Fremd Torturchen - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

2

On the Northernmost Shore

Off in the distance, crows were cawing.

Their voices, tinged with melancholy, stirred up a certain nostalgia.

The owners of these voices circled about the gray sky with their black wings spread wide. In truth, they weren’t actually crows. They weren’t even birds at all. Their cries, beaks, and black wings did resemble those of crows, but the creatures turning through the sky did not have craniums. Their soft brain matter was fully exposed, some of it having even broken down. And their bodies were infested with flies. By all rights, they should have been dead. Yet the horrific figures didn’t even seem to be in pain.

Their very existences had clearly diverged from the evolutionary tree of life. Though, all things considered, that made perfect sense.

After all, they were Diablo’s underlings.

Croak, cRoak, crOak, croAk, croaK.

Only their voices were melancholy. The underlings themselves, each of their large bodies about the size of a small pig, were swirling calmly.

Then they gently swooped down toward the chilly beach.

An underling grazed the surface of a leather tent, one of the many that had been systematically set up just beyond the waves’ reach. Together, the tents formed an impressive encampment. It was filled with flags from all three races, flapping in the sea breeze.

A coat of arms adorned with a white lily. A coat of arms featuring plants and beasts. A coat of arms sporting a dark-red lizard. The three flags lined up together served as proof that the three races’ armies were working as one.

The cream of the crop had been chosen from within those armies, and they were the ones stationed on the coastline serving as the first line of defense.

The battle-hardened veterans present had been given the coordinates, but not even they could comprehend the route the underlings had taken from the World’s End. However, the vast majority of the fiends had been aiming for this nameless northern beach.

Technically, the deserted land wasn’t just any old beach. It was the northernmost tip of the human territories, wedged between the beastfolk and demi-human lands. Back when formal boundary lines were first being drawn up, the area was discovered to be a piece of private property that existed in the buffer zone between the two races’ domains. That was where the beach’s inane, tangled history began.

An investigation found that a human doctor had gotten lost and mistakenly stumbled upon a beastfolk town that no longer existed today. After they cured an epidemic, the town’s mayor at the time bestowed the beach on them as thanks. Following that, though, disputes around tradition and obligations grew fierce and messy. There remained some lingering resentment in the wake of the peace treaty, so it was finally decided the land would be left as is.

As far as rights to the ocean surrounding it went, that was a whole other headache. So out of consideration for the other two races, the humans more or less left the ocean abandoned.

From the naked beach, the underlings could easily spread out to invade the demi-human and beastfolk lands, and they could surge south toward the human territories as well. The defensive front’s goal was to stop the underlings before it got to that point.

They had already successfully driven back the second and third waves.

The underlings left over from those two waves were soaring in at regular intervals, and the soldiers were currently working to shoot them down. However, they’d just finished taking down a large flock, so they were in a temporary cease-fire. The soldiers manning the coastline were keeping a watchful eye on the survivors soaring overhead. Because the battle had died down, people were hurriedly trying to move the wounded.

The wounded were being carried to medical tents based on the severity of their injuries. And within the tents, there were strange people mixed in with the others. A girl so young that she hardly looked suited for the battlefield had been tossed down respectfully yet forcefully onto one of the beds.

At first glance, she seemed uninjured. However, she was repeatedly coughing up frothy blood. She was swaddled in scarlet cloth, and her legs were bound with countless metal bands. The unrefined restraints were designed to stop her from squirming and opening up the laceration that ran all the way from her thighs to her ankles. White, humanlike teeth were neatly lined up on the inside of the slit. It was grotesque in a way that defied common sense. Anyone who looked like that could only be a demon’s contractor or someone with a strong link to God.

The girl was the latter—one of the Church’s saints.

She had connected to God too much, and the burden had caused her to hit her limit. And she wasn’t the only one. Several other saints had already been put to sleep in the first-aid station. They’d been flailing about like fish and been administered a powerful, dangerous anesthetic as a result. Bit by bit, the fighters the army had who were effective against the underlings had been whittled away. But the crow cries still hadn’t completely died down yet.

This desperate situation was well befitting of the end-time.

“…They’re still coming?”

One of the soldiers murmured in a voice thick with tension and fatigue. Part of the sky had been forcefully stained black, as though a storm had arisen. The horrible creatures kept appearing, like flies drawn to carrion.

The underlings were blotting out the horizon.

Compared with the second and third waves, their numbers were negligible. But for an army exhausted by nonstop battles, it was more than enough to induce despair. The soldiers looked up at the flock with heavy eyes.

