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Fremd Torturchen - Volume 7.5 - Chapter 2




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Kaito’s Daily Routine (Front Side)

Once someone dies, that’s it. No amount of weeping and pleading will change the fact that their existence is over.

However, Kaito Sena was one of the rare exceptions to that rule.

After many years of inhumane abuse at the hands of his father, he died a meaningless death. But instead of fading away, his existence persisted. Even now, he could vividly remember the moment in which he was murdered.

His was a rare situation, to be sure. And in many ways, a decidedly unfortunate one.

Kaito Sena mused on that fact as he found himself being killed.

As the hands tightened around his neck, he realized that it was all just a dream.

I gotta say, it’s pretty unpleasant having to relive my death in my dreams and not even be able to wake up when I want to.

It was something that had already happened. There was no way to stop it. His feeble body had no hope of fighting off the large man who was straddling him. Resisting would only make the despair last longer.

And so yet again, he got strangled to death atop that damp tatami mat.

His arteries and windpipe gave way. His spine creaked under the pressure. A dry snapping noise echoed out.

Then it happened.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

An absurdly carefree voice rang through the air, and as it did, an intense blow struck Kaito straight in the chest.

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

He blinked, then realized that he was lying on a dry sheet. The solid stone ceiling above him filled his view. It had no fluorescent lights, nor did it have any stains. It wasn’t the room he’d lived in when he was alive.

Kaito frowned. Where was he, and what was he doing there?

Then at long last, he finally remembered the grave, hard-to-believe reality of his situation.

Ah, that’s right. I…

…reincarnated in another world.

He gingerly glanced to his side. Standing beside his bed was the exact person he’d expected.

Her black hair was long and lustrous, her skin was so fair that it seemed almost translucent, and her eyes were as red as jewels. She was wearing a bondage dress composed of leather straps that just barely covered her breasts, and her arms were crossed in front of her.

And as for her shapely, high-heeled leg, it was buried in Kaito’s stomach.

Now Kaito had a clearer picture of what was going on. That impact from a moment ago had been her giving him an ax kick.

He almost voiced a complaint but stopped the moment before the words left his mouth. His self-preservation instincts were screaming at him to shut up. He shifted his gaze over to the window. Golden light was leaking in through its shutters. Gears turned in Kaito’s head as he sorted through the new information.

Dawn had long since broken. At the moment, he was working as a butler, despite his protests.

And his master was none other than the young woman who had just struck him in the chest.

The proud wolf and the lowly sow. The peerless sinner.

The Torture Princess—Elisabeth Le Fanu.

She was already up and dressed, and he was still lying on his bed.

It was becoming clear to Kaito why she had kicked him.

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

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

Elisabeth’s smile was as malevolent as it was beautiful. Kaito’s face blanched. Now he’d gone and done it.

And with that, Kaito Sena greeted the morning—

—part of a long series of cruel, bizarre days.

Elisabeth Le Fanu, the Torture Princess, was a peerless sinner. She had murdered countless people, starting with the population of her own fiefdom. But that tyranny of hers didn’t last long. The Church captured her. By all rights, she should have been put to death on the spot. However, her execution was delayed.

Her order was to do some good for the world before she was to be killed at the stake. And so began the Torture Princess’s crusade against the remaining thirteen demons and their contractors, leaving aside the already-captured Kaiser.

Demons were higher entities that destroyed the world and fed on the pain of God’s creations.

And Kaito himself had already gotten a glimpse of how horrifying they could be.

He’d seen the work of the Knight, weakest of the fourteen, firsthand.

Everything was still fresh in his mind, how the Knight had attacked the innocent villagers with atrocities so vile that they had made Kaito want to avert his eyes. But perhaps the most gruesome atrocity of all had been the demon getting Drawn and Quartered—the punishment that Elisabeth inflicted on the Knight for his sins.

No matter which side Kaito looked at, hell was all that awaited his gaze.

Outside the battles, though, Kaito’s life was actually fairly peaceful.

Well, under some definitions of the word, at least.

Can you really call a life with this many flying plates in it “peaceful,” though? Not sure about that one.

“This! Is! Viiiiiiiiiiiiiile!”

Kaito crossed his arms and pondered that thought. As he did, some stewed tongue with mashed potatoes came hurtling toward him. He didn’t even have to look to know that Elisabeth was the culprit. The crime fit her MO.

The plate then turned around like a boomerang and began miraculously making its way back. Kaito caught it as it sprayed sauce through the air. He shook his head in exasperation.

“You know, I tried to make the menu as idiotproof as possible. Don’t tell me I screwed even that up.”

