Ch.99Black Magic Workshop – 8

“I’m speechless. You’re not asking me to answer your questions to save my life, but to spill everything I know if I want to die without pain? That’s seriously fucked up.”

Catherine grumbled in a low voice. Well, I couldn’t say I didn’t understand her feelings.

Normally, one would offer choices like “tell me everything you know if you want to live,” or “tell me everything you know if you don’t want to die.” That would make sense.

But I had bluntly presented her with “tell me everything you know if you want to die without pain,” so from Catherine’s perspective, it must have seemed absurd.

But what could I do about the truth?

The saying “a life worse than death” exists for a reason, and Charlotte standing behind me was the person in this kingdom most capable of delivering a fate that perfectly matched those words.

It wasn’t difficult to make a human beg “please kill me” instead of “please spare me.”

At least not for Charlotte.

“Stop talking nonsense and just answer.”

“How can I answer what I don’t know, you son of a bitch! I’ve been telling you, I don’t know anything!”

“No, you clearly conducted research on black magic here. And though you failed, you even left a magic circle on a scroll. Let me warn you one last time—don’t even think about lying to me. Charlotte has already extracted and examined all the memories from your other personalities, and confirmed there’s no memory related to black magic. You’re the only one who could be the culprit.”

“Has it occurred to you, idiot, that that woman might be lying to you? You could be barking up the wrong tree.”

“Charlotte lying? To me?”

I snickered. Before Catherine could curse at my laughter with veins popping on her neck, I cut her off.

“Why?”

The “why” I asked here didn’t mean Charlotte would never lie to me.

Maybe not to Christine or Serena, but Charlotte was definitely the type who would lie to me without hesitation.

The reasons could be various.

She might think lying would be more beneficial than telling the truth, or she simply didn’t want to tell the truth, or she had other motives, and so on.

I just hadn’t caught on to which of Charlotte’s words were lies and which were truths. If it’s not discovered, it’s not a lie, after all.

However, she wasn’t the type to lie in a situation like this.

Charlotte was extremely perceptive, so she would have already noticed that I was being deadly serious and sensitive right now.

In this situation, if she carelessly fed me false information, it wouldn’t be hard to imagine how I would react afterward.

So, the “why” I threw at Catherine meant why would Charlotte lie to me “in this situation.”

“Why? You fucking moron, why? Are you seriously asking me that? You blindly trust that Blood Queen no matter what? If she told you a wooden knife could cut through an iron shield, would you believe that too?”

“Of course. Charlotte could cut through iron not just with a wooden knife but even with a strand of hair.”

Serena and Christine could probably do similar feats as well.

“…You’re… insane…”

Seemingly disgusted by my response, Catherine hesitated and closed her mouth. Her left cheek was slightly bulging.

I knew that cutting iron with wood was more of a figure of speech, but the three people beside me were beings who could make that metaphor a reality.

In other words, weak metaphors wouldn’t work.

‘I need to try a different approach.’

Catherine’s reaction was too firm, so I changed my plan. I needed to present physical evidence right in front of her to make her either stop denying or show some agitation.

Or perhaps she would deny it even more vehemently.

If she still claimed ignorance after this, I’d have to destroy her remaining eye and continue the conversation.

I didn’t need eyes to get answers anyway. All I needed were ears for input and a mouth for output.

“I think I’ve been pushing you without evidence, so showing you what I found might help jog your memory. Look carefully. This was found on your desk. I can also explain where the scroll bundle was located.”

I took out the scroll I had kept in my pocket and held it in front of Catherine’s face.

I didn’t unroll it. Nothing would be more foolish than showing an unrolled scroll to a mage. If Catherine started chanting a spell, it would be over.

No, if it were a spell activated by chanting, it would actually be better. Charlotte could block it. The worst case would be if this was a spell that could be activated without chanting.

Of course, I wasn’t sure if Catherine was a mage skilled enough to use spells without chanting, but there was another reason to be cautious.

This was black magic.

And it could, unluckily, be magic that draws in black mana itself.

Unless I had left my brain somewhere, I wouldn’t do something so stupid. I shouldn’t.

This might not matter since it was confirmed to be a failed magic circle.

But the problem was that when I first found this scroll, the magic circle was faintly glowing despite being dim.

As long as there was even a slight possibility, caution was absolutely necessary.

“Look properly. This is the scroll found on your desk. I can’t show you the inside, but does anything come to mind?”

“Fuck, come to mind? Did I write my name on it or something? I don’t even know what magic circle is inside, so what am I supposed to tell you?”

“Show a magic circle to a mage? I might as well entrust a fish to a cat.”

“Then what the fuck do you want me to do! I told you I don’t know anything about black magic, and you told me not to bullshit you. I told you I don’t remember, and you said you extracted memories from my other personalities and checked, so it must be me. And the evidence you’re showing me is just the outside of a fucking scroll? You’re being completely ridiculous, you bastard! How am I supposed to know from just looking at that, you piece of shit!”

Catherine trembled and cursed. Her expression and voice seemed genuinely indignant. From an outside perspective, it was indeed an unfair situation.

Yes, from an outside perspective.

