Fremd Torturchen - Volume 6 - Chapter 5

5

The Battle Against the Fourth Wave

As the Diablo pillar released its fourth wave, a series of strange occurrences happened at the Northernmost Shore.

Black clouds surged across the sky, yet the ocean was still.

Lightning flashed, yet there was no noise.

The sound of waves rang out, yet the water didn’t move.

The sea before the Northernmost Shore was as level as a mirror. This was certainly no natural phenomenon. Not even a sudden temperature fluctuation that’d cause it to freeze over would bring about such a state. The sea was calm, all the way to the distant horizon. It had completely forgotten to churn. Furthermore, it was slowly being dyed uneven shades of red and black.

As an experiment, one of the soldiers tossed a seashell into it. A loud thunk echoed out, and the shell bounced back. It wasn’t just its appearance; the sea had physically hardened. The change had happened silently, making it all the more disquieting.

“Th-this is…”

“Hmm, it seems almost artificial. If I was to compare it to something…I suppose it’s like if the glassworkers from the human capital all came together and crafted a single, giant pane of glass in order to maintain their skills. The scale of it is kind of impressive, not to mention ominous, but…”

With that, Valisisa snorted. She was right—the fact that the sea seemed to be covered by a red-and-black pane of colored glass was strange, to be sure, but it was more or less comprehensible. Eventually, the sea hardened as far as the eye could see. When it had, it transitioned to the second phase of its transformation.

Countless shadowy figures came squirming over the horizon.

The beastfolk noticed a strange sound, and they strained their ears to make it out.

What they got for their troubles were frigid shivers running down their spines. Shluck, plop, shluck, plop, shluck. The moist sound of flesh and fat sticking to something hard, separating, then sticking to it again was growing nearer.

Most of the underlings from the previous waves were winged, and they’d come flying in. However, it would seem the fourth wave was going to approach by crawling with their sticky bodies. The fact that the sea had been forcibly hardened over had likely been to accommodate their mode of advance.

The underlings seemed to be in no particular rush, and they crawled calmly beneath the surging black clouds and the red sunset sky. That said, their advance had a terrible sort of vigor to it. It was a contradiction that made it seem as though space and time themselves had been twisted. Suddenly, sublime cries ravaged the air. The beastfolk who had been listening to the footsteps all covered up their ears at once.

They could hear screams. The screams sounded happy.

They could hear laughter. The laughter sounded kind.

They could hear an address. The address was silent.

They could hear begging. The underlings were begging for death.

The voices sounded rich in emotion, but their actual contents were hollow. They sounded meaningful, but they were fragmented, and the fragments had no cohesion. It was all incoherent and jumbled. That was precisely what made them so eerily terrifying.

As they let out waves of unpleasant sound, the horrors finally revealed their full forms.

The moment they did, all the soldiers save the saints practically lost their will to fight.

They resembled humans. They resembled beastfolk and demi-humans, too. Yet at the same time, they were completely different from any of them.

The things had body parts from all three races. In a sense, their bodies were composed of “parts” alone. There was no clear delineation between their heads and their bodies. Their arms, legs, ears, hearts, lungs, and intestines all tangled and wrapped around one another as the things advanced. If someone took a body from a member of each race, sliced them up haphazardly, then stitched them back together as sacrilegiously as they could while making sure to leave the organs and the genitals exposed, that was probably what they’d end up with.

The very fact that they existed desecrated the dignity of the living.

The soldiers were assailed by terror. Despair at the prospect of being captured by those things, or worse, turned into one of them, filled the beach. Several people let out moans. Some vomited, and others defecated themselves.

“Ah… Ahhh… Ahhh…”

“Those possessed by fear, withdraw! My army has no use for fools who’d be defeated before even making contact with the enemy!”

Valisisa barked out a coolheaded order. Upon hearing her sharp rebuke, the beastfolk drew their weapons and held them at the ready. However, they couldn’t stop their ears and tails from putting their fear on full display.

That notwithstanding, they’d come back to their senses, and they raised a fervent cry to elevate their spirits.

“Come and get us, you monster freaks!”

The things responded with laughter. (And they were screaming, too.)

The things sang a song. (And they were silent, too.)

The things composed a prayer. (And they were jeering, too.)

The things wept loudly. (And they were laughing, too.)

The things responded with laugh  ( too.)

The things  ( ?)

The  ( !)

“Shut up already.”

That moment, a listless voice echoed through the air. Its speaker hadn’t been there a moment ago.

