Chapter 96. I Shall Follow Your Command. My Lord.
Chapter 96. I Shall Follow Your Command. My Lord.
After I lost consciousness, the atmosphere of the mansion shifted completely.
The lights were off, so darkness lurked in every corner, but it wasn't only the guards — even the servants who should have been asleep were awake, roaming the halls.
All of them were under the mental domination of the Nightmare demons led by Garbonia, mobilized to block any interference in whatever was happening inside the mansion.
By then, Katarina had been targeted too, and she'd had no choice but to cut down everyone who swarmed her just to carve a path forward.
Innocent servants, of course.
Even the comrades she had shared every hardship with until now.
"You killed the subordinates who came with you, with your own hands."
"...If I hadn't, I would not have made it this far."
Katarina stared bitterly down at the blood staining her body.
Though it wouldn't have been strange for her to burst into tears at that moment, she simply accepted the first-aid I was administering in silence.
It was nothing more than the minor care of applying bandages and ointment stocked in the guest room, but even that would serve as a stopgap.
Fortunately, her wounds were not deep. Though I had no idea what would come next.
"Are you all right, Dave?"
Katarina asked cautiously while receiving treatment.
My hands must have been visibly trembling as I worked on her injuries, and that worried her.
I answered her with a sheepish smile.
"...I can't say I feel great."
Dealing with Morgana was one thing, but because she died inside my consciousness, it felt as though her power had seeped into me.
Compared to Ymir's drugs, it felt like an unrefined foreign force clinging to my mind.
That disgusting sensation brought on dizziness and nausea, but the real problem was the situation was too dire to rest.
-Thud! Thud!
A heavy pounding echoed from the door of the room we'd hastily hidden in.
The mind-controlled humans outside were trying to force their way in with sheer power.
Their strength was one issue, but their numbers likely reached several dozen.
Naturally, breaking through their encirclement alone was impossible for me.
"...Dave."
Katarina, however, was a different matter.
"Give me your orders."
She had operated as the field commander of the Anti-Human Coalition and survived countless battles. At the very least, she could create an opening to escape this mansion.
Ideally, the right choice would be to rely on her help to get out of here together and plan for the future.
If I only considered my safety and hers...
Yes, wasn't the situation far more serious than I'd first thought?
Everyone in the mansion was our enemy, and Garbonia, the one pulling the strings, possessed mind control abilities that were leagues beyond my own.
I had managed to trap and deal with Morgana without even intending to, but expecting Garbonia to be handled that easily was a stretch.
"Katarina."
Even so, in such a desperate situation, I could not back down.
Because if I missed this moment, I would truly be walking a path of no return.
"While you were away from headquarters, that bastard probably wrecked the Anti-Human Coalition beyond any hope of recovery. You anticipated that, didn't you?"
"...Yes."
Katarina must have felt the same.
Seeing the vengeful glint sharpen in her eyes above her mask, I steeled my resolve and extended my hand toward her.
"Even so, if you'll still stand with me... For the sake of revenge against the bitch who did this to us, will you use that power to help me save them?"
Under the justified reason of revenge.
To achieve my own goal of simply wanting to save those girls.
"I will follow you."
Katarina clasped my hand firmly, pulling herself up from her seat.
At that instant, the exit burst open with a deafening Craaash!, and shadows surged through the breach, charging at Katarina and me.
"A... a woman."
"There's a man, too!"
"Defile them! Defile them all!"
The haggard servants of the mansion rushed in with blank minds.
In their eyes, only a single thing flickered: a raw, sexual urge to violate their targets.
-Shlak!
A flash of light sliced through the darkness, and amid the spray of blood, a thrown dagger streaked forward, piercing precisely through brows and hearts.
-Shrrrk!
Chains followed immediately after, dancing through empty air before snapping taut without warning, dragging corpses along.
As the off-balance bodies clogged the path, Katarina slipped out from the shadows and weaved between them, her eyes glinting sharply.
With daggers wedged between every finger, she aimed them at her targets without exception.
-Shing!
The mana-infused blades scattered outward, mercilessly tearing through flesh. Those exposed to the attack went limp without exception, and soon only an eerie silence hung over the space.
"...Let's go."
A battle—no, calling it a massacre would not be an exaggeration—that unfolded in a mere instant.
But the fact that I was not part of it brought me a measure of relief.
In this moment, without the help of the hero party, she was the perfect ally, gifted with an innate talent for fighting in darkness.
"A human... over there..."
The problem was that she was the only one who could fight, while our enemies consisted of everyone in this mansion.
"It's a woman! A woman!"
"Eliminate the intruders!"
"No, defile her! Ram it into every single hole she has!"
We couldn't even afford to whittle down their numbers through direct combat.
For now, our best bet was to flee as efficiently as possible while heading toward our destination.
With that judgment made, I boldly rushed down the corridor. Katarina, fending off our pursuers from behind, began to ask me cautiously.
"Have you decided where we're going?"
"...Yeah. I can feel it."
"Feel it? What do you mean?"
"I explained the situation earlier, but right now, I've succeeded in pulling Morgana inside me and absorbing her. What I'm sensing now is an energy similar to what I absorbed."
