Ishura - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 - The Ruins of the Azwa Great Belfry

The Iriolde army’s bases of operation, hidden away in unseen corners of Aureatia’s vast borders, had mostly been uncovered by the Aureatia army. The National Defense Research Institute, the greatest weapon research facility, was no exception.

In Aureatia, at least, it had become impossible for Iriolde’s army to hide away.

However, there always existed exceptions. Who had originally shared these unseen corners of the city, not recorded in any maps or other official documentation, with Iriolde’s army in the first place…

In an abandoned district of the city, practically nothing but desert at this point, was an entrance to one of these unseen locations.

A tall woman with gray hair and a young girl in a patient’s gown, her bangs covering one eye, descended into the stonework room.

Viga the Clamor and Nihilo the Vortical Stampede.

“Never knew Aureatia had these types of places.”

“A really surprise, isn’t it? Judging by the style, the tower must be from around one hundred and fifty years ago. It looks like the foundation was liquified, and the whole building itself sunk into the ground.”

“We just entered the top of the tower, right? How’d you even find a place like this?”

“Hee-hee, that’s a secret.”

The one who provided the base for the National Defense Research Institute was Enu the Distant Mirror, while he had still been on the Twenty-Nine Officials. Using his position as head of the city development department, he used unseen corners within central Aureatia as his bargaining chips.

On the other hand, Viga the Clamor was an undercover spy sent by Aureatia to look into the strict confidential secrets held within the National Defense Research Institute.

She had leaked a great deal of information to Aureatia that Haade the Flashpoint alone wouldn’t have been able to catch, but the location of this home base that served as her personal trump card was the one thing she had kept secret.

Enu and Viga had joined forces to achieve their shared goal even before the Sixways Exhibition got underway, each moving as spies between two organizations at once, while belonging to no specific camp of their own.

The creation of a new construct—the method to unify the people’s will without being under anyone’s control—the krsnik.

This base was prepared previously by the two of them as a research facility for the creation of the krsnik.

“The plan was to meet up with Enu here. Hopefully he’s arrived already.”

Descending three sets of stairs, they entered a floor of the tower that was clearly different from the rest, with brand-new construction work.

Craft Arts must have been used for a large-scale remodeling of the area to serve its goal as a research facility.

The nerve fibers extending from Nihilo’s back were the first to sense the presence of another.

“Looks like he’s already here.”

Opening up the door, in the tiled room sat Enu the Distant Mirror and Kuuro the Cautious.

“Well, hello there, Enu. You just waltzed right in?”

“There were unavoidable circumstances, Viga… You’re Nihilo the Vortical Stampede.”

“Hee-hee-hee. I sure am. Good on you for recognizing me.”

“Sorry for being late. This wouldn’t have happened if everything went as planned, but…I juuuust barely made it out, okay? I was just supposed to take Nihilo’s head back and leave the National Defense Research Institute, but for some reason, I nearly got killed in the process.”

“…The institute was attacked? Right in the middle of a coup?”

“Yuuuup. I was a bit suspicious of you for a moment, Enu. I wondered if maybe you simply didn’t care about the krsnik research anymore.”

“Then, my being here should be enough proof to dispel those suspicious.”

Following Enu, Nihilo added her own speculation.

“The main target of their attack in the first place…was the one I was with, Yukiharu. For Aureatia, it was probably just all a bonus if Mom got wrapped up in it, too.”

“Hee-hee. Heck, maybe that’s why I survived at all. Once I’ve lost my research facilities, I’m just a little ole Word Arts caster that knows a teensy bit about Aureatia’s internal affairs.”

“Hm. In any case, you have the equipment here, and we’ve captured Linaris the Obsidian. You can continue your research without issue.”

“Let’s see…that would be Linaris, then?”

Without having any contact with Obsidian Eyes herself, Viga didn’t know what Linaris looked like in person.

Nevertheless, she was immediately able to distinguish which of the girls laid out on the two beds was Linaris. She had an alluring silhouette that would charm anyone, regardless of gender. Her face, with its pale complexion, was a beautifully sculpted masterpiece, even when accounting for the vampire’s inherent good looks.

“The other girl?”

“Yuno the Distant Talon.”

The leprechaun sullenly replied, sitting in the corner of the room with bandages wrapped around his face.

Viga was already acquainted with Kuuro the Cautious as well.

“She needs an emergency blood transfusion and using the facilities here was the only option. Sorry for bringing her unannounced.”

“I’m glad you successfully brought Linaris this far, but this girl was there in the carriage with you. Was she…?”

Enu shrugged, his owly, emotionless look unchanged.

“Carrying her was the only choice. The town’s a battlefield. We couldn’t make a stop at a hospital on the way here, and tossing her out in the road would just invite more suspicion.”

Yuno’s bedsheets were stained red with blood.

“I mean…I don’t reaaaally care either way. If you wanted me to treat her, I just wished you would’ve kept her in her clothes and not brought her in here. Now she’s brought in unwanted bacteria.”

Viga pouted as she disinfected her hands with chemicals, changed her clothes, and began getting ready to treat her.

The interior of the room bore a striking resemblance to the biological experiments building at the National Defense Research Institute.

