Chapter 545

My heart was pounding. With my neck bent back at such an angle, even swallowing was difficult. Ah, even if I’d prepared myself for this, I couldn’t help swearing.

If I’d had free use of my body, I would have instinctively sent their jaws flying. But no matter how much I moved my arms and legs, they wouldn’t budge. The only part I could move was from above my knees to just below where my legs joined my body. In other words, practically nothing.

I didn’t even know anymore. At least there was some room above the belt wrapped around my solar plexus, so I could move the upper part of my chest to some extent. But with my arms twisted back, how much could I possibly accomplish by moving? They were holding my shoulders in the first place. They didn’t seem to care in the slightest whether they broke my shoulder blades or not.

Just as I began to feel as though every other sensation had faded behind the sound of my own pulse—

“…!”

A salty, metallic taste spread across my tongue.

Cold blood flowed into my mouth. My throat stung, as though they had infused it with the mana of a powerful mage. They held my neck and kept my head from dropping forward. Their determination to make sure I couldn’t spit it out was almost admirable.

Whenever I tried to close my mouth, they pressed harder on the metal rod pinning down my tongue. I jerked my head back on instinct, but they had a firm grip on either side of my head.

I felt like I was going to die soon.

There wasn’t really any particular reason for it. Or perhaps there was. Swallowing liquid with my neck bent back forced the muscles in the lower half of my face to work far too hard. When I struggled to force open my barely closed esophagus just to stay alive, the back of my head, connected to my neck, began to ache.

“Ghk…!”

Huh. I wasn’t even exhaling. I just kept drawing in more and more. Breath, air, everything. My lungs felt as though they were going to burst, so I twisted my shoulders, and a brief reprieve came.

The amount of blood falling into my mouth decreased.

My esophagus moved on its own.

Unless I wanted to experience dying from having my airway blocked by vomit, I needed to think about something else to break through this situation, especially with my stomach already churning.

Something else, huh.

I did wonder what I would look like if all my teeth turned red. Probably like a dokkaebi¹.

And just like that, my attempt to distract myself was abandoned.

The only thoughts that came to mind were things like how many people were involved in this interrogation, how many were surrounding the room where I was being questioned, and how the situation was unfolding right now—questions about the human dignity that would inevitably follow this less-than-pleasant method of interrogation, though I’d already conceded the upper hand the moment they mistook me for a member of Pleroma; strategic patience, knowing that the lie I would prove through this process today would serve as a kind of vindication, allowing me to shake off the bad reputation that came with the truth; and the fact that, while I’d once turned my tongue blue with the blue candy a childhood friend had given me, I’d never made my teeth blue. They were all thoughts that strayed not even an inch from the heart of the matter, yet were so trivial that they only irritated me further for no reason.

As the breath escaping me began to settle, they tightened their grip on my jaw again. The crude metal rod, nowhere near as skilled as a doctor and pricking the mucous membrane of my uvula, almost seemed to be blocking my airway instead. Or perhaps not. Maybe it was simply because the blood kept pouring in far too relentlessly.

Someone must have noticed that my back had arched and that I was putting strength into my legs, because they began pressing down on my thigh with a foot. The pain was dispersed. If I hadn’t had to keep moving my esophagus, I probably would have laughed at the way they were behaving. Weren’t they being a little too wary of me at this point? Even with common sense, no one would hurt an interrogator in the middle of an interrogation. And yet they were the ones going to such lengths to make sure I couldn’t do exactly that…

I had no idea how much time passed with my stomach churning and my chest twisting from the nausea. The one-centimeter wound burned hot. Even though I had hastily closed it with healing mana, that was only the surface. The inside still hadn’t healed completely, so every time I twisted my body too much, it made itself known.

I had never intended to resist in the first place, but now I was completely drained. I could no longer even attempt to escape into the freedom that would amount to nothing more than sitting uselessly on the spot. In other words, I couldn’t pull my throat forward anymore just to open my esophagus.

Around that time, whether they had noticed my condition or simply decided I had drunk enough, the blood dripping onto my tongue began to decrease. The interrogator who had spent all this time prepared to break my jaw slowly pressed down on my mandible with a gloved hand, pulled out the metal rod, and closed my mouth for me.

How considerate of them, finally. They were helping me so I wouldn’t smash my front teeth when I hurriedly closed my mouth…

“Ugh….”