Suddenly, a powerful noise echoed through the air to encourage them.

The moist sand sank. The saints lined up along the water’s edge had each released the shackles from their bodies.

Standing in their center was La Christoph. He had solemnly spread his arms wide, as though to part his own long, black hair.

He was a tall man, and his shoulders were broad. However, one part of the physique he had been blessed with was horribly transfigured. His chest area and the white robe over it were both incised. His flesh had been pared away, and his rib cage lay bare. Yet no blood spilled forth. The heart and lungs his ribs were supposed to be protecting were completely gone.

In their place, a huge number of white, feathered creatures were packed within him.

La Christoph, the Modest Birdkeeper, spoke in a strangely smooth voice.

“We gather and wait.”

“We gather and wait.”

His dignified voice was met with a metallic chorus. The saints had begun cladding themselves in light.

The soldiers unconsciously straightened their postures. Even now that God had become their enemy, seeing the saints lined up evoked a sense of nobility and sacredness. However, their figures were repulsive, even unsettling.

After all, most of the saints’ bodies had been transfigured in some capacity.

Their forms were myriad—there were people with their eyes transformed into rainbow spheres, people with tattoos winding across their skin, and people with fish swimming around in their transparent abdomens. And even among those without any external abnormalities, some of them were laughing without end, others were reciting scripture with their mouths closed, and yet others were in similar states as La Mules had been. But while it was unclear how they were maintaining a joint sense of purpose, all of them were obeying La Christoph’s orders.

Following his lead, they shut their mouths tight. It was a strange sight to behold, one that resembled some kind of ceremony.

The beach was overtaken by a solemn silence. However, that silence was irreverently broken by the underlings’ shrill cries.

The moment it happened, La Christoph opened his eyes as wide as possible and shouted in a voice like thunder.

“The hammer falls on thee!”

“Ah, aah, ah, AH, ahh, AAAAAAaaaaaaAaAaAaAAAAAA!”

A flock of skylarks. A school of fish. Rainbow light. Drops of blood.

They all swelled up in tune with the eerie chorus, then shot toward the enemy.

Countless holes opened in the underlings’ stomachs, their brain tissue was consumed, and their heads went flying clean off. They immediately began falling out of the sky. Several evaporated into a heat haze, then were blown away and scattered by the sea breeze.

Numerous underlings spiraled down and were swallowed up by the waves. At first glance, it looked like victory had been secured. Not letting his guard down, though, a wolf beastman looked through a telescope, then narrowed his eyes.

The beastman in question was Lute, the commanding officer of the first squad of Vyade Ula Forstlast’s private army.

Setting aside the telescope, he swung his arm downward.

“Location two, gray. Location six, black. All others, within expectations. Over!”

“Repeat, location two gray, location six black! At the ready!”

This concise command indicated how the foes who had evaded the saints’ shots were clustering together.

After configuring their positions to account for the quantity of incoming enemies, the beastfolk raised their shields overhead. They were standing in front of the saints and serving as a living wall. Human soldiers slipped beneath them and began nocking their consecrated arrows.

One of them shouted, angrily laying their frustration bare.

“The damn monsters… They just keep on coming!”

Consecrated or not, conventional weaponry had little effect on the underlings. The soldiers had to endure their fear and wait until their foes were close enough before launching their arrows. Right before the enemy made contact, though, disaster struck in the saints’ line.

One frightfully thin woman keeled over. With a pitifully weak noise, she collapsed into the sand. Glowing, albino rat snakes were slithering through her dark hair.

La Christoph gestured with his chin, not showing a shred of alarm. A group of scarlet-clad attendants rushed over to the woman’s side. After covering her head with a helmet, they forcibly fixed the helmet in place with screws and swaddled her whole body in scarlet cloth. Then the attendants roughly yet reverently carried her away from the front lines.

A moment later, another saint collapsed. The soldiers gasped. Their military strength was slowly but surely chipping away. The experienced members among their ranks could see the army as a whole was reaching its limit.

Despite that, though, they couldn’t abandon the front. It was far too early to give up.

And in a very real sense, it was far too late.

To quell their fears, the beastfolk and humans joined together in a valiant war cry.

“““YAHHHHHHHHHH!”””

Croak, cRoak, crOak, croAk, croaaaaaaaK.

With an ominous caw, the underlings descended.

Then their cries were drowned out by a comical thumping noise.

“…Huh?”

