Pact
Pact
The interrogation room on the 4th basement floor of the Holy Order.
The room, covered on all sides by Blue Magic Stones that blocked mana, felt heavy, as if even the sound of breathing was suppressed.
Mana restraints were locked onto my wrists. But even without them, I had no intention of resisting.
No, I didn't even have the will left to do so.
Freya-nuna was sitting across the table.
The image of her screaming in the inn lobby three days ago was nowhere to be found.
Instead, wearing the mask of the cold-hearted Vice-Captain of the Imperial Holy Knights, she was simply staring at me with bloodshot eyes.
"......Rion. As an investigator, I will ask you. Is everything written in this statement true?"
Freya's voice was trembling.
In front of her lay the mental evaluation results of Serin, Elina, and Miu, along with a report on the horrific scene that had unfolded at the inn at that time.
I nodded indifferently.
"Yes. It is the truth, without a single word changed."
At my answer, Freya slammed her hand onto the table with a loud bang.
"Then I'll ask you! You are one of the high-level mages. Seven days. What on earth did you do during that long time? If Serin and the others had lost their reason due to that curse, you could have suppressed them with magic, kept them in a sleep state, or restrained them!"
Nuna's shout echoed through the empty interrogation room. Resentment was etched into her eyes.
A reproach asking why I couldn't protect them, why I stood by and watched that disgraceful behavior as their leader.
I looked up at the ceiling for a moment. When I closed my eyes, the memories of those seven hellish days surfaced vividly.
Was it because I was incompetent? Or because I enjoyed their degradation?
"I couldn't suppress them."
"What? Even just counting by mana volume, it wouldn't have been any trouble for you to put those kids to sleep!"
I gave a self-deprecating smile. And I recalled the day, a very long time ago, when we first formed the party, Dawn's Light.
"Nuna. Do you remember the oath we swore before the Goddess when we formed the party?"
Freya's brow furrowed.
"Are you talking about the party's blessing? The one where mana recovery speed increases and growth accelerates when together..."
"Yes. But to maximize that blessing, a 'Treaty of Oath' is required. The strength of the blessing increases in proportion to the weight of that treaty—how much we are willing to sacrifice for one another."
I lifted my hands, bound by the restraints, and drew a mana sigil in the air.
Although no mana came out, the words of that terrible treaty, embedded in my memory, flashed through my mind.
"Elina was a slave. She felt extreme terror at the thought of someone forcibly controlling her or breaking her will. What about Miu? Discriminated against for being a beastkin, she couldn't sleep every night for fear that humans would oppress her like a beast. Even Serin was a child who felt suffocated by her family's strict rules."
My voice was low and monotonous.
"I had to put those children at ease. Because I am the leader."
I stopped talking and looked straight at Freya.
"So I wrote it myself. Treaty Article 1, Section 4. [Rion cannot exercise magic or physical restraint that suppresses the party members' will without their explicit consent under any circumstances. If this is violated, Rion's mana circuits will be immediately destroyed, and the party will be automatically disbanded.]"
Freya's complexion turned pale.
"......What is that. You made a treaty like that, which is basically suicide?"
"Yes. That was the only way they would trust me and smile. Serin also agreed to that treaty to put her companions at ease."
My monologue continued quietly.
At the time, that treaty was a beautiful token of trust.
It was the magic that allowed Elina to sleep peacefully by my side, and the promise that made Miu wag her tail and embrace me.
It was my oath as a noble leader that I would treat them as equal human beings.
However, the moment the Curse of Favorability Reversal was triggered in the ruins, that oath returned as the cruelest curse in the world.
On the first day after escaping the Antika Ruins, when Serin first took Goro's hand, I tried to stop her.
But the moment I tried to cast magic, the treaty sigil engraved near my heart burned red and forcibly twisted my mana.
[Respect the will of the party members.]
Serin's will was 'I want to have sex with Goro.' Although it was a will twisted by the curse, the treaty judged it to be her true heart.
Every time I tried to put her to sleep, the treaty defined me as a traitor and tightened its grip on my throat.
"For a week...... even while watching them being violated, I couldn't use even a single strand of magic on them. Because that was their will. According to the treaty, I became an observer who had to respect their choices and stand by."
I leaned over the table.
"When Elina was screaming under Jack, if I had tried to forcibly put her to sleep, I would have died right there from mana backflow. When Miu was wagging her tail at Old Man Hoji, if I had tried to drag her out, my limbs would have been twisted by the treaty."
Freya couldn't continue. The pen in her hand fell to the floor.
"Then...... what about those men? Goro or Jack, why didn't you kill those pieces of trash? You could have just cut them down before they touched the kids!"
I closed my eyes. The memories of that inn room came flooding back.
Serin, thrusting her hips under Goro, spat at me and screamed.
Elina bit Jack's cock, rolling her eyes back and sneering.
Miu growled while licking Old Man Hoji's feet.
"I couldn't kill them. No, I shouldn't have."
"Why!"
"The treaty also included a prohibition against harming the 'precious beings' of the party members. Since they wanted to protect those men and were in a state of desperately desiring their pleasure, if I had killed them...... the treaty would have been triggered."
I lightly shook the mana restraints.
"Freya-nuna. You think I didn't protect them, don't you?"
Freya buried her face in both hands. Only her suppressed sobbing lingered in the interrogation room.
"No. I kept the treaty to the very end. I respected their will and left them to do as they pleased. The result is...... just the tragedy you saw."
"......Then, what about the curse? When the week passed and the curse was lifted at the inn, why didn't you forgive or comfort them then? Even knowing it was a curse, why did you cast the kids aside so cruelly? They were clearly victims..."
I was silent for a moment at Freya's question.
The smell of blood. The smell of semen. And the screams they let out after the curse was lifted.
"Just because the curse was lifted, does that mean what already happened disappears?"
I asked dryly.
"The semen that pooled in their wombs, the eyes that mocked me as incompetent, the voices that spat on my face while praising Jack's thing...... I'm asking if that can be washed away with just a single word that the curse was lifted."
I tapped around my chest.
Silence hung in the interrogation room. Freya-nuna's tears fell, plop, onto the incident report.
"Rion...... you......"
"Freya, I did my best to keep the treaty."
I looked down at my bound hands.
"So...... at the moment that treaty was lifted, you......"
Freya couldn't continue her sentence with her trembling voice. I didn't avoid her gaze and calmly continued.
"Yes. The moment I finished signing the party dissolution form, the shackles that had bound me disappeared. The treaty of oath, which I had poured 10 years of my life into, evaporated without a trace with just a few drops of ink."
I leaned deeply into the backrest.
"Do you know what gave me the most goosebumps?"
"......What is it?"
"Hearing Goro's screams, watching Jack's eyes roll back...... that I felt alive."
Freya's complexion turned pale.
"I had trapped myself in the shackles of morality and ethics. I believed that if they smiled, I was happy too. But that was a delusion. It was gaslighting. It was a curse I had cast upon myself."
I lifted my hands, bound by the restraints, and touched them.
"When I tortured those pieces of trash, I felt a sense of liberation for the first time. When the magic I used to help others was used to thoroughly destroy someone, its efficiency was several times higher. How paradoxical is it? That I, who was called a good person, actually possessed a talent most optimized for destruction."
I stared straight into Freya's bloodshot eyes.
"The reason I am self-deprecating is not because I took revenge on those guys. It's because of my own shallowness in so easily throwing myself away because of such trash. And...... because of the fact that the pleasure that shallowness gives is so sweet."
Freya could no longer ask any more questions.
The Curse of Favorability Reversal had been lifted, but it felt as if another curse had been engraved upon Rion.