Fremd Torturchen - Volume 7.5 - Chapter 4

Kaito’s Daily Routine (Back Side)

A few days ago, the Torture Princess summoned a soul.

Her demon-subjugation efforts took up most of her time, and she had never much cared for doing chores in the first place. As such, she decided to summon an “Unsullied Soul” to take care of her housework for her. However, that requirement was filled by a most unexpected individual. They were killed in a manner far crueler than their sins in life would warrant, true—but they also hailed from another world.

His name was Kaito Sena.

Now he was in charge of handling all the chores around her castle. Much to her dismay, though, Kaito’s technical skills were lacking across the board, and his cooking in particular was downright disastrous. If it weren’t for the one dish he did excel at, purin, Elisabeth would have strongly considered disposing of him.

And to top it all off, he hadn’t even started making her breakfast yet.

In all likelihood, he was oversleeping, a crime that well warranted a punishment of death.

“That Kaito… He certainly has some nerve, waking up after his master.”

When Elisabeth got hungry, she became much akin to a starving lion.

Her heels clicked loudly as she strode briskly down the dim, unadorned hallway. The servant quarters were cramped, and they had none of the colored windows, suits of armor, or stone statues decorating their walls like the rest of the castle did.

“He only just reincarnated here, and yet it’s as though he’s forgotten he’s in the Torture Princess’s castle already. Perhaps I’d best beat some respect for my majesty into him with the cat-o’-nine-tails… Hmm?”

All of a sudden, she ended her ominous soliloquy. She frowned and stopped in her tracks.

There was something in the middle of the hallway.

Or to be more precise, there was a peculiar figure wriggling and squirming in front of Kaito’s room.

The thing was “soft,” and it was stuck to his door, raggedly panting as it scraped its nails against the wood. Its body was split in half down the middle, making it look like the bizarre figure had been brutally torn to shreds. Flaps of skin dangled from the cross section, and for whatever reason, they were accompanied by a series of thin strings. On its other side, its heart was pressed against the door and rapidly pulsating.

Given the state of the thing, it was odd that it was even alive. And in fact, it wasn’t—it was “dead.”

It was nothing but a corpse, yet even so, it was writhing in pain.

In that sense, its very existence was contradictory. Despite the fact that it was dead, it was shedding fat tears and scratching at the door in agony.

All in all, it made for a rather sorry sight. The vast majority of people who saw it would have wanted to do something to help. Some might even feel guilty about how carefree their own lives were in comparison.

However, Elisabeth was not the vast majority of people. She coldly clicked her tongue.

“Unable to vanish, eh? Begone, now. You shan’t find what you seek here.”

The moment she rejected it, it froze in place. Then without displaying an ounce of displeasure or annoyance, it disappeared.

The vast pool of blood it had been accompanied with vanished as well.

It left nothing behind.

Hmph, Elisabeth scoffed. Irritated, she kicked Kaito’s door open.

After entering, she narrowed her eyes.

Golden light was leaking in through the room’s shutters, yet the darkness inside had yet to fade.

She had little doubt that that was due to the agonized plea the thing had been making though the door.

The weight of its grudge had sullied the very air.

Despite the bizarre situation he was in, though, Kaito himself was still fast asleep. However, when Elisabeth looked closer, she noticed that something was off about him. Hmm, she thought as she approached his bed. She peered at his face, and once she did, she realized exactly what was going on.

Kaito’s tongue was sticking out, and his body was convulsing.

The corrupted air was giving him a nightmare. And it wasn’t difficult to imagine what the nightmare was about.

“…’Tis but natural one would make such a face, I suppose.”

Elisabeth shrugged. Kaito Sena’s memories included the moment of his own death. His was a rare situation, to be sure. And in many ways, a decidedly unfortunate one. Elisabeth mused on that fact.

’Tis rather unpleasant, having a nightmare and being unable to wake up despite knowing it’s a dream.

As Kaito continued sleeping, his dream approached its climax. He began thrashing about, spraying drool and mucus every which way. He scratched at the air with his fingers, and tears rolled down his cheeks. Help, he mouthed to nobody in particular.

Before long, his neck was going to snap.

