Even If I Have to Kill
Scritch, scratch, scritch, scratch...
Since coming here, one thing had become absolutely clear.
Never, under any circumstances, scrape your own arm against the floor to strip away your own flesh and bone in front of another person.
"*Ugh...* *Heave...*"
Meria had her ears plugged tight, her neck craned out of the iron bars to keep watch for anyone approaching, all while desperately holding back her vomit.
"I told you not to look in the first place."
"I can't hear you! I can't hear a thing!"
This was already the third day of this shit.
She had to keep watch, and since it was bound to be incredibly gruesome, she'd initially insisted on not turning her eyes away from my suffering. But after watching for a brief moment on the first day, she had reacted like this every single time she heard that scraping sound.
With my limbs covered in deep cuts and my body in a constant state of ruin, Meria had offered to help at first out of sheer concern. But looking at her now, it was much better for me—even with my crippled limbs—to just do it myself.
It wasn't exactly a pleasant task for me either, but having helped out at the cathedral, assisting with the funerals of villagers and nearby adventurers, I had seen plenty of corpses. I didn't have much of a stomach against them.
Decapitated adventurers, thirty-somethings whose organs had been completely hollowed out, leaving them lighter than a hundred-and-forty-year-old elder, and drowned adventurers reeking of rot... I'd seen it all.
Still, those were just corpses lying still. I hadn't actually sprinkled holy water on them or wrapped them up myself; my job had been limited to basic chores. I had never even touched a dead body, so scraping the flesh off my own severed arm against the stone floor was on a completely different level of difficulty.
"I never worked this hard even when sharpening my sword..."
It wasn't that I used to slack off, but I certainly never did it with the feeling of sacrificing my very soul and body.
These bastards had locked us up, but they never bothered to search the cell. They were incredibly sloppy.
Maybe because they usually just kidnapped people, operated on them, and killed them, their victims never had the time to escape, so the thought of searching the cell occasionally never even crossed their minds.
The facility itself seemed quite old. A couple of bricks came loose easily, making it simple to stuff finger bones and torn chunks of flesh into the gaps.
In a few days, the stench of rot would fill the air, but I didn't give a damn about the smell. We would be out of here before then. No matter what.
"Hey."
"*Kyaaaah!*"
"Ah, sorry. I just poked you with my finger to tell you I'm done."
Meria spun around in a panic to look at me, probably thinking I had poked her with my bloody, severed stump.
"This should be sharp enough."
Those cultists didn't seem to carry any real weapons. Even if they did, they would only be for self-defense, and they were ultimately just fanatics. I could easily bridge the physical gap between a man and a woman.
Of course, they didn't teach us how to murder people at the Academy, but what I had learned from sparring with other students would be more than enough.
Man and woman. Cultist and swordsman. Immortal and mortal.
Can I really kill someone? The thought crossed my mind.
But right now, I had the determination to escape this place at all costs, the desire for revenge against the bastards who had inflicted near-fatal agony upon me, and the goal of keeping Meria alive.
Even if I didn't want to, even if I couldn't, I had to do it.
"Hey, time to come out."
Act as normal as possible.
*Clank.*
Wear the same annoyed, miserable expression as always.
*Creeeeak...*
Look as numb and accustomed to it as always.
"...My arm still hurts from regenerating."
Make the same trivial complaints as always.
"As if a monster who grows limbs back has any right to complain."
Perform the same meaningless actions as always.
"Hurry up and foll—*gark, ack!*"
Just like always, just like always, just like always, just like always, just like always, just like always.
Thrust!
Feeling my heart hammer frantically against my ribs, I forced the sharpened bone deep into his throat.
Maybe because I was so used to my own blood, the sudden gush of warm, slick blood almost made my grip slip, but I clenched my fist and held on with everything I had.
"*Gggh, s-scre...*"
Because I used my other hand to muffle the mouth trying to scream, the strength in the hand driving the bone into his neck faltered slightly.
Realizing a proper scream wouldn't come out anyway, the cultist gave up and reached back to claw at me, but he had no leverage to exert any real force.
"*Ugh, n-ngh...!*"
Instead, his fingers groped blindly, trying to gouge out my eyes.
Given my body's condition, my eyes would probably grow back eventually, but getting blinded right now would be fatal to our escape.
If I lost my sight while trying to get out, we would never escape. And God knows what they would do to Meria as punishment for our rebellion.
It was a race of what would give first—my eyes, or this bastard's throat...!
Squclch!
At that exact moment, the strength drained from his hands and neck all at once, allowing the half-embedded bone to plunge deep into the core of his throat.
It looked like Meria had managed to help me somehow.
Feeling his body go completely limp, I ripped the bone out and carefully lowered him to the floor.
Then, to make absolutely sure he was dead, I stomped hard on his clearly punctured throat.
*Crunch!*
"A-Are you okay? I didn't have much strength, so I... I kicked him in the crotch."
Meria looked up at me with a frantic, pale face.
There wasn't even time to thank her.
"The body... what do we do with the body?"