In other words, it was both an operating room and a laboratory, furnished with all the necessary facilities for both.

“Using pressure to stop the bleeding was the right call. Though, you can see all her blood vessels anyway, Kuuro, so that must’ve been pretty easy, right? Using the stockpile here for a big blood transfusion wasn’t a mistake, either. But, with the wound left open, she would’ve been in quite a pickle had I gotten here just a biiiit later.”

She began to suture together the artery with needle and thread, all without ever breaking her smile.

Technical medicine, treating patients via physical surgery, had been seen as fishy and dubious within the Kingdom.

However, on the other hand, to self-proclaimed demon kings dealing in Life Arts, it was a technique they had continued to individually pioneer and develop. Even among them, due to her unique origins, Viga was extremely well-versed in technical medicine.

“It’s definitely deep, but it’s still just a simple cut. As long as it’s not infected, she should recovery completely. There is one big problem though, isn’t there? We can’t really discharge her now, can we?”

“No problem. That girl knew full well what would happen to her. If necessary, I’ll keep watch on her.”

“I think it’d be just easier to kill her, personally,” Viga replied, wiping her blood-soaked hands on a throwaway piece of cloth.

“After I watch her for a bit longer…I’ll decide if that’s necessary or not.”

“There’s one other person here, right?” Nihilo suddenly spoke up.

She must have determined Kuuro was the most threatening and warranted the most caution—as soon as she entered the room, she had kept close watch of the leprechaun.

“Inside your coat…you’re hiding another person. Who?”

“Right. Would’ve rather asked for this without already owing you for Yuno’s treatment, but…”

Kuuro languidly stood up.

“As requested, I have brought Linaris the Obsidian back here alive. For my reward, there’s a patient I’d like you treat.”

“…? A patient?”

Viga the Clamor. Nihilo the Vortical Stampede. Enu the Distant Mirror. Kuuro the Cautious. Linaris the Obsidian. Yuno the Distant Talon—these six were not the only ones in the room.

The seventh individual was far too small, her heartbeats far too faint, to be noticed until now.

“Viga the Clamor. You told me before you wouldn’t mind making me a second one.”

To carry out his revenge on Obsidian Eyes, Kuuro the Cautious required Enu’s assistance. If slipping within Mestelexil’s defense net was all he needed, Kuuro might not have needed to share information with Enu at all.

However, there was something he needed to accomplish immediately after he carried out his revenge.

“This one is the only one for me. You made her, so I want you to heal her.”

Kuuro gently laid out the horribly enervated homunculus on the bed.

Cuneigh the Wanderer didn’t say a word, her eyes painfully closed shut.

In the middle of her sleep of despair, she was tormented by an even more horribly grievous memory.

It was from when Obsidian Eyes had retreated from Kuta Silver Town to Mikweh Quartz Town.

In the middle of the night, gazing out at the cityscape, silent with all the lights gone out, Linaris lingered in place.

She was hoping he would look for her. She was already fourteen, yet her chest pounded like a young child impatiently waiting.

“Linaris.”

Finally, she heard the voice she’d waited for.

Rehart the Obsidian’s low, dulcet voice.

“You can’t be walking around outside right now. Even if you bring Zeljirga or Frey along to guard you.”

“…Father.”

“Your appearance immediately draws people’s eyes. Your pale skin stands out even more in the middle of the night like this. I can’t have you be seen and leave an impression behind. You need to keep this in mind.”

“I’m sorry, Father, for making you worry.”

She politely bowed her head.

Linaris did feel guilty for being so giddy, despite knowing full well that her selfish behavior would lead to this scolding.

“Today…I have something I absolutely wanted to show you no matter what.”

“Out here?”

Rehart sighed.

He looked to be alone, but surely that wasn’t the case.

Even when in front of his own daughter, he probably had an assassin nearby like he did when meeting Obsidian Eyes’ clients.

When she imagined her father’s solitude, the sadness ever so slightly dampened her excited heartbeats.

However, she had wanted to tell him that he no longer had any reason to fear.

“Fine, then. Know that I won’t ever entertain this kind of selfishness again.”

“Thank you very much… Father, here.”

A light went on in the one of the residences behind her.

This wasn’t Kuta Silver Town or Aureatia. Normally, none of the people living here would be awake this late at night.

Another light was lit. This one in the home right next to the other. Again, to their next neighbor, as if a flood of light was spreading around. The houses of the town, continuing along the slop, all turned on their lights at Linaris’s will.

“Look for yourself. No longer will we have to lay low and stay hidden.”

“Linaris.”

Rehart’s eyes widened as he looked at the flood of light.

Every single mind across the town was controlled and now awoken.

“What is this?”

“The ability to control others! Father…I have the very same vampire power that you have yourself! Father… Finally, I’m no longer…your powerless, useless daughter!”

“…”

The vampire’s supernatural powers of control did not manifest from birth. Given that mechanism behind their orders to their corpses was done via pheromone, they were endowed with the power alongside their secondary sexual characteristics.

Not only that, but Linaris had been helpless, born without the superlative physical abilities characteristic of vampires.

While she desperately learned the tricks of mental control passed down in Obsidian Eyes, she completely lacked any of a vampire’s natural gifts—nothing more than a well-bred young daughter to be protected, lacking any of the power suitable for a successor.

