Chapter 193

Translator: Willia

You always had to be careful when setting a trap. The truly clever would spot the trap and set one of their own in return.

So whenever you set a trap, you had to remember that you yourself might become the target.

It was hardly surprising, but Dunkel was not alone. All the resentment and old affection had been left behind. Now, all that remained was to settle things once and for all.

It was a dark night near a village in Esck, and silence hung beneath the faint moonlight. Would he run, or would he fight? Ricardt watched Dunkel's eyes, trying to read his intentions.

But then Dunkel pulled something from inside his clothes and threw it to the ground. Black smoke billowed up, and Ricardt could no longer see.

His presence vanished at the same instant. It was only that he had no chance against Ricardt one-on-one. Having once been the head of a guild himself, Dunkel was no ordinary man.

Sensing something was wrong, Kala shouted.

“Scatter!”

At the same moment, something came raining down from the sky ahead toward the Benzinen people. In the darkness, they could not make out what it was at all. The objects only flashed now and then as they caught the moonlight.

Most of those who hurriedly scattered escaped unharmed, though a few were struck by concealed throwing weapons. Even so, no one screamed. Their enemies emerged from the darkness and began their attack.

Their weapons were mostly daggers, short swords, and claws. The fighting looked almost like wildcats tearing into one another. Show even the slightest opening, and they would spring in at once and finish you.

Not one of the enemies came at Ricardt. They deliberately left him alone and tried to deal with everyone else instead. Whenever Ricardt rushed toward them, they simply dodged away.

That left Ricardt like a dog chasing chickens, his thoughts growing muddled over what exactly he was supposed to settle and how.

The Benzinen people ran toward the village first. It was difficult even to guess how many enemies there were.

Ricardt hesitated for a moment. Should he find Dunkel and chase him? Or should he stay and keep fighting? What did the enemy intend? What were they after? What was he supposed to do?

Most of the enemies Ricardt had fought until now had danced in the palm of his hand. But when faced with a being beyond the bounds of human understanding, its intentions were nearly impossible to fathom.

Then Roy, who had been running toward the village with Bellin on his back, suddenly fell. Maybe he had tripped over a stone, or perhaps something else had gone wrong.

Ricardt's mind snapped into focus. Forget objectives and strategies. What truly mattered in life? Wasn't he supposed to protect the people he had to protect?

He could fail at any time. He could simply try again. But there were things in this world that, once lost, could never be regained.

Ricardt's heart lurched, and he ran toward Roy. By then Roy was getting back to his feet, but enemies were already rushing at him. They did not seem to be trying to kill him. It looked as though they meant to take him away. Had Roy been their target from the beginning?

Ricardt's brain worked faster than light. In an instant, he calculated every variable, separating what he could do from what was possible and what was impossible. From it all, one constant emerged. Too late.

Self-reproach crashed over him. But then something blacker than darkness itself swept through the enemies about to descend on Roy.

For an instant they vanished from sight, and when they came back into view, every one of their heads had been twisted backward. One after another, they collapsed limply to the ground.

And the darkness did not stop. Like a swiftly moving snake, it slid across the ground and swept through the enemies in an instant. Every time it passed, another enemy died with a snapped neck.

It was utterly unreal, a sight difficult to believe even while seeing it with his own eyes. What was that?

The thing deeper than darkness reached the roof of a house on the outskirts of the village. The pitch-black shape sat there as though crouching, then smoothly rose to its feet and revealed itself beneath the moonlight. It was a person whose entire body, save for his head, was covered in a black cloak.

Ricardt and the Benzinen people alike stared blankly up at the mysterious figure, as though caught in a nightmare that was somehow not as unpleasant as they had expected.

He was an immaculately groomed old man. His white hair had been oiled and combed straight back so neatly that not a single strand was out of place. The darkness deeper than darkness was none other than Reman. Reman von Banstein.

His skin was pale as a sick man's and his eyes were scarlet. He turned toward Ricardt and spoke. Though they were a fair distance apart, his voice carried as clearly as if he were standing right beside him.

“It has been a long time, King of All Murderers.”

“......”

It seemed the letter had reached him after all. Ricardt had not expected quite such a dramatic entrance, though.

“Unless special measures are taken, I cannot move about during the day. Let us hurry. That foul stench reeks all the way over here.”

Reman glided down from the rooftop once more, then shot off somewhere at great speed. Ricardt looked back at Roy. Bellin was beginning to wake, and Roy was holding the girl in his arms as he looked at Ricardt.

