Chapter 12:
I Offer Unto You Sweet Slaughter
AFTER DEFEATING THE ENEMY, Linus and Maria approached the base of the underpillar behind the throne. There, they found a large Origin core, which stood about one meter high. Linus used the power of the Reversal core to stab at it with a knife, but it bounced off without even chipping it. Maria and Linus tried combining their strength and attacking it at the same time, but they still couldn’t leave a single mark on it.
“I know they said that these Reversal cores don’t have as much power as Flum, but…I guess we can’t destroy something this huge.”
“This is a problem. If we don’t destroy this thing, the Chimera won’t stop… Oh?” Suddenly, Maria peeked behind the core. “There’s a wire connected to it. It extends to a hut over there.” The cable was tangled around the underpillar itself as well, but it continued on over to the hut.
“I sense someone inside. Come on, let’s go check it out.” The pair approached the entrance of the hut with weapons in hand, taking special care to conceal their presence so as not to be detected. They had fought so fiercely outside, so the people inside must have noticed Maria and Linus.
Linus kicked open the door, announcing, “Hello, we’re comin’ in!”
They didn’t get any response, which meant that whoever was inside was hiding—and also that there was someone here with a reason to hide.
“Look, the flow of the wind tells me where you are. If you don’t wanna get hurt, come on out,” Linus said in a deep, threatening voice.
A man with eyes slanted by the spiral on his face appeared from behind a bookshelf.
“Wait, I’m not your enemy!”
“Hold on, I recognize your face. You’re a lieutenant general of the Royal Army. Your name’s Werner, if I remember right.”
“Yes, yes, that’s right. I’m a lieutenant general. I ended up getting captured by the church together with Herrmann and the general.” Linus and Maria had heard from Ottilie that Henriette and Herrmann were being held captive here. If that were true, then it wouldn’t be unusual that Werner had been captured as well. However, they found something suspicious about his face, and Maria questioned him.
“We hear that when the battle with the Children began, it was Henriette and Herrmann who fought valiantly to help the people of the royal capital escape. The two of them. What were you doing at that time?”
“Look, I know it’s pathetic, but I was scared, so I couldn’t go against the church. Because of that, I was assigned to guard this place, and I’m alive and well, in perfect health.” He was by no means cleared of suspicion, but there was some logic to the trouble he was causing.
“What happened to Henriette and Herrmann?”
“I can’t get in touch with them, so I don’t know. But they’re definitely in a tough spot, since they’ve had Origin cores embedded in them.”
“You said you were assigned here as a guard. Who else is here?”
“Echidna Ipeila.” As soon as she heard that name, Maria’s expression stiffened.
“Echidna… She’s here, is she?”
Upon hearing Maria’s furious voice, a woman in white appeared from the back room, almost as if to provoke her further.
“My, oh my, it has been ever so long, Holy Saint. I am glad to see that your face has returned to normal.”
The person responsible for forcing a failed Origin core onto Maria had appeared. Maria glared at Echidna, not even trying to hide her animosity.
“Oh heavens, so scary. Is it okay for you to make that kind of face in front of him?”
“If something like this could make him dislike me, then he would’ve left me a long time ago.”
“Oh, how passionate.”
“I’m surprised you have the composure to try to provoke me. Even though you’re about to die here.” A sword of light appeared right next to Maria, floating in the air. Then Linus placed his hand on Maria’s, gently stopping her from attacking.
“Maria, wait.”
“But Linus, we cannot trust this woman!”
“She’s the one who created the Chimera, right? So she should still have some use.”
“Yes, that’s right, I am still usef…” Echidna was overflowing with confidence as she spoke, bringing her index finger to her lips. But as she did so, Linus drew his knife with such speed that it was invisible to an ordinary person and cut that finger off.
“Heeek?!”
“I’m not gonna kill you. But I didn’t say anything about letting you off unharmed.” There was no way that Linus was ever going to forgive the woman who had hurt Maria. Echidna crouched down from the pain, clutching her wound tightly with her other hand, groaning and writhing in agony as she broke out in a cold sweat.
“This isn’t a negotiation. It’s an order. If you refuse to obey, I won’t balk at killing you. Oh, yeah, that reminds me, Gadhio wants to kill you. Should I call him?”
“W-wait!” It seemed Echidna was aware that she had incurred Gadhio’s hatred. “I don’t want my cute little Chimera to be killed, either. If it’ll stop that from happening, I’ll cooperate.”
