For the last bit, Jeanne’s voice was ringing with ridicule. Taking that as their cue, the feelers throughout the room began writhing with animosity. The unpleasant sound of mucus slapping against mucus echoed out.
Izabella covered her scarred face with one hand, then shook her head from side to side again and again.
“This is mad… This is utter, utter madness! Why does something like that exist? Why is it here, in the underground royal tomb? Just what is it we believed in? What exactly have we been protecting?!”
“Lift up your head, miss. There are many good and proper things you’ve protected, you know. But you noticed, didn’t you? Even just a little? Something was gradually going askew. But you foolishly averted your eyes. This is the price you pay for your blindness.”
Jeanne’s voice once more took on the ring of a priest giving a lecture. She mercilessly continued her dignified remonstration.
“Look closely and behold. Why do you think I led a stray sheep like you here, O representative of humanity? You are a leader, though perhaps only in name.”
“Yes…you’re right. So I am. So…I was.”
Biting her lip so hard that she drew blood, Izabella looked back up. Tears were spilling down from her eyes.
With those same eyes, she focused her vision on the monster whose very existence she would just as soon have denied.
The snowy owl began moving in earnest. Its massive head spun as it glided forward. Dragged along by its upper half, its mass of feelers moved as well. For a moment, Kaito felt as though the entire room had charged forward. That was just how extensive its writhing, mucus-covered flesh was.
“Master Kaito.”
“On it.”
Kaito, accompanied by Hina, tried to take a step forward. However, he could have spared himself the effort.
The loud, high-pitched noise of heels clicked and echoed throughout the room.
The black Torture Princess and the golden Torture Princess had stepped forward first.
The two of them stood side by side. Then, as though they were mirrored reflections of each other, they raised opposite hands. Darkness and light swirled atop their palms as they fearlessly faced down their sacred, profane, hideous foe.
Crimson and gold flower petals danced. White light and black darkness spun.
One spoke with naked fury, and the other emotionlessly murmured.
“Just die already!”
“Good night, slave.”
The next moment, the crimson, gold, black, and white exploded. The Torture Princesses weren’t relying on their torture devices and machines. Not fearing the onrushing feelers in the slightest, the two of them were firing off swords directly.
Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk!
Thousands of swords designed for decapitation impaled the snowy owl through its body. It looked like a living pincushion.
Opening its beak, it let out a miserable, throaty voice.
“Ahhhhhhh, ahhhhhhh, AHHHHHHH, aHhHhHhH.”
Its voice was neither avian nor monstrous. It was the voice of a human. As he heard that, a terrible possibility welled up within Kaito’s mind.
The birds La Mules summoned vanished right away.
Why, then, had the owl before them not?
Perhaps, in order to secure the summoned beast to this world, they’d mixed a human in as well. That was the horrible suspicion Kaito had. But between his sentimentality and his revulsion, he had no space left to thoroughly examine that possibility.
“Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”
The scream went up in pitch, rising nearly to the level of a shriek. After forcing her way out of Deus Ex Machina’s arms, Izabella hit the ground running. Then, upon crashing into the sword-ridden owl, she grabbed the handle of one sword buried particularly deep in the bird’s chest and twisted it.
The snowy owl screamed even more violently. As it did, Izabella wrenched the sword free.
A horrible squelching noise resounded throughout the chamber. Dark blood gushed from the wound and ran across the floor.
The sword had been puncturing the owl’s pulsating heart.
Its massive eyes still as wide as dinner plates, the owl convulsed. Its head and torso began transforming into white light, and the feelers comprising the rest of its body turned into black feathers. Halfway through, though, both transformations stopped.
Its tragic corpse then toppled to the ground, the right to even vanish as a demon or a holy creature taken from it.
Izabella was drenched in blood. The sword clanged against the ground as she dropped it, and when she looked up, her face was trembling. For a second, it looked like she was going to collapse. But she managed to right her footing with willpower alone.
She then placed her arm horizontally over her chest and gave a bow.
“No longer must you be bound by the chains of your tortured existence. Your efforts guarding the tomb did not go unnoticed.”
That was the dedication she gave to the monster. Nobody else said a thing.
As though it were accepting her words, the man-made monster drifted into its eternal slumber. Its feelers stopped twitching. After confirming that fact, Izabella toppled to the ground.
Then she broke into a silent sob.
She cried and she cried, as though trying to parse the absurdity of it all and change it all into rage.
A massive pool of blood spread through the room. Izabella sat motionless in it.
“Hey, Izabella…”
Kaito called out to her in hopes of comforting her. But before he could finish, the light sound of footsteps splashing echoed through the room.
Jeanne had approached Izabella with an easy, almost dance-like gait. To everyone’s surprise, she spun forward and wrapped Izabella up in a tight hug. Izabella’s eyes went wide.
Jeanne’s expression was as cold as always, but her embrace was warm and kind.
“I knew I liked ya for a reason, li’l lady. Fools demonstrating their pride is not so unpleasant a thing. You got a backbone on ya.”