Elisabeth sighed. Then she raised her ravishingly shapely leg up high.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

Her ax kick struck Kaito straight in the abdomen.

The shock from the blow snapped him awake, and his limbs went stiff as he contorted in pain.

He blinked a few times. It looked like he was wondering where he was and what he was doing there. At long last, though, he seemed to remember the grave reality of his situation. He gingerly glanced at Elisabeth. He started to say something, then clamped his mouth shut at the last moment. It was rare moment of prudence, coming from him.

If he’d voiced so much as a single complaint, Elisabeth would have strung him up from the ceiling.

Instead, he shifted his gaze over to the window. His eyes went wide when he saw the light streaming in through the shutters.

Ah, so you’ve finally remembered your role and station, then? Dullard.

“I see you’re up early, Miss Elisabeth… No, yeah, I’m just up late.”

“Ah, so you’re aware you’ve overslept, then, Kaito? ’Tis some nerve you have, indulging yourself in indolence beyond even that of your master.”

Elisabeth’s smile was as malevolent as it was beautiful. Kaito’s face went pale.

And with that, Elisabeth Le Fanu greeted the morning—

—one of the next of a long series of unpleasant, bothersome days.

Her demon-subjugation efforts took up most of her time—that was the pretext under which Elisabeth had summoned Kaito Sena.

However, the truth of the matter differed greatly.

On all the days without demon battles, she was actually bored beyond belief.

Although she was giving the Church regular reports and sending out familiars in search of information, that was the sum total of her responsibilities. In truth, the actual reason she called forth a servant was merely because she despised doing chores.

As such, summoning Kaito freed her from having to do any of them. In theory, it should have been a happy ending. In practice, though, this only compounded her boredom. There were many things her stone castle was good at, but helping its inhabitants kill time wasn’t on that list. But even so, she was neither shameless enough nor stupid enough to venture outside it. After all, the Torture Princess was a sinner without peer.

Like a prisoner, her food was the only pleasure afforded to her.

And thanks to Kaito, even that’s been ruined… Well, nothing for it. May as well take a nap.

Elisabeth yawned and began making her way back to her bedroom.

After she killed the fourteen demons, she herself was destined to be burned at the stake. Until then, she intended to fritter away as much of the idle interim as she could. Before she could reach her room, though, she stopped.

She stared down the hallway, then crossed her arms in displeasure.

“Hmm. So it’s back.”

A trail of blood dotted the stone floor before her. It was vividly crimson, as though it had just been spilled. However, stepping in it didn’t leave any footprints. The blood was nothing more than an illusion. Although it was visible, it was closer to a lingering thought than an actual object.

Elisabeth sighed. What to do, what to do?

“Urgh, dealing with this would be a headache and a half. Were I alone, I’d just as soon leave it be.”

Unfortunately, though, her castle was currently also home to Kaito Sena. He was in real danger of being snatched up by the owner of this blood. In fact, given this morning’s events, he might well have been the reason that it appeared in the first place.

“There you go again, making more trouble for your long-suffering master. See, this is precisely what makes you so foolish.”

Elisabeth cursed her servant’s name as she set off. She knew full well what a master’s duty was. Kaito was carrying out his end of the deal and working as her servant, and that meant it was her responsibility to protect him.

The fact that his work was all sloppy and half-assed notwithstanding.

Well, it isn’t as if I’ve anything better to do.

Perhaps this would make for a good way to kill time.

Elisabeth began casually following the trail of blood.

The farther she went, the more blood there was.

Elisabeth even started finding chunks of flesh and scraps of string floating in some of the larger drops.

Kaito’s chores took him all over the castle, so he must have covered at least some of that ground before she did. Yet despite how gruesome a spectacle it was, he never came to report it to her. In all likelihood, that meant that he hadn’t been able to see it.

He may hail from another world, but it’s my blood that sustains his existence. How is it that he could see the main body yet was blind to such prominent tracks? Just how empty is that head of his?

It would appear that Kaito Sena lacked any sense of wariness or appreciation for danger.

Growing increasingly exasperated, Elisabeth picked up the pace.

