HOT NOVEL UPDATES

Fremd Torturchen - Volume 8 - Chapter 5




Hint: To Play after pausing the player, use this button

5

The Beastfolk’s Decision

The red room was deathly quiet. The chessboard was a mess, and the pieces were in utter disarray. Plus, there weren’t even any players. All that remained by the desk was a cold cup of tea.

At the moment, that place, that place where nobody ought to be—

—had a visitor.

A woman had appeared—

—in that room, farther than the World’s End.

To. Fro. Chitter. Chatter.

There was a voice.

It wasn’t clear if it was a dream or reality, but there was definitely someone singing. It was a young girl, her voice loud and full of pride. She called out, her tone that of a person dashing through a field with deranged abandon and laughing their head off. “Come now,” she was saying, “let’s be good girls and sing a song.”

“Holy, Holy, Holy!

“Lord God Almighty, thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

“Amen.

“Hallelujah.”

The last line was the Grave Keeper’s final statement. It was odd. Why did people say hallelujah and wish blessings on one another? Why did they sing songs so rife with contradictions? Why did they give such perverse orders? How could they do all that yet remain utterly blind to their own sins?

Until the day of your death, try to do some good at least.

And if you cannot do good, then die.

However, the very premise was flawed. What was “good”?

What did the world that turned ever so properly deem good?

At this point, is anything truly “good”?

“…eth…sa…beth… Lady…Elisa… Lady Elisabeth!”

“…Hmm? What’s going on there? You’re making a racket.”

Upon hearing someone call for her, Elisabeth suddenly came to.

When she did, she discovered a pair of emerald eyes wet with grief blinking right beside her. They weren’t human eyes; they were actual jewels. It made for a beautiful sight and one that stirred up a wave of nostalgia in Elisabeth. When she saw them, she finally understood her situation, which came as a great relief.

It was a delightful silver-haired maid peering straight at her.

“Oh, Hina, it’s you. In that case, all is forgiven.”

Elisabeth let out a small breath, then shook her head. Pain’s aftertaste still lingered in her body, and she felt as though she’d just had the most horrible nightmare. However, she was unsure how much of it had been a dream and how much had actually been real.

Wanting to know where she was, she glanced around.

Upon doing so, though, a deep furrow made its way across her brow.

“…Wait, where are we?”

The room was red.

It was dyed all over with the color of fresh blood, and it was the kind of room that burrowed its way into your eyeballs and chipped away at your brain.

A chessboard sat atop the plain desk at its center.

Elisabeth stood and walked over to it.

Upon peering down at it, she couldn’t help but scrunch up her face. The pieces’ arrangement was a mess, and even at a glance, it was obvious that the game was in a state of abject chaos. And to top things off, there weren’t even any players. All that remained by the desk was a cold cup of tea.

The oddest thing, though, was there were two pieces submerged in that cup.

Elisabeth plucked them out. A red droplet dripped down her wrist.

That was not tea in the cups. It was blood, and it dripped off the sword-brandishing boy piece and halberd-wielding maid piece as they rose.

As she looked at the strange designs, Elisabeth finally realized something.

“Wait… Hina? Hina?!”

Hina was Kaito Sena’s eternal lover and beloved automaton bride.

She was also the Torture Princess’s maid—a kind woman and one whom she held great affection toward.

However, she was also someone who had no right to be there.

After all, she and Kaito Sena were locked in a deep slumber within a crystal.

Elisabeth whirled back around as though she’d been struck. She stared intently at the maid standing there.

Hina gave a pained smile. However, she then abruptly looked down and bit her lip as her silver hair draped in front of her face. She gripped the hem of her maid uniform’s skirt.

Elisabeth hurriedly rushed over to her. She had a million questions—where they were, for example, and why Hina was there—but she immediately discarded them all.

Hina was mourning right before her eyes. That was the only thing that mattered.

Elisabeth stroked her cheek, then stroked her head through her soft maid cap.

