Chapter 93 - Chaos

In a drawing room of the imperial palace, Maximilian sat drinking tea, watching the master of the Magic Tower across from him.

Long, curly red hair. Upturned eyes and lips that curved upward at the corners. She had the looks of a beguiling beauty, but Maximilian knew what she was.

An old monster among old monsters, who had lived more than a hundred and twenty years.

“What might be the reason you summoned me?”

The tower master spoke, putting on an air of elegance. Maximilian answered without the slightest loss of composure.

“Now that the festival has begun, I called you here to commend your service.”

“Oh my. And what would that commendation be?”

“You have worked hard.”

“...”

The tower master’s smile froze in place. Even now, Maximilian’s lack of conversational skill had led him to say something she could not make sense of.

Oblivious to her reaction, he was dwelling on his younger brother’s request.

[“Until sunset. Please keep her there just until then.”]

It was a request from the younger brother he had thought would always remain immature. As his elder brother, surely it was only right to grant it.

“Is there anything troubling you?”

At Maximilian’s words, the tower master’s eyes curved into a smile.

“Thanks to the imperial family’s generosity, I always live in abundance, you know?”

“I see.”

Maximilian nodded and continued.

“I saw the items the Magic Tower submitted for auction. There were many fascinating things.”

“Oh, I am so glad they pleased you.”

“Yes. The artificial organs were particularly impressive. I believe we should discuss their possible uses with the healers.”

“They are a creation I am quite proud of.”

A creation she was proud of.

The question of how, exactly, she had perfected that technology... went back down his throat with his tea. His brother’s account was coming to mind.

‘Corpses walking about without organs.’

Was that not a suspicious—and glaringly obvious—connection?

“I am grateful for your constant efforts on behalf of the Empire’s well-being.”

“You flatter me. Ah, if that is all, may I take my leave?”

Maximilian flinched, then went still at her words.

“... Stay a little longer.”

“Is there something else you need?”

“I would like to speak with you a while longer.”

Fortunately, his voice did not shake. The composure he had honed throughout his life as crown prince was serving him well even now.

The tower master studied him. After staring intently and murmuring, “Hmm,” she began to giggle, rose from her seat, and approached him.

She settled onto Maximilian’s thighs. Her hand began to stroke his cheek.

“That sounds as though you wanted this. Was I mistaken?”

Maximilian felt flustered and disgusted—both rare reactions for him.

The thought that she had mistaken his behavior for an attempt to flirt with a monster over a hundred and twenty years old made his skin crawl.

But he could not let it show. Setting down his teacup, he laid his hand over hers on his cheek.

‘Forgive me, my lady.’

As he silently apologized to his fiancée, he said aloud,

“... That depends on how you choose to see it.”

A smile spread so wide across the tower master’s lips that it looked ready to split her face.

“Hmm...”

Watching Maximilian through narrowed eyes, she slowly leaned her head forward. His pupils trembled as though an earthquake had struck, and his entire body tensed.

It was a reaction born of his revulsion at what was about to happen.

He wanted to shove her away and leave that very instant, but he could not bring himself to do it. Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut.

He emptied his thoughts, scattering his reason so that he would feel nothing. What Maximilian felt next was a lick—the touch of a tongue against his earlobe.

His stomach churned. He wanted to vomit. Maximilian gritted his teeth and held it down, goosebumps rising along his spine.

For the Empire. For his brother. As he inwardly cried that he would endure it all, her next words forced his eyes wide open.

“The second prince is terribly curious, isn’t he?”

His heart gave a heavy thud and seemed to drop. The sudden mention of Albrecht had done that to him. Maximilian drew a sharp, empty breath. His head turned stiffly toward the tower master, close enough that their noses touched.

She smiled again, her mouth stretching almost from ear to ear.

“He could have simply pretended not to know.”

Maximilian was not foolish enough to miss the meaning behind those words.

‘... She knew?’

She had noticed. She knew everything—what they were doing, and why he had summoned her today.

Suddenly, Maximilian’s thoughts sharpened.

‘My brother is in danger.’

Before he could regain control of his expression, his face hardened at the thought.

“... You should be worrying about yourself, Your Highness.”

As she spoke, the tower master’s hand slid down his cheek, past his neck, and onto his chest.

Her hand stroked his chest with a deeply seductive motion, then moved lower. Just as Maximilian’s breath stopped—

THUNK!

A horrifying sound of flesh rupturing rang out.

For an instant, all sense of reality vanished, replaced by shock.

Trembling violently, Maximilian lowered his head to look at his abdomen.

“Cough...!”

A bloody cough burst from him.

The tower master’s fist was buried in his belly.

“Mm, really. If only you had been a little prettier, I might have let you live.”

When she pulled her fist from his abdomen, blood gushed out.

“You look far too manly, Your Highness. Not very appetizing.”

PATTER, PATTER.

Maximilian staggered as pain suddenly engulfed him, staring at the tower master.

She rose and walked toward the window, her heels clicking as she hummed.

“It is a festival, after all. We ought to make our fun a little more spectacular, don’t you think?”

He needed to call for the guards just outside the door, but all strength had drained from his body. He did not have the energy.