“I'll be back.”

Ricardt ran after Reman, putting distance between himself and the others in an instant. From this point onward, it almost felt like the realm of those who had transcended humanity.

Reman did not seem to be running on two legs so much as floating slightly above the ground and flying. Even Ricardt was hard-pressed to keep up, yet Reman seemed completely unconcerned with whether he followed or not.

But something about the direction Reman was heading felt familiar. Ricardt instinctively realized that he was going toward Benzinen village. More precisely, toward that peak where sunlight shattered.

Reman sped up the gentle mountain path, raced along the ridge, and reached the peak in an instant before coming to a stop.

Ricardt was slightly out of breath by the time he came to stand beside Reman. Looking down, he saw a small clearing beneath the peak. Dunkel was there. And so was another being.

He had been hiding right under their noses all along.

“Papa......”

Dunkel was held in someone's arms, looking up at him. What was rather surprising was that the person holding him looked like a boy around Roy's age. Of course, that was only on the outside. Within was a twisted vampire devil.

“Shh......”

Papa stroked Dunkel's hair very gently, as though lulling a baby to sleep. As Dunkel's eyes slowly began to close, the hand stroking his head moved down and closed around his throat. Then it gradually began to squeeze.

“Ugh. Ngh......”

“It's all right, it's all right......”

The hand around his throat squeezed harder and harder. Dunkel struggled for breath, but Papa soothed him by telling him it was all right. He did not stop strangling him.

“Ghk. Nngh......”

Papa truly strangled him slowly. Though he had enough strength to twist Dunkel's neck in an instant, though he could have choked him to death much faster, he deliberately brought him toward death little by little.

At some point Dunkel's eyelids fluttered, then his movements stopped. The tension left his body, and he went completely limp. He died just like that, with almost absurd ease.

Papa savored that death for some time before speaking without even turning toward Ricardt and Reman. His voice was soft and beautiful.

“I first met Dunkel when he was six. He never had a father to begin with. A fatherless child. Common enough, isn't it? So I became his father. That's all.”

Ricardt could not make any sense of what he was saying. Then why kill him? What had all that revenge been about? Papa's way of thinking was impossible to understand.

“What is he talking about? Reman, do you understand him?”

“He means possessing both life and death. If I had to make the nearest comparison, it would be like tending something for a long time, fattening it up, and then devouring it once it becomes appetizing.”

If Ricardt forced himself to make sense of something that made no sense at all, Papa apparently regarded Dunkel's keeping the secret to the very end as true love.

And his reward for that love was some sort of bond through death or whatever else he called it.

“......”

In any case, Ricardt could not understand it. Yet at the same time, even such a devilish predilection was one of humanity's darker facets. Or perhaps something that had grown out of one.

“I never forced anyone even once. I never used any strange magic either. I gave them what they needed, so I simply take what I want. Is that really so wrong? Ricky. Aren't you the one who understands that best?”

Papa gently laid the dead Dunkel down, then rose to his feet and looked up at Ricardt.

“I don't want to talk to you.”

“Human forgetfulness truly is a blessing. It lets them always begin anew. But not us. Isn't that right, brother?”

Papa looked at Reman as he asked. Reman merely answered calmly.

“A bastard of unknown stock like you is no brother of mine.”

Vampires placed tremendous importance on bloodline. Reman's lineage was clearly established, whereas Papa was, so to speak, some nobody of unknown origin.

“Heh, pedigree. We all have something missing. Me, you, and you too. That we can fill what each other lacks is a fortunate thing. A happy thing, even. Isn't it?”

Whether he was doing it deliberately or not, Papa kept asking whether that wasn't so.

Ricardt thought silently for a moment, then slowly descended into the clearing. Flames that burned away the darkness rose along his blade, and fire blazed in his eyes as well.

“Now I understand. Twisting the truth in subtle ways must be one of a devil's defining traits.”

“Correct.”

The instant the word left Papa's mouth, Ricardt shot forward with terrifying speed.

An unstoppable blow came crashing down toward the crown of Papa's head. But if it could not be blocked, all he had to do was dodge.

Ricardt's sword cut through empty air. Papa was already standing at the edge of the peak where moonlight fell and shattered, as if he had teleported there.

He leisurely spread his arms toward the moon as though bathing in its light.

The sight irritated Ricardt slightly. This time, Reman went after him.

