Chapter 93

Sanctuary, the rift, and now.

Aries trembled in terror and immediately prostrated himself before his Master. Dezeb crushed Aries’s head beneath his foot and spoke again.

“Someone go get the operations team too.”

Dark red blood spattered across his trouser cuff and dripped to the floor.

A tangled mass of tentacles spilled from Aries’s burst skull like entrails. Dezeb shoved it toward the pile of corpses.

“Eat.”

Aries had to force his own still-breathing offspring down the tentacles’ throats. While tears streamed from every opening in his tentacles as he carried out the carnival, the operations team that had been summoned was torn apart in Dezeb’s grasp.

“W-we found her.”

At last, the remaining Dogs returned with a report that might calm him.

Dezeb ground out the cigarette between his lips against the remains of Aries’s shattered skull, then glanced at Aries behind him, signaling him to be quiet.

The corridor fell utterly silent.

“Th-this is Erabelle.”

Dezeb exhaled a long stream of cigarette smoke as he listened to the voice. It was a deep male voice—a prince’s voice, no less—and the strength drained absurdly from his fingertips.

“...Erabelle.”

“Yes, th-this is Erabelle.”

Erabelle hurriedly answered the call.

But the receiver remained silent. A thin layer of chilling silence, like black ice, stretched between them.

“I assure you, I am Erabelle Vermilion.”

In a deep man’s voice, she insisted that she was the adopted daughter of House Vermilion.

“......”

Dezeb let out a long breath on the other end of the line. A shiver crawled over her skin. Erabelle straightened her back and swallowed dryly.

“I have not yet determined how this happened, but I have refrained from any behavior that might arouse suspicion. The trial that took place a short while ago also proceeded normally—”

“...Erabelle.”

He abruptly cut off her stream of words.

“Did you cry?”

“......What?”

“I asked if you cried.”

“N-no, I, I...”

She really hadn’t cried, but for some reason, the question made her eyes sting.

“You must have been terrified.”

It’s all right.

His voice seemed to caress her ear.

“It’s all right.”

Erabelle clenched the table mat she had been biting until moments ago. At the sight of the man’s thick-knuckled hand, her vision blurred.

“It’s nothing serious. So don’t cry and upset me. Just rest for a little while. I’m coming there now.”

“...What?”

“I said I’m coming there now.”

Her tears vanished at once.

“Kancher is beside you, isn’t he? Put him on.”

Erabelle handed the phone to Kancher, who stood frozen in a daze.

Clutching the phone, Kancher tottered out of the bedroom.

“Yes, Dezeb.”

Kancher squeezed out every last drop of courage he had.

“It has been approximately two hours. Prince Ananasa began claiming to be Lady Vermilion, and we were in the process of calmly assessing the situation without making any physical contact whatsoever.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. That is absolutely correct.”

“There’s surveillance footage, right? Send it over here.”

“Yes... I-I’ll do that.”

Hearing him stammer, Dezeb asked what was wrong.

“Did you hit her, by any chance?”

“N-no, I did not!”

At his vehement denial, Dezeb asked again in a gentle voice.

“Or torture her, perhaps. Something like that. She must have started spouting strange things out of nowhere.”

“Th-that absolutely did not happen...”

It absolutely had not, but then Kancher remembered the cushion and table mat that would be clearly visible in the footage.

He also remembered her kneeling on the floor with the mat stuffed into her mouth, her nape exposed in helpless resignation as though awaiting execution.

Kancher squeezed his eyes shut.

His grave was dark.

“That did not happen, but...”

“Mm-hm. But what?”

Dezeb asked lightly. Kancher was not fooled by his Master’s doglike tricks.

“It was the day of his signum renewal...”

Cold sweat gathered on his forehead.

“...Ah. Was it?”

“We haven’t fitted it yet.”

He hastened to add,

“The moment we brought it up, he fetched a cushion and a table mat, which seemed rather strange.”

After a brief silence, Kancher heard Dezeb laugh.

“So she’s seen that.”

Why didn’t they report it sooner when it had already been two hours? Dezeb muttered to himself with a laugh. Kancher squeezed his eyes shut again.

“Prepare the warp gate.”

His voice sounded distant. Dezeb appeared to be addressing another Dog beside him, and then the call abruptly disconnected.

Kancher had a feeling his life would soon be cut off just as abruptly.

“...Are you crying?”

Only after they were certain the call had ended did the team members belatedly trail out and gather around him. Kancher stood gloomily with his massive body leaning against the wall.