Eventually, she reached the small garden at the castle’s rear. She opened the aged door leading outside and headed down the moss-covered steps. A slight wind grazed her body. Underneath the clear blue sky, the situation in the garden was unfolding in exactly the way she’d anticipated.

For a moment, a surprisingly serious thought passed through her mind—perhaps it would be best to turn around and leave posthaste.

Down in the garden, Kaito Sena was facing half of a ravaged corpse.

It was making tears stream from its eyes, as though silently begging for help. However, Elisabeth knew that help wasn’t what it was after. It had overcome such base rationality long ago. Now it existed solely to resent people. It craved nothing more than to share its pain with the living.

’Twas torn up, sewed together, then while it yet lived…killed.

That kind of agony was enough to rob anyone of their humanity.

Now the corpse had been reduced to a monster.

However, Kaito didn’t seem to notice the bottomless malice emanating from it. He regarded it without showing so much as an ounce of fear.

Then he said something truly idiotic.

“Don’t worry, I’m coming.”

…Perhaps it would be best if I were simply to leave him to his fate.

Elisabeth gave the thought some serious consideration. In the end, it was close, but she did eventually change her mind.

It was because Kaito’s expression was simply far too kind. His sympathy and tolerance toward those suffering in pain were written all over his face. Without so much as hesitating, he approached the monster. It was an exceedingly foolish sight.

Yet at the same time, so too was it pitiable.

That was true of Kaito and the corpse alike.

“Idiots, the lot of them.”

And so Elisabeth snapped her finger.

A mass of iron stakes burst up from the ground in front of Kaito. Without a noise, they pierced the body clean through.

Even though that was the second time Elisabeth had gotten in its way, the mercilessly skewered monster still didn’t offer a single complaint as it vanished. Nothing remained of it. However, just repelling it over and over wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

’Twill continue appearing, no doubt. What to do, what to do? …Oh?

All of a sudden, a certain item sprang to mind. An image of a clear glass ball flitted through her thoughts. She crossed her arms and began contemplating whether or not it would be useful. Before long, she reached her verdict.

As it turned out, it might just do the trick.

“Ah, such ingenuity! I’ve always had a faint inkling, but it would seem that I really am a genius. Oy, Kaito! Hmm?”

Elisabeth narrowed her eyes. Perhaps due to the shock from her attack, Kaito was lying flopped over on his back. His eyes were even closed. For whatever reason, he was trying to fall asleep. It was utterly unclear as to why.

At that rate, he was likely to misconstrue the stake attack as having been nothing more than a dream. Elisabeth had no objections there. It would save her having to explain what was going on. Instead, she bent her elbow and moved it into position.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

With an absurdly carefree cry, she slammed her elbow straight into Kaito’s gut.

The shock from the blow immediately snapped his eyes open. He gingerly turned his gaze toward his belly. Elisabeth grinned at him with her arm still buried in his gut. After ten seconds or so of silence, Kaito finally spoke.

“You know, I figured you’d go for another leg attack, but it’s the arm this time, huh?”

“Hmhm, know now that I am a master of every combat technique known to— That’s not important right now, Kaito! First you oversleep, then you see fit to take a siesta on top of that?!”

“Huh, yeah, I guess I did.”

After having that fact pointed out, Kaito hurriedly rose to his feet. Elisabeth angrily arched her eyebrows, and the two of them exchanged some sharp repartee. Right as he was in the middle of reflecting on his own failings, though, his expression suddenly froze.

“…Wait, huh? I was asleep, right?”

Apparently, the whole situation was uncanny enough that even an idiot as simple as him could take notice. He glanced around, probably looking for the bloodstains. For a moment, his gaze lingered on the upturned patch of soil where the iron stakes had come out.

Knowing that whatever annoying questions he’d come up with would only add to her workload, Elisabeth immediately called out to him.

“Anyhow, if you have the time to be brazenly napping like that, then you must surely be bored to death. ’Tis fortunate for you, then, that I have the perfect job for those idle hands of yours. Come along now, and be chipper about it.”

“Okay, so I’ll admit that I was napping, but that doesn’t mean I’m— OW!”

