The Young Princess Kills Everyone: Re
Mary sensed the presence of countless people in her destination.
The scent of living, moving humans.
After leaving the cave and parting with Digi, she continued walking towards a village.
She felt like a carnivorous animal that remembered the taste of humans.
She often wished to simply go mad.
She was supposed to be more broken when she lost Francis.
But before she knew it, her heart calmed down again little by little.
Her encounter with Ami was probably the turning point.
She started fighting together with Calaria and Cutie, and her heart had others to depend on.
Among all the bloody fighting, Mary gradually regained her composure.
Thinking back on it, that was probably a part of Mitis’s script as well.
She hid behind a tree trunk and checked her surroundings.
She saw people living their normal lives.
Perhaps they were not under World’s influence.
The villagers quickly crushed such hopes.
But if all of her encounters were calculated by Mitis, one thing did not make sense.
Calaria.
When Mary was about to kill her, Francis showed up to stop Mary.
More accurately, it was Star, who had inherited Francis’s will; but if that arcana was trying to guide Mary towards a better future, then why had things gone this way?
Perhaps Star just could not oppose World?
Or, was it trying to show the way to the least worst future out of all the possible ones?
A man cried and shouted.
The villagers were holding him by the arms and legs, and took him to a square.
Then, they gave their order.
‘Say the words.’
The man shook his head and refused.
He knew that the people who uttered these words went insane.
It was an absurd scene to watch from afar.
But someone who understood what was going on knew how disgusting it was; this was the same thing as being ordered to choose one’s own death.
No matter how much they threatened and beat him, the man kept shaking his head and refusing.
The villagers decided to give up.
There was nothing else to do if he was going to keep refusing.
They decided to kill him, and people brought axes or knives from their homes.
The man’s expression twisted with fear
The villagers, with no shame or guilt, all raised their weapons.
Mary thought about it.
Repetition, repetition.
She had to commit such crazed acts while still sane.
She thought maybe it would have been better if she had just disappeared instead.
“Myriad Corpses Burial Scythe.”
The girl grabbed her scythe and jumped out from the shadows as her skirt fluttered.
She got between the man and the villagers, and swung without hesitation.
She decapitated two with one strike.
She split the bodies of three people in two.
There were two remaining whose upper and lower bodies were barely left connected, so she took pity on them and crushed them with arms she grew from her back.
“Hih, aah……!?”
The man’s face warped in terror.
He did not feel any relief from being saved.
Mary did not even look him in the eyes.
She quietly approached her next feed.
It was simple to distinguish the abnormal from the normal.
Now that World was not hiding her true identity, they were simply shams that only looked like people.
The man’s facial expression did not even slightly move after all that torment.
“Nooo, heeelp!”
“Moooooom!”
It was useless to pretend to be human now.
Mary swung her scythe.
The performance ended and she mercilessly cut them down as they stopped resisting.
She devoured the corpses on the ground with the head of a beast growing from her back.
(Too slow!)
Mary started thinking that as she continued eating.
She had to devour them after cutting them down.
The smell of their insides.
The tumbling corpses of the innocent before her eyes.
Mary’s scythe changed shape in accordance with her will.
The edge itself opened up like a mouth lined up with sharp fangs.
“Myriad Corpses Behemoth Scythe!”
Swinging this scythe was enough to gulp down all the flesh in the swing’s trajectory.
It was a weapon made to prey and slaughter at the same time.
The Behemoth Scythe.
With her new scythe in hand, Mary took care of all the villagers one by one.
“That’s a corpse. Not a person. A corpse, a corpse, a corpse!”
She tried to convince herself while taking in the things screaming in pain like humans.
She got rid of everyone in the village in the blink of an eye, and only the man who was imprisoned remained.
He asked Mary:
“W-Wha…… What the hell happened? What happened to the kingdom!?”
“It’s because of an arcana that can control people who say a specific phrase.”
“Just because they spoke some words……? Is the same thing happening in the other villages too?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
The man fell on his knees.
Mary quietly looked down on him.
“There’s nowhere to run, right? So it’s pointless for me to survive.”
“Will you die?”
“Can you do it, my princess?”
“I understand.”
She knew more than anyone that this was salvation.
Mary gently beheaded the man before he could hesitate and used him for sustenance.
Then, she stood still in the center of the empty village.
She suddenly sensed a presence behind her and turned around.
It was Digi with no legs or arms, leaning back against the wall of a house.
“Do you want something?”
“I can’t believe you killed everyone like that. How can you know killing World wouldn’t free them?”
“I doubt Mitis would make it that easy. She used my father’s mouth to say that she will end the world, so I’m sure she’s finished getting ready for just that.”
“Do you think she can really end the world?”
“Yes, of course. I probably can’t stop her now, no matter how much I struggle.”
That was not a joke; from the events so far, it was likely that Mitis only made her move after everything ended.
If she was trying to destroy the world, she would only make her move after the preparations were finished.
“That’s why I’m calmly amusing myself with this sick game.”
“……World Destruction.”
For some reason, Digi said those words.
Indeed, Dugan was certain that this was a plan to destroy the world, but-
“Is there a relation to the experiment 16 years ago?”
