Chapter 40

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It was barely worthy of being called a village. So tiny and remote that it probably did not even appear in the lord’s tax records, it consisted of a single log temple and three or four widely scattered houses.

The temple dedicated to their god had not been built with fine materials, but the care its builders had taken was evident. It stood straight and looked sturdy. Yet someone had smashed its doors and windows.

Light streamed through the shattered openings like the gaze of a god. Following that light inside revealed a sea of blood, with bodies strewn everywhere. The killing seemed recent; wisps of steam rose into the cold air.

“Wh-when the promised day c-comes, the God of Judgment will punish y-you.”

The cleric lying on the floor dragged himself along as he spoke, bleeding from wounds all over his body. He was trying to get away from someone. Escape clearly seemed impossible, so the man who had done this to him merely stood and watched.

The sword at the man’s waist remained sheathed, but he held something like a sickle. Thick blood dripped from it.

People sometimes resemble animals. With his large, protruding jaw, the man holding the sickle had a face anyone would call doglike. He looked like a vicious fighting dog, though his eyes were surprisingly calm. Numerous small scars marked his face, the one crossing his right eye especially large.

The man spoke.

“When?”

“What?”

“When exactly is he going to punish me?”

“Wh-what are you talking about?”

“You’re not very quick on the uptake. When I was little, I prayed every day for divine punishment to strike. Begged him to kill my fucking bastard parents. Or kill me, at least. But no matter how much I prayed, he ignored me. So I killed them myself. And then I understood.”

“...”

“There is no god. Nothing even close.”

The man blasphemed so simply, so casually. The cleric’s eyes widened, as though this shocked him more than his own horrific plight. A demon...

“No divine punishment is going to strike me down for killing you. But if there’s such a thing as divine mercy, it’s that you ran into me. If you’d run into the others, you’d be begging them to kill you by now, not your god.”

The man walked toward the cleric, his footsteps splashing through the blood covering the floor. As he approached, the cleric closed his eyes and prayed.

“O God, grant salvation to this wretched soul...”

“There’s no divine punishment, and there’s no salvation. But salvation is the bigger load of shit.”

SWISH! THUNK!

His sickle sank into the crown of the cleric’s head. The cleric flopped like a fish. Just then, someone called to the man from outside the temple. It was a woman’s cheerful voice.

“Stewie! Stewie! What’s taking so long?!”

The man she called Stewie was none other than Steiner the Mad Dog. Apparently, the Five were close enough to use pet names for one another.

Steiner looked at the cleric he had killed. The sight of the dead man with a sickle embedded in his skull pleased him well enough.

But that idle amusement lasted only a moment before he turned and left the temple. Three people were waiting outside, their work finished. The woman who had called to him was dancing lightly about, though what delighted her so much was anyone’s guess. She wore several pieces of hide crudely stitched together. They were human skins, subtly different in color and texture.

The woman herself, however, had dark, toadlike skin. It was the result of practicing an aberrant form of Mana Drive. This was Erze, the Skin Collector.

“Stewie, what took you so long? Ohoho! Look at this.”

She approached Steiner and raised an arm as if showing it off, stroking it with her other hand.

“Isn’t it wonderfully soft? My skin’s getting prettier and prettier. Ohoho!”

“Sure... But where’s Tony?”

Tony was their pet name for Reto, the necromancer of the Ehrenberg Five known as the Experimenter.

“That creepy bastard said he’d got everything he needed and left ahead of us.”

The speaker was a man dressed entirely in black from head to toe. His name was Ghost, also known as the “Phantom Sword.” Yet to anyone looking, he was the creepiest of the lot.

“I said we should head to the rendezvous once we were done. Didn’t you tell him?”

“Wasn’t that your job?” Ghost asked Erze.

“Why would I talk to him? I thought Hatty told him.”

The man called Hatty was inhumanly tall and massive, like a giant from legend. The rectangular shield beside him was as large as an ordinary person. He was Hanett, known as the “Iron Bulwark.” He stood with his arms folded, leaning against a wall, his head almost reaching the roof.

“Why are you suddenly dragging me into this? Besides, I told him.”

The three of them, excluding Steiner, passed the blame around. They were rather disorganized for a group with such an infamous reputation, though it also showed how close they were.

They had all attended the same academy. For all their bickering, they were like brothers and sisters, perhaps bound together more tightly than a real family.

There was just one serious problem: they had grown up terribly twisted without ever truly becoming adults.

“Hatty says he told him.”

“Hah...”