“Oh, shut up! Just come!”

She grabbed him by the earlobe and forcibly dragged him off. As she did, she shot a glance back.

A graphic crimson pool was bubbling up on the ground.

The moment she saw it, Elisabeth coldly averted her gaze and began hurrying on forward.

It was almost as though she was trying to deny there had been anything there at all.

A long time ago, Elisabeth installed a magical device in one of the rooms down in the castle’s dimly lit underground hallways.

The device was designed to release people from nightmares. However, its actual effectiveness was suspect at best.

On top of that, testing it required at least two people, so as a result, Elisabeth had gone without ever trying it and had in fact mostly forgotten that it existed at all. However, it might well be just the thing they needed to resolve their current situation.

The only problem was how dangerous it was.

Kaito, of course, had strong feelings about being used as a guinea pig.

“Okay, that’s gonna be a reeeeal hard pass from me!”

“No, no, it’ll work! I haven’t the faintest shred of proof to support that notion, but I have this strange feeling that you’ll do just great!”

“That’s a little too important to leave up to a notion, don’t you think?! Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop! If you’re gonna shove someone into something, at least make sure it works first!”

“You’re a man; have some guts! Worry not—if anything happens, I’ll be sure to retrieve your ashes!”

“Oh, so we’re just working under the assumption that I’m gonna die… Hey, wait, ahhhhhhhhhh!”

However, this had all been his fault to begin with, so his human rights were forfeit.

Elisabeth ignored his protests and pressed him against the device. With a shoop, he got sucked inside—or so he likely thought. Transporting his entire body would have been far more trouble than it was worth. Instead, the device was designed to split off the tip of his soul and borrow it for a little bit. When it did, his consciousness went along for the ride.

Back in reality, he had merely passed out. Elisabeth left his body on the floor and began observing what was going on in the device.

“Now, then. I’ve my suspicions about his nightmare’s true form. Let’s see if I’m right.”

Inside the glass, the flowers were glowing crimson, and their bloodred forms were endlessly shifting.

They became butterflies, then turned back into flowers, then became butterflies again. They gently scattered and flapped their wings. And the beautiful cycle continued. Suddenly, though, something changed. The dream world’s administrator, a black-and-white tapir, made its appearance.

Kaito unguardedly made his way toward it. When he tried to touch it, though, it casually gobbled his hand up.

“I mean, ’twas the right answer, but still, what kind of fool allows themselves to be eaten so easily?!”

Elisabeth could scarcely believe what she had just watched. Sure enough, Kaito was a dimwit, an idiot, and a simpleton.

Then the tapir burst.

Its skin split from the top down, then fell gently to the ground. The animal had been reduced to a horrible blob of muscle fibers. Chunks of meat began cascading off it, dripping with mucus as they delivered the data about the nightmare the tapir had eaten to the world itself.

Then the inside of the glass ball sharpened.

The field of flowers ceased its perpetual expansion and shed its crimson hue. All that remained was a vast array of silver needles.

The butterflies’ wings followed suit, thinning out and becoming knives. The entire space was filled with objects designed to hurt people.

Elisabeth heaved a heavy sigh.

“As I thought… ’Tis like a veritable cage of pain.”

Her silky black hair swayed as she turned around.

With a faint smile on her face, she called out:

“Ah, another expectation met. Sure enough, you heeded the call. This device piques your fancy, doesn’t it?”

She was looking out the room’s open door—

—toward the pool of crimson—

—that was expanding and spreading forth like a sea of blood.

Countless viscous balls of foam bubbled on the pool’s blackened crimson surface.

This gave it the appearance of a putrid, burbling swamp. An especially large bubble formed on its surface, then popped, revealing a gaunt set of fingers. The rest of the lone arm rose up shortly thereafter, as did a single leg. Together, they dragged the torn-up body across the stone floor. The gruesome corpse looked up at Elisabeth. It offered her no other reply.

However, it did give its skin, flesh, and organs a meaningful shake. Elisabeth nodded. Sure enough.

The thing longed to be able to share its pain with the living, and it responded to the pain of others as well. Its sole desire was to merge its pain with someone else’s, then force them to take on the entirety of this combined pain on their own.