Something splattered against the beastfolk’s shields. They frantically looked to see what it was. Their shields were stained crimson. The soldiers’ eyes went wide, and they cast their gazes back overhead. Blood was raining down from the sky.

The underlings had all gone stiff. It should have been impossible, but it looked like they’d stopped completely.

Each and every one of them had been impaled with ten black blades apiece.

“…Huh?”

“Hurrah!”

Shock and joy were just two of the many emotions in the soldiers’ cries.

The next moment, the oddly frozen scene crumbled all at once.

The blades all faded away into azure petals, then traced magnificent, ephemeral paths through the air. The underlings fell, too, leaving trails of blood in their wake. These displays of crimson and azure joined together, then were swallowed up by the gray sea in kind.

It made for a beautifully merciless spectacle. The soldiers gazed upon it in awe.

Then they were met from behind with a voice whose casualness was completely unfit for the circumstances.

“Hey, sorry I’m late.”

The voice’s owner was no enemy. The soldiers knew that. Their ally who’d temporarily left the front lines after the third wave had been crushed had returned—that was all. Yet even knowing that, they couldn’t conceal their trepidation as they turned around to face him. The stares of everyone present gathered on the voice’s owner.

There stood a thin boy languidly waving his arm.

“Is everyone okay? Ooh, you definitely don’t look okay.”

“…Sir Kaito Sena.”

Someone murmured his name, their voice thick with fear. The boy nodded. His demeanor was so casual, it made the reaction seem ridiculous. He was wearing a black military uniform, so his outfit could certainly be considered becoming of the treatment he was receiving. But between his short stature, the seedy look in his eyes, and his childish features, there were likely few who could recognize him as the Mad King from his looks alone. And his appearance definitely wouldn’t have led anyone to imagine he was the one who’d taken down the underlings just then. But that wasn’t even all that he’d done.

The boy had carried out the slaughter of the second and third waves near single-handedly.

In other words, the real monster wasn’t the underlings.

It was that human.

“You know, I think it’s kinda rude that people keep looking at me like I’m some sorta monster.”

“If you’re not a monster, then who is? Hell, even trolls are more human than you are.”

Upon hearing Kaito’s complaint, Valisisa Ula Forstlast, the first imperial princess of the beastfolk, scoffed.

Sullen, Kaito offered no rebuttal. He continued walking in silence.

Even the soldiers who weren’t keeping an eye out for survivors were staying busy—preparing and serving food to warm their bodies up from the chilly, salty wind, replacing their weapons, maintaining their equipment, and treating their own minor scratches and wounds. The air was thick with the smells of the sea, blood, sweat, metal, fur, and leather all blended together.

Kaito wove his way between the soldiers and made his way toward the first imperial princess’s tent. After dealing with the underlings, he was originally supposed to head for the first-aid station so he could take stock of the wounded. On his way, though, he’d been called over by Valisisa and was currently following her bouncy red tail.

It paired poorly with her gallant, masculine uniform, but her tail really was cute.

Kaito chose to keep that impression to himself, knowing that sharing it could get him killed, and asked Valisisa a question.

“So what’s the situation like?”

“You can see for yourself how bad things are. That pack of saints is even more useless than I expected… And because of them, all the regular soldiers are having to pick up more slack than they can handle. Those saints are powerful as fixed batteries, true, but their durability leaves a lot to be desired. They aren’t suited for constant battles like this. They seemed threatening before, but the humans’ stinginess in deploying them in actual combat is coming home to roost. The fact that the humans never took proper readings on their durability is aggravating.”

“Those are people you’re talking about, you know. You shouldn’t refer to them like they’re weapons.”

“Ha, calling those saints ‘people’ is like a bad joke. So much so that it’s funny. And even if they were, right now, everyone and their mother are nothing more than pawns. Although you, Mad King, might be the exception. That carefree nature of yours, the fact that you possess power surpassing any other’s… It’s like you were born to infuriate me. Do you enjoy annoying me, by any chance?”

“I’m feeling a little hated right now.”

“Not at all. Relax. This is far preferable to incompetence. Feel free to be as useful as you please. Usefulness begets love, after all. Once you’ve averted the end of days, if you wish to submit yourself before the beastfolk, I would even offer you my hand in marriage.”

“Sorry, but I already have a lovely wife.”

“Oh, thank goodness. Just thinking about sharing a bed with the likes of a human makes my skin crawl.”

“Then don’t offer.”

Kaito shrugged, half-exasperatedly. Valisisa laughed scornfully.

