Chapter 81

The eyeball moved around in his grip.

“I have to eat it, right?”

“It’ll be delicious.”

“I’m not inclined to.”

Quilbion bit his fingertip to draw blood. He dabbed his blood onto the contract made of blood floating in the air.

The blood forming the contract transformed into two needles and embedded themselves in Quilbion and Sheryl’s chests.

“The covenant is made. If you break it, your nark will go berserk and you’ll die, so make sure to keep it.”

After nodding, he put Sheryl’s eyeball in his mouth. Chewing felt repulsive, so he swallowed it whole.

There was no immediate change like when he’d eaten the essence of sorcery.

“That incantation is what I put on you before.”

“The one you attached to my eyes?”

“Right, that one.”

Suddenly his stomach twisted. It felt like his intestines were being torn strand by strand.

He looked at Sheryl while grimacing.

“It’s an incantation I made. Naturally it’ll hurt quite a bit to digest.”

“Would’ve been nice if you’d told me that beforehand…… ugh.”

He endured with his forehead pressed against the table.

This world’s body was vulnerable to pain. But it wasn’t unbearable.

Blood vessels spreading through his neck to his entire head throbbed. Quilbion steadied his breathing. Bodily pain was familiar. What’s familiar is easy to endure.

“Your face is nicely cooked.”

Sheryl laughed merrily.

“But you’re impressive. Enduring with that body.”

While listening to Sheryl’s words, he wiped his forehead. It was drenched in sweat. The pain that had dominated his body gradually receded.

“But can I take what I got here to reality? It’s a separate world.”

“Incantations melt into the mental world. So it’ll carry over. Same with the covenant.”

After wiping his mouth with his hand, he examined the incantation that had settled in one part of his brain.

A curse that removed the target’s vision by manipulating nark.

Quilbion moved his nark. A small black sphere formed between his thumb and index finger. It was the prototype of the curse.

“You pulled it out right away. I thought it would take you some time.”

“I must have talent like you said.”

“If you place that on some hateful bastard, the curse completes. Of course, the effect varies wildly depending on the caster’s capabilities. Your curse is…… they won’t be able to see for a few days?”

“It’s useless.”

He threw the curse prototype at Sheryl.

The black sphere that struck Sheryl’s eyeball disappeared with a hiss like a water droplet meeting heated iron.

“See? The sorcery and incantation you used don’t work on me.”

“I didn’t throw it expecting great results. I just threw it because you looked ugly.”

Sheryl shrugged.

“More than that, how is it? Doesn’t it feel like I said?”

“So-so. I also learned that using nark independently is quite difficult.”

“It’s an incantation I made fairly diligently. Keep researching it.”

“Incantations contain Karma too, right?”

Sheryl smiled.

“All sorcery contains heart. Because nark is heart itself.”

“Every time you use the word heart, I feel sick.”

“Why?”

“I come to know. That you guys, who I thought were completely different monsters I couldn’t understand, are no different from us.”

“Hatred of your own kind?”

“It’s a struggle to survive. But, do you guys believe in something called fate?”

“Fate? Ah, a very exciting word. Fate, you see, is proof that you’re receiving the Designer’s love. The Designer spread both arms to embrace you so you wouldn’t greatly deviate, so danger wouldn’t come—the name of that embrace is fate. That’s why fate doesn’t exist for us. How can we believe in something that doesn’t exist?”

“So that’s why you’re going crazy trying to enter the Designer’s embrace?”

“We’re curious. We were born in a place with nothing. Meanwhile, you lot opened your eyes with everything. It’s unfair. I, you see, want to receive love. I want to try dancing on that powerful current called fate.”

Sheryl raised her hand.

He could immediately tell what she was planning. Quilbion reached out and grabbed Sheryl’s wrist.

The hand he grabbed rotted away.

Extreme pain struck his brain. His vision shook for a moment, but he didn’t release the hand he’d grabbed.

“Why do you keep doing this? This place has no meaning to you. It’s a world that’ll be abandoned when you wake up.”

“But it’ll persist. Because this isn’t a hallucination. It’s a world of clear existence with bastard bosses, friends who don’t repay money, and ex-lovers.”

“No. The moment you leave, all that remains here will be a shabby Quilbion. Apprentice Quilbion. Useless Quilbion.”

“Even if useless, he’s someone who has to live here.”

“What if I kill him?”

“What about the covenant?”

“That’s about the promise, so it doesn’t matter. That promise was that the incantation I handed over wouldn’t harm you. Directly killing you is no problem at all.”

“Like a dog.”

“Of course, I have no intention of killing you. But I don’t care about the shell left here after you leave.”

Quilbion looked back.

The people’s skin had turned black.

They’d dried up and shriveled without even being able to scream.

There were no survivors.

“Do you hate humans that much?”

“That one over there kept staring at me. Irritatingly. Looking at me as if I were filth—I can’t overlook that.”

“If I leave, you’ll disappear soon too, right?”

Quilbion prepared to return. He couldn’t leave an uncontrollable monster loose here.

“It doesn’t disappear right away. Last time you left first and left a shell behind, right? I asked it various things. But it really couldn’t remember anything. Just an ordinary coachman. So I killed it and took out the heart and ate it, and your scent remained. After confirming that, I twisted my own neck too.”

Sheryl flicked her tongue.

“It’s you yet not you. Really interesting.”

“You’ll get sick if you pick up and eat strange things. So stop eating them.”

“Alright. I’ll listen well, so postpone leaving for a moment. If you leave now, I’ll kill all the bugs outside, okay?”

“I’ll stay, so fix this. It hurts like hell.”

Quilbion looked at his own arm that had turned black and shriveled completely.