That was the reason behind the corpse’s fixation on Kaito Sena. At the moment, it was staring at the magical device so hard, it seemed liable to bore a hole in it.

“Grrr… Urrr…”

“Aye, ’tis a world constructed from pain. Interested, aren’t you, in seeing which fool cooked it up? O pitiful wretch sheared apart by the Knight while still living and used as part of his beast.”

And with that, Elisabeth casually revealed the corpse’s true nature.

Originally, it had just been a normal old human. However, after it was captured alive by the Knight, the weakest of the fourteen ranked demons, it was torn apart and tied together with countless other such victims to form a massive patchwork beast. And the only reason it had suffered that horrible fate was because it had had the simple misfortune of living in a village near the Torture Princess’s castle.

In a certain sense, it was Elisabeth’s fault that this villager had come to harm. However, she didn’t even know his name.

To her, he was just another innocent, nameless victim among countless others like him.

Even so, the corpse showed no sign of holding any special grudge against the Torture Princess. And that was to be expected. He didn’t have the capacity to resent any one specific individual. The atrocity that innocent villager suffered was beyond the scope a person could even comprehend.

When someone had their body torn up and stitched together into a horrible beast, they generally lacked the presence of mind to attribute blame to a particular person.

Suspended in that state of confusion, the villager had suffered untold agonies. However, the Knight’s death had freed him.

Or rather, it should have, but for some reason, he was still trapped in that state of pain.

’Tis doubtless because he couldn’t accept… No, rather, he couldn’t understand what had happened.

Normally, the villager should have died the moment his body was torn apart. However, the Knight’s magic had forcibly kept him alive. Even when he suddenly returned to his proper state of “death,” he couldn’t understand that that was what had happened.

Instead of disappearing like normal, his soul stagnated. And because of that, he changed.

All he knew was pain.

The simple intensity of his agony had overwritten his very humanity.

That was what had reduced the villager to the monster it was now.

However, releasing it from that state would be easier said than done. Its consciousness had been worn away too badly for it to respond to reason, and on top of that, Elisabeth was the Torture Princess. Hurting people and causing them pain was the sum total of who she was.

She possessed neither the virtue of a saint nor the compassion of a hero. However…

“That said, continuing to have you haunt me seems a rather unpleasant proposition. Perhaps I’d best do something about you after all. Now, the boy who created this world is inside the glass ball. What do you say?”

The device glowed silver as Elisabeth pressed her palm against it. Inside, Kaito was engaging in an act that was either gallant, reckless, or simply stupid beyond belief and setting off across the brutal landscape without so much as faltering before the pain that was going to entail.

Blood trickled across the world of knives and needles.

Upon seeing that, the monster immediately reacted. It reached out with its one arm and leg. How simple it was, how pitiable, and how foolish. Elisabeth let out a callous laugh. However, those same traits would go on to save it.

Whether or not the monster would truly attain salvation, though, Elisabeth had no idea.

“Very well, then, I shall allow it. Come along now.”

The monster accepted the Torture Princess’s invitation and leaped. Its body, which was composed of nothing but its soul, vanished inside the magic device.

Elisabeth ran mana through her palm and shifted her consciousness and part of her soul along after it.

And with an illusory shoop—

—Elisabeth got sucked into the ball.

“You fear pain, aye, but you’re far too accustomed to it. I daresay that that contradiction there is where your warped personality stems from.”

As Elisabeth fell, she let out a quiet murmur.

Kaito must have heard her, as he frantically glanced around. When he did, though, he twisted his body a little too far and lost his balance. Like the fool he was, he’d forgotten that his foot was still impaled on the needles.

Elisabeth frowned. Well, that’s not good. She flapped her dress like a bird’s wings and whistled. Darkness and flower petals whirled through the air, eventually coalescing into a black ball and materializing with a pop.

The dream’s master had made its appearance once more and was now far larger to boot. Elisabeth landed gracefully atop the massive tapir.

As she made it do a nose dive, she checked back in on Kaito’s situation. He was right on the verge of completely toppling over.

“You’re incorrigible, you know that? What, do you have some secret quota of blunders you feel compelled to meet or something?”

