Chapter 1034: The World Is a Kaleidoscope (16)

The nameless sailor froze solid.

Only the lower jaw hanging beneath his half-open mouth trembled once in a while. He had forgotten even to breathe, and terror slowly began to fill his eyes.

Mm. This is no fun if it goes like this.

At that, Qing snorted through her nose, then took a huge bite out of the bread slathered absolutely thick with butter.

CHOMP.

Then, still chewing, she spoke as casually as ever.

“[Fine. So what happened? When’s that bastard Hamel coming?]”

The presence of an abomination vanished without a trace. In its place, all at once, was a woman eating a meal—no, a beauty.

An absurd beauty whose good looks remained untouched even in this state, with clothes sticky with blood and hair still matted with bits of flesh.

The mood loosened so abruptly that the tension in the sailor, who had been just about to chamber and fire off a scream, fizzled out with a soft hiss instead.

“[Hamel? Who’s that?]”

“[Who else would he be? Your captain. What, you work for a captain whose name you don’t even know? Amsterdam, uh, right? Amsterdam? Is that how you say it?]”

Qing, who had been keeping up her immersive performance, faltered for a moment.

The capital of the Netherlands was Amsterdam, but did Amsterdam still exist in this era too? Or no—was the capital of the Netherlands Notre Dame?

Fortunately, Amsterdam in this era was the most prosperous city in the Netherlands, all but serving as its real capital.

“[Why Amsterdam?]”

“[That bastard said I should go with him. Said if I hid in the hold for a few days, it’d all work out. Said the whole place over there was practically his land. And then—ugh, look what happened to me.]”

At that, the sailors looked at each other.

Hamel? Who the hell was that? Sounded like some country bumpkin.

First of all, there was no captain in the fleet with a name like that. Still, somehow, the whole story laid itself out right in front of their eyes.

Some guy named Hamel on one of the ships must have gone out for nighttime fun and caught each other’s eye with a Central Plains woman.

Then when he tried to coax her into coming with him, he must have spun lie after lie—saying he was a captain, saying he was important.

He would have sweet-talked her bit by bit. I’ll treat you well. I’ve got a fortune back home. And after luring her in, he’d hide her in the hold first.

Then once the ship set sail, what could anyone do? It wasn’t as if they could just throw her into the water. In the end, it was still something a sailor aboard the same ship had done, and forgiveness was easier than permission. They’d have no choice but to take her along.

In truth, it was common enough.

There was no shortage of men who came back saying they wanted to take along a woman they’d met ashore, and seeing how she hadn’t even been able to say anything and had hidden herself in the hold, the man must have been a pretty low-ranking one at that.

And then she survived because she’d been hiding in the hold, and the marines found her while searching the United Company and brought her over.

Well, sure, all that trembling and shouting about an abomination was marine talk. Hadn’t the fleet’s first mate dismissed it all as nonsense and flatly said she was just a survivor?

Tsk, tsk. Marines. Always so full of shit.

The two sailors deflated on the spot.

It was the moment the script Qing had improvised on the fly worked perfectly.

In truth, if they’d only thought about it a little more deeply, the strange parts would have been obvious enough.

Why was a woman who’d supposedly just been hiding in the hold in such a horrific state? If she’d gotten swept up in the chaos, why wasn’t she cowering the way the other terrified sailors had? If the word abomination meant anything to her, shouldn’t something about it have snagged in her mind? Why did she sound as if she had no idea at all? And so on.

But right now, they were more curious about something else.

“[Wow, your language is really good. Where’d you learn it?]”

“[I go to church.]”

“[Ah, the pastor. Wasn’t he supposed to have been in Shanghai for over five years? Still, you’re really good. Practically native-level. Seriously.]”

“[Aw, come on. I’ve still got a long way to go.]”

“[No, I mean it. Right? She’s good at our language, isn’t she?]”

“[I’d believe it if you told me she was born in Amsterdam. Seriously, miss, you’re good.]”

A foreigner speaking your own language tended to make you feel instantly close to them.

At that, Qing smiled faintly.

“[But there was a loud noise. Wasn’t that cannon fire? Did you shoot cannons at something?]”

“[Uh, well.]” “[Ahem.]”

The two sailors turned their eyes away, uncomfortable.

After all, saying, We shelled your city, was a little hard to blurt out to her face.

So Qing cast her line again.

“[Then that’s good, isn’t it? I’ve got a lot built up about Shanghai. I’m not even from there. But why’d you fire?]”

