Hell – 2

ㅡSrrng!

“H-Heek?!”

And, as soon as the woman with bronze skin turned around, Kaikilia aimed the Holy Sword at her Adam’s apple. Seeing the sword, which emitted a brilliant golden light, pointed at her throat, the woman gasped in horror and raised both hands.

“Explain, Delta.”

Kaikilia looked at me, maintaining the posture of pointing the sword at the woman’s Adam’s apple.

“Why does the Holy Sword react to this woman?”

That was exactly right.

The Holy Sword was glowing a little, but more intensely than usual.

“……Holy Sword?”

“I did not ask you, you wench. Nor did I permit you to open your mouth. If you wag your tongue or move your body again without My permission, you alone shall bear the full consequences.”

The woman with bronze skin reacted briefly to the mention of the Holy Sword, then, at Kaikilia’s chilling murmur, she quietly shut her mouth and only rolled her eyes around.

There was nothing to gain by dragging out the time any further here. It was a good thing I had prepared an explanation in advance, just in case something like this happened. I quickly stepped between the woman and Kaikilia and pushed the side of the Holy Sword’s blade with my finger.

Kaikilia, who had been gazing intently at me, obediently moved the Holy Sword according to my gesture. The tip of the blade, which had been precisely aimed at the Adam’s apple, veered away into the air.

Of course, she had not completely shaken off her suspicion. She had merely lowered the tip of the blade. If she had completely dispelled her doubt, she would have unsummoned the Holy Sword.

“Are you protecting that woman?”

“That’s right.”

“There must surely be a reason for doing so. Tell Me. The reason why I should not kill but spare the woman to whom the Holy Sword reacts.”

Kaikilia, crossing her arms beneath her chest, lightly rested her hip on a nearby table and crossed her legs.

Her attitude was still very overbearing, but it was a huge leap forward that she listened to me instead of acting on her own whim. It was an unimaginable action in the past.

“Because this person is different from the kind that the Holy Sword reacts to.”

“Different?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. As Your Majesty must also know, what kind of beings are they that the Holy Sword reacts to?”

Kaikilia gave me a look that asked why I was asking such an obvious question, yet she obediently gave her answer.

“Demons. And the idiots who believe in that kind of crap, are they not?”

“That’s right. However, this person behind me is…… what’s your name, by the way?”

I turned my head. The woman, her bewilderment not completely faded, looked back and forth between me and Kaikilia, then cautiously opened her mouth.

“Margarita. You can call me Margarita.”

“I understand. Margarita-ssi is completely different from demons or demon worshippers. The reason the Holy Sword reacts to Margarita-ssi is simply because she has survived by eating the corpses of demons.”

She ate demon corpses. Perhaps it was a fact she absolutely didn’t want others to know, because as soon as I mentioned it, Margarita flinched. Her pupils trembled incessantly.

I felt bad for revealing her secret on my own accord, but it was much better than clumsily lying to Kaikilia and getting caught. It was obvious what would happen if I got caught.

“What did you just say? Did I truly hear correctly, Delta?”

At that shocking confession, even Kaikilia seemed greatly surprised, her eyes widened.

“How could I dare to lie to Your Majesty? It is the truth, without an inch of falsehood.”

“……To think you put that disgusting thing, which is revolting just to imagine, into your mouth.”

Kaikilia, frowning as much as she could, seemed to have understood the reason why the Holy Sword reacted, regardless of the disgusting nature, and unsummoned the Holy Sword. The golden light she held scattered into the air.

A small sigh was heard from behind me.

“W-Wait a minute. But how do you know all that? We just met today, didn’t we?”

As the shock and relief subsided, her bewilderment seemed to be just beginning, and Margarita’s hand urgently grabbed my shoulder.

I replied with a laugh, and Kaikilia clicked her tongue softly and spoke for me.

“Give up. He is My subject, yet even I do not know all of his inner thoughts. However, even so, he has never made a wrong choice until now, so it is enough to simply trust and follow him.”

I secretly admired Kaikilia’s words just now.

To say that she doesn’t know all my inner thoughts but that it’s enough to simply trust and follow me-those words were filled with such strong trust that it was hard to believe they came from Kaikilia, who was incredibly proud, arrogant, and overbearing.

Such words would not come out unless she trusted me considerably. I felt quite proud, thinking that the things I had done so far had been effective.

“Well, that’s not very important.”

“If that’s not important, then what is important…….”

With Kaikilia’s supportive fire backing me up, I smoothly dodged the question like a snake slithering over a wall, and Margarita pouted her lips and grumbled.

“What’s important is the fact that you, Margarita-ssi, were trapped in Hell, and because of that, you laid hands on demon corpses, half in despair.”

“…….”

“Am I wrong?”