“He really is crying.”

“Hey, the Chief’s crying.”

The bastards delightedly mocked him, but he lacked even the will to bare his teeth.

Kancher felt as though he had become Virgo. Remembering the insane redhead who had recently gotten himself decapitated again after doing something idiotic only deepened his gloom.

“...Everything’s gone dark.”

“That’s because your eyes are closed. Open them. Your eyes.”

“Right...”

Encouraged by his subordinates’ passionate support, he opened his eyes. Then he crooked a finger, beckoning one of them into striking range.

“Come here. Get over here, you bastard.”

“Why me? If you keep this up, I’m not coming to your funeral!”

“......”

His death was now a certainty.

Kancher closed his eyes again and turned toward the wall.

Everything truly had gone dark.

“Prepare the warp gate.”

After ending the call, Dezeb turned his head and spat out the bitter fluid pooled in his mouth.

The Dogs flattened against the floor crawled away trembling, while he irritably shook the slime from his body.

The gate brought him to Ilwol Palace in an instant.

The Dogs had moved an entire vessel, yet after all that haste, they found Erabelle Vermilion crammed into the corner of a broad sofa, clutching a pad and indulging in her fandom.

“What are you doing?”

Dezeb asked, dumbfounded.

“I-I was resting for a moment...”

“You couldn’t stay off the forum for even that long? You couldn’t resist for one moment? Don’t you think it looks a little strange to access a celebrity forum from the Imperial Palace?”

“I used a workaround...”

“You’ve certainly gone to a great deal of trouble at a time like this.”

“I-I’m sorry. I simply couldn’t calm down...”

“Oh, does looking at James’s face just magically calm you down?”

“Not exactly...”

“Be quiet.”

Dezeb smoked furiously as he gently cupped Erabelle’s cheeks in both hands. An incredulous laugh escaped him. He had never imagined the day would come when seeing this face brought him relief.

“You put me through hell, and now you’re sitting here doing this. Say goodbye to your box of fan merchandise. This time, I really am throwing every last bit of it away.”

As he held her cheeks as though soothing her, tears welled in Erabelle’s eyes. He disliked this high-level body, whose nose did not redden and whose temperature did not rise. Yet the moment he thought of her as Erabelle, his heart ached for her all the same.

“Crying won’t help.”

“I-I...”

Erabelle blinked hard, trying to hold back her tears. She did not succeed. Dezeb wiped away the tears beneath his fingertips and chided her.

“You were sitting here looking up pictures of James. What was so difficult that you’re crying like this?”

“I really, um...”

Erabelle broke off, her eyes widening.

“Uh...”

The corners of his mouth were splitting open in long gashes extending to beneath his ears. Startled, she hurriedly reached out and cupped his cheeks. Fine tentacles writhed between her fingers as blood streamed down them.

“D-Dezeb!”

His eyes narrowed as he watched her worry over him. Even this small thing filled him with the satiated contentment of a well-fed beast, and he released a long breath.

“Why did that suddenly happen? A-are you unwell again?”

“Something like that.”

His eyes shifted as he answered.

It seemed the Prince had awakened.

And inside Erabelle’s body...

Could this be the cause?

He stroked Erabelle’s cheek and curved his hand around her ear.

The Prince’s long drop earring brushed his hand and gave off a peculiar resonant hum. Erabelle seemed not to notice, preoccupied as she was with holding his torn cheek together.

This was exactly how his inability to conceal his weakness always came back to bind him.

“Wait here for a little while. I’ll resolve this soon. Think of it as leave and get some rest. Don’t touch this body. Don’t touch it at all, understand?”

The mere thought of Erabelle inhabiting another man’s body made bile rise in his throat.

But Erabelle said nothing, still pressing the Prince’s hand over his wound. She looked as though she was thinking something over, and his eyes narrowed again. Nine times out of ten, when she looked like that, she was entertaining some pointless thought. The tenth was invariably something that would stab him in the back.

“I asked whether you understood me. What are you thinking about now?”

“Then how am I supposed to use the bathroom...?”

Of course.

“That is a level-nine body. Most bodily functions are probably annual events for it, so you don’t need to worry about anything so pointless.”

He was no longer surprised in the slightest.

“If you absolutely can’t stand not washing, run a Spell Disk. Tell the others to bring you one. But you weren’t going to wash anyway, were you?”

Watching her immediately accept that, he found himself questioning his taste all over again. Yet he was so delighted that she was still holding his wound closed that he could not even get angry.

It was a vicious cycle, really.