74. Untying the Knot (2)
74. Untying the Knot (2)
- 1 -
"Why is Rita bothering with such troublesome nonsense?"
The question came from Serica.
She had been visiting my dungeon as if it were her daily commute, saying she found whatever Elias was up to inside lately entertaining. Even though the results had come out today, she still hadn't gone back.
She probably just didn't want to return to her family.
"What are you talking about?"
"That male human. If you wanted to make him pay the price, couldn't you just cut off his limbs and throw him to the beasts?"
That was the question she asked.
A sentiment truly far removed from human sensibilities.
Spinning herself in a swivel chair, Serica's eyes held a somewhat indifferent curiosity.
She had questions, but she didn't much care whether she got an answer.
When I grabbed the chair to stop it, she looked up at me with faint displeasure, but the moment I began to speak, her eyes lit up and she started paying attention.
"Don't use such harsh words, Serica. I like the way you are, but harsh words don't make you look pretty."
"Ah, really? So that was harsh language..."
"Yes. As for the reason I'm punishing a human in such a way..."
I paused to think for a moment, but decided I should begin by correcting her misunderstanding.
"First of all, it isn't a punishment. It's a test."
"A test?"
"Yes. The process of determining whether he's useful to me."
"Why? What would you even use a human for?"
Serica tilted her head, cocking it to the side with a little 'kyaut' motion.
Her golden hair cascaded down with the movement, falling into disarray.
I picked up a comb and began to stroke that golden hair, so beautiful it naturally drew the eye. She closed her eyes slightly, as if pleased.
"Many dungeons take in and make use of humans, Serica. You've seen mercenaries, haven't you?"
"Yeah. There are plenty in the marquis household too."
"More than half of them were actually human, you know."
"What? Really?"
Serica's eyes went wide as she spun around.
Her round, wide-open eyes were adorable. Those who hated vampires might dislike her red eyes, but.
I tapped her forehead lightly, turning her head back to its original position, then undid the bundle of her disheveled hair.
I meant to try a different style from the one she always wore.
"That's right."
"I really didn't know. They were humans? Why did they become demonkin? Humans are always going on about humanity and such, aren't they? Saying they don't want to become monsters."
"You've heard things like that?"
"In the dungeon, after seeing my bonsai, some especially scrawny males and females said exactly that!"
They were probably mages or intellectuals.
Ordinary mercenaries or adventurers might have a sense of duty, but they didn't tend to agonize much over morality or philosophy like humanity. Their lives were busy — where would they even find room for scholarship?
"People like different things, don't they? Just as you can't resist sweets, whereas I prefer tea."
As she nodded at my words, I brought my hands to the back left and right of her head, and her mana naturally moved the hair, interlocking the strands.
The final result was braided hair, woven together.
Using those thin, rope-like strands, I recreated her twin tails one by one.
Not high up like usual, but lower. Still cute, but with a more demure look, I suppose.
"Ah, is that how it is? So, those people don't hate becoming demonkin."
"They do hate it, but they like what they can achieve by becoming demonkin even more. Money, for instance, or the opposite sex."
"The opposite sex? Why would they like the opposite sex?"
That final question made even me hesitate.
Because, to explain this to her, I needed some mental preparation myself. I knew she was actually an adult, but even so...
"That... I'll explain next time."
"Ehh..."
"Anyway, it's true that I tormented that human, but it wasn't solely for the sake of punishment."
"What do you want to use him for?"
A tone that sounded almost innocently naive, and yet treating a human as a mere object by saying "use him" as if it were perfectly natural.
"To seize a human kingdom."
Feeling a pang of regret at how accustomed I was growing to that gap, I concluded the conversation.
"Oh...! You want to become a human princess too?"
"You're not wrong."
"I'm looking forward to it! Rita is super pretty and cool, so you could totally be both a human and a demonkin princess!"
"Thank you, Serica."
"Heh."
Indeed, innocence and good-and-evil were separate things, I thought.
'It was entertaining, for a change.'
What came to mind was the moment of the contract I had carried out with Elias.
- 2 -
"What I felt most of all... was powerlessness."
At Elias's confession, Libertas — who had been merely looking down at the book in her hands without any pretense of listening attentively — nodded her head.
"All the thoughts you had been deferring came flooding in at once, I see."
He felt a sudden chill at the Dungeon Lord's words. She had pinpointed the exact thoughts he had recalled inside the dungeon.
"I was endlessly weak. I was nothing more than a wastrel who relied solely on appearance and authority to push others around... the very kind of good-for-nothing I usually held in contempt."
He had always known, in the course of his life, that he lacked talent and was endlessly weak.
But until now, there had always been substitutes for all of that.
Wealth and authority, and sometimes looks, as substitutes.
Even if his succession rank was low, he was still the son of a marquis household, a knight, and a handsome man.
"But all of that was utterly useless when I faced a genuine threat."
When he had to stand alone, when he was isolated inside the dungeon.
All of it was meaningless.
He had to confront the weakness he had only known about in theory.
He had to distinguish more clearly between what he could do and what he couldn't, what he had to do and what he mustn't do, and then select only a portion of that and focus solely on preserving his own life.
Like a civilized man thrown into the wild, he had been forced to whittle himself down that way.
"And what did you gain from that experience?"
After the brief confession that followed.
