Ch.173Reunion

“Ehehe, Master…”

Olivia, who had crawled onto my body and clung to my chest while wrapped in a blanket made from her own skin, rubbed her cheek against me and giggled senselessly.

She had her arms firmly wrapped around my back as if she would never let go again. She was hugging me so tightly that my sternum had collapsed several times.

I was still trying my best not to pay attention to Olivia.

No matter how I reacted, even if I got angry, Olivia would just take it as some form of affection. It was better not to give her any excuse at all.

Not that I could do anything in my current state anyway.

After discovering the shocking truth about what Olivia had done to me, I couldn’t muster the will to maintain my sanity.

My mind was still filled with suspicions about Olivia. What method could she possibly have used to reduce me to this half-dead state long before we even met?

I clearly met Olivia well over a hundred years after I gained this regenerative ability—or rather, something that could no longer be called regenerative ability.

Yet she claimed she was the one who made me like this. It made no sense. Since Olivia would never lie to me, it must be the truth.

Even though the truth was right in front of me, it was incredibly difficult to believe.

‘How on earth…’

Separate from these thoughts, the iron chains binding my wrists forcibly moved my arm, placing my palm on Olivia’s head. Then my wrist moved to stroke her hair.

There was no strength in my hand at all, so it merely touched and brushed against her head, but Olivia seemed satisfied with just that.

After happily enjoying being petted for quite some time, Olivia suddenly looked up.

“Master, it’s almost time for breakfast. What would you like to eat this time?”

Had that much time passed already?

Despite both of us having bodies that didn’t need food, Olivia always prepared meals, insisting that serving her husband food was a wife’s privilege.

That was how I could vaguely track the passage of time.

Counting just the breakfasts I’d eaten, it had been about twenty times, so accounting for the ones I might have missed, it had probably been about a month.

Of course, this was assuming Olivia was serving meals at regular intervals, but judging by the spacing between meals, it seemed fairly accurate.

“I made you eyeball soup last time, and I also made you finger salad before… Let’s see, what parts haven’t I served you yet… Hmm, I’m not sure. Master, what do you think? Which part of my body do you think would taste the best?”

The problem was that these “meals” were far from normal food made with regular ingredients.

Everything I had eaten, except for some seasonings, consisted of dishes made from Olivia’s body parts. By now, I must have consumed enough human flesh and organs to equal an entire person.

“How about breast meat? You like my breasts, don’t you, Master? When you touch them, your fingers sink in so softly. See, aren’t they really soft? Or you could suck on my nipples like a baby. If you want, I can even make breast milk flow. Hehe, though I won’t be making a baby for about a hundred thousand years. Until then, we’re newlyweds.”

Olivia thrust her chest in front of my eyes as if showing it off, then kneaded it with both hands. The tips, standing erect beneath her thin shirt, asserted their presence.

“Hurry and answer me. Which part of my body do you think looks most delicious? Should I cut out my heart and grill it for you? It might be a bit chewy because of all the muscle. Or how about my tongue? The portion would be small, but I can extract it multiple times, so that’s not a problem.”

And Olivia would eat her meals by literally tearing pieces from various parts of my body, making this less of a meal and more like cannibalism.

Though the parts Olivia bit off would immediately regenerate.

“Yes, I think the tongue would be good this time. Master, I’ll tear it out now, so please wait a moment…?”

Olivia, who had been continuing her happy chatter despite my unchanging lack of response, suddenly lost all trace of her smile. Her words trailed off unfinished.

In its place, indescribable fury and killing intent filled the void.

“…What have you done, Master?”

Olivia exchanged glances with me, her eyes completely dead. Even looking into the eyes of a corpse dug up from the ground would show more life than Olivia’s eyes right now.

“Hm? What have you done, I asked.”

I gave no answer to Olivia’s menacing interrogation. More precisely, I couldn’t give any answer. I didn’t understand her question.

Just moments ago, she had been lovingly offering to feed me parts of her body, and now she had completely flipped her behavior and was asking what I had done.

All I had done was lie chained to the bed, being led wherever Olivia took me.

“Master. I can see everything. Your soul has been shaking violently since just now.”

Olivia raised her fingernails and began to gently tickle near my heart. She lowered her head. The distance between her red lips and my ear gradually decreased.

“You formed soul bonds with others besides me, didn’t you?”

A chilling whisper flowed from the lips pressed close to my ear.

“With three others, no less.”

Only after hearing those words did I roughly understand what Olivia was talking about.

‘…So it worked.’

Honestly, I had been half-doubtful even as I spoke.

Even though Serena, Charlotte, and Christine possessed talents that could hardly be called human, elevating the rank of a soul was an entirely different matter.

The process of perceiving higher concepts was difficult enough, and even if one succeeded in perceiving them, if the mind couldn’t accept it, the brain would surely melt and lead to death.

