Editing HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6 (section)

===Part 6===

Quenser looked annoyed as he held up his alcohol lamp made from a liquor bottle.

He had climbed down the trapdoor’s ladder and found a long underground passageway. It was probably hand dug, but the walls were not made of dirt or stone. They most resembled rotting wooden walls, but that was not quite accurate either.

They were coffins.

And they were crammed full of white skeletons perfunctorily wrapped in rotting cloth.

“Are these catacombs? …Dammit.”

The place looked more than a century old. After that much time, the corpses looked more like fossils, but he did not feel like relaxing and taking a deep breath. He could see some burial items of gold or jewels here and there, but he felt no desire to pocket any of them.

More than just the one tunnel, there seemed to be a large web of them with the monastery at the center.

With nothing to guide him, he relied on his instincts until he ran into something other than a coffin-lined passageway.

It was a small room.

There were no coffins here.

“What is this…?”

However, it was far from a comforting place. He saw chairs and a bed, but this was certainly not a rest area for the grave keeper. They were made of sinister-looking steel and they were designed to hold the victims’ arms and legs in place with chains and belts. Thanks to the paint, they were not even rusted.

Hanging on the wall were a number of whips…or rather, metal rods with a variety of attachments. There were also hammers and large pliers which did nothing to put Quenser’s mind at ease.

There was a single small desk in the corner for someone other than a victim. The drawer had a book’s worth of parchment full of handwritten text. It looked to be centuries old. It explained how to use and maintain the tools.

(After the old age of witch hunts died down and became taboo, did the people who couldn’t forget the taste of blood hide their collection in a distant land?)

That raised questions about the coffins covering the passageway walls. The monastery had been built to close people in like a prison and these catacombs and a torture chamber were hidden below it. Quenser did not like imagining what kind of life had been lived here.

(This world really is shit if things like this can cross the ocean and take root.)

But his life was more important than divulging dark secrets of history.

He refocused his mind, but he came to a stop just before stepping out into another passageway.

He glanced over at the steel bed again and traced his fingers across it.

“Don’t tell me… You have to be kidding.”

Then he started down a random passageway. Several layers of rotting coffins covered both walls and he used his alcohol lamp to inspect a few of the skeletons.

And then…

“Quenser…?”

A voice reached him from another passageway.

He held his alcohol lamp in that direction and saw a twintail girl in a Faith Organization uniform. It was the very uniform he had given her.

The student felt sweat on his brow.

“Sk…uld?”

“Thank goodness. Heivia said you’d vanished from the monastery, so I thought you might be here.”

He breathed a sigh of relief.

And she gently placed her hands on Quenser’s shoulders.

“I don’t like saying this to someone from the Legitimacy Kingdom, but I owe you one. I can’t have you dying here.”

“…”

“Let’s get out of here. The Faith Organization soldiers know about this place, so it’s used as an emergency escape route for the Elites and officers. The other soldiers should show up here soon.”

That was a perfectly reasonable point.

If the Legitimacy Kingdom had put together a rescue operation, Skuld would have known the maintenance base better than anyone. And she would know the escape routes better than a normal Faith Organization soldier. There was nothing odd about her showing up in the catacombs before anyone else.

But something caught at Quenser’s mind.

He recalled what Urd and Verdandi had said.

Skuld was a serial killer.

She could not control her violence and aggression, so she could not function in normal society. She was extremely skilled as a Pilot Elite, but she was so broken as a human being that she could not maintain the bare minimum of dignity without the framework of the military protecting her. Plus, her murders were highly contagious and she would create a negative boom of copycat killers if word got out.

“…? What is it?”

“N-nothing.”

Skuld looked puzzled and Quenser shook his head.

Either way, they could not stand around here. He would be in trouble of the Faith Organization soldiers found him here.

For that reason, he followed Skuld through the labyrinthine catacombs.

She did not seem even remotely hesitant to defenselessly turn her back toward him.