I immediately bent myself as far down as I could and left everything to my esophagus. I could almost tell where my stomach was. I kept retching until there was nothing left to bring up, and even after that, I could only dry-heave. I scraped the blood remaining on my tongue against the roof of my mouth and my front teeth until it fell away, then spat irritably. After that, I leaned back against the backrest and let out a long breath.

I’d been worried, but thankfully, that was no longer necessary. I didn’t even have to pretend. It was so disgustingly revolting that any human being would have reacted the way I did.

I quietly rejoiced and closed my eyes. I had opened and closed them so many times while resisting that my crushed eyelashes had become crumpled and uncomfortable, but that was hardly something worth complaining about now… It was unfortunate that I couldn’t see their faces, but that only meant I had more strength to wait.

The fact that I hadn’t gone berserk or shown any abnormal reaction was more than enough to throw them into confusion. Even though I had already returned what I’d drunk to the ground and had enough time to cough for quite a while, they didn’t stop me. They watched the entire scene without interference, as though they hadn’t expected ‘my core’ to react this normally, or as though they intended to write an observation report afterward.

I felt the blood around my mouth drying and tightening my skin. Then I felt a bloodstained glove touch my jaw again.

Someone grabbed my cheek.

Round two.

What else were they going to do with my mouth already forced open? Now it was time to speak.

My first attempt at putting pressure on my vocal cords produced nothing but the sound of air. I stopped breathing from deep in my abdomen and shifted my breathing up toward my chest as I moved my body away from the hand.

“Stop…”

It sounded as though I had barely managed to squeeze out the words after hesitating, but I hadn’t hesitated in the slightest. Even though I heard a tone that sounded like something I might say and yet also like something I wouldn’t, I felt less disgusted than I had expected.

Putting on a straight face was my job, after all.

I wasn’t particularly surprised that the voice I intended came out as planned. I breathed in through my mouth and slowly exhaled.

The hand moved away. Instead of voices, I could only hear the sound of fabric brushing against something. They were probably exchanging hand signals. They must have asked the people watching from outside what to do next…

What mattered to me was what came next.

How would they react now?

As though they had reached a decision, I heard glass rattling behind me.

They had decided to make me drink blood one more time.

The same thing happened again.

But the blood that touched my tongue tasted different this time. They had clearly infused it with someone else’s mana.

This time, I resisted a little more. Before the hands had even moved away, I twisted my body and immediately vomited. Something other than blood spilled out of my mouth as well.

“Stop, stop…”

There was a little more sincerity in it this time. Perhaps because of the stomach acid, my voice sounded different from how I knew it. I let my head droop to the left and merely moved my lips.

“Isn’t this enough for you to know by now?”

Someone placed a hand over my core and probed my mana. The warmth of a human hand against my skin made my stomach turn once more.

“Urgh.”

Even with me on the verge of vomiting onto his arm, this interrogation expert didn’t pull his hand away. Instead, the hand gripping my jaw twitched. The interrogator examining my core was obsessed with detecting any trace of abnormality in its mana.

But my mana was circulating throughout my body just as it would under ordinary physical shock.

That was all.

He wouldn’t find anything beyond that.

I gagged once more before speaking.

“What exactly is supposed to be wrong with me…? Are you looking for evidence that I’m in league with Pleroma?”

Even though they were listening, no one answered. There had to be anywhere from several people to more than a dozen standing by in case I went berserk, yet they remained silent as though none of them could hear me.

My throat burned. My stomach was already empty of blood, but my body’s instinctive disgust at having swallowed something that wasn’t food kept making me retch. Every so often, only stomach acid reached my tongue.

I wanted someone to wipe the blood running down my chin.

There was no such courtesy, and instead, I felt someone grip my broken arm and inject something into it.

Not much time seemed to have passed. When I came to again, I felt a little more comfortable and a little more uncomfortable at the same time, because I was in water.

It probably wasn’t water.

I realized that my entire legs were submerged in an amount of diluted blood slightly less than what would be used for a half-body bath.

Judging by their determination not to let this go without being thorough, these weren’t the Prussians I knew.

Their tendency to become more thorough than ever when cornered was certainly fitting for the foremost state that had accomplished the great undertaking of German unification.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

They were anxious, and they saw this moment as their last chance. Whether they were trying to find evidence that I wasn’t Pleroma or evidence that I was, they had to be thorough in verifying both possibilities.

Even so, did they really have to conduct such an absurd interrogation that even a lunatic who had bathed in someone else’s blood to become young again would leave after seeing the scene here today feeling wronged over why they’d been condemned?  Did they truly believe they had to go this far…?

