Chapter 72

Chapter 72

 

Would this be called a secret rendezvous with Evan at night?

I asked him a question:

“Will this horrifying cycle—dying and then coming back—ever come to an end?”

He answered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world:

“It’ll all end without any issues if you simply live to old age and die naturally.”

He said that when he asked the evil god, it turned out that a nameless deity, fond of amusement, had taken me and fused me with something else.

When I asked why I had to endure such a fate, the answer was that I just happened to catch their attention at the time.

At first, I felt wronged. I was frustrated, thinking about how I’d agonized so seriously over why I had to endure all this. Realizing it was all meaningless left me feeling hollow.

But then again, had there ever been meaning?

I had spent my life clinging desperately to a thread, letting it slip when things became too hard, and repeating the same routine endlessly.

No matter how much I struggled, I always ended up in the same place. Everyone hated me, sought to kill me. But in the end, I had gained one person who walked with me through the flow of time and tried to save me. That alone seemed enough.

After finishing our conversation, we pressed our faces together—not to share a kiss, but to lightly touch each other’s foreheads with our lips.

It wasn’t romantic. It was just an attempt to escape the heavy conversation we’d just had.

It’s not that I lost my sense of identity or confidence in myself.

From the moment I opened my eyes as this young woman, I had already become Erica Mecklenburg.

At first—before my first death—I denied it.

But long ago, I realized there was no point in drawing distinctions between my past and present self. I even stopped the bizarre habit of having one-sided conversations with myself.

When I asked if accepting magic power after offering sacrifices would make me someone other than myself, I answered no.

That’s just how it was.

So then, was the version of me who stayed locked in my room reading Vivian’s love stories the “sacrifice”?

It felt slightly different, but I simply accepted it.

After all, I wasn’t a mage.

When everything is over, I’ve been told we should follow through on the joke I once made about getting married.

Apparently, the ring will be made from jewels in the Imperial Palace.

About a week passed after our conversation at the pond.

If you asked whether anything had changed at the academy, the answer would be no—aside from a significant number of male students disappearing after visiting the bars in the back alleys, and a few students never returning after going to the restroom.

Oh, right, that’s made the atmosphere a little tense.

Everyone was gossiping about it when I strolled through the campus shops or walked around the streets.

As for me, I stayed holed up in my room and skipped classes as usual.

When the Crown Prince wasn’t around, I visited the shop selling personal goods, stocked up on cigarettes, and chain-smoked them.

“It’s about time for her to show up.”

Now that I think about it, I learned a valuable lesson last time.

When I beat Lydia senseless in the hallway while screaming at the top of my lungs, quite a few people came to check on the commotion.

Reflecting on that, I asked Evan to get me some sleeping powder.

Now, if Lydia came by, I’d scatter the powder in the air, hold my breath, and wait for her to collapse. Once she was unconscious, I’d drag her into my room.

Thanks to the spell Evan had cast, no sound could escape the room, even though I could still hear noises from outside.

Once I got bored of toying with her, I’d hand her over to Evan and tell him to use her as a sacrifice.

Knock, knock.

“Miss, I was worried about you, so I came to check in. Could you open the door?”

And, just as I’d expected, Lydia showed up at my door with two nameless female students while I was on my sixth cigarette.

She said she was worried about me. What else was I supposed to do?

I opened the door and immediately threw the powder into the air.

All three of them fell asleep in an instant, collapsing to the floor.

Since it’d be troublesome if someone saw me dragging unconscious students, I quickly pulled Lydia and the two others into my room.

This frail body of mine could barely manage to move these limp girls.

“These two—I don’t even know their names. Should I just get rid of them?”

I dragged the nameless girls to the bathtub and stomped on them repeatedly until their necks bent at impossible angles.

It seemed like an appropriate response for vagrants who had collapsed outside someone’s door without permission.

It took a while since I wasn’t very strong.

“Phew, that was tiring.”

I’d ask Evan to clean up later.

I approached Lydia, who was sleeping peacefully, tied her hands with rope, and picked up a pistol.

I had plenty of time. This wasn’t about revenge. I just wanted to get rid of this insignificant girl who’d tormented me for so long.

