Ch.87Lie

“…What is this?”

A confused question escaped my lips as I faced an unexpected situation. I thought maybe the room was too dark for me to see anyone, but that wasn’t it.

Didn’t she say she would wait on the top floor? I stepped back to check the stairs. This was indeed the top floor, and there were no stairs leading further up.

The room remained completely empty. A darkness as thick as midnight created an eerie atmosphere. Even the air felt sticky.

Thinking I might be in the wrong room, I returned to the hallway. Including the door I had just entered, there were six doors in total.

I grabbed the doorknob of the door across from me and turned it clockwise. There was a clicking sound. It was locked. Trying to turn it the other way yielded the same result.

The third, fourth, and fifth doors also responded with nothing but clicking sounds. I tried forcing them open, but they wouldn’t budge even slightly.

If all the doors on this top floor had the same structure, the door thickness would only be about one finger joint thick, making it impossible for me to break through.

Giving up, I turned my attention to the sixth room. Only one door remained. I slowly brought my hand to the doorknob and turned it clockwise.

No sound of a locking mechanism was heard. As I watched the handle turn with the rotation of my wrist, all sorts of thoughts crossed my mind.

From wondering if I had really gone to the wrong room, to grumbling about why they hadn’t told me about this beforehand.

The door opened with a creaking sound. The interior was familiar.

It matched exactly with the room I had first entered, where I met the woman who promised to create a new identity for me. Down to the smallest detail. At least, that’s how I remembered it.

The black carpet on the floor, the black blackout curtains completely blocking the sunlight trying to pour in through the windows, the black-painted wooden desk, and the black leather chair.

But there was no sign of anyone here either. Only the desk and chair placed in the middle of the room greeted me.

By this point, I felt more curious than annoyed.

At first, I thought they might be trying to pull some kind of trick, but they would need to actually be present to do that, wouldn’t they?

‘Or perhaps they’ve cast an illusion spell over the entire building.’

That was quite a plausible guess. I had quite a bit of experience falling victim to illusions like this before. It was a method typically used by criminal groups involving mages.

While I couldn’t guess why they would do such a thing, I did have some ideas about how they might have done it.

The simplest way would be to physically remove people, while those who preferred more sophisticated methods typically used illusion magic.

If the latter method was employed, people might still be walking around the building, trying to pull something on me while I was under the illusion spell.

For instance, they might be trying to open my bag and steal my gold coins. If it was an illusion magic that overlaid all five senses rather than just showing visions, such a thing would be possible.

And the gold coins in this bag were valuable enough to warrant such complex illusions.

Breaking an illusion was simple. Either use dispel magic, or inflict a certain level of physical pain on the person under the illusion.

But both methods were impossible for me.

First, I couldn’t use magic, so the option of using dispel magic was naturally excluded.

‘And as for physical pain…’

I grabbed my left index finger and bent it backward against the back of my hand. With a cracking sound, the finger joint shattered and my fingernail touched the back of my hand, but I felt no particular pain.

I merely recognized in my mind that my finger had been bent.

Whether I looked dejected or not, my super-regeneration ability activated, and the broken joint returned to its original position. The strange feeling of my finger not moving properly also disappeared.

I clicked my tongue. This was the problem. Having become numb to most pain, I had almost no means of experiencing physical pain.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I thought something hurt. It might be faster to count in centuries.

If my assumption that this whole situation was an illusion spell was correct, there was virtually no way for me to overcome it on my own.

Either the caster’s magic power would have to run out, or I would have to leave the building. These were the extreme measures I would have to consider. The worst case scenario would be if even the act of leaving the building was part of the illusion.

Of course, all of this was based on the premise that I was under an illusion spell. If they had simply emptied the place to mess with me, there was no solution.

‘I guess I should search the other floors.’

I don’t know how trying to get a new identity turned into such a complicated mess.

“Truly magnificent, my dear.”

As the door closed, Charlotte let out a voice filled with ecstasy. Her body, tightly wrapped in a black uniform, trembled with effort.

Her sighs were drenched with viscous pleasure. Her half-open eyes were moist with tears. Heat overflowed from her half-parted lips.

Charlotte was sitting on the desk. It was the first place the boy’s eyes would turn to upon entering, and also the center of this large room.

With both arms propped on the desk and one leg crossed over the other, Charlotte had been taking in every moment of the boy’s presence in the room without blinking once, from the moment he entered until now.

Nothing else mattered to Charlotte. It was enough that the boy had come here and had thought of the possibility of an illusion spell.

Since Charlotte had cast an illusion spell on this building, thinking about illusion magic was equivalent to thinking about Charlotte—a strange logic of hers.

After momentarily shuddering in solitary pleasure, Charlotte finally managed to collect herself. She lifted herself from the squelching desk.

Even after standing firmly on her own two feet, Charlotte continued to stare longingly at the place where the boy had been.

Then, turning around, she instantly changed her demeanor.

“Do you understand the sins you have committed?”

It was a voice containing a terribly cold frost that seemed capable of freezing the very space. The emotions of ecstasy and pleasure had vanished without a trace.

Her emotionless red eyes turned toward the desk where she had been sitting just moments ago. Or rather, toward something that merely bore the name of a desk.

