"As you command."
Jeremy raised the horn-shaped wine glass. It contained grape wine laced with mandrake powder. Mandrake—commonly known as mandragora—contained a compound that induced hallucinations. They had refined it into a powder that could be dissolved in wine for consumption.
It was supposedly the most profitable product alchemists in this world peddled. It could be used as a narcotic, and naturally, it could serve as an anesthetic as well. Jeremy must have dissolved a rather generous amount of powder into the wine.
"Egh… ughhh."
Daisy drank the wine in agony. Whether "drank" was even the right word was debatable—half of it never made it past her lips and dribbled sideways along her jawline. Jeremy watched the sight with a wide grin.
"This is an anesthetic, you know. If you don't take it, you'll be the only one hurting, right?"
"……"
"Flesh will tear open and blood will flow without end. I won't take responsibility."
Daisy stared at Jeremy with a blank expression. The liquid trickling from her mouth diminished slightly. Even so, her stomach had long since blown past its limit—there was simply no way she could keep all the wine down. Considering how much potion she had already swallowed, she ought to have vomited it all back up by now.
Next, Jeremy lit the incense candles. A thin, ashen smoke began to curl lazily upward.
"Honestly, you should consider yourself blessed. When I was your age, we didn't even have things like this."
Five or six incense candles ringed the bed. These, too, reportedly served as both hallucinogenic and anesthetic agents, fashioned from medicinal herbs that grew only in the Demon Realm's Great Ring of Hell. Jeremy grumbled while adjusting the candle flames.
"If a patient died of shock during the procedure, that was simply the end of it. Half of my six colleagues kicked the bucket before they even got their names on an assassin's roster. Ugh… how much does all this even cost?"
She complained in grand fashion, yet no particular emotion came through in her voice. She was a cold, calculating assassin, as always. Perhaps Jeremy's habit of laughing too hard and overexaggerating every expression was nothing more than a desperate struggle to recreate lost emotions through outward appearance alone.
"……"
I downed the wine.
After we returned from subjugating two Goblin villages, the baron had been treating us with even greater hospitality. This was wine received as a tribute gift. The fine liquor, which should have been incomparably sweet, tasted unbearably bitter.
Now a ten-year-old girl was about to be dissected before my eyes. Her heart would be laid bare. All so she could be made into my slave—solely because of a single possibility: that she might one day pose a threat to me. It was sheer madness.
No. This was no mere possibility!
This is the world where <Dungeon Attack> was transported as-is... A world that revolves around the Hero above all else. That child is destined to become the Hero. Look at the fact that the quest didn't break even after Andromalius died. If that isn't proof that fate doesn't change so easily, I don't know what is!
The minimum safety measure, yes. This is the minimum safety measure...
"Excuse me, Lord Dantalion?"
"...Ah."
My reply came late, lost in thought. The bizarre, shifting scent of the incense was completely coating my nostrils. The incense's effects seemed to be gradually taking hold.
When I snapped back to awareness, Jeremy was standing there with a surgical knife in hand, looking my way. The operation had already begun without my noticing.
"Nn... ha, nngh..."
Daisy, bound to the bed, let out a stream of moans. Her bare skin was splitting red. The eyes that had been staring ahead with clarity had gone hazy and lost all focus. Saliva was drooling in large amounts from the corner of her mouth. The girl had lost all control over her own body.
Even as the incense smoke stung fiercely, Jeremy alone remained as calm as ever.
"This is also quite a powerful hallucinogen. It's tough without immunity. Since you're the Demon Lord, there shouldn't be any aftereffects, but you've seen enough by now, so why don't you step outside?"
Jeremy's voice sounded like it was coming from far away. I shook my head like a flopping fish. Even the voice coming from my own mouth sounded ever so slightly distant.
"No. I'll watch until the end."
I felt it was my duty. I couldn't explain why, but I was absolutely certain that I could not leave this place now.
Jeremy nodded and turned back around. The surgical knife moved.
"Ha, nn..."
"Wow. Lord Dantalion, this kid is no joke? The mana from the potion is manifesting and it's incredibly dense. No, I've never seen mana this dense in anyone... she's practically a monster. My goodness."
"Kgh... nnkh, haghk..."
"Despite being a child, the mana already has a will dwelling within it. It's trying to protect its master. Wow, this is insane. So it really is true that some people are just born different. The old geezers at any mana tower would have their eyes pop out of their heads. What on earth did you eat growing up to turn out like this? I wouldn't mind getting a bite of whatever that was."
Jeremy kept chattering away about something. He was probably trying to keep Daisy from losing her mind by deliberately talking to her. In contrast to his busy mouth, Jeremy's hands moved with precision and care, cutting and prying apart the girl's flesh.
"Thanks to the mana, you wouldn't have caught so much as a minor illness, let alone any plague. Skin's nice and fair too. Too bad, though."
Words and hands moved to different rhythms. Time before his eyes crawled along like a silent film.
"For now, regret being born with mana coursing through your veins. It's making this surgery incredibly difficult, hehe. Stay focused. If you're not careful, you might actually die."
A flood of dark crimson liquid spilled across the girl's pale skin. Daisy was now struggling even to breathe. Moans seeped ceaselessly from her lungs.
"Hhck— ugh, ah… hhaaaah! Ahh! Hh, ka…."
A scream rang loud in his ears. White flesh, red clumps, thick smoke, an overpoweringly intense fragrance with the faint tinge of blood woven through it….
What he felt looking at the girl writhing in agony was not pity.
It was merely… strange. Grotesque and peculiar.
