Chapter 3: Scattered Sparks at the Evening Ball

Chapter 3: Scattered Sparks at the Evening Ball

Scattered Sparks at the Evening Ball

Gasping for air, Menou quickly threw off the covers.

She was a trained Executioner. Even if she was in a state of deep sleep, she could be wide awake the moment she sensed danger.

She felt like she had been dreaming about the past, but the last traces of her dreams were chased out of her mind by reality. She rolled to the side and dropped off the edge of the bed. In the half second it took to fall, she caught herself with one hand to reduce the impact and landed nimbly on both feet.

Did something just attack me? She looked up at her bed and froze in astonishment.

Something heavy had just landed where Menou was sleeping moments before.

It was Akari, bouncing on the spring bed.

“Aw, you dodged me. Good morniiing, Menou!”

What is she trying to do? Having dived onto the bed where Menou was sleeping, Akari sat up and waved cheerfully.

Menou, who was still in a battle-ready stance on the floor, let out a sigh and straightened up. She’d gotten into combat mode for no reason. Her shoulders sagged, and she glared at Akari.

“What was that for, Akari? Were you planning on crushing me under the extra weight you’ve put on?”

“Wait, what?! That came from nowhere! I haven’t put on weight! …O-or have I?”

“I’m not going to tell you. It’s important to be self-aware.”

“Whaaaa—?!”

Menou kept her voice cool. If anything came from nowhere, it was the surprise assault.

She’d been attacked suddenly in her sleep. Why wouldn’t she be a little miffed? Turning away with a “hmph,” she started to get herself ready, washing her face and changing into her priestess robes. This hotel didn’t have any scales or anything, of course. The only point of comparison on a journey like this was your own self from the day before.

While Menou changed clothes and put her hair up with the scarf ribbon, Akari pinched her own stomach nervously and heaved a sigh of relief.

“I’m totally fine. D-don’t tease me like that! You weren’t waking up, so I figured I’d help you out, that’s all.”

“And you couldn’t think of a better way to do that?”

“I just got carried away with my feelings for y—ow?!”

She was wearing a meek expression for someone confessing criminal intent. Menou had decided not to forgive her, so she administered retribution in the form of a forehead flick.

Akari clutched her head tearfully and flashed her a reproachful look.

“Wehhh… I thought it was kind of weird, though. You never sleep in.”

“…That’s true.” Menou had a lot to think about the night before.

From what she’d heard afterward, the men she had handed over to the knights the day before suddenly turned into monsters and went wild. Fortunately, the knights were able to take them down before there were any casualties, but that wasn’t the problem.

“This job is shaping up to be more of a pain than I expected.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m investigating this dangerous drug called monstrine, you see… Listen, Akari. If a stranger gives you a red pill, make sure you don’t swallow it, all right?”

“Even I wouldn’t take something that sketchy…”

It was safe to assume the men’s transformation into monsters was due to the monstrine.

One dangerous property of Original Sin was its ability to erode and take over other material. In other words, if one could turn the Concept of Original Sin into a pill form, then it would be possible to turn anyone who consumed it into a monster.

Users of monstrine weren’t really being strengthened physically. Their physical forms were changing from human to monster, and the strengthening was merely a result of that.

So the Fourth wasn’t really using monstrine to try to raise money. By circulating it throughout the city, they could transform the innocent people who consumed it into monsters and commit terrorism on a massive scale. This drug was very dangerous indeed.

That explained why there were so many monsters appearing in Libelle lately. When Menou had reported this to Sicilia, she immediately began investigating the state of monstrine distribution and started apprehending anyone who had taken the drug. Fortunately, it hadn’t really reached the actual port yet, but there was still plenty of cause for concern.

The scale of this incident was becoming much larger than they had initially imagined.

“At any rate, I have a lot more work to do.”

“Hmm?” Akari simply tilted her head in curiosity.

“What’s the meaning of this, Lady Manon?”

At the start of the latest emergency meeting, which had been held daily since Flarette’s arrival, Manon was immediately accused by the other members of the Fourth.

