My eyes happened to meet Whip’s.
Her twin pupils, each gleaming like a five-pointed star, pinned me in place. It had been hard to tell with all the tall heretics around her, but she was actually fairly tall herself, about the same height as me, maybe a little over a hundred and seventy centimeters.
Finished talking with Joanne, Whip walked straight toward me. “So you’re Oakley Mercury-chan! The one they call the finest masterpiece ever to come out of the gestation sacs!”
“That’s the first I’ve heard of being called a masterpiece.”
For a moment, our gazes locked. I couldn’t read anything at all from those pentagram eyes. Then she broke eye contact, turned toward Alex and the other arrivals, and raised her voice cheerfully.
“Nice to meet you all! I’m Whip Funny Task, acting chief of the Northeastern Branch! Thanks sooo much for coming all the way from the holy land Metasim! Everything’s ready to welcome you, so go right on in, okay?”
The blonde pseudo-sister led us deeper into the cave. When Alex saw the Northeastern Branch members greeting us with warm smiles, he actually started bouncing up and down.
“Whoa, they’re welcoming us! This is kinda nice, huh, senpai? Like we’re important guests or something!”
While Alex frolicked like an idiot, I finally placed Whip’s true identity.
She had appeared in the original story, too. I just hadn’t recognized her because, back then, she’d gone by a different name: “Mary Henderland.”
If I had to sum her up in a single phrase, she was a fox in human skin.
Behind that harmless, friendly face, she’d infiltrated cities as a spy and assassinated one key figure after another. Honey traps, disguises, orchestrated “accidents.” That orthodox nun’s habit she was wearing now was probably a leftover from those days.
If memory served, Whip had used every trick in the book to throw the orthodox side into chaos.
In the end, the protagonist had sniffed out the disturbance and killed her. That was how her story had ended, but the number of important Kennethian figures she’d taken with her was staggering. She’d even killed a candidate for orthodox executive, which made it easy to understand why she was so highly valued, given her track record.
On the message boards, she was often labeled “one of the strongest among ordinary humans.”
According to her more dedicated fans, despite not being an executive, she was strong enough to make the strongest character rankings for the entire original game.
I’d never put much stock in those strongest character debates online, but one thing was certain: Whip’s strength was far beyond anything you’d call normal.
The fact that someone on her level could be treated as a minor storyline boss said a lot about how deep the heretics’ bench really was.
“Everybody! This way, this way! Don’t get lost, okay?”
The sparkling beauty named Whip led us toward what passed for the mess hall.
The base made full use of the natural cave formations, with human-made expansions carved in here and there.
There were no human production facilities in the Northeastern Branch. This place existed purely as a hyper-aggressive, hyper-tactical stronghold, with all its resources poured into espionage and battle readiness.
More secret base than proper headquarters, really, and a badly optimized one at that.
As we followed the winding stone passages, we finally came to a wide chamber where long tables and benches had been neatly lined up directly on the bare rock.
The men of the Northeastern Branch began filing in, dropping into their seats one after the other. We took places in an open section, and as soon as we’d settled in, Whip stepped forward and clapped her hands.
“Attention, everyone!” She called out brightly. “Today, some wonderful comrades have come all the way from the holy land Metasim to join us! Let’s give them a biiig round of applause!” She flashed a row of perfect white teeth and started clapping with cheerful vigor.
The Northeastern men responded with rough, rowdy applause and grins of their own.
At some point, Stella had taken the seat of honor at the head of the table; she brought her fingers together and offered a soft, refined clap of her own.
Right on cue, steaming-hot dishes were carried out and spread along the tables. It felt like we’d wandered into the wrong venue and crashed someone’s banquet.
The strange, high-energy atmosphere of the place left me a bit adrift. But on either side of me, Alex and Joanne were both staring at the food like nothing else in the world existed.
“Whoaaa! Looks sooo good!” Alex practically drooled, clearly at the limits of his patience.
Joanne kept sneaking glances at me, one hand rubbing her stomach in embarrassment as it let out a small, plaintive growl.
“Why do you keep looking at me?” I asked.
“No reason. I just thought you were full of openings,” she replied, embarrassed.
“Shut up…”
For just an instant, a pulse of something close to raw lust surged behind my eyes.
I suddenly wanted to press my ear against her emaciated inguinal line, against the hollow just under her protruding ribs, against the faint vertical line leading down to her navel, and listen to the sounds of her digestive organs at work.
It was a warped craving, one that had clearly come from her side of our fused mind.
Ever since that night, it chased after me. On and on, without end. No matter how I struggled, the parts of my heart that had been scraped away never grew back.
She’d looked away earlier, cheeks faintly flushed, but now, feeling the scent of me about to be painted over by someone else’s self, Joanne’s eyes flew open.
A devil’s smile spilled across her lips.
The dregs of that mental contamination were still smoldering.
The moment I accepted the piece of Joanne’s ego squirming in the corner of my mind, I would stop being me and become something else entirely.
Lately, she seemed unnervingly sensitive to even the smallest shifts in my emotions. Maybe that was only natural. She’d accepted everything that made me who I was, and from that, she’d gained a one-way link straight into my heart.
I, on the other hand, had chosen not to let her ego seep into me. I’d rejected her. None of what she was thinking ever flowed back this way.
I tore my gaze away from the oppressive mix of lust and malice pouring off her and forced myself to look down instead, at the plate of meat in front of me.
“This is our way of welcoming you all! You folks from the other branches, go on and enjoy some good old Northeastern-style cooking!” Whip shouted.
In this world, meat was extremely rare.
Most of it went into salt-curing or smoking so it would keep, and the idea of biting into a slab of meat still clinging to the bone and reveling in the flavor was little more than a distant dream, especially in a frigid region like this one.
I’d never once had what you’d call a proper meat dish.
But we, the Aros Temple Cult, had everything we needed to provide “fresh flesh.” And we’d already built the kind of culture where, even if you were served meat like that, you could eat it up and call it delicious without a second thought.