One Week Later
One week later. One week later.
In the cold underground torture chamber, only the hoarse screams from parched throats echoed.
"Kuaaaaak!!!!"
"Kill me! Just kill me already, you crazy bastard!!!"
It was still too early. Scum like these needed to taste at least one ten-thousandth of the pain they had inflicted on their victims before they died. Which meant... there was still a long way to go.
The young man and woman who had picked a fight with me were the captain and vice-captain of Gawain's personal unit. As for Gawain himself... at first we couldn't find any trace of him, but his corpse was eventually discovered twenty kilometers from the blast site. Because of that, the death toll from the explosion rose to three. The elderly butler who had served House Halstead, the aforementioned Gawain, and Count Halstead, the Crown Prince's loyal retainer.
I hadn't known him well. We'd only spoken face-to-face once, and even that meeting had lasted less than twenty minutes. If I were to mourn him or shed tears, it would be nothing but crocodile tears. At the very least, I wasn't vile enough to insult a man like that with fake grief and crocodile tears.
"Bring me some heated iron tongs."
"Lord Werner... heated branding irons are one thing, but why tongs..."
"Tongs are convenient for gripping things... but they're also good for prying things apart. Especially when they're red-hot."
I didn't know much about what kind of person Count Halstead had been. But I did know he was a good lord—so good that when he triggered a self-destruction spell that turned a one-kilometer radius into dust, he still warned the nearby residents to evacuate, and they actually listened to his sudden order. That alone was reason enough to torture these pieces of trash.
"Lord Werner, I've brought the heated iron tongs!"
Even the veteran torturer looked visibly tense.
"See this? We've already shaved off all their body hair, cut off their fingers and toes, hammered nails into their bodies, applied lacquer, kept them awake, ruptured one eardrum with an awl, and pulled out their teeth. Stop whining and watch carefully."
I tapped the floor with the glowing-red tips of the tongs so they could see.
"You see this? What do you think I'm going to do with it? Just so we're clear, I have no hobby of cooking trash like you."
"Then what exactly..."
"Expansion work. I'm going to expand every single hole that exists in your bodies."
The moment I said that, their faces went pale. It was admittedly one of the more vicious methods among the tortures I knew.
"If you hate it that much, I'll spare one of you. I'll only work over the biggest piece of trash among you."
At that, the two of them immediately began throwing each other under the bus. One had dissected a seven-year-old child because he wanted to see what was inside, another had raped a daughter in front of her father, another had made ornaments from human skin, another had burned people alive... Nothing but stomach-turning stories.
"Alright, I've decided."
The ancient sages once said: when faced with a choice between two options, just pick both. That same wisdom is what gave us jjajangmyeon-ramen and half-and-half chicken, after all.
Those impressed by my wisdom responded with shrill screams and desperate pleas for death. The smell of cooking meat wafted through the air.
"Let's stop the torture here. We weren't going to get any information out of them anyway."
Most of the information had already been written in Count Halstead's letter to the Crown Prince, so it wasn't needed. The torture up until now hadn't been for information in the first place—it had been purely to inflict pain. Still, listening to these scum talk had made my blood boil a little.
"Lord Werner, what should we do with these two now...?"
"Sell them to a brothel in the worst slum district. Ah, and don't forget to cut the tendons in their arms and legs, rip out their tongues, and sear their eyes shut."
"What about the man...?"
"Sell him too. Plenty of people in slum brothels don't care about that sort of thing."
"Yes, sir!"
After dealing with the trash, I found myself bothered by the blood on my clothes and face. Blood was a surprisingly annoying liquid—hard to wash out of fabric, hard to scrape off skin, and it came with a nauseating metallic smell as a bonus. Having to live with blood constantly on your body was one of the hardships of living in the shadows.
"...Have you finished your work, Teacher?"
"Yes, Your Highness..."
The Crown Prince looked somewhat haggard. The death of his loyal retainer must have been a shock. It made sense—Halstead had been both a subordinate and a friend who had served him since childhood.
