When the first princess went off to Ist, she struck a deal with Krone. The Cait-Sìth wanted to save her nephew and her guard. And so, the princess rushed through the Tower of Wisdom and gathered all the healing tools she could find before returning to Kingsland.
“Mrow. Let’s begin,” Katima said.
“Most certainly!” Bara replied. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Of course! When this is over, I need mew to take a look at my wounds! Is that clear?”
“Y-Your wounds?! Princess Katima?! Please wait! What are you planning?”
But the princess wouldn’t answer. She pushed the stretcher into the back of the room, and stopped in front of a massive, bed-shaped magical tool. Various tubes protruded from it. In her shock, Bara rushed forward, hoping for an answer, when suddenly, a transparent wall resembling a pane of glass materialized between her and the royal.
“Princess Katima!” Bara cried. “What are you doing?!”
“Putting up a barrier juuust to be safe,” Katima replied. “I originally planned on using it to protect myself in case an experiment failed.”
“What are you—”
“Don’t worry. The barrier will go down in a few meowments.”
Bara banged on the barrier, but it refused to budge. Katima could no longer hear the nurse’s voice, and only heard the girl’s futile pounding. The royal ignored it all and took out a small black stone from her coat pocket.
“Thanks to Oz, I’ll be able to use this, mew see,” Katima said.
This stone had been embedded in one of Oz’s hands. Katima wasn’t about to abandon the stone, and had taken it before she left the Tower of Wisdom. She proceeded to draw Chris’s rapier, which she’d secretly stolen.
“Meow! Mrow! Meow! Huh? Am I actually a genius with the blade?”
From afar, it looked as though she were engaged in a strange dance—like she’d lost her marbles and randomly started swinging a blade around. However, the princess seemed to be enjoying herself, her eyes filled with determination.
“All right. Here I go.”
She lined up the black stone on her desk next to an empty magic stone, and placed them beside Dill’s body. Katima proceeded to use the rapier to slice through the bandages that enveloped Dill’s body. She looked down and bit her lip as she saw the deep gash in his body. With renewed determination, she took out a syringe from her pocket and pierced Dill’s neck. For the several seconds that followed, a tense silence filled the room.
“Princess...Katima?” Dill said feebly as he opened his eyes.
The princess brushed the knight’s hair away from his eyes. “There are many things that I must tell mew. But time is of the essence, and mew don’t have much left, Dill.” The syringe contained a medicine that forced a person to regain consciousness. It took a heavy toll on the body, but Katima was convinced that had she not used it, Dill would’ve never uttered another word again. “If we stand around and twiddle our paws, mew’ll die very soon.”
Dill fell silent.
“But there’s one way I might be able to save mew. It may change everything about your body, but even so... Do mew want to live, Dill?”
As soon as he came face-to-face with the royal’s gaze, Dill knew he was in deep. He’d fallen in battle and was now unable to stand at his master’s side. The faithful knight quickly noticed Ein’s absence, and instantly understood what had happened.
“My loyalty...hasn’t...died yet...” Dill managed to eke out.
He was so frustrated that he was on the verge of tears, but he managed to suppress his emotions while conveying his innermost thoughts to Katima. He weakly reached out to the princess, only to have his lifeless hand supported by her paws.
“Very well,” Katima said. “Then I shall steel my resolve as well.”
Before Dill could even question what the princess meant by “her resolve,” he lost consciousness once more. With the knight fully knocked out, Katima rammed a magic stone into his gaping wound. She quickly shoved the tubes from the magical tool into his body, and used the last tube to pierce an empty magic stone.
“When the core and the magic stone are linked, it starts connecting itself to the surrounding organs and reconstructing flesh,” Katima said. “After another pass over the artificial Demon Lord creation research, that much is already clear. But now, we run into a bit of a pawblem...”
Dill was a human—he possessed no core. Even if the core was destroyed, a magic stone could persist by itself, and thus, it was easy to prepare an empty stone. However, if one’s magic stone was destroyed, the core would die with it.
But as the princess had listened to Arshay’s explanation, the furry royal had thought of a certain solution. Indeed, Arshay’s resurrection had been the answer to Katima’s woes. Following the same process of the Demon Lord’s return, the black magic stone simply needed to serve as the core.
“Apparently, the necessary environment will be suppawted by this magical tool,” Katima said. “Sadly, I haven’t had enough time to process every step, and I’m just copying what I saw Oz do earlier. It looked to meow like this step was vital to rebuild your body around the magic stone.”
Truthfully, Katima had wanted to hear what Oz had rattled off during his battle with Chris. Instead of hearing it for herself, the princess had to settle for whatever she’d been told on the train ride home. That was all. From there, Katima used her own expertise to bring her conclusions in line with the mad professor’s discoveries.
“At the very least, mew won’t become a chimera or anything. So no worries there.”
Was this black magic stone a completed product while others were prototypes? Or was it because her subject was being treated in a completely different environment? No matter the case, she knew that this stone was totally different than the ones found inside chimeras.
The only real roadblock was Dill’s status as a run-of-the-mill human. Oz’s creation didn’t take humans into account, making Katima’s aims seem rather unrealistic.
“Princess Katima! No!” Bara shouted.
Katima couldn’t hear her voice until now, but she realized that Bara was no longer alone. The nurse had called for help, and a handful of knights were trying their damnedest to break through the barrier. They had only managed to make a tiny crack so far—not nearly enough of an opening for someone to squeeze through.
“There are records of failed experiments on subjects with completely different traits!” Bara cried.
“Nya ha ha! Mew don’t think I know that?” Katima replied.
“There haven’t been any nonhuman-human experiments either! It’s all been with monsters! Officer Dill is just a normal human being! The use of an artificially embedded magic stone completely changes the purpose of the experiment itself! Please, Princess Katima!”
“I know all that.”
“Then please stop! If this fails, he won’t come out of this unscathed!”
Ever since she arrived at the castle, Bara had been always eager to learn something new. Her studies also included a decent amount of reading on the artificial Demon Lord. Katima’s intentions were as clear as day to the nurse as she desperately sought to stop the royal. Bara was convinced that this wouldn’t end well. However, her words fell on deaf ears as Katima continued. The princess thrust the rapier into her own magic stone. Blood and magical energy gushed out of her self-inflicted injury as she hastily connected a tube to her wound.
“Oof... This hurts more than I expected! Nya ha ha...”