“Oh my, oh my, oh my. Y’all still don’t get it, do ya, dumb-asses.”
Jeanne spoke, her expression blank. Her chains rattled as she propped her index finger up on her lip.
Then she went on, as though trying to explain something obvious to a child.
“Allow me to put it the way you would, mister. First of all, the lives of all the beastfolk here rest in my hands… Oh, how unfortunate. I suppose the ‘first’ point was all I had.”
It seemed like she truly found that fact unfortunate, as she cast her rosy eyes down. However, she soon got over it. She pointed one slender finger toward Lute.
Kaito looked at him. As he kept pressure on his wounded flank, Lute met Kaito’s gaze and shook his head. He was silently screaming at Kaito not to go with her.
He hadn’t even tried to ask Kaito for help. He seemed to be planning to oppose her on his own.
Next, Kaito cast his gaze around the council room. Again and again, he received the same response.
All the beastfolk had responded the same way.
That was enough for him.
“Hina, put down your halberd… So where are you planning on taking us?”
Kaito placed a hand on Hina’s shoulder. With a small nod, she lowered the tip of her weapon.
As Kaito stepped forward to cover Hina, Jeanne responded matter-of-factly to his question.
“As things stand, not a single one of you stray sheep truly understands the situation we are in. But the world is in a state of crisis, and the situation grows more dire with every passing second. I intend to prove it to you with the most direct methods at my disposal. My reason for that is that fully explaining would take longer. You’re the Kaiser’s contractor, mister. And you’re a valuable piece of bait for the Torture Princess, too. I will make you understand, whether you wish to or not. Now then, get your ass over here already.”
Silently, Kaito came to a realization. He and Jeanne were never going to be able to see eye to eye.
I can’t even begin to understand what she’s going on about.
The girl herself, however, seemed to think her duty to explain the situation wholly fulfilled. Still expressionless but with an oddly satisfied demeanor, Jeanne extended her hand to him a second time.
Accompanied by Hina, he took a step forward. When he did, though, someone grabbed his leg. With a start, he looked down.
The expression on Lute’s face was desperate as he tried to stop Kaito.
“Sir…Kaito… You…mustn’t go… That…girl…is mad…”
“I’m sorry. I dunno what’s going on at all, but it looks like I got you guys wrapped up in something terrible. If we leave with Jeanne, at least no civilians will get hurt. Once we’re gone, shout for healers.”
“But…what about…you—?”
“I’m really sorry about this.”
Kaito found himself at a loss for what to say next. Lute’s breathing was ragged. After glancing between his golden eyes and the brutal wound carved in his flank, Kaito decided to speak from the heart.
“I was really happy that you guys all believed in me. Thanks…and make sure you take good care of your wife.”
With those parting words, Kaito began walking again.
Lute frantically scrabbled at Kaito’s ankles, his sharp claws scraping at Kaito’s black pant cuffs. But before long, Kaito advanced beyond his reach. As he strode forward, Lute scratched at the ground. But his body refused to move.
No matter how hard Lute struggled, he couldn’t follow.
At the same time, he hadn’t called for reinforcements. No shortage of powerful soldiers had already fallen. In order to avoid adding to the victim count, Lute chose to just see Kaito’s departure through to the end. In spite of that, though, he couldn’t keep himself from letting out a weak, rumbling moan from deep within him.
“Urooooough, urooooough, uraaaaaagh!”
Kaito took Jeanne’s hand. When he did, she squeezed his hand tight. The gesture seemed almost innocent, and she gave a mechanical nod.
At some point, the Kaiser had taken his place by Kaito’s side.
Then the Deus Ex Machinas moved to surround them. With bizarre movements, they began spinning around Kaito, Hina, the Kaiser, and Jeanne. Golden flower petals and white feathers began fluttering along beside them. The two dazzling hues seared the scene into the vision of all present.
It was a magnificent, elegant spectacle, but at the same time, it had a certain coldness to it.
Jeanne shouted from the eye of the vortex.
“Please, set your hearts at ease! Pleasant misters, rude misters, despicable misters, all of you! There is no need for any of you to mourn or lament!”
Then the Torture Princess Jeanne de Rais,
the oppressor of slaves, the savior of the world, the saint, and the whore, made her sonorous declaration.
“All this is for the sake of salvation!”
The golden-white light vanished.
And when it did, Kaito and Hina left the land of the beastfolk behind.
Lute had been left behind, and his furious, frustrated howls echoed off the walls.
In all honesty, Kaito was prepared for the possibility of death.
The things Jeanne was doing and saying gave him no confidence in her sanity. And not only was he unable to tell what she was thinking, but he couldn’t even figure out what her objective was. Based on the fact that she’d referred to him as “a valuable piece of bait for the Torture Princess,” he clearly held some value in her eyes, but past that, he was in the dark.
Given all that, he wouldn’t have been shocked to discover that their destination lay a mile up in the air or something.
Hina and the Kaiser were quick on their feet, so he wasn’t particularly worried about either of them. But he had little confidence that he himself would be able to make it out of such a situation in one piece.
