One, two, three

“What happened suddenly?”

“There was a death. I’ll explain what happened later.”

René and Tracy met at the bottom of a brick staircase on a street corner.

Tracy was dressed in the jet-black work clothes of a Thief.

From the neck up, he was a girl with amber eyes and dark hair with big pigtails. His face was that of Mialanze without the cat ears.

“Here you go, this is for the Princess.”

The Mialanze-faced Tracy took out something that looked like an opera mask.

René took off the hood that had been hiding her face up to that point and put the mask on her face instead, and it stuck to her face.

“Ok, your face has changed.”

Although she couldn’t see it herself, René must have changed into Mialanze’s face.

Silver Mirror Mask.

It was a magic item that copied someone else’s face, or rather head, and put an illusion on your own head to disguise yourself.

Incidentally, cat ears seemed to be out of support range.

Tracy, with his social credibility, shouldn’t have to expose his face too much and act in a dubious manner. His face still had value to be used, so he shouldn’t have gone out of his way to diminish that value.

René was purely too prominent. In fact, if one were to see a 10-year-old girl with silver hair and silver eyes, the people of Ciel-Terra today surely would think of the “Rose Princess of Hellrage” with zero consideration.

The two of them, now with the same face, began to disappear into the night.

“What a terrible smell.”

René’s nose twitched and she frowned.

The smell was so bad that it was difficult to compare it to anything else.

“Smoking bat litter in a couple of places near here. The noses of the beasts can be crushed with this, so the smell of blood should be unnoticeable… The fact that something like this is being burned is suspicious in itself, so someone will be along shortly to check out the situation.”

“Okay, I understand. I’ve already seen some signs of the Holy Beasts moving around … We’ll be lucky if they catch it at the orphanage.”

“Uhhhh. Hurry up.”

The inn ahead of them was a stylish one with a brickwork exterior.

The snowy garden was neatly lined with plants and avant-garde stone sculptures.

And in a slightly widened space, sitting like a guardian dog, was a tiger that looked like it was wearing golden equipment on its white body.

A holy beast.

The holy beasts that appeared in the city were initially feared by the citizens, but as it became known that they were the holy beasts of the Noacurio army, they were accepted.

They were so still that some children even came to poke them for fun.

René proudly approached the holy beast sitting in the middle of the garden.

There was no sign of movement.

These holy beasts were apparently as inflexible as golems or robots.

A girl approaching it in the middle of the night like this would normally be suspicious, but since dealing with such things was out of the order, it didn’t make the slightest move.

Sight was deceptive through the disguise.

She did not know how keen their sense of smell was, but even if they were sharp enough to distinguish individuals, the smell of bat litter crushed them.

The presence was completely blocked out by magic.

Rene went behind the holy beast, where she assumed the Dullahan form.

When she removed her head, a cursed red blade was born in her hand.

“Good evening, Holy Beast-san. Goodbye.”

A light swing of the red blade.

The tiger’s head fell off while in a sitting pose.

The body, weakened, fell over on its side and blood flowed.

“Oh, you’re happy to have killed it? Couldn’t it have been telepathically linked to the summoner?”

“If that’s the case, it would be strange if this Holy Beast wasn’t moving to find out what’s going on. But there are signs of a Holy Beast approaching from near the castle. Maybe this thing is only ordered to start acting in certain situations, but otherwise it can’t move unless it is directly ordered to. Otherwise, maybe the range of his telepathic communication is too short.”

“I see.”

The exceptions to the immovable holy beasts making their move were confirmed to be “the smell of blood” and “the presence of the undead”.

When there was a robbery on the street two days ago, a person was stabbed and blood flowed, and the holy beasts in the vicinity came flying.

Not to mention about the undead. When René created one skeleton outside the city to test it and let it approach the city, the nearby holy beasts howled and called for their friends, who all flew at once to exterminate it.

In both cases, after checking the situation, the holy beasts went to the castle, perhaps to report the situation.

From these cases, it seemed that there was no mental connection between the Holy Beast and the summoner(?), or if there was, it would be limited to a very short distance.

The summoner was not getting information from the five senses of the holy beasts, nor was he able to give them instructions accordingly. The holy beasts that found the undead also went out of their way to howl and rally their friends.

They were like golems whose behavior was predetermined by a command-operation program. Perhaps they were ordered to start moving under certain conditions and come back to report if something happened.

“I don’t know if they’ll react to the sounds of battle, but this will allow us to be a little louder.”

“I’ll take care of it from here. I’m going to put everyone to bed except the target.”

＊ ＊ ＊

Ralph was having a happy dream.

“Nfufufu… it’s intense… I love you so much… gugogogogogogo…”

Then suddenly, he was thrown into the air.

‘Whoaaaaah!?”

He felt suspended, not knowing what was going on, and then, immediately after, he was slammed face first into the cold floor.

“Bugyuru!!”

The back of his nose reeked of iron. He woke up with a nosebleed and found that the impossible was happening.

The big bed Ralph was sleeping on. The bed, which would have taken four grown men to lift, had been lightly overturned.