I didn’t want to gamble with those three’s lives, so I had been putting off that enlightenment until now, when I was dragged here and thought it was worth the risk, so I gave them a hint.

And they succeeded. Not just one lucky one, but all three.

‘…Now, whether I can handle those three is my problem.’

If those three truly transcended human limitations and stepped into a completely different world, I couldn’t be certain if I could still handle them afterward.

In the extreme case, they might even become like Olivia. After all, Olivia began to truly distort after she achieved her rank elevation.

“But it’s not complete, is it? Kik kik. It seems you’ve struggled in your own way, but it’s still far from enough.”

Olivia sneered. Not complete? That meant they had stepped into another world but hadn’t reached the level of elevating their soul’s rank.

In positive terms, it meant there was room for growth; in negative terms, it meant they were slightly insufficient to face Olivia. Which interpretation to choose was entirely up to me.

Snap. Olivia, who had been sneering, closed her mouth.

“How dare they try to steal my Master without knowing their place?”

All humor vanished from her voice. The surrounding temperature seemed to drop several degrees. A terrible chill enveloped my body.

“Hee, heehee… heeheeheeheehee…”

Then she bowed her head deeply and began to laugh strangely.

“I left those bugs alone because they were just insects, but they’ve defiled my Master? Yes, I’ll kill them. I’ll definitely kill them. No, just killing them isn’t enough for forgiveness. I absolutely cannot forgive them. I’ll trap them in time and turn them into decorations. Yes, that’s good. I’ll spread out all the entrails of one, pull out all the joints of another, and flatten the head of the third by pounding it. Yes, yes, let’s do that. Let’s just do that. How dare, how dare they covet my Master…?”

Grinding her teeth and repeating eerie mutterings, Olivia raised her head and smiled, pulling up the corners of her mouth, looking at me with eyes like an abyss without a single point of light.

“Master, I apologize, but this unworthy disciple needs to leave for a moment.”

It was a smile I had seen before.

“So, please wait. This time, I will definitely kill those things and hang them on the wall as decorations.”

And it was also a smile I never wanted to see again.

“This is…”

Charlotte, who had arrived at the place where her husband was supposed to be, guided by the bound soul, frowned at the surrounding landscape.

Wasn’t this the space Charlotte had “discovered”?

A space she had found by chance long ago. A place with a floor devoid of any curvature, made of some unknown metallic material, and a vast sky filled only with pitch-black darkness.

Was her husband really here? The question rose to the tip of her tongue, but Charlotte quickly dismissed it.

This was the place she had arrived at by following the pull of the soul bound to the person she loved beyond measure. The possibility of that pull being wrong converged infinitely to zero.

If that were the case, it would be the same as saying Charlotte’s love was wrong.

“The answer was closer than I thought.”

If this was truly the space created by that bitch who deserved to be chewed up and spat out, then Charlotte had already taken one step closer to the truth.

Why hadn’t she noticed this simple fact? The simple truth that this space she had entered and exited numerous times was filled entirely with black mana.

Charlotte firmly suppressed the anger and self-loathing trying to seep into her mind and body. She didn’t want to cloud her judgment with anger.

Now that she understood the truth, the darkness in the sky, which had seemed like a distant background, felt more terribly oppressive. It was a repulsive place.

Just as Charlotte, having calmed her bubbling emotions, was about to open a transfer gate again, a cross-shaped wound appeared not far away, without any sound or warning.

Seeing that slash, Charlotte’s already rigid face hardened even more frighteningly. As far as Charlotte knew, there was only one woman among those who could come here who used a sword.

The middle part of the cross-shaped slash opened left and right, and from within, someone with a familiar appearance that she never wanted to meet stepped through without hesitation.

It was Serena.

“…”

“…”

As soon as they confirmed each other’s presence, they both frowned simultaneously.

Serena and Charlotte had the same thought: whether to kill this damned woman right now, or to kill her after killing the woman who had kidnapped the boy. The option of not killing was never on the table.

“You bit—”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear a single word from that beast-smelling mouth of yours.”

Serena growled at Charlotte, and Charlotte growled back at Serena, baring their teeth.

Of course, fighting here and depleting their strength would be extremely pointless, but neither had any intention of joining forces with the other. They would rather face the enemy alone.

Just as Charlotte was about to draw mana from her body and Serena was about to manifest Wind Shear in her right hand—

Boom! The ground shook with a sound.

They reflexively turned their gaze to where the sound came from. If the woman who had kidnapped their love appeared before them, she would be the top priority.

But contrary to their expectations, it wasn’t Olivia who appeared.

“What are you heretics doing here, defiling the divine?”

It was Christine, who had appeared by tearing through space with her bare hands.