The desk squirmed.

More precisely, what squirmed was the human bodies stacked like a desk.

What constituted the desk-like object that Charlotte had been sitting on until just now were only humans. Humans with their arms and legs cut off, leaving only their torsos and heads.

Blood continuously flowed from the cross-sections of severed shoulders and thighs. As a result, the desk had the contradictory color of being both flesh-colored and red.

Behind it sat a black-haired woman. Or rather than sitting, she was more accurately pinned down.

Where her eyes should have been, there were only two bright red hollowed-out holes. Blood flowed from the black holes like tears.

Her nose, which should have stood proudly, had been cut off, leaving only two holes, and her ears had been roughly torn off, leaving only a straight line with her cheek flesh.

Between her severed lips, her gums were visible without a single tooth attached. The place where her tongue should have been was empty.

Her hair, which had once been neatly braided, was now no different from disheveled strands forcibly loosened. Originally black, it was now completely bloodied, appearing almost blackish-red.

“I asked if you understand the sins you have committed.”

No sooner had those words ended than an ice awl pierced Marietta’s thigh. Marietta twisted her body in various directions due to the intense pain spreading from her thigh.

More than ten awls of the same size were already embedded in Marietta’s thigh. The pierced areas were freezing as if afflicted with frostbite.

“Or should I personally explain to you again what sins you have committed?”

Crack! This time it was the back of her hand. With her tongue torn out and all her teeth shattered, Marietta couldn’t even properly scream as the ice awl pierced through her hand and into the desk.

Her palm was spread wide open. Where her fingernails should have been, only bloody flesh was visible.

The ice awls embedded in each joint of her fingers firmly fixed Marietta’s hand to the desk made of humans.

According to Charlotte, death was the greatest mercy granted to humans.

And Charlotte had no intention whatsoever of granting mercy to Marietta.

The silver-haired, red-eyed woman, who seemed like the embodiment of death itself, began to take one step at a time toward Marietta.

“The first sin is that you dared to look upon the face of the one who is to be my husband.”

With these words, her eyes had been smashed.

“The second sin is that you dared to hear the voice of the one who is to be my husband.”

With these words, her ears had been torn off.

“The third sin is that you dared to exchange words with the one who is to be my husband.”

With these words, her tongue and teeth had been pulled out.

“The fourth sin is that you dared to smell the scent of the one who is to be my husband.”

With these words, her nose had been twisted.

“The fifth sin.”

Charlotte stopped walking. She was now only a few steps away from Marietta.

“You dared to desire the one who is to be my husband.”

The fifth and final sin. This was the real reason Charlotte had committed such cruel acts.

The fact that the process of creating a new identity had been passed to Marietta without going through her hands had made Charlotte quite displeased, but since it was the method the boy had chosen, she had no intention of questioning the method itself.

If Marietta had not attempted to place the boy under her, Charlotte would have mercifully severed her head in one stroke.

Even if she had just not attempted to seduce the boy by putting stimulants in his tea, Charlotte would have shown some mercy by tearing her body apart in one go.

But Marietta did not do that.

She dared to try to seduce the boy, dared to try to place him beneath her, dared to feed him tea laced with drugs, and dared to test him.

There was no way Charlotte could forgive that. She was so enraged that she had smashed Marietta’s entire body as soon as she confirmed the memories extracted from her head.

“Did you think you could be forgiven for that action?”

The chair Marietta sat on was made of human arms and legs. A desk made of torsos, and a chair made of severed limbs.

The carpet, which had absorbed the blood of well over a hundred humans, created bubbling blood foam every time Charlotte stepped on it.

Human heads were displayed on the wall like animal taxidermy, and dried blood was abundant on the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Two days. That was how long Marietta and her subordinates had been subjected to cruel torture. The blood that had flowed for two full days had long since turned into scabs.

Except for what was directly flowing from human bodies. Charlotte’s healing magic never allowed them the mercy of death.

Especially Marietta.

After staring at Marietta for a moment with eyes devoid of any emotion, Charlotte soon turned toward the door.

Of course, she didn’t forget to amplify Marietta’s senses before leaving. As the pain felt throughout her body was infinitely amplified, her body’s contortions became much more violent.

Having left the room permeated with human blood and flesh, Charlotte created a small mirror in the air with a gesture. The mirror reflected a beautiful girl with long silver hair and bright red eyes.

Charlotte tidied up her appearance while looking in the mirror.

She checked for any blood splatters, combed her hair this way and that with a brush. She worked to make her lips stand out more, and even sprayed subtle perfume.

Perfect beyond measure. Charlotte, Charlotte de Gargantua, always had to show only the best appearance.

She had already thought about what to say. 99% lies and 1% truth. It was a method Charlotte frequently used.

The 1% truth was that this woman named Marietta was involved in business related to black blood demons, and the 99% lies were everything else except that one fact.

Saying that this woman named Marietta was involved in business related to black blood demons and that she had personally come to investigate it would be enough.

Once she mentioned the connection to black blood demons, the boy would never sympathize with this woman. That’s how it had always been.

If asked why she came personally, she would answer that it was because he was here. Charlotte had always done so.

Charlotte created a magic circle with her usual arrogant smile.

Soon, the magic circle began to emit light.