“…Father?”

“What is this?”

Rehart repeated the same words over again, befuddled.

Linaris found it strange.

Her venerable father at all times was dignified, sharply intelligent, and had never appeared agitated in front of her before.

Not only that, but here she was, showing this power meant to help her father…

“…Um, this is…my, um…”

“H-how did you get…a whole town under your control…? Is a vampire truly…capable of manipulating all of them at once…?”

The vampire threat terrorizing the land told of a time long past.

By the age of the True Demon King, Rehart had been the last vampire descendant.

Had their repeatedly inherited bloodline birthed a parent unit that didn’t even require violent bloodshed, as if the virus had spontaneously mutated, facing the threat of total extinction?

“This should not be. What am I supposed to do? Linaris…y-you’re really capable of…even more than I…”

“…F-Father…!”

Linaris moved forward out of concern. Rehart recoiled from her.

She was scared. What had she done wrong?

The daughter who always needed protection thought she had finally paid him back. If her beloved father saw even this long-awaited awakened power of hers as unnecessary, it meant that there was no value in Linaris’s life anymore.

“Please, please let me be useful! I’ll give everything, my body and my soul, to you, Father! I’ll do anything you ask me to! So please…I beg you…don’t be disappointed!”

Much like Rehart had feared Linaris, Linaris too felt terrified and clung tight to her father.

“…I…I just want you to be happy, Father.”

She offered up a blinding flood of nighttime light, like she had once seen in Kuta Silver Town.

She thought she could bear the beacon of hope, even amid the uncertain blackness of the dying vampires.

“I…am going back to my room, to rest some… I need to…think on the organization’s future…from here… Linaris…”

“Father…wait… L-look…”

The desire had always been on her mind. She wanted the power to be a suitable successor.

Being born without any power at all, hadn’t she been the cause behind the decline of Obsidian Eyes, the organization her big, kind, and strong father had built?

“Please, look at me.”

Obsidian Eyes’ decline didn’t stop.

Linaris’s power, in fact, was the first omen of its inevitable destruction.

Rehart the Obsidian died a year later.

“Eeeyaaaaugh! Auuuuugh!”

The shrill, piercing cry echoed through the underground operating room.

Linaris writhed, arching her porcelain—almost translucent—back like a bow.

Nihilo the Vortical Stampede held her down with one hand, but the strength of her resistance was little stronger than a mouse, and honestly, it didn’t seem like Nihilo needed to pin her down at all.

“Ah…aaah…haah…”

“You awake now?” Nihilo asked with a grin as she pulled her nerve fibers out from Linaris’s back.

Linaris the Obsidian was such a valuable specimen because she was still alive. Viga’s exhaustive medical procedures had kept her alive, but for the past days, even while Linaris was awake, more often than not, her consciousness was muddled and indistinct.

“Anh, augh…”

“Hee-hee, sorry about that. Guess they hurt when I take them out, too.”

The nerve fibers that extended from Nihilo’s spine acted like a control stick, operating a machinelike part of her own body, but at the same time, they were capable of forcibly sending signals to a living organism’s nerves, throwing muscle movements out of whack and causing intense pain.

Nihilo didn’t necessarily understand what sort of meaning there was in such a torturous experiment, but when it came to Viga the Clamor, Nihilo could imagine her causing unnecessary pain to test subjects.

“…P-please… I beg you… I, I will endure this… Ngh, augh… So please, leave Obsidian Eyes alone…”

Linaris pleaded as tears dropped from her large eyes.

Even with a woeful look on her face, her profile was as beautiful as freshly fallen snow.

“Sorry. I don’t think me or Mom have anything to do with this Obsidian Eyes of yours. We’re not trying to get any information out of you or looking to get you to do something for us, either—apparently, all that’s important is that you feel horrible pain. Hee-hee-hee…what a funny experiment, right?”

“…”

“So, Obsidian Eyes is really important to you, huh?”

Nihilo didn’t hate this work—tormenting Linaris and watching her reaction. It was far better than dealing with some mysterious beastfolk or revenant.

She herself was rather indifferent to people’s appearances, but even Nihilo could tell that Linaris was beautiful.

She had silky smooth skin, even paler and more translucent than Nihilo’s own dead skin. In stark contrast was her thick, glossy black hair. Her lips were pale enough to think no blood passed through them at all, yet the blood flowing through the pipes connected to her body was colored deep red, like a precious jewel.

“Now, now, Nihilo, dear. You’re doing your job properly over there, I hope?”

The door to the room next door opened and Viga appeared, wearing a surgical gown.

Both her hands were stained with blood. Both Yuno the Distant Talon and Cuneigh the Wanderer’s procedures should have long been finished by now, but maybe she had been wrapped up in some other work separate from their treatment. In the next room over, there were several other test subjects besides Linaris.

“While it’s all well and good that you’re enjoying yourself, you still need to give her as much pain as possible, okay? For a vampire like Linaris…we won’t be able to draw out her emergency signal unless she feels her life’s in danger.”