She seemed to enjoy talking, and she was doing quite a bit of it. But upon seeing them conversing, the beastfolk passing by simply looked in astonishment. Although he’d only known her a short while, Kaito could tell Valisisa’s behavior was the reason they were staring. It appeared her pool of conversational partners was limited. If she deemed someone unnecessary, they wouldn’t even enter her field of vision. For better or for worse, she seemed to have a straightforward way of viewing the world. Yet when she was dealing with Kaito, she spoke freely. The soldiers’ surprise made perfect sense.

Has she taken a liking to me, maybe? Or does she just not think I’m worthy of her concern? It could easily be both… Man, I just can’t get a read on her.

As he turned that thought over in his mind, Kaito arrived at a tent whose entrance was flanked on both sides by doorkeepers.

When he went inside, he left the moist, chilly air behind him and was greeted instead by the warmth of a simple stove. The craftsmanship of the beastfolk’s portable dwellings never failed to impress. While the imperial princess’s tent was likely the only one of its kind, it had all the furniture necessary to conduct official business, and the floor was even covered with a bulky rug.

Valisisa sat down hard in her large, stately chair. She swished her tail from side to side as she rested one elbow on her desk. Then she began tapping away at the large map spread out across it.

“So? What were the results of your patrol?”

“The damage was pretty nasty all over… But when you consider how slow we were to get started, the evacuation efforts are coming along decently. And we were able to hit the underlings’ main landing sites fairly hard. They don’t have any sort of command structure, so their behavior itself is relatively predictable. As long as we can figure out the best ways to attack them and where they’re gonna land, all we have to do is head to the corresponding points and drive them back as many times as we can.”

As he was laying out his explanation, Kaito snapped his fingers and crafted a chair for himself out of black darkness and azure flower petals. It was the exact same piece as the luxurious article Vlad had once created.

Kaito crossed his legs as he sat atop its leather seat, across from Valisisa. Then unhesitatingly, he reached his arm out to the map and touched the large, yellow expanse that indicated the desert.

“As for the demi-human pureblood sector, its construction is just as peculiar as I heard. The walls around the first ward are flawless, but as the ward numbers go up, the defensive structures get shittier. I guess the conditions really are different based on purity of the residents’ blood… But because of this layout, the brunt of the losses came from the purebloods. They keep the gates to the other wards sealed off, so they didn’t have anywhere to escape to. I don’t even want to think about the attack the third ward got hit by… They were literally getting tortured to death.”

“Ha, I warned them to improve conditions every chance I got, but they never listened. The pureblood sector’s defenses are designed to protect against overland invaders and mixed-blood uprisings. They didn’t even consider that attacks might come from above. Their fate was only natural for ones with a weakness so pronounced… Come now, don’t give me that face. I would have disparaged them the exact same way if it was my race we were talking about. If you get hung up on every little thing, we’ll be here all day. Get over it. Now, it’s the duty of the living to prevent more victims from arising. Did they finish reorganizing their defenses?”

“By some miracle, yeah. We pinned down the source of the underlings here at the beach, so once we shot down the ones that were approaching via alternate routes, things settled down for a while. We figured out bombarding them from the second-ward bulwarks was the best way to take care of them. Right now, the soldiers gathered there are using the demi-humans’ metalwork cannons to keep up the assault. The civilians are split up among the various sectors and are under tight management. Once we opened up the gates, it was easy to come up with efficient evacuation routes and set up focused escorts. They should be able to hold through the day, even without my help.”

Valisisa nodded coolly. It seemed all had fallen within her expectations.

She shook her soft tail as she continued her line of questioning.

“What of humanity’s Capital?”

“I only just heard back from them, but it sounds like they’re doing comparatively well. The remaining paladins and the mages have been working together successfully. They don’t have much that’s effective against the underlings besides their divine beasts, but those summoned beasts are no joke. That said, we can’t make out the damage they’ve taken in the countryside. They’ve allowed the lords to decline to dispatch soldiers to the Capital and just focus on protecting their own territories instead. And they’ve deployed people who can draw up barriers and teleportation circles to all the major cities so they can aid in the defense and evacuation efforts.”

“And my beloved homeland?”

“Right, sorry I had to put you in charge of the Northernmost Shore instead of your own country. Just like I promised, you don’t have anything to worry about. All of Vyade’s squadrons save for the first are manning the defenses around the World Tree, and I gave them a powerful— Hmm?”

Then without warning, Kaito went silent and started rummaging through his pocket. He pulled out a glass orb filled with red liquid. It wasn’t the jewel he’d been carrying around that housed the replica of Vlad’s soul. Valisisa narrowed her eyes in puzzlement.