Exasperated, she reached out her arm and snatched Kaito’s hand as it flailed through the air.

Then all in one go, she yanked him upward.

After plopping him down on the tapir’s back, she sat down herself before he had a chance to come to his senses. Then she rested her arms on her knees and went back to observing the world.

Sure enough—they merged.

The corpse had come inside along with her, but it was currently nowhere to be seen. However, just because it wasn’t visible didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Not only was it no more than a soul, but it was also little more than a mass of resentment and obsession with pain.

Given that the world they were in was composed of nothing but pain, it and the monster were practically identical. As a result, the monster had gotten absorbed by the world the moment it came inside, much like the tapir’s meat rain had.

In a sense, the corpse and everything that was visible were now one and the same. It had been spread throughout the entire world.

Elisabeth nodded. Everything was going as she’d anticipated. When she did, an angry shout came from behind her.

“ELISABEEEEEEEEEEETH!”

“Oh, hello there, Kaito.”

“Don’t you ‘oh, hello’ me, dammit! Do you have any idea what I just went through because of you?!”

When Kaito continued loudly shouting, Elisabeth lowered the hand she’d been lightly waving at him with.

Then she shrugged and gave him a nonchalant reply.

“Well, you say that, but even I hadn’t the faintest idea that your nightmares’ cause would take such a form. And besides, who exactly was it who refused to wait for me, striding across those needles on his own like an utter fool?”

“Well, it does sound bad when you put it that way… Wait, hold on a minute. This is the cause of my nightmares?”

“That it is. ’Tis a contradictory sight indeed.”

Elisabeth gazed down at the transformed field of flowers as she spoke. Still seated, Kaito scooted over until he was right next to her. What an easily distracted fellow he was. Elisabeth faced the world of knives and needles as she went on.

“To pinpoint the precise source of another’s nightmares, one must first dive deep into their memories. However, this is but an experimental device, and such a complex feat is beyond it. Instead, it displays a symbolic manifestation of the fear that drives its subject’s nightmares. What you see before you is its result. You fear pain, yet you’re accustomed to it and, at times, even accept it willingly. As I said, contradictory. ’Tis perverse, and that means a lot coming from me.”

“…Huh.”

“A sea of knives and needles, eh…? ’Tis a veritable cage of pain, impossible to ever escape from.”

Elisabeth narrowed her gaze. The scene bore a disturbing resemblance to the atrocity the Torture Princess once put her fiefdom through. Her subjects’ desperate pleas for the release of death had been music to her ears, and she’d savored them while sipping on the finest of wines.

Elisabeth went silent as her mind turned back to that night of madness. Kaito didn’t say anything, either.

For a time, it was silent atop the tapir’s back. Suddenly struck by the absurdity of it all, Elisabeth arched her back and stretched her arms all the way up. After bringing them back down, she exhaled.

“To be frank, though, it doesn’t matter to me in the slightest.”

“Don’t you think that’s a little too honest?”

“Ha. You think your trauma is special? What you fear, what you find unpleasant, what weight you bear…I’ve no intention of asking the details, nor would they hold my interest if I did.”

“That’s…fair, I guess.”

“That said, I do aim to obliterate this place now.”

“…Say what?”

Kaito’s reply was completely dumbfounded, a fact that Elisabeth found insulting.

How utterly insolent. In a more righteous world, he wouldn’t just be tortured for that; he’d be straight-up executed.

Setting aside that this was how the magic device worked, the situation as a whole made their sole option abundantly clear.

They had to break the cage.

They had to kill the monster.

For that was providence, as well as the merciful thing to do.

“When you put someone in the device, it reproduces the symbolic cause of their nightmares. However, that alone is but the first step. The way it ends the nightmares is by having a third party destroy the reproduction, thereby freeing the subject’s mind. A violent configuration, to be sure.”

“I feel like that doesn’t make any sense at all. Is this really gonna make the nightmares stop?”

“Oh, there’s certainly no guarantee of that! Most of the developers of large-scale magic devices such as this end up going mad!”

“I’m starting to sense a trend with these unfounded statements you keep making.”