Steiner sighed, then addressed Erze, who was standing closest.

“Erri, go get him.”

“What? Me? Why?”

“That loser actually listens to you, at least.”

“Aww, that’s true. Being pretty is so exhausting.”

Erze twirled in place as she spoke, as if flaunting her beauty. But she was the opposite of beautiful: grotesque, horrifying, and out of her mind.

“Then the three of us will go ahead. We’re counting on you, Erri.”

“Okaaay...”

“By the way, Stewie, did you hear?” Ghost asked just as they were about to leave.

“Hear what?”

“Apparently some heroes have turned up in Siegfringer lately. They’re wiping out thieves’ guilds and bandits and rescuing people. For nothing, too. I heard Haspil’s dead. Auntie Lily as well.”

Steiner seemed to consider that for a moment before offering a blunt remark.

“They must be some real sick fucks.”

Saving other people for nothing? By Steiner’s standards, they were perverts beyond comprehension. Utterly depraved perverts, at that.

Even counting his previous life, Ricard had never encountered terrain like this.

The moss-covered ground looked merely uneven, but when he stepped on it, it undulated as though there were water directly beneath it. In fact, the ground could suddenly give way, swallowing a person in an instant and killing them. Worse, the snow made it impossible to tell where to step. It was a truly strange and dangerous marsh.

He had no idea where to begin looking for Reto’s laboratory in this empty expanse. Fortunately, it had not snowed recently, allowing them to discover footprints. Judging by their size, they were unmistakably the Nameless’s.

“Oh! Those are his footprints.”

This time, Boribori recognized them before even the sharp-eyed Ricard.

The tracks led north. Ricard and Boribori followed them, the ground squelching beneath every step. After walking for a while, the two boys came upon an unbelievable sight.

GROOOAN...

A corpse with rotting flesh was moving as though alive. And it was not alone. Several of the bodies scattered about were still moving. By all appearances, they should have been dead long ago. Their milky eyes rolled, and some crawled slowly despite having nothing left below the waist.

“A n-necromancer...” Boribori muttered.

Even Ricard’s mind went blank for a moment at the appalling sight. Was magic truly this horrifying?

Finally collecting himself, he examined the scene. The corpses looked as though some enormous beast had attacked them. They bore the marks of being crushed, trampled, and hacked with an axe.

“It was him. He must have fought here,” Ricard said.

Boribori immediately followed the tracks across the gruesome scene without a backward glance. Ricard hurried after him.

At some point, a pale mist began to gather despite it being midday. It was not so thick that they could not follow the tracks, though doing so took effort. The footprints ended at a gloomy, ominous-looking hut on a relatively firm patch of ground in the marsh.

Ricard unslung the sword from his shoulder and carried it in one hand, ready to draw at any moment as he approached the hut. He carefully opened its unsecured door, only to discover yet another horrifying, revolting scene.

Jars of preserving fluid held all manner of bodily specimens. Many lay shattered, their contents strewn haphazardly across the floor, and the liquid gave off a strange, pungent smell.

On what appeared to be the necromancer’s desk sat his severed head. It was Reto the Experimenter. The Nameless had already killed him.

He looked as though he had been grotesque even in life, and death had only made him more so. Perhaps because of what they had just seen outside, it felt as though his eyes might suddenly open.

“He left it for us,” Boribori said.

“Huh?”

“Why else would he have gone to the trouble of cutting off the head and putting it here?”

“You could be right...”

Certainly, the Nameless was not the sort to do something like this in a fight. That meant he had another purpose, and Boribori’s explanation seemed right. But finding the Nameless took priority over taking the head. It did for the two boys, anyway.

Besides, this was an assassination commission, not a fugitive hunt. They only needed to kill him, so there was no need to take his head. They could cut off an ear, or take some distinguishing part or possession.

“Oh my, what little cuties have we here?”

A cheerful female voice suddenly sounded behind them. Ricard and Boribori whirled around instinctively.

They found themselves looking at a toadlike woman. No, she did not merely resemble a toad; she looked like a toad that had actually taken human form. And she was draped in human skin.

Ricard knew at once, instinctively.

“Erze?”

“Oh? You know my name? Well, I suppose beauty like mine is rather famous.”

With incongruously elegant gestures, Erze showed off her hideous appearance.

“Where are the others?”

“Hmm?”

“There are five of you.”

“Sweetie, how could we stay together all the time? They’re probably in Lindvale.”

Lindvale was where the Five had first massacred an entire village. Whether by coincidence, irony, or sheer cruelty, it was also where the Nameless had lived.