The vibrations in the air had transformed into a roar, but the voice had blown them completely away.

“Huh?”

“Whoops, easy there.”

One of the soldiers gave a dumbfounded grunt. At the same time, a human figure touched down on the sea’s surface with a casualness wholly unsuited to the gravity of the situation. As his black uniform flitted about in the rusty wind, the slender boy raised his head. The underlings’ hideous forms didn’t appear to scare him in the slightest. He seemed relaxed, which was eerie in and of itself. A different kind of unrest filled the air. But the boy paid no heed to the reaction he was getting. Instead, he raised his arm.

Then he gave his fingers a majestic snap.

“Recreation of the Plain of Skewers: Impaled Victim.”

New colors danced atop the water. Azure petals and black feathers had begun raining extravagantly from the sky.

The next moment, a chorus of thunks rang out. The red-and-black-stained sea had been rent, and innumerable iron stakes had shot up from beneath the waves. Their sharp points had ripped through the frozen sea like they would an ice floe.

The normal, clear sea came rushing through the cracks. Then it was met with a huge amount of blood and quickly became stippled with crimson. After all, the underlings crawling atop its surface had been impaled on the stakes as well.

The way they were hoisted in the air, they looked almost like skewered game.

The blasphemous creatures awkwardly struggled, their mixed body parts squirming as they did. However, the iron stakes gave them no quarter. The evening sunlight washed over the stakes, the waves crashed atop them, and still, they stood resolute and immovable.

In that moment, the stakes resembled countless, glimmering headstones.

The person who had summoned the stakes, who’d just returned from the World Tree, was Kaito Sena.

“…Oh. I guess you can just impale them normally. All bark and no bite, huh?”

He nodded casually. He turned toward the soldiers, then shrugged. The gesture indicated he was hoping they’d affirm how much of a letdown the underlings had proven to be, but he received no such response. He blinked as he gazed over their stiffened bodies.

Eventually, he clapped his hands together, then called out to them in a loud voice.

“Hey, sorry about this, but I’m gonna need the saints to start firing. The fourth wave is still attacking. Normal weapons should be good enough to fight them. I’ll cut down and skewer as many of ’em as I can, but I’m counting on you guys to deal with the ones that get away from me. Their exposed organs look like they should be weak points, but their mana actually comes from an eyeball hidden inside them, so watch out for that.”

“You heard him, everyone. If you can destroy them, then do so. We gather and wait.”

La Christoph solemnly raised his arms as if nothing had happened. His expression didn’t even have vestiges of confusion in it. He had just been calmly waiting for everyone else to settle down. In accordance with his directions, the saints began chanting in unison. Their bodies were clad in pure light.

A bit of confusion remained among the soldiers, but they got into formation.

After making sure everything had calmed down, Kaito nodded with a gentle expression on his face. However, it faded before long. The Mad King turned back to his fleshy foes. As he raised his arm once more, blood dribbled from the corner of his lip.

Then the Mad King murmured as the Torture Princess once had.

“La (oh ye, born of death, return from whence you came).”

And with that, he gave his fingers a sonorous snap.

“The enemy’s moving differently now. I want to go make the rounds and check up on a couple places; you mind if I head out?”

“You butcher a thousand of those things on your own, then pose that question like you’re making small talk? You have my permission. Go.”

“Y’know, I love how brief these conversations of ours are. It’s a real lifesaver.”

Kaito nodded to Valisisa, then placed his blood-filled glass orb down on the sand.

As the teleportation circle knit itself together, he cast his gaze out over the Northernmost Shore.

The fourth wave had been successfully wiped out.

A number of red-and-black shards that had been shattered by the stakes had washed up onto the sand. Underling corpses were scattered around them like beached jellyfish. A medic grabbed one of them with a hook, then struggled to pull it in. By analyzing the carcasses, they might be able to devise a counteragent for the venom the underlings had been spewing. A wolf-headed beastman went over and gingerly helped them pull the heavy corpse.

Elsewhere, crimson-clad attendants and uninjured soldiers were working to transport the freshly fallen saints and the wounded. On the other hand, the healthy saints who’d just returned to the battlefield were gathered together and receiving a status report.

They’d become rather adept at substituting people in and out. The soldiers and saints were even starting to intermingle to the best of their abilities. Perhaps it was because they’d successfully dealt with their horrific foes, but the soldiers’ faces were all brimming with confidence.

Even though he saw things had changed for the better, Kaito still furrowed his brow. His thoughts raced vigilantly.

