Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
Click, click, click, the sound of a clock echoed through the quiet corridor.
Calaria and Tinny who were in the same room quickly came over to Mary, who was still at a loss for words.
“W-Why…..?”
“Mary, what happened?”
Tinny covered her mouth as her face went pale, and Calaria put her hands on Mary’s shoulders.
However, Mary didn’t know the answer.
She shook her head sideways.
“The ceiling suddenly broke, and he was stabbed by pipes.”
Hearing that, Calaria looked up above the corpse.
“I don’t smell gas, and the pipes don’t look deteriorated. What’s the cause?”
From what they could see, there was no reason for the piping to break. Calaria and Mary looked around while the other members gathered.
The other side of the doctor’s office was like a square, so it was an easy place for onlookers to gather.
As confusion because of the sudden death of their comrade spread among the troops, Cutie and Jaysam finally showed up.
The captain was surprised when he saw the corpse and shook his head while bitterly clenching his teeth.
Then, he instructed his subordinate: ‘Carry him to a room nearby.’
“A pipe just happened to break when a person just happened to be under it – that’s a scary coincidence. Right, Mary?”
“Yeah. It’s almost too much of a coincidence.”
Mary understood what Cutie was trying to say.
Considering it as an attack by an arcana user may be going too far, but they still had to think about that possibility.
“Didn’t anything weird happen beforehand?”
“The lights went out, only for a moment.”
“In that case…… a short circuit caused a fire? No, this place uses mana, so the lights shouldn’t go out because of a power outage.”
Cutie put her hand on her chin while thinking.
However, when Mary went out into this corridor, the only one standing there was the man who died.
Was he killed without being directly seen?
Was it some kind of an automatic power?
Or was he being observed from far away?
There was way too little information, so it was hard to know the identity of the ‘enemy’, or to even confirm one’s existence.
(If this was an attack by someone, it won’t end with one person. We can only confirm that if someone else dies, though.)
Mary continued thinking while putting her hand on her chin.
Then, she heard a dull noise from the room where the corpse was carried to.
Then, she heard a man’s voice.
“Hey, are you okay? That was so loud. Hey, answer me! Hey, do you hear me!?”
“He fainted…..?”
“Give me a break, man. I’ll take him to the doctor’s office.”
The man came out of the room after that exchange.
Carrying another man who lost consciousness.
“Sorry Captain, this guy fell and fainted so I’m taking him to the doctor’s office.”
“Is he okay?”
“I hope so, but he hit his head.”
Mary looked at the man with a bitter smile on his face and spoke in a monotonous voice:
“That person is dead.”
The man sounded shocked after this was suddenly pointed out.
“Huuh?”
“He must have hit a bad spot.”
“W-Wait a bit, people don’t die that easily!”
“They do, humans die very easily.”
“Shut up, that’s not true!”
The man persisted.
Mary regretted being too cold, and took a breath before talking to the man again.
“I don’t want to argue. If a second person has died, then I would say this is an attack.”
“What’s going on, Princess Mary?”
Mary turned towards Jaysam after hearing him and continued:
“I think it’s an attack by an arcana user. The enemy is watching us in secret and waiting for a chance right now.”
The troops were shocked by this remark and put their guards up.
“What happened to your boasted private army information management, Cutie?”
“Uncovering that is one of my goals.”
“Well said.”
“I mean it. I am a little surprised that the enemy is using methods that are more direct than I expected, of course.”
Calaria and Cutie looked around with stern eyes while having a light exchange with each other.
The atmosphere suddenly got tense.
Some of the troops could not stand it and fell into panic.
“S-Stop messing around! Arcana user!? I’m not gonna be killed in a place like this! Captain, let us get our weapons!”
“Wait, don’t move! There’s no telling when we’ll be attacked, you know!?”
“Then I’ll go take my rifle by myself!”
It was the female troop who had snapped at Cutie earlier.
She ignored Jaysam’s order and ran for the armory.
On the way, however, something strange happened on the walls of the corridor she was going through.
The metal wall was suddenly torn like paper and its sharp corner moved aiming for the woman’s chest area.
“Huh?”
The woman couldn’t understand what happened and simply watched on as she waited for death.
This could no longer be considered a coincidence – it was clearly sorcery.
Not willing to let her die, Mary reached out to her.
Simultaneously, she looked at Calaria.
(Miss. Calaria, get her!)
Calaria nodded. A bone bullet was shot.
The bone bullet hit the torn apart wall, and changed its course.
The sharp corner stabbed the wall facing it instead of the woman, and stopped.
Immediately afterwards, the floor the two were standing on earlier tore open and high temperature steam started blowing out of it.
Calaria grabbed the woman and ran towards the other side of the corridor.
“You can see what happens, everyone. Please don’t make any careless movements, even I can’t save everyone!”
“W-What, what’s going on!?”
“Captain, what are we supposed to do!?”
“I don’t know either, but just obey Princess Mary for now!”
