“Hugh, about the security details for tomorrow and beyond…”
“Whaaaat!?”
The moment Benedict opened the door to the party’s quarters, he was met with Diana’s shouting, though it wasn’t directed at him.
Inside the room, Diana was grabbing Hugh by the collar.
“What’s wrong, Diana? Are you fighting?”
“Benedict, haven’t you heard!? Iris has disappeared!”
“…What?”
Diana shouted with a frantic expression. Hearing this, Benedict felt the blood drain from his face.
“I thought it was strange that I hadn’t seen her, so I checked all over the castle. She’s not anywhere she’d usually go. I even had the maids check to make sure she hadn’t collapsed in the bathroom…
The last time anyone saw her, she was walking on the castle walls. The gate guards haven’t seen her, but she’s gone somewhere.”
Hugh, still held by the collar, spoke, and Benedict felt a snag in his thoughts.
“The castle walls…?
A sealed letter arrived for Iris from the guild, so I gave it to her while she was walking on the castle walls.”
“What’s that?”
“So she was summoned by the guild… no, even then, it’s strange for her to leave without telling us anything.”
“Yeah, and it’s also strange that the gate guards haven’t seen her. It would make sense if she used <<Fly>> to leave, but I don’t understand why she would do that.”
Iris wasn’t the type to just wander off on her own. Even if she was just going nearby, if she went alone, she would tell her party members where she was going.
The fact that she suddenly disappeared suggested that something unusual had happened.
Even so, he wouldn’t normally be so worried.
If it weren’t for the attempted assassination of the Count and the attack on the families of the Night Python subjugation squad.
Iris disappearing in this situation. It was only natural to have unsettling thoughts.
“Benedict, can’t you track her with your nose!?”
“Don’t be unreasonable. It’s tough to track someone outside unless there’s a scent on the soles of their shoes. Even then, it’s only a possibility if they walked there themselves.”
“Oh, dammit! Where are Iris’s belongings!?”
“Here…”
“Lend them to me!”
Diana overturned a large backpack. An avalanche occurred on the bed.
Diana rummaged through items for using magic and some cute miscellaneous goods, and pulled out Iris’s change of clothes.
“Please be close, please be in time… <<Oracle: Seek Person>>!”
Diana cast a spell.
A divine magic version of a spell to find people using items as clues.
Diana closed her eyes, tracing the seams of the shirt to concentrate her mind.
A tense silence that took one’s breath away. After a while, Diana opened her eyes wide.
“I found her!”
“Where!?”
“This is bad, she’s not in the city! It’s strange!”
“Calm down, if she’s moving from Eltaref to somewhere else, where is she heading!?”
Diana thought for a moment, then nodded as if to confirm her own thoughts.
“…Vone, maybe.”
“No way…”
The merchant city of Vone.
It’s a hub for trade routes connecting the surrounding territories, and it’s probably the most bustling city in the Kealy County, which has no notable resources or industries. The Adventurer’s Guild also has a branch there, and “Dragon’s Throat” often visits. However, the information that Iris was heading there was more than enough to support unsettling imaginations.
“The Night Python’s territorial control base, which the Count is trying to attack, is in Vone.”
It was a scene that Renée saw in a slumbering sleep.
In the darkness of ignorance, Renée existed as Renée.
One size smaller than Iris’s body, with silver hair. Renée’s body, wearing nothing, emitted a faint light in the darkness.
Suddenly, she looked up and saw Iris.
Wavy blonde hair and wisteria-colored eyes. Like Renée, she was wearing nothing. She was sitting down, curling up her body.
A piercing gaze was directed at Renée.
Inside the cage of the flesh, the two were facing each other, soul to soul.
“The Rose Princess. Renée “Rosy as a Rose” Luvia Ciel-Terra. …Poor girl. No matter how much you fight, you will surely never be saved.”
Iris opened her mouth. Her tone was cold, as if she were exhausted.
It was a dialogue in an irregular space. Emotions couldn’t be read.
Still, what was understood were pity, sympathy, and hostility.
“I don’t need salvation. I will only take revenge…”
Renée said firmly, as if shaking off something that was clinging to her.
“Yeah. I’m sure that’s what revenge is.”
Half mocking, half agreeing, Iris said so and sighed.
“I’m… going to die.”
Iris’s tone was as if she had made up her mind, or as if she had already given up on everything.
Renée affirmed with silence.
“The fact that you, who killed me, will continue to suffer… I feel a little bit like ‘serves you right’. But, you’re still pitiful. Surely, you have nothing left but revenge, but that revenge will torment you.”
“I won’t suffer… I’ll cut off their heads, pierce their chests, and split their stomachs. I’ll burn them to death, tear them apart, and dry them out. I’ll kill them in terror. I’ll kill them in humiliation. I’ll kill them in despair. I’ll kill every last one of them. I don’t know if there’s salvation… but it will surely be fun. Just imagining it makes me impatient.”
A jet-black flame of resentment that continues to burn in her chest. The determination and impulse to repay all the pain and sadness. It’s like living hell to just sit still with this starving feeling.
The only way to be released from this pain is to take revenge, and it must be fun. Immediately after being reborn as an undead, the time spent slaughtering in the royal capital was short, but it was actually the best.
Now, that will be spread throughout the country. Eventually, it will spread to the world. Kill everything that killed Renée… that’s all.
However, Iris mocks with pity.
“Really?”
She was laughing as if she had understood everything.
“You’ll find out soon enough…”
“Huh…”
Iris Lune woke up in a place she didn’t recognize.
Her body was cramped and constricted. Her whole body was tied up with rope, she was gagged, and even her fingers were tied so that she couldn’t make a seal. On top of that, she was stuffed into a burlap sack and seemed to be lying between some kind of luggage. The floor was shaking with a rattling, bumping motion. It was probably on a horse-drawn carriage.
It took her a split second to understand that. Iris Lune immediately twisted her body and looked at her lower half.
“Saaaaaafe!”
Like an energetic baseball umpire, Iris Lune screamed in her heart.