“[Because the Governor of Shanghai won’t open up trade. Those pig bastards built entire ports and sweep up Eastern goods, and what the hell are we supposed to do?]”

“[So you shot it? What were you planning to do if the Central Plains army came pouring in?]”

“[That’s exactly why we shot it. An army of uncivilized wretches like theirs would get swept away easily by our homeland’s naval guns, and then even the Emperor of the Central Plains would get scared and come out a lot more cooperative.]”

“[But what if their army’s strong?]”

“[Hmph. That black tribal chief in Africa, that king in India, that sultan in Java—they all dropped to their knees in apology in front of cannon fire. Why would the Central Plains be any different?]”

“[Ah, so this wasn’t your first time? You’ve probably been going around shelling every city you stop at.]”

“[Well, none of them could understand when you talked to them.]”

“[Because they’re uncivilized, that’s why.]”

And the sight of the two of them snickering to each other.

Oh? You’re laughing? What’s so funny? This is funny to you?

Roaming from place to place, shelling cities, picking fights, crushing armies—and you were proud of that?

I’d wondered whether maybe there had been some unavoidable reason they had to fire their cannons after all, but perhaps I’d been thinking far too kindly of this era itself.

Every trace of expression vanished from Qing’s face.

They’d looked at a human being and called her an abomination and all that, but weren’t these bastards the real abominations?

Bastards who weren’t even fit to be called human were exactly the kind ghosts ought to drag off. No wonder the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost had latched onto them.

*****

“Lady Joanna. It’s me. I’m coming in.”

Creeeak. The careful sound of a door opening.

At that, Joanna threw back the blanket and raised her curled-up body, revealing a figure drenched through with sweat.

“Are you feeling a little better?”

At that, Joanna let out a long, deep sigh.

“Haaah....... I made a spectacle of myself.”

“Did you get any sleep? You look terribly tired.”

“I’m fine now—mm, no, to be honest, I’m not that fine. Every time I close my eyes, I feel like I’m going to get dragged back there, so I couldn’t sleep at all.”

“Still, I’m truly glad you seem much improved. What in the world happened? Ah, if it’s hard to say, you don’t have to—”

“No. It’s just that I picked at the wrong person. That veiled bitch—she’s a witch too. And one contracted to a far higher existence than mine. Probably some nameless being they worship in the East.”

“There are witches in the East as well?”

“Witches are everywhere. They’re just called different things depending on the place. Priests, clerics, shamans, spirit-mediums—if they borrow power from some great being, then in the end they’re the same as witches. But that one...”

The thousands of deaths in which she had experienced every method of slaughter that existed—when Joanna inadvertently recalled them again, her jaw began to tremble.

At that, the first mate clapped loudly.

CLAP!

“Now then, let’s stop the forbidden-knowledge lecture there, Professor. There’s bad news and good news. Which would you like first?”

Thanks to that, Joanna was pulled out of her fear. She shot him one grateful glance, then answered while forcing a haughty look onto her face.

“You save the tasty part for last.”

“The United Company has been wiped out. Sixteen survivors out of a total complement of 343.”

“How many are dead and how many are wounded?”

“There’s no point in dividing them. Only the dead and those who are about to die are left. I’d never seen a sight that terrible before.”

“No, how? Did the powder explode or something?”

“No. From here on, it’s good news. An abomination appeared.”

“An abomination? Where would an abomination—ah, don’t tell me, a wild abomination? It is a wild abomination, right? It’s calm now, right? Please, please tell me that’s what it is. Yes?”

Joanna’s eyes sparkled.

No one could possibly have guessed, looking at that excited expression, that she had just heard that 343 men were all dead except for sixteen.

Like a child standing in front of a gift bundle.

“That’s right. Perhaps because it’s an Eastern abomination, it still seems to retain a fully human form. More than that, quite fine-looking. Honestly, beautiful. Do you understand what that means?”

“There’s no way something like that could exi—well, I suppose they’re Eastern monkeys, so maybe their standard for a person isn’t appearance, ah, but an abomination that looks normal, ah, hee-hee, EEEEEEK!!!”

Joanna let out a shrill scream.

A scream of delight she couldn’t contain.

An abomination whose outward appearance was normal—beautiful, even?

Then it could be disguised as a person and carried around at any time, and no one would ever even suspect it was an abomination.

Even if it were deployed into enemy territory and sent on a scorched-earth campaign, it would be treated not as an abomination but as some fallen hero. It would also be an abomination capable of moving outside the sightline of heroes.

