Volume 1 – Following the Maze Drawn With Lines of Blood
Mary continued faintly breathing while laying on the ground.
The pain took her strength away, and while the bleeding stopped, she did not recover enough to stand up yet.
They wanted to lay her on a bed, but hesitated to move her body due to how heavy her injuries were.
So Cutie and Ami also sat down on the floor, nestled close to her, and worried about Mary.
“Is Lady Mary really okay…..?”
Ami slightly grabbed the tip of her dress.
“She’s growing something that looks like legs, so I think she’s alright.”
Cutie feigned calmness, but her forehead was sweating too.
The open wounds she was looking at were almost foaming and wriggling.
“Mhm…… this is how they grow. Also, her severed legs are still there.”
“That’s not pleasant to look at. But, I’m sure Mary is the one most creeped out by it.”
“I don’t think so. Because it’s Lady Mary. Lady Mary’s body is awesome!”
Ami stared at the healing wounds with a somewhat vacant expression on her face.
“That’s just you.”
“Really?”
Cutie felt a little uneasy by the look in Ami’s eyes.
Meanwhile, Tinny stood near the door to pay attention to the outside.
Her face looked pale and cold sweat was dripping down her back.
“Tinny, you can’t change anything by panicking. Let’s just wait for Calaria’s results.”
“I know, I know. But, it’s so hard to stand around while the princess looks like that!”
“That’s not a good reason to make a move. Just sit down and-”
“Aa, aa, aa. Alright, looks like the device is alive.”
Calaria’s voice from above her head interrupted Cutie’s warning.
The sound seemed to be coming from the speakers on the ceiling.
“Are you using the broadcasting equipment in the monitoring room?”
“This is Calaria. I managed to…… kill Indi. As we thought, he was…… a spy. He snuck into the organization years ago.”
“Mr. Indi, I can’t believe it……”
Tinny bit her lips after muttering.
The surviving organization members were surely even more shocked than her, and were lamenting this news.
“But…… Ahh, I’m not sure if Wheel of Fortune’s effects have disappeared yet. The rest is…… up to you, Cutie.”
The sound of something falling down came from the speakers.
Ami worriedly looked at Cutie.
“Miss. Calaria is in a lot of pain, isn’t she?”
“I guess she’s wounded.”
“I want to go help her right now, but……”
Cutie grabbed a pen from the desk, and slightly opened the door.
Through the opening, she could see glass marbles scattered on the floor.
They weren’t moving, so the power was probably deactivated, but the condition would be fulfilled again if she touched them even a little.
She threw the pen at a glass marble.
The ball rolled around, hit another ball nearby, and stopped without anything else occurring.
Tinny and Ami watched this happen from behind Cutie.
“Nothing is happening.”
“Pheew…… Okay, that means Mr. Indi was the arcana user.”
“……Yeah.”
Cutie’s expression was even sterner now.
(He’s been here for a long time. Did Dugan send in a spy from that early on? I guess he could have had enough foresight to do that. But, would he sneak in an ‘arcana user’ for all these years?)
It was quite the waste to use such a valuable asset in this way.
The organization was almost destroyed thanks to it, but was the Liberta Liberation Front really worth that cost?
It’s not as if he could have guessed a few years ago that Mary would be in this place now.
“I’ve confirmed it’s safe outside, so shall we leave the room now?”
“Yeah, Cutie, we have to check if the others are safe!”
Cutie didn’t break her careful composure even as the other two hurried.
She wasn’t sure if it was really okay to leave.
This was too easy of an end for an arcana user.
While Cutie thought about this, Mary looked at her from the floor by the corner of her field of vision.
Cutie met eyes with her, and she slowly gestured for Cutie to approach.
“Wait up you two, I think Mary is saying something.”
Mary’s mouth was moving, but her voice was too quiet to hear.
Cutie got very close to her, and finally heard her mutterings.
“Miss. Cutie, from the start, I always thought…… it was a little strange. But, I couldn’t decide, if that was because we just met.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like how she was supposed to be left-handed. How she was supposed to call me Lady Mary. Small details, but still.”
“…..?”
Cutie tilted her head.
But she realized from Mary’s appearance that this was important, and continued listening.
“Now that I think of it, I’m curious why she was cowering in a place where she normally couldn’t be saved. Like, was she hiding herself there to make it look like she ‘died’? Yeah, in that case, my sister’s voice knew about that, and, now, no. And the communication device, yes. Why did nothing happen when she used it, but when I used it…… I think it’s strange. So I looked into it, making the ‘eyes of the dead’ go around searching.”
Mary hadn’t sorted everything out herself and was speaking in unclear terms.
The two’s conversation didn’t seem like it would be quick, so Tinny and Ami continued suspiciously watching them.
But, Cutie began to see the ‘whole story’ that Mary was trying to convey.
She gulped and cold sweat started dripping down from her forehead.
“The spot, is in a corner of the facility, the dump site. It was in the trash box, in there.”