“I have a taste, as I’m sure you’re aware. A preference for organ meat. But I’ll have you know that even I have my limits! I bite in, expecting the sumptuous harmony of meat and vegetables to fill my mouth, and what I receive instead is the hellish flavor of blood! The vegetables are so mushy that they’ve lost any semblance of texture, yet somehow, the tongue manages to be hard as a rock! Is your aim to shatter my teeth?! This meal is an affront to all five senses!”

“I’m sure your teeth are gonna be fine. And also, I feel like I say this a lot, but you’ve got a crazy knack for food criticism, you know that?”

“This is no time to be idly admiring my talents! Haven’t you even a shred of remorse, you dullard?!”

Elisabeth hurled her fork at him, and it buried itself smack-dab in the middle of his forehead. Its handle bobbed up and down.

Kaito calmly withdrew the utensil from his brow. Blood comically gushed out like a fountain. However, that was of little concern. Thanks to the fact that he had the body of a golem, Kaito was more or less immortal, and his experiences back in life had left him well accustomed to pain. “Good grief,” he muttered as he pressed the cuff of his unbecoming butler outfit against the wound.

Elisabeth trembled with tears in her eyes. Kaito took the plate that he’d put off to the side ahead of time and handed it to her.

“Y’know, I figured that organs might be a little heavy for breakfast anyway, so I made this as well.”

“Thanks to your sloth, it’s already well past time for lunch, but I do appreciate the rare display of competen… Well now. What exactly is this supposed to be?”

“I made those shish kebabs last time, so I figured that frying an egg would be a piece of cake, but, uh…I kinda figured out a way to screw it up.”

“’Tis pitch-black, this egg! Nothing but crisp! Apologize to the yolk, the white, and the chick they could have been!”

As she shouted her oddly specific instructions, Elisabeth knocked her second meal off the table just the same as she had her first. Kaito could practically see the cat ears drooping atop her head. The Torture Princess was a peerless sinner, it was true, but she had a certain childish side to her as well. Eating delicious things filled her with an innocent joy, and tasting unpleasant food made her so dejected that it was almost pitiful.

Kaito nodded sympathetically. It was a sorry sight. Elisabeth snapped her head up.

“Answer me this now—why do you have a look on your face that suggests you’re not the one to blame?!”

“Miss Elisabeth, please put down the knife. If I lose too much blood, I really will die.”

Elisabeth growled menacingly. Kaito decided to make a break for it.

His blood was full of the Torture Princess’s mana, and losing too much of it would cause his soul to leak right out of his body. It was his one true weakness. Even if not for that, though, he still wanted to avoid angering Elisabeth any further.

Otherwise, I’ll end up on the Iron Chair!

“Best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Choosing to heed that idiom, which he’d heard back when he was alive, he headed to the kitchen to clean up the mess he’d made while cooking.

Elisabeth had summoned Kaito because she needed someone to take care of her chores.

In fact, that was the only reason she summoned him. When you got down to it, the story was actually kind of absurd.

The thing was, Elisabeth herself hadn’t had any intention of summoning someone from another world.

She needed a servant so she could fully devote herself to her battles against the demons, but she also had conditions as to who they could be. If she accidentally ended up hiring someone evil, the Church might suspect her of trying to rise up against them. So to avoid drawing any unwarranted suspicion, Elisabeth made sure to summon someone who was “sinless.” Because nothing Kaito did in life had warranted his brutal death, he fit that criterion. The fact that he got drawn from another world was purely a coincidence.

Unfortunately, though, Kaito’s domestic skills were downright nonexistent.

His disastrous cooking hardly needed to be mentioned, and he wasn’t particularly great at any other chores, either. He was in no way the right man for the job. As far as everything other than food was concerned, though, Elisabeth was actually pretty lenient. She never ordered him to do anything more complicated than “clean this room” or “wash what laundry needs washing.” Kaito took full advantage of this fact, and most of the work he did was fairly sloppy. However, the one thing he did make sure to do every day without fail was clean Elisabeth’s bedroom. He was lazy, but he wasn’t an idiot.

Even though it belonged to the castle’s master, Elisabeth’s bedroom was fairly plain. Kaito knew that touching any of her belongings was a dangerous proposition, but the cleaning itself was relatively painless. Each day, Kaito dusted the few pieces of furniture she kept, then changed her bedsheets so he could hand-wash and dry them. Then he would work around Elisabeth’s afternoon catnap and look for a chance to carry her down mattress and pillow to a room with a balcony so he could air them out. He had no idea how people were actually supposed to clean those kinds of things, so he was basically just playing it by ear.