“Come now—there’s no need to be so sad. A smile suits you far better, does it not?”

Hina’s eyes went wide. She said nothing, and tears began streaming down her cheeks in large drops.

Seeing that sent Elisabeth into a tizzy. “What’s going on? What’s wrong? Is it something I did?” All of a sudden, though, Hina grabbed her hand. Elisabeth’s eyes went wide.

Hina desperately squeezed her hand, tears still pouring down her face. Then, for some reason, she began talking just about as fast as her mouth would let her.

“There are a lot of sad things happening to you right now, Lady Elisabeth. Sad things, and painful things, and difficult things, and horrible things, and unforgivable things… And I’m certain there will only be more of them from here on out! But please, Lady Elisabeth, you must believe. And no matter what happens, you mustn’t forget.”

Hina raised her downturned face with great vigor. Her tears gleamed like tiny stars as they scattered through the air. Elisabeth had no time to so much as get in a question edgewise. As though pressed for time, Hina continued her fervent plea.

“We… That is, Master Kaito and I, we love you so much! So please, you must protect this world of yours. Please…if you remember nothing else, remember that.”

“How could I possibly forget?”

Elisabeth’s statement rang with a certain coldness. Hina gasped. However, Elisabeth quickly gave her a smile. The Torture Princess then returned her grasp, clasping Hina’s hand in both of hers.

Elisabeth gently stroked the back of Hina’s hand. The Torture Princess made her calm proclamation.

“I love you, too, Hina. I could never forget that…not even if I wished to. Nor shall I. Never, ever, ever.”

Thus did Elisabeth make her promise, her tone reminiscent of a child’s.

Hina blinked. At long last, a smile spread across her face, like a beautiful flower opening its petals. However, her expression quickly darkened again. With her face scrunched up like she was going to resume crying, she untangled her hand from Elisabeth’s.

Her fingers’ faint warmth grew distant.

Puzzled, Elisabeth finally asked a question.

“…Hina, what’s the matter?”

“It’s time for us to go our separate ways, Lady Elisabeth. Someday, I’m sure…we’ll… No…no, perhaps not. Please, though…please do take care of yourself.”

Little by little, Hina’s voice grew fainter, and her face etched with its childlike sorrow grew more and more distant. Eventually, her familiar visage disappeared from view entirely. Elisabeth reached out, but those slender fingers of hers were nowhere to be found.

“Wait,” Elisabeth tried to beg her. “Don’t go.” But her voice wouldn’t come out.

Everything was growing hazy.

For a moment, she thought she saw a shadowy figure. However, that too soon fluttered away into the darkness.

It was unclear how much was dream

and how much was reality

but either way, everything came crumbling down.

Elisabeth called out desperately to the figure she hoped beyond hope was real.

“Don’t go, Hina! Don’t go!”

“……eth…sa…th……beth…Elisabeth!”

“Hina!”

Elisabeth sat up with a start. Her head smacked into someone, hard.

“Hey, ow!” they yelped.

She tilted her head to the side. Hmm?

She heard an oddly familiar voice as well as an oddly unbefitting quote coming from it.

Right in front of her, the usual suspect was rubbing his jaw.

“Goodness, these surprise attacks are starting to get to me. That was a sincere cry I let out there.”

“Calling that ‘sincere’ is about the scariest lie I can imagine.”

Hearing that man say “ow” like that was unsettling in the extreme.

What if that wasn’t a lie, though? Elisabeth’s face paled a little. Perhaps she was overreacting, but the prospect was scary enough to warrant it.

Vlad shrugged discontentedly at his beloved daughter’s words.

“You know, I’ll remind you that you’re the one who head-butted my jaw. Well, no matter, I suppose. The long rebellious phase marches on, and it’s up to my paternal love to be equal to it. You were tossing in your sleep—is something wrong?”

