Chapter 202
Chapter 202
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: penny
Chapter: 202
Chapter Title: Hell - 2
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-Shing!
“H-Hiiik?!”
And just as the bronze-skinned woman turned around, Cecilia pressed the holy sword to her throat. The woman, seeing the brilliantly glowing golden blade aimed at her neck, freaked out and raised both hands in surrender.
“Explain yourself, Delta.”
Cecilia kept the blade steady at the woman’s throat as she turned to look at me.
“Why is the holy sword reacting to this woman?”
She was right.
The holy sword was shining a little more intensely than usual.
“……The holy sword?”
“I didn’t ask you, wench. I didn’t permit you to speak either. If you move or wag your tongue without my leave even once more, you’ll bear the full consequences yourself.”
The bronze-skinned woman flinched at the mention of the holy sword but obediently shut her mouth at Cecilia’s chilling tone, her eyes darting around wildly.
There was no point dragging this out. Good thing I’d prepared an explanation in case of this exact scenario. I quickly stepped between the woman and Cecilia, nudging the flat of the holy sword’s blade aside with my finger.
Cecilia watched me silently for a moment before compliantly withdrawing the sword in line with my gesture. The tip, which had been aimed precisely at her throat, veered off into empty air.
Of course, she hadn’t fully dispelled her suspicions. She’d merely lowered the blade. If she were truly convinced, she would have unsummoned it entirely.
“You’re protecting this woman.”
“Yes.”
“There must be good reason for it. Speak. Why I should spare the life of a woman who provokes the holy sword.”
Cecilia crossed her arms below her chest, leaning her hip lightly against a nearby table and crossing her legs.
Her attitude was still incredibly overbearing, but the mere fact that she was holding back from acting on her impulses and listening to me was a huge step forward. She never would have dreamed of behaving this way before.
“Because the reason the holy sword is reacting to her is different.”
“Different?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. As you know, what sort of beings provoke the holy sword?”
Cecilia shot me a look as if to say, why ask something so obvious?—but she answered readily enough anyway.
“Demons. And the idiots who worship such filth.”
“Exactly. But this woman behind me…… Well, what’s your name?”
I turned my head. The woman was still glancing back and forth between Cecilia and me with a face that hadn’t fully shaken off its panic, but she cautiously opened her mouth.
“Margarita. You can call me Margarita.”
“Got it. Margarita here has nothing to do with demons or their worshippers. The holy sword is reacting to her simply because she’s survived by eating demon corpses.”
Eating demon corpses. It must have been a secret she desperately wanted to keep from others, because the moment I mentioned it, Margarita flinched hard. Her eyes trembled nonstop.
Sorry for spilling your secret like that, but it was way better than feeding Cecilia some half-baked lie that’d get exposed later. The fallout from that would be obvious.
“What did you just say? Did I hear that right, Delta?”
Even Cecilia looked genuinely shocked by the bombshell revelation, her eyes widening round.
“How could I dare lie to Your Majesty? It’s the pure truth, without a shred of falsehood.”
“……To think you’d put something so repulsive in your mouth.”
Cecilia furrowed her brow as much as it could go, but separate from her disgust, she seemed to accept the explanation for the holy sword’s reaction. She unsummoned it. The golden glow in her hand dispersed into the air.
A small sigh came from behind me.
“W-Wait a sec. How do you know all that? We just met today, didn’t we?”
As the shock and relief faded, confusion finally set in. Margarita’s hand grabbed my shoulder in a panic.
I answered with a smile, and Cecilia clicked her tongue softly before speaking up in my stead.
“Give it up. He may be my retainer, but even I don’t know everything in that man’s heart. Yet he has never once made a wrong choice, so it’s enough to simply trust and follow him.”
I was quietly impressed by Cecilia’s words just now.
She doesn’t know everything in my heart, but just trust and obey—that was a statement brimming with such profound trust, it was hard to believe it came from the haughty, arrogant, overbearing Cecilia.
She wouldn’t say something like that unless she truly trusted me deeply. It made me feel pretty proud, knowing all my efforts had paid off.
“Eh, that’s not important.”
“If that’s not important, then what is……”
With Cecilia’s backup, I slipped past the question like a snake over a wall. Margarita pouted and grumbled.
“What matters is that you got trapped in Hell, Margarita, and out of half-despair, half-necessity, you resorted to eating demon corpses.”
“…….”
“Did I get anything wrong?”
