The Betrayers' Gathering #6
He had vanished without a single trace, then reappeared without a sound or whisper of rumor.
His trail had been as hazy as a ghost’s, and at its end a different man stood revealed.
Even when he had been coughing up blood and screaming in the cathedral, he had not yet carried the murderous will to turn a blade on people.
Castro felt as though his entire body were being torn apart from the knife driven through his instep, yet he still glared up at Adonis with suspicious eyes. Pain, bewilderment, and a boiling urge to kill churned inside him.
“Even in this state, the first thing you think of is killing me? Don’t you think that’s a little much?”
Adonis muttered as if he could hardly believe it, staring into the eyes of Castro, who knelt half-prostrate with his foot still pierced. The kneeling posture looked uncannily like a knight receiving his accolade—so bizarre it almost seemed as though Castro were kneeling in submission before Adonis himself.
“You… you bastard! If you left like a loser, you should’ve just crawled into some corner and stayed there! Why the hell did you suddenly show up and—!”
“It’s unfair. I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong that I had to live like that. The ones who actually did wrong were someone else, so why was I the one treated like a criminal?”
“You damn bastard…”
When Castro ran out of words and shut his mouth, the corner of Adonis’s lips curved in a thin smile. The man still showed no intention of reflecting on his own sins; Adonis found that quietly reassuring. Even if he used his hands, he would feel not the slightest twinge of guilt.
“Even if the tendons are cut, Isabel’s here, so she can heal them, right? If not, pouring potions on them should work fine.”
What was he trying to say?
Castro felt a chill race down his spine as he met Adonis’s eerie gaze. The man was smiling the way he always used to, yet the coldness radiating from him was denser than ever, and his voice was every bit as frigid as his expression.
“What… what are you planning to do?”
“What else? I only came to declare war today, so I’ll just cut the tendons. Looks like today’s not the day you die.”
After spitting out those cryptic words, Adonis immediately smashed his fist into Castro’s jaw. The kneeling posture made swinging a punch almost too convenient.
“Uh… augh…?”
A solid blow to the jaw rattled the brain so hard that clear thought became impossible. Castro was no exception; his mind spun past dizziness into pure blankness, as though he had regressed into a wailing infant who could only cry without words.
Seizing the opening, Adonis sharpened the nails of his right hand into pointed, razor edges, then flicked his hand lightly and severed the tendons behind both of Castro’s ankles.
It was the pain of flesh tearing and vessels being sliced open, yet that very agony snapped Castro’s reeling consciousness back into place. When Adonis yanked free the knife still buried in the instep, Castro collapsed onto the floor with a wet slap. The blade that had been propping him up was gone, and the ankle tendons that should have supported his weight had been cut clean through.
“Ugh… uwaaaaah!!”
The moment his senses returned, Castro screamed until his throat tore. Just as Adonis had once done, he howled loud enough to spit blood. Thanks to the artifact’s effect, however, no one heard the voice—except for the three women still lost in pleasure-drugged sleep.
“Mmm… what’s going on…?”
Vivian was the first to wake. She rubbed her sleepy eyes, glanced around, then went wide-eyed in horror.
Castro crawling across the floor with his ankle tendons severed. The boyish Adonis looking down at him with a smile. Dark crimson blood dried and clinging stubbornly to the tip of a blade. It was a landscape straight out of a nightmare.
“Castro!”
“Ugh… uhhh…”
Startled, Vivian called his name and scrambled down from the bed. Castro turned his head with a twisted scowl. The searing pain climbing from his feet kept his face locked in a permanent grimace, yet he had adapted enough to the agony that he could at least follow conversation.
“Long time no see, Vivian. How’ve you been? When I heard the World Tree kicked you out, I thought you’d be half-dead, but you look like you’re managing pretty well.”
Adonis greeted her first with a smile. Vivian muttered in a voice thick with terror. One look at Castro’s condition was enough to tell her exactly how this was going to go.
“Y-you… why are you here? You said you gave up the territory and the title and left. So why did you suddenly… where have you been, and why come looking for us like this…?”
“I just… wandered around here and there. Then living like that got too unfair, so I came. Just to see your faces once.”
Still smiling, Adonis answered while stepping forward with the bloodied knife in hand.
A Hero was still a Hero.
Vivian had never felt that truth so bone-deep as she did now. Of everyone here, only Castro might have stood a chance against the Hero—and look at the state he was in. Weaponless and unable to call her spirits, Vivian was nothing more than a plaything.
“It’s good to see you like this.”
Adonis spoke as if he truly meant it, then snatched Vivian’s arm and hurled her to the floor. Her white body, still slick with filthy fluids, rolled across the boards and came to a stop right in front of Castro’s face.
“Kyaaaaah!?”
A scream of pain and shock burst from Vivian’s lips. Her skin scraped raw against the floor, leaving red marks. Compared to Castro’s severed tendons the wounds were trivial, yet her contorted expression rivaled his. It was living proof that no matter how much someone else suffered, it never hurt quite as much as one’s own little scrapes.
Thinking exactly that, Adonis walked over and sat down on Vivian’s back as if it were the most natural seat in the world.
“No way… Adonis?”
In the meantime Olivier and Isabel had woken and sat up, eyes round with shock. He looked gaunt and somehow faded, yet there was no mistaking him—it was the Hero Adonis. Even if he was doing things the old Adonis would never have done.
“Ah. Long time no see, everyone. How’ve you all been?”
Adonis greeted them cheerfully, as though reuniting with old friends after a long separation. The two women only turned deathly pale and froze. He had already seized the arm of the Vivian he was sitting on, bent it backward, and twisted.
“Kyaaaaah!!”