It was unclear if Vlad’s allusion to his “paternal love” came from a place of sincerity or mockery, but either way, Elisabeth decided to refrain from attacking him over it. She pressed down on her forehead. She had just been having a dream; she was sure of it.

A lonely, nostalgic nightmare.

And yet she couldn’t remember so much as a single detail about it.

“…No, ’tis nothing. I think.”

“Are you sure? But Elisabeth, you— Heh. You kept not waking up, so I tried calling you by your name for a change. Ah, the memories it brings back. Back to the matter at hand, though, you say nothing’s wrong, but…”

Vlad curled his lips. Elisabeth narrowed her eyes—if he had something he wanted to say, she’d just as soon he said it.

All of a sudden, something fell from the corner of her eye. The Torture Princess quickly wiped it away with her finger to try and pretend it hadn’t happened. However, Vlad wasn’t about to let it slide so easily.

“…it looks to me like you’re crying.”

“…I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Elisabeth’s reply was cold and blunt. The thing that had fallen was something most unbefitting the Torture Princess. In fact, it was utterly unacceptable. But if it had, indeed, fallen…

…then it must have fallen on behalf of someone from her dream.

Someone inside a crystal, who could no longer cry themselves.

“So this is… Ah.”

Elisabeth took another look around.


The place they were in was most peculiar indeed.

For one, everything she could see was hard.

That was due to the boulders piled up all around them.

Kaito and Hina’s crystal was narrowly wedged in between them, and the two of them were sleeping peacefully in the darkness of the boulders’ shadows. However, there were also a series of sunbeams streaming down on them from overhead.

By following the golden rays with her gaze, she could make out the heavens far, far above.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the sky above was clear and sunny.

Its deep blue contrasted against the two mountain ranges that towered high up into it. Their peaks were misshapen, evidence of the magical explosion they’d been subjected to.

The boulders piled around them were the remnants of those shattered peaks, but before the explosion, the area had been home to some humble abodes and horribly mangled corpses. The alchemists who lived there had willingly sacrificed themselves to give birth to the golden Torture Princess, and now they were all buried beneath the boulders. The area had been destroyed, just as they intended.

In short, Elisabeth and Vlad were at the alchemists’ hidden village.

The birthplace of Jeanne de Rais.

“So we reached the destination safely, then… I visited this place but once, after hearing of it from Jeanne and coming in hopes of learning something from the magical traces here. And what’s more, that was over two years ago. Impressive, I should think, that I made it here successfully under such conditions. I really am a genius… Wait, what of my wound?”

Elisabeth turned her gaze over to her shoulder. When she did, she found herself struck speechless.

There was a bandage wrapped around it. Whoever tied it had evidently tried to do so carefully, but their results were clumsy at best.

Elisabeth lifted the bandage to check on the wound. It was healing quite nicely, and the flesh had successfully knit itself back together. However, she clearly didn’t have Vlad to thank—pointless acts like “wrapping it in a bandage, just in case” weren’t exactly his style.

But then…who?

Elisabeth fumbled through her vague memories.

Indistinct flashes of the final bits rose to the forefront of her mind.

A sad face disappearing. A familiar figure vanishing. Reaching out and being unable to find their slender fingers. Trying to beg them not to go but being unable to speak. Everything growing hazy.

And then, for a moment, feeling like she saw a shadowy figure.

However, that too fluttered away into the darkness.

“A shadowy figure…fluttering? A figure…in tattered rags, perhaps?”

It was unclear how much was dream

and how much was reality

but either way, everything came crumbling down.

“No, it can’t be.”

There was only one person she could think of who fit that description. But Elisabeth shook her head. He was dead. He had cast himself into the abyss, sacrificing himself to fulfill the role allotted to him by his mother.

Never again would he return.

Suddenly, a deep voice rumbled out. It belonged to a black dog, and it rang with a deep, intense boredom.

“So what do you intend to do, foolish child?”

“About what, Kaiser? What is it you’re asking me?”