Once he was done with all that, he would generally then get to work cleaning the hallways and other rooms.

Sometimes, he would end up getting chased around by moving suits of armor and have to hide in the reservoir, where he would gaze in awe at the undines swimming about. That would usually last him until the evening. Then he would get to work preparing dinner, drawing Elisabeth’s bath, and picking out wine for her to indulge herself in.

Such was his routine, day in, day out.

Today, though, he had a different plan. He headed to the rear garden.

The reason for that was simple—the weeds were making a play to expand their territory. If he didn’t act fast, they would overtake the garden in no time. However, he quickly began doubting that decision.

“Whew… Man, first the oversleeping, and now it feels like I’ve been nodding off all day…”

Kaito let out a big yawn as he wrenched the weeds from the ground. That area was often overcast, but the sun had decided to show its face that day. It was the kind of warm weather that made one’s eyelids naturally droop.

Plus, because of his nightmare, Kaito hadn’t exactly gotten a good night’s rest.

It would probably be smarter to go back inside, where it was cooler. However, he had just started to make some decent progress on the weeds.

“Still, how carefree does a guy have to be to nod off in…yaaaawn…the Torture Princess’s castle?”

Kaito began muttering to himself to try and stay awake. The sheer thought of doing something like that would be enough to make anyone from this world gape in horror. Ever since he died, though, Kaito had been having a difficult time registering emotions like fear or alarm.

“Now that I think about it, I had to do a lot of messed-up stuff back in my old life. Moving around bodies that I wasn’t sure were alive or not, selling drugs, spreading quicklime over rooms that were covered in blood… If it weren’t for the demon battles, this life would probably actually be nicer than my last one. Sigh. Man, screw those demons.”

Kaito shook his head in annoyance and rose to his feet. With a large bundle of weeds tucked under his arm, he turned around.

There, atop the ground that he’d just finished clearing, was a dead body.

The moment he saw it, Kaito realized something.

Huh, I guess I really did nod off.

This was a dream. It had to be.

The corpse in front of him couldn’t possibly exist.

Everything about it was just too damn strange.

The body was definitely dead. Yet even so, it was moving. All its skin was brutally stretched out, and one of its sides was covered in thin strings. Now, the phrase all its skin wasn’t totally accurate. The corpse was split in half down the middle, and the cross section had been torn to shreds. It was like it had been attached to something before being forcibly ripped off, like a caterpillar stuck to a roll of sticky tape.

Its fluttering scraps of leftover skin swam hazily through the air, accompanied by a series of black strings.

The corpse tilted its head and peered at Kaito from a strange angle. It looked like it was in constant agony, and tears dribbled from its bare, lidless eyes.

Kaito couldn’t help but let out a low gasp. But it wasn’t out of fear.

It was out of sympathy, and out of affection.

Man…it hurts, doesn’t it?

An eternity of pain with no hope for salvation was a cruel thing to have to suffer through.

It was a scary, scary fate.

“C’mon now, don’t cry.”

It was supposed to be a dream, but when Kaito let out his murmur, his voice had a strangely clear ring to it. He looked down at the ground. It was covered in red. Blood was gushing forth from the corpse without stopping. The viscous way it was spreading seemed oddly graphic for a dream, but Kaito couldn’t quite put his finger on what felt so strange about it.

He tilted his head to the side and took a step forward.

“Don’t worry, I’m coming.”

Something was off.

However, he couldn’t tell what.

He approached the corpse with long strides. His gait was oddly brisk and nimble, to the point where even he could tell something was off. The corpse extended its one remaining arm toward him. He reached out for it in kind.

The fingers of the dead and the fingers of the living were about to meet.

The moment before they could, though, the ground exploded right in front of Kaito.

“Whoa!”

The force from the impact knocked him back, and the weeds he’d been carrying got scattered all around him.

Right before his vision shot upward, he saw the body get impaled by stakes. However, no new blood came flowing from it. Instead, the grisly corpse merely vanished without a sound. Now that he was sprawled out on the ground, Kaito looked up at the clear blue sky.

An idle thought drifted through his mind.

See? I knew it was a dream.

No demon attack would ever take such a pathetic form, and the only other way that such a strange event could take place was in a dream.

Why was it, though, that he’d felt as if it were his duty to rush over to the corpse, touch it as quickly as possible, take its hand, share its pain, and assimilate it?

Surely, there was no good reason for him to have been so bizarrely impatient.

Wait, hold on a sec. What the hell was that about “assimilating” it?