Those things looked creepy as hell, but the bodies of the fourth wave’s underlings still fell within this world’s rules. By the sixth or seventh wave, though, they’ll have overcome that restraint. Normal soldiers won’t be able to resist them, let alone react accordingly.

Despite knowing that, Kaito pushed that unsettling reality deep within his heart.

Dampening the soldiers’ spirits right now wouldn’t do anyone any good. The underlings were only going to get more horrific from here on out. It wouldn’t take much to break their will to fight. Kaito needed their resolve to be as high as possible when the fifth wave hit. To that end, he said nothing as the azure light swallowed him up.

The moment after the cylindrical wall surrounded him, his consciousness cut out.

The pain ceased, then came back. Kaito died from shock.

After automatically resuscitating, he slowly opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was the mellow glow of the sunset.

“…Looks like the sky’s cleared up over here.”

After letting out a faint murmur, he looked to the side. He was standing atop a long bridge stretched out wide over the blazing, golden desert. Or to be more precise, the stone structure wasn’t actually a bridge. It was one of the walls that divided up the demi-human territories.

In the demi-human country, the places people lived were determined by the purity of their blood. Its citizens weren’t allowed to travel freely within its borders. Kaito was on top of the wall surrounding the second sector—more specifically, he was in a passageway designed for lookouts and repairmen.

At the moment, though, it was home to an imposing line of cannons.

The sound and tremors of cannon fire rocked Kaito’s surroundings at fixed intervals.

“Ready, aim, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire!”

As directed, flames burst from the entire front row of small cannons at once. The pterosaur-like underlings who’d been struck let out annoyed cries. The damage they’d suffered was minimal. The demi-humans didn’t pay that fact any heed, though, and pulled on the ropes connected to the wheeled cannons in order to draw them backward. As they reloaded them with shells and gunpowder, the second row began firing.

“Ready, aim, fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiire!”

GYAAAAAAaaaaaAAAAAAAAA!

Their bones broken by the successive fire, several underlings fell out of the air. All the while, more cannonballs were being brought up on pulleys. Any damage to the cannons was being taken care of atop the wall, too. Thanks to how efficiently the repair and transport teams were working, the repeated bombardment was being sustained for a length of time that hardly seemed possible.

It was an impressive technique, one that took full advantage of the country’s ability to mass-produce gunpowder and metal.

“Same as before, huh? Man, it’s crazy how long they’ve been able to hold out.”

Relieved at how hard they were fighting, Kaito looked around. The man he was looking for was standing a little way off from the cannoneers. Kaito raised his voice and waved his hand at him.

“Aguina! Aguina Elephabred!”

“Hmm? Oh, Sir Kaito Sena, are you making the rounds? And just Aguina is fine. I’m aware of how troublesome our surnames are for foreigners to pronounce. If you try too hard, you’re liable to bite your tongue.”

The bespectacled, lizard-headed man replied from beneath his coarse, sand-resistant robe.

The demi-humans had agreed with the beastfolk and, in doing so, had come under the Mad King’s jurisdiction as well. Given how the demi-human soldier at the World Tree had treated him, though, it was clear that not everyone was on the same page there. Depending on the orders he gave, they wouldn’t actively get in his way, but they wouldn’t always cooperate, either.

They were probably concerned about how things would shake out afterward and didn’t want to be known for having allied themselves with the Mad King.

Aguina’s words, on the other hand, were congenial. He, too, was an official who’d attended the three-race joint meeting. However, he was displaying a certain degree of affection toward Kaito. And the reason for his attitude was surprisingly clear.

The demi-humans value blood purity above all else.

The third sector had suffered critical damage, but Kaito had stopped it from spreading to the first and the second; ever since then, their estimation of his battle prowess had risen steeply. Unlike how he was treated everywhere else, he was greeted on the battlefield’s front lines with open arms.

In other words, this was thanks to how flexible and how brazen the demi-humans were.

The deafening sound of cannon fire continued. Kaito rushed over to Aguina to make sure he could be heard.

He covered one ear and raised his voice louder.

“The underlings in the fourth wave are different than the ones from before! Are you guys okay? It sounds like your cannons aren’t firing as often as they were when I came last time. Is the enemy’s attack subsiding or something?”

“Oh, you came up with a hypothesis without even checking. Perhaps it’d be best if you looked down.”

“…Down?”

“Down.”

Aguina nodded. His long sleeve rustled as he pointed one of his sharp claws downward.