Reman streaked across the brilliantly moonlit space like a stroke of black ink, but once again Papa vanished without a trace. He had never intended to fight in the first place.

But both Ricardt and Reman possessed monstrous reflexes, and they pursued him relentlessly. It looked almost as though they were dancing with a devil beneath the moonlight.

“Hahahahaha!”

Papa seemed to think it was a game of tag. He darted this way and that, laughing loudly in delight.

Ricardt instinctively felt that he should not chase Papa merely by reacting to his senses. He had to reach the place where Papa would appear before he did. His extraordinary mind combined Papa's every movement, his manner of speaking, his personality, everything about him, and arrived at a single conclusion.

Whether Reman knew what Ricardt had realized or not, he exchanged a glance with him for an instant and cut in from the left. Ricardt waited below, then immediately surged upward.

The area was not especially large, but there were still countless places where a person could stand. Yet Ricardt reached the exact spot where Papa vanished and reappeared, and swung his sword first.

Whoosh!

The blade cut off Papa's right arm. Strangely, no blood came out. Papa's eyes widened for an instant, as if he himself could not understand what had just happened.

Ricardt seized that tiny opening, reached out, grabbed him by the collar, and drove his forehead into Papa's face.

Crack!

The unrealistically beautiful boy's face caved in. Ricardt tried to stab him with his sword this time and finish him completely, but even while dazed, Papa tore himself free of the collar Ricardt was gripping and escaped.

He shot away, sliding along the peak like an arrow. Ricardt felt a flash of frustration at how close he had come and hurried after him.

“If I catch you, you're dead!”

Whatever kind of game of tag this was beneath the moon, Papa laughed loudly as though he were having the time of his life despite his grievous injuries.

“Hahahahaha! You can't kill me!”

But then it happened. The others, who had belatedly set out to find Ricardt, reached the area. Perhaps he had heard Ricardt shouting, because Roy shouted back.

“Master!”

Papa snapped his head around toward Roy even as he fled.

From Roy, Papa sensed the exact opposite of lack: love so full it overflowed. The desire to corrupt it erupted inside him like an active volcano. A dog could never give up eating shit. He, too, was a slave to his desires.

He stopped fleeing and charged toward the others instead. For an instant, Roy and the others assumed Papa was after Bellin and moved to protect the girl.

But Papa rushed straight at Roy and reached out with his one remaining hand. With his face caved in from Ricardt's headbutt, he grinned broadly and shouted. Several of his teeth were missing as well.

“Come here!”

What greeted him instead was an axe swung without the slightest hesitation. Roy's axe blade bit into Papa's chest.

Whoosh! Thunk!

Papa stopped for the briefest instant. Ricardt came tearing through the darkness like a beam of light and lopped off his head in a single stroke. Then Reman arrived and dismembered the rest of his body.

All of it happened within an extremely brief instant. The others had no idea what had just happened. All they could understand was the result before their eyes.

But even with nothing left but his head, Papa chuckled and spoke.

“I don't die.”

“Is that so?”

Ricardt raised his foot high and stomped down on the head with all his strength. There was a sound like a watermelon bursting as the head shattered in a single blow.

Crunch!

No blood or brain matter flowed from Papa's shattered head. But at least he could no longer spew those revolting words.

“Master!”

Roy called out to his teacher and king and threw his arms around him. Ricardt tucked Roy against his side and kicked Papa's shattered head away.

“Was that Papa just now?”

“No.”

“Then what was he?”

“Just garbage made from a heap of wretched scraps.”

That was what Ricardt said.

But Papa's remains simply faded away beneath the moonlight. They could disappear for a while, but they could not cease to exist.

Because as long as humans existed, devils would inevitably exist as well.

The whole thing left a truly filthy aftertaste. It felt as though he had pried open something that would have been better left covered. But only by forcing oneself to look into such things could one find the way back into the light.

And so, beneath the faint moonlight, the devil disappeared for a while. The vile devil called obsession and lack.

The vicious revenge that had begun with the old woman, and Dunkel's revenge, ended like this. So too did the lukewarm remnants of old affection.

A place where revenge was considered a virtue seemed to provide fertile soil for devils to grow. The desire for revenge was a seed.

That seed, put another way, was hatred. It was anger over what had been lost.

Ricardt knew that all too well, and only now did he understand. I had once been a devil without equal. And no one had been able to kill me.

Chapter 39 – The Essence of Revenge. End.

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