point, his subordinates had assembled as well.
The beastfolk were silent, th
eir expressions tense as they awaited Kaito’s conclusion.
I know how they feel.
As he felt their intense gazes wash over him, he realized why they’d thought this atrocity had been committed by human hands. They didn’t want to believe that one of their own could perform an act of such heinous violence, even if it meant ignoring reality. And it was only natural to want to know the purpose behind such an incomprehensibly brutal act.
The witnesses needed there to be some kind of motive in order to come to terms with this tragedy.
That was precisely the reason why the beastfolk had decided their enemy must be mankind.
And there are even parts to that logic that are sound.
Humans wasn’t to blame for this. But it also wasn’t the work of a beastman.
The crime couldn’t have been committed by just anyone. And there hadn’t been any objective beyond causing pain.
It had been perverse.
It was just an insane, evil crime.
“I know who did this.”
Then Kaito made his assertion. Hina quietly nodded. The beastfolk were struck speechless.
“…Who in the world was it, then?”
The chains rattled in the wind. The bodies swung back and forth. The flies took off, and the thick, rotting fragrance wafted by.
Assailed by every unpleasant sensation imaginable, Kaito spoke.
“It was a demon. I’m sure of it.”
But there was a fierce contradiction between that answer and reality.
All fourteen of the demons’ contractors were supposed to be dead.
After all, it had been none other than Kaito himself, alongside the Torture Princess, who had killed every last one.
2
A Mysterious Foe
Time flowed on mercilessly, leaving mortal matters and concerns behind in its wake.
The sky grew dark. The hill where Kaito had knocked out the paladins was blanketed in darkness as well.
Even the holes in the earth gouged by conflicts past were cast in black relief. It was as though a jet-black sea had spread over the entire area, concealing the coffins and bones in deep shadows and bringing a gentle silence to the surroundings.
Then a sharp noise rang out.
—Click, clack.
A beautiful woman stood atop the hill’s summit, her heels ringing like the notes of a song.
It was Elisabeth Le Fanu, the Torture Princess. She cast her crimson gaze on the area around her, taking it in with a scornful eye.
“So this is where you went, eh? You chose yet another unpleasant and nostalgic spot.”
Elisabeth scoffed.
Her silken black hair fluttered, as did the dress she was wearing, which was colored scarlet on the inside and extended past her waist. As she stood atop the hill, she began searching for irregularities. A few seconds later, she dropped to one knee and knelt on the ground. Not shying away from the bones around her in the slightest, she inspected the spot where she’d noticed the influx of mana.
At first glance, there didn’t appear to be anything left. Someone had probably been in charge of destroying the evidence and, as such, had carefully scooped up the earth and smoothed it out. But concentrating to her utmost, Elisabeth discovered a spot that was stained ever so slightly red.
“Hmm.”
She scooped it up with the tip of her finger and stuck it in her mouth. As the mana lingered on her tongue, she searched her memories. Upon zeroing in on a particular magical tool, she spat out the dirt and lightly brushed off her soiled tongue.
“Mana mixed with the taste of old flesh. Blood, bone, and organ shavings. Primitive, but convenient. I’d thought it banned across all human lands, so… Ah.”
Elisabeth heaved a deep sigh.
After receiving notice from the Church about a new sighting of the Kaiser’s contractor, she’d made the unusual choice of visiting the scene herself. The reason she’d done so was because there’d been a point that had caught her attention in the report she’d received.
It had been in the testimony of one of the paladins who’d apparently been saved after barely escaping with his life.
When he’d been on the threshold between dreams and consciousness, he reported feeling like he’d heard the Kaiser’s contractor having a conversation with someone.
There was a chance that the person Kaito had been talking to had been no more than Hina, Vlad, or the Kaiser. But the timing was too ominous to casually overlook it.
’Tis been quite some time since Kaito made his declaration of war at the Capital.
Unlike the demons to date, Kaito was capable of holding a dialogue. Now was around the time when people would start to realize that. Someone might have finally tried to make contact with him.
That was what sparked Elisabeth’s apprehension. And it seemed her fears had been wholly on the mark.
And what’s more, the first to come into contact with him had been of a different race.
“The other person is a beastman, eh? This is turning out to be quite bothersome indeed.”
If that was the case, then she had a new problem to deal with.
