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"Ugh..!"
....
"W-Wait a second.. you're too fast.."
....
"Agh.. come on!!"
After that, there was no conversation to speak of.
No matter how much he hollered on his own, with no answer ever coming back, it couldn't be called a conversation.
Nothing came out of my mouth. I simply swung my arm in silence—and with every swing, mounds of flesh came pouring down.
I didn't even care where I cut, because the place I stood was inside his body. Which meant everything within reach was fair game. Above, below, left, right—every corner of this space.
"W-Wait, st-op─"
....
His reactions had begun to sharpen, unmistakably, compared to a moment ago. The vivid pain that struck without warning seemed at last to be showing itself on his face.
"Hurler et Désoler."
— "Scream and Suffer." —
Dragon Speech, recited on pure instinct.
It offered no benefit to me whatsoever. It simply made his agony easier to feel.
For a creature who wouldn't let out so much as a whimper while being torn apart, it was a perfectly suited debuff—and a reliably effective one, at that. His voice carried something it hadn't before: pain, and hurt.
"W-Wait, Senior.. what did you do─"
....
Ignoring his voice ringing in my ears yet again, I accelerated.
I drove my blade deep into the wall of flesh and ran straight through it, and from the faceless, mouthless mass a warped scream burst out—while from the floor beneath my feet, countless tentacles came surging up. Each one lunging in a different direction, each flaunting its own mass.
Anyone else would have at least screamed at a sight like that. I didn't so much as flutter an eye. I calmly reached out a hand, anywhere at all, and poured mana into it.
Deep, deep down.
Every inch of this place was his body. Magic cast anywhere would land on him all the same.
Of course, against a slime no attack could touch, magic wouldn't work either—and he knew it, which was why he wasn't particularly trying to stop me.
But the magic I wielded wasn't meant for attacking.
"..Huh?"
....
"A-AAagh.. kehek.. kek!"
Right in front of where my hand rested, stone pillars sharp as awls erupted upward—the kind you'd sooner expect to find in ancient ruins.
However massive a tentacle might be, it had its limits. Nothing shoves aside a boulder harder and heavier than itself.
"Ke.. kehek. You think I can't do nothin' about a lousy rock?"
....
Figured not. One way or another, you were never human to begin with.
Still coughing at intervals like he'd come down with a cold, the guy gave his chin a little bob—and the pillar that had stood there so proudly a moment before sank into the ground in an instant.
Not because the space beneath it had emptied out.
Because it had melted on the spot.
"..I may look like this now, but I was a slime to begin with, y'hear? A few lousy rocks—bring as many as you like, I'll melt every last one in a heartbeat!"
....
The tentacle masses came charging again—more numerous than before, the red tendrils swollen bigger and heavier still.
Weaving through the swarming blobs, I scraped away at my surroundings once more.
Scrape, cleave, tear. Pluck, crush, trample. Pierce, mince, pound to paste.
With every gouge of my dagger into his flesh, his face warped a little further—visible now even to my eyes—but I wasn't in much better shape myself.
Even Dragon Speech had its limits, and I was forcing a body that had never been whole to keep moving.
A needle-like pricking had begun to spread through my arms. My legs were holding on by a thread. And the drain on my mind was no joke either.
Let my focus waver for a single instant, and the tentacles came grazing past my skin.
Shreds of torn flesh snagged at my feet and nearly took me down more than once or twice, and evading the tentacles that erupted all around with barely a moment's warning—one reaction at a time—demanded concentration far beyond anything I had imagined.
But I clenched my teeth and endured.
And when that failed, I endured out of sheer stubbornness.
It wasn't as if I'd never been through this before. There had been missions, without question, that my strength alone could never have accomplished.
But every time, I found a way. If success was off the table, then at least a way to stay alive.
I sent the lunging tentacles veering past by a hair's breadth, slipped around the ones surging from below, and kept raising structures one after another.
"Kr.. kek..! Agh, seriously, enough─"
....
Perhaps he'd flared up over the pain, because attacks came flying at me, unmistakably faster than before. I didn't stop.
That kind of reaction did nothing but spur me on faster.
Tear, cleave again, dodge the strikes, build something new.
Ten minutes into that rhythm, sighs were already bursting from his voice—he sounded worn through at a glance.
"Ha.. haa, c'mon.. ain't it 'bout time you dropped? It hurts like.. hell─"
....
Another twenty minutes passed.
Fear was beginning to seep into his voice.
"Fuck.. stop.. stop it!! Just drop dead..!! You son of a bitch!!"
....
At last, when what felt like an hour had gone by, the voice fell silent.
Both of us had shut our mouths.
One of us couldn't properly close his through the unending pain—and the other was busy wiping away the sweat pouring down like a flood, trimming every possible loss of energy.
Time passed again.
The second hand met the minute hand, over and over, and parted again.
I could no longer feel how many hours had slipped by. At some point the ground beneath me was carpeted with mounds of flesh, and every step rang with the pop of something bursting; everywhere I wandered, the reek of blood hung thick at the tip of my nose.
My hands shook violently, and my legs felt as though they'd been loaded down with weights.
My skull felt like it was spinning round and round at sickening speed, as if I were strapped inside a centrifuge, and I must have burned through far too much focus—tears of blood were beading faintly at the corners of my eyes.