Cutie seemed lax as always as panic spread.
“Even if you can’t save everyone, I want you to at least protect me.”
“Miss. Cutie, why didn’t you bring any guards?”
“I’m confident in my defensive techniques.”
“This is no time to joke around!”
“Indeed. I apologize. But, let’s start by figuring out our enemy’s powers first. If they’re an arcana user, there has to be some ‘uniqueness’ or a ‘rule’ to their power.”
Magrat’s Hermit and Mary’s Death God were such powers.
If they figured out what the arcana power was, perhaps they could figure out a way to survive.
(At the very least, the enemy isn’t attacking us while we’re standing around like this. I’m sure there’s a ‘condition’ for them to use their power.)
The best way to find out would be for Mary to be the bait.
Most of all, if the opponent’s target was Mary, then this was probably what the enemy ‘desired’ as well.
Then, they heard some faint ‘music’ coming from a different direction than the one Calaria went towards, from the other side of a corner.
The troops noticed this and frowned.
Everyone looked in the direction the sound was coming from.
A toy clown then showed up from behind the corner.
“That seems very strange.”
The doll had a face painted in white, and was approaching closer along with cheerful music.
It was a toy meant for children, no matter which way you looked at it.
However, it was unnatural and uncanny under these circumstances.
“Hey, Mary, what’s the point of that thing?”
“I don’t know. But it’s clearly a trap.”
“Should I break it?”
“……Well.”
It was clearly trying to get someone to break and end it.
But there was no telling whether leaving it alone would end up with a good result or not either……
“My Princess, please…… Please break that thing……”
The troop closest to the toy clung onto the wall to get farther from it while speaking in a weak tone of voice.
Meanwhile, the clown continued cheerfully moving and approached closer while shaking its head left and right.
“Please! I don’t want to die!”
“Ugh!”
Mary clenched her teeth and shot a bone bullet.
The bullet hit the toy, and the clown was smashed to pieces.
Then, something sparkling flew out of it.
“Glass marbles…..?”
It was a shower of brilliant, multicolored balls.
They drew a parabola and launched near the eyes of the troops.
Mary tried to shoot them down by shooting bones from her hand like before, but……
(They changed directions!? I can’t hit!)
They twisted around due to some strange power and could not be stopped.
“……Huh?”
The wall behind a troop warped. His body sunk in.
Half of his body was swallowed, and the wall suddenly returned to its original rigidness as it crushed his bones and flesh.
Blood spurted outwards and the left half of the man’s body was cut and dropped to the ground.
“Agh…… Ah…… Aaaagggh!…..”
A glass ball then hit another troop.
Mary’s attack was ineffective against this also.
Then, when the ball hit the ground below the man, a pitfall opened up and his body fell ‘inside the floor’.
“Uaaaagh!? No, nooooooo! Agggh!”
Then, it closed.
The sound of flesh bursting open was heard.
A great volume of blood spurted out.
Only the upper half of the man’s body was left intact, and he crawled towards his comrades with what little life he had left in him.
“Help, me…… I don’t…… want to…… die…… ugh…… uuh…..!”
But, this did not continue for long either.
The other troops were running out of patience after these all too sudden deaths.
“T-This is bad, I don’t want to die like that!”
“Yeah! We stayed here to fight Dugan! Not for this!”
They screamed and began running away.
“Wait, calm down!”
Jaysam tried to stop them in vain, and the troops continued running to get away from there.
Then, the wall exploded, the ground rose, and their bodies sank in one by one.
They died one after another as the chaos spread.
Jaysam punched a wall as shouts and screams echoed throughout this hell.
“Shiiiiit!”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have broken that…..?”
“Nobody is going to blame you, it doesn’t matter if we broke it or not!”
“That’s right Mary. And the balls are heading this way as well, so we gotta run!”
“……Understood. Come over here, Mr. Jaysam!”
“No, I will try to save my comrades, you think about your own survival!”
Jaysam ran through the corridor while shouting, ‘uaaaaaagh!’
The other troops also followed suit to try and overcome this unidentified killer by force with their physical prowesses.
Mary stopped trying to convince them to run and slid into a doctor’s office nearby.
“Close the door right now, Mary!”
Cutie shouted, but Mary froze up.
She saw Tinny trembling while hugging herself in a corner of the corridor.
(She was so close just now, so what is she doing there!?)
A glass marble from the clown was flying towards her.
Would she make it?
The unease making waves in Mary’s heart asked so.
But a gentle voice guided Mary.
“It’s okay, you can do it Mary. Good luck!”
It was not an auditory hallucination, but the voice of Francis, which made Mary smile.
An upsurge of emotions dispelled all doubt in her heart.
“Mary, where are you going!?”
“I’m going to save Miss. Tinny! I can do that much, at least!”
Cutie reached out to her, but Mary was already far away.
Tinny watched Mary in astonishment with wide open eyes as she approached closer.