I checked whether there was anything left around my mouth. There wasn’t. They must have stopped feeding me and decided to keep me in this blood-soaked environment instead. But would anything come of that? Yes. Under normal circumstances, my mana would have reacted strongly to this blood. I suppose I should compliment them for knowing how to use their heads.

If that was their plan, then by the time I was allowed to leave this place, I would be able to see how they had carried out what Leonard and I had prepared in advance, and I would be able to meet Julia and Ulrike as well. Elias, too. Narke, too.

I wouldn’t bother thinking about what kind of faces they would make when they saw me. At least, I didn’t want to. For now.

Even if I received their comfort, the thought of placing that emotional burden on them made me a little tired. One could be confident and still be tired.

The constant smell of blood was making my stomach churn. Whenever someone else’s mana brushed against my body through the water, my skin stung. Being trapped in a bathtub reeking of blood was no easy thing. I could just stand up and get out, couldn’t I? But I had no idea who might have a gun pointed at me, and more importantly, I was well and truly trapped again.

“How long am I supposed to stay here?”

I asked as I gripped the thin glass frame of the bathtub. Whenever I moved my body, the blood that had been hardening on the surface before I could move peeled away from the water unpleasantly.

“I am enduring this interrogation as much as possible to reassure you. Even if I am innocent, if I were to say that I did not wish to undergo an interrogation like this, you would surely refuse to believe in my innocence.”

[…….]

“And now, I believe I have endured quite enough.”

The sound of the door opening came. Someone entered at the order they had been given, pulled my shoulder back, and felt for my core.

The reason their touch felt unsettling wasn’t because I was uncomfortable with them touching me. They were genuinely hesitant to lay a hand on me. Apparently, what they were seeing didn’t look particularly safe. They believed I could tear through my restraints and get up at any moment and kill them.

Putting aside the fact that I had not the slightest intention of doing so, the image of someone taking a half-body bath in blood was apparently that horrifying. It was obvious that people across the Empire would see me no differently right now.

My stomach wasn’t burning anymore.

Someone tried sending mana into my core, then hesitantly pulled his hand away. Naturally, the reason he was at a loss was that there was nothing abnormal about my core.

That made it certain. They had already decided that there had to be something wrong with me before they brought me here.

One of the many possibilities and countermeasures I had sent to Bavaria in advance had pinpointed their behavior exactly. It was nothing surprising. Their thinking had been right there in the palm of our hand.

[Lord Askanien.]

Judging by the fact that they continued to address me as ‘Lord’ even in a situation like this, they had no intention of irritating me. Naturally. They were too preoccupied with determining whether Prussia’s future could be secured and whether Prussia was innocent.

And yet, being treated with such courtesy in a situation like this made me uncomfortable.

Even now, they still regarded me as the Prince of Anhalt, someone who had to be treated with due respect. And at the same time, they couldn’t seem to break free of the mentality of the 19th century.

Historically, though, humans would continue to hesitate little when it came to wielding state power against individuals, all the way through the end of the 20th century and even into the 21st. In light of that history, this was more than moderate enough.

Normally, I would have lamented that fact, but today, not so much…

When I first encountered a world where drinking blood could amplify one’s abilities, I honestly had no idea things could lead this far. Even now, knowing that, simply keeping my mind together despite how nauseated I felt was already more than enough.

If I had known a future like this awaited me, I should have been more careful when choosing the book, even taking the setting of its world into consideration. It was too late now.

I knew this wasn’t something that had been up to me, but with my mind growing hazy, I couldn’t help having such a ridiculous thought.

It had always been this way, but today made it certain. No matter how unsettling it was, there was no avoiding it anymore…

All I could do was make the best possible use of it.

Thinking that, I roused my dazed mind.

[We’ll draw some blood. It will be used for the interrogation, and if there’s any left over, it will be disposed of by the end of the day.]

As soon as the person in charge finished speaking, the interrogators who had come over grabbed my arms.

They drew my blood three times. One of the samples was used right there, while they took the other two with them when they left. I could guess what they were going to use them for. Couldn’t I? It meant I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to be released.

I spat on the floor, realizing that my stomach no longer had enough gastric acid left to dilute the blood I’d drunk.

I should at least get some sleep.

Even without deciding to, my mind slipped into sleep on its own. Since falling asleep would probably be another noteworthy result of their experiment, they didn’t stop me.

As expected, the interrogators returned.

I woke at the sound while sleeping against my injured left arm. No, waking my eyes was harder than lifting my head, so I couldn’t actually open them.