“Angh…agh…lease… Please, spare Obsidian Eyes…”

“Now, now, it’ll be all right. Don’t worry, the pain won’t last too long. Bear with it a liiiittle longer and it’ll be over soon.”

Viga spoke to Linaris with a smile.

She looked like a nurse gently reassuring her patient.

Nihilo had seen her gently soothe a test subject like this as they died writhing in agony many times before.

Linaris the Obsidian was a terrifying and horrible organism. However, in this situation, she was nothing but a powerless, infirmed young girl, even weaker than a noncombatant like Viga.

The corpses that kept her protected couldn’t reach their base here, and there were almost no effect targets for her vampiric control. Enu and Kuuro, of course, had been inoculated with the antiserum beforehand, and Viga too, having personally dissected Qwell the Wax Flower’s corpse and having a hand in the new antiserum production process, had been inoculated, too.

Finally, for those already dead like Nihilo, a vampire’s infection and control had no effect at all. Constructs, including revenants, didn’t have normal blood circulating through them, and for a vampire, who used a blood-borne infection to control a target, they might have been their greatest natural enemy of all.

“Oh, right, Mom.”

“Eeyaaaauuugh!”

Linaris’s elegant body leaped when Nihilo inserted her nerve fibers.

Though part of her wanted to enjoy Linaris’s reactions more closely, she could handle the torture while she talked.

“What is a vampire’s emergency signal, anyway? Is it related somehow to taking blood from her like this?”

“I might not have ever gone into detail about vampire biology with you, now that I think about it. Vampires’ behavior is similar to honeybees’, in a way. In both cases, they create this system where a parental unit, like a queen bee, manipulates the colony below them with pheromones. In fact, vampires also release a special alarm pheromone in response to threats or pain. They really are similar, aren’t they?”

“I see, so like an emergency order to protect the parent unit…”

“That’s right. While there’s possible biomaterial alternatives, their normal pheromones…the alarm pheromones possess a far more powerful effect on inducing behavior. Not only that…it will seep into their blood just by causing pain like this, without need to ask, so it really is quite brilliant. This material was the one sample that was impossible to get from a dead specimen.”

Even while Viga happily explained everything to Nihilo, Linaris screamed, hugged her shoulders, arched her slender back, sometimes hugging her knees to endure the pain.

“Hnaugh…ngh…nrggghh…”

“Hee-hee-hee… Isn’t that cute. So do you like it more when we do these awful things to you, hm?”

“Don’t worry now, Linaris. I promised Enu and Kuuro that I wouldn’t do you any bodily harm. Do your best for me now, okay?”

“No, noooo… I don’t want to hurt anymore…!”

From anyone else’s perspective, the sight probably looked like the pits of hell itself.

However, to Viga and Nihilo, this very sight had been part of their everyday life during the age of the Demon King.

The shrieks of agony reverberated into the adjoining sickroom.

Though, naturally, the facility wasn’t built under the assumption it would house the sick. It was furnished with a bed; however, the room was originally expected to serve less as a sickroom and more as a morgue.

“…I’ll kill you…! I’ll kill you!”

“Don’t move.”

Kuuro curtly advised her, sitting in front of the door.

Yuno the Distant Talon was struggling so hard to free herself from the bed restraints, it really did seem like she would cut open her arm again. She looked almost like a rabid beast, a complete reversal from the resolve she had shown him when they’d met in the manor.

“Hraaaah!”

“You want to get hit with more anesthesia? You know full well that it’s pointless to struggle.”

“But, Linaris… Linaris, is in so much pain! If it means letting Linaris…letting my friend die, I don’t care what happens to me!”

“…The goal isn’t to kill her. As part of the experiment, they just need to cause her a certain amount of pain, and they promised me they wouldn’t take her life, crush her eyes or nails, anything like that… I’ll stop them if they try.”

“Kuuro…h-how can you stay so calm?! You treated Linaris like a little sister, didn’t you?! Even Linaris, she, she always looked so happy when she talked about you…she adored you, so why…?! How can you take part in something like this?!”

“It’s because I think of her like a little sister, I’d say. Do you know how many people have died because of her? If her only crime was being born a vampire, I could sympathize. But the crime of using and killing innocent people needs to be punished accordingly.”

“Th-that…doesn’t have anything to do with the actual victims at all, does it?! You’re…not publicly passing judgment on her, either… Instead, you’re just torturing her in some experiment that no one else can see…! This isn’t what Linaris should actually do to atone at all…you’re just doing this to satisfy yourself!”

That’s right. All of this is just self-righteousness and for my own satisfaction.

Kuuro was already not a part of Obsidian Eyes.

However, he decided to pass judgment on Frey and Linaris in the style used by his former spy guild.

Those who drove their comrades to death would always face retaliation. They responded with a befitting amount of fear and suffering. That had been the Obsidian Eyes way when Kuuro was in their ranks.

No matter how despicable and worthless the dead may have been, as long as they were with Obsidian Eyes, there would be reprisal. Conversely, even if someone was a previous friend, with whom they had shared past joys and sorrows, if they were no long in Obsidian Eyes, they would be used and killed. An easy to understand, and thorough, custom.

For Kuuro, at least, this wasn’t for the sake of justice or logic. It was to deter enemies with fear and show dignity to the lonesome nonconformists, nothing more than an agreed upon code of conduct as a means of protecting themselves.