Usually, they only treated her presence as a formality, but now all of them were staring at her. Manon blinked at the unusual turn of events.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“The attack, obviously! The failure was unfortunate, but…why did they turn into monsters, including Kaiser?!”

“Kaiser…?” Manon’s brows drew together in concentration for a moment as she searched through her memories.

Kaiser. Who was that, again? The name did sound familiar. It definitely wasn’t anyone important, but she suspected it wasn’t a complete stranger, either.

After turning the name over in her head a few times, she managed to bring up the memory.

“Ah, yes, Kaiser. Mr. Kaiser, was it? Yes, I remember now.” She lightly clapped her hands together in recollection.

It was that large-built man whom Manon turned into a monster yesterday afternoon when his surprise attack failed. The whole thing was so unimportant that she’d forgotten all about it.

Pleased with herself for remembering, Manon pressed her palms together and smiled.

“I just happened to be passing by, that’s all.”

“Passing by, you say…?”

“Oh, yes. I was coincidentally in the area during the attack. It would be troublesome for all of you if Mr. Kaiser spilled valuable information, wouldn’t it? So, as a member of the Fourth myself, I decided to take preventative measures. Flarette was there, too, so I thought it best to deal with things promptly.”

Manon smiled, and the other executives of the Fourth were stunned into silence.

Their expressions weren’t finding fault with Manon, exactly. They seemed to be trying and failing to figure out how best to approach her.

“Lady Manon. You are the one who first proposed the distribution of monstrine. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“Monstrine is incredibly addictive, and its users feel euphoric. That’s what you told us when you brought in the Guiding vessel with which to produce it.”

“Yes. The drug we’ve been distributing has been adapted to have those effects, so it works just as described.”

“Distributing it throughout the city will give us access to capital. And if necessary, we can use the citizens who have taken monstrine as hostages to hold off the Faust. As an absolute last resort, we can turn them into monsters to increase our number of pawns and use them to fight the Faust and the knights head-on. Isn’t that what you told us?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

Everyone here had been taking the young Manon more than a little bit lightly. The Fourth in Libelle, after all, were primarily friends and relatives of the house of Libelle. Since they had known Manon since infancy, and she showed no signs of taking the meetings seriously, they naturally looked down on her.

But now, all that had changed.

“Then why did Kaiser turn into a monster?! It doesn’t make sense!”

“Ahh, I see what you’re trying to say.”

Of course, the leaders currently present all knew the risks of monstrine, while it might not have been clear to the lesser members of the Fourth. Consuming it would give the user a muscular body and sense of omnipotence, but that was just a side effect of their slow physical transformation into monsters. If one knew the eventual fate of monstrine users, they would obviously never use the drug themselves.

So why had one of the leaders transformed into a monster?

The reason was simple. Manon pointed at the food on the table with her fan.

“I laced this food with monstrine.”

This was one of the reasons they had reached such an irrational conclusion at yesterday’s meeting.

The others had all taken monstrine by way of the food here. The resulting intoxication and inflated sense of power was what led them to decide on such a reckless attack and act on it immediately.

Angry shouting filled the room.

After all, Kaiser had turned into a monster, gone on a violent rampage, and gotten put down by the knights. On top of unmistakably declaring that she was the one who turned him into a monster, Manon had just revealed that all of them had taken the drug, too. The terrifying realization that any one of them could turn into a monster was now running through them.

“Damn you! What the hell are you thinking?!”

Manon’s calm smile was unchanged.

“Quiet down, please.” She produced a red pill from her sleeve.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Tangled-up jump rope]

The red pill vanished from Manon’s palm.

“What?!”

This time, there were cries of shock.

One of the members seated at the round table—a woman—had her arms twisted out of shape. Bones cracked. Her joints bent at seemingly impossible angles. Like rope that had gotten knotted together, her arms moved unnaturally and began to slowly wind around the woman’s own neck.