Margarita hemmed and hawed for a while, clearly agonizing over it, but she must have realized there was no point hiding anything further when I already knew this much. She nodded.
“Yeah. Exactly like you said. Getting stuck here, having no choice but to eat their corpses……”
Finally, words of affirmation came from Margarita’s mouth.
“No point hiding it, so I’ll be direct. How much do you know?”
“Everything I need to.”
Margarita was a former holy knight who’d been trapped here eons ago. Her age in the lore was about the same as the Eternal Mage’s, give or take.
A mere holy knight surviving that long was thanks to Hell’s nature. Humans dragged here were under a curse that prevented them from aging, so Hell could squeeze every last drop out of them.
Margarita had been swept up in a demon worshipper summoning ritual, much like a player might be. She’d gone to purge them, only to fall into a trap and get dragged to Hell.
Her comrades all ended up as living batteries for demons, but she barely survived alone.
She’d escaped, but even a holy knight couldn’t slay every demon in Hell. So she’d eked out a living by scavenging the corpses of demons killed in their endless infighting.
Demons fought viciously among themselves. That was canon. Humans were priority number one, of course, but without human prey around, they devoured each other, turning Hell into the hell it was.
Having a king didn’t stop the fights. If anything, the demon kings encouraged the chaos and disorder.
“…….”
I gave them a concise summary of all this. Cecilia and Margarita listened quietly. Their faces plainly showed their bewilderment at how I knew such things.
I didn’t care. Cecilia was the type to shrug it off with a “that’s just how he is,” no matter what I did. And Margarita had just gotten shut down once for prying into my identity, so she’d hold her tongue for a while, curiosity be damned.
Above all, the holy sword’s owner had vouched for me. Humans could lie, but the holy sword never did. Margarita, as a former holy knight, would know that better than anyone.
“Strong stomach you’ve got. Thinking of eating filth like that.”
Cecilia threw in a jab, her brow deeply furrowed.
Honestly, I had trouble picturing it myself. In the original story, true to the grim setting, she was a filthy old man with a wild beard and hair covering his face, rags for clothes.
Here, she looked like a striking Latin beauty.
‘……But doesn’t she not need to eat to avoid starving here?’
From what I’d seen, everyone mechanically shoveled down food, but I wasn’t sure.
“So here’s my proposal, Margarita.”
If I didn’t get to the point now, I’d just look like some lunatic who barged into her home and started dredging up her dirty secrets. I hurried on.
“Don’t you want to get out of here?”
At that, Margarita’s head snapped up.
“Of course I want out. You think I enjoy being stuck here, force-feeding myself demon corpses? Gnawing on that vile crap, barely living a life not worth living?”
But the lifted head drooped powerlessly again soon after.
“But…… there’s no way out. No way……”
“Why not? You came up with it yourself.”
“…….”
Margarita stood there blankly for a moment, as if not grasping my words. Then, seconds later, her eyes filled with shock.
“H-How do you even know about that…….”
“I verified the theory, gathered all the materials I could, even slapped together a prototype. But I couldn’t get the key component to activate it, so it’s just sitting there, right?”
“N-No……”
Margarita sputtered incoherently.
What I’d just mentioned was Margarita’s side quest. Gather all the materials she needed for escape and deliver them. Do that, and you could get her out of Hell.
There was a linked side quest in the Holy Kingdom too, but that could wait until after we busted her out.
“I’ll get it for you.”
“……What?”
“We’ll procure all those materials for you. They’re not all one-use anyway, so just let us use them later too. We need to get out of here fast, same as you.”
In the game, Margarita succeeded in escaping.
And after, she’d hand it over to the player for use anytime they wanted, so no issue if Cecilia and I borrowed it.
I’d originally planned to beat the final boss to leave, but this seemed faster.
I’d briefly thought we couldn’t use it here since it tied into the Holy Kingdom side quest for players, but that wasn’t the case.
“W-Wait, hold on……”
Margarita was floundering in extreme confusion, even stumbling over her words.
Well, it was the kind of bombshell that’d elicit exactly that reaction, even if she’d heard it before. What was needed now wasn’t more talk—it was action.
“No need to just stand here yapping about it. I’ll prove it. Your Imperial Majesty?”
“I’m listening.”
“The ones we killed earlier still aren’t enough, right?”
At my words, Cecilia met my eyes and flashed an imperious smile.
“What’s the point of mere words?”