The Snake Princess's Bargain
“P-please, spare me. I beg you.”
Looking at the Dercian heiress prostrated before me, I nodded inwardly.
Her utterly haggard appearance. A face growing more hollow by the day. She must have been terrified of the disinfection and finally reached out to me. The fear of not knowing when she might be killed had brought her to her knees.
She thinks she might be a sinner herself.
If she weren’t a player, she could simply stand tall. But whether the people vanishing day by day had instilled terror in her, or whether she had something to feel guilty about, was something I needed to determine.
“······ Spare you?”
After organizing my thoughts, I muttered the words heavily. The Dercian heiress nodded frantically.
“Yes, yes! If you just spare me, I’ll do anything you ask.”
I slowly stroked my chin. She had never been on the list of ‘sinners’ from the beginning. But the Dercian heiress would not know that. There was no need to tell her, either.
The Dercian heiress regards me as an associate of the Death God Religion. And as an executive with the same authority as Number One.
That was not wrong. Number One had also called me the same ‘Guardian of the Golden Orthodox.’
I approached the heiress, bent slightly at the waist, and lifted her chin with my hand. Meeting her eyes head-on, the Dercian heiress’s pupils shook wildly. She truly feared me. She believed I could kill her at any moment.
In that case.
“Anything?”
“I-if you just spare me······.”
She claimed she would do anything if I only spared her life. I smiled leisurely. It was a misunderstanding she had formed on her own, yet I could amplify this misconception further—so I began to ‘act.’
“Isabella von Dercian. Do you know why you are here?”
“I-I······ because I’m on the list of ‘suspects,’ isn’t it······?”
“Do you know why you made that list?”
“That’s······.”
She did not know. There was no way she would. Yet the hundred ‘auction participants’ gathered here were all on the list of ‘suspected sinners.’ Every one of them had a reason to be presumed a sinner. The Dercian heiress would be no different.
“Are you truly Isabella?”
“Yes······?”
As if asking what kind of nonsense that was. I changed the question.
“Since when have you been Isabella?”
“Well, of course from the moment I was born······.”
It was not a lie. She sincerely believed herself to be ‘Isabella.’ I frowned inwardly. I had thought she would be aware that she was a fake. Then did that mean the Isabella currently succeeding the queen’s throne in the desert city of Faisalmer was the fake?
That memory alone is real.
Impossible. Isabella had woken in the desert with her memories erased. All she remembered was her full name. Yet that name could not be false. Even though she was a character I had raised, her ‘true name’ itself had already been Isabella von Dercian—not a nickname.
The name given when creating a character is a nickname, a kind of alias. So every character possesses a separate ‘true name.’ Therefore, the one in the desert being Isabella von Dercian was certain.
“From what age do you remember?”
“··· My first memory is from when I was three.”
“Were you already in the ‘Dercian family’ then?”
“Y-yes, without a doubt. Why are you asking such things······.”
“Answer only what I ask. You weren’t twins, and there weren’t two ‘Isabellas,’ correct?”
“Yes······. Ah!”
As if something had surfaced, the Dercian heiress’s eyes widened.
“I-I think I remember seeing a child who resembled me. Is that why?”
“Continue.”
“There was a child afflicted with ‘Divine Illness.’ Not a twin, but a child who gave off a strangely similar aura to mine, so I remember her. B-but I was told never to approach······ and then one day she suddenly disappeared.”
Divine Illness?
God’s disease. Had there ever been a sickness with such a name?
“Divine Illness, you say.”
“That’s······ I only vaguely remember the elders of the family mentioning it. I don’t really know what kind of disease it is······.”
When I probed lightly, she reacted as though she truly did not know. My thoughts grew tangled. It seemed Isabella and this ‘Divine Illness’ were somehow connected.
They do resemble each other strangely.
The Isabella before me and the Isabella of the desert shared oddly similar features. They would have changed as they grew, yet as children they might have looked like twins.
“I-it’s not me. It’s definitely that child. That child is the sinner!”
The Dercian heiress protested desperately. She had arbitrarily interpreted the intent behind my questions.
Anyway.
The family elders know. If that child with Divine Illness is the desert’s Isabella, then the Dercian family itself might have abandoned her.
It was a matter that required deeper investigation, yet I still did not know whether finding her origins would be salvation for the desert’s Isabella.
One thing, however, was clear.
“I will spare you.”
“Aaaah············!”
“But there is a condition.”
“W-what is it?”
“Return to your family and ‘quietly’ investigate the child with ‘Divine Illness.’ Afterward, come find me through Hudson in Arcana. If your words prove true, I will take it into consideration. But if you engage in any unnecessary words or actions beyond what I ordered, I will place you back on the ‘disinfection’ list.”
“Y-yes! I will definitely do so.”
The Dercian heiress nodded desperately, relief flooding her face. Yet her eyes burned with resolve. She firmly believed that she and that child with ‘Divine Illness’ had been mixed up, which was why she had been brought here. That misunderstanding only deepened her faith in me.
So I spoke again.
“Is there anything else I should know?”
Tell me of your own accord. She hesitated a moment, then opened her mouth with a serious expression.
“······ The Dercians intend to capture all the Four Calamities and use them as ‘weapons of war.’ They failed once in Delphian, but they will never give up. And I heard that if they catch Baal, they can awaken the remaining Four Calamities as well······.”
The continuing story struck like a bolt from the blue.
Huh.
To save herself, she had sold out her own family.
······ An excellent attitude indeed.
After both the ‘disinfection’ and the ‘auction’ had ended, seventy-five participants remained. Twenty-five participants and all those who had assisted them had been kidnapped and killed by the Death God Religion.