“That was quick.”
“Living for love… I’m the same as the Holy Saint, you know? I live for the love of my children.”
Maria and Linus couldn’t determine if Echidna was being serious or not, which made Werner speak up in exasperation.
“She’s been like this the whole time. It ain’t an act.”
It sounded like Echidna was more like Mother than Dafydd, in terms of her character. She loved the Chimera like her own children and desired the development of the Chimera more than the resurrection of Origin. She seems easier to communicate with than those overly devout people, thought Linus, as he recalled the pope and the king.
“Okay, in that case, stop the Chimera right now.”
“By the by, if I cooperate with you, when will you let me go?”
“Ah, I see. Well, if you do what we order you to here…we’ll let you receive a fair trial in the royal capital.”
“So…you mean that I am going to die either way?”
“Did you really think that we’d let you survive after you created something like the Chimera?”
“Die here and now or prolong your life a little longer. Choose whichever you prefer.” She bit her lip and trembled in humiliation. It seemed like she did value her life.
“Agh, this is the worst!” Despite her cursing, she headed toward the device in the back of the room. Linus, Maria, and Werner followed her. It seemed that this device was connected to the central core, and it also looked like this hut had been built as a place where they could control the Chimera with fine precision. When Echidna pressed numerous buttons on the device, making clacking sounds as she did so, the central core flickered slightly.
“It appears that the Chimeras really have been successfully developed into a fully controllable weapon,” Maria reaffirmed as she observed the scene. Weapons that used Origin cores in the past were powered by the unidentifiable thoughts and incomprehensible sentiments of humans. However, what Echidna dealt with was not the occult, but a series of devices created through scientific methods.
“Oh, are you unhappy that God’s will is being trampled upon?”
“I have no interest in that whatsoever.”
“I see. Captain Huyghe said that he could use them, but he also said he couldn’t stomach it personally.”
Hearing Echidna’s grumbling, Linus scrunched his face into a frown.
“The captain of the knights sounds just like the pope and those people. I’d rather not fight him, if possible.”
“Rumor has it that if his subordinates show even the slightest hint of defiance, he’ll kill them by chopping off their head,” Werner said.
Linus remembered hearing about those two cardinals being publicly beheaded in the royal capital. At that moment, Echidna finished her work.
“I sent out the stop signal. Now, my cute little Chimera shouldn’t be moving anymore.”
They could see those “cute little Chimera,” which had been flying through the sky, falling to the ground, one after another, outside the window. “I hope my little darlings aren’t hurt when they fall…”
Linus left Echidna to press her face against the window, concerned about her children, and reported on the situation via his communication device.
“This is Linus. We’ve successfully shut down the central core, and the Chimera aren’t moving anymore.” They had been too busy fighting to communicate, so they didn’t know much about how the others had fared.
“What should we do now? Should we prioritize destroying the central core?”
“Yeah. I’m uneasy about leaving it there, even if it is shut down. I wish someone knew where Flum is… I’ll try asking.” When Linus tried calling out via the communication device, a frail, timid girl’s voice came back over the device.
“This is Milkit. Um…I am with Master, more or less.”
“You already met up with her! Can you two come over to the huge tower?”
“Well, that will be difficult. We’re underground and we don’t know where we are.”
“Milkit, were you separated from Eterna, by any chance?”
“We were attacked by a monster while we were together, and well…”
Linus wondered if Flum was in any condition to fight, given that she wasn’t participating in the conversation. In that case, it would probably be safer for the two of them to go to Milkit and Flum.
“We understand. In that case, we’ll look around and see if we can find a way to the underground so that we can join up with you.” After finishing the communication, Maria had a slightly anxious look on her face as she spoke. “It doesn’t seem like it’s over yet.”
“Well, now that we’ve stopped the Chimera, we’ve accomplished our mission, so let’s not rush.” In terms of degree of contribution, it’d probably be fine if they left all of the remaining work to their allies, in the worst-case scenario. Just then, Werner, who had been listening to the conversation, raised his hand modestly and jumped into the conversation.
“Um, excuse me, what about me…?”
“You’re coming with us, of course. Keep an eye on Echidna so she doesn’t run away.”
“So I’m her guardian in the end anyway.” Linus and Maria left the hut and headed for the barracks, bringing Werner and Echidna with them.