“That said, ridiculous as the ideas behind it may be, ’twas well worth testing it out. We’ve not had any battles as of late, and I could feel my body growing duller by the day… Plus, I just went through a rather unpleasant experience.”

Elisabeth let out a biting murmur and cracked her knuckles.

Now that she thought about it, this had been quite a day. Starting with Kaito’s failure to wake up on time, one unpleasant event had occurred after another. To be quite frank, Elisabeth was a little fed up with it.

It was high time she put an end to it all.

“Bakuuuu,” the tapir cried. It could clearly sense her violent intentions. However, Elisabeth ignored it. To the contrary, in fact, she treated its cry as a signal to let the destruction commence.

She reached out into empty space, and a vortex of darkness and crimson flower petals formed around her pale hand.

Then she drew a long sword from within.

“Executioner’s Sword of Frankenthal!”

The unsettling epitaph inscribed on the sword’s elegant blade flashed. Anyone who saw it would have the meaning of its phrase driven straight into their brain. Elisabeth swung the sword down like she was signaling an execution to take place.

“Witches’ Dance!”

Its blade sliced through the empty air.

As it did, the silver landscape began to change. The air shimmered with heat, and the ground, which had taken the wave of her magic head on, transformed into a vast sheet of burning metal. If anyone had been standing on it, the heat would have forced them to hop around like a madman. However, visible beings weren’t the only ones who could feel its effects. Even now, there was a lone monster writhing atop the scorching plane.

Elisabeth narrowed her crimson eyes.

It hurts, doesn’t it? Good! Savor the taste of my torture and, with it, remember.

The pain of being burned was different from the pain of being torn apart. Once the monster experienced that new kind of pain, doubt would surely rise up in its mind. He was already dead. Why, then, should he have to experience yet another type of pain? And when that happened, that intense confusion should temporarily revive the monster’s humanity.

The metal plane’s temperature rose mercilessly, growing higher and higher by the moment. Its silver flowers drooped and sagged as they melted. The intense heat was permeating every inch of this bounded world. And Kaito and Elisabeth were no exception.

The tapir only barely managed to ascend in time. It flailed its stubby arms and legs about to protest the heat.

Kaito had to cling tight to its round back to avoid being thrown off. He let out a panicked shout.

“H-hey, Elisabeth! At this rate, you’re gonna end up burning us to death, too!”

“Hmm. That is a problem, isn’t it? To be quite frank, I never actually considered that possibility.”

“Why wasn’t that the first thing you thought of?!”

Kaito’s cry echoed with concern and indignation, but Elisabeth didn’t pay it the slightest heed.

She was listening to a different howl, one that was coming from the world itself.

“No, no, no no no nonononono! It’s hot, it hurts, help, someone save me!”

The corpse’s sanity had been locked in a stupor by its simple agony, but the new pain had revitalized it and brought it back to the forefront. And now that the corpse had its senses back, there was something Elisabeth needed to do.

She parted her scarlet lips and, without a moment’s hesitation, made her bold declaration.

“Now, ’tis time to seal the deal.”

It was time for her to end all the nightmares.

Destroying and killing were the sole talents the Torture Princess had to her name. As such, Elisabeth’s role to was deliver a second violent death to the newly conscious soul. She swung her sword down without so much as a shred of mercy.

Darkness and crimson flower petals surged forth, emitting a shock wave that got absorbed by the gaps between the ashen clouds.

The sky creaked. Then the sound of glass shattering filled the air.

That sound was the death knell of the world and monster alike. The world was broken, and death was the only fate that awaited any who were spread throughout it.

The innocent villager had now met his second death. Elisabeth was certain of it.

Shards of the sky cascaded down like shooting stars.

Thousands of scraps of light rained down from overhead.

And immediately thereafter, Elisabeth and Kaito got violently launched outside.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

That marked the third attack Kaito’s chest had suffered that day.

It was getting to the point where Elisabeth felt she should start collecting a fee for services rendered. Kaito, on the other hand, seemed displeased with the wake-up calls. How utterly insolent. This time, though, Elisabeth decided to overlook his slight.