Margarita, who had been agonizing over it for a while, seemed to have judged that there was no point in hiding it further, given how much I already knew, and nodded her head.

“That’s right. It’s exactly as you said. That I was trapped here, and that I had no choice but to lay hands on their corpses.”

Finally, words of affirmation came out of Margarita’s mouth.

“Since hiding it seems pointless, I’ll ask you directly. How much do you know?”

“All the information I need to know.”

Margarita was a former Holy Knight who was trapped here in the distant past. Her age in the setting was probably similar to that of the Eternal Mage, or something like that.

The reason a mere Holy Knight could live for so long was due to the characteristics of Hell. Since they needed to exploit humans for as long as possible, humans in Hell were cursed to not age.

And Margarita was also a case of being swept up in the summoning of demon worshippers, similar to the Player. She had gone to subjugate the demon worshippers but fell into a trap and was cast into Hell.

All her comrades ended up as biological batteries for demons, but Margarita alone barely managed to survive.

Though she escaped, it was impossible for even a Holy Knight to deal with all the demons in Hell, and so she had sustained herself by laying hands on the corpses of demons who had been defeated and pushed out in the hierarchy struggle.

Demons also fight like hell among themselves. That was the official setting. Of course, humans were their number one priority, but when there was no human hunting, they engaged in mutual predation, making Hell truly hellish.

It wasn’t that they didn’t fight just because there was a king. Rather, the King of Demons was said to encourage such chaos and disorder.

“…….”

I briefly summarized and told them this information. Kaikilia and Margarita silently listened to my words. Their faces were filled with questions like, ‘How do you know all this?’

I didn’t care much. Kaikilia had an attitude of just accepting it, saying it was possible for me to do such things, and Margarita had just been rebuffed once when she asked about my identity, so she would suppress her curiosity for a while.

More importantly, the owner of the Holy Sword was affirming my identity. Humans might lie, but the Holy Sword does not. Margarita, being a Holy Knight, would know that best.

“You have quite the stomach. To think you even considered tearing into and eating that kind of crap.”

Kaikilia, frowning as much as she could, tossed out a remark.

Honestly, I couldn’t quite imagine it either. In the original work, befitting such a grim setting, her beard and hair had grown so shaggy that they completely covered her face, and her clothes were all tattered, making her a grimy old woman.

But here, she looked like a stunning Latin beauty.

‘……But didn’t they say you wouldn’t starve to death even if you didn’t eat here?’

Everyone mechanically took their meals, though, so I wasn’t sure.

“So, this is my proposal, Margarita-ssi.”

If I didn’t get to the point now, I would seem like a crazy person who suddenly broke into someone else’s house and dug up their shameful secrets, so I quickly moved on to my next words.

“Don’t you want to escape from here?”

At my words, Margarita’s face snapped up.

“Of course I want to escape. Do you think I want to live here, constantly stuffing myself with demon corpses? Do you think I want to exist as if I’m not truly living, just tearing into such disgusting things?”

However, the head that had lifted soon fell weakly.

“But there’s no way. No way……”

“Why is there no way? You devised it yourself.”

“…….”

Margarita, who had been standing blankly as if she hadn’t understood my words, had her eyes filled with horror a few seconds later.

“H-How could you know even that……”

“You’ve completed all the theoretical verifications and somehow managed to create it by gathering various materials, but you couldn’t acquire the core material needed for its operation, so you left it as is, didn’t you?”

“N-No……”

Margarita stammered.

What I had just mentioned was Margarita’s sub-quest: collecting all the necessary materials for escape and bringing them to her. Then, Margarita could be helped to escape from Hell.

There was also a sub-quest related to the Holy Nation that connected to this one, but we could escape from here first and think about that later.

“We will procure them for you.”

“……What?”

“We will procure all those materials for you. In return, since we both know it’s not a one-time use item, you just need to let us use it together later. Because we also need to get out of here quickly.”

In the game, Margarita succeeds in escaping.

And after escaping, she even hands it over to the Player, saying they can use it as much as they want, so there shouldn’t be any particular problem if Kaikilia and I use it.

I had originally planned to defeat the Final Boss and return, but now that I thought about it, this way seemed like a faster route back.

It’s not that the player can use it just by receiving it; it’s used in a sub-quest of the Holy Nation that links to this one, so I briefly mistook that it couldn’t be used here either.

“T-This, just, just a moment……”

Margarita was very flustered, even stammering her words.

Well, it was the kind of statement that would elicit such a reaction even from me. What was needed at a time like this was action, not words.

“There’s no need to just keep talking here. I will prove it to you directly. Your Majesty the Emperor?”

“I am listening.”

“Isn’t what we killed earlier still not enough?”

At my words, Kaikilia met my eyes and gave a domineering smile.

“What is there to say?”