The last thing Maximilian saw before losing consciousness was flame as red as blood.

* * *

In the cavern exposed beneath the junk shop in the gutter, Bera landed with Renée in his arms. The first thing she did after her feet touched the ground was retch.

“Urgh...!”

“Saintess!”

“I-I’m fi... urgh!”

She retched again. There was no other reason for it—only the stench filling this place. Her hands shook violently, and her legs trembled. She had an idea of what that smell was.

A foul stench of blood and rot. She had never smelled anything so vile in her life, yet the moment it reached her, she understood instinctively.

Covering her mouth, Renée searched for Bera with trembling movements. Before she knew it, her outstretched hand had gripped his collar.

“... Bera.”

“... Yes.”

“Are there... bodies...?”

It was the stench of corpses. Not just one or two, either, but what smelled like at least dozens mingled together.

Bera’s face twisted at her question, and his lips moved.

“Yes. They are lying all over the cavern.”

His gaze swept their surroundings.

Every corpse had its abdomen split open. They must have been left here for quite some time, for patches of decay were visible across their bodies. The blood pooled beneath them had turned pitch-black and swarmed with insects.

Even amid all that, something stood out in particular: the heads resting atop the corpses’ necks.

‘... Anna.’

Anna, as Rohan had called her. A gentle-looking woman with long, straight pink hair. Every corpse bore her face.

More grotesque still, while their bodies rotted away and blood pooled beneath them, those faces remained pristine, without the slightest sign of decay.

What could explain this?

What had this cavern been made for?

As those thoughts continued to occupy him, the others descended into the cavern. The same horror rose on their faces.

“What in the...”

Rohan was the most shaken. His thoughts thrown into turmoil once more, he faltered backward.

Mari and Count Vaishur surveyed the scene with grave expressions, while Albrecht’s face had frozen in shock.

“She’s insane. Are you telling me she committed these atrocities and then went about her days as though nothing had happened?”

Tendons stood out on the hand gripping Pure Blood.

Bera watched him briefly, then resumed piecing his thoughts together.

‘There is no one here.’

He could sense no presence. It was not that he had failed to detect one. There truly was no movement in this cavern apart from their own—unless he counted the faint rustling of insects.

There had to be someone who had supplied the tower master with the serum. It only made sense if that outside party existed.

Bera felt his thoughts growing tangled.

What had he missed? What had been done in this place?

As he wrestled with those questions, he sensed something amiss throughout the cavern.

‘... What if they cleared it out?’

What if all the equipment that had filled this place had been removed?

Bera sharpened his vision and studied the cavern closely.

First, he examined the walls. They were uneven, the bedrock roughly hewn away.

Next came the corpses. Nothing had changed: they were still bodies that had long since begun to rot.

Then he examined the floor. As he studied the ground beneath the bodies, he flinched at what he saw.

“Saintess, a moment.”

Leaving Renée, whom he had been supporting, in Mari’s care, Bera walked over to a pile of six corpses and began to move them aside.

The wet, squelching sensation and the peculiar chill of dead bodies seemed to creep through him.

Ignoring them, he removed every corpse and swept away the pooled blood. Then he saw it.

‘... It’s indented.’

The ground here was noticeably more sunken than elsewhere, as though something had rested upon it.

Only then did Bera understand.

‘They withdrew?’

All the equipment here had been removed, just as it had been from the junk shop above.

And the corpses had been deliberately arranged this way to hide the traces.

Withdrawal. Concealment.

Bera’s body jolted as he combined those two ideas and pieced his thoughts together once more.

‘... They knew we would come.’

They had already known this cavern would be discovered.

His thoughts continued.

‘Then where did they go?’

Judging by the cavern’s size, this could not have been a small operation.

There must have been more of those walking corpses that had guarded the shop above.

The final subject number in the journal had been in the two thousands.

Even if that number had accumulated steadily over the past several years, even if some of those people had been replaced along the way, there ought to be hundreds still remaining.

Surely a movement on that scale—an attempt to leave the Empire—could not have gone unnoticed.

As Bera followed that line of thought, a possibility occurred to him.

‘... What if they haven’t left?’

What if they had not left the area? What if they were still in the capital, hiding throughout the city with a purpose?

Bera felt goosebumps rise all over his body. He shot to his feet.

The strongest fighting force in the capital was here in the gutter. Outside the capital, crowds of tourists from every region packed the area. The tower master and the outside party already knew they had been exposed.

Then the situation that might arise—the choice they might make—

RUMBLE!

The ground shook. Everyone froze, their gazes turning together toward the source of the tremor.

“... That is coming from the center of the capital.”

Albrecht’s words confirmed it.

Attack the capital during the festival. Escape in the ensuing chaos. Leave no one with the resources to pursue them.

Having reached that conclusion, Bera realized what they would target in the attack.

He remembered where the tower master was now.

“... The crown prince.”

They would target the crown prince. Even after the capital dealt with the disaster, it would be unable to act rashly. Internal turmoil would tie its hands and buy them time.

Bera whipped his head around. Looking straight at Albrecht, he shouted with urgency in his voice.

“His Highness the crown prince is in danger!”

... They would use the chaos to assassinate him.