What a lucky bastard.
Number 53, Master, had somehow slipped free of this trap. Even after the second day the tests had continued, yet he had avoided them all. Lucky—and sharp-eyed beyond measure.
“This is the headquarters of the Death God Religion.”
······ And once the disinfection concluded, I followed Number One and arrived at the headquarters of the Death God Religion in a single leap. After crossing several warps, a massive and luxurious palace appeared at once.
This vast territory was clearly—
The Imperial Palace.
It belonged to the Empire’s imperial family without question. The unknown domain I had never once reached while playing Pangenia.
Malevolent God
Grit.
On Earth, Master ground his teeth. He had escaped the Empire alive, yet he could not hide the humiliation.
You bastards dared to fish for me?
How long he had anticipated the Special Auction. The ruins he had hastily sold for it. The losses were beyond words. Yet if it had only been monetary damage, he could have recovered. The problem was the irreparable pride.
They had treated him like prey caught in a snare. The one who had reigned as a king had overnight become a weak, pitiful creature barely surviving from day to day. Even that, however, he could endure.
How dare······!
It rose unbidden. The moment he had thrust his hand into the Powder of Truth. Of every instant in the Empire, that had been the most humiliating—a memory he never wished to recall again. He could swallow everything else, but that single moment was beyond endurance.
Absolutely beyond it.
“You bitch. If you want to live, you’d better start making excuses.”
Master revealed his killing intent and glared at Obsidian. She swallowed hard and trembled.
“W-why are you like this?”
“You were playing both sides between the Empire and me.”
“W-what are you talking about? I told you—I was kidnapped!”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s true! I was kidnapped and ordered to spill your information. I didn’t say a single word, and thanks to that we managed to get out alive······.”
Crack!
Master drove his fist forward.
Crunch-shatter!
At the same time the space around Obsidian fractured like glass. Space Shattering—one of Master’s unique abilities.
“You were kidnapped and didn’t spill my information? Who would believe that crap?”
Obsidian had not been in the banquet hall. Sneaking out alone was impossible. Common sense would call it a kidnapping—yet the opponent was Obsidian. If she had truly been taken, she was the sort of woman who, cornered and desperate, would invent stories about Master just to save her own skin and offer them up.
If she had not been kidnapped, only one possibility remained: she had been the Empire’s spy from the beginning.
“But you can believe this much. From this moment on, if you don’t spill everything, I’ll crush you completely. I’ll start with your face. Then I’ll tear out your hair, pull every tooth, burn you, pour melted salt into the gums and every wound, and slowly smash you to pieces.”
“Ah······ uh······.”
Obsidian shuddered. He was serious. Master truly intended to destroy her.
“I-I got it. I got it! But don’t misunderstand. I really didn’t know it was that kind of place either. I-I just sold ‘players’’ information little by little for a nice price······!”
“Did you sell my information too?”
“Not at all! No matter how money-crazy I am, would I do something like that? I’d be in danger myself! Besides, if I’d known that masked bastard was that kind of person, I never would have gotten close. Damn it, I was tricked too!”
“Since when?”
“Th-they approached me not long ago. About half a year now? Please believe me!”
She spoke as though truly wronged. It seemed she had been peddling players’ information as a business. Master did not believe she had acted alone. There must have been quite a few ‘information merchants’ selling alongside her. The information they gathered had apparently been used to summon people to the auction.
Obsidian licked her dry lips.
“But we came back alive, right? Now they won’t think of us as players at all. That vicious Death God Religion would never have let us go if they knew we were players.”
“No. At least you were deliberately released.”
Master was certain. They knew Obsidian was a player. They had let her go knowing that, so they could use her again. Betrayal is hard the first time and easy the second—especially for a human who had sold information for money from the start.
Obsidian frowned.
“They know I’m a player? Even though I deliberately mixed real and fake information?”
“Yes. And when they approach you again, you won’t be able to refuse. Branded a traitor by both sides, the only end is death.”
“······ That’s completely different from how the Death God Religion has always operated.”
The Death God Religion never contacted sinners. Once judged a sinner, they attached a Death God or simply killed them. The Death God Religion dealing with sinners? Impossible based on their past actions.
“They must have changed their methods. The situation has changed, hasn’t it?”
“What situation has changed?”
“Wilhelm is dead.”
“······ What does that have to do with anything?”
At Obsidian’s sincere confusion, Master clicked his tongue.
“The only human the Death God Religion knew was a gamer’s avatar yet could take no measures against. The human they could not even approach. That was Wilhelm.”
“Wait. They knew?”
He offered no further explanation. Unlike Obsidian, however, Master knew deeper circumstances surrounding the Great Expedition. The Death God Religion had identified Wilhelm. Yet they could not approach him. They could not attach a Death God, nor brand him with the stigma of a sinner.
It’s clear that Wilhelm served as a kind of restraint on the Death God Religion’s activities.
Master did not know the exact reason. He was certain the Empire’s refusal to join the Great Expedition was connected to Wilhelm—and that the Death God Religion was entangled in that reason as well.
Yet a ‘player purge’ of this scale was unprecedented. Had there ever been one, he would have known. Why had the Death God Religion suddenly changed their methods? Because Wilhelm was dead, and they no longer felt the need to be careful?
Moreover, half a year coincides with the time Wilhelm died.
There was another reason for thinking so. The moment the Death God Religion approached Obsidian also overlapped with the failure of the Great Expedition. This could not simply be coincidence.
And if it was not coincidence—
Death God Religion. Do you bastards intend to disinfect every player in Pangenia?
Such malice.
······ Was that not truly treating them like bugs or germs?