Elisabeth responded to the vague query as befitted such a question, and the supreme hound slammed his tail against the ground in irritation. As cracks splintered across the boulders near the impact site, he roughly gestured its supple black mass toward the crystal.

“It should go without saying that I’m asking what you plan to do with that. Such an ugly ruckus, this business about handing it over and smashing it and so forth. As always, humans are utterly incapable of making sound decisions.”

Normally, the human condition lay beyond demonic understanding. However, that particular beast had come to know hatred, and as such probably had a better handle on the rebels’ motivations than most. However, he wasn’t finished.

“And that goes for you, too. Mankind’s shallow deeds are misguided and fraught with error, each and every one of them. All this nonsense comes far too late.

“Eventually, the end of days would surely come once more.

“Geh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, fu-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh, geh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.”

When he laughed, his voice sounded almost human. Their imminent crisis was only the tip of the iceberg.

A true, final end was coming.

It was an ominous, despair-inducing prediction

and to it, Elisabeth gave a resigned nod.

Now then, it’s time for a story. A tale of reality told as would be a fairy tale.

A tale of God and Diablo.

Such was the manner in which Vlad eloquently began his speech.

“Three years ago, the world very nearly met a tragic end.”

However, that seemingly immutable fate was altered by a single individual.

After burdening himself with God and Diablo, the boy fell into a deep slumber at the World’s End. Thanks to his deeds, the people of the world managed to avoid the apocalypse. The greatest good for the greatest number was, surely, the greatest outcome.

One could say they all lived happily ever after. But whenever someone’s story ends, there are some things that yet remain.

With its lease on life renewed, the world continued on.

But the bells would eventually toll on a new curtain’s rise.

“…For that is the way bells and curtains are. And oh, how they toll! God and Diablo—entities with the power to destroy and rebuild worlds—exist. And now, all three races are now fully aware of their existence!”

Now everyone knew that there was a way to destroy the world.

The true menace, the true threat, was the survivors’ changed perceptions. After all, the true value of information lay in its ability to set people’s minds in motion. And now that everyone knew that the world was something that can be ended, the end of days was no longer a pipe dream or a legend.

It was oh-so-very real.

“‘The end of days cometh, and destroying the world is an attainable feat.’ With that fact proven, people will undoubtedly come out of the woodwork to try it for themselves. And in a sense, they won’t even be doing it maliciously. For you see…”

“‘What kind of villain sees a chance to turn the world on its head and doesn’t take it,’ was it?”

Elisabeth took over for the closing remarks, and Vlad nodded in agreement.

She was self-aware enough to realize what was going on. The mob’s decision had been mistaken, but the Torture Princess’s response had amounted to little more than grandstanding. On a long enough timeline, temporarily hiding Kaito Sena in an attempt to keep God and Diablo safe or destroying the vessel to return them to the ether would both end the same way.

At the moment, the strongest thing mankind could summon was the Kaiser, apex of the fourteen demons. But now that it had been conclusively proved that the reconstruction happened, it was only a matter of time before more and more people began trying to summon God and Diablo.

Having a clear goal allowed mankind to reach it in far fewer years than would otherwise be required.

Astronomic as the odds were, having God and Diablo under control like this was still far better than having someone else summon them and return the world to nothingness.

One way or the other, though, ruin would eventually come.

No matter what option they chose.

After all, this world was but an unwanted child born from a single woman’s despair.

As such, it was in its nature to eventually end. Every option led down the same road—all they were doing was delaying the inevitable.

And so to save this world in the truest sense of the word…

…would require freeing it from the God and Diablo system altogether.

The Kaiser, an entity above all that, scoffed at the folly of man.

“Your human perspectives are too puny to grasp it all, I imagine. But from my vantage on high, it’s plain to see that even with the end of days averted, it will eventually come to pass all the same. Two points in time, all but overlapping… And in that sense, my previous unworthy master, Accumulation of Seventeen Years’ Pain, is the greatest dunce of you all. And yet…

“…I find it hard to imagine him being that blind.”