At last, Libertas's eyes turned toward him.
Eyes that emitted a sinister purple power were set upon a face so pale it seemed fragile.
Looking at that beautiful face and those eyes, Elias shuddered.
He realized instantly that the gaze she had directed at him until now had been, at most, a fabricated one.
But that gaze.
When he met those true eyes, filled with a hint of curiosity, interest, cruelty, and coldness.
"Amusing. You look as though you are standing before a king, do you not?"
Before he knew it, Elias had straightened his slouched posture and could do nothing but kneel on both knees.
He raised his downcast eyes to study Libertas's gaze, read 'permission' within them, and then opened his trembling lips to speak his opinion.
"You... are not something like a king. If anything, perhaps... a master."
"Ho-oh."
A smile rose to Libertas's lips.
Had Elias seen that smile, he would have shuddered once more. For that smile would have confirmed his discernment.
It was the smile of a ruler who had recognized the value of an object to be possessed.
"What difference does that make?"
"...A king reigns. But a master possesses. There is a difference. A king may exist without cherishing, but a master cherishes their possessions. That is... not necessarily a way of treating people, and even if there is a difference in importance among possessions—"
"I see your discernment is excellent."
She did not reveal it through expression or gesture, but Libertas was considerably impressed.
The difference between king and master aside, it was an insight that had precisely identified her possessiveness.
'No matter how I look at it, he really seems suited to be an administrator or diplomat rather than a knight.'
She even thought the knight before her eyes seemed to have taken the wrong career path.
"So... Lady of the Dungeon, who wishes to become the master of all things. Please, possess me as well. I do not wish to wither away in a place like this. I... wish to rise. To stand at the highest point, and raise my sword high."
Yet the path the man before her still desired was the path of the knight.
It was nothing new.
It was common for the path of one's true talent and the path one desired to be at odds.
And it was precisely because of that that she had become able to possess him.
"What you desire is to gird on a sword and climb the stairs."
"Those words are not mistaken."
Alexis and Elias were similar yet different.
Both ultimately wished to express their ego, but in Alexis's case, the emphasis was on the desire to take, whereas Elias craved everything that could be achieved in the course of revealing his own sense of existence.
The former was the path of a tyrant, the latter the path of a great general.
That did not mean the former would come to dominate the latter. How many times in history had a great general raised his sword or turned the tip of his gun against a tyrant or a foolish ruler?
"In that case."
Elias could not collect his wits at the sight of something pale emerging before his eyes.
He did not know why he hadn't noticed until now, but Libertas was barefoot.
"What are you capable of doing, indeed, for the sake of what you desire?"
"I... what...?"
Libertas set down her book and slowly lifted her leg, drawing it up onto the chair.
Elias followed the slowly rising foot with his gaze, and just not looking at the sight seemed to consume all of his endurance — though in truth, even if he had raised his head, he would not have been able to see the sight he wished to see.
Because the moment he dared to try to look upon her form, Evangeline would have gouged out his eyes.
"For your life and your glory, could you drag your father down from his seat and kill him if necessary? Could you blindfold your mother, sever the heads of your kinsmen, and offer them before my throne?"
"...!"
At Libertas's words, which ordered patricide in a still gentle and soft tone, Elias momentarily jerked his head up before slamming it back down.
She paid no attention to his reaction, and her words continued on.
"...And could you offer up everything you have?"
The waiting, and the hesitation.
Did not last very long.
[Survive and seize it. If you are to survive, that is your only path. After I am dead, if you strike and take what belongs to your brother, what could I possibly say about it?]
What flashed through his mind in that moment were his father's words.
Hadn't betrayal been, from the very start, an everyday affair for nobles?
[What I can give you is only one village with a mine. Secure anything more on your own.]
[It couldn't be helped. ...I'm sorry your mother is powerless.]
Moreover, he already had a record of being betrayed once by his parents in his childhood.
Betrayal in the form of 'deprivation of succession rights' and 'minimization of inheritance rights.'
It was merely something that awakened him to the reality of what he had taken for granted, but to him — who had already finished rationalizing it internally — the truth was not important.
"...I shall do so! In order to live, in order to rise high, I shall offer all that I am to you, Master!!"
"I see..."
Libertas's eyes narrowed as she saw through the conflict raging within him and the endless series of self-rationalizations.
In that moment, Elias's use had already been decided.
"If that is truly the case, I shall bestow upon you worldly glory. The first step shall be the 'talent' advanced to you."
With a 'hwiririk' sound, a contract was summoned, already bearing her name and Elias's name, with a special clause inscribed below.
"The price of that first step is the body of one elder sister of yours."
"...Yes...!"
The moment the Dungeon Lord's dagger was aimed at the west, following the south of the kingdom.
"Then I shall dare to receive that 'lust' you harbored for me as the down payment."
Libertas wore a mischievous smile.
Because she had absolutely no intention of using this contract as a reason to settle the grudge she originally held.
"...Pardon?"
- The contract has been established, Candidate of the Demon King.
When Elias dared to voice his confusion at Libertas's incomprehensible words and raised his head, as the Demon King's hand vanished, and at the same time Libertas smiled.
Elias's body was engulfed in light.
In the light of 'monsterification.'
"What is thiiiiis — !!!"
A moment later, the voice that flowed out from within that light was far higher than the one he usually produced.