Thus, Yuno’s assertion was probably correct. In fact, in Kuuro’s own case, even if he wished for a fitting retribution for all the lives he had stolen, he didn’t expect it would ever come.

“…That’s fair. If there’s something I’m hoping for, it’s that with the weight of Linaris’s punishment, she’ll forever disengage from the guilt and responsibility for Obsidian Eyes. There was one among them who wished for something similar themselves. Though, I ended up killing them, too.”

Ultimately, he was doing exactly what Frey wished for.

Kuuro broke into a wry smile.

“Yuno, what are you after, then? Do you believe that Linaris shouldn’t face any punishment at all?”

“I-I don’t…i-it’s not about, Linaris’s crimes…”

Yuno moaned, struggling to squeeze her voice out. She was in tears.

“Wh-why am I…so powerless? I was prepared… I-I thought if it meant saving Linaris…if it meant redeeming myself for past regrets, my life was cheap, expendable… Yet, Linaris is suffering like this…and even all those crimes she’s committed, if it was already way too late to do anything about them by the time we first met, what was I ever supposed to do to save her?!”

“…”

Kuuro listened to Yuno’s breathing as he remained seated in front of the door.

Anxiety, fear, and self-reproach.

If even after learning everything about Linaris, Yuno still treasured her this much, then Kuuro figured he had made the right decision not to kill Yuno on the spot after all.

“Know your place. You’re a normal minia who won’t even live for very long. You should just be glad someone without a single ace up her sleeve like you is here in the first place.”

“Hic, mrrnggh…hic…”

Kuuro thought back to Linaris when she was young, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she listened to him tell her about himself.

Those moments were the best, when he was tasked with looking after the young lady, and he didn’t have to talk about killing. He talked about the trees and creatures he could see with his Clairvoyance, and about the people living beyond the manor’s walls. Within bloodstained and dirtied Obsidian Eyes, Linaris alone was innocent and pure, which was why everyone cared about her so dearly.

“Talk to her. You’re going to be her spiritual and mental sanctuary. For the Mistress, that’s the only meaning you have in being here.”

He said something similar to what Toroa the Awful had said to him once before.

It was more than likely that Kuuro would never been able to do the same again.

Everything had completely changed, and it could never be restored to how it was again.

Both for Linaris, and himself.

“Miss Yuno.”

From the bed next to hers, Yuno heard a very weak voice.

In the underground sickroom, she couldn’t distinguish day from night, but at night, the lights were all extinguished, save for one.

“Are you awake…?”

“Linaris.”

Yuno tried to jump up before remembering her ankles were bound to the bed.

Raising just her upper body, she strained her eyes to get a better look.

Linaris might have been laid down in the bed, but it also looked like just a pile of sheets, too.

To her eyes, it seemed very hard to believe there might be a person under them.

“I’m awake… I’m awake! Go ahead, talk all you want! If there’s anything you want to say, I’m here!”

“…Oh no… I’m just glad, you’re there…”

The pile of sheets didn’t budge. Was Linaris’s body really all in one piece?

Kuuro’s mentioning the promise to not harm her body only served to make Yuno feel even more uneasy.

“Miss Yuno… Allow me to apologize… You surely must have endured quite a lot…”

“Not at all! I mean…we’re friends, aren’t we?! You’ve been in agony this whole time, this is nothing compared to that!”

“…”

“L-Linaris… Th-the negotiations with the Gray-Haired Child, they were a success! Lendelt and I, we got him to promise that Obsidian Eyes would be protected…! So, please, don’t worry!”

“Thank you…”

Her voice seemed to fade as she mumbled.

“…Thank you…for believing, in me…”

“…”

Yuno considered Linaris a friend. However, when Hiroto the Paradox told her the truth, if Yuno hadn’t stood by Linaris in that moment, would she have killed Yuno?

Kuuro claimed that he had captured Linaris to get revenge. Yuno had come to Aureatia herself after swearing to get revenge on the ones who destroyed Nagan.

Even if it had all been for the sake of Obsidian Eyes, each family member of the victims Linaris sent to their deaths surely had the exact same right to revenge as Yuno.

“…Linaris, have you…killed people?”

“…”

“I never imagined that you could do something like that. Since to me, you just seemed like a quiet, gently bred…and kind young girl… But I heard from Kuuro… Obsidian Eyes killed a lot of people and wants a great big war…and that they have killed even more people to see that happen… Is that all true?”

“…”

“I’ve killed someone before, too.”

Yuno didn’t have any experience directly taking another’s life.

However, she had killed before. In Lithia, she had indeed wished for Soujirou’s blade to cut down Dakai the Magpie. She didn’t necessarily regret the rage she felt back then.

Still…

“Even though it was something I thought was right…afterward, I felt afraid. When I thought about how…the person I killed had a heart and soul, just like me…and had thought all sorts of things throughout their life, I realized just what a major thing I had done… It made me want to forget, to ignore it.”

“…Yuno. I’m sure…you’ll be disappointed…”

Linaris’s voice quivered, but Yuno couldn’t tell if the quivering was out of fear, or because she was exhausting her stamina.