If there was a problem, it was that they had returned after thirty minutes. I couldn’t see them, but judging from the movement of the air, they were standing beside me without doing anything.

A voice echoed in from outside.

[Has Mikhail Ismailov ever drunk your blood?]

So now they were bringing up Pleroma’s ‘false’ Messiah. Had they found some connection between the two Messiahs, or was this going exactly as I expected?

I stayed silent for a moment before moving my lips.

“Yes.”

[Why did he drink it?]

“How would I know? My throat still feels raw from being torn apart.”

[When we rescued Ismailov, we discovered that the hostage’s ear had been torn. It was an injury caused by ripping off an artifact.]

“Did he? Please tell him I’m sorry.”

No answer came.

They suspected that I had torn off his ear so I could drink his blood.

And, amazingly enough, they were right.

Not only that. Everything they were trying to verify was right.

Just as they suspected, I can become infinitely stronger by drinking blood. I’m simply using every precaution I can think of to pretend otherwise.

But there was no way I was going to give them the right answer.

There was just one thing that caught my attention at this point…

[Did Pleroma call you Christ not because you drink blood, but because Pleroma wants your blood?]

“How would I know? It’s true that I don’t drink blood, so perhaps that’s the case…”

There was no answer.

I heard the sound of dress shoes turning. They were exchanging hand signals.

Thud―

There was a sound of flesh being pierced, but my skin was untouched. Someone else’s skin, then.

A moment later, a draft brushed across my face. The smell of blood drew closer as well. Fingertips with a rough texture touched my face, but perhaps it hadn’t been intentional, because before I could even say anything, the hand abruptly pulled away. For a moment, I wondered if this was someone I knew.

“What are you…?”

The moment I asked, the smell of blood grew more distant. The interrogator who had held out his hand to me stepped away several paces and wiped the blood off with a towel. At least, that was what it sounded like.

I could only assume they had been ordered to find out whether I would drink blood directly from a person’s veins rather than blood that had already been collected.

If they could have seen my eyes, they probably would have looked rather awkward.

Would I drink it…?

If I had been in the middle of a battle, backed into a corner, I might genuinely have drunk it. But that was a truth they had no business knowing.

Their persistence in trying to determine, right to the very end, whether there was something wrong with me was almost admirable.

And then—

[Very well.]

It was over.

[You do not react to blood. At least initially, there appears to be nothing abnormal about your temperament. The interrogation will conclude here before midnight.]

I suppressed the urge to twist up the corners of my mouth.

What a bunch of troublesome bastards. They had desperately tried to determine until the very end whether I had an inclination to drink blood, yet they hadn’t come even remotely close to the truth.

Was my simple preparation the perfect answer, or…?

One thing was certain. Even if I had prepared for them as thoroughly as possible, a worthwhile opponent would have looked for a way to see through it and confronted me anyway. These people hadn’t.

I was grateful for that.

Whether it was the inefficiency unique to a bureaucratic system that had become little more than routine, or simply the nature of ordinary people, their best efforts were utterly ordinary. They had laid the groundwork in a way that made it easy for me to use them.

All I had to do was play along, like I had today, so that this enormous power would continue believing that it was doing the right thing.

I felt the people leave the room. But there might still have been people watching me from outside.

Of course. If the experiment was over, they should have set me free. Instead, they had left without doing so. Wasn’t it only natural for me to be suspicious?

Slosh…

After the silence dragged on, the only sound left was the water.

If it weren’t human blood, I wouldn’t have minded resting in the water like this.

I wondered what else was waiting for me and raised my head for no particular reason.

Then I heard the door open, followed by the slow sound of footsteps.

The sound of leather soles against marble was not one that could possibly leave me with a pleasant memory, at least not under these circumstances.

“Not hard to figure out what you did.”

I heard a whisper. I lifted my head toward the sound. I couldn’t even tell whether it was coming from above or from the side, but I did it anyway.

Someone slipped a cool finger beneath the edge of my blindfold from the side of my cheek and lifted it. My optic nerves, long since accustomed to the darkness, couldn’t take the sudden burst of light. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Even so, I knew who it was. His voice, the silhouette I had caught a glimpse of, even the temperature of his skin—all of it pointed to one person.

Abraham stood with his back to the light, smiling from within the shadows.

“You’ve done quite well getting yourself out of this with such a flimsy trick. May I take that to mean you trust me?”

Translator Note

1. Dokkaebi (도깨비 ) are legendary creatures from Korean mythology and folklore. ↩︎