Absurdly enough, Erze had freely divulged their secret rendezvous. Perhaps it was because she felt no threat whatsoever from the two boys in front of her. Or perhaps she had never intended to let them leave.

“You two are a little old, but you still have quite nice skin. Hmm, I’ve decided. I’ll add you to my skin. Aren’t you grateful?”

Ricard and Boribori had never been called old anywhere they went. Everyone thought them young, but apparently Erze did not.

The toadlike woman gave a throaty laugh and drew a sharp dagger. Rather than an ordinary dagger, it looked more like a tool for skinning.

As she approached the boys, however, she spotted what lay beyond them: the head on the desk. She stood blankly for a moment, then began to tremble.

“T-Tony?”

They usually ignored one another and bickered, but that was all just mean-spirited teasing. To her, the Ehrenberg Five were family.

Unable to accept what she saw, Erze’s eyes blazed and her face twisted hideously. She was so ugly to begin with that the sight was enough to haunt one’s nightmares.

“What have you done to Tony—!”

Erze shrieked, but she never finished. Ricard and Boribori immediately drew their swords and struck.

CLANG! CRACK!

Astonishingly, however, their swords only scored the skins she wore—skins that had once belonged to other people—and failed to penetrate her own.

Ricard’s meteoric-iron sword was too fine a weapon to break, but Boribori’s mana-infused blade snapped in two, though it could cut through almost anything.

It truly felt as though he had struck solid rock with his sword. Ricard felt its violent vibrations travel through his hand and into his bones. Grimacing, he hastily retreated. As he did, Erze lunged at him with murderous intent.

“Riki!”

Boribori cried out, clutching his wrist in pain. But for a moment, Ricard thought Erze must be playing around. Her attack was that clumsy.

Had losing her companion made her lose control of her emotions? Was her skin simply tough while her fighting skills were poor? Or was it a trap? Countless thoughts crossed his mind in that brief instant.

But Ricard, who had experienced more real combat than words could express, found the answer even in that fraction of a second.

He released his sword, made a blur of movements, and snapped her arm at the joint in an instant.

CRUNCH!

“Aaaah!”

Boribori seized the opening to leap onto Erze’s back. Wrapping both legs around her waist, he clung to her like a turtle’s shell, thrust both hands into her mouth, and forced her jaws apart. Mana coursed through his veins and into his muscles, unleashing monstrous strength.

“Nnngh!”

CRRUNCH.

“Aaaaaah!”

Erze’s jaw dislocated, leaving her mouth gaping like a snake’s. She thrashed wildly, but Boribori would not let go. When he finally tore off her lower jaw, however, he lost his balance and was flung away.

CRASH!

Boribori flew a considerable distance, then sprang to his feet.

“Guuuurgh...”

Erze could barely make a sound, like an undead creature, and could no longer speak. Her tongue hung limply without anything beneath it to support it. She staggered, trying to escape.

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

Ricard pursued her bare-handed. Erze fled in terror, but he was far faster on his feet. Catching her in an instant, he grabbed her leg, brought her down, and twisted her ankle right around.

“Aaaaaah!”

Erze writhed on the ground in pain. She tried to grab Ricard, but he had already darted out of reach again. Drawing a dagger from inside his clothes, he spoke.

“Are your eyeballs tough too?”

“Uuuurgh...”

“I certainly hope so.”

Without waiting for an answer, he drove the dagger into her eye with all his strength. As the blade pierced the eyeball and reached the soft brain behind it, Erze convulsed. Soon, she went limp.

Against an ordinary opponent, her skin’s resistance to blades would have been powerful enough. But these two boys were not ordinary opponents.

“Hah, hah, hah...”

Boribori approached and looked down at Erze’s limp corpse.

Ricard asked his panting friend, “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. You, Riki?”

“Me too.”

“Then let’s go.”

“Yeah.”

The two boys gathered proof that Reto and Erze were dead, then immediately set out for Lindvale. Though both targets were dead and their commission was complete, Ricard and Boribori’s journey was not over. Nor did they intend to end it.

There was, however, one thing that troubled Ricard. It was not fear that the Nameless might die. He tended to accept death with detachment. Rather, if the man died after punishing himself like this, what meaning would it have, whether he achieved his revenge or not?

The circumstances of Riki in Ricard’s previous life and those of the Nameless were different, but there were unmistakable similarities. Ricard feared that the Nameless was following in Riki’s footsteps. Because there was no salvation at the end of that road.