Chapter 5: Maiden Bathed in Blood

Chapter 5: Maiden Bathed in Blood

Maiden Bathed in Blood

As soon as the blood-soaked little girl appeared, Menou made her move.

She didn’t hesitate or try to figure out who exactly this girl was. She just took the initiative.

Activating Guiding Enhancement, Menou was engulfed in the glow of Guiding Light as she closed the distance between them and slashed the girl’s throat with her dagger.

“…Mm?”

The girl, whose throat had been cut, fell backward with a dazed expression on her face.

Fresh blood sprayed through the air.

The small girl’s body crumpled to the ground, blood seeping from her slashed neck into the floor. A fatal wound. But of course, Menou didn’t let her guard down. The girl had fallen far too easily compared to the bizarre way she’d first arrived. There was no way killing her would be that simple.

There was obviously much more to this girl than met the eye.

The reason Menou didn’t hesitate to immediately go for a killing blow was that the option of trying to capture the girl hadn’t even occurred to her. Anyone who came crawling out of another person couldn’t possibly be a normal human. There was no way she was the innocent little girl she appeared to be.

Menou’s judgment was, of course, correct.

The girl’s throat had been cut wide open. The gash Menou left was deep. Foaming blood bubbled up from the girl’s lungs through her larynx and frothed out of the wound.

Then, suddenly, a hand reached up through the gash.

“Ngh!” Menou gasped.

As she watched, a second hand violently ripped the trachea open and emerged. The arms emerging from the girl’s throat pushed the wound open further as though trying to make a bigger exit.

With audible gnashing and tearing, the hands ripped open the wounds, pushed through the flesh, and bore through bone, tearing up the corpse until a little girl exactly like the dead one came crawling out.

“Mm-ah-ah, don’t be hasty. We haven’t even gotten started yet, have we?”

Emerging from the gaping hole in her own dead body, the little girl chided Menou cheerfully.

Her own corpse was at her feet, or perhaps it was more like a cast-off husk. Either way, that body had been living moments ago. Now it was gradually starting to melt away, as if its purpose had been served.

While the dead body decomposed, the second little girl who wore the very same face was perfectly unharmed.

The entire display was so grotesque and surreal that it would have made anyone lose their minds. As the blood drained from her face, Menou almost felt faint for a moment.

But this was reality.

Focusing on her pounding heart and her tunneling vision, Menou licked her lips. She took in a short breath and slowly exhaled.

That was enough to restore balance to her mental state. “I feel like I’m going crazy…,” she grumbled.

“No, not yet. It’s the next part that’s really going to be crazy funny. The starting bell hasn’t even rung yet, you know?”

While Menou carefully maintained a level head and even tone, the little girl giggled, soaked red with her own blood.

“It doesn’t seem like you’re…a demon that Manon summoned.”

“’Course not! I’m a real human girl from head to toe, see?”

Though she said this with a smile, it was clear she was no ordinary human.

“I see… I suppose you must be human, yes.” Menou chose her words carefully even as she cursed on the inside.

She should’ve realized something was off about the footage Momo brought back.

The spikes of the iron maiden trap that Momo triggered were coated in poison. Logically speaking, that meant the little girl inside shouldn’t have been alive in the first place. But she had survived being impaled by poisoned spikes because she was evil incarnate.

Perhaps the girl standing in front of Menou really was human. But even if that were true, she was still a taboo among taboos, more insidious than any demon or devil could ever hope to be.

Her use of these unbelievably terrifying conjurings was proof enough.

There was no doubt about it: This girl had to be an Otherworlder with a Pure Concept. In fact, she was the worst kind of all—a dreadful being who crossed beyond being called a lost one. Menou darkly muttered the special name of the calamities that caused such harm to the world.

“A Human Error…!”

Standing in front of her was the shadow of what was once an Otherworlder.

This was what happened when an Otherworlder used up all their old memories, cast off their humanity, and became the very incarnation of their Concept.

Her cherubic appearance meant nothing. Even on the inside, she was nothing more than a false image. This little girl had transformed into a Pure Concept, right down to her bone marrow.

