Chapter 104: Torture Them to Death and Every Problem Solves Itself
The pitch darkness felt unusually suffocating tonight — no doubt because of the guilt pressing down on his own shoulders.
Blake, kneeling on the cold floor, could not even bring himself to breathe too loudly.
After all, he was a sinner who had failed his mission and fled for his life.
There was no excuse he could offer, and in truth, none he wished to offer. Every bit of it had been his own mistake. From the moment Rebecca had failed to kill the captured Arendt on the spot, and from the moment he himself, upon receiving the request for reinforcements, had gone there and accepted her decision without a shred of doubt, the failure of this operation had already been decided.
In the end, they had lost Rebecca, her assets, and a great many of the faithful besides.
"There, there. It's not your fault."
A gentle voice drifted from the far end of the darkness.
Blake pressed his head even lower.
"It was my error."
"No — you came back alive, and that's what matters."
The woman quietly soothed him. Only then did the tension slowly begin to drain from Blake's body.
Confirming that his breathing had steadied, she let out a small laugh.
"That boy, though... he never fails to unsettle me. I never imagined he'd strike back like this."
"...My apologies."
Blake bowed his head once more.
That boy, of course, meant Arendt von Eckhart. Their enemy, who seemed to have dropped straight out of the sky.
"Now that you've met him face to face, what do you think? You've always longed for it — the day you would settle things with Vincent's enemy."
"That young man..."
Blake hesitated for a moment. He could not readily decide how to define him.
The woman's voice gently urged him on.
"He is...?"
"...A strategist. Though I suspect even that word falls short."
Only after a long while of searching for the right words was Blake able to give his answer.
"He seems adept at placing himself and his allies exactly where they are most needed. He is also well practiced in the art of deception."
And there was one more thing that gnawed at him.
Blake lowered his gaze.
Could it be a coincidence, that the man had mirrored his every movement so precisely?
"If even you speak of him this way, I suppose he's far from a trivial opponent. Though... given how easily Vincent and Rebecca were taken in, perhaps it goes without saying."
A voice, seemingly lost in light contemplation, echoed from beyond the darkness.
Vincent had always been somewhat quick-tempered, so it would not have been strange for him to swallow an opponent's provocation.
But Rebecca had been cautious, and cautious again. Save for that one peculiar obsession of hers, she handled everything without a single gap.
Even that obsession — it was a hobby one would never notice without watching her closely for years.
Arendt von Eckhart, after facing Warren just once, had seen through that twisted predilection instantly, found the crack, and driven straight into it.
He hadn't even tempted her brazenly. Rather, he had maneuvered her into a position where she could not let go of her greed even while she failed to shake off her suspicion of him.
Had he approached so openly, it would only have roused Rebecca's guard.
And then, on top of that — to win over Warren, the man sent to kill him, and turn him into an ally.
The reason the cult had left Warren alone all this time was that, as Rebecca's servant and lover, he had dutifully served his role. Not once had anyone doubted his loyalty. That a man who had followed Rebecca without complaint for years would betray her within mere hours was simply absurd.
What on earth had happened in the imperial palace?
Could this really be explained away as mere cunning?
"Blake?"
"Yes. Speak, and I shall obey."
At the sudden call, Blake reflexively bowed his head even deeper.
"You have received so much already, and I would like to send a gift in return. Will you move for me yourself?"
"Yes. It would be my honor."
He answered without a flicker of hesitation.
"This life of mine — I offer it to Lord Cernion."
"Still, treasure that life. You are our most precious asset."
A soft touch passed lightly over Blake's head.
What was that, exactly?
Stretching out across his bed, Arendt muttered blankly to himself.
Several days had passed since he returned to the imperial palace.
While the Imperial Knights were buried up to their necks in cleaning up after the incident, he had sunk deep into a single worry that refused to leave him alone.
The temple found beneath Rebecca's castle, and the unidentified voice he had heard there. None of the others present seemed to have heard it, but it had most certainly not been an auditory hallucination.
In truth, he wasn't even sure that "heard" was the right way to put it. Rather than relying on his ears to catch a sound, it would be more accurate to say the voice had burrowed directly into his skull.
Arendt's face twisted into an ugly scowl.
A being outside the flow.
An accurate description. He had been dragged into this world from another one, after all.
Come to think of it — why am I even here?
It was the root of everything, yet until now he had deliberately never dredged that question up to the surface.
He hadn't had the luxury, frankly.
But things had come to the point where he could no longer ignore it. From the way Cernion spoke of him as outside the flow, the god must have been aware of him for quite some time. And what's more, it bothered him that Cernion had been the one to play knowing in the first place.
Anyone looking at him now would see an audacious lunatic openly siding with Luce and vowing to smash the Evil God to pieces.
If his arrival in this world was some scheme of those gods or whatever they were, then what could their purpose possibly be—
The thought had drifted that far before he shook his head hard and flung the distraction away.
I don't know what you bastards want from me.
Whether you're a stage director or a producer, someone clutching power, or — at the very bottom of it — a god, barging into a performance that has already begun and is flowing along quite enjoyably is a violation of basic etiquette.