Kaito obediently walked over to the edge of the wall and dropped to his knees. Squinting, he gazed at the distant ground.

“…Oh, I guess they came here after all.”

A section of the sand was dyed hideous shades of red and black. Underlings had risen up from it and were using their moist organs as suction cups to crawl up the wall. Before they could reach the top, however, demi-human soldiers with cloths over the mouths rushed toward them. The scales decorating the soldiers’ armor jingled as they tilted pungent jars over the side. Black sludge poured down from the jars.

After they finished drenching the underlings, a second group of soldiers threw lit torches at them.

Flames rushed up, and the underlings passed out. It was a simple, merciless defense strategy.

Kaito spoke, his tone half-shocked and half-impressed.

“Man, you guys are gutsy…and accurate. Didn’t the underlings’ appearances fill you with despair?”

“Ha-ha, not in the slightest. We children of the Sand Queen have nothing in common with those hideous, hodgepodge monstrosities. And with that being the case, what reason would we have to despair? We simply dealt with them the same way we would any dangerous beast of the desert. That said, it’s thanks to the main army at the Northernmost Shore thinning out their ranks that we were able to do so. If there had been more of them, we could well have been overrun. You have my thanks.”

Aguina laid his hand atop his chest. His words were laudable.

Kaito, still on his knees, looked up at Aguina. The boy faintly widened his eyes in shock.

“Well, there’s a surprise. I never thought I’d see the day when you actually thanked me for something.”

“Hmm? Back when you rescued the survivors from the third sector’s desperate predicament, then kept the damage in the first and second sectors to a minimum, surely I must have thanked you at least a few times.”

“Huh…maybe you did. We were both crazy busy back then, after all.”

“My goodness, we were. Dreadful, that was… I must confess, to tell you the truth, my memories of whether or not I properly showed my appreciation are somewhat vague.”

“So hey, since it sounds like you appreciate what the other races are doing, maybe you could tone down the blood-purity obsession a little?”

“Ha-ha-ha, I’m afraid I find your humor a little dull. Unlike the Three Kings of the Forest, our Queen has long since entered her eternal slumber. Understanding the anguish of our constant decline is beyond other races.”

Aguina replied to Kaito’s suggestion with a dry laugh. It didn’t seem like he had any plans of revising his way of thinking.

Kaito heaved a deep sigh. He had his suspicions that this insistence of the demi-humans would lead to conflict someday. At the moment, though, he didn’t have time to worry about whatever racial conflicts may or may not be brewing.

There’s probably stuff that I’ll only be able to say now, but…I guess it is what it is.

Still seated, he looked out over his surroundings. The sand rose and fell uniformly, casting shadows in a truly majestic way. Back when he was in that tiny room, he could never have dreamed of seeing anything like it. He burned the image into his eyes.

As he did, he also checked to make sure there weren’t more underlings in sight than he thought the demi-humans could deal with. After determining their nearby numbers weren’t a serious threat, he nodded.

“Well, it looks like there aren’t any pressing problems here, so I’m gonna head out. There should be a way longer grace period before the fifth wave attacks. It shouldn’t hit until after midday tomorrow. If anything unexpected happens before then, get in touch.”

“Understood. If that happens, we’ll send word immediately.”

“Sounds like a plan. Guess I’ll do some light cleaning, then be on my way.”

“…‘Cleaning’?”

Still seated, Kaito leaned forward.

Then without a word, he dove headfirst into the empty air. His uniform fluttered as he glided.

Now upside down, Kaito looked up toward the top of the wall.

Aguina’s eyes were wide, and his back was illuminated by the afterglow from the setting sun. Kaito smiled at him, then cast his gaze over to the wall’s surface. Suddenly, horrifying creatures came into his view. New underlings were crawling atop the charred corpses of their comrades and trying to climb up the wall. When he reached the same height as them, Kaito snapped his fingers.

“La (burn).”

Flames burst from within the hideous, fleshy masses. A moment later, nothing remained of them but ash.

Then they were scattered by the dry desert wind. As he fell amid the fine particles of ash, Kaito pulled the glass orb from his pocket and flicked it with his finger. The crimson orb descended toward the sea of sand like a drop of blood.

An instant later, a teleportation circle had woven itself in the air.

Gentle light spread out from the orb, like an azure rose in bloom. Kaito landed where the flower’s center would be, and the petals of light snapped shut.

And with that, Kaito began teleporting.

“…What is he, some kind of monster?”

The moment before his consciousness faded, he distinctly heard someone mutter that phrase.