In this case, the Pure Concept the girl was using was probably some form of sacrificial summoning-based conjuring. It was safe to assume that she used her own death as a sacrifice to summon herself. Killing this girl was essentially the same as offering her a sacrifice.

In other words, this girl couldn’t be killed. She was immortal, albeit through a different means than Akari.

“…This is bad.” Menou gripped the handle of her dagger tightly.

Frankly, this girl’s command of her Pure Concept was so thorough that it wasn’t even worth comparing to Akari, who had still only recently come to this world. What kind of Human Error was she? Menou had a feeling she knew the answer, but she didn’t want to say it aloud.

A single verse from the scripture crossed her mind:

The Concept of Original Sin was born from the wild thoughts of a single girl and spilled forth from her flesh and blood .

Anyone familiar with the concept of taboo knew these words, which seemed to fit the girl in front of her all too well. If Menou’s hunch was right, then this was the worst scenario imaginable.

“What’s with the scary face, lady? Come on. Just enjoy the ride.”

“What about this could I possibly enjoy, monster?”

“Mmm, a monster? Ouch. I practiced really hard while I was inside that girl and finally got the hang of talking. So let’s chat some more. Please?”

She took one step, then two, then three.

The little girl entered Menou’s range with carefree footsteps and leaned in close.

“Tell me, what’re your favorite hobbies? I like singing, and dancing, and watching movies! You can kinda practice singing and dancing on your own, but I’m so sad I can’t watch movies. What about you, lady?”

“Hobbies, hmm? I don’t really have any.”

As the little girl actually started a meaningless conversation, Menou responded quite bluntly.

Surprisingly enough, she didn’t sense any hostility from the girl in front of her. She didn’t even seem angry or unfriendly, never mind murderous. In fact, she looked for all the world like a perfectly ordinary little girl coming over to have a chat.

“Aww, that’s a shame. Hobbies make life worth living, you know? You should try to enjoy life more.”

“I’m far too busy to waste time on hobbies. It’s my job to kill people like you, after all.”

“Mmm! You? Kill me?”

“Yes, my goal is to destroy you. Your Pure Concept, that is. That’s the whole reason I exist.”

“Mmm, so you want to destroy my Pure Concept?”

Standing close enough that Menou could have reached out and patted her on the head, the harmless-looking girl looked up at her with wide, rounded eyes.

Then she started shrieking with laughter. The little girl seemed delighted by the threat of being killed.

“Wow, you say such funny things! You can kill me if you want, you know. It happens all the time. See, I’m super weak, so I die a lot. But I’m pretty sure you can’t destroy me.”

She was like a child who’d been given a new toy, accepting Menou’s threat like a present to be celebrated and played with. This strange reaction only put Menou even more on edge.

“If you think you can destroy me, just try it, okay? No one in this world has managed to do it, not even the Ivory hero, but go ahead and try!”

“The Ivory hero?” Menou furrowed her brow at the unfamiliar title.

“Mmm, you don’t know?!” The girl put her hand over her mouth in an exaggerated show of surprise. “But it was so amazing! The strongest, greatest, most powerful Pure Concept ever! The ‘White’ that brings purity and normalcy to the world!”

The little girl spread her arms wide and raised her voice. “Clouding the Star in the north, turning the Dragon to white salt in the west! Chasing the Vessel in the east far into the white night and sealing me in the white fog in the south! Ivory , the hero who destroyed and sealed us away and saved the world! The one who betrayed us when we tried to cast this world aside! Mm, but it wasn’t that person’s fault!”

She was speaking and gesturing with an air so dramatic it was somewhat out of place. The girl carried herself like a performer starring as the tragic heroine in a one-act play as she went on.

“That person was our friend, our comrade, our hope—and also the guardian of this world! The Pure Concept of Ivory got stuck with the role of protecting this stupid planet! That person’s own desires didn’t even matter anymore…!”

Her voice shook with sadness, and she lowered her head.

Then she abruptly looked up again, wearing a bright smile without a trace of grief.

“But now I get it. Everyone forgot about the hero. After all that hard work! Even though the hero got totally used up, it still slipped your mind!! …You know, I think that’s why I hated all of you so much.”