“I was scared the whole time, and yet…I was never able to feel the type of fear you speak of, Yuno… Even if I felt sad…even if I was able to imagine and empathize with the person…like some, heartless…different creature…”

“Linaris…”

Linaris was a vampire. Though she may look like a minia, she was a fundamentally different creature, and she could never expose herself to miniankind as they were, to Linaris, her natural enemy.

Perhaps those people who lived in the world outside of Obsidian Eyes, in Linaris’s eyes, were nothing more than beasts bereft of Word Arts. Or perhaps Linaris was trying to say that was what she had been like herself.

“…I’m sorry.”

Hearing her apology, mixed with tears, the thought came to Yuno.

If Yuno had betrayed her, Linaris would have surely killed her.

Linaris had lived her whole life with the resolve to do such a thing.

“Yuno… I’m sure, there must have been others like you among them, Yuno. I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

Yuno wanted to extend her hand to Linaris, but with her legs bound, it was impossible.

The feeble, weak apology didn’t extend outside the sickroom, sunken under earth and stone.

The experiments of shrieking torment still continued from there, unending.

When Viga the Clamor was dissecting a person alive, she didn’t put any malice in the act.

This was both a result of her innate temperament and of her education.

The village Viga had been born into didn’t have a name.

The settlement, hidden away from the Kingdom’s eyes, had been inhabited by a single-family line since long ago, who passed down their unique techniques and successful accomplishments through generations.

To someone with the average person’s sense of values, it must have seemed a far cry from what could be called technical medicine, and more like a cacophony of devilish skills. The techniques to take apart the secrets of the minian form and reconstruct it into a completely different life-form altogether.

Their origins weren’t exactly recorded in the Kingdom’s annals, either. They were a clan dedicated to honing Life Arts, birthed in secret by a demon king expelled from the Kingdom in an ancient age long past.

Across many years, they pruned and selectively bred their own bloodline over and over. With each passing generation, they’d birth children able to more deeply observe a person’s body and who possessed even more precise techniques, and these children were educated, inheriting the bloodline’s accumulated techniques and knowledge.

The goal of the education was to scrape away any feelings of sympathy and step into the realm of the unethical.

The patients having their bodies mangled and cut up might scream out in pain or pitifully beg for mercy.

However, for a physician, none of it had any bearing on their work. People would let out screams when dealt pain, but so did heartless beasts. They were taught that this was simply a natural reaction.

They were told that more than the piled-up corpses of the innocent, more than any revenge against the Kingdom that drove them from society at large, the most important thing of all was to simply pursue their clan’s research, their deepest desire.

To create a perfect life-form that would never be visited by sickness, age, or death—to complete the miracle that the Wordmaker entrusted to the hands of mortals and create a fantastic world teeming over with life.

This was Viga the Clamor’s sole objective, both then, and now.

When Viga exited the lab room, Enu was gazing over a city map of Aureatia, looking bored.

Even as Linaris’s shrieks continued unabated, Enu—just like Viga—didn’t flinch at all.

“I’m assuming you’ve finished gathering today’s samples, Viga?”

“Yup. Right now, I’m having Nihilo wash up. Since we were able to get Linaris in perfect shape, we were able to skip over a few processes we expected to deal with.”

“It’ll finally be finished soon, then… It’s been a long time.”

Viga sat down in the chair right next to him and tried to peer over at the map.

In a rare twist, Enu reacted with displeasure and twisted himself to move away from Viga.

“Ah.”

“Just as long as things are going smoothly. I was thinking it was about time to give Kuuro a detailed explanation on the krsnik. He’s a very important collaborator of ours, after all.”

“Fiiiiine with me.”

“Well, I figured it was best not to ask about anything I didn’t need to know.”

That was the first time Kuuro had spoken up. He had always had a weak presence, and would breathe and walk in total silence, so unless he purposefully asserted himself like this, he would often go unnoticed.

“Either way, I can’t leave this place until both Linaris’s and Cuneigh’s procedures are finished. Since I would learn all about it at some point, I’m guessing we’d all be more comfortable if you were the ones to tell me.”

“I suppose you’re right. I mean, with that eye of yours, Kuuro, you’re going to see what we’re making here anyway. Want me to answer some questions?”

“My problem is less with the krsnik and more with you individually. Are you creating the krsnik to destroy Aureatia?”

“Oh no, not at alllll! The vampire powers are meant to be used for something much more peaceful.”

“…I’m surprised. You’re not lying. You yourself used Nihilo the Vortical Stampede to assault Aureatia, didn’t you?”

“Hee-hee-hee-hee. Well, I was still pretty young back then.”

Nihilo the Vortical Stampede’s invasion during the Age of the Demon King might have been the closest precedent they had for the Particle Storm’s advance, which Kuuro the Cautious had witnessed for himself. Several layers of defense were broken through, and after that thing passed by, only corpses were left behind, soldier and civilian alike.

At first, Aureatia searched with all their might to find out who had employed the construct, and for what purpose, but it was meaningless. Nihilo the Vortical Stampede was a revenant with a soul of her own, who could make decisions and act of her own accord, and, just based on the fact she continued her destruction and slaughter without depending on commands from a self-proclaimed demon king, was invincible.