A chill ran down Kaito’s spine. However, that emotion quickly grew dull and got replaced with a crushing wave of fatigue. A thought passed through his thoroughly confused mind.

Well, no biggie, I guess… It was just a dream, after all… Now then, gotta figure out how I’m supposed to wake up.

Suddenly, Kaito remembered an old wives’ tale he’d once heard. Apparently, if you went to sleep in a dream, it would make you wake up in the real world. Kaito took a deep breath, then relaxed his arms and legs and slowly closed his eyes.

The blue sky was overtaken by darkness.

Then his vision cut out entirely.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

An absurdly carefree voice rang through the air, and as it did, an intense blow struck Kaito straight in the chest.

The shock from the blow immediately snapped him awake, and his limbs went stiff as he contorted in pain. He blinked, then realized that he was lying on the hard ground. There was a pile of uprooted weeds by him that was pricking him in the arms and legs.

The clear blue sky above him filled his view.

Kaito frowned. Where was he, and what was he doing there?

He gingerly glanced at the spot where the strike had landed. Atop him was the exact person he’d expected. She was looking down at him with a catlike beauty, and her arm was buried in Kaito’s gut. It was a brilliantly executed elbow strike.

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

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

“Huh, yeah, I guess I did.”

Elisabeth hopped to her feet, then crossed her arms as she shouted her accusation.

Kaito hurriedly rose as well, and Elisabeth angrily arched her eyebrows as she went on.

“And what’s more, you didn’t even take it in a proper bed. The garden, Kaito?! Just how sleepy were you?!”

“Uhhh, yeah, you got me there.”

“In a more righteous world, you’d be in Thumbscrews this very moment! Go on then, weep in joy at my mercy and magnanimity!”

“And which world’s the one where that logic makes sense, exactly? …Wait, huh? I was asleep, right?”

Everything Elisabeth just pointed out should have been true. He himself remembered having been asleep. However, he tilted his head to the side. Something didn’t add up.

All of a sudden, he remembered how bizarre the entity he saw in his dream was.

What was that thing?

He glanced around the garden, but the bisected corpse was gone, and there were no traces of the fresh bloodstain. Kaito breathed a sigh of relief. I guess it was a dream after all. Suddenly, though, he frowned.

There was something strange about a particular patch of the ground. The soil was disturbed, like something had exploded up from underneath it. It was the kind of thing you’d expect to see on a battlefield.

It’s almost as though…a stake burst up from under the ground… Nah, there’s no way.

“By the way, Kaito.”

“Yes, Miss Elisabeth? However might I be of service?”

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

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

“Oh, shut up! Just come!”

Elisabeth grabbed Kaito by the earlobe. It would seem that resistance was futile.

He began reluctantly following her, his eyes as forlorn as those of a calf being taken to market. The two of them left the garden. For some reason, though, Kaito decided to take a quick glance back.

…Huh?

When he did, he saw it.

At some point, a crimson pool had spread across the ground like a putrid swamp. Sticky-looking foam bubbled on its surface. However, it vanished in the blink of an eye like a fleeting mirage. All that remained was the dry ground.

Kaito turned his gaze back in the direction they were heading and continued after Elisabeth a good deal less reluctantly than before.

I’m seeing things. Yep, definitely just seeing things.

After all, the alternative was that he wasn’t—

—and if that were the case, then that crimson swamp was an ominous omen indeed.

Kaito followed Elisabeth down a set of stairs, and the two of them arrived underground.

He stepped down onto the stone floor. The long passageway that stretched before him reeked of mold and was turned at a corner partway down.

The corridors beneath the castle were laid out in a complex maze, and they were filled with mysterious groaning, which evoked the sense of a labyrinth containing a monster. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if there really was a monster down here. Kaito glared straight ahead.

There was something important that Elisabeth kept in the room at the end of that hallway—the teleportation circle etched in her blood. However, it would seem that that wasn’t what they were here for. She selected one door from amid the innumerable rows of them.

Then she kicked it open with all her might.

“Saaaaays me!”

“Why’s it always gotta be the violent option with you?”

Exasperated as he was, Kaito peered into the room from beside her. The inside was terribly cramped. It looked like a dungeon that had been designed to psychologically torture its prisoner. However, that wasn’t the room’s true purpose. Instead, there was a strange object installed in its center.

What, it’s a glowing glass ball? No…

It couldn’t be anything that simple. However, it was true that the clear orb was filled with a crimson light.

This light was composed in the shape of a flower. A moment after it bloomed, its petals fell off. Then they transformed into butterfly wings in midair. The butterflies flapped about, then gathered together back into a flower. And thus, the light began its transformation anew.