Menou replayed the girl’s words in her mind.

The Star in the north, the Dragon in the west, the Vessel in the east… She guessed the girl was talking about the Four Major Human Errors.

The Star in the north must be the Starhusk. The Vessel in the east was the Mechanical Society. Menou wasn’t sure how the Sword of Salt in the west became a Dragon , but this all happened a thousand years ago. It made sense that the little girl’s version might not line up with modern interpretations of the Human Errors.

At any rate, if what this girl said was true, it would mean that when those four infamous Pure Concepts threatened to destroy the world, they were stopped by a fellow Pure Concept holder called Ivory . In other words, an Otherworlder had saved this world.

Even Menou had never heard of such information. According to the church’s records, the Four Major Human Errors were sealed or destroyed by the church at the time.

But more pressingly, there was an important phrase in her story that held a clue to the girl’s identity.

“You said you were sealed in the ‘white fog in the south.’ Does that mean you’re…?”

“Mm, calm down. You said you’ll destroy me, right? I’m really happy! It’s been so long since someone seriously tried to do that to me. If you really mean it, let’s have an exciting, super-fun fight to the death! I’ve gotten so sick of doing nothing but eating my own kind!”

Interrupting Menou’s question, the girl held the hem of her dress and gave a refined curtsy.

“Thank you for coming today, and I wish you an auspicious day and good health! Please strike me, smash me, crush me to your heart’s content! There’s plenty more where that came from, so no need to hold back! Let’s see you really go crazy!”

She looked up from her deep curtsy and straightened out her spine.

It was like the introduction of an actress standing on stage as the curtain rose. As she gave this strange and unfamiliar speech to Menou, the girl reached her head up higher. She put a hand under her chin and slowly lifted it.

“What you’re about to see is the greatest B movie of all time. A game of chance where the devil rolls the dice.”

Of course, her head didn’t rise any higher than her neck. But still, she kept pushing it upward.

Soon, there was the snapping sound of fleshy fibers stretching. The girl’s smiling face went higher and higher as her neck stretched unnaturally. Muscle fibers have a certain elasticity; her neck slowly stretched out, just like it might on the corpse of a hanged man.

And it didn’t stop.

“Demons! Monsters! Demon lords! Devils and mysterious, monstrous gods! What will the roll of the dice bring next? You’ll just have to wait and see!”

Her skin, veins, and flesh went past their limits, snapping and tearing as her head went higher. Slowly, her head and neck were being separated from her body.

At last, there was a final crunch of bones breaking apart.

In the same moment, the girl twisted her own head sharply.

And her head came off completely.

Blood sprayed from the place where her head had been torn off by brute force.

The girl’s now-headless body collapsed to the ground. Her severed head, still smiling, rolled across the floor like a grotesque die being cast.

It was a completely unfathomable action. A suicide that went beyond abnormal.

Menou looked up wordlessly at the fountain of spraying blood.

As she dazedly looked on, the head rolled to the edge of her vision and landed looking up at the sky.

Then, the gushing blood before Menou’s eyes took on a red glow of Guiding Light.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Chaos Collusion, Pure Concept [Evil]—Summon [Can I call a hundred friends?]

The fountain of blood cut through space itself.

On the other side of the newly formed rift in the air was a dark abyss. The unnatural amount of blood gushing out of the girl’s neck transformed into an empty void that connected to the abyss.

What formed was none other than an entrance to the Concept Dimension of Original Sin.

Blood, flesh, and the fabric of space tore open, and monsters began to ooze out from the abyss.

One after another, an endless parade. No two monsters were alike. Even Menou, an Executioner, had never seen the likes of the monsters that appeared.

These summoned monsters immediately began devouring the little girl’s body. Her flesh and blood had been offered up as a sacrifice to them, after all. And there was no better sacrifice for these creatures than a pure maiden.

The innocent little girl’s body was consumed by the monsters in moments.

One of the monsters suddenly began to tremble. It shook violently and opened its mouth wide as if it was about to vomit something up.

Out of the monster’s gullet slid an unharmed little girl.

It was a girl of no more than ten years of age, with refined features and a white dress. She looked exactly like the little girl who had just been eaten.