She tried to resist, but it was her own arms that were strangling her. Out of sheer desperation, she raised her feet and tried to fit them between her neck and her arms. As she curled up and flailed her legs, she looked very much like an ant struggling not to drown.

“Ah…brghh…”

Finally, the woman suffocated and stopped moving entirely.

“Now, are there any other complaints?”

The meeting room fell deathly silent.

But one brave old man turned a hateful gaze on Manon.

“How dare you! You’re just a failure who couldn’t even inherit your mother’s power… Was it your doing that Count Libelle is bedridden, too?!”

“…How rude. I am still a perfectly dutiful daughter, you know.” Manon shrugged. “It’s simple, really. I was asked to spread the monstrine in exchange for borrowing power to exact my revenge, so I wanted to have as many people consume it as possible.”

“Revenge, you say?” The old man’s face twisted in surprise. “But Count Libelle would never… Wait. Don’t tell me you sold the Fourth into the hands of an outsider?!”

“Sold you…? Who in the world would be so generous as to buy such a worthless organization?” Manon shook her head in disbelief that the members of the Fourth still considered themselves so valuable. “This was my own decision.”

“Balderdash! As if one little girl like you could cause such a massive upheaval on your own! Who’s really behind this?!”

The old man grew even more heated.

He was surprisingly close to the truth, but completely off the mark at the same time.

“Flarette is here…the apprentice of Flare, who took my mother’s life. That awful woman who killed her because she was a lost one… As a daughter, it’s only human nature that I should want to respond accordingly, isn’t it?”

Staring levelly at the pallid members, Manon continued indifferently.

“And so I’ve made certain arrangements for the ball taking place tomorrow evening at Libelle Castle. Do be sure to attend.”

She didn’t care what any of them thought.

This revenge was Manon’s desire, and hers alone.

The evening sunlight cast a deep red over the landscape.

In this port city, the wind changed based on the time of day. In the evening, it died down to a light breeze toward the sea. In a dark alley between the long shadows of two buildings, a spray of fresh blood jetted through the air.

“Gah!”

This fearful cry came from a youngster in his late teens.

These youths were delinquents of Libelle, boastful boys who thought themselves the strongest fighters in the world. Finding the peaceful life too boring, they banded together in search of cheap thrills and excitement, committing wicked acts whenever they could escape the watchful eyes of the knights and priestesses.

Truth be told, they were the epitome of youthful indiscretion. And while normally they were full of baseless confidence and swagger, in this moment, all of them were dripping with blood, faces filled with fear.

Standing before them was a girl whose adorableness was completely out of place.

Her pink hair was tied in two pigtails with matching scrunchies. Short-statured and clad in a white priestess robe, she addressed the young men in a light drawl.

“Won’t you just confess already?”

This girl was fundamentally different from the priestesses they knew. She was violent without a hint of hesitation. There was no mercy or compassion in her voice. And most of all, the weapon she wielded was indescribably nasty.

It was a coping saw.

The young men already had lacerations all over. The wounds weren’t particularly deep; it would be difficult to inflict serious damage just by swinging the thin, flexible blade.

But it didn’t change the fact that they were very painful.

Since the weapon was intended for sawing away at things, not cutting them, it caused a dull ache that tormented the brain. Usually, a fight would give these young men a little bit of excitement, but the pain from her coping saw was quick to crush their desire for battle.

“Wh-what do you mean, ‘confess’? Who the hell are you?!”

“I thought I already explained this to you…” Rolling her eyes at the flustered teens, she irritably explained her purpose. “I’m looking for the Fourth who live in this city. The dregs of society must take or at least carry that so-called monstrine drug, riiight? Hurry up and spit out all the information you have, you talking guinea pigs.”

“I—I dunno what you’re talking about!”

“No lying, please.” Momo narrowed her eyes and swung the coping saw. Its sharp whine as it cut through the air made several of the boys tremble.

Though their wounds were shallow, the feeling of a saw blade on skin elicited a certain primal fear. They had already been cut several times now. A few of them were already traumatized for life. Just seeing the saw swinging like a whip was enough to drain the blood from their faces.