I lit another cigarette, letting its acrid smoke fill the silence.

Eventually, Lydia stirred.

She struggled to sit up, her bound hands making it difficult.

“Lydia, did you sleep well?”

“M-Miss…? What is this all of a sudden—”

Bang.

I shot her in the thigh.

Lydia screamed and rolled on the floor in pain.

“Kyahhh! Aaargh!!”

I got up and kicked her as she writhed.

When she tried to stand and run, she fell backward onto the floor.

“Lydia, if you don’t stop making noise, I’ll blow your head off right now.”

When she didn’t answer, I pressed the muzzle of the gun to her forehead and asked again.

“Do you understand?”

She bit her lip, desperately trying to suppress her screams, and nodded.

But how dare she just nod? When asked a question, shouldn’t she answer directly?

“Lydia, when someone asks you a question, you answer. Got it?”

I struck her head with the pistol grip, and only then did she respond.

“Yes, yes!”

Blood spurted from her thigh, pooling on the floor.

The smell was revolting.

It brought back memories of when I was trapped in that room, beaten so badly that all I could smell was blood.

At least this time, it wasn’t my blood.

“Don’t make a sound. The moment you do, I’ll pull the trigger.”

I mercifully cauterized her wound with my cigarette.

It’s funny. They had done the same to me after severing my limbs.

If I had survived even after losing my limbs, then this counted as treatment, right?

Lydia whimpered and cried, but it didn’t bother me much.

She had always been this easy to break. Why had I been so afraid of her?

Such a weak girl.

How had she been able to torment me so thoroughly?

How pathetic.

Why had she gone out of her way to torment me in the first place?

She burned the inside of my mouth, locked me in cramped spaces, subjected me to water torture, and inflicted all kinds of degrading acts upon me.

Quite creative, really.

Now, as a sort of final act, it was time to untangle the twisted knot between us and resolve any misunderstandings.

Resolving misunderstandings is simple.

You just eliminate the source of the misunderstanding.

The easiest way to untie a knotted string is to cut it with a blade. But I had evolved past that—I had a more precious weapon in my hand than a mere cold blade.

“Lydia, you must have something you want to beg me for.”

“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Miss, I must’ve lost my mind for a moment!”

Lydia, bowing so low that she might as well lick the floor, began groveling pitifully.

Her sobbing irritated me, so I pressed her head harder into the ground with my foot.

Strangely enough, that seemed to quiet her down.

When trying to get answers through violence, it’s not about asking questions alongside the violence. No, the key is to beat someone so thoroughly that they beg to tell you what you want to hear.

I hadn’t even asked why she tormented me, yet she was already scrambling to justify herself.

“Alright. So, what exactly did you do wrong?”

“…I-I brought the others and tried to… hurt you…”

Her words faltered.

Well, of course they did—I’d hit her.

How dare she talk about hitting someone else?

Quaking in fear over a single bullet while having the audacity to threaten someone else.

“Not that. Give me three more things you’ve done wrong.”

Lydia’s mind began spinning.

But there was no way she could figure it out—not yet, at least.

After all, the things I was referring to hadn’t even happened yet.

Realizing she had nothing else to confess, Lydia simply repeated her apologies, trembling in terror.

I didn’t feel particularly good about it.

It wasn’t satisfying.

Sure, cleaning up trash off the side of the road might give someone a slight sense of accomplishment, but not many people would find it exhilarating.

Lydia wasn’t worth pouring old, festering emotions or sticky hatred onto.

She was just a pathetic little human being.

“Lydia, get up and walk to the bathroom.”

At my command, Lydia’s expression turned to one of faint despair as she limped her way toward the bathroom.

I aimed for the back of her head and pulled the trigger, the bullet carving a hole straight through her skull.

The cocky little girl collapsed lifelessly to the floor.

The smell of a corpse is unavoidable, but the blood would drain down the pipes, so it wasn’t an issue.

Once Evan took care of her body, a few rinses of hot water would wash away the smell entirely.

I was thankful for the gun.

It meant I didn’t have to dirty anything else just to deal with a cockroach.