Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
“Hiih, eeh, ah…… Noooooo!”
Ami screamed.
Tinny’s face went blue as she trembled, and Cutie frantically grabbed Mary’s upper body.
“Mary, you okay? Mary!”
“Cutie, what happened to Mary!?”
“It’s the device’s vibration! It uses a rotating motor! Throw yours away if you value your life! Hey, Mary, Mary!”
Mary faintly opened her eyes in Cutie’s arms.
Then, she smiled and quietly spoke up:
“Uh…… Ah…… Ah, ahah…… Miss. Cutie…… you’re…… surprisingly gentle…… uh, gugh, brrgh……”
The blood she spat out stained her face.
Cutie wiped it with her sleeves and continued talking to her with teary eyes.
“Idiot, this is no time to say things like that! What are we going to do about this injury!? The bleeding, the bleeding isn’t stopping!”
“Lady Mary! Noo, don’t die!”
“Hey Cutie, is Mary breathing?”
“Yeah, but her body is split in two!”
“Then she’s still okay, she’ll heal using the Death God’s power if you let her be.”
“An injury like this can’t heal!”
“I already explained, didn’t I? She came back to life after being completely burned, you know?”
Indeed, Calaria had told her about that.
But, Cutie could not be convinced while she was looking at Mary like this.
She was frantically panting as her guts hung out of her body, and she looked to be on the verge of death.
“Yes……. I think, I’ll be, fine. But, ugggh…..! Agh! I have to, get past this pain…… Ah, hah, haaah…… so…..!”
“If this isn’t enough to kill the Princess, what is…..?”
“I don’t know either! Mary……. Ugh, fine, I get it. I’ll just try to accept this. Okay?”
“……Yes. So…… ah, haah! Please……”
“Please what? I don’t understand, Lady Mary, don’t die like this!”
“She’s telling you she won’t, so just believe her! I’m forcing myself to be convinced too, so!”
Cutie scolded Ami, despite realizing how immature it was for her to do so.
She put her hand on her chest and took a few heavy breaths, then called out to Calaria.
“Mary won’t be able to move for a while. You have to finish Indi off.”
“Copy that. I promise I’ll succeed.”
“You can expect compensation.”
“Those are some motivating words.”
The call ended there.
Then, Cutie stepped on the device with all her might and destroyed it.
“Aah…… How indecent of me to vent my anger like this.”
Then, as if lamenting her own misery, she covered her face with one hand.
The sound of Mary’s wounds wriggling as they healed filled up the quiet room.
◇◇◇
Calaria left the female troop in the room and went out into the corridor.
The clocks were lined up in an orderly interval.
They were set up in a way that limited the gaps between them as much as possible.
Clocks that were set up only to kill the other members – she wondered how the person who did all this felt about it.
She had asked the female member she left in the room earlier what kind of a person Indi was.
She said that he was the oldest member of the group, and that Jaysam and the others trusted him completely. There were even rumors that he would be the next leader of the group.
“What a pro.”
Calaria spoke out her impressions of the man.
He was not sane, and that’s why Calaria felt that the man was an expert.
“I’m not happy about not having my weapons, but I have to do what I can.”
She had her gatling guns if she could get to the room that was given to her.
However, it would be hard to aim in these tight underground corridors, and it was risky to move around so much.
There were many rifles in the armory, but they would be a waste of time unless they were powerful enough for someone like Calaria to make full use of.
In the end, she reached the conclusion that going in bare-handed would be best.
Even now……
“Phew…… Hnph!”
Calaria could speed up like a bullet by launching herself off the floor with the soles of her feet.
Of course, Wheel of Fortune activated when she entered the range of the clocks, but there was barely a second to attack her because of how fast she was moving.
There wasn’t enough time to destroy Calaria’s brawny muscles.
Further, even if she was assailed by a slashing attack from a peeled off wall, she would not even have to evade it.
Because Calaria’s body could not be hurt even if cut by a sharp tip.
Calaria’s fighting power born from her eccentric physical prowess and toughness was a match even for an arcana user, and she forcefully broke through the minefield of clocks.
She finally got close to the monitoring room.
She saw Indi when the door of the room entered her sight.
(It’s him!)
Her expression became sterner and she sped up.
However, Indi was not a novice at all.
The moment he saw Calaria when he stepped out of the room, he quickly turned around and planned a route of escape.
But even if he was a pro, he was still in the ‘realm of common sense’.
A foe like Calaria who was an exception to such things quickly closed distance and chased after him.
Her hand reached Indi’s back after just a few seconds.
Then, he turned around and took a handgun out of his pocket, firing it at her feet.
But the bullets were slower than Calaria.
She saw them, evaded, and chased after him again – until her feet were suddenly tangled and she lost balance.
She then felt a sharp pain.
“Ugh, my toes….!?”
Her toes in her court shoes were broken.
Despite her feet being outside the range of the ‘clocks’.
(That gun just now, it wasn’t a sorcery gun, but a normal one. I see, he activated his power with the rotation of the bullets!)
Her agility was lowered because of her broken toes, and she had to focus on evading attacks and fell a little behind Indi.
She got angry as he turned a corner and tried to distance himself further from her.
“I won’t let you get away!”
“Your senses are mistaken. You’re the one who cannot get away.”
