The Young Princess Kills Everyone: Re
What am I, really?
Calaria thought about that many times.
She even directly asked Justia about it.
“Hey Yueri, why am I so strong?”
“Because I prepare your meals very carefully.”
“Hey Yueri, why do I have a high mana storage volume despite having low mana release volume?”
“Because that’s how I raised you.”
Come to think of it, these were very clumsy smoke and mirrors.
But Calaria at that time did not push further.
Because she was simply curious, and this was not some massive mystery that could change her life.
However, Justia did tell her something once when she got talkative after drinking and getting drunk.
“Calaria, back when you were even younger than that conscript over there, you were kidnapped by a bad person. You got captured by their subordinate. That made me really mad.”
“I guess I ended up being safe.”
“I worked really hard for that.”
“How remarkable.”
“Uhehe…… But, after that……”
“What?”
“You used to be so weak, but you never got sick again after that.”
If that conversation wasn’t just some drunken foolish talk, that was probably when Calaria acquired her superhuman physical powers.
Was that because Calaria was a homunculus with unique abilities?
Or did the men who kidnapped her perform a surgery on her?
Calaria stopped thinking about it, since it was in the past anyhow.
But now, she could not help but think about it again.
“……Why am I alive?”
Indeed, she should have been burned up and absorbed by Yueri.
But just like when she opposed World’s control, Calaria maintained her sense of self even as she was submerged into someone else’s mana.
“I can’t release mana. So I can’t take it either…. Is that why I’m safe? Is that the reason?”
She could not understand the situation without that logic.
Her surroundings were a faint red color, and she felt warm; she could not breathe but she felt no pain.
She could speak, but she did not know if the ‘thing’ she could hear was a ‘voice’ vibrating in the air.
“I’m definitely inside Yueri, though. What the hell is going on here?”
Calaria was confused.
She tried to stand up, but she noticed that she had no hands or feet.
Instead, she could freely swim through the air with her consciousness.
She approached a light pink colored ‘wall’.
It was transparent, and she could see outside through it.
She saw Mary fighting.
Sometimes she looked angry, and sometimes she had a mad smile on her face.
She seemed to be in danger, coming and going between normalcy and madness.
“It’s my fault…… I’m the one who brought Mary here.”
This world was no longer a place where a normal human being could keep their sanity.
Cutie and Ami were probably dead by now.
Her only choice was to use that sorrow and turn it into an urge to kill.
But even that could not fill up the void.
The void took her stability away, and her heart crumbled like wooden bricks.
“I don’t know if that was really just. But, I think I did what I thought was right. And, from now on-”
She moved her eyes.
Yueri’s body had spread all throughout the building like blood vessels.
Particles of life were fluttered about among it.
They split when their numbers decreased, and repeated this process to materialize as a fake immortality.
Calaria reached out with her hand.
She had no hands, but she created ‘something’ resembling them with her thoughts.
And she grabbed life.
It tried to escape from Calaria’s hand, but it was weak.
“I’m sure that there is light ahead of the path Mary is walking on.”
⟡⟡⟡
“You’re just tiring yourself out, give up and go forward.”
Yueri provoked Mary.
“No, I’m going to find a way to kill you!”
Mary ignored this and continued killing her.
She pretty much had no concept of exhaustion right now, and had been fighting with all her strength for a while, but her movements had not dulled one bit.
Yueri also fought as if she had infinite mana.
It was difficult to accept that she could acquire so much mana, even if she was using Judgment and Justice.
Perhaps she had taken World’s blood and was using it to magnify her mana.
(I’m sure Yueri will run out of mana if we keep fighting like this for a few months. But that will take too long. I have to find another way to kill her, or-)
The tiresome massacre began again.
Amidst the process, the presence of Yueri was indeed getting smaller.
They were inside a building.
The answer to the strange feeling Mary had became clear when she used Tower.
Yueri also noticed this after a short delay, and curiously tilted her head after birthing a new body.
“Is something else interfering?”
“From that reaction, I can see that you didn’t expect this either.”
“This is strange, I didn’t think you possessed an arcana that could invade my inner body.”
“I used Temperance to forbid you from regenerating.”
“You can’t stop all life at the same time.”
“I petrified your life with Hierophant.”
“That won’t work either, because of the same reason.”