But their rebellious spirits hadn’t been entirely quashed just yet. One of them even judged that she couldn’t cut them too severely. He raised his fist and charged at her in a suicide attack.

His judgment wasn’t entirely wrong. In fact, throwing his weight into a charge was probably even a correct decision against a coping saw.

The pink-haired priestess just scowled in irritation.

“Goodness, you’re annoying.”

The charging boy was met with an airy roundhouse kick, which sent him flying.

Phosphorescent light filled the dark alley. A quick, instantaneous Guiding Enhancement had powered up her kick to a strength unbelievable for someone of her small stature.

The young man crashed into a wall and slumped to the ground, where he lay groaning and unable to stand up. The girl’s eyes were completely cold as she approached him.

“This is getting to be a bother. Perhaps it would be faster if I were to saw off one of your arms?”

That wasn’t an empty threat. The girl wrapped the coping saw around the boy’s shoulder joint. He struggled to get away, but she had him pinned down such that he couldn’t move.

“D-don’t…! You really think you can get away with this?!”

“Can’t I? Would anyone really care if trash were to be cleaned out of a dark alley?”

There was no hesitation in her voice. The ice-cold threat sent shivers down the young men’s spines.

“It would probably be a relief to the Common folk you’re always bothering. Even the Order of Knights wouldn’t seriously investigate the deaths of nuisances like yourselves. They’ll just assume you took one of your usual fights too far and died like fools. No witnesses, no suspects. That would be the end of that, no? This is why it’s important to be careful of how you portray yourself on a day-to-day basis.”

“B-but you’re a priestess! There’s no way you’d really kill someone!”

“Who knooows? I’m a wandering priestess on a pilgrimage, and I’m only staying in this city for a few days. Even if I were found out, the Faust wouldn’t care about a teeny-tiny town like Libelle. If anything, they might even praise me for taking out the trash.”

There wasn’t even the faintest trace of a conscience in her tone. Her ruthlessness was such a far cry from an ordinary priestess that it terrified them even more.

“Hurry up and tell me everything you know! I’m really not in the mood to hear your whiny little screams.”

“S-stop…! We got nothing to do with the Fourth, really! And we don’t wanna get near ’em, either! We were told not to take that creepy drug! Right, guys?! It’s the truth!”

“I see…”

His tear ducts must have given way from fear; torrents of tears and snot were starting to flood his face. It definitely didn’t look like an act. He might even be telling the truth , Momo thought, but being kind to garbage wouldn’t benefit her or Menou in any way, so she decided to saw off his arm for good measure.

“Well, here goes nothing.” Momo grabbed both ends of the saw and stepped on his shoulder to hold it in place, prompting a louder scream.

“You demooon!”

“I-if our leader was here, you’d be dead!”

“…Leader?”

Just as Momo was about to start sawing, one of the delinquent’s words caught her attention. If they still thought their leader could help them even in this situation, they must have a considerable amount of faith in whoever it was.

This was perfect.

This so-called leader could probably give her better intel than these bottom-tier ruffians. Momo decided to extract this person’s location by way of her saw but was distracted before she could get back to using it.

“Over here! This weird priestess just attacked us out of nowhere!”

One of the fleeing delinquents had apparently gone to get this “leader” for help.

Even better. Momo turned toward the source of the voice. Whoever this person might be, they probably had more useful information than these idiots.

Momo smiled in a sinister way, but then the smile froze on her face.

She heard clacking footsteps, echoing loudly even outdoors.

Then someone with an overwhelmingly powerful presence appeared.

It was a woman tall enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with any man, her red-tinged blond hair trailing behind her. Her handsome features were both wild and refined. The amount of skin exposed by her angular, open-backed dress was somewhat excessive, but she stood proudly as if to show off the physical beauty of her body.

“Honestly. Whoever it is, I won’t have them wreaking havoc in—oh?”

It was none other than Ashuna Grisarika, whose eyes sparkled when they fell on Momo.

