A Curse to Some (5)
The muzzle flashed, and a metal bullet tore free.
In the same instant, scarlet flesh burst and scattered like shrapnel.
Blood erupted like fireworks, splattering across the pristine white uniform and her cheek.
Thud. Maeve's body, having shot herself in the head with her own pistol, collapsed lifelessly to the floor.
Blood trickled from her masterless corpse, pooling into a small crimson puddle.
Her black eyes rolled to a stop at my feet, as if demanding that I accept a reality I couldn't begin to comprehend.
The woman who had begged me to kill her had blown her own head off first.
"...She's insane."
Muttering a curse at the most unhinged behavior I'd witnessed from any woman I'd met so far, I reached for her musket, thinking I might at least salvage her equipment—
And the eye lying on the floor rolled back toward its owner.
"...?!"
The moment the eye rolled home, every scrap of scattered flesh and every puddle of blood around the room began flowing back into Maeve's body.
Blood seeped back through the severed vessels, torn flesh and bone fragments clinging back together with gruesome persistence until her form was whole again.
It was a resurrection of an entirely different mechanism from mine, which only triggered upon death.
Maeve was... immortal.
So was that why she'd asked me to kill her, just like in the first playthrough?
But how would I know how?
If an immortal with Maeve's ability had appeared in the game, I'd have remembered her for certain—yet I didn't know her at all, let alone any way to sever her immortality.
Once Maeve's ruined face fully reclaimed its shape, she slowly rose and looked at me again, her expression blank as ever.
"See? I can't die by my own hand."
She wore a strange expression—eyes utterly lifeless, yet the corners of her mouth curled upward as if in some twisted gesture of friendliness.
"If you kill me, Dean, I'll do anything you want."
Stowing the musket in her hand at her waist, Maeve approached and thrust her face close to mine.
Cutting through the soft, faintly blooming scent of her flesh came a sickening stench of blood.
That same horrific odor I'd smelled each time death came for me was wafting off every inch of Maeve's body.
"...Urk."
"Oh dear."
A hallucination washed over me, as if the entire landscape was draining into darkness, and bile surged up my throat.
I collapsed to the floor, convulsing, and hung my head as I vomited up pale white bile.
"You... what the hell are you?"
"I'm Maeve."
She crouched down naturally and patted my back, giving her flat, emotionless reply.
To Maeve, that revolting smell of blood wasn't a real odor at all.
It was a kind of pull that death itself carried—a scent only perceivable by special beings like me, who had died over and over again.
"Does my smell really hit that hard? I just washed up."
Once my nausea had somewhat settled, Maeve sniffed at her own clothes.
Judging by the look on her face—nothing wrong detected whatsoever—this scent of blood was something only I could sense.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to do that on our first meeting."
Despite her emotionless tone and manner, Maeve's personality was surprisingly kind.
She rose first and extended her hand to me, and I reached up to take it—then flinched away from the smell and stood up on my own instead.
"......"
Left awkwardly hanging in midair, the hand she'd offered out of consideration retreated sheepishly into her pocket.
"You asked me to kill you... didn't you?"
I forced the words out, my throat burning from the bile.
"Yeah. As you can see, I can't die even when I want to."
"...I'm sorry. I can't do it."
"I see."
As though she'd expected the refusal all along, Maeve met my eyes without so much as a flicker.
The abyss dwelling in her pupils held a darkness not so different from my own.
"Then die for me."
In that instant, Maeve drew the musket stowed at her waist, aimed dead center at my forehead, and pulled the trigger.
"Guh...!"
With a hollow click, I screwed my eyes shut against the familiar wave of despair. Of course. Of course it would come to this.
"...?"
But there was no flash of fire, no searing pain of my skull leaving my shoulders.
Peeking my eyes open, all I saw was the round muzzle and a pale white index finger resting on the trigger.
"...I forgot to reload."
Maeve uttered this chilling statement with a perfectly blank face, then calmly worked her hands and began reloading the musket.
She could just as easily stab me with the blade on its end, yet here she was, theatrically reloading in no particular hurry—so I shoved Maeve's shoulder and knocked her over.
"Ow."
"You lunatic...! What is wrong with you?!"
When I shouted at her—not a single crease of pain on her face even mid-fall—her lips finally parted.
"I figured you might kill me if I did this."
The reason Maeve had so blatantly provoked me was simple.
She'd begged for death and been refused, so she'd staged this reckless stunt to manufacture a pretext for being murdered.
I'd let my guard down, believing that Maeve—seemingly someone like me—wouldn't kill me.