Then, Mary told Cutie her conclusion – what the eyes of the dead saw.
“Miss. Tinny’s corpse.”
Mary was of course shaken by that scene, the carved up face of someone she knew just thrown in there.
But it made sense.
Including the fact that Mary was attacked so accurately when she went to save Tinny.
It all pointed to one fact: Tinny was, no, ‘someone pretending to be Tinny’ was the user of Wheel of Fortune.
“That girl…..?”
Cutie’s heart pounded so hard that it hurt.
There was a bloodthirsty killer behind her right now.
Someone with a screw loose in her head, someone who could murder people without even changing the expression on her face.
“Can you make some time until my recovery?”
Cutie shook her head in reply.
“She wants to go outside. Like you said, the enemy might not have expected you to save Tinny. So I want to flee this place as fast as I can.”
“But since Miss. Calaria is injured, there’s no one else who can fight an arcana us-”
“I’ll do it.”
“Miss. Cutie?”
She wasn’t joking.
Cutie spoke with a voice full of resolve.
“I told you I’m confident in my art of self-defense, right?”
“That’s absurd.”
Cutie put her hand on top of Mary’s, who was holding her sleeve.
“That woman stood up by herself.”
She thought back to Calaria.
“She continued searching for a clue even while risking death.”
She then looked at Mary and gently smiled.
“So my pride won’t allow me to be the only one who stands around and watches.”
Saying that, Cutie softly brushed Mary’s hand away and stood up.
She nimbly grabbed Ami’s arm and forcefully pulled her away from Tinny.
Ami staggered and almost fell down: “Aah!?”
Then Cutie kicked a chair that was near her and made her sit down.
Seeing this, Tinny grinned in a strange manner.
“Lady Cutie, why did you do that? That was some kind of a joke, yes?”
Seeing Cutie’s behavior, Tinny guessed that Cutie noticed it.
She was ready both to give up pretending, and to ‘walk on thin ice’.
“There’s no need to act now.”
“Wait, are you saying I was acting or something?”
“Let’s stop the charade. Mary already found it, your real corpse that is.”
“……”
Ami looked at Cutie and Tinny in turns with confusion.
Then, Tinny showed a smile that was completely different than any she had shown so far.
The corners of her mouth warped into an unpleasant smile, almost reminiscent of Magrat’s.
“Very impressive. I guess there’s a reason the Princess was chosen.”
“Show your true identity!”
Cutie took her gun out and aimed.
Tinny – no, the person pretending to be her, pulled the skin off her face in one go.
The face revealed underneath was full of tattoos, and Cutie’s first impression was:
(……She looks like Calaria?)
At most, she could say that they just resembled each other.
But, considering Yueri’s existence, she felt that this was a ‘connection’ that could not be ignored.
The woman was not swayed by the muzzle aimed at her chest.
The blue-haired woman, in a voice completely different than Tinny’s, challenged Cutie while bursting into laughter:
“Ehehehehe, hello, you can call me Hemlock. Nice to meet you, lady of Majoram.”
“You’re Wheel of Fortune’s user.”
“That’s right, I’ve always been surprisingly good at acting too, though. Maybe my pentacle wasn’t flawless? Still, I guess I made some mistakes too. Kyahah!☆”
“Yeah, I can take you down now thanks to your stupid mistakes.”
“Take me down…… Hmmh, you mean you’ll kill me?”
“Why else would I aim a gun at you in this distance?”
“Ehehehehe, I know, I know. But, you know, you shouldn’t underestimate arcana.”
Hemlock snapped after laughing.
She disappeared right before Cutie’s eyes.
The floor was gouged out, as if the spot she stood on was erased by an invisible power.
Then she moved behind Cutie, and whispered:
“You’ll pop like a soap bubble if I touch you.”
Cutie distanced herself after she sensed Hemlock’s fingers reaching towards her back, but she couldn’t run away from her power’s effects.
Her shoulder bones transformed into needles and stabbed her flesh from within.
(Aaaaggggh! But she didn’t even touch me! What was the ‘rotating’ object!?)
Cutie’s face contorted with pain and she glared at Hemlock.
Then she noticed.
The faint noise of machinery by Hemlock’s arms and legs.
“Your limbs – they’re artificial arms and artificial legs, aren’t they!?”
“Yes! Wonderful, wonderful cogwheel pooooweeeeeeer! Creaking and turning, gouging out lives for me!”
Hemlock showed her white teeth with a self-satisfied smile, certain of her victory.
But Cutie didn’t intend on becoming the loser.
“My life is expensive, I’m not going to let you take it!”
Why did Hemlock hide her identity?
Because she did not want to be known as an arcana user.
Why did Cutie hide her own Sorcery Rating by using a jamming device?
There was something she wanted to hide.
“Empress Familia, crush my enemy!”
The furniture in the room transformed.
The chair, bed, curtains, and the broken fan all turned into animals of different shapes and swooped down on Hemlock.