The cycle repeated, never ceasing.

Elisabeth pointed at the strange orb.

“’Tis a magic device I tested out many ages ago, then promptly forgot all about. But when I saw you plagued with those nightmares of yours and constantly fatigued, I suddenly remembered it existed.”

“I get this weird feeling that I’d be better off if you hadn’t.”

“Oh, no need to sound so suspicious. ’Tis but a device designed to prevent nightmares.”

“A device designed to prevent nightmares?”

Kaito parroted Elisabeth’s words back at her. That sounded harmless enough, not to mention extremely handy. Given the option, he’d rather not relive the moment of his death any more than he had to. He couldn’t help but be interested.

When she saw Kaito’s reaction, Elisabeth curled the corners of her lips into a malevolent smile.

“Of course, any small error when using it would leave you unable to return, permanently crippled, or something to that effect.”

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

In times like these, discretion was the better part of valor. Kaito immediately made to dash out into the corridor. The moment before he could flee, however, Elisabeth snatched him up by the collar. Behind him, she began making an unusually enthusiastic declaration.

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

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

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

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

Kaito’s resistance was in vain, and he found his back getting pressed against the glass ball.

Then—

—with a brief, unsatisfying shoop—

“Huh?”

—Kaito got sucked into the ball.

The world was filled—

—to the very brim—

—with crimson flowers in full bloom.

It was a bewitchingly beautiful sight, but an endlessly ominous one as well.

As he lay sprawled atop the flower field, a shallow thought passed through Kaito’s amazed mind. He retracted his statement from back in the garden.

“…Okay, I take it all back. Demons or not, this life is way more messed up than my last one.”

No good could ever come of a world with magic in it. However, just lying there lamenting that fact wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Crimson flower petals scattered in his wake as he stood.


“All right, first order of business: Let’s figure out what the hell happened to me.”

Kaito glanced around, trying his best to stay levelheaded. Unlike the ground, which was as red as a sea of blood, the sky was muddled and gray. Butterflies made of crimson light glittered through the air with a dim glow behind them as they continued their lively dance all the way to the horizon line.

As beautiful as it all was, it was decidedly bizarre. Kaito wasn’t sure where to go.

He looked around again, hoping to find some sign. A moment later, he did a double take.

Something weird was floating there.

“Whoa, what’s that thing?!”

“Bakuuuuuuuuu.”

“Whoa, it made a noise.”

There was something round in the middle of the field. It was some sort of mysterious black-and-white creature.

Kaito began thinking to try and figure out what it was. The only black-and-white animal that immediately came to mind was a panda.

This thing looks different, though. Wait, I feel like I might have seen one in a picture book back in school—some sort of black-and-white animal that had something to do with dreams… It was so long ago, though, and I only went to school for a short bit, so my memory’s a little fuzzy.

“Bakuuuuuuuuu!”

“Whoa, it made a noise again.”

As Kaito leaped back, something dawned on him. The strange creature was making an odd noise, but its actual cry probably sounded different than that. His golem body’s translation function was probably just coming up with something that it figured was “close enough.”

After letting out a dissatisfied groan, the animal went silent. Kaito steeled his nerves and walked toward it. The creature was floating in the air with its eyes closed, as relaxed as a baby in the womb.

Seeing how adorable it looked helped alleviate Kaito’s fears a bit. He timidly reached out to touch it.

Suddenly, with a big chomp, the creature snatched up Kaito’s hand in its mouth. Kaito was a few seconds slow on the uptake, but he eventually let out a shout.

“Hey, don’t eat me!”

“Baku. Munch, much, munch.”

Fortunately, it didn’t hurt. Apparently, it wasn’t actually eating his flesh. However, his hand grew wet with drool all the same. The munching sound went on as the creature continued gently gnawing on him. A sensation came over Kaito that felt like he was having something sucked out of his body.

He tilted his head to the side. How odd. Then out of the blue, the creature’s body began swelling up.

“Whoa! Are you okay there, buddy?!”

“………”

The black-and-white creature didn’t answer, instead choosing to persist in its unnerving silence. All the while, it continued inflating. It was almost like some sort of balloon he was blowing into. Its fuzzy body grew rounder and rounder, and then—

—with a pop—

—it burst.

“…Huh?”

Kaito let out a dumbfounded yelp. However, the creature’s body hadn’t actually exploded. Instead, its skin merely split and peeled off from its top down. Afterward, it was left as a sphere of muscle fibers decorated with lard and veins. The creature had been reduced to a horrible blob. Then it began pulsating in midair, like it was the heart of very world itself.