The beastfolk’s pureblood borough was completely off-limits. The Church’s eyes didn’t reach that far, and Elisabeth now found herself wholly unable to pursue Kaito. The Torture Princess was a pawn of the Church, and a powerful weapon to boot. If she went and trespassed on the beastman territories on her own, it could very well end up sparking a war.
“What in the blazes have you gotten yourself wrapped up in, Kaito? What are your intentions?”
Elisabeth whispered, and the darkness around her grew steadily deeper. No answer came back. That was only natural.
Once, Kaito had tried to remain by Elisabeth’s side to the bitter end. But now he was off in a distant land.
Kaito Sena had chosen to become the enemy of mankind.
And now the beastfolk had reached out to him.
It was unclear what the significance of that was, or what consequences it would bring about.
The only thing for certain was that Kaito had temporarily slipped Elisabeth’s reach.
“…’Tis nonsense.”
She bit down on her lip, enraged. But the thing that upset her wasn’t Kaito’s disappearance itself. No, the object of her anger was a different emotion that was welling up within her whether she wanted it to or not.
She had just felt a definite sense of relief
at the fact that she was unable to kill Kaito Sena.
And as the Torture Princess, that was something she could not allow.
“Ah, achoo!”
“Oh my, did you catch a cold? Our lands are far chillier than those in which humans live. As you can see, we are blessed with thick fur. But adjusting the temperature to suit human tastes is an area we find ourselves tragically deficient in. If the fire doesn’t meet your needs, please don’t hesitate to say something.”
“No, no, I’m fine. It’s not a cold. It really does feel like someone’s talking about me behind my back, though.”
Lute’s words were brusque yet filled with earnest concern, and Kaito’s reply was easygoing.
The sun had long since set, and they’d left the village where the massacre had taken place behind.
They were currently in a different small village, one that sported a row of simple houses just like the last. Its tall fence was crafted from interwoven branches, and Kaito and the others were huddled around an open-air fire near its entrance. Trees spread out in every direction. Humidity percolated in the shadows the trees cast, causing the chill to sink into their skins. However, the strong flames did a lot to help drive the cold away.
A pot full of water sat atop the fire, and finely torn flower petals sat simmering inside it. Before long, the water was dyed a vivid orange hue.
Hina had been watching over the pot, and her maid uniform rustled as she quickly stood.
“All right, if I decoct these any longer, it’ll go bitter. Quickly and carefully…now!”
<
br /> Removing the pot from the flame, Hina scooped out the withered, mushy petals. She placed them on a separate plate, then sliced up some dried fruit and added it to the pot. As the lingering heat warmed them up, the orange water started to take on a reddish tinge. After deciding the hard chunks had spread out enough, she began ladling the pot’s contents into bowls.
“There you go, Master Kaito and Mr. Lute. Eat up.”
“Thanks, Hina.”
“Oh my, you’ve done a wonderful job with the leaves we brought along. Your functions are a marvel, Madam Hi…na… No, forgive my rudeness. I’d been told you were an automaton, Madam Hina, but I should have referred to you the same way I would a person. In my carelessness, I spoke presumptuously. My apologies. Erm…”
“Hee-hee, please, don’t worry about it. I am my beloved Master Kaito’s eternal lover, his faithful companion, his soldier, his weapon, his love outlet, his sex doll, and his bride—all because I am a puppet. And I take great pride in that fact.”
Hina flashed a gentle smile. His eyes filling with admiration, Lute held his bowl high.
“Well said. Whatever one’s nature is, being able to take pride in it is a beautiful thing. In that case, I wish to express my thanks toward your functions once more.”
Though he was singing Hina’s praises, Lute didn’t bring the bowl to his mouth. It seemed beasts and beastfolk alike favored their senses of smell, as the shape of his mouth relaxed while he savored the aroma. Apparently, it was beastfolk custom to wait for food to cool completely before eating.
Kaito was the first to have a taste. The broth had a curious viscosity to it.
A honey-like sweetness that was mixed with the fruit’s acidity filled his mouth. The flavor seemed to wash all the fatigue from his body. Slowly exhaling, Kaito looked up at the night sky.
As he gazed at the smattering of stars in the darkness, he let out a small remark.
“…I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Quite. And I was so ready to rend them limb from limb.”
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 4 Page 4