Chapter 240: If the Master Hadn't Been There (3)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 240: If the Master Hadn't Been There (3)
The night was shrouded in deep darkness.
Elize flew through the night sky.
Her consciousness flickered, and the next thing she knew, she was in a crumbling cathedral in a deserted village. It was a place she used to stop by whenever she needed to rest.
I was with the merchant group, so why am I here?
The soul shackles were gone, and the blood pact had been severed.
It hadn't even been a month since she'd found a place to belong, and already she was lost again.
The ring Karami had given her was gone, too, and her bloodthirst was beginning to surge…
"Hah. Things are taking a strange turn."
There was nothing she could do in a remote village like this, so she decided to head to Noctar and gather information.
That place was the nest where Elize was supposed to be.
And so, Elize flew the long distance to Noctar, but she couldn't enter the city.
An invisible barrier blocked her path.
I can't get in.
It wasn't a matter of whether she could break the barrier or not.
It was as if this strange world had established an absolute, immutable truth that a being named Elize could not enter Noctar.
As if to prevent her from interfering with someone inside.
In her current state, having not yet awakened her true vampire nature, Elize was far too weak to twist that truth.
She couldn't go to Noctar.
If so, where was she to go?
Having lost her way, Elize wandered aimlessly, unable to find a destination.
*
"Ugh!"
A short gasp escaped her lips.
A sharp pain, as if her heart were being squeezed in a vise.
Alfia clutched her chest.
She forced her heavy eyelids open.
"Where…?"
All she could see were iron bars boxing her in. Alfia was trapped in a space so cramped it was hard to even move.
Clatter. Thump.
The cage rattled like a cheap cart, throwing her from side to side. Her body was being thrashed about like a stone tumbling down a cliff.
But that was nothing. After all, Alfia was used to pain.
This excruciating agony, however, like needles stabbing relentlessly into her heart, was something she could never get used to, even after hundreds of years.
It was all the more torturous for Alfia, who had once been liberated from that eternal suffering.
"Why…?"
She was certain she had subdued the rampaging spirits using the Scroll of Spirit Usurpation. But now, her path to the spirits was closed.
The brand Karami had carved on her back was gone.
This whole situation…
It was a reenactment of when the mercenaries had infiltrated the Great Forest, kidnapped her, and were in the process of handing her over to Roperman.
Her master and Karami had appeared and saved her then. Though Alfia herself had been unconscious and hadn't seen it.
She didn't know what was happening, but this time, she thought, she would see it with her own eyes.
But no one came to attack the mercenaries, and Alfia was dragged all the way to Noctar.
The Noctar she arrived in was not the one she and Narsha had cultivated.
It was dark and filthy.
Vagrants were strewn about the streets.
In the place where the Merchants of Death should have been, there stood the Desert Rose Merchant Group—the very one Alfia had shattered to pieces.
Led by the mercenaries into the group’s headquarters, Alfia was greeted by Roperman.
"Oh, ooh! Such beautiful features. The aura of the forest! Th-There's no mistake. An elf! I finally have an elf of my own!"
Roperman, the collection enthusiast.
He was just a rich upstart who had lived a life of being ignored by nobles, but not anymore.
With an elf in his possession, not even a high-ranking noble would dare look down on him.
"B-But this elf. S-Something's wrong with her."
Her haggard complexion made her look ill.
She couldn't even stand properly.
"Looks like she caught a cold. She's been like this since we first saw her. Our job was to catch an elf and bring her here. We're done, so hand over the payment."
"Hmm…"
Roperman was suspicious, but he didn't think it was a major problem.
If she was sick, he could just get her treated.
An elf was worth that much.
*
Roperman enslaved Alfia.
He sealed her power to prevent any funny business and made her obey his commands absolutely.
But even when he called for doctors and priests, they couldn't solve the source of her pain.
If Roperman learned anything about Alfia, it was that this elf was not the kind he had heard about in rumors.
She couldn't shoot a bow, nor could she handle spirits.
All she had were her looks.
All she did was groan all day, unable to get up, begging for alcohol.
Useless.
It was no wonder Alfia had been captured. She was an outcast, a dud rejected by elven society, which was why the mercenaries had been able to catch her.
She couldn't even do the basics of being an elf.
How could he show her off to the nobles like this?
She didn't even qualify for Roperman's collection, which only dealt in luxury items. He had spent a fortune to buy a piece of trash.
As if to vent his frustration, Roperman resorted to violence.
"Y-You damned elf! H-How dare you deceive me?! Why does an e-elf like you even exist? Why did a bitch like you have to come to me!"
He violently grabbed and shook the hair of the collapsed Alfia before roughly throwing her aside and kicking her relentlessly.
Her once-beautiful skin was stained with dark bruises, and the sound of bones breaking could be heard.