And its horrible transformation didn’t stop there. Next, it began melting, losing its form like a piece of fruit rotting. Chunks of meat began cascading off it.

They fell down like a dark rain, then seeped into the ground in the spaces between the flowers.

And eventually, the world—

—stopped moving in turn.

“What…the hell?”

The eternal cycle had come to an abrupt conclusion.

The butterflies, midway through flying through the air and falling down as flower petals, froze in place.

Kaito looked around in a panic. He was pretty sure he hadn’t done anything wrong, but his heart was pounding up a storm all the same. Something bad was going to happen; he could feel it. He braced himself. However, no such disaster came.

Kaito breathed a small sigh of relief, and the tension flooded out of his body. But he had let his guard down too quickly.

The world began moving.

It was like it had just finished “perceiving” him.

The crimson petals all cascaded to the ground in unison and crumbled away into nothing. All that remained were the flowers’ stems and stamens, and those then hardened and changed color and material. Now they were a bed of silver needles.

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

Kaito stood stock-still in the newly silver world. His voice grew hoarse.

“…You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

If he took so much as a single step forward, the needles would impale his feet, and the knives would slice his skin to ribbons.

At a loss for what to do, Kaito gave the cruel world a quick glance over. However, he didn’t see any way to reverse the transformation.

The strange creature had melted, and it didn’t look like it was coming back. Kaito’s one lead had quite literally vanished. That said, just standing there wasn’t going to get him anywhere. Kaito mulled over his options.

There’s gotta be some way for me to get out of here. If I make my way to the edge of this world—the glass ball, that is—maybe I’ll be able to call Elisabeth for help.

The problem was, if he moved even a little, he would end up getting hurt by that same world. It was a situation that would induce despair in just about anyone.

Kaito took a deep breath, then slowly let it out.

Welp…not like I have much of a choice.

That about summed it up.

Kaito placed a foot atop the needles and carefully took a step forward. When he did, the needles’ silver prongs pierced his foot clean through.

Seeing them burst through the top of his shoe, Kaito grimaced. He lifted his foot up, and a horrible slurping noise sounded out as it came free of the needles, which were now covered in disgusting globs of fat. Blood gushed from his wounds.

As agony shot through him, he took another step, once more bringing his foot down on the needles of his own volition.

The moment he did, a melodic voice echoed through the air.

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

“Huh? Wait, that voice… Elisabeth?”

Kaito frantically glanced around. For a moment, he even forgot that his foot was being impaled. That was a bad move. He tried to twist his body to the side to get a better look, but because his foot was still stuck, he ended up losing his balance.

He toppled over, and the carpet of needles quickly drew closer.

Oooh, I don’t like this.

The prospect of being in agony—

—and of dying in agony—

—and of being in constant agony yet unable to die—

was a most unpleasant prospect indeed.

That was the fact that Kaito mused on as he fell helplessly toward the needles. The moment before he got run through, though, he stopped.

Someone behind him—

—had just grabbed his hand tight.

“…Huh?”

“Heeeave…”

Then they began dragging him upward. It was almost anticlimactic how casually he got pulled up through the air.

It felt just like the time his soul got unceremoniously yanked—

—and plucked out of his original world.

“…Ah!”

By the time Kaito realized what was going on, he was already sitting atop something black-and-white.

When he looked down, he discovered that it was the round creature from before. It was the exact same shape—just a lot bigger.

The large creature floated gently through the air as it carried Kaito on its back. He didn’t understand what was going on in the slightest. What he did know, though, was that he didn’t have any time to waste gawking at the strange beast.

He quickly glanced to his side. There, he found the exact person he’d expected.

He pointed his finger straight at her.

“ELISABEEEEEEEEEEETH!”

“Oh, hello there, Kaito.”

Elisabeth gave him a breezy greeting and a one-handed wave. She was sitting with her arms perched atop her knees and the scarlet inside of her dress tucked underneath her. Kaito raised his voice in indignation.

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

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

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

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

Elisabeth gazed down at the transformed field of flowers as she spoke. Still seated, Kaito scooted over until he was right next to her.

All of a sudden, he realized that his foot didn’t hurt anymore. His wounds were gone without a trace. However, the world of needles and knives showed no sign of reverting to its original state. Overwhelmed by the sheer heartlessness of the sight, Kaito asked a question.

“Wait…what does this have to do with my nightmares at all?”

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

“…Huh.”

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

An eternity of agony was an unpleasant prospect indeed.