I’ve gotta be ready for whatever comes my way.
With all that in mind, Kaito put up his guard. The golden petals and white light had melted together before his eyes and formed a firm cylinder, but before long, it shattered and collapsed like molten gold.
It turned out that Kaito’s fears had been partly unfounded, as their destination was on proper, solid ground.
The spectacle before him, however, was bizarre enough to make up for that fact.
“…Wh—?”
Kaito had found himself standing in a small village wedged in the ravine between two precipitous mountain ranges.
There were lines of tightly packed, slate-colored buildings flanking him on both sides, both of which seemed to practically cling to the narrow ground. Based on their appearance, the buildings looked to have been made exclusively from boulders quarried off the mountainsides. Each one probably weighed a considerable amount, but they’d been expanded so haphazardly that the pressure had caused them to warp. A few of the buildings had even caved in from the weight of their neighbors.
All in all, they gave off a similar impression to cotton balls packed tightly into a snowdrift.
In other words, the village was old, decrepit, and desolate.
The gap between the mountains that the village sat in grew narrower the higher up one went. As a result, simply by standing in the middle of the town, Kaito felt as though something was oppressively looming over him. Furthermore, the whole place was starved of sunlight, and not even the wind could reach its streets. A single brush with illness could have spelled disaster for its entire populace. But while no standards would have deemed it fit for human habitation, the town’s most peculiar aspect was unrelated to its layout.
The honor belonged to the fact that human corpses sat crucified along the walls of each of the buildings.
Their bones were countless and filling up the view for as far as the eye could see.
Three descriptors immediately rushed to the forefront of his mind.
Massacre. Sacrifice.
And finally, torture.
The crucified corpses had iron
stakes running from their palms to their shoulders and from their feet to their thighs.
They also looked rather old, as their flesh had long since rotted away. Because of that, the scars on their bones were visible, making it evident that the iron stakes weren’t the only form of torture they’d suffered.
The anguish they’d felt leading up to their deaths looked to have been fierce and protracted.
Every single building in the town was decorated with corpses in that state. Kaito didn’t feel the need to bother checking inside any structures to confirm his dreadful theory.
Even if we went looking for survivors, I think the odds we’d find any are slim.
In all likelihood, every single person in the village was dead. The mountain-cradled settlement was like a single giant coffin.
On that note, a vague thought drifted through his mind.
It reminds me of Elisabeth’s…no, the Torture Princess’s hometown.
“You know of a similar location, don’t you, mister? She and I are both Torture Princesses, after all.”
Once more, Jeanne displayed her cheery expression as she spread her arms wide. The chains on her wrists rattled as she spun around, and her honey-blond hair glistened as it swayed.
When she did so, the ornamented, exposed nature of her attire caused her to evoke the very image of a dancer.
“As you’re well aware, birthing a Torture Princess requires the pain of a suitable number of sacrifices. Elisabeth killed her people and offered them up to herself. I was given offerings, and those were who I killed. Same difference, ya feel me?”
Kaito frowned. He had no idea what she meant. But even though he couldn’t understand her, he could somehow make out what she was trying to say.
This village was similar to Elisabeth’s hometown in many ways. But there was one major difference between the two.
There were no resentful voices here.
Countless people had been tortured and killed here. Yet in spite of that, Kaito couldn’t sense any malicious aura emanating from the gray settlement. The air filling the village was still and silent.
“Elisabeth killed her people and offered them up to herself”… “I was given offerings, and those were who I killed.”
Kaito turned Jeanne’s words over in his head. “Same difference.”
In other words, this village’s inhabitants had willingly offered themselves up to the Torture Princess.
But why?
“Call forth Vlad, boy. We’re making no progress at this rate.”
The Kaiser growled, and Kaito turned to look at him. When their eyes met, the Kaiser scoffed.
“Twisted as you are, your form was originally that of a proper glass sphere. Don’t be conceited enough to think you can converse with the likes of her. The best way to deal with a lunatic is to send a lunatic of our own.”
“You have a point there. I can’t even begin to tell what she’s talking about.”
Nodding at the Kaiser’s suggestion, Kaito fed mana to the stone in his pocket.
Azure petals and black feathers swirled through the air. Their numbers were on the reserved side this time, but Vlad made his ever-extravagant appearance from within them regardless. He crossed his long legs in the air.
His eyes were glittering with childlike curiosity. Without so much as a preface, he launched into his speech.
“How intriguing, to artificially construct a Torture Princess that way. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but I certainly can’t deny its creativity. I have to say, though, I find myself more interested in the creator than the creation… Just who was the beautiful madman who devised you?”
Vlad’s head seemed to practically be in the clouds, the question he was posing having just about nothing to do with Kaito’s. Still expressionless, Jeanne pointed toward one particularly misshapen building. The bones crucified against its warped walls were clad in gold adornments.
“Mm.”
“Ah, martyring even himself, I see. How thorough. You’ve been entrusted with the rest, then, I take it. Which brings us to Elisabeth and Kaito Sena. You’re trying to make them your servants.”
