“Love exists to be destroyed. Do you not understand that?!” Jack, facing Ottilie, tried to stab his sword into the ground.
“I will not let you!” Without a moment’s delay, a blade of blood shot from Ottilie’s sword. She had unleashed her Anguis, deflecting Jack’s sword.
“Your Ishidaki cannot be activated unless you plunge your sword into the ground, no?” Jack, realizing that she had seen through his technique, clicked his tongue. In terms of raw power alone, the two of them were evenly matched. Their abilities fell slightly short of Henriette and the heroes. However, both of them had mastered unusual skills that few others possessed, and depending on that explosive power, they could even demonstrate that they could temporarily surpass Henriette and the heroes.
“I do not understand how your Justice Arts work exactly, but I understand your abilities. They are movement inhibitors that are linked to specific actions, right? And…you most likely have four techniques that you can use.” The techniques that Jack used in the underground research facility were Ishidaki and Shrimp Hold. From those two techniques, Chatani had predicted what kind of power he was using and where those techniques had originally come from. They were methods of torture used in an ancient time period known as the Edo period. Jack seemed to be using sword techniques modeled on those methods.
“My, you are quite the learned one. Well, then, now that you know—”
The tip of his sword moved. Ottilie took the initiative and thrust her sword into the ground just like Jack had attempted to do earlier. Jack, wondering if she was doing some kind of warm-up exercise, appeared puzzled but pointed the tip of his sword at Ottilie.
“Shrimp Hold.” It was a form of Justice Arts that bound an opponent’s body in invisible ropes and robbed them of their freedom.
“J… Jörmungandr!” At the same time that Jack activated his skill, though, Ottilie hung onto her sword that was stuck in the ground and then swung it upward. Although the effects of Shrimp Hold triggered slightly faster, her sword technique was fully activated thanks to the fact that she had already started acting and used the momentum of pulling her sword out of the ground. A giant blood snake large enough to swallow a person attacked Jack.
“Ga ha, verily! So you’ve unleashed a bold move!” Jack had wanted to slash at Ottilie while his Shrimp Hold effect was still active. Therefore, Jack avoided Jörmungandr with a minimal degree of movement, dodging it so narrowly that it grazed him.
“However, you present me with an opening when you are replenishing your blood!” Jörmungandr was a powerful technique, but it reduced Ottilie’s blood cartridges significantly. In order for her to continue fighting, she would need to move her heavy body and reload cartridges. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Jack tried to get in close to Ottilie…but suddenly, another blood snake crawled up from near his feet and bit him in the calf.
“Gah! This is…!”
“Serpens. I had them dive underground ahead of time.” Ottilie launched her blade at Jack with the little blood that she had remaining to perform a follow-up attack. Jack temporarily gave up on trying to get close and retreated, while cutting off her pursuit.
“Tch, I ended up getting bitten.”
“Unless this turns into a greatly drawn-out battle, the effects of my Genocide Arts will remain.” Ottilie calmly removed the empty cartridge and replaced it with a new one from her belt. “I am poised once more, and I have the advantage.”
“I do not think it would be a mistake to say we are evenly matched.”
As Jack said that, Ottilie’s left upper arm suddenly burst open and blood spurted out.
“Th…this is…”
“You had thought you had seen through my techniques, but it would appear to have backfired on you, methinks.”
“You are saying you have other techniques besides inhibiting one’s movements.”
“Torture is not limited to binding someone. Direct violence can also be used, at times.” Ottilie looked at him and, for some reason, made a sad face.
“Is there something that has made you feel sympathy for me?”
“It is that I feel sorry for the people around you.”
“Ga ha, verily! You are worried for them, as I am someone with a fondness for torture? Do not worry. I choose my friends very carefully.”
“But you weren’t always like this, were you?” Jack’s brow twitched slightly at that. “Jack Murray. He originally was simply a kindhearted knight working in the countryside. But one day, he suddenly changed, tortured the married couple who had taken care of him in the village where he worked, and then brutally murdered them.”
“I used to be quite close with them, yes. How nostalgic.”
“It is as though you were possessed by an evil spirit.”
“It is something similar to that.”
“So you are a spirit who is aware that he is an evil spirit, then?”
“I was person who was born into a family whose calling was torture.”
“But Jack Murray never came from such a family.”
“I am talking about a past life.”
“Huh? You might be crazy, but that’s—”
“You said yourself that you do not understand how Justice Arts works, did you not?”
“You can’t mean…” Even in a world where magic existed, that was just too far into the realm of the occult. But the truth was that standing before her now was a human being with memories of a past life, wielding a power with mysterious principles.
“In my clan, parents do not raise their children themselves. Instead, they entrust them to married couples who, knowing nothing about the clan, raise the child with love and affection. When the child reaches a certain age, their adoptive parents are tortured and murdered. Only then is the child recognized as an adult.”
Ottilie felt dizzy after hearing his evil customs, the likes of which she thought you would only hear about in made-up stories.
“Even if they are parent and child, and no matter how lovingly they dote on the child, when faced with pain and suffering, people reveal their true nature and even come to hate their own children. They curse them, disparage them, shouting and screaming that they wish they had never raised them, that they are ungrateful, and so forth.”
She figured that this must have been something he had actually experienced himself. What’s more, as he talked about it, Jack had gradually become more and more excited, and a look of rapturous ecstasy appeared on his face.
“I could not possibly ever forget the pleasure of that moment. The instincts engraved in the bloodline of my clan cry out. Shatter love! Reach the heights of ecstasy! That is the meaning of your life! That is what it is telling me!”
Even Ottilie couldn’t help but mutter “Pervert…” under her breath.
“You understand, don’t you? This loftiness. This exalted nobility. Even after humanity fell to ruin and an immeasurable amount of time hath passed, it remains… Do you think this will is precisely what ought to be called justice?!” If the Church Knights truly believed that something like that could be called justice, then there was only one thing that Ottilie could say.
“You’re a vulgar lowlife.” She despised him from the bottom of her heart, practically spitting those words at him. But Jack could only think even that was just fodder for his own sadistic pleasure.
“The love that you speak of, too, will soon be reduced to that.”
“There is no way that an evil spirit such as you can destroy the love of people living in the present!” To prove her love for her sister, Ottilie resumed her attack on Jack with even greater ferocity than before.