One Hundred Melts
Sizzle!
"Mmmmph!"
With his pressure points sealed so he could not open his mouth, Horsem's eyes bulged as he let out continuous, agonized groans.
And no wonder—his legs were currently submerged in lava.
"I didn't realize, but this melts slower than I expected."
"Mmmmph!"
"What was that? Oh. You want me to heal you? Fine."
Great Heal
A soft shimmer of light washed over him.
"Mmmph!!!"
As the legs that had been reduced to bare bone regenerated, Horsem screamed. This was already the eighth healing—which meant the act of melting his legs in lava had already been repeated eight times.
"What's the big deal with this much pain? I've still got ninety-two more to go."
"Mmmph!"
"I hear the number of dwarves you killed topped a hundred. I'd love to repeat this over a thousand times, but I'm the soft-hearted type, so I can't go that far… I'll just melt you about a hundred times and then kill you."
"…"
Hearing Do-ha's words, Canteas shook his head. Soft-hearted? Where, exactly? The man was melting someone alive in lava and healing him just to do it again.
"You betrayed even your family and slaughtered your own kin just for power? What good did that even do you?"
Do-ha himself had fought gods for the chance to return to his family—to his grandfather's side. He would have gladly thrown away every scrap of power he possessed if it meant going home. And yet this creature had done this.
"Didn't you feel any guilt when your own people burned to death?"
Sizzle.
Rumble.
The healing finished. Do-ha dunked him back into the lava, and Horsem's body shuddered with a face twisted in agony.
"How is it? That same burning feeling. The dwarves who were burned at the stake probably suffered even worse."
With a casual flick of his hand, Do-ha lifted Horsem free of the molten rock.
"No need to glare like that. I'll heal you again."
Magic flared. A soft pop of light followed.
Thirty minutes passed like that.
After a number of repetitions no one could count anymore, the relentless torture left Horsem's mind completely blank. He had not gone mad—Do-ha had taken measures to prevent that—but the deliberate rests Do-ha kept giving him left him staring into nothing.
"Alright. About five minutes of rest? Let's go again."
"Mmm… mmm…"
At Do-ha's words, tears rolled down Horsem's face. He would rather the torture never stop. Why keep giving him these little breaks that let him feel relief, only to snatch it away?
Footsteps approached.
"Just a moment…"
"Hey, old man. You shouldn't be moving yet."
Canteas scolded Kael as the dwarf king set a hand on his shoulder. After days of starvation and torture, Kael had only received rough healing; he was nowhere near ready to walk around.
"Do-ha… give me… a moment of your time."
"Yes."
At Kael's request, Do-ha stepped aside. He had known the dwarf king had recovered enough to come here long before this.
"Horsem."
"…"
At Kael's call, Horsem turned his head away. Even under torture, he had no desire to speak.
"Why did you do it… why…"
Kael's fist trembled. He understood being tortured and imprisoned—that was simply what happened to the previous king in a coup. What he could not understand was everything else.
"Why burn even your own kin… what crime had they committed…"
Why not simply deal with him alone? Why slaughter innocent dwarves so cruelly—people whose only sin had been living diligently day after day?
"Hmph."
Still facing away, Horsem snorted. Even on the brink of death, the old man insisted on preaching.
"I'll give you one more chance."
"?!"
"Live on… atoning for the dwarves you killed."
At Kael's words, Horsem's eyes went wide. Was he actually going to forgive him?
Do-ha's hand settled on Kael's shoulder.
"That can't happen."
There was no world in which Do-ha would simply stand by and watch.
A flick of the wrist. A rush of air.
"Mmmph!!"
Do-ha moved his hand, and Horsem's body plummeted into the lava. Until now only his legs had been submerged; this time the molten rock swallowed him up to his navel.
Sizzle.
"Grrraaaah!"
"Kael. Are you in your right mind?"
"Do… Do-ha."
Do-ha frowned as he looked at the dwarf king. Forgive a vermin like that? Creatures of that sort never lived in atonement no matter how many chances they were given. If Horsem had possessed a heart capable of atonement in the first place, he never would have burned his own kin so savagely. Do-ha was certain of it: give Horsem another chance, and someday that chance would become a blade driven straight through Kael's heart.
"Snap out of it. Giving trash like that another chance is the same as bringing garbage you already threw out back into the house."
In the end Do-ha sealed Kael's pressure points and put him to sleep.
"Canteas. Take him to a room and lay him down."
"Yeah. Got it."
Canteas lifted the unconscious Kael.
A soft whoosh of movement, then silence.
"Hah… hah…"
Horsem, hauled free of the lava, gasped for breath. The pain was far greater now than when only his legs had melted.
"You must have hoped, even for a moment, that you might live?"
"Mmmmph!"
"But I have no intention of letting you live. Of course I understand Kael's feelings."
Kael had always been soft-hearted. That very nature was why every dwarf trusted and followed him. And with his son recently dead, Horsem was the only family he had left—of course he wanted to spare him. That was Kael's wish. Do-ha felt not the slightest desire to grant it.
"When Kael told you to live in atonement, your eyes lit up… Heh. You didn't actually think you were going to survive, did you?"
"Mmmmph!!!"