“Ooh! If it isn’t Momo!”

Without a word, Momo charged her coping saw with Guiding Force.

Guiding Force: Connect—Coping Saw, Crest—

“If we’re meeting again in a place like this, it really must be—”

Invoke [Oscillation]

“This is where you die, Princess-poo!”

Shrieking with such intense emotion that her calmness until that moment seemed unthinkable, Momo lunged forward and swung her vibrating coping saw like a whip.

The battle between Momo and Ashuna ended quickly.

There was little to be said about it. Momo wanted a serious fight, but the battle-loving princess was overjoyed to take her on. Making her happy was the opposite of Momo’s goal, so she gave up as soon as her initial attack failed.

And of course, Ashuna didn’t seem the least bit bothered that Momo had attacked her.

“You’re always so energetic, Momo!”

“Zip it…”

Ashuna grinned merrily at Momo, whose only response was an annoyed gripe.

They were seated side by side at a seedy bar in a cellar near the alley.

The young delinquents Momo had been pressing for information had scattered. When they learned that Momo was an acquaintance of Ashuna’s, they inexplicably accepted everything without further complaints. Momo found the whole thing terribly exhausting.

“So what in the world are you doing here, Your Highness? If anything, I would’ve expected you to be at Libelle Castle.”

“‘Your Highness?’ Come now, Momo, don’t be so formal. Why don’t you keep calling me Princess-poo, my friend?”

“Why in the world didn’t you die in those ruiiins…?!”

In mere minutes of conversing, Momo’s composure was already slipping as Ashuna grated on her nerves.

On the way to this city, Ashuna and Momo had run into each other in the Wild Frontier. Ashuna dragged Momo into exploring some ancient ruins they happened to find like adventurers, but Momo had used Ashuna as bait to escape and left her alone there. And yet, here she was, alive and well—and more annoying than ever, as far as Momo was concerned.

But for some reason, that just made Ashuna even happier.

“Speaking of the ruins, those gargoyles were pretty tough. Enemies based on the Concept of Original Sin are always bothersome. Demons, especially. My fighting style doesn’t seem to be very well matched for them.”

“Well, that’s because your only strategy is brute force, Princess-poo. And gargoyles are more like knockoffs than actual demons, since they’re just stone statues that have been conferred with demon energy.”

The bodies of demons were composed of Original Sin themselves. Essentially, a demon was the result of extracting the essence of an Original Sin. Anything it absorbed, whether organic or inorganic, would be transformed into something of an evil nature. The Concept of Original Sin naturally eroded the fundamental composition of things and made them all the same.

“Gargoyles have physically absorbed demons and changed their own composition. It’s more like a monster than a demon. After all, a monster is really just a living thing that’s absorbed an Original Sin and changed in nature.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes.”

Original Sin Conjurings were unique in terms of their origin. Long ago, there was no such thing. About a thousand years prior, the being that brought demons and monsters into the world suddenly appeared.

The originator of all Concepts of Original Sin was Pandemonium.

A single girl with a Pure Concept and a wild imagination created demons, and the blood and flesh she shed turned into monsters. Original Sin Conjurings were based at first on a Pure Concept controlled by one single Otherworlder. It was the lesser imitations that became known as Original Sin Conjurings.

Momo sipped on the milk she’d ordered as she thought back on this origin story.

Pandemonium was sealed away as one of the Four Major Human Errors, and thus it became the name of the site of the ruins. The Pure Concept sealed above the ocean to the south of Libelle was the source of the monsters that now ravaged this world.

“I don’t get it, though. Why go to the trouble of conferring demons into something else? By making them more physical, they lose their immortality, right? Can’t you just summon a demon as is, like that time in Grisarika Kingdom?”

“It’s a matter of creating more mass. Calling forth a large-mass demon from the Concept of Original Sin requires a sacrifice of equal size, not to mention high-level conjuring techniques. It’s more cost-effective to call on smaller, lesser demons and confer them into something, inanimate or otherwise. But more importantly, Princess Leader-poo…”