Grimgal of Ashes and Illusion - Volume 12 - Chapter 13

13. An Ugly Trick

“Honey Den,” Haruhiro called out. “May we have a word?”

As he approached, Honey Den didn’t say, Yeah, or, What? He just suddenly threw his mug at Haruhiro.

He might have been lazy, but contrary to appearances, he wasn’t slow. Haruhiro managed to dodge the wooden mug itself, but he got a little bit of the booze on him.

Clicking his tongue, he chased after the fleeing Honey Den.

Without so much as a Hey, or an Out of the way, Honey Den pushed down people as he went and ran over top of them. It was the right way to flee in a crowd, but hard for any decent person to do. He apparently had no concern for his fellow man.

“You’re scum!” Haruhiro shouted.

As he jumped over one of the fallen people, Haruhiro let out that insult despite himself, but Honey Den turned just his head back and shouted, “Shut up! I’ll kill you, you piece of shit!”

“You’re the piece of shit!” Setora snapped.

For Honey Den, it must have felt as if, suddenly, a single woman had risen up to stand in his way.

The fact was, they had planned for the possibility he would bolt, and the party was spread out across the area. Honey Den had happened to pick the direction Setora was in.

Setora tried to sweep Honey Den’s leg. Or rather, she gave Honey Den’s shin the hardest kick she could muster.

“Gweh?!” Honey Den pitched forward and fell. He tried to get right back up, but Setora was on him in no time, putting her foot on his back.

“You think I’d let you escape, you moron?” she snarled.

“Nughhhhhhh...”

As Honey Den groaned, Kiichi ran over to him, hissing and baring his fangs threateningly.

“Whuh?! The hell?! A cat?! S-Stop! Don’t bite! I don’t taste any good...”

“As if I’d let him eat you,” Setora said contemptuously.

When Setora put her whole weight on her heel, Honey Den let out a kind of creepy squeal. Was he kind of enjoying this? He was seriously creepy...

Either way, Honey Den was now successfully captured. They would have loved to make him talk and be done with him here, but a bunch of curious lookie-loos had gathered around, so there was no time for that.

The sun was setting, and the dragons had flown off, so Haruhiro and the party escorted Honey Den into Roronea. That still attracted a lot of onlookers who, despite knowing nothing, loudly shouted that they wanted to hit him, tear him apart, and kill him.

What to do?

Jimmy offered a suggestion.

“How about using our ship? It should be coming into port about now.”

When they headed to the port, the Mantis-go was coming alongside the pier. For some reason, the K&K’s KMW Momohina was on the gunwale, not the deck, doing what looked like kung-fu practice. Maybe that was part of her charm... or not? It was hard to tell.,

Nothing could be said on that point, but the gunwale was no wider than a simple handrail, and just standing on it at all was terrifying. Despite that, she was doing flips, and screaming high kicks.

Seriously? It was inhuman.

“Mew, that’s so cool...” Yume let out a sigh of admiration, and it wasn’t hard to understand why, but Haruhiro would really rather she not start aspiring to be like that.

Once they helped with the mooring and boarded the Mantis-go, that noisy sahuagin Ginzy met with Haruhiro and the party, acting like he was the captain.

He was too noisy to bear. Best to ignore him.

“Hey, hey, hey! I’m the captain of this ship, I’ll have you know!! What are you ignoring me for?! Hey, what for?! Damn it, I’ll sue! No, I’d love to sue, but where can I?! Who will hear my pleas?! Hey, hey, hey, hey?! Hey! I said, hey!”

“Whewwww. Shut your mouth, dummy!” Momohina attacked Ginzy as she came down from the gunwale, easily lifting him up and giving him a hearty toss.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!” His arms and legs flailing pathetically, Ginzy fell straight into the sea.

Sploosh! There was a great splash, and then he just sunk.

He floated back up a little later, making a fuss again. “What was that for, out of nowhere?! I know I’m a sahuagin, but this is too much! I’m not a sea sahuagin, I’m a land sahuagin, so the sea water’s too salty. I’m halfway to being a freshwater fish, even though I’m not a fish, okay?! I’m stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill the captain, though!”

They ignored him, and got on with the interrogation in the ship’s hold. She must not have had anything to do, because Momohina tagged along.

Once the crew cleared out, the party and Momohina bound Honey Den to a pillar in the hold, and started the interrogation by asking if he’d gone into the forest with Red-Eyed Ben and Step.

“I have no idea what you’re on about,” the man whined. “Oww, it hurts. My teeth hurt.”

Kuzaku cracked his knuckles, taking a threatening attitude. “This guy doesn’t seem to get the situation he’s in, does he?”

Honey Den just sneered a little.