Kaito snapped his fingers. Azure petals began dancing within the orb. The red liquid took on a radiant glow, and a person’s figure appeared on its surface. The plain, bespectacled court lady gave a deep nod.

“Sir Kaito, do you have a moment to spare?”

“Yeah, you’re fine. What’s up?”

“I believe you requested to be promptly informed if she woke up, so… She has awakened.”

The court lady’s voice was low, as though she were afraid of something.

One of Kaito’s eyebrows sprang up. A moment later, though, his expression went calm again, and he nodded.

“Got it. Thanks for the heads-up.”

“With all due respect, the reconstruction sect will raise a fuss once they find out. You may want to hurry.”

“Believe me, I know. Good work out there.”

After thanking her, Kaito extinguished the light. She was still bowing as her figure faded from view.

The woman had been one of the communications personnel working for the king. At present, humanity hadn’t formally given Kaito their backing. In spite of that, though, many humans, the court lady among them, carried out Kaito’s orders without running them by their superiors, despite the fact that he was officially powerless. The chain of command was a complete mess.

In a sense, humanity had found themselves in quite the odd situation.

You can hardly blame them, though. Right now, people are being forced to watch one another get torn to shreds and cast aside like garbage.

Given the general chaos, it made sense for them to want to follow the strongest guy around. And all the more so with that person having declared himself an ally to everyone alive. But he couldn’t count on their blind faith lasting forever.

Once things settled down, many of them would start regretting their actions or else be swayed by some new authority figure and begin reproaching Kaito. But he was fine with that.

I don’t need unshakable motives or faith from them; I only need their cooperation.

As long as he could do what he needed to do, that was enough.

Kaito casually slipped the orb back into his pocket. Valisisa puffed her tail up with displeasure.

“Hold it. You would bring out that strange device all of a sudden, then put it away without another word? What is it? Compared with the Church’s communication devices, its make is unreasonably simple, no?”

“What, this? Okay, so first, I craft a glass orb out of mana, right? Then I put my blood into it. It’s basically just one big ball of my mana. I can use it as an intermediary for all sorts of different spells.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Kaito nodded frankly. He then hurriedly wiped at the trail of blood quickly trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Valisisa heaved a long, deep sigh and shook her head in exasperation.

“You’re really starting to deviate from how magic works in this world, you know.”

“I mean, you’re not wrong. Most of my mana comes from the pain I get from my connection to Diablo’s pillar, after all. Diablo’s like an observer from a high plane; it’s not like me or you. But the basic principles behind this are pretty similar to the ones behind that, aren’t they?”

Kaito gestured with his chin toward Valisisa’s finger. Wrapped around it was an extravagant ring composed of a large, glittering crystal set in a loop of silver ivy. Pink flower buds rested within the crystal.

It was a rare beauty, like spring itself had been captured in ice.

Valisisa wasn’t wearing any other ornamentation on her body. She didn’t seem the type to enjoy dressing up.

However, Kaito could sense a great deal of mana coming from within the ring. It was clearly a powerful magic device, and not a mere piece of decoration. The beastfolk were lacking in magical talent, so it was a surprising article to see one of them wearing.

Valisisa snorted as she stroked the ring.

“We’ve been pouring mana into this little by little for generations, ever since the Three Kings of the Forest bestowed it upon one of the members of the first imperial family. Disrespectful, don’t you think, equating it to that thing you made on a whim?”

“Oh, sorry. Well, now that I’ve gone and ruined the mood, I guess it’s as good a time as any… The pillar is getting ready to release the fourth wave, so things should be quiet for a little while. Sorry I’m so busy, but would you mind if I teleported out for a bit?”

“You being busy is only natural. The thought of you having free time is almost comical. You have my leave. Go.”

“I owe you one.”

“But be certain you return before the fourth wave hits. Without you, this shore will be annihilated. And when the foundation of a pile of stones is shattered, the result is self-evident—everything falls to ruin.”

Upon hearing her weighty words, Kaito nodded. He promised her he’d be back. Then, after asking her permission again, he placed his orb on the floor. The blood within slowly began oozing out of the glass.

It then started to inscribe a pattern atop the rug, as though it were alive. Azure flower petals swirled up gently within the tent, dancing splendidly through the air as they spread. They then melted together and hardened, forming cylindrical walls around Kaito. On the other side, Valisisa spoke detachedly:

“Farewell, then. And give my regards to the Saint.”

And with that, Kaito abruptly lost consciousness.