Ultimately, it was said the conclusive piece of evidence was gained by tracing the route of how the vast quantity of deep celestial charsteel used to make the armoring had been obtained. In a destroyed village, they discovered the corpse of the self-proclaimed demon king who had created Nihilo and, based on the weak point they analyzed at the research base there, dealt with Nihilo the Vortical Stampede for good—this was what the public believed to the true.

It had always been a fishy story. For starters, did Nihilo the Vortical Stampede even have a weak point at all? If she was a revenant with a heart, able to act freely and judge for herself, then the way of suppressing her must have used that heart, too… Maybe they did it by using a self-proclaimed demon king captured on Aureatia’s side as a hostage to bargain with?

Whatever the truth, Aureatia never publicly announced the self-proclaimed demon king’s name and closed the case by saying they were dead.

Then, Viga the Clamor infiltrated the National Defense Research Institute as a double agent, and Nihilo the Vortical Stampede was reused as a siege engine in preparation for war, though Kuuro had no idea of the course of events that led them there.

“The village where they discovered the self-proclaimed demon king… I heard that a majority of the people living there had been dissected alive. Guess that was your handiwork.”

“Indeed.”

Viga’s expression shifted ever so slightly, but there weren’t any further signs of mental turmoil.

While she looked like a person, she was far closer to a construct herself.

“The krsnik project…was something I proposed, knowing Viga’s history. At the time, the True Demon King’s terror had already spread on an irrevocable scale. If one singular fear is uniting the people’s minds and driving them mad, then what would you think the antidote would be?”

“All the honest methods that could be thought up have already been tried. What did you come up with?”

“Overwriting that control. Of course, putting that load on just a single vampire meant that the parent unit’s actions would potentially wipe up all their corpses, too. We needed a method that would unite everyone’s wills, but without having any control over them. What would then make that possible is the krsnik, an artificial vampire mutation.”

“…Vampire mutation?”

“Think about it. You must have some idea what I’m referring to.”

In this world, there were a great many organisms, such as the dragons and gigant, who could not be explained solely through the laws of physics. Even among these organisms, the vampires had an especially unusual nature.

Essentially just a disease, vampires were born by remaking the children of the infected at the developmental stage. Superb looks and exceptional physical abilities compared to those of the same race—in and of itself, a spontaneous mutation within the range of what was theoretically possible. The point that definitively separated vampires from other individuals was that their bone marrow created the virus at the same time it created blood, and they possessed an acinus that produced pheromones to control corpse behavior. Looking at them from a biological standpoint, this lone discrepancy would be the only difference between vampires and non-vampire races.

“Vampires excel more than any other at recreating the chains that serve as the blueprints for life, but it is extremely delicate work that can be affected by both individual differences and external factors. As a point of fact, there have been more than a few confirmed cases of unintended vampire mutations already.”

“Dhampirs, I’m guessing. Individuals born with vampire characteristics, but innately lacking the ability to spread the infection. Their bone marrow doesn’t contain the pathogen, but the ability to create an antiserum instead.”

“Linaris is clearly another example of a mutation. She is extremely weak physically, but on the other hand, she managed to acquire a route of an infection that doesn’t rely on said abilities—airborne infection.”

“…”

Kuuro knew the fact that she hadn’t been born as a normal vampire had torn Linaris up inside. No one, including herself, ever imagined she would awake to the colossal powers of control she had now, and it was believed she’d never be unable to act as Rehart the Obsidian’s successor.

“I let myself get caught up in a pompous lecture when I am no expert in this subject, but the truth is, I just hypothesized the possibility from the facts of the past and the opinions of researchers. It was only thanks to Viga’s cooperation that we learned an artificially manipulated spontaneous vampire mutation was feasible.”

“I can see the general logic. What mutation are you going to cause in the krsnik, then?”

“We’re planning to cause a mutation not in its infection ability or physical abilities, but in his behavioral commands,” Viga answered. “The krsnik will be able to spread the infection and increase their number of corpses, but they will be a vampire that cannot freely give orders as a parent unit. Theoretically speaking, it’s not too far of a stretch to imagine that kind of mutation now, is it?”

“As far as you’re making it sound, sure…”

“If we’re able to imbue the pathogen itself with a powerful action-inducing pheromone—in particular, the warning pheromone we’re gathering from Linaris now—then the krsnik corpses will obey that command forever. Hee-hee, isn’t if funny? I mean, the parent unit won’t be able to override the command at all…”

Linaris the Obsidian could freely manipulate the corpses she generated, but that was in large part due to the excellent nerve manipulation techniques passed down through Obsidian Eyes, and her own outstanding capacity for thought. The average vampire could only control their corpses by swapping out the single command they had been given for a new one.

“And this, this will happen even in the next generation. That’s because, when there is an abnormality in the vampire pathogen, the corpse’s child then isn’t born as a normal vampire, either. The infection passes from mother to child, and they’re corpses from birth, so even if, say, the parent unit dies, they’ll continue obeying the command worked into the pathogen itself.”

“…”

At first glance, this was just an inefficient bioweapon.

Whether the idea was to make the infected commit suicide with a command that couldn’t be overruled, or make them kill someone else, there were other viral pathogens that similarly killed the ones they infected.