Who was telling the truth?

Urd and Verdandi had only been speaking inside a small interrogation room. He had no objective proof to back them up, so it was entirely possible they had been lying to turn him against Skuld.

“Have you ever used this place before?”

“During the evacuation drills. But I was surrounded by bodyguards the whole time.”

She readily answered.

“I know why you might be feeling down. Not only is the place full of musty old coffins, but you saw that old torture chamber, didn’t you? When you see things like that, it’s hard to agree with the people who glorify the ‘good old days’.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.”

Skuld had no reason to betray Quenser after coming this far.

She would have gained nothing from risking her life on a mission to rescue him.

But she had still come to the Faith Organization maintenance base zone which was the most dangerous place for her.

Normally, he should trust the person who had risked her life for him more than the words of enemies like Urd and Verdandi. She had proved she was on his side through actions instead of mere words.

“By the way, Skuld.”

“Yes?”

It was a casual conversation.

“Why were some of the bones over there oddly new? The flesh had clearly been chemically stripped away.”

A dull shock exploded in the bridge of his nose.

It took him a few moments to realize what had happened.

While taking the lead, Skuld had turned around and swung a backhand blow at him.

“Gah!?”

His hands flailed wildly and the alcohol lamp slipped from his grasp. The liquor bottle rolled away, but that may have been fortunate.

Just like a Molotov cocktail, wet flames spread across the floor and then rose like a wall.

Before his dizzy vision could recover, Skuld grabbed his collar with both hands.

She was planning to throw him into the flames.

He shuddered when he realized that, but as a student with no real hand-to-hand combat experience, he did not want to begin grappling even with a slender girl.

Before he lost his balance, he lowered his hips.

Skuld was holding his collar, so her hands were pulled straight down. She was placed in an unbalanced crouching position and she had been shifting her center of gravity forward to push Quenser.

The skinny boy had no way of knowing it, but the ninja of the distant Island Nation had used a certain technique to lose any pursuers.

They would crouch down into a ball just after turning a corner so their pursuer would trip over them upon running around the corner.

Skuld’s body rotated vertically.

It was like an overhead throw.

And she was headed right toward the wall of Molotov cocktail flames she had tried to use herself.

“Gyah!!”

Her slender body landed right in the wet flames.

Quenser held his head, unsteadily stood up, and tried to check on the situation.

“Pant, pant!!”

(Dammit, I trusted you. I really did! I thought the day might come that I would have a domineering Elite treat me like her big brother!!)

But life was not that kind.

The Faith Organization uniform was not just a synthetic track suit. It had some level of fire resistance.

Skuld broke through the wall of flames and charged forward on all fours like an animal. He could not escape to the left or right in this narrow passageway. She tackled him at waist height and he finally lost his balance. His back slammed into the ground.

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“Gbah!! Cough, cough!!”

“Ahh, ahh. Why’d you have to notice that?”

Skuld climbed on top of Quenser and giggled.

The wall of flames behind her cast a dark shadow over her face.

“This was my secret base. I just about danced for joy when I found it before anyone else. So why did you have to find it!?”

She reached out her hands toward his neck. She was planning to throttle him. The boy frantically struggled with his arms, but Skuld moved her hips on top of him to pin them down below her hands.

“Then…then what Urd and Verdandi said was true!?”

“I wouldn’t know what they told you.”

“That you’re a serial killer!!”

“Hee hee. Oh, that one’s 100% true.”

“Then why did you risk your life to come rescue me? There had to have been other ways of earning enough points for the Legitimacy Kingdom to let you in!”

“Because…”

Instead of killing him quick, she took her time to enjoy it while pinning his wrists down.

She brought her face close enough for their noses to touch and then her mouth split open in a smile.

“You seemed like such a delicious target from the moment I saw you. Macho men don’t do it for me and slender women just aren’t enough. Yes, I prefer androgynous and feminine guys. When I see one, I just can’t stop myself.”