“That experiment’s failure is the trigger of it all. Mitis…… Well, she called herself Stella, but she said she’ll redo the true World Destruction.”
“True……?”
“A device drawing on World’s power to destroy this world. It seems they built it in Pupa’s headquarters.”
“So the world literally will be destroyed this time. And I know what Pupa’s involvement means.”
“Mhm, that crazy Yueri got onboard with the plan.”
Mary was wondering why Mitis joined hands with the researchers of Pupa, but it made sense if it was to build that device.
“In other words, I can fight Mitis if I go to the headquarters.”
“You’re not gonna win.”
“We’ll see.”
“It won’t stop even if you miraculously win.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you have to fight if you already know it’s pointless?”
“I do.”
Mary spoke clearly.
“That’s the least I can do as a survivor.”
“I’m really happy I wasn’t the arcana user of Death God.”
“Don’t talk like you’re not involved when you let me survive.”
She turned on her heels and turned her back to Digi.
She left the village.
Afterwards, Digi did not go after Mary.
♢♢♢
Lutis was a small farm village in the southern part of the kingdom.
It was a peaceful land with natural surroundings, but it was also boring for the young and the population was in decline.
So taxes were on the higher side, and the aristocrat ruling it was destitute so it did not have much of a future.
Most said this village would vanish in a few dozen years, but the people were still living to the fullest here.
The population was 284.
Mary ate 280 of them.
Her current Sorcery Rating: 25,893.
She found a few corpses that did not keep their original forms, so that thing was probably a part of the remaining 4 villagers.
Lalkilia was a town on the highway connecting to Luvana, which prospered due to its trade with the royal capital Captis.
It was originally a farming village mostly similar to Lutis.
However, the merchants who did not possess sorcery cars often stayed the night in Lalkilia after departing from Luvana, and the town developed due to the trade they brought in.
Many inns were lined up in the area near the central street.
Its population was 1,892.
Mary preyed upon 1,890 of them.
Her current Sorcery Rating: 27,119.
A part of the residents had fled to an underground shelter.
After Mary told them it was safe outside, they all asked her to kill them.
Mary abided, and killed everyone at nearly the same time with as little fear and pain as possible.
The shopping town Luvana.
It was particularly highly populated among the towns near the Kingdom of Orvilia.
Maybe that was why the town was already filled with an ill smell by the time Mary arrived.
At the square in the town’s center, the people who refused World’s control were massacred to make a show of them, and the symbolic fountain was full of dead flesh and blood.
Its population was 35,221.
Mary preyed upon 34,119 of them.
Her current Sorcery Rating: 52,718.
She became able to bite and crush buildings, so her preying efficiency greatly increased.
Perhaps due to the quickly spreading chaos, a lot of people had run away and the area outside the town was filled with many corpses.
Mary did not know where they were from, so she did not include these corpses in her prey count.
Leinges, a town on the coast.
It was a harbor city to the east of the luxurious hotel in Yukum Beach where Mary and the others once stayed.
A lot of aristocrats came to enjoy their vacations here or to cruise in the beautiful sea.
Now, countless corpses were floating in that sea.
The blue sea was now dark red, and the rotten smell of entrails drifted along with the sea water’s scent.
Humans with different parts connected to look like a fish were submerged in a water tank in a restaurant.
The people continued their normal lives despite the corpse smell drifting through town.
For them, it was certain that nothing had happened.
So when Mary arrived covered in blood and holding a scythe, they cried and screamed like they saw a monster
It was definitely a message from Mitis; ‘you’re the evil one.’
Too late for that now.
The population was 12,593.
Mary preyed upon 12,561 of them.
Her current Sorcery Rating: 59,262.
Feedam, the stronghold of the Miselma Faith.
Due to the many passionate believers, there were a lot of people in this town who were not under control.
Over 100 survivors barricaded the town and held up in one section.
But the enemy had the numbers advantage.
The barricades would be destroyed in a few hours if Mary had not come.
The rescued survivors were astonished and frozen when they saw the town covered with blood stains only and no corpses to be seen.
Then, a woman Mary previously met in the church stepped out in front and bowed: ‘Thank you very much.’
That made her more nauseous than any insult.
Its population was 9,572.
Mary preyed upon 8,144 of them.
Current Sorcery Rating: 64,811.
♢♢♢
Mitis sat down in the president’s room in Pupa’s headquarters and spun around.
“Hnnhehehehe, ahahahahaha!”
She laughed like a kid playing with a toy.
Something really fun was happening.
Her eyes looked to the ceiling, but she was seeing something else.
Mary, covered in blood.
She was slaughtering the confused and fleeing people of Captis with the scythe in her hands.
“She’s really something. It’s not so easy to keep your sanity and kill innocent people at the same time! Even if she’s only doing it to beat me. She does have some talent, I’ll enjoy breaking her.”
Mitis’s Sorcery Rating was over 3,000,000.
If Mary was to challenge her, she needed just as much, or more than that.
She could not find a way to do it with an ordinary arcana.
But Mary was different.
She was only doing it because she had a chance to barely win.