“You’re really hard to convince. Then-”
“Someone is gathering the lives inside me. Are they trying to create a heart……?”
“So there’s no need to feign ignorance; you do understand. There’s only one ‘someone’ who can do something like that, isn’t there?”
It was clearly someone who was hostile towards Yueri.
Mary could not stop herself from smiling.
It was not because of the pleasure she felt when killing someone.
It was a pure smile, from the heart.
“She is fighting together with me.”
“Hnn, hngh!……”
Yueri’s heart jumped.
She fell on her knees in pain.
“The power of a God, even if it is an imitation. Are you saying there’s something that can oppose that? No, wrong. Calaria should be the same as any other homunculus. I know that.”
“There’s no one left here who still cares about logic like that. The result is all that matters. Isn’t that right, Miss. Calaria?”
A bud of flesh was born some distance away after Mary called her name.
What emerged from it was unmistakably Calaria herself, wrapped in her maid uniform.
“Sorry, Mary. It took me longer than I expected.”
She was holding a beating heart in her hand.
“That’s my heart…… My life! How? How did you do that? How can you use my flesh to create your own body!?”
“Because my body repels sorcery.”
“Are you saying I can’t control you even though I absorbed you……?”
“I think so. Also, since you locked the air up in a bag, I could collect your life there in one place.”
“Tell me why. Are you saying my sister set this up?”
“Justia doesn’t know anything. No, she probably never wanted to know.”
“What do you mean?”
Calaria loved Justia, who was her mother.
However, leaving that aside, she still knew that the fact that she ran away from the laboratory was true.
“She ran away. She ran away from the reality that I, who was born from the mixed blood of sisters, acquired a special power.”
That was probably the reason Justia was such a good-natured person.
She knew her crimes, so she treated others very kindly to make up for it.
She believed that sacrificing herself to save someone else was her atonement.
So even when Calaria acquired a clearly out of the ordinary body, she did not try to learn the details.
“Why?”
“Maybe she wanted to have some semblance of a normal life.”
“That’s irresponsible!”
“Yeah, if that is true, Justia is irresponsible. But that doesn’t matter now, does it? The important thing is that your heart is right here, Yueri.”
“I think Miss. Justia never cared about what you were, Miss. Calaria. No matter how you were born, for her, you were simply her beloved daughter.”
Mary knew.
Even if it was a relationship that began from a sense of guilt or evasion, it could eventually turn into real love.
“Phew, that’s a relief to hear.”
“Don’t be so relieved. If my sister created a power that could oppose a God, that means I was an idiot to remain behind and continue the research! Why didn’t she come back? Why, why!?”
“Maybe you could have asked her if you didn’t kill her.”
In the end, that was where everything came back to.
Regardless of Calaria’s birth, regardless of her powers, nothing changed the fact that Yueri was Justia’s enemy.
Calaria squeezed the heart in her hand, and Yueri held her chest in pain.
“Ugh, ugh…… How can I feel this much pain with this body……!?”
“As you can see, Mary. Yueri will die if I crush this heart.”
“But…… if I die, so will Calaria. You will be all alone, princess. Are you good with that?”
“Don’t worry, Yueri. Mary doesn’t think that I’m going to survive, not after everything that happened. Isn’t that right?”
“……Yes, I knew. You’re already dead. That body of yours is just a part of Yueri that you borrowed. It starts with killing you, and ends with completely killing Yueri.”
“You heard her. She’s ready. She will kill us both.”
“But…… I survived all this time. Are you saying I won’t get to watch the destruction of this world where my sister rejected me!? I can’t let that-”
Mary’s shell blew her grumbling away.
“Agh!…… Why…… Did I…… uh!”
Yueri’s body broke apart and all the other lives gathered in the heart in Calaria’s hand.
So she could not revive again.
Mary and Calaria were finally alone.
“……I feel like I haven’t seen you for such a long time.”
“It’s only been a short while since our parting, but yes.”
“Well, it hasn’t even been one month since we first met.”
“The time we spent together felt so dense.”
“I wanted to take it slower while getting closer with you.”
“It can’t be helped, we put our lives on the line every day. So…… We also got close to each other faster.”
“But I think we could have all gotten along if we met in a different manner.”
“I think so too. I wish I was recruited into the royal castle, and that I could have simply worked as your maid, Mary.”