Instead, she took a moment to seriously examine the broken ball. The damage was fairly severe. It had served its purpose just the way she’d hoped it would, but she had a bone to pick with its shabby construction.

“What a flimsy piece of junk that turned out to be. For how dangerous a device it was, I’d have expected it to survive at least a single use.”

“I bet it would have if you didn’t use it like a lunatic.”

Kaito gave her an exasperated reply. He wasn’t just being insolent; now he was being downright rude. However, Elisabeth chose to overlook his irreverence once more, and the two of them shared a trivial little exchange. All the while, Elisabeth continued running her fingers over the device.

The world of pain was broken. The monster was dead. However, it was unclear whether or not the device would ever be fit for use again.

Well, I’m sure I’ll fix it somehow or other, Elisabeth ultimately decided. She withdrew her hand and turned to Kaito.

“And on another note, I take it your odd drowsiness is gone?”

“Huh? Oh, actually, now that you mention it, yeah… I guess today’s just been one weird experience after another.”

His answer was far vaguer than Elisabeth would have liked. She frowned.

After being freed from the Knight’s beast, the villager’s soul had been left without a proper form. The only reason it had been able to materialize the way it had was because it had found such a choice piece of prey in Kaito. The sensation he felt once it started hunting him hadn’t been drowsiness; it had been the sheer pressure of the monster’s desire to drag him to his death.

Elisabeth took another look around Kaito. The dark shadow was gone.

It would appear that the monster really was dead. Or to be more precise, it was now properly aware that it was dead.

As such, it had vanished off to wherever dead people normally went.

If such a place even exists, mind you.

The existence of the higher entities God and Diablo had been conclusively determined, but nobody had been able to prove where people’s souls went when they died. That was why Elisabeth hadn’t known if her choice would end up bringing salvation to the monster.

The only things she had done were grant a dead man more pain and vanquish him as he screamed.

’Twould be arrogant to describe such an act as “sending it to its rest.”

The wicked Torture Princess had ended its existence. That was all.

A dead man had vanished. Nothing more, nothing less.

Elisabeth didn’t regret her decision, nor was she ashamed of it. She gave a proud, haughty nod.

“If so, then I daresay you have me to thank. If you wish to drop to your knees and express your reverent gratitude, I certainly shan’t stop you.”

“Why? Just why?”

Kaito shot her a resentful look. He truly was foolish, this foolish servant of hers. However, it was precisely that foolishness that made it such a bother to explain things to him when he directed baseless complaints her way. Elisabeth elected just to scoff.

Then she suddenly remembered how famished she was.

Meals were some of the highlights of her days. In fact, they were the only highlights.

She crossed her arms. Then instead of complaining, she went on.

“Now then, Kaito, ’tis almost dinnertime. Should my meal be late, I assume you’ve no objections to finding yourself atop the Ducking Stool.”

“Actually, I think I have an objection or two.”

Even after she threatened him like that, he was still probably going to present her with something utterly inedible.

Even though she knew that, Elisabeth looked forward to her dinner nonetheless.

Everything past here is nothing more than a digression.

You could ignore it all, and not be the slightest bit worse off for it.

The story started a good while back.

Back when Elisabeth first installed the magic device designed to release people from nightmares.

Why would she do such a thing?

Every day, she would spend countless hours in idle slumber. She was the type that preferred to sleep au naturel. Never once had she tossed and turned due to nightmares, never once had she gotten insufficient sleep, and never once had her rest interfered with her daytime activities.

However, the Torture Princess dreamed.

And it was rather unpleasant, having a nightmare and being unable to wake up despite knowing it was a dream.

In a world that she was unable to wake from of her own volition, she was bombarded with constant shouts.

Loathsome Elisabeth, repulsive Elisabeth, cruel, hideous Elisabeth!

A curse upon you, a curse upon you, a curse, a curse, an eternal curse upon you, Elisabeth!

Countless voices echoed out with scorn and maledictions.

The Torture Princess was being burned in the fires of Hell in front of all the masses.

Night in and night out, her torment continued without cease.

However, Elisabeth Le Fanu had never once tossed and turned.

And she had never once feared going to sleep.