Indi suddenly stopped and put his hand in his pocket to grab a handful of glass marbles.
Then he threw them at Calaria.
The balls drew a parabola in the air.
He retreated afterwards.
But Calaria noticed the ‘noise’ approaching her from behind.
(This noise, it’s a toy car coming at me at the same time as the glass marbles from the front.)
The car slowly moved on its four wheels.
There were probably many glass marbles stored inside it.
Even if Calaria did not break it, Indi could still make it ‘self-destruct’ with his power, so there was nowhere for Calaria to run.
That’s why she clenched her teeth, lowered her body and put all her weight on her one foot that was not wounded.
The floor warped in the shape of her foot and broke apart.
Calaria then slid on the floor like a swallow and approached Indi after going under the glass marbles he threw.
His poker face broke.
He opened his eyes wide, almost as if saying, ‘impossible, how did you do that?’
(What a shame for you. Of course I can do it!)
Calaria hit his abdomen with the heel of her palm while showing her white teeth.
But Indi’s body was not blown away, and instead only staggered a little.
That wasn’t because the strike was weak, it was because the shock remained ‘inside his body’.
He felt pain as his inner organs shook.
“Ugh, brrgh….!?”
A lot of blood started frothing from Indi’s mouth.
It was clearly a deadly injury.
He had lost many functions necessary to keep a human being alive, and was going to die in a few minutes unless he received urgent care.
But he still ran.
He turned his back to Calaria and staggered away.
“You’re right, I ‘can’t run away’. Now, shall we continue this game of tag?”
Calaria thought Indi might have a spot in mind, but he simply returned to the place he started in.
“Ugh, guh…… Just a little further……”
“I see, in that case…… I can’t let you live!”
She leaped next to Indi again.
“Just a little-”
He faintly muttered.
“It’s almost a round trip.”
“Huh!?”
When Indi returned to the spot he started at, they completed one ‘revolution’.
The arm Calaria was reaching out to Indi with started creaking and warped.
“Oh, ooooh!? My body…..!”
“Haah…… Aah…… That was a good fight…… Haha, well, I almost died, so let’s call it a draw.”
“Uggggggh!”
“You can’t run away. It doesn’t matter how tough you are, you’re the ‘object’ now!”
Calaria felt like her entire body was being squeezed and crushed.
Her body trembled, she sweated profusely and blood started coming out of her mouth as she clenched her teeth.
She started hearing ominous noises coming from inside her body.
The small bones had already broken, and her blood vessels were hurt as internal bleeding spread throughout her skin.
She could barely stand up due to all her broken bones.
But, she did not go down.
Normally, an ordinary human would have already been broken.
But she was enduring this for more than a few seconds now.
“Why won’t you die? You bitch…… You’ve gained resistance to sorcery…… with your living flesh?”
“Looks like it. I’m not sure why, but I have a peculiar body that repels sorcery. It has its limits, but compared to Mary’s attacks…. This is nothing!”
Calaria roared and released herself from Wheel of Fortune’s spell.
She then shook her shoulders and approached Indi.
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m human, more human than you.”
He stopped resisting.
He muttered some senseless words and laughed at himself.
He admitted defeat after Calaria survived that attack.
But this gave rise to a doubt within Calaria’s mind.
“That’s gracious of you. Are you an arcana user?”
“Who knows?”
Indi feigned ignorance.
Calaria couldn’t read his expression.
She didn’t believe he would spit it out even if she tortured him either.
“Hey…… how does it feel?”
Calaria was curious.
She had already grabbed Indi’s head with her right arm.
He could never run away now, so she could ask him a question.
“What do you mean?”
“Killing your comrades that you’ve spent years with. I can’t understand how you’d choose that.”
“It’s not for fun, nor my choice. I did it because that’s what was required of me.”
“I see, it doesn’t sound like you switched sides halfway, then.”
“What if I did?”
“……Don’t you feel that it was a waste?”
“What do you mean a waste?”
Calaria wasn’t trying to instigate him; she was speaking from the heart.
Calaria realized that she wasn’t going to get any better answers, and put her strength into her right hand.
She crushed Indi’s head, bursting its top part apart.
Indi’s body fell to the ground.
Then, something like a piece of ‘skin’ was stuck on Calaria’s fingers.
Indi’s head looked atrocious as his lips and nose were peeled off his face.
“A man born as a tool for war, and utilized as such……”
Calaria turned her back to the corpse, pushing down her hazy feelings.
But……
“We were both alike. We should have walked on the same path.”
He spoke.
Even though his brain was crushed, and his mouth was all that he had left.
But when Calaria turned around, she did not see his mouth moving.
It was his throat.
His throat opened like a mouth, and words came out of it.
“If it wasn’t for that hypocrite pretending to be Justice, Yueri Turquaz.”
Calaria frantically stepped on what was remaining of his head and crushed it.
Indi fell silent for sure this time.
“What was that just now? Why does this guy know Yueri!?”
So Yueri’s death and her ‘past’ were connected, after all.
If so, why had she left without telling her about such an important thing?
The heavy ‘mist’ in Calaria’s heart grew denser and made her body heavy.
“Shit, this is so confusing…..!”
Calaria walked while dragging her feet and flopped into the monitoring room after slightly opening the door.