And that was only the beginning of the ways it could be used. Assassination, protection, infiltration, and so on. The strongest strategic weapon in existence had now gained versatility as well.

Perhaps it could become an achievement more valuable than trade with the Central Plains—no, it would certainly be worth more......

“Where is it? Let’s go right now, right now! Hurry!”

Thus Joanna, who had cast off her fear in a single burst and come back to life, hurried the first mate along toward the guest cabin where the abomination had been kept.

The sailors guarding the room bowed their heads. At a glance from the first mate, they pulled back the heavy bar and quietly stepped away.

Once the sailors disappeared beyond the corridor, Joanna, who had kept her mouth tightly shut until then, finally loosened and melted into a hee-hee, gooey smile.

“They said my abomination was beautiful, so I’m really looking forward to seeing just how pretty my abomination is. Come on, open it already. My abomination, my abomination. Hee-hee.”

“Please calm yourself. You might provoke the abomination—”

“That’s all nonsense they made up to scare people. If a naturally occurring abomination is in a calm state, that means it has already vomited out all its resentment, so it won’t run wild again unless something extreme happens. It’s probably waiting quietly right now. Come on, let’s see.”

Joanna yanked the door open.

At the same time, the stench of blood stabbed all the way into her lungs.

At the same time, there came a harsh sound—HSSS, HSSS—some rush of wind for which there simply was no other word.

It could only be so.

Because there were holes in their throats, and no matter how hard they wrung their lungs dry, all that came out was foamy blood-water. There was not, in any culture anywhere in the world, a word coined to define the sound of air going in and out of lungs through a punctured throat.

HSSSSS, HSSSSS! The sound of leaking wind grew more violent as the door opened.

Two men with holes punched through their throats, their bones crushed evenly so that their limbs drooped long and limp like octopus or squid legs, smeared themselves across the floor.

Yet they still struggled, hurling desperately pleading eyes toward Joanna and the first mate.

This was the soft-bodied human made by the Five-Foot-Eight Ghost—the method by which it imposed absolute silence upon the wicked.

Punch a hole through the throat and speech was blocked. Mash every limb to pulp and they could neither write nor run away. What a hideous scene of silence this was.

“......So that is what you meant by waiting quietly?”

“My, my. My abomination is skilled too. It’s the best.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“Not to me. They probably got bold and tried to meddle with the abomination. Someone might see—close the door already. Good heavens, it really is beautiful, isn’t it?”

Joanna smiled with pretty crescent eyes as she looked at the abomination sitting there quietly with nothing but a blank expression, despite having caused this whole spectacle.

Such a beautiful face. Even the form covered in blood and flesh failed to damage that beauty.

And also—no, wait, do all those Eastern monkey bitches have big tits? Does this bitch have three heads too, like that horrifying bitch from before?

Does all Eastern food go straight to their tits?

Then maybe I could make some business out of that.

If I stood my abomination there and told people Eastern food made your breasts bigger, every lady in the city would come swarming in.

Why, Joanna was in such a good mood that she’d even received inspiration for a brand-new business venture. Smiling brightly, she said,

“No point dragging it out. Let’s settle this quickly. Now then, darling, let’s have an honest little soul-to-soul talk.”

Joanna walked forward with light little steps, as though the two sailors still writhing on the floor did not exist, and set her index and middle fingers together against the abomination’s forehead with a tap.

At once, Joanna felt her own mind begin to sink into the abomination’s interior, and she thought,

Yes. True, she had gone through something so hideous she was afraid even to think of it again, but if the ending was good, then all was good, wasn’t it?

If all those countless deaths had merely been bad luck burned off in advance for the sake of a result like this—no, even so, that had been too horrific.

Yes, this was perfect.

If she stayed here any longer, she might run into that dreadful Eastern witch again, so she would just use the abomination as an excuse and go back.

Her homeland would surely want to keep her there if she possessed an abomination, and yes—she would never set foot in the East again. She hated the East now. Truly.

And at last, Joanna’s mind fully seeped into the abomination’s interior.

This was the moment a weightless mind, inside another’s inner world, once more took on the properties of flesh and became concrete.

Feeling the weight of a body on the soles of her feet, Joanna snapped her eyes open.

There, beneath a gigantic sun reduced to nothing but a ring and eaten away by darkness, stretched a vast expanse where blood, flesh, and entrails pulsed.

“Uh......? No, no, that’s not right, why am I here, again.”

Joanna, once more!

Has come back here on her own two feet!

The strength drained from her legs before she even realized it.

Joanna dropped straight down with a wet plop onto the sticky ground.