Ch.63Black Blood – 8

“Magic?”

I didn’t feel anything.

As I looked down with a puzzled expression, Alex desperately denied it even while screaming.

“I-I really didn’t do anything! Please believe—ARGH!”

Christine’s foot pressed firmly on Alex’s ankle bone.

With that simple motion, his ankle shattered like a breaking twig and bent sideways, causing his writhing to become even more violent.

Christine only stopped moving after his shin, knee, and thigh bones and flesh were crushed in sequence.

With one leg completely destroyed, Alex trembled, making sounds like his last breath. Christine’s face remained flushed with anger.

“What are you talking about? What was he trying to do to me?”

“This heretic before us dared to use magic against my god. For that alone, he deserves death as punishment, but I beseech you to show mercy and allow this sinner to return to the embrace of god through self-sacrifice.”

“Were you trying to use magic on me?”

“No! Please believe me! I really didn’t—”

“You continue to lie. Though your sin is grave, my merciful god will forgive even that.”

Christine placed her foot on Alex’s other, still intact leg with a hardened expression. Just before her foot could crush his remaining leg, I called out to Christine to stop her.

“Christine, wait. I have something to say to this guy.”

“As you wish, my god.”

Christine obediently withdrew her foot and stepped back, while I moved forward. Alex’s face relaxed slightly, perhaps thinking he now had a chance to survive.

“Were you trying to use magic on me?”

“N-no, absolutely n—”

“I’ll ask again.”

My cold voice echoed.

“I’m giving you a chance right now. You’d better assess the situation carefully before answering. This is your last chance—were you trying to use magic on me?”

Alex was gritting his teeth, struggling to endure the pain.

Since he seemed unable to answer properly in this state, I opened my bag and took out a scroll with a healing spell written on it.

I placed it between Alex’s arms and twisted them to make him tear it, causing the scroll to glow green.

The scroll transformed into a healing magic circle and seeped into his body.

His crushed leg returned to its original thickness, and his pulverized bones reconnected and regained their firmness. Even the blood gushing from his severed wrist stopped as new flesh formed.

Alex looked at me in bewilderment.

“You can reattach your wrist later. Wondering why I’m doing this?”

“……”

“You can’t die from shock or blood loss before I hear your answer. There’s no special reason. I’ll just kill you if you don’t answer properly anyway. I trust Christine far more than someone like you. If Christine says you did something, then you really did it. If you want to claim you didn’t, the burden of proof is on you. Do you understand now?”

“…What if I try to run away right now?”

“Run away?”

He asked so seriously that I couldn’t help but laugh. It was a laugh of disbelief.

Did he really think he could escape from Christine? He’d need to be at least on Charlotte’s or Serena’s level for that.

“Want to try?”

“……”

My answer was brief. But understanding the weight behind my words, Alex slowly shook his head.

“Good, your brain works. Now, tell me. I’ll listen. I’ve got plenty of time to spare.”

“If I tell the truth, will you spare me?”

“If I like your answer. Honestly, I still don’t understand why you did it. You seem to follow your desires, and you didn’t look at Christine when we first met, so you’re not stupid. You had the guts to propose a deal right away. So why did you suddenly do something that would get you caught and end up like this?”

If this guy had even glanced at Christine, she would have immediately blown his head off. He survived because he didn’t.

He probably misunderstood the relationship between Christine and me, but the fact that he made such a judgment in that brief moment showed he was quite intelligent.

What I wanted to know was this: with that good brain of his, what kind of plan did he have that made him try to use magic?

“Now, tell me what you were trying to do. We have lie detection methods in place, so feel free to lie all you want. Just don’t expect to keep your life if you do.”

That was a lie. I can’t use magic at all, let alone lie detection magic.

I think Christine might be able to use a truth detection miracle based on divine power, but asking her to use a miracle here would expose my own limitations, which I don’t want.

‘This guy doesn’t know my true abilities.’

He’s quite intelligent. He’s probably already figured out the relationship between Christine and me. He must have noticed how fanatically Christine serves me.

Since Christine, who trampled him like a bug, thoroughly serves me, he must have greatly overestimated my abilities.

So, I was simply taking full advantage of that misconception.

With the fear of Christine imprinted in him and his spirit completely broken, lies tend to be very effective in situations like this.

“…Alright. Ask me anything.”

“Good to see you’re reasonable. First question: what were you trying to do to me?”

“I was trying to copy your appearance.”

“My appearance? Why?”

“…To commit fraud.”

Look at this guy.

The fact that he would say something so absurd showed he completely believed my claim about having lie detection methods.

Of course, there was still a possibility that even this was a lie, but that probability was infinitesimally small.

This type of person wouldn’t gamble with his own life at stake.

I made it clear that getting caught meant death, and he wouldn’t risk testing that just to save his life.

“If you needed money, why didn’t you just say so? I could have given you a few more pouches of gold.”

“Indeed. If only I had realized earlier how kind you are.”

The fact that he could respond to my comment with humor suggested his pain had subsided considerably.

“Well, that’s that. So what kind of fraud were you planning to commit by copying my appearance?”