"...Give me the gun."
"Okay."
A wave of betrayal crashed over me—so in the end, she was no different from any of the other women—and I wrenched the musket from Maeve's grasp, gripping it tight.
"If you're going to do it, kill me in one strike. I don't want to see my life flashing before my eyes."
She closed her eyes slowly, like someone settling in to sleep, and I leveled the blade at her.
My hands trembled at the sensation of killing a person for the very first time; I fought to steady them and drew a breath.
And then I drove the blade mounted on the musket deep into Maeve's throat.
Her snow-white skin flushed crimson in an instant, blood gushing up around the buried blade as I twisted it.
Curse of Immortality
— Cannot be killed by anyone of a lower level than oneself.
— Directly committing suicide is unlocked after reaching Level 666.
The moment the light drained completely from Maeve's eyes, a perk window—presumably hers—unfolded before me.
...The Curse of Immortality?
She could never die at the hands of anyone below her level, and suicide only became possible upon reaching Level 666.
"......"
Now I understood, perfectly, why I hadn't remembered Maeve from the first playthrough.
Back then, at Level 999, I had been able to casually override her immortality and kill her.
I hollowly pulled the blade from her throat. The bleeding stopped at once, and the wound sealed itself without leaving so much as a scar.
"So it failed."
"...Sorry. Here's your musket back."
"Why couldn't you kill me?"
Maeve accepted her musket back with unsettling familiarity and asked me for the reason.
...Should I tell her the truth of the curse laid upon her?
Even though everyone in this world could open their status windows, it seemed I was the only one capable of viewing these special perks.
"I don't know how to kill you."
After a moment's deliberation over what choice to make, I lied through my teeth, playing the clueless stranger.
Knowing that information was directly tied to my own survival—I absolutely could not let it slip.
"...You're lying."
I'd acted as convincingly as I could to keep the lie buried, but Maeve's hollow, empty eyes saw straight through me with ease.
"You know how to kill me."
"......"
"...Tell me right now. If you don't want to die."
The cracks began to spread across Maeve's expressionless face as she seized me by the collar and pressed the musket's blade to my throat.
But she didn't push any harder, didn't try to actually cut me.
To her—someone who had no idea whatsoever that I could resurrect—killing the one person who might grant her death was not a decision she could make lightly.
"...Please. Tell me what you know. I'll give you anything you want."
When I offered no answer and simply held her gaze, I could see Maeve's emotions growing frantic.
The eyes that had held no trace of life now glimmered brightly, as if her true nature was finally bleeding through, and expression blossomed across that blank face.
"......"
But I had absolutely no intention of revealing the truth.
The moment she learned the conditions, she would kill me without hesitation—and besides, handled carefully, I could bring Maeve under my thumb.
Under normal circumstances, I'd never have dreamed of exploiting a person's weakness, let alone in such a vicious way. But not anymore.
A villain must conduct himself in a villain's fashion.
And so I reached out and took hold of the musket Maeve had pressed against my neck.
"...You want to know?"
When I laid the blade against my own throat, a dull ache bloomed and blood began to trickle down.
"But if you kill me right now, you'll never find out. Ever."
"That's... you'll run away...!"
The moment Maeve realized her own mistake, she hastily pulled the musket away—and with it came the conviction that controlling her would be easier than I'd thought.
I lifted the corner of my mouth into a smile, brushing her cheek as she stood there flustered.
I saw a tremor ripple through her eyes the instant our gazes locked.
"Help me. And someday, I'll tell you how you can die."
Manipulating a human being backed to the edge of a cliff required nothing more than a little sweet talk.
With Maeve at my side, I could absolutely challenge the Labyrinth of Rifts again—the maze I'd failed to clear on my own.
At the thought of reclaiming Fer-de's Fang, color began flooding back into a world that had gone gray.
Since severing her hated immortality was Maeve's whole purpose, I could simply use her for all she was worth, and when she'd outlived her usefulness, tell her the conditions for breaking the curse then.
"Well? What do you say?"
Giving her no time to think, I drove the wedge in deeper and pressed her toward a decision.
It was an utterly unjust contract—but in the end, only one choice remained open to her.
"...Fine. I accept your offer. But if you ever betray me, I won't let it slide. Ever."
Her cursed ability was, to me, nothing short of a meat shield of absolute utility.
A power that was a curse to some, and a blessing to others.
"I'm a man of my word, so don't worry."
And so I succeeded in recruiting Maeve—an enormous wildcard—as my chess piece.