Now that I had actually killed him, I realized I hadn't thought about how to handle the corpse.
Should we hide it? Or just leave it and run?
"Let's just leave it. The only place to hide it is inside the cell anyway, and there's barely any difference between leaving it here or in there."
My racing heart finally began to settle, but then my hands started to tremble.
"This is bad. My grip strength... it's not like it used to be."
"Isn't it just because you haven't eaten properly in so long?"
"No. I've felt my strength fading little by little ever since the experiments started. I didn't have a way to test it, so I tried to brush it off as my imagination, but it's definitely not the same."
The shaking right now was from the adrenaline and sheer tension, but it was also a fact that my physical strength had deteriorated.
Still, as long as it was enough to kill a man, that was all that mattered.
"Let's clean this up first, just in case."
I wiped the blood off the bone and my arm using the corpse's clothes, then hid the bone in my pocket.
It wasn't like they had custom-made clothes for us; they must have scavenged them from somewhere, so I was glad my pants actually had pockets deep enough to conceal the bone.
By the way... even if the victim was a murderous cultist, how did Meria feel about taking a life?
"Just so we're clear, I'm the one who killed him. You had no choice."
"I'm terrified and my hands are shaking too, so please don't remind me. Just focus on escaping."
"Sorry."
Indeed. I felt bad for Meria, but even if guilt consumed us, we had no other option.
It was either living with guilt on the outside, or living in terror on the inside for the rest of our lives.
"It's a relief there are only three keys. What kind of idiots lock people up without even carrying weapons for self-defense?"
One ring for the cells, and another ring with different keys. These had to be for the facility doors.
Taking Meria by the hand, I carefully pushed the door open.
The cultists could be in this underground facility, in their own quarters, in the laboratory, or up in the cathedral.
But since they brought us here for experiments, there had to be at least two more of them around.
I still didn't know if this underground facility was directly beneath the cathedral or hidden away in some remote mountain.
Well, it was definitely underground, at least.
"Part of me thinks we should kill every single one of them who knows our faces before we leave, but..."
Escaping was obviously our top priority, but what about after we got out?
I would probably be fine, but what about Meria?
What if she had the misfortune of running into them again, and they targeted her for revenge or to silence her?
She wasn't the type to just stay cooped up in her village; she loved to travel.
"It's fine. Let's just get out of here first. Your problem, Sis, is that all your worries show right on your face."
"Sorry. Let's move fast."
The short hallway had four doors and a single passageway.
One was the research lab, one was the operating room, and the other two were unknown.
When I was being dragged back to the cell after an experiment, I had seen one of the cultists bid the others goodnight and head down that passageway.
"*Whew...* Let's go."
"What's taking you so long?"
"!"
Just as I took a deep breath and reached for the handle, the door swung open from the other side. We had lingered too long.
No, actually, this was better. If we had stepped out even a moment sooner, we would have run into him in the middle of the hallway, which would have been far harder to handle.
Thrust!
Before I could even formulate a plan, I drove the bone straight toward his heart.
He was the gentlest-looking one of the bunch. Shorter than the other men, and consequently, the weakest-looking.
"*Gah-ack!!*"
He stared up at me, utterly paralyzed by terror, trembling violently without even trying to resist. His face was a mask of pure dread.
I bet he had a grand old time when he was gleefully slicing off my limbs and scarring my body during those experiments.
He grabbed my arm, trying to hold me back—whether to beg for his life or as a desperate struggle—but even that touch made me sick to my stomach.
"Don't cling to life so disgustingly. Just die."
I shoved the bone in once more, and the strength drained from his hands.
Determined not to make another mistake by hesitating like last time, I grabbed Meria's wrist. Recalling the layout of the facility in my head, I sprinted like mad down the hallway toward the door I suspected was the exit.
Praying to whatever gods were listening that no one else would appear, we reached the door at the end of the passage.
To think we had been trapped for days when the exit was this close.
Please, please, please, please...
*Creeeeak...*
"*Sob... hic... ugh...* *Waaaaah!*"
The moment we stepped outside and saw a village nearby with people walking around, Meria burst into loud, unrestrained tears of relief.
I, too, had been certain that I would die a gruesome death in that dark, hidden basement, with no one ever knowing.
But I couldn't let my guard down just yet. The thought that we might still run into one of them kept my heart hammering, and my grip on the bone remained white-knuckled.
From their perspective, they would probably be terrified of their crimes being exposed and would pray never to cross paths with us again, but still...
Looking around, it seemed this exit had been disguised as a storage shed for the cathedral.
Our escape had been surprisingly easy. But then again, we were just two girls with no special abilities or belongings, there were no other test subjects, and the cell contained nothing but a bed.
They probably never dreamed we could fashion a weapon like this, which was why their surveillance and security had been so incredibly lax.
"*Sigh...*"
I was just glad they were such incompetent fools.
Then again, calling it "easy" after literally murdering two people felt a bit absurd.
Anyway, we had no idea where those bastards might be roaming in this village, so we needed to get the hell out of here immediately... but how the hell were we going to make any money?