The final words escaped the Kaiser’s mouth as little more than a murmur. His tone betrayed a surprising amount of confidence in Kaito Sena.

Vlad’s unpleasant smile widened. He opened his mouth, ostensibly to poke fun at the Kaiser.

Wanting to avoid having a fight break out, Elisabeth made to stop him.

At the last moment, though, she found something more pressing to comment on.

“Now, would you be so kind as to tell me why you followed us here…Lute?”

“My deepest apologies. The thing is, I was actually at the World’s End back then as well.”

A timid voice she was well familiar with rose up in reply, and a copper-furred wolfman made his way out from behind the crystal.

Neither Vlad nor the Kaiser offered any reaction. Apparently, Elisabeth was the only one who hadn’t noticed him. She clicked her tongue, annoyed at her own oversight. Perhaps she really was going soft.

Upon hearing that, Lute’s tail curled into a ball. He clearly thought it had been directed at him. However, Elisabeth waved her hand to dispel the misconception, and Lute’s flattened tail and ears returned to their usual state.

Still nervously cowering a little, he went on.

“I must say, that battle was a thing of beauty. But right as I was watching in secret, utterly transfixed, the saint fired off her unauthorized attack, and things immediately got chaotic. She must have been concerned for Madam Izabella’s safety, I imagine. Anyhow, I took advantage of the confusion to slip into the teleportation circle. As for why…”

“How you got here is beside the point—so long as you’ve no intention of turning on me, that is. This reason of yours is what concerns me—”

“And you want to know what he plans on doing now, I imagine.”

A response came, but the voice it belonged to wasn’t Lute’s.

Lute bowed low and took a step backward.

A panther-headed beastman strode forth to take his place. His night-hued frame was adorned with a cloak of white wolf fur and a military uniform of the finest make. His fur was short, his figure was lean, and he carried himself with majesty and grace.

Elisabeth narrowed her eyes. Even she knew who he was.

He was nowhere near as renowned as the first imperial princess, Valisisa Ula Forstlast the Dynast, or the second imperial princess, Vyade Ula Forstlast the Wise Wolf, but he too had been named as a member of the imperial family by the Three Kings of the Forest.

As far as age was concerned, he was Valisisa’s junior and Vyade’s senior.

“First prince Vyadryavka Ula Forstlast.”

Elisabeth spoke the man’s name. He nodded, then gave his cloak a flourish. It flared out behind him, and the ornamental peafowl feathers on his shoulders fluttered along with it. Then, as Elisabeth looked at him in puzzlement, he made his move.

Without a shred of hesitation, the first imperial beastfolk prince

knelt before the Torture Princess.

Then, still on one knee, he gave Elisabeth a deep bow. She regarded him with suspicion.

“What’s this now?”

“It’s quite simple, Torture Princess Elisabeth Le Fanu. I kneel before you with a humble request. We can no longer place our trust in the humans. But you are a different matter, and my people have a score that still needs settling.”

“And what score is that?”

“Our emotions run deep, and our honor runs deeper. My sisters were murdered, and we will not take that lying down. So as such…”

One of Vyadryavka’s fists was pressed against the ground, and he clenched it tight.

Elisabeth thought back. Some of the demi-humans had betrayed humanity and sided with those of mixed race. In contrast, the beastfolk had maintained the status quo. However, it was clear to demi-humans and beastfolk alike that the humans could no longer be trusted.

So what were the beastfolk to do?

The answer was right before her.

“…we intend to receive the betrayer of humanity as an honored guest.”

The first imperial beastfolk prince made his declaration.

His aim was as Vyade’s had been when she extended her invitation to Kaito all those years ago:

to pick up a blade the humans cast aside in order to do battle with it.



Share This :


COMMENTS

No Comments Yet

Post a new comment

Register or Login