“You’re associated with religion, aren’t you? Using the name of religion always yields above-average results anywhere. Judging by the abilities of the woman behind you, you seem to be from quite a large religious order, aren’t you?”

Religion, huh. Since Christine worships me as a god, that’s not exactly wrong. But I doubted whether using my name would actually accomplish anything.

In terms of divine power, no religion could match us, but that’s only because of Christine’s extraordinary existence.

Generally, the greater the divine power exerted by the higher beings of a religious order, the larger the religious group is assumed to be, but that description was completely incorrect when it came to Christine and me.

And if word of someone using my name reached Charlotte’s ears, they definitely wouldn’t die peacefully.

She’d probably use multiple layers of recovery and healing magic to keep them alive while they’re eaten by insects for years as a form of execution.

“Well, I don’t think it would have worked out the way you thought.”

“No. If I had succeeded in copying your appearance, the rest would have been easy.”

“Where does that confidence come from?”

“I believe in my skills. I’ve done it many times before. So I thought this time would be the same.”

“But it wasn’t, right?”

“That, and my appearance copying magic is somewhat special. It also copies part of the target’s memories.”

Part of the target’s memories.

I wondered idly how many years of my memories would have been copied.

“So you’d commit fraud using my appearance and then copy someone else’s appearance to escape? Predictable.”

“That’s right. It would be quite difficult to prove I have a religious order backing me with just words, but I have the gold coins you gave me. People tend to believe much more readily when there’s evidence.”

“Does this appearance copying magic require direct contact to work?”

“No. Originally, I can capture someone’s appearance from a distance with just a little time… but strangely, the magic wouldn’t activate at all, so I had to pretend to shake hands to make direct contact.”

In the end, it all came back to Christine.

Mana nullification is an ability that returns the flow of mana directed at Christine to nothing, but the fact that his appearance copying ability was blocked meant he was trying to use my appearance to somehow harm Christine.

Otherwise, mana nullification wouldn’t have activated.

“Well, I think I get it now. At first, you tried to copy my appearance to commit fraud, but when remote copying didn’t work, you tried direct contact and got caught, resulting in your wrist being shattered.”

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

“Don’t feel bad about it. Even if you had managed to touch me directly, you would have failed anyway.”

If there was even the slightest intention to “harm Christine” mixed into his plan to copy my appearance, the magic would never activate.

I considered asking what his intentions were, but decided to let it go since I didn’t expect to hear anything pleasant.

‘His intentions were impure, that’s all.’

Now that I had heard what he was trying to do to me, what he was thinking, and what method he was planning to use, I had no more questions.

As I reached for the knife at my waist, Alex panicked.

“B-but I told you everything! Please spare me!”

“Yes, I’m about to spare you right now. What’s the problem?”

“Then why the knife…!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll just cut off one arm and one leg before letting you go. If you have the severed parts, you can reattach them, right? This is much better than living precariously.”

“What nonsense are you saying?!”

“I’m serious.”

I didn’t bat an eye.

I could guarantee that this option was far better for him than living with all limbs intact.

This was a choice where he might die, but the other option was 100% death.

But Alex, unable to overcome his fear, summoned mana throughout his body. Soon after, his body gradually became transparent from the extremities, and before long, his entire body disappeared.

An invisibility spell, huh.

His severed wrist remained where it had fallen on the ground. He seemed to have fled in such a hurry that he didn’t even think to take it with him.

“He’s gone.”

“My god, if you permit—”

“Do as you please, Christine.”

As soon as I finished speaking, Christine shot forward with a loud bang. After Christine’s figure disappeared into the forest, screams echoed shortly after.

Judging by the fact that the screams could still be heard from here, he hadn’t gotten very far before being caught. That’s why I said it would have been better to just lose an arm and a leg.

I was going to say that his atonement would end with losing one arm and one leg, so we should let him go. I was going to explain why I was doing this.

As a bonus, I was planning to give him a scroll with a healing spell to reattach the severed parts.

Now that it’s come to this, it’s out of my hands. I slid the half-drawn knife back into its sheath. Was this the direction Christine mentioned before entering the lake?

Christine couldn’t control her body, which kept heating up on its own.

She paid no attention to the mumblings of the human whose skin had been completely torn off, who was half out of his mind and repeatedly begging for his life.

She kept rubbing her thighs together and inserted her hand between her legs, fidgeting several times before she could calm her excitement just a little.

But after the heat subsided slightly, an even greater heat surged back. The experience of being able to provide mana nullification to her god was that enticing.

Although now, due to her own inadequacy, she could only do it for a brief moment while staying right next to him, if she offered more sacrifices and guided more sinners to the embrace of her god…

Even without direct contact, eternal connection might become possible.

“Ah, my god…”

Christine trembled with difficulty as she reached climax just from imagining being eternally connected to her god.

This wasn’t right. How dare she leave her god behind and indulge in pleasure alone—that too was a great sin. She needed to repent.

For her prayer of repentance, Christine grabbed the still-living human’s knee joint and forcefully bent it in the opposite direction.

A scream echoed.

Christine began to pray.