"What brings you here, Your Highness? This doesn't seem like a place someone of your station should visit..."
"I came to discuss the contents of the letter Halstead sent... and Gawain's corpse."
"...I suppose I should hear it."
According to the letter Halstead had sent, the Black Round Table was currently collecting all sorts of items from across the country. Not only the holy relics once used by heroes like Werner, but also various demonic swords, rare spellbooks, and even corpses or objects bearing powerful curses... They had completely lost their minds. On top of that, they were also targeting the Spirit Kings. Most of the Spirit Kings' locations were uncertain, so the Black Round Table was apparently struggling as well. The whole incident had begun when they grew suspicious of the unusually high iron production in Halstead Territory and started investigating the mines.
"So in the end, Count Halstead lost everything because of the iron."
"Yes... It's a tragic fact, but..."
"As expected, the Black Round Table bastards cannot be forgiven..."
Another fool who had been left to die for putting others before himself. That kind of fool.
"There was also something suspicious about the death of the man named Gawain."
"What do you mean..."
"First of all, the location where the body was found was strange. He should have been caught in the explosion, yet he was discovered twenty kilometers away..."
"Well, he was a monster. He probably tried to escape somehow and ran out of strength."
"Yes, I thought the same, so I had the entire area thoroughly investigated."
The Crown Prince then pulled a scroll from his robes.
"This is the report sent by the subordinate in charge of the investigation."
After reading the report, I couldn't help but be surprised. It contained the testimony of a witness who had seen the scene. When the commotion broke out and people rushed toward Count Halstead's mansion, the witness had been on his way back from selling iron ore to a nearby village. He claimed to have seen a blond man, covered in burns, crawling on the ground trying to leave the village. Then a black-haired elf appeared in front of him. The blond man grabbed the elf's pant leg as if begging for help, but the black-haired elf took several items from him, abandoned him, and left. The blond man screamed and eventually collapsed and died.
"This is the testimony of the person who first discovered the body. So it's safe to assume it's accurate."
The blond man was definitely that bastard Gawain... and the black-haired elf was clearly...
"Your Highness... could you investigate a man named Raven Fioni for me?"
"If his surname is Fioni, then..."
"Don't ask questions. Don't tell anyone."
"Understood. If it's your request, Teacher..."
My head was pounding from all sides. I stepped outside for some fresh air, but my thoughts swirled chaotically like scattered manuscripts. The Black Round Table. Raven, Airi, Glacia, Lorsha, Camellia... There were far too many things I needed to worry about.
"By the way, my master."
"Shit, you scared me."
Ah, right. He was here too. Armadura, the Iron Spirit King. The one I had contracted with in the iron mines of Halstead Territory.
"Would it be alright if I continued the story I couldn't finish last time?"
"Go ahead. It's not like it could be more serious than the headaches I'm already dealing with."
My head already felt like it was about to split open anyway. Knowing who my parents were wouldn't make things worse. Even if they were living well, it didn't matter. Even if they were dead, I wouldn't be particularly sad. The best-case scenario was that they wouldn't show up in front of me trying to leech off me.
"All of us Spirit Kings were created by the Mother Goddess. That Mother Goddess is the goddess humans worship."
Right, I'd heard that in the game's background lore. Something about a goddess who used crows as her avatars.
"The Mother Goddess was so bored that she created us by tearing off her own fingernails, under the pretext of making pets."
I wasn't sure if that was the actual creation myth, but it sounded disgusting.
"But in the end, the Mother Goddess took pity on the humans of this planet and sent us down to this world."
So they weren't Spirit Kings—they were aliens.
"And the Mother Goddess personally shaped a new soul with her own hands. The human born from that soul is..."
"Who is it, our mom?"
"No, Lord Werner. It is you."
"...Ah, fuck, wait a minute... Hey, explain it so I can understand, you hedgehog bastard."