However, he had no time to reply before the darkness took him.

He didn’t appreciate being seen as a monster, but it was more or less a reasonable assessment.

Kaito Sena was aware of that fact.

Great power carried responsibility with it. And at the same time, it represented something that was to be shunned. Fear, disgust, contempt, discrimination, hostility, avoidance—the forms of rebellion were varied. Yet sometimes, that power also garnered praise.

People were hostile toward things they couldn’t understand, and they worshipped people who were close to their ideals.

As far as people were concerned, anything too different from them had to either be a deity or a monster.

Thus, reverence and contempt were two sides of the same coin. Conventional religious gods were one thing, but anyone who was deified would quickly also find themselves vilified, looked down on as a monster, and killed. Rebellion and praise were equally irrational things. However, that contradictory nature people had was in and of itself worthy of love.

The powerless feared the powerful and regarded them with hostility, but they also revered them and sought their aid. On the other hand, if they found themselves indebted to someone they’d once denounced as a monster, they would still throw their arms wide and protect that person. They could kill because of their self-righteous senses of justice, but a mere thought could be enough for them to lay their lives down protecting another.

That was just how people were. And not just humans, but the other two intelligent races as well.

Flocks of sheep were, fundamentally, stupid. And that was the way things ought to be.

For if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to live with that contradiction.

Ignorance is a sin. But there’s a kind of peace that can only exist inside it.

As for Kaito Sena himself, he was straddling the fine line between god and monster.

At the moment, he had declared he was going to protect the living. But the entity known as Kaito Sena was quickly becoming the most ominous thing around. As far as the world was concerned, he was now a foreign element, and where he’d originally come from had nothing to do with that fact. His rate of mana acquisition was accelerating. He was like a weapon that automatically enhanced itself.

He might well have been even more dangerous than the Torture Princess, the peerless sinner.

If he were to turn on the world, what would happen? Surely, the danger of that possibility wasn’t lost on anyone.

Even while he was saving them, they were doubtless thinking, The day will come when we have to kill him.

But that’s fine.

That was the decision Kaito Sena had made.

Every race had come to rely on him, but behind their smiles, their fear and bloodlust were rising. However, that process, too, was necessary for what he imagined would come after. That was why he didn’t mind, no matter how much they ostracized him.

That was fine. It had a purpose. But…

…It is a little lonely.

That emotion, too, came from the heart. As he felt it, he thought:

Is this how you felt, Elisabeth?

After being vilified and bombarded with criticism, she had sentenced herself to die alone.

She wasn’t a person who was capable of loving solitude. That was why—

That was why Kaito had—

“Ha-ha, I come here to meet you in person, yet your complexion is downright pallid, my dear successor!”

Wait, is it even possible for a voice to be that annoying?

Kaito snapped his eyes open. All the thoughtful reflection that had been going through his mind a moment ago vanished without a trace. He couldn’t even remember what it had been about. Nevertheless, he blinked a few more times.

He shook his head to sweep away his vertigo. Then he looked up at the culprit who had so rudely shattered his postrevival silence.

The tall man in question stood against a backdrop of verdant-green trees. He was wearing a black coat and an aristocrat’s shirt replete with a cravat. His sleek, black hair draped down to his shoulders, and his ruby-like, crimson eyes served to accentuate his androgynous beauty. He was the Kaiser’s first contractor, the former leader of the fourteen demons, and Elisabeth’s foster father, whom she had burned to death.

Vlad Le Fanu.

A smile was plastered across the man’s childish face. Kaito reflexively let out an exasperated remark.

“Someone’s in a good mood.”

“And oh, how very! After all, I am but a child graciously bequeathed a brand-new toy! And yet even so, you will be pleased to hear that thanks to my astounding judgment and competencies, I have faithfully carried out every one of your orders! Why, I should think it only reasonable to allow yourself a little merriment in consideration for my labors… Although, it does seem you’ve died again. Can you stand?”

Vlad courteously extended a white-gloved hand to Kaito.

After hesitating for a moment, Kaito took it.

Until just recently, that action wouldn’t have been possible. After all, Vlad Le Fanu’s real body was dead. All that was left of him was a replica of his soul. But now he was no mere phantasm.

After helping Kaito to his feet, Vlad spoke with sincere delight.

“Being able to move as I please really does stir at my emotions. Truly, being alive is a wonderful thing.”

And with that, Vlad Le Fanu nodded, a broad smile spread across his face.

The man who’d once been burned down to his very bones had attained flesh once more.