Upon hearing her infantile response, Vlad stroked his chin in understanding. Jeanne nodded back. Apparently, the two of them had been able to successfully establish communication. That said, Kaito still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
He frantically called out to Vlad.
“Hey, Vlad, hold up a minute. What the hell were you able to get from that? As far as I’m concerned, it was all just more gibberish. What happened here? What’s her goal? If you understand what’s going on, man, you gotta lay it out for me.”
“First, let me start with a fairy tale.”
“Excuse me?”
It seemed even Vlad planned to talk in riddles. He’d always been odd, but Kaito was concerned that he’d finally broken. Across from him, Vlad took an elegant bow, like an actor giving a performance.
“Perhaps you’ve heard it, my dear successor? No, wait, you hail from another world. It would be odd if you had… Confound it. Now all my fun’s been spoiled.”
“I don’t care what’s spoiled. Just answer the question already.”
“Long, long ago, a saint carrying God in her body remade the world, then vanished. Today’s story takes place just afterward.”
Ignoring Kaito’s complaints, Vlad carried on undeterred.
His voice proud and velvety, he poetically spun his tale.
“Now, for some reason, a whole clan of pedigreed alchemists went missing. It’s said this set back humanity’s magical developments by over a century. Everyone and their mother went searching for them; even I myself spent some time trying to hunt them down. The likeliest location was held to be the stretch of land between the beastfolk’s and the demi-humans’ lands—the two races share an amiable relationship, so surveillance at the border is lax. People suspected they’d taken up hiding in a blind spot between the two.”
“So what?”
“That is precisely where we’re standing right now.”
Vlad’s story had seemed unrelated, but everything suddenly fell into place.
Flustered, Kaito cast a sweeping glance over the village among the mountains. It was true that the village was short on paths or other ways to get in and out. Describing it as hidden would be completely apropos. But if Vlad’s story was true, then why had the alchemists chosen to shelter in this place?
Waving his hands like a conductor, Vlad gestured at his surroundings as he continued his fairy tale.
“The alchemists hid themselves away here and spent many years searching for a method to work against a certain objective. In the end, they created a Torture Princess. The clan had bolstered their ranks through inbreeding, and they all gave themselves up as offerings to empower her.”
“Why the hell would they—?”
“…In short, you’re saying they needed martial power?”
Hina, who’d been standing beside Kaito on high alert, finally spoke.
Vlad cast his gaze toward her, as though he’d only just registered her existence. He seemed altogether surprised. But then his mouth curled up into a gentle, refined smile.
“Good thinking. It would seem the rubbish I once tossed together has attained excellence. Your growth far exceeds my expectations; as a mage, I must say I find that rather delightful. Why, you seem downright human.”
“Given that they were willing to go so far as to sacrifice themselves, I conjecture the opponent they were facing was not an enemy of theirs personally. After raising her as the Torture Princess, they entrusted her with fighting against ‘something’ that, while dreadful, they had no personal connection to. That is my hypothesis, as someone familiar with the power and fate of another Torture Princess, Lady Elisabeth. Would you agree, Master Kaito?”
Splendidly ignoring Vlad’s rude remarks, Hina laid out her theory. Kaito glanced over toward Jeanne. He hadn’t expected a response out of her, but she actually gave a small nod. In other wor
ds, Hina’s hypothesis had been on the mark.
As he considered that, he found himself plagued by a violent sense of dizziness.
Every answer he got was raising new questions.
In order to fight this “thing,” whatever it is, they made a Torture Princess? Man, sacrificing themselves must have taken a boatload of resolve and conviction. What in the world were they fighting against? Torturing themselves and feeding demon flesh to her would—no, wait.
Kaito quickly hit the brakes on his runaway train of thought. Then he gave voice to the question that had just bothered him.
“So which demon’s flesh did she eat, exactly?”
“Since you’ve already died once, mister, you should already have something of an idea even if you don’t know the answer, right?”
Jeanne turned to Vlad and prompted him on. He nodded, having understood.
Kaito instinctively fixed a stare on Vlad. Vlad then whispered to him, as though he were sharing some great secret.
“I suspect the flesh she consumed came from the same demon mine did, you see.”
If he had eaten the same flesh Jeanne had, then that meant…
It’s not the Kaiser’s meat… No, wait, that’s just totally wrong.
“That’s…right…”
Finally, Kaito realized the contradiction therein. Vlad had been the Kaiser’s contractor. In order to accomplish that, he’d somehow procured demon flesh. Kaito had never spared that much thought. But without getting help from someone, he would have needed to eat a demon’s flesh in order to be able to summon the Kaiser.
And anyway, there’s no way the proud Kaiser would ever allow anyone to consume his flesh.
After gathering up enough pain to preserve his own life, Vlad had chosen to take on a mentorship role and had stopped accumulating strength. As a consequence of that, he’d been beaten by the Torture Princess. But even so, Vlad was no mere human. He’d fed a demon’s flesh to Elisabeth, his successor, and he’d no doubt partaken of demon flesh himself.
If that were the case, though, then which demon’s flesh had he consumed?
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 4 Page 12