Her elven healing factor quickly repaired the damage, but that only provoked Roperman further.
"Y-You stubborn bitch…! Not even a single groan. Fine. L-Let's see how long you can last!"
Roperman prepared a concoction of aphrodisiacs and potent poisons that could melt a person's ego and personality into liquid.
He mixed them together and administered the cocktail to Alfia without restraint.
It didn't take long for Alfia's mind to begin to melt away.
*
She didn't know how much time had passed.
Her sense of time had vanished long ago.
Her brain, pickled by drugs, Alfia couldn't even lift a finger on her own. The very act of thinking was impossible.
And yet, a single sentence floated faintly in her mind.
—Miss Alfia, I will erase all the pain you've endured.
Who… had said that to her?
She didn't want to forget.
She couldn't forget.
But she couldn't remember.
What it was.
No, there was no need to remember.
Because the pain that had been with her for a lifetime could never disappear.
It's okay.
She was used to the pain.
Perhaps due to the drugs, she couldn't even see properly now.
Something was faintly visible beyond her closing eyelids.
For some reason, the mere sight of it was irritating…
*
Crash!
Mirabelle was thrown roughly to the ground.
She rolled limply across the floor.
"You ill-mannered wench. No food for you tomorrow, either. We'll see how long you can keep up that defiance."
Slam!
The iron door shut.
Once the baron left, the other slaves approached Mirabelle.
Her small body was covered in marks of abuse. Her indigo hair, which Karami had once sculpted and called beautiful, was a tangled mess.
"Are you okay?"
"Why did you have to resist and earn yourself a beating? I understand how you feel, but being stubborn will only make things worse. You could get yourself killed."
Mirabelle had been resisting the baron with all her might.
She would never call him Master.
She struggled desperately to remove the shackles.
Her actions had greatly displeased the baron.
"Just play along a little. You're pretty, so you'll be loved for that alone."
"I… only have one Master," Mirabelle said.
Despite the countless hardships, her will remained unshaken. As if struggling to her feet, she began to pull at the shackles again.
She hated with a passion that this thing, something that wasn't her Master's, was fastened around her neck.
But all it did was add more wounds to her skin.
There was no way her delicate hands, weak from not eating properly, could undo the metal shackles.
"I don't care if you starve, get beaten, or die, but please, just don't cause trouble for the rest of us. The master's anger splashes onto us because of you."
Mirabelle, who had been pulling at the shackles like a woman possessed, slowly shifted her gaze.
"You all… call a person like that 'Master'?"
"Isn't that obvious? He's a noble and we're slaves. What choice do we have but to do what the person who feeds us says?"
Mirabelle looked at them with pity.
If they had met Karami, they wouldn't be like this.
A woman, offended by the pity from a fellow slave of all people, sneered.
"From the way you talk, you must have had a former master. But if you were so precious to him, what are you doing here?"
"…"
"You were abandoned by that master you're so desperately looking for."
Mirabelle froze. Her words had pierced through the very thing Mirabelle had been desperately trying to ignore.
Because she had thought that it might be true.
She had refused her Master's orders multiple times, and not only had she rebelled, but she had even tried to stop him from leaving.
She had earned her Master's hatred.
Perhaps, since he couldn't break the contract, he had given her this terrible punishment instead.
That he had returned to the past and chosen not to save her at all.
That's what Mirabelle thought.
What if everything up to this point was just a delusion born from the trauma of losing her mother and being abandoned by her father…?
She prayed with all her heart that it wasn't true.
*
There was no place in this world where a witch could be at ease.
It was true in the nameless village, and it was true now, sold as a slave and trapped in the baron's mansion.
The Holy Knights, who had been tracking the whereabouts of the disappeared Mirabelle, finally reached the baron.
Since merely protecting a witch was a grave crime, the baron handed Mirabelle over to the Knight Order as if shooing away a ghost.
The town square.
Mirabelle was tied to a wooden stake, surrounded by piles of hay.
A witch hunt. It was the exact same punishment her mother had suffered.
It was the end for an abandoned, unsaved witch.
Fwoosh.
The fire was lit.
The embers spread, and fierce flames engulfed Mirabelle.
The searing heat burned away her desperate hope that this was all a dream, leaving not even a shred of doubt.
Perhaps this was the true liberation Karami had once spoken of.
Through death.
Liberation from this hellish world.
Please, in my next life, let me be born as my Master's slave.
Mirabelle serenely closed her eyes.
The sound of the crackling hay.
The sound of the crowd cheering for the witch's death.
And one other thing.
"Little one. Hmm, was it Mirabelle? Even if this is just a simulation, aren't you a bit too calm about dying?"
A familiar voice.
But the tone didn't match her memory.
Mirabelle opened her eyes.
Floating before her was a single pink fox, its tails fluttering.