“Erase the magic circle on your left cheek first, and I’ll unroll the scroll to show you.”

“Oh? You caught me?”

At my words, Catherine’s expression completely changed.

The face that had been screaming in rage just moments ago was gone, replaced by a smugly grinning mage.

The change was so drastic that there was a moment of silence.

“Wow, shit. I tried pretty hard to hide it, but how did you catch me? Are you a mage too? Strange, you didn’t look like one.”

“I clearly told you not to do anything stupid if you wanted to die peacefully. I guess you don’t want that?”

“Sorry about that. As you can see, I have this kind of personality. With the other personality that would have stopped me now dead, all that’s left in this body are negative emotions.”

“Only negative emotions left? So the one that died first was the positive one?”

“Well, something like that. It was made by gathering ‘relatively’ positive emotions. Like envy and jealousy.”

“Envy and jealousy as positive emotions…”

Noticing my dubious reaction, Catherine cackled and added:

“Can’t you tell from how my tone and personality keep changing? An ordinary person would go insane if they inherited even a part of the emotions left in me. That’s why they’re ‘relatively’ positive. They’re negative in absolute terms, but they have some positive aspects.”

“Why did you separate your personalities?”

“Fuck off. Why would I tell you that when you’re going to kill me anyway?”

“Then you won’t answer questions about black magic either?”

“Of course not. How can I answer what I don’t know?”

Something felt off. My intuition was ringing alarm bells.

I calmly organized my thoughts. Catherine’s current state was visibly abnormal.

Despite her own explanation about having two separate personalities, it now seemed as if a third personality had emerged.

The first one, which by her own account contained what she considered positive emotions, had died unable to withstand Charlotte’s torture.

The second one, which had tried to bite my face off upon appearing and had been outwardly present until just now.

And now this third, smugly grinning one.

“You were cursing and pretending to be indignant earlier, but you never intended to tell me anything anyway, so dream on, idiot. And what? You’ll make me beg for my life? That’s fucking hilarious. Go ahead and try. Even when you gouged out my eye and flayed my face earlier, I only screamed for show.”

The way she dismissed what was clearly painful as merely “screaming for show.”

“Why aren’t you starting the torture already? Didn’t you say you’d make me beg for my life? Don’t tell me you’re all talk?”

Even going so far as to provoke us.

Looking at Catherine, who was talking so casually despite the blood continuously flowing from her crushed eye, I finished organizing my thoughts and turned to Charlotte.

“Charlotte.”

“Speak, my lord.”

“I told you not to extract memories recklessly because you might get contaminated too.”

“Indeed.”

“Seems you listened well. You’re not contaminated.”

Realizing the true meaning of my words, Charlotte narrowed her eyes.

“Go and burn everything here to ashes. Leave nothing behind.”

Charlotte silently disappeared.

As protective magic circles were laid on the broken walls, and beyond them the sound of literally everything burning could be heard, I met Catherine’s eyes again.

“Do you know what I mean by contamination?”

“I don’t know and I don’t want to know, idiot.”

Catherine’s tone grew increasingly hostile.

“When a specific object is contaminated by black magic, it’s very different from ordinary contamination. Let’s use black blood monsters as an example. Their blood and flesh corrode the earth, fill the air with poison, and make water putrid. That’s ordinary contamination. It’s what most people think of. So, what do you think contamination caused by black magic is like?”

My finger alternately tapped Catherine’s head and chest.

“It’s what’s in here. Mind. And soul.”

Soul and mind are clearly separate concepts.

Sometimes there are mages or scholars who lump them together, but such people are usually mediocre or naturally correct their thinking as they gain more knowledge.

“The contamination from black blood monsters is simply the act of corroding something material. No matter how much they corrode the land, fill the air with poison, or make water putrid, it’s only temporary.”

But black magic is different.

“Black magic twists and destroys human thought patterns and concepts themselves. That’s why there’s no way to save someone tainted by black magic, nor should there be. The very act of trying to save them would lead to contamination.”

I withdrew my finger. I couldn’t see what expression I was making right now, but I was certain it was burning with cold anger.

“Let me give you an example. Imagine if the very concept of water in your head was contaminated by black magic, and you looked at water. The water would rot just from your gaze. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because the concept of water is contaminated in your mind, it applies to reality as well. Get it?”

This level would actually be manageable. You could isolate the person from water-related spaces or kill them beforehand.

But what if black magic contaminated the concept of air? Or the concept of earth? Or even the concept of mana?

What if it contaminated humanity itself?

Humans contaminated by black magic would create more humans contaminated by black magic, and it would spread instantly. The world would end just as quickly.

“Listen. I call this contamination for convenience, but it might be easier to understand if I use a different word. You’ve heard it before, right? ‘Curse.'”

An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I couldn’t know exactly what in this damned mage’s head was contaminated, but one thing was certain.

A curse can be crushed by an even stronger curse.

I grabbed Catherine’s hair and pulled her close to me. A few strands of hair broke between my fingers, but I didn’t care.

What did a few strands of hair matter to someone who was about to die anyway?

I lowered my voice. I focused all my nerves on each word I was about to utter.

And then I opened my mouth.

“What is my name?”