Come to think of it, it was truly bizarre. Captain Hawk, Jack Orland, Leaf, Kurz Schleiermacher — they had all died writhing in moans and pain. Why did people have to suffer? Why couldn't the pain be a little more… cleaner — that is, why couldn't it at least look more pleasant? Why did it have to be pain, of all things?
His thoughts were growing duller by the moment. His head was spinning. The fragrance had seeped all the way into his skull.
Why do you try to kill me? I have done nothing wrong to any of you. To die simply for being the Demon Lord — what a joke. I never asked to become one. You're the ones who left me no choice but to strike first. Why must I bear all the blame? Why must I carry even what I never brought upon myself…
"Gh— haaah!"
So shut your mouth, Jack. A little singed flesh and you're screaming like that? I bit down on my teeth and begged the adventurers for mercy when an arrow was lodged in my thigh. Use your head. Think desperately. Even if you're dragged into a tiger's den, as long as you keep your wits about you, you can punch the tiger cub right on the nose.
"You damn demon…!"
No, it's simply business. It's just that all business is unfair. You'll understand that by now, won't you?
The Memoria magic was magnificent. A clean hit. If it hadn't been for Paimon, I would have been ruined by a nobody — a petty merchant who doesn't even appear in Dungeon Attack. We might have become wonderful friends….
"Ghhk… khrp, ughk, bwueaah…!"
"Don't you dare throw up! Swallow it! Swallow the damn potion! If you throw it up right now, you're almost certainly dead. Got it? If you don't want to die, swallow it!"
"Khfrrrhk… ghk, ghghk…."
Roughly how many died? A hundred thousand? Around two thousand in the Black Mountains… well, somewhere around there, I suppose.
Anyway, those orc bastards eat a disgusting amount. You can smoke-cure the corpses of thousands and they'll clear through the lot in no time. Occasionally cute, but mostly damn nuisances. Quick and decisive — monsters that die fast are far more convenient in war. Humans, on the other hand, are different….
"Son of a bitch!"
Barbatos had a fair point. This was a goddamn mess. To the human armies, soldiers weren't just soldiers — they were subjects, meaning labor. And labor was something you had to worry about losing.
In that sense, thank God I wasn't born human. Imagine getting cast as some lady-in-waiting to Princess Elisabeth or some role like that. I'd be pulling my hair out even more than now. I might be the lowest-ranked Demon Lord, but at least I was still a Demon Lord…
A hundred thousand had died.
A hundred thousand — that was practically a world.
"Khfrrrhk… ghk, ghghk…."
So, my heart will always be just slightly bigger than a world of a hundred thousand.
"Get your head straight. Ugh, her eyes rolled back. Hey! Hey! Snap out of it! You wanna die? Before you croak, should I stick a knife in you first, you sick bitch? You goddamn mongrel, open your eyes! Open your eyes! If you die, that little brat — your brother or whatever — dies too. Your parents bite it too. Shit, hey!"
I see.
Now I understood why I'd felt so intensely that I had to keep Daisy alive.
I wanted her to become the same kind of creature as me. I wanted her to be trapped in the same wretched situation. If there were two pieces of trash instead of one, at least they could comfort each other.
I had come to want to comfort someone. To become a senior, to become a parent, to become the kind of strong one who could comfort and guide someone else.
My heart had gone soft without me even noticing. I wasn't trash anymore — I was something.
Comforting someone by seeing the same kind of wretch as myself — what nonsense was that? Inside me were Captain Hock, Jack Orland, Leaf, Kurz Schleiermacher, a hundred thousand humans with a hundred thousand different stories — and they were supposed to be comforted by me? The murdered, by the murderer?
Don't make me laugh.
That was an excuse worse than no excuse at all. How was it any different from a lord pitying his serfs? You could have died instead of surviving. You chose not to kill yourself.
"Lord Dantalion?"
My body had already risen to its feet and positioned itself beside Jeremy.
Before my eyes, the girl's naked body lay stretched out as it was. Ravaged flesh, deathly pale inner skin peeking through the gashes, blood — so much blood. I took it all in slowly. Then I looked into the girl's eyes.
"……."
Focus returned to Daisy's eyes. Her gaze sharpened in an instant.
The girl, who had been stoic and expressionless all along, now had fierce anger mixed into her stare. She must have realized that the one inflicting pain worse than death on her right now was me. She must have understood that it was none other than me who was her enemy.
I gave a cold smile.
"Is that all you've got?"
"……."
"I wondered how strong you were, from all that bold talk. Turns out you can't even endure a single surgery. In the end, you're nothing more than a ten-year-old girl — not a bit more, not a bit less. You couldn't carry even thirty people, let alone your brother, your parents, and the villagers all combined."
Daisy parted her lips.
A voice so small it was like a breath escaped from her. Like a newborn baby, she babbled several times, failed over and over, and then barely managed to form words aloud.
"I will……kill you."
"……."
"I swear it."
I burst out laughing.
My brain, addled by the incense smoke, cleared in an instant. That's right! Everything became clear. What I needed was this — hostility so naked and obvious!
One who has killed a hundred thousand should naturally attract a hundred thousandfold hatred. But most of them, never even knowing that I was the one who killed them, fell before they ever had a chance to seek revenge. Wasn't that terribly unfair?
"Please, do try your hardest to kill me."
If I have killed a hundred thousand, then you should bear a will heavier than a hundred thousand.
I will go on to condemn another hundred thousand, another million to death. You must stand at my side and watch every last moment without missing a single one. The ones I slaughtered were far too weak and ignorant to ever oppose me — so you, take their place. Every last one of them.
"I want to keep you by my side."
Because every time I see you, I will be reminded of what I've done.
So that I cannot run away from what I have done, from my own life. So that I cannot find some refuge to hide in — be it comfort or pity.
"You shall be my eternal, living witness."