Shihoru threw a What now? glance in Haruhiro’s direction. It was hard to decide.

The pirates were ruffians, so they might use physical pain to extract a confession, but Haruhiro would honestly prefer not to be so uncivilized. Kuzaku was only making the threat. Basically, they were just posturing.

Merry said calmly, “If you need to make him hurt a bit, so long as he’s still breathing, I can back you up.”

At those unsettling words, Honey Den’s expression changed just a little. “Heh. No matter what you do to me, I don’t know what I don’t know. I can’t tell you anything I have no clue about. Oww, my teeth hurt.”

“Hey, hey, Haru-kun,” Yume started to say. “This person, he says his teeth hurt, so why not try takin’ them out for him?”

“You say some scary things, Yume...”

“Isn’t that a bit weak?” Setora sniffed.

She was blatantly looking down on Honey Den. He might have been the type she hated. Well, Haruhiro kind of hated him, too. Really hated him, maybe.

“He can only act tough for now,” she said contemptuously. “Cut off a finger or two. If you do that, he’ll tell you anything, I guarantee it.”

“Don’t underestimate me, you bitch!” Honey Den screamed.

“If you want to live to see the dawn tomorrow, keep your slobber in your mouth, pirate.”

“I... I ain’t scared of nothing! I mean it!”

“Do you want to see if you can still say that once I pluck out your eyeball and shove your severed ear into the socket?”

“Wh-What’s with her?! I-Is she nuts?! No sane person comes up with things like that, right?!”

“I have reason to be used to cutting up dead bodies,” Setora said coolly. “If they are still alive, that is of little consequence. Perhaps I should use you to prove that right now.”

“I-I-I-I-If you think you c-can do it, b-bring it on, bitch! I-I-I-I can’t t-tell you what I d-d-d-don’t know!”

“Where should I start?” Setora pulled out a small blade and took a step toward Honey Den. She was perfectly expressionless, without a hint of hesitation in her voice or actions. “Why don’t I skin that hideous face of yours? They often say fresh air tastes good, and without your skin, maybe you’ll be able to taste it with your face. Want to try?”

“Y-Y-Y-Y-You can’t do that! I won’t taste anything! It’ll just hurt! It’ll hurt like hell just getting my face skinned, too!”

“It may hurt so badly that you want to bite your tongue and die, but that does not concern me in the least.”

“D-Don’t you have any human conscience?! There’s something wrong with you!”

“Think what you will; it has no influence on me.” Setora took another step towards Honey Den.

She couldn’t possibly mean to go through with it... or so Haruhiro hoped, but Setora might very well do it without batting an eye. That was how she made them feel.

Was that part of the act? Probably. Hopefully it was just an act.

Now, as for whether he felt sorry for Honey Den... no, not in the slightest, but Haruhiro didn’t want to think he had no choice but to let Setora get her hands dirty. He moved to stop Setora.

“Hold on, Sis!” Momohina cried.

He was beaten to it.

Momohina stepped up, still sweaty from kung-fu practice, so she just had her coat over her shoulders, not done up. She hadn’t been wearing it before, but at some point she’d put the fake mustache back on.

“Who are you calling Sis?” Setora asked, looking disappointed.

“Heh...” Momohina laughed. “You’re a sis, so I called you Sis, Sis.”

“I don’t understand...”

“Have no feeeear. I don’t understand it myself, either!”

“KMW, was it?” Setora asked coolly. “Will you torture this rotten, cavity riddled piece of trash instead of me?”

“Pirates have pirate-yyyyyyyyyy wayssssssss of doing thangs.”

“...Thangs?”

“Thoings? Hm? Did I get it wrong?”

“I don’t think either is correct...”

“Whuddever. Pirates have their own way of doing things. That’s right! Full speed ahead! On that note, Jimmy-chan, the thing, get the thing ready!”

Momohina seemed to be referring to some specific thing, but no matter how you looked at him, Jimmy seemed confused.

“What is the thing?” he asked.

“Fungh?!” Momohina’s eyes went wide, and she beckoned Jimmy over to whisper in his ear.

Jimmy nodded, left the hold, and came back shortly with it in his arms.

“Yes! Thiiiis is what a pirate should use!” Momohina lifted the bundle of large bird feathers she had received from Jimmy up high.

Jimmy had brought a pot, too. Momohina dipped the feather in that pot.

“I-Is that...?” Kuzaku began.

Momohina went, “Ta-daaaah!” and pulled the feather bundle from the pot. The feather bundle was glistening and wet.

“Oil?” Shihoru whispered.

“Bingo! We have a winnerrrrrrr!” Momohina clapped in a way that seemed dodgy as she slowly swayed the feather bundle around.