“Even if she beats me, nothing’s coming back anyway. From what happened so far, even if I die, she should understand that the minds I twisted with World’s domination won’t come back.”
Mary killed, killed, and kept killing.
She showered in tears, blood, screams and shouts of abuse.
She pretended that her heart was dead, but she still got hurt.
“It doesn’t matter if she understands. She can’t stop me. I knew it was most efficient to start with Francis’s death, since she had the biggest effect on the formation of Mary’s personality. Then, she killed her father and mother with her own hands. Mhm, mhm, I get it. She can’t stop now, even if she knows that’d be easier.”
♢♢♢
Captis’s population was 63,949.
Mary needed around one hour to devour everyone.
Her Sorcery Rating exceeded 110,000.
She still did not stop.
Because there was someone pushing her on.
“Hey, did we do something bad? Why did we all have to live through this sorrow, captain?”
Most of the Liberta Liberation Front’s members were dead by the time Mary arrived at Captis.
A woman laid down next to Jaysam and barely survived.
“Let it all break. I’d rather have your hand than World’s. And, I don’t care if it’s in a dream or in the afterlife, but let me go to a decent world……”
Other than that, she also ate all of the 42,251 residents of the Slava Territory.
She was a living calamity now.
But no one could blame Mary.
Because all the villages and towns she visited showed her a different kind of Hell.
The cannibal village.
The hanging village.
The town with the smiling faces lining up the flower beds.
She would rather see only an appalling vivid bloom of blood.
She saw a sabbath.
She was shown how cruel people could be when transformed into incarnations of greed.
She did not want to see anything any more.
She wanted to crush it all before she could see it.
Just this time, she did not feel a necessity to act like a normal human being who thought ‘there could be another way to save them’.
So she stopped making distinctions.
She decided to devour everything.
Mary’s mana continued to expand.
She swung an arm and people disappeared; she swung her scythe and villages vanished.
She raised her hand and a jaw came out of the ground to swallow an entire town.
She could even order a bone beast to trample and crush an entire city.
Getting into the mood, she destroyed all human settlements in the kingdom except for the royal capital with surprising speed.
And Mary kept going.
She invaded the Kingdom of Helias, and then the Empire of Ganadia.
She wolfed down the people under World’s domination.
Mary’s gluttony continued for over half a day until the morning.
In that time, she ate around 1,000,000 corpses.
Her Sorcery Rating’s rise gradually got slower as the number of corpses she devoured increased, but she still exceeded 400,000.
♢♢♢
The sun illuminated the royal capital from the skies.
The previous day’s noise completely quieted down, and an unchanging daily life continued.
However, it was bizarre that no one was reacting despite Mary walking out in the open in the main street.
She felt like she was almost excluded from the world.
The decisive battle’s location, Pupa’s headquarters, was outside the royal capital.
The reason she stopped by this place before that was to see her hometown one last time, and to devour the ‘feed’.
That was indeed her only aim, but she saw a familiar figure among the crowd and stopped walking.
The reason Mary and that girl stood out among the dolls pretending to be humans and walking around was that these two already stopped pretending to be human.
“You’re the start, aren’t you, Miss. Cutie?”
Mary squinted her eyes and spoke with sorrow.
“……Y-Yeah.”
Cutie’s mouth opened halfway and discharged her bored voice.
Her body was slightly twitching at random intervals.
Mary did not sense her former intelligence from Cutie’s face, which was saddening.
And at the same time, Mary laughed at how convenient this was for her.
She laughed at her heart wavering after she already devoured a million people in her personal sorrow and anger.
“I’ve become a lot stronger so that I can kill World and the rest of you. So please understand.”
If Cutie was here to make things unpleasant for Mary, then Mitis definitely planned on desecrating Cutie.
She would make her mind and body look pulpy and unsightly.
But the early bird gets the worm.
She activated Hanged Man and Power at the same time.
She grasped the hilt sliding out of the palm of her hand, and even though Hanged Man’s power was not affecting her Sorcery Rating now, it jumped to over 1,500,000.
The hilt transformed.
A blade was born and drew a curve resembling a crescent moon.
It was formed with bones but condensed to the very limit, and glittered like diamond.
The hilt also became stronger.
Her scythe was the same as it always was, but the number of corpses used for it now could not even be compared to before.
“Myriad Corpses Burial Scythe.”
Mary mowed down the air with her scythe.
Whoosh, her slash cut the wind.
Instantly, a wind swept through the entire royal capital.
The gentle breeze brushed her cheeks.
After a small delay, the ground started to rumble.
It was the sound of the buildings sliding away.
Not just one or two.
Almost all the buildings in the royal capital were ripped up by the nimble swing of her scythe.
Of course, it was not just the buildings.
The people living in them, and naturally, Cutie in front of Mary……
“Uuh…… Uh, aaah…… Aaaah.”
They all split into pieces and fell to the ground.
Over 90,000 lives were reaped in an instant.
“So cruel, Mary.”
‘Something shaped like a person’ activated.
It was the signal for the start of the battle between Death God and Empress.
—
I will be returning to my original pace from next Friday.
Thank you.