So I'll throw a far bigger tantrum than I have so far.
Enough that you cheap excuses for deities won't even dare dream of setting foot on this stage.
Cernion or Luce — once they grew suffocating, they'd come crawling out on their own. He could collect the answer to why he was here then.
And the first offering had already been chosen.
Arendt sprang up from the bed and stood before the map of the empire spread wide across his table.
Holed up in his room these past few days on the pretense of resting, he had retraced his memory of The Blue Knight of the Sacred Sword and marked every location where events in the novel had unfolded.
Arendt's gaze came to rest on the spot where Rebecca's castle — subdued not long ago — stood.
Rebecca's already dealt with.
Which meant that the affairs she had been entangled with in the novel would either surface later in some other form, or quite possibly never happen at all.
Arendt picked up his pen and drew a large X through it.
Blake's involvement in this whole affair had been unexpected on their end as well.
His first appearance in the novel had come from an entirely different incident.
He had used the Frost-Tinged Touch to seize an entire city and bury it beneath a snowdrift, announcing his existence by freezing countless civilians to death.
But the Frost-Tinged Touch was already in Arendt's hands, and the man now wielded a different artifact.
That'll be another variable, too.
His golden eyes rolled slowly in their sockets.
He had also left marks on the regions where Vincent had run rampant in the novel.
Vincent had already been dragged off the stage, and his former partner, Count Stadler, was now one of their staunchest allies.
Vincent would have no further influence on how this story unfolded — and yet, there remained exactly one part of it that nagged at him.
Something that had bothered him ever since he first sensed Blake at Rebecca's castle.
The border region.
It hadn't been the site of any major incident. It was mentioned only in a single line of dialogue:
"They say two suspicious masked men have appeared near the Border Mountain Range!"
It was back when acts of terror against civilians were erupting across the empire, and Blake and Vincent were each beginning to make their presence known.
Laios had dispatched knights, but the two of them had vanished without a trace before long.
Never again after that did Vincent and Blake appear together.
Why the two of them were together was never explained, either.
Around the time those eyewitness reports surfaced, Vincent had razed an auction house and then gone stirring up trouble here and there with his artifact, while Blake had, at some point, likewise appeared and begun his own rampage.
If they'd gone there under the cult's orders—
It occurred to him that Blake might have shown up there alone as well. That was why he'd talked Laios out of the pursuit, after all.
Better that than to push through in the dead of night and let some unforeseen variable crop up.
The timing would have been fitting, too.
Just then.
Knock, knock.
The sound of knuckles on wood yanked his consciousness back to reality.
"Hey. You asleep?"
Arthur's voice followed right after.
Just as Arendt carelessly folded up the map and shoved it into a drawer, the door swung open.
"What's wrong with you? You're not even asleep — why didn't you answer?"
"I ignored you on purpose. Surely you know that much?"
"Do you actually want to die?"
"Never mind that. What do you want?"
A low, muttered vow to murder him for real drifted through the room.
Somehow, it was an oddly soothing curse.
"His Highness the Crown Prince is asking for you. Go see him right now."
"Why?"
"What do you think? Because of this whole mess, obviously. Now move it. The Commander's there too, you know."
"This is a pain in the ass, honestly."
Scrubbing at the back of his neck a few times, Arendt snatched up his outer coat.
Arthur, frowning as he stared at his junior, added one more thing.
"Then maybe rest a bit longer. I heard from the Commander you're in rough shape."
It was true that he'd been left in tatters — fighting Warren, then getting beaten black and blue by Warren again while infiltrating Rebecca's castle, and then brawling with Blake on top of it all.
His body still ached all over, and a few of the wounds had refused to close even with potions.
But Arthur and Richt, who had played the part of bait, were hardly in any better condition.
Evidence enough: Arthur's face was plastered with bandages, and beneath the collar of his uniform, tightly wrapped bindings were clearly visible.
Arendt wanted to snap at him to go look in a mirror, but he gave up on it. He had something far more entertaining in mind.
The moment Arendt fixed him with a wide-eyed, unblinking stare, Arthur flinched and backed up a step.
"Wh-what? Why are your eyes doing that?"
"Oh, nothing. It's just... that you'd think of me so kindly, Senior~ I'm truly moved."
"AAAGH! Just swear at me instead, you little bastard!"
Struck head-on by the attack known as the innocent, glistening doe eyes — guaranteed maximum damage when, and only when, the caster was Arendt — Arthur began flailing about in open despair.
In an instant, Arendt's face snapped back to its usual expression. He shrugged his shoulders and strolled out of the room with perfect composure.
"AAAGH! You're giving me chills!!"
Still, it seemed he'd need to start working out a plan.
Capture Blake, beat him to a pulp, and he could dig a fair way into the secrets of that damned cult.
"A rest period~ how nice."
It simply wasn't the time for one yet.
As he walked down the familiar corridor, a plan was already taking shape in his mind.
Even without confronting them head-on just yet, he could certainly manage to make the first move.
He'd spent days lazing about under the excuse of treatment — it was time to get to work.