A sickening crack rang out as the arm wrenched around. Vivian screamed on cue. One arm, then the other. With both arms bent the wrong way behind her, pain was inevitable.
Castro, enraged at the sight, shoved against the floor with both arms and lunged—
“Ugh… uwaaah…”
A heavy thud of impact. The sound of a nose breaking. Castro’s eyes rolled back and he went limp on the floor. Adonis, still seated on Vivian, had simply kicked him full in the face with brutal force. Not enough to kill, but more than enough to break bone and snuff out consciousness.
“P-please forgive me…! Please, please…!”
Pinned under Adonis’s weight, Vivian somehow managed to crane her head upward and beg. Her spine was arched like a crescent moon—a ridiculous posture that only made her desperation more pitiful.
Adonis ignored those pleading eyes and gently stroked the hands bent behind her back. His touch was as delicate as an appraiser examining an ancient relic.
But then—
A tiny sound, like a tendon snapping, rang clearly through Vivian’s body.
In that instant the delicate fingers looked more vicious than anything in the world.
“Ah… aaaaagh!!”
The sensation of having one’s fingernails ripped out while still alive. An unknown agony most people would never experience in a lifetime—yet for Vivian it was reality. Sharper and more vivid than any pain she had ever known, the kind that would burn behind closed eyelids forever.
“Hmm… does it hurt a lot? Sorry. It’s my first time, so I’m pretty clumsy. As a sort of apology, I should finish pulling them out quickly.”
“W-what are you—aaaagh!!”
Adonis tilted his head with a look of mild embarrassment and yanked out the remaining nails. Vivian threw her head back and shrieked. Three nails from her right hand had come free at once; her pretty face was a mess of tears and snot. Ugly and filthy—and therefore a face that made the pain all too easy to imagine.
Olivier and Isabel, who had been watching in frozen silence, suddenly realized the danger and scrambled off the bed toward the exits. Olivier headed for the terrace window; Isabel for the door. For two people who hadn’t planned a thing, the move was remarkably calculated and cunning. If one of them was caught, the other might still escape.
Yet neither of them made it outside the room.
Isabel was already pressing her fingers to her own crushed ankles, frantically trying to heal them. Olivier’s body was rolling across the floor right beside the wailing, nail-less Vivian. Adonis had risen the instant the two women started to run and stopped them both.
Crazy bastard. Rolling on the floor, Olivier clamped her mouth shut as she took in how completely Adonis had changed. His actions were so vicious and so swift that she almost wondered whether this was really the same Hero. The whole situation felt like a delusion—too unbelievable to be real.
“Ah… aah…”
In the meantime Adonis finished ripping out every last fingernail from Vivian’s ten fingers. She foamed at the mouth and her eyes rolled back. After tasting the raw agony of having her nails torn free, it was no wonder her mind had snapped.
Adonis stared blankly at the bloody nails filling his palm, then carefully arranged them in a neat row on the crown of the unconscious Vivian’s head. The gesture was as careful as laying tiles on a floor—and that very care made it all the more terrifying. Displaying the bloodstained nails so openly sent chills down the spine.
“Now then… next is Olivier’s turn, right?”
Crack! Adonis stomped down on the top of Olivier’s head hard enough to fracture bone. She bit her lip and groaned. Her face was twisted enough to convey the pain, yet she somehow managed not to scream. Occupational hazard: she had been tortured more than once or twice in her career as a thief.
Instead she turned her head sideways and stared up at Adonis with eyes full of dread. The pain was bad enough, but she could already imagine all too clearly what he planned to do next.
“I-I’m sorry! Just once, please forgive me just this once! I’ll do whatever you say, anything, so please…!”
She showed no thought of avenging the fallen Castro, nor any anger over Vivian’s suffering. Only her own body mattered. She was not the devoted type who would protect a male who failed to guarantee a safe breeding environment; she was simply selfish by nature. Back when she had turned her back on Adonis she had been head-over-heels for Castro and had gladly obeyed his orders. Once this moment passed she might well start fawning again as if nothing had happened—but not right now.
Adonis reflected once more on just how selfish a woman Olivier was, then lightly twisted her bronze-skinned arms. If he used full strength the bones would not merely break—the arms would tear free entirely—so he had to hold back.
“Aaaagh?!”
In the end Olivier could not endure and unleashed the scream she had been holding in. After that the dam broke; she kept screaming without pause until every fingernail from both hands had been pulled out and laid neatly before her eyes.
Adonis left Olivier curled up and beginning to sob, then walked over to Isabel, who was still trembling under the bed. She seemed wholly absorbed in repairing her ruined ankles, yet the moment her eyes met Adonis’s she began to shake violently.
“Ah, p-please… can’t you just stop? You’re the kind Hero, right? Hmm?”
Even while trembling in terror, Isabel forced her voice into the gentlest tone she could manage. She subtly laced it with Holy Power, trying to stir affection and guilt. Hoping the soft-hearted Adonis of old would return.
But that Adonis had already been dead for a long time.
Isabel did not know it, and so she failed to realize that every action she took now was completely useless. Just like the other women, right up until the moment all ten of her fingernails were ripped out.
“Ah… aughhh…”
The women, arms twisted behind their backs and every fingernail gone, crawled across the floor with drool hanging from their mouths. Between the pain of flesh being torn away and the nightmare reality they were living, they had no room left even to think of escape.
Adonis looked down at the half-ruined women and the man lying unconscious with a clear boot-print stamped across his face, then slowly rose to his feet. The gentle curve still lingered at the corners of his mouth, making the sight all the more chilling.
“I’ll come again next time. Take care of yourselves until then.”
In a bright voice he left behind that single, nightmarish farewell, then vanished without a trace—together with the small tower he had set up on the floor.
Like the faint smoke of a morning campfire that rises and disappears.