Watching Do-ha's bitter smile, Horsem finally broke into a wail.
"Alright. Let's start again."
With another flick of his hand, Do-ha spent the next several hours maximizing Horsem's agony before finishing him by cutting the body apart piece by piece.
"Ugh. You completely diced him up."
Canteas, returning to Do-ha's side, shook his head at the scattered pieces of Horsem. As expected of that madman. He had known Do-ha would never let Horsem die cleanly.
"Is it all over now?"
"Almost."
"Almost?"
Do-ha looked off in a particular direction, and Canteas turned to follow his gaze. What he was staring at were the dead nobles.
"Ah. Worried about the aftermath of killing those guys?"
The corpses of the nobles Do-ha had beaten to death early on were still lying there. Before dealing with Horsem, he had thoroughly smashed every last one of them. The nobles gathered here had all been hostile to Kael, so there had been no reason to spare them—and more importantly, they were the ones who had fanned this entire disaster into existence, so Do-ha had simply killed them.
"Would I worry about something like that?"
"Sheesh, of course not. Then Dimerof's the one who'll have a headache. If it's not that, why are you staring at them?"
"Wondering how long he'll keep that up."
"Huh?"
"That one over there. Duke Gern."
Do-ha tilted his chin toward the figure of Duke Gern, still lying face-down as if dead.
"Gern? What about him?"
"He's not dead. I'm just curious how long he'll keep playing corpse."
"Huh??"
At Do-ha's words, Canteas jolted in shock. When they had first arrived, he had checked the nobles' conditions himself. Every single one of them had been dead with every bone in their body shattered—yet Gern was alive?
"He's probably planning to run the moment we leave… but he can't escape my eyes."
"Is he really alive?"
"Want me to prove it? Throw him in the lava like Horsem and we'll know for sure. I was going to dump all these corpses in the lava anyway."
In that instant—
Whoosh!
Thud.
The face-down Gern sprang up like a coiled spring and leapt far away.
"Damn it. How did you notice?"
"What?! He's really alive??"
Watching Gern bounce up like a spring, Canteas's face filled with astonishment. How was that man still alive? More than that—how had he fooled Canteas's own eyes?
"How did you figure it out…"
"The guards at the castle entrance, the soldiers inside—the magic hanging on them wasn't ordinary. And these idiotic nobles alone weren't enough to pull off a coup. So I figured someone else had to be involved."
"Damn it, it was almost finished and you had to interfere…"
"Black Veil's been researching hard, huh? Real progress—enough to fool even Canteas with a death act."
"Y-y-you… how do you know that…"
The moment the words Black Veil left Do-ha's mouth, Gern's pupils shook violently—far more violently than when Baek Do-ha had first appeared.
"You've been a Black Veil elder for a long time."
Black Veil. A criminal organization of black mages. Black magic towers existed, of course, but Black Veil was cut from a very different cloth. They would do anything for the sake of black magic, and if they needed corpses they did not hesitate to murder. They did not kill purely for sport, which made their reputation somewhat ambiguous—but they were still a criminal organization, no question.
"Did you think I wouldn't know?"
"Then why leave us alone…?"
"Because I needed you."
Back when Do-ha had sat on the imperial throne, he had actually intended to wipe Black Veil out completely. The master of the black magic tower had been under constant stress because of them. Even so, he had left them alone for one reason: Black Veil cleaned up members of the Demon God Cult with exquisite thoroughness. More precisely, they disposed of the cultists' corpses with terrifying efficiency. Like rats that fed on the dead, the moment a cultist's body appeared, Black Veil snatched it away in the blink of an eye.
In war, the aftermath was always the real problem. Leave the corpses and plague or vermin would spread; they had to be cleared as quickly as possible. That cleanup cost an enormous amount of money. Some nations spent every coin they had won through victory just on disposal. That was why people said even war required money.
"But you cleaned those corpses so neatly. That's why I left you alone."
"…We're treated as nothing more than that…"
"That's exactly your level."
Crunch.
At Do-ha's words, Gern ground his teeth. It was true they had always rushed excitedly toward any corpse they found, but they still had achievements of their own. To have all of it dismissed so completely…
"So will you spare us now?"
"No chance."
"Why? You said you left us alone, and now you're going to deal with us?"
"To be precise, I'm only dealing with you."
Do-ha pointed at Gern with a bitter smile. As he had said, he would leave the Black Veil organization itself alone. The benefits of keeping them around far outweighed the crimes they committed, and the current emperor, Dimerof, left them be for the same reason.
"But I can't leave you. You helped drive Artlein into this state."
"…I… I hold an important position in Black Veil…"
"It'll run just fine without you, so don't worry."
"Damn it!"
Magic flared!
Realizing there was no escape, Gern finally unleashed his magic.
"Do-ha! Give me that guy's corpse! I need to research it."
As Do-ha prepared to move, Canteas spoke up urgently. Gern had definitely been dead with every bone in his body shattered. Yet somehow he was perfectly fine now. There was clearly something here that Canteas did not know.
"Got it."
Power roared. The ground trembled.
"Damn it. These weren't the ones I was going to use here…"
With a sigh, Gern spread his black magic, and red skeletons began to rise from the magic circle.