“And my sister, Ami, and Miss. Cutie would all come hang out on the weekends.”
“Sounds noisy.”
“But it would definitely be fun.”
Mary squinted her eyes and smiled.
Calaria also warmly smiled when she imagined it.
“……Hey, Mary, what happened to Cutie and Ami?”
“I said my farewells to both of them. Miss. Cutie gave me encouragement, and I actually married Ami.”
Mary showed her ring after saying that.
Even Calaria seemed surprised by this, and she opened her eyes slightly wider.
“I’m not surprised, Ami is really bold. Ah…… I don’t know anything about these things, so I got a late start.”
“Didn’t you suddenly kiss me?”
“That was……. because I panicked.”
“I understand why now.”
“But I was just meddling in things. I’m not even sure if it was best for you to survive this far, Mary.”
“Please be glad I survived. I think that’s your responsibility as the person who made me survive.”
“……How stern of you.”
“Please allow me to be a little selfish. I’m in so much pain that I could collapse at any moment. I can’t keep standing until the end with my strength alone.”
“Do you still need strength?”
“Yes. I received a charm from Miss. Cutie to help me keep moving. And I exchanged vows with Ami. So, Miss. Calaria, won’t you stop holding back and give me some encouragement too?”
“I’m not holding back. It’s just that I don’t want to do anything that will push you towards hell.”
“This is your responsibility”
“I really can’t argue with that…… Fine, if that is your wish.”
This could not be called ‘kindness’.
But Mary knew.
After everything that happened so far, ‘kindness’ was nothing but a shackle now.
So she knew this was difficult for Calaria, but she still wanted it.
She wanted Calaria to push her heart, which was on the brink of breaking, down a cliff where she could not see the bottom.
“The thing that stole everything from us is World, or Mitis. I can’t forgive her for that.”
“Yes.”
“So, take me with you. And show me your victory. Show me that we didn’t fight for so long in vain!”
“Yes, I promise.”
That promise became a new spell that bound Mary.
She gripped her scythe.
She held it aloft.
Its edge split and lined up with sharp fangs.
“Farewell, Mary.”
She focused strength into her hands and swung.
A mouth opened, chewing and crushing both Yueri’s heart and Calaria.
“Uugh……”
There was nothing left when Mary sighed.
Not even a trace of Calaria who was standing there.
Mary put her Scythe away and walked up to the wall.
The wall cracked and a pipe with a sharp broken tip pierced through it.
She stared at it.
And she bent backwards to get some momentum before head-butting the pipe.
The sharp iron rod penetrated her head.
She slowly pulled it out and nailed her head again.
“Aaaagh……”
While screaming indistinct words.
“Aaagggh…… Agh, agh, aaaagggh!”
She pierced her head over and over again.
When she felt that this was not enough, she smashed her head with a sharp rock and churned her brains.
“Aaagggh! Gah, gaaah, aggggh!”
Her eyes looked upwards and she drooled from the corners of her mouth.
When she healed, she broke her own head again in the same way.
Over and over and over again, but Mary did not die. She could not die.
“Aggh…… Hih, haha, hehe, ahahahahaha!……”
She sat down on the floor and feebly laughed.
There was no one else left in the world, so she could do nothing but laugh.
But laughter had a limit, and when she reached it, a black void arrived and wrapped around her heart.
She blankly looked up with an expressionless face and froze up for a few minutes.
Then, she moved again.
She slowly stood up and staggered towards the stairs.
“One more left…… One more, and it’s over…… So I have to kill……”
“Take revenge for us.”
“I can hear you.”
“We’re always watching you, sis.”
“They’re wishing me luck.”
“Show us your victory, Mary.”
“Everyone is cheering for me…… Hehe!……”
That was all now.
Because there was no more oil left to pour on the wavering live coals.
She burned her promise like firewood and moved forward with a scorching urge to kill.
“I’ll kill her…… I’ll kill heeeer……”
She staggered like a corpse, and went up the stairs step by step.
Towards the highest floor where Mitis awaited.
The fresh blood princess, seeking an end to the fighting, headed towards the ground of the decisive battle.
Magician, Justice, Judgment fully consumed.
Mary’s number of currently possessed arcana: 20.
Remaining arcana: 1.