Using her own pale hand, Jeanne wiped the blood off Izabella’s face. After wiping away the filth, she stroked Izabella’s scarred skin as she went on speaking.
“Their weakness is precisely what drives the foolish to be strong. That was the ideal you were striving toward, miss. You’re a good kid.”
Upon hearing the gentle words, Izabella blinked several times. But she didn’t have a chance to reply. Deus Ex Machina scooped her up in its arms once again.
“No, I… This again?”
Izabella tried to resist. But a moment later, she wearily let her body go limp. She seemed to have given up and was now obediently allowing herself to be carried.
Standing up herself, Jeanne raised her bloody hands.
“Come now, just a little farther—how exciting.”
Kaito cast another glance around the room.
He hadn’t noticed at first due to the feelers covering it, but the room was constructed like a large hall. To his alarm, the walls didn’t seem to have any joints or seams on them, and a number of delicate crystalline lamps hung from the room’s hemispherical ceiling.
Was this room really made by people?
Kaito found that fact dubious. At the same time, he realized that the room offered no way for them to advance. He couldn’t see any hallways or stairs branching off it. It was a dead end.
The one thing he did see, though, was a deep carving in one of the stone wall’s sections that had been covered up by feelers. The carving’s craftsmanship was so impressive that the person depicted seemed to be alive.
Kaito walked up to it. The Saint was embracing something swaddled in cloth, but it was impossible to see what lay within. What was clear, though, was the Saint’s benevolent smile. A demi-human attendant was standing beside her.
His face was cast in shadow, concealed by his hood. Kaito let out a dazed whisper.
“…The Butcher?”
Putting the dots together, Kaito thou
ght back to the statue he’d seen in the Capital’s plaza.
A statue of the Saint shedding tears of blood had been installed next to Godd Deos’s headquarters. And in front of her had been another statue, a kneeling apostle wrapped from the head down in tattered rags. Surprisingly, the apostle had been a demi-human. Legs with scales engraved in them and sharp claws had peeked out from the bottom edge of the rags.
He’d looked as though he was both rejoicing in and lamenting the Saint’s suffering.
Absentmindedly, Kaito reached out to touch the engraving. Before his hand reached it, though, someone grabbed him by the wrist.
Elisabeth had been the one to stop him. She spoke, her voice cold.
“Do you have a death wish? Go on, then—touch it. Not even ash will remain.”
“Oh. Uh, my bad.”
Kaito narrowed his eyes and appraised the amount of mana stored in the wall. Elisabeth had been completely right.
It was hard to tell at just a glance, but the entire wall was covered in a fiendish barrier. Anyone who touched it would probably have their very existence annihilated. But then he tilted his head to the side in puzzlement.
There was something odd about the mana the barrier was giving off.
It’s the same here…good and evil mixed together.
Sacred mana blended together with malicious mana, sealing the wall up firmly.
It was at that moment that Kaito realized something.
“Wait, this thing isn’t designed to protect something, is it?”
Something was hidden there. Or perhaps it was sealed away there. That was the impression Kaito had gotten.
But…what?
His ominous premonitions worsened as he carefully looked back over the mana and the general vibe the wall was giving off. Then he realized that there was something lurking on the other side of the sturdy wall.
What…what is that? Is that a noise I hear?
Kaito strained his ears, taking great care not to touch the wall. After a moment, he realized what the nature of the noise was. Something was breathing, inhaling and exhaling at a steady, fixed rhythm.
Something was sleeping back there.
Like a child, taking a calm, tranquil nap.
“Now then, today shall be a day worth commemorating. Let us unveil the secret within.”
There wasn’t a tinge of fear in Jeanne’s voice. She opened her palms wide. A black jewel sat atop one, a white jewel atop the other. When she pressed them together, they merged into one, then transformed into the shape of a key. Once they had, Jeanne thrust it into the face of whatever it was the Saint was holding.
—Grgrahhh.
As the strange noise rang out, Jeanne gave a sweet, gentle whisper.
“Beyond that wall lies the true source of the flesh we ate.”
Apparently, the groaning noise from a moment ago had indicated it was now unlocked. The hefty wall began shifting, creaking and kicking up dust as it went. Like a chastity belt dropping, the Church’s revolting, long-kept secret was laid bare.
Beyond the hefty wall
sat a child’s bedroom.
It was quiet inside.
The deep, deep silence within felt as though it had lasted centuries, if not millennia.
At first glance, it didn’t look like anything besides a room for a normal child, its walls decorated with wallpaper and ribbons. It was a harmless, charming little room. But a second glance would reveal the room’s dark, twisted nature.
There were human faces sprouting from the wallpaper in place of a floral design. All of them were wordlessly writhing. Although they had no vocal cords, their mouths were contorted into silent, anguished screams.
As for the ribbons hanging overhead, they were made from various types of human entrails, dangling from the stomachs of people suspended in the air. And given their vivid hues, the owners were still alive.
And in the center of that grotesque, pain-adorned room sat a massive cradle.