Two girls with black hair and amber eyes looked down at Ralph, illuminated by the light of a heating magical artifact that resembled a fireplace. Their bodies were different sizes, but their faces were identical.

“Hee, hee, hee! Nah, what the h*ll are you people!?”

He didn’t know what was going on. Were these girls supposed to have turned that huge bed upside down?

Ralph backed away, and the smaller girl closed the distance and thrust a bright red sword at him.

A sword that looked like it had been carved out of a jewel.

“Ralph Brett McGregor. I only want one thing from you. Please die.”

Ralph was terrified by the look in her eyes. Fear of a young girl, whom he did not know.

There was an insane light in her amber eyes as she looked down at Ralph.

There was not a shred of doubt in her eyes. They were the eyes of someone who would pick at human life like cutting weeds.

Ralph was not even tempted to resist with his magic, which was his specialty.

All Ralph could do was raise his voice and call out for someone as quickly as he could.

Either way, the result was the same.
 

“Somebody…!”

Just as he was about to raise his voice, the larger girl closed the distance with wind-like speed and thrust a palm at Ralph’s throat.

“Goho! Goho, goho!”

With a fluid motion, she had Ralph bite down on a gag.

“Were you trying to say, ‘Somebody help me’?”

“Mugu, Mugufu!”

The smaller girl giggled.

–Who are these people!? Who are they!? What are they doing here!?

Ralph was finally beginning to understand that something deadly was afoot.

“That thing.”

“Yes.”

Then the two of them took out something strange.

Not a sword or a knife, but long nails and a hammer.

“I’m sorry. It’s not my thing, but it’s my job too.”
 

The older girl twisted Ralph’s body.

Then the smaller girl leaned over and, quite unceremoniously, drove a nail into Ralph’s arm.

“Ngu……! Ngu…!!”

A bolt of pain shot through Ralph’s body.

With incredible force, the girl drove nail after nail into Ralph’s limbs, sewing him to the floor like an insect specimen.

It hurt. Incredibly painful.

But if he tried to wriggle out of the pain, the wounds would open up and hurt even more.

It hurt so much that he wanted to writhe, but all he could do was swallow all the pain and stay still.

Ralph bit down on the gag as hard as he could.

“Ughaaaah! Ughhhhhh!! Uaaaa……!? Aaaaaaah!”

“As a mercy at least, let me tell you why you’re going to die. It’s because of someone else you have wronged and killed. He said he’d give me his soul, so I’m acting as his avenging agent.”

The girl’s words that sounded like a slap in the face.

Now that it had been said, he knew what they were talking about.

Even Ralph was aware that he was committing an unfair act.

However, from an extremely aristocratic and noble point of view, Ralph had a clear view of the international situation.

It was impossible for him to acquit Yu Yin under the circumstances. Even if Yuin was not at fault, he would have been punished in some way. For the sake of the peace of all people, Yuin had to be sacrificed.

Ralph was just along for the ride. He only pushed Yuin to do what he wanted, so there was no reason for him to be punished this much…!

“Li! Listen! Listen to…!”

“What? ‘Listen to me’?”

Ralph nodded his head.

The mysterious girl pondered with a serious look on her face.

“… If this were a trial, I’m sure there would have been some who would have heard your plea. Only when the crime is shown in a way that is acceptable to everyone is it found to be a crime. The suspect will be given a legitimate opportunity to make a defense,… and that’s the right way to judge a case.”

Ralph nodded, his neck almost shredding.

The girl smiled gently and put her hand over her own face.

“I wish that knight Yuin or whatever he was called could have been given a proper trial.”

The girl’s face peeled off.

A white face with amber cat eyes and a somewhat oriental atmosphere. The face turned into a hexagonal light spliced together and eventually fizzled out into particles of light. What remained was a white opera mask.

The real face that emerged from beneath the porcelain-like opera mask, which was removed, belonged to an innocent silver-haired, silver-eyed girl distorted by madness.

How could he not know who she was?

The tragic princess who was about to destroy her country after the fall of the capital.

“Rose Princess of Hellrage”… René “Rosey” Ruvia Ciel-Terra.

“I am the avenger. Your righteousness and wickedness are out of bounds. I only push through with absurdity… Lament your misfortune in meeting me.”

“Uh…ah…”

Ralph was speechless.

Ralph finally realized that the situation was already out of control, that there was not a chance in all likelihood that he would survive.

“I wanted to kill you after I saw you suffer so much, but there just doesn’t seem to be time. That’s the only thing I regret.”

Ralph thought he had heard those words somewhere before.

René turned her back to Ralph and put her hand on a mysterious black shadow.

This was the first time Ralph noticed it. The unidentified stone statue that was supposed to be in the garden of the inn was now, for some reason, in the room.

“Come on. We’ll have to smash him up so he can’t be revived.”

To his horror, René easily lifted the stone statue, which was taller than she was.

And then she carried it over.

Over to Ralph.

She then lifted the statue up to the ceiling.

“Mass x Height x Gravity Acceleration.”

A huge, black shadow filled Ralph’s field of vision.

–Ohhh!? Stop, don’t, no, no, no, no.