“Oil?” Merry tilted her head. “You’re going to burn him?”

“Eek!” Honey Den’s whole body went rigid.

Setora looked around the hold. “Will the ship be all right?”

Hold on, you two, your thinking is way too merciless.

Haruhiro cleared his throat. “If we burn him, won’t he kind of die?”

“Fwah!” Yume clapped her hands. “Yume thinks she’s got it! It’s ticklin’ time, isn’t it?!”

“Hahah!” Momohina’s face brimmed with a smile as she pointed the feather bundle towards Yume. “Ding, ding, ding, ding, diiiing! You got it! Fifty thousand points to Yumeyume!”

“Woo! Yume got it!”

Did these two have something in common, after all?

“Urgh?!” Honey Den’s eyes darted about. “T-T-Tickling?! H-H-H-Hold on, hey...”

Momohina went, “Mweeheehee,” a dirty smile on her face as she waved the feather bundle back and forth gently, approaching Honey Den.

“No, listen, I don’t mind pain, but this really isn’t my thing...”

“Gwahahah! Boyyyys! Strip hiiiim!”

If that was the KMW’s orders, so be it. Haruhiro and the party were underlings of the K&K Pirate Company.

Haruhiro had Kuzaku and Jimmy help disrobe a struggling Honey Den. Or rather, since it would be a real pain to untie him and then tie him up again, they cut off all of his clothes except for his underwear with knives.

He wasn’t exactly ripped, and he had thick body hair, so he was hard to look at. The girls, with the exception of Momohina, looked away in distaste, but Honey Den seemed not so much embarrassed as shy and pleased.

He was a deviant. They had themselves a sexual deviant here.

“Are we ready to go full speed aheeeaaad?!” the KMW cried.

Haruhiro, Kuzaku, and Jimmy just answered, “Sure.”

“You have no energyyyy! Full speed aheeeaaad?!”

While wondering what kind of ritual this was, Haruhiro desperately screamed, “Full speed ahead!”

Jimmy said, “Sure,” like before, and Kuzaku shouted, “Full speed ahead!” even louder than Haruhiro.

Now the company’s KMW was satisfied. “’Kay! That’ll do! Let’s get starteeeed. Prepare yourseeeelf!”

“No, stop, stop, stop, stop!” Honey Den howled.

“I will not stop! Meow!”

“Eagh?!”

“How do you like it heeeere?!”

“Hah?! Hahaha?!”

“Moooore!”

“Nwahahhoah?! Gyahahahahahahahahahoh?! S-S-S-Stop it, please?!”

“I. Will. Not. Stop. More, more! Goochie, goochie, goo!”

“Ngahhhhhhhhhhhh?! No, no, not theeeere, ahhhh?!”

“Here’s the spoooot! You like it heeere, huuuuh! Here, here, here, here, here.”

“Nnnghiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaahoahhhhhhhh?!”

This was reeeeaaaally... hard to watch.

But it was wildly effective.

Honey Den finally acknowledged he had been talked into going to the dragons’ nest by Red-Eyed Ben. They had wanted a younger hand along for labor, so they’d brought Step.

Relying on a map made a really long time ago by the famous adventurer Edgmer, they’d tried the route through the forest to the dragons’ nest. However, they’d been found by the runaruka. After a chase in which Step was shot and killed, Ben and Honey Den had barely managed to shake their runaruka pursuers somehow.

Honey Den had learned from that, and suggested they abandon the plan. But Ben had stubbornly refused to accept it, and threatened to kill Honey Den if he backed out.

“He was serious,” Honey Den told them. “He’s a liar, but when he says he’ll do something, he damn well does it, that bastard.”

They had been together in the Skull Pirate Gang, so Honey Den knew Red-Eyed Ben well. According to Honey Den, when Ben snapped, you never knew what he’d do. The reason he’d angered Dead Skull and gotten demoted was that he’d fought with one of his fellow pirates over something petty, then later ambushed and killed the man. He told tall tales, and came across as a petty thug, so people were prone to taking him lightly, but he was a capable man.

So Ben and Honey Den had stared at the map and chosen a route north along the coast for their second attempt.

It had gone well at first, with no encounters with runaruka, to the point that they were laughing, What was that first attempt? Step died for nothing!

However, at that point, they were almost at the dragons’ nest.

Even the famous adventurer Edgmer had never entered the dragon’s nest. Looking at their copy of the map, the dragon’s nest was blank. The real map held nothing but a cutesy dragon and dragon eggs drawn in.

Basically, what it was like and what creatures inhabited the place was a complete unknown.

An unexplored frontier.

One that was to be, to say the least, a far more terrifying place than Honey Den had ever imagined.