I still had no idea how Morgana's power would affect me, but for the moment, it seemed I had gained the ability to track others of her kind.
A unique sense belonging to Nightmare demons, like a smell or a sound... Come to think of it, Ymir had mentioned that the method the demonic race uses to dominate minds is similar to the "pheromones" used by ants and bees.
Yes, perhaps I had now acquired a constitution that reacts sensitively to the pheromones emitted by demons.
"If we follow that energy, we should be able to reach where the Nightmare demons are."
"That's right, though it's little more than a rough guide..."
-Slash!
The moment my pursuers had their limbs carved away by dagger strikes,
I stepped onto the staircase leading upward. Sensing the presence of people on the floor above, I paused for a moment to steady my breath.
"...In practice, chasing after only that trail is no different from throwing ourselves into a hopeless, reckless battle. Since we have no idea what awaits us, it might be wiser to retreat and plan for another day."
Perhaps I was letting my selfishness drag her—a woman who showed me absolute trust—into a meaningless fight.
"Even so, Katarina, do you still intend to follow me as I charge into such a reckless fight?"
"I will follow you."
I had said it aloud, unable to bear the weight of that responsibility, but she simply answered firmly, as if my misgivings didn't matter at all.
"As I am now... there is no other choice for me but to trust in you."
"...I see."
Yes, when I thought about it, she had lived a life just as bleak as mine, hiding for her entire existence.
A fate decided from birth by blood: to betray humanity.
But the father who led her onto that path had died in an accident, and she, too immature to have inherited everything he had, was shackled by the responsibility of taking over the remnants of his organization.
And in the middle of all that, the entire organization had been toyed with by a single demon bitch, and she had been forced to kill her own comrades with her own hands.
For Katarina, pushed to the absolute brink, I—the person who had watched her father from the closest vantage point—must have seemed like the only savior.
A life chased and cornered, forcing her to desperately cling to even a hopeless, rotten lifeline.
Even if ruin waited at its end, accepting it with resolve was the only choice left to her.
"There's much I want to say, but all of that will have to wait until after we survive."
If that was the case, my role was not to feel guilt toward her.
It was to live up to those expectations, and simply play the role of the "lord who shows her the path she must walk."
"Katarina! Eliminate every last one of the bastards blocking my path!"
"I shall carry out your orders. My Lord."
-Craaack!!
A spray of blood erupted as we ascended the stairs.
Katarina led me past the wall of corpses she had created. She sprinted down the hallway, kicked open the door at the end, and laid bare the scene inside.
What I found there was a girl, collapsed.
And two Nightmare demons, in the middle of doing something to that girl.
"Wh-what the hell. You two. How did you get in here...?"
"Wait! I can feel Morgana's power coming from that man!"
The moment the Nightmare demons looked past Katarina and saw me enter the room, they recoiled in shock. Immediately, they raised their guard and began to gather power into their bodies.
"Y-you bastard. What the hell did you do to Morgana?!"
"If you don't start talking right now, I'll turn your mind into a vegetable—"
But whatever those bastards felt meant nothing to me.
No, it was utterly abhorrent.
Because my eyes could clearly see exactly what they had been doing before I arrived.
"You..."
Heira.
The girl I had wounded was laid on the floor, and I could see her being eroded by the power they were emitting.
"What the hell are you doing to her...?"
They were probably doing the exact same thing Morgana had tried to do to me.
They wouldn't be doing anything physical, but if left alone, she would become a complete mental wreck... and in the end, just like the humans I'd encountered up until now, she'd be reduced to a puppet that simply followed the orders of whoever had poured their magic into her.
Yes, unlike Serika and Ymir.
The two of them had value as members of the hero party, so they would be handled specially. But Heira, unlike them, did not follow the party's destiny.
From their perspective, she was nothing more than livestock to be handled however they pleased, just like me.
"...Uh, uhh?"
"What is that guy? What the— Gurk!"
The instant I recognized how they treated her, a violent torrent of energy rushed out from my body and began to gradually encroach on the room.
Its density felt thicker than usual, probably because I had absorbed Morgana.
I didn't know what influence that power would have on me, or how to even use it, but in this moment, the amplified force was reacting to my emotions, thrashing wildly.
Yes, the Nightmare demons' faces began to turn increasingly pale, as if they could barely endure even that alone.
"That guy! Something's wrong with him!"
"It's not weird, he's dangerous! For now, run!!"
Unable to withstand my power, the Nightmare demons fled from the spot.
Katarina, who had been holding back the humans swarming at the entrance, prepared to throw a dagger the moment she saw the Nightmare demons fleeing.
"Should I chase them?"
"No, we don't have the luxury. Katarina, keep guarding the entrance!"
Yes, right now, checking on the girl those bastards had been toying with took priority over slaughtering those pieces of filth.
With that point made clear, I immediately approached the collapsed Heira.
"...Heira."
A young girl who didn't even bear the destiny of the hero party.
To save the girl I had merely met by chance, dragged into this situation because of me.
"Heira!! Snap out of it, Heira!!"
Kneeling beside her, I prepared to pour my own power into stripping away the force that bound her consciousness.
To free her from a nightmare that was nothing like mine... a nightmare crafted over a span of a hundred long years.