When Sheryl tapped the arm, the blackened arm quickly regained a healthy color. It even filled out.

“This is an incantation too?”

“This is sorcery.”

“What’s the difference between sorcery and incantation anyway?”

“Sorcery needs structure. You’ve learned it, so you’ll know what I mean. You form hand seals, move nark, go through phenomenon induction, then concretize.”

“I guess you guys need the hand seal stage too.”

“Of course. Like you, we have to create form with fingers. Isn’t it strange? Even the ones who abandoned human form kept their fingers. Though hand seals can be simplified, they can’t be skipped entirely.”

“Compared to that, incantations……”

Quilbion created the curse Sheryl had handed over in his hand again.

“They appear just by wishing.”

“Right. It’s intent. That’s why incantations can’t be transmitted except by tearing off and passing on my own. They can’t be documented like sorcery.”

Sheryl stood up from her seat.

“Shall we go out? The air here is too stale. It smells rotten.”

Sheryl covered her nose with a handkerchief while looking at the corpses in the corner.

“Then don’t kill them in the first place.”

“I told you earlier. That one looked at me unpleasantly.”

Sheryl left the shop. Before closing the door and coming out, Quilbion looked at the dead people one last time.

“I’m sorry.”

Something called guilt raised its head very briefly. But the moment he closed the door and turned around, the remnants of emotion vanished cleanly.

Am I really human? He briefly pondered, then stopped. It wasn’t like the dead would return.

“Look there.”

At the place Sheryl pointed with her finger, there was a train entering the station while spewing steam.

Given the time, it was probably the last train.

“This is an interesting place. I want to come again next time.”

“If you think that way, stop killing people.”

“I’ll try.”

He walked the streets with Sheryl.

A path draped in darkness. Only the sparsely placed streetlamps were the sole light.

“The humans living here will fly in the sky later too. They’ve made many strange things.”

“Steam is quite mysterious. To think it’s a world where everything moves with processed mana fuel.”

Similar yet different.

A bizarre world.

The cracks.

“How many of these worlds exist?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve been to various places.”

“It was a different place each time. No, they overlapped a few times, but even so, countless numbers exist.”

“Then who created the humans living here? If they were born in the Designer’s indifference like us, they should be stuck in a trash can, but these ones look happy.”

Sheryl said while looking at the building across the street. Through the window, there was a man and woman wrapped in gentle light facing each other.

As if something pleasant had happened, laughter bloomed each time they opened their mouths.

Quilbion immediately blocked Sheryl’s path.

“Seems like you have to go now.”

“Why?”

“Because you won’t listen. Let’s stop here for today. We’ve each gotten what we could, so let’s part peacefully.”

“Mm, peacefully. That’s nice.”

Sheryl’s eyes curved beautifully as she repeated the words “that’s nice.”

Damn woman.

Quilbion pulled out the knife he’d taken from the restaurant from his back pocket. Even while watching the knife approaching her throat, Sheryl didn’t step back—instead, she raised both hands upward and shouted.

“Let’s all die together!”

The streetlamps’ light evaporated in an instant.

Pook!

He pierced Sheryl’s throat with the knife, but it was useless.

Black rain fell from the sky.

The vigilantes patrolling the night streets were running over while blowing whistles. Quilbion hurriedly severed Sheryl’s neck.

The knife that cut through flesh proceeded to smash the cervical vertebrae. Sheryl’s neck bent at a right angle. With her head and shoulders completely touching, Sheryl smiled brightly.

“Do these ones have something called fate?”

Though her neck was half-severed, her voice was fine. Even here, Sheryl was a monster.

Pitter patter.

The rain soaked Quilbion’s body.

The vigilantes who approached next threw themselves and subdued Quilbion.

Lying face-down on the ground, he looked up at Sheryl standing tall. One vigilante stammered.

“M-miss. Are you okay?”

What kind of question was that to ask a woman smiling with her neck bent in a bizarre direction?

Quilbion shouted to the three vigilantes.

“Run, quickly.”

“Be quiet! You crazy bastard. Stabbing people openly on the street?”

“I am crazy, but I didn’t do it for my own sake. But it seems it’s already too late.”

“I said be quiet!”

The vigilante who’d been shouting while twisting his arm trembled. The vigilante who’d been subduing Quilbion’s body toppled sideways.

The others weren’t much different.

Trembling, they buried their heads in the ground where black rain had pooled.

Screams came from all directions.

Quilbion swept up his wet hair and looked directly at Sheryl.

“Feel better?”

“A tiny bit. The ones here won’t know about fate or the Designer. They won’t know how great a blessing they’re enjoying. It’s infuriating. We’ve endured so miserably.”

“Taking your anger out on the wrong place.”

He stood up and gripped Sheryl’s neck with both hands.

“Quilbion, no, Quil. Let’s meet again. I’ll be waiting.”

He grabbed the neck of her disgustingly smiling face and pulled it off her body. Even with the neck completely severed, Sheryl’s body maintained its balance and stood.

The black rain falling from the sky stopped.

Quilbion threw the head to the ground and leaned against a wall.

Screams and crying could be heard from everywhere.

An uncontrollable disaster.

“As expected, it’ll only end when they’re all dead.”

He raised his hand and patted his shoulder.

“You’ll have to suffer a bit.”

He moved to an alley far from the scene and sat down.

Apprentice Quilbion.

He didn’t know what kind of life the Quilbion who would remain here would live, but it wouldn’t be very pleasant.

“Hang in there. At least you’re better off than me.”

Quilbion took a deep breath, pressed it down deep into his lungs, and held it.

Until his mind grew distant.