It seemed almost cruel how pure a shade of white it was, the only unsullied object in the room.
Within it, something was sleeping.
Whatever it was, human vocabulary was ill equipped to describe it.
It was alive. It was in deep slumber. It had flesh.
If someone wished to describe it in words, that would have to be enough.
“That there is the first demon—a far higher entity than the fourteen who descended after it, and a being with the power to shatter the world’s very foundations.”
Though she faced a horror that surpassed human comprehension, Jeanne’s speech was dispassionate. Kaito found himself at a loss for words.
That thing isn’t supposed to exist in this world.
He thought back to the exposition Elisabeth had given him right after he’d reincarnated.
“We call the entity who created the world ‘God’ and that which destroys it ‘Diablo.’ Hence, Diablo can only interfere with the world of man once God has abandoned it. But there is an exception. If Diablo has a contractor, then all bets are off.
“But summoning Diablo, who possesses enough power to destroy the entire world, is no small feat, and there is no one vessel who can contain it, so it has yet to manifest.”
That was how things were supposed to be, yet there could be no mistaking the fact that Diablo, who held enough power to destroy the entire world, was sleeping before them.
The Kaiser said nothing, his thoughts inscrutable. A sublime smile was plastered across Vlad’s face. Hina was making no efforts to hide her revulsion, and Izabella was wearing the expression of a child who’d just been struck by a parent.
Something that shouldn’t exist, exists.
Faced with that irreconcilable contradiction, Kaito felt a wave of vertigo. Elisabeth shook her head from side to side as she cast a sidelong glance his way. Then, with a displeased look on her face, she posed a question to Jeanne.
“Without a contractor, Diablo should be unable to manifest in this world. Who, then, is this thing’s contractor? My power is all but supreme, and not even my body could withstand such a feat. Nor is it possible for Vlad, nor the Grand King, nor you. The vessel would shatter. No man should be qualified.”
“That isn’t the case, though. A person with such power does exist, a person that even the stray sheep are familiar with.”
Jeanne’s answer bordered on singsong.
Kaito and Elisabeth furrowed their brows. If such a person really existed, they’d have to be a pretty big deal. Ignoring their doubts, though, Jeanne launched into a seemingly unrelated story.
“The Saint manifested God through her body, saved the world, then fell into an eternal slumber. Because of that, it can be said the world of man was built atop her suffering, her devotion, and her sacrifice. That forms the basis of the Church’s doctrine. But therein lies a contradiction. The Saint manifested God through her body and rebuilt the world. In that case, though, who was the one who destroyed it?”
“…That would be Diablo, naturally. No. Wait.”
Elisabeth covered her mouth. Kaito, too, noticed the contradiction.
“Diablo can only interfere with the world of man once God has abandoned it.”
If that was the case, then the Saint shouldn’t have been able to manifest God. After all, once God abandoned the world, then as one of his creations, she, too, would have been a target for destruction.
The mystery had been dangling right in front of everyone’s noses, yet none of them had even noticed it.
The world had been saved once. But what had happened right before that?
“Exactly, miss. Normally, there’s no way that God could have responded to a human’s summons and dwelled within their body. All humans would have been destroyed the moment he abandoned the world, after all. In other words, the order is backward.”
“…Backward?”
“Even though God had yet to renounce the world, Diablo destroyed it anyway. That was why God appeared in response to a human’s summons, and that
was why He rebuilt it. The girl who carried God within her body, the girl who wasn’t destroyed, was the only person left in the world. But if she could summon God, she would also have been able to form a contract with a demon of equal power. In other words…”
The chains on Jeanne’s wrists rattled and jingled as she raised one index finger in front of her lips.
Then, as though she were telling them a secret, she divulged the truth that had been hidden for so long.
“First, the girl formed a contract with the mighty Diablo. While it’s unclear what her objective was, she was unable to maintain control and ended up destroying the world. In her regret, she summoned God, formed a contract with Him, and rebuilt the world. But she was unable to endure her two contracts, nor was she able to die, so instead, she fell into a deep slumber. That is what it all means.”
And in that moment, one of the fundamental doctrines underpinning human society crumbled at its very foundation.
A crack formed in Izabella’s expression. But Jeanne didn’t stop, instead making one last declaration.
“The Suffering Saint, the one venerated by the Church, is none other than the first demon’s contractor.”
And because of that, the Church had hidden away the first demon, the one she’d called forth.
The alchemists must have obtained its flesh before its existence had been covered up. Then, knowing it would one day awaken, they went into hiding and began preparing countermeasures. And for some reason, the Saint’s apostle, the Butcher, had bided his time before giving the demon’s flesh to those wishing to form contracts.
Kaito and Elisabeth thought back on what the Butcher had told her.
“It’s a nonsensical little fairy tale, and one that’s gone on for a very, very long time.
There are those who’ve worked to bring these events about, and those who’ve worked to prevent them.”
Torture Princess: Fremd Torturchen, Vol. 4 Page 19