However, just as Enu had mentioned from the start, the purpose of this weapon wasn’t slaughter.

“A singular, unified command… I see, so then what’re you trying to do…”

“Is use an explosively transmissive virus to forcibly forbid infected from killing each other. For the citizens spurred on by the True Demon King’s terror…and the monsters powerful enough to destroy our world as we know it, the most direct method of reigning them in is to obstruct them from doing anything that would cause destruction, regardless of whether they have any intention to or not.”

Kuuro shook his head.

“A ridiculous fantasy.”

“Hah-hah-hah-hah. I mean, we thought the same thing at first. But, think about it, isn’t this the method that our world needs right now? Of course, the Sixways Exhibition needs no mention, but…there’s the Lithia Incident that Talen caused, and this latest coup attempt by Iriolde, too. Among all the schemes to unite the post–Demon King world that have happened up until now, and are likely to keep happening from here on out, this one will cost the least number of lives. Even once everyone becomes a krsnik corpse, biologically they won’t be any different from any other minian.”

Aureatia’s Thirteenth Minister, Enu the Distant Mirror, when did he start putting this plan of his together?

As head of the Construction Ministry, he knew the geographical blind spots that could serve as bases of operations. From his position on the Twenty-Nine Officials, he was able to make contact with the self-proclaimed demon king Viga, who was kept in secret. As the one put in charge of vampire subjugation campaigns, he continuously searched for living vampires to serve as specimens. By providing a basepoint to the National Defense Research Institute, and sending Viga to join them, it allowed the research to happen. With his life in Obsidian Eyes’ grasp, he used the Sixways Exhibition situation to keep himself alive longer. Then, by connecting with the Gray-Haired Child, he was able to finally escape from the yoke of everyone, both Aureatia and Obsidian Eyes.

He had kept acting entirely on his own, without ever revealing his true purpose to anyone.

“To carry out the plan, we thought to use the network of water channels to cause a pandemic, but…with the discovery of a vampire with airborne transmission, this became unnecessary. My chance encounter with Linaris was personally my greatest moment of crisis, but at the same time, an incredible stroke of good luck.”

“You really believed…that the self-proclaimed demon king Viga would cooperate with a plan like that? She’s betrayed both the National Defense Research Institute and Aureatia to be here, just like you have. Not only that, but she’s the only one between you who’s fully versed in the life sciences. I bet she could make a small adjustment to the krsnik and create a weapon that’d destroy all of Aureatia.”

“Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. Oh, but I wouldn’t do something like that. Peace maintained through innate instincts—I feel like that’s a way more fundamental and surefire idea than hoping people will obey unclear rules and laws.”

Kuuro furrowed his brow. Viga’s words were genuine.

Even when he used Clairvoyance to gaze at them, these two truly and honestly believed in their plan.

“If you want peace, why did you create something like Nihilo the Vortical Stampede?”

“Oh, well, I mean…”

Viga cocked her head and awkwardly smiled.

“If all these people driven crazy with fear and killing each other kept living…then there’s the chance their children would inherit those characteristics, too, right? Back then, all of my clan, and all the people on the Kingdom side of things had ended up that way so…I figured before there were any more of them, it’d be better to clean them all up first.”

…What a monster.

She genuinely didn’t think of minian life as any different from that of a squirrel or a bug.

Her belief was that by getting rid of the unwanted individuals in a population and making the desirable ones breed, it would lead to even more desirable results. To Viga the Clamor, this krsnik plan was also simply an experiment to introduce a more desirable group of individuals into the larger herd.

“…What do you think, Kuuro? Your Clairvoyance sees everything. You must despise the nature of this world, of killing and mistrust. Now this cooperative relationship is entirely in exchange for Cuneigh’s treatment, but…I revealed all this information to you now. I believe you definitely won’t interfere.”

“…”

Enu might be right.

It was a terrifying project, but even a man like Enu felt a strong-arm measure like this was necessary.

There was no doubt that the situation their world was in was dire enough to warrant it.

“I just need Cuneigh healed up. I decided I wasn’t going to get caught up in any more trouble.”

“In that case, all you need to do is protect this place until that’s done—once the krsnik’s complete, it will be invincible.”

Since the infected would be unable to harm one another, and this command could never be updated, it meant there wouldn’t be anyone capable of harming the source of the virus’s outbreak, the krsnik itself. On top of that, the infection would spread through the air. Whether the small number of individuals inoculated with the antiserum, or constructs without any blood to infect, were capable of resisting the immense number of infected or not…that was the type of experiment they were now looking to conduct.

Even with his Clairvoyance’s foresight, Kuuro couldn’t imagine how society would transform after all the people were robbed of the will to harm and kill one another. It was probably going to cause a seismic amount of turmoil and chaos.

Kuuro the Cautious might have been the only one in a position to stop it at that moment.

“What does your Clairvoyance see. Success? Failure?”

“…Can’t say. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if something like that did happen.”

Kuuro pulled his flat cap down past his eyes to hide them.

“Anything’s a hell of a lot better than more people dying.”

One thing was certain, both in the past, and now.

Kuuro was sick of watching people die.