One light shove would have put me down. A body that might have lost to a seven-year-old child.
By then, I was certain I couldn't have resisted even the tiniest tentacle. But it never came to that.
No—it couldn't.
The head of the thing before me hung limp and swaying, out cold.
Consciousness lost to the endless pain. It was a truly ugly, pitiful sight.
I walked, slowly.
Toward the thing whose head dangled from nothing at all.
Blood squelched under every step and shreds of flesh snagged at my feet, but I ignored them and kept walking.
I ignored the blood-scent caked thick into my nostrils, and ignored the red tentacles still twitching feebly here and there.
Halfway there, my leg clunked to a dead stop—but invoking Dragon Speech once more got me moving somehow, and when I finally stood before him, the face of the unconscious thing looked utterly at peace.
A newborn infant.
A little child giddy over the taste of candy.
The kindly smile of an old man grown old and content.
A smile only those who truly know happiness can wear hung on his mouth.
Unlike my own, pressed tightly shut—a smile so beautiful it was enviable.
"..I envy you, you know that."
I tossed the blade—dulled past use, dripping blood—into a corner and conjured a fresh one.
And then, just like that, I split both corners of his mouth.
"A-AAAGH!!"
....
His mouth tore open in one long pull, tracing the arc of a crescent.
A smile preserved for eternity settled onto his lips, and from that same mouth poured a scream that was its perfect opposite.
By the time his eyelids flew open, it was already too late.
I had known where his core was for a long while.
Just as predicted, the moment his eyes opened they found my hand—and that mouth of his, split long and gaping wide, fell open.
"H-How?!"
"I'm no fool. You'd paraded around that much—anyone would have caught on."
....
An amethyst-colored stone, radiating an aura so ominous and unsettling it prickled the skin.
The core that served as this creature's heart. It sat in my hand.
The moment I squeezed, a few crumbs flaked off with a dry crackle—and the reaction of the thing watching me do it was more violent than I'd anticipated.
"W-Wait, Senior! I done wrong, I reckon I done thought wrong!!"
....
"I-I'll never eat a human again! I won't so much as go near one!!"
....
"So.. please.. spare me just this once─"
It shot upward—his head flew toward the sky.
Flipped. In his eyes, the world must have turned upside down, because I had kicked that dangling, neckless head with every last ounce of strength I had.
I kicked it so hard the flying head went bouncing off the mounds of flesh, and screams spilled from his mouth of their own accord.
I seized the head—smeared with the blood pooled across the floor, still keening in pain—and lifted it until our eyes met.
"Again."
"Khu.. kuhk.. y-yes! I'll do it over, I swear!! Th-that's why.. I done.. wrong!!"
....
"From now on I won't lay a hand on any living thing, humans or otherwise..!!"
....
"I won't even cross your sight again, Senior.. gehek."
My blade slid into his mouth and punched clean out the other side.
His eyes went wide, fixed on me—and the word out of my mouth was already decided.
"Again."
"J-Just.. lem-me ca-tch a bre-ath─"
"Again."
"KEAAAAGH!!!"
I took hold of the blade jutting from the far side and wrenched it free, and his reaction was a sight to behold.
It sounded much like a chicken getting its neck wrung.
I hauled him up again, matched his gaze, and repeated myself, kindly.
"Again."
"..Fuck."
....
"Fuck, was it really all that wrong? You bastards do whatever the hell you want too.. AAAGH!!"
"Again."
"I won't! I said I won't, you fucking bastard!! You all live exactly how you please, but the second I try to do somethin', why d'you start raisin' hell at me?!"
....
"You lot stuff your faces with the good stuff every damn day. You palm the hard work off on somebody else. You do whatever you please, wherever you please!!"
....
"So why the hell can't I do the same?! I'm so jealous of it I could go mad.. keheuk!!"
"You seem to have something confused."
I split his mouth a little wider still—until the tip of my blade touched both cheekbones.
And I didn't stop there. I went for his eye. Gouging, digging, twisting.
"What I want to hear from you isn't your reason for doing any of this."
"KUHAAAAA!!!"
"Whether you envied humans or whatever else—that's none of my concern. It's not as if the dead are coming back."
"Ahh.. fu..ck.. AAAGH!!!"
"Didn't I tell you from the very start?"
"Kk.. huuuh.."
"The only thing you need to give me is one thing. The name of that woman from before. That elf."
The one eye he had left widened, and widened, then flooded over with fear.
As if he'd finally grasped the position he was in.
"Don't worry. We have plenty of time."
"S-Senior, I remember now! I remember that woman's na.. AAAGH!!"
"If you want to live even a little longer, lying is one way to go about it."
Though I'd see through it soon enough.
I finished the sentence mid-slice through his nose, and his eyes rolled straight back.
Broken by terror, he fainted dead away. I made no particular effort to wake him.
"..KYAAAAAGH!!!"
....
He'd come around on his own soon enough anyway.
After that, time passed once more.
The second hand, the minute hand—and then the hour hand began to move.
The only difference from before was that our mouths kept moving this time, each of us producing a voice that contradicted the other's.
Fear, and composure.
When I finally returned to the Great Forest, seven hours and twenty-three minutes had passed since I vanished.
And in one hand, I carried an orange-furred mass, its shape barely identifiable at all.