That was definitely how Kaito felt. That was what he was afraid of. That was what he was used to.

The two of them went quiet, and for a time, it was silent atop the strange creature’s back. The pair just sat there. All of a sudden, though, Elisabeth arched her back and stretched her arms all the way up. Her breasts bounced precariously beneath their leather belts. After bringing her arms back down, Elisabeth exhaled.

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

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

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

“That’s…fair, I guess.”

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

“…Say what?”

Elisabeth’s proclamation came completely out of left field.

Kaito blinked. He hadn’t quite registered what she had said just yet. As he gave his dumbfounded reply, he looked around. When she said “this place,” she must have meant the space they were currently in. When that fact finally clicked, he worriedly shot her a question.

“Now, um, Miss Elisabeth, are you really sure that’s a good idea?”

“It matters not! Besides, such was the purpose this device was built for in the first place!”

“Ah, so what I’m hearing is that you have no proof at all that we’re gonna be okay.”

As Kaito quickly came to that realization, Elisabeth rose to her feet.

Her dress flared out behind her like a cloak as she lorded over the world of silver. Several butterflies landed on her luscious black hair. Adorned perilously with their bladed wings, she smiled in satisfaction.

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

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

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

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

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

Elisabeth finished with a low murmur. She cracked her knuckles.

Kaito tilted his head to the side in confusion. Something must have happened that he didn’t know about. However, there was no time to ask questions. Elisabeth was making her move. Beneath them, the mysterious creature let out an apprehensive “Bakuuuu.” It sensed danger. However, Elisabeth paid its complaint no heed.

To the contrary, in fact, she treated its cry as a signal to let the destruction commence.

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

Then she drew a long sword from within.

“Executioner’s Sword of Frankenthal!”

The runes inscribed in its blade flashed crimson.

Anyone who saw them would have their meaning driven straight into their brain.

You are free to act as you will. But pray that God shall be your salvation. For the beginning, the middle, and the end all lie in the palm of His hand.

“Witches’ Dance!”

Elisabeth swung the sword straight down.

To Kaito, it looked like flames were billowing off it. However, that was just an optical illusion.

In truth, the sword had merely cut through the air. Down below them, though, changes were occurring in the silver landscape.

The air was shimmering with heat haze, and the ground had been transformed into a vast sheet of burning metal. If anyone had been standing on it, the heat would have forced them to hop around like a madman. The metal plane’s temperature rose mercilessly, growing higher and higher by the moment. Its silver flowers drooped and sagged as they melted. The intense heat was permeating every inch of this bounded world.

And Kaito and Elisabeth were no exception.

The massive black-and-white creature rose higher into the air at the last minute, but not even it could escape the effects of the change. It flailed its stubby arms and legs about to protest the heat. Kaito had to cling tight to its back to avoid being thrown off.

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

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

“Why wasn’t that the first thing you considered?!” Kaito shouted in visible panic.

Elisabeth, on the other hand, was inexplicably as calm as a cucumber. She swung her sword down once more. There’s no way…, thought Kaito. And yet there was.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Elisabeth made her bold declaration.

“Now, ’tis time to seal the deal.”

She swung her sword down, and darkness and crimson flower petals surged forth. A series of chains went flying as the ashen sky absorbed the shock wave. Elisabeth continued attacking the world without stopping.

Kaito braced himself. He had no idea what was going to happen to them. The sky creaked before his very eyes.

“Wha—?”

Then a noise as shrill as glass shattering filled the air.

The world built of pain was broken. Shards of the sky cascaded down like shooting stars.

The image of the countless glittering fragments burned itself into Kaito’s retinas.

As the thousands of scraps of light rained down from overhead, all of a sudden—

Shoop.

“…Huh?”

—a disappointingly brief noise echoed out—

—and Kaito and Elisabeth got launched outside.

“Taaaaaaaaaaaake that!”

“Hurgh!”

A shock ran through Kaito’s body for the third time that day.

When he took the heel or elbow or whatever it was to the chest, his eyes snapped open.

His body went stiff as he contorted in agony, but he quickly rallied and got up. A dim, glowing ball sat in front of him. Its surface was covered in cracks, and it was emitting black-and-white smoke. He could faintly make out an annoyed “Bakuuuu” cry coming from somewhere, so it would seem that the events he’d just gone through hadn’t been only a dream.

Elisabeth was standing beside the ball. She gave it a huffy frown as she looked down at its sorry state.

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

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

Kaito shot her an exasperated rebuttal, but Elisabeth didn’t respond to it. “Hmm,” she murmured as she inspected the cracks. After giving the device a thorough once-over, she nodded. “Well, no matter. I’ll just stick it back together later; I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

“I’m pretty sure it won’t.”

“Oh, have some faith. ’Tis nary a flaw in this world that a little welding can’t fix.”

“Oh yeah, this isn’t gonna end well.”

But right when Kaito was about to warn Elisabeth that her efforts were likely to accomplish little more than exacerbating the ball’s already-critical damage, Elisabeth suddenly turned on her heel and shot him a question as casual as could be.

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

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

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

“Why? Just why?”

They were bold words, coming from the person who’d shoved him into a magical device against his will. Kaito squinted at her. However, it was true that she was the one who’d destroyed that world.

Wait, was she looking out for me…in her own weird kind of way, mind you?

Suddenly, Kaito was reminded of a few other things that had piqued his interest.

There were those traces of an explosion back in the garden. There was the way she’d said that she “just went through a rather unpleasant experience.” And there was the way she’d acted as though something had just happened.

Could it be? Had she been working on his behalf, even before she stuck him in the ball?

It seemed like it might be possible, so Kaito decided to ask her. Before he could get the words out, though, Elisabeth turned once more.

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

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

Kaito took it all back.

Today, as always, Elisabeth Le Fanu’s cruelty was in perfect form.

Even in the evenings, Kaito still had plenty of work to do.

First, he had to draw a hot bath for Elisabeth. Then he had to go around and check the magic lamps to see if any of them had gone out. And although it was an impossible task due to the castle’s sheer size, he also had to make sure all the windows were closed and the doors were locked.

If Elisabeth wanted wine with her dinner, he had to go get that, too. All in all, his evening workload was nothing to sneeze at.

Once he was finally finished, Kaito staggered back to the servant quarters.

He made his way to his room and sat down on his bed. As he looked up at the ceiling, he let out a small murmur.

“God, I’m pooped.”

Not only had his day been filled with all sorts of bizarre mayhem, but he’d also had to do a full day’s workload on top of that. Plus, he didn’t even know if that strange device had actually worked or not. After dinner, Elisabeth had brazenly made yet another proclamation.

“From today on, I suspect you’ll have nightmares just the same as anyone! But I’ve a feeling that there may or may not be a chance that their frequency could well decrease!”

Kaito didn’t even know where to start with that one. That was a whole lot of words for not a lot of certainty. Her proof, as always, was nowhere to be found. Strangely, though, he didn’t find that fact all that upsetting.

A device that “reproduces the symbolic cause of nightmares” and ends them “by having a third party destroy the reproduction, thereby freeing the subject’s mind,” huh?

The entire sequence of events had been totally absurd, but he had to admit that it had been kind of refreshing to watch the world of pain get destroyed. It made him feel like the thorn winding its way through his chest had lightened up a little.

As they fell, those thousands of scraps of light—

—had looked like beautiful, radiant stars.

…Huh? Wait, was that thing I saw out in the garden a symbol of the pain that caused my nightmares, too?

Confused, Kaito tilted his head to the side. He still wasn’t sure what that phantom had really been. Maybe it was just a new spin on his nightmare, but he found that hard to believe. He thought back over what it had looked like.

It had been in eternal pain, an agony that would never end.

It had been a corpse, yet even in death, it had still moved.

“…I can’t come be by your side.”

Him assimilating an entity that was going to suffer in pain for eternity wasn’t an option. From now on, he served Elisabeth. As foolish of a servant as he may have been, he was all she had.

He didn’t have time to spend the rest of his days grieving for an event that had long since passed.

Plus, he had no desire whatsoever to keep crying even after he died.

If I had to die…I’d rather do it happily, with no regrets.

It’d be nice if it were a situation where he could say, This was for the best—

—where he could do it for someone else’s sake and go out with a smile on his face.

As that random thought passed through his mind, he collapsed backward onto the bed with his arms and legs sprawled out. He closed his eyes. Based on what Elisabeth had said, the magical device’s effects were uncertain.

Would he have another nightmare tonight?

For a moment, Kaito was seized by worry. However, his exhaustion quickly won out, and he sank into a deep slumber.

That night, Kaito Sena had a dream.

A strange animal soared overhead, crying, “Bakuuuu,” as it flew. It had a round back, and Elisabeth was riding atop it. As she and the creature bobbed gently through the air, she complained about how vile Kaito’s cooking was.

Well, that’s not very Torture Princess-y of her, Kaito exasperatedly mused.

It was a weird dream, to be sure—

—but it was about as far from a nightmare as they came.



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