“…!!”

Quenser’s throat grew dry.

Was she saying she had rescued him because she had not wanted the Faith Organization or her older sisters to steal her prey?

“Your actions are completely inconsistent. I can accept the initial surprise attack disguised as a defeat, but the Draupnir swarm and the Princess’s loss in the second battle had to have been complete coincidence. If you had made even a single mistake, you would’ve died. Are you trying to say you planned all this out, including those coincidences!?”

“None of that matters,” she readily told him. “I kill as many people as I can at the moment. You don’t need to obsessively plan out a hobby, do you? And it’s not something you can keep yourself from doing, right?”

“It was all…adlibbed…?”

“I always make the decision that will lead to the most deaths in that moment. That’s what I do. That just happened to coincide with a few other events and – next thing I knew – I found myself on a rescue operation. But what I must do is the same no matter what happens. I will indulge in my hobby. I will bathe in blood and death. No life could be more fulfilling!!”

She was insane.

That was the logic of an utter lunatic.

Urd and Verdandi had been right. If Skuld managed to earn the Legitimacy Kingdom’s trust and blended into a safe country, she would definitely slip away from her observers, escape, and kill as many defenseless civilians as she liked. The police, guards, and other forces stationed in the safe countries would not be enough. Not only would they fail to stop her, they would lose their lives as an exciting detour to spice up her killings.

“Skuld…!!” shouted Quenser as she pinned him down.

He was answered with a head butt.

Skuld’s forehead struck him again and again while his hands were restrained. His forehead, nose, and cheekbones strained under the weight of the hammer-like blows. His consciousness faded and he could tell his body was going limp.

She likely wanted to savor the weakening of his breath.

She let go of his limp wrists and her fingertips crawled to his chest. Then she applied tremendous pressure like she was performing CPR.

“Gweah!! Agwah!?”

“Hee hee hee. Ee hee hee ee hee. Hee hee hee ha ha ha ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Still straddling Quenser, Skuld arched her back and laughed at the top of her lungs.

The act of harming him must have filled her with ecstasy because irregular tremors ran through her small body.

“Yes, yes. This is the feeling. I can feel the invisible life in my hands!! Yes, that’s right! Killing isn’t something you see, hear, taste, or smell! You feel it!! You touch it with your fingertips! It’s all about recalling that invisible shape and truly experiencing it!!”

Quenser’s mouth opened and closed in search of oxygen and Skuld’s fingers crawled further across his chest. But this was not another meaningless heart massage. Her hands drew ever closer to his throat.

He shook his head in protest, but that changed nothing.

She was breathing heavily on top of him. Her cheeks were flushed. Her ten fingers wrapped gently around his throat. The two thumbs softly stroked his Adam’s apple. She seemed to enjoy how it moved around in her hands.

“War never mattered. In fact, death happens far too quickly in those clean wars where you can kill at the pull of lever. You can’t feel it and enjoy it!! This was a wonderful place. Pliers, hammers, saws, and so much more… I still think my bare hands are the best, but using a tool and feeling the sensation reach my wrist wasn’t bad either!!”

“Sku-..ghweh!?”

He tried to say something, but she started crushing his Adam’s apple below her thumbs.

She seemed to be cutting off the blood to his head more than the air to his lungs. He was afraid his entire head would inflate and burst from within.

Had his guess been right?

The metal bed in that torture chamber had been strangely shiny. That was thanks to human sweat…no, oils. That meant it had been used recently, not just centuries ago.

He had refused to believe it, but he may have just been in denial.

Pilot Elites came in all types.

They each had their own reason to pilot their Object: money, fame, a lifestyle, social status, faith, etc.

He had not wanted to believe that an Elite would pilot an Object simply to enjoy the act of killing.

“Gh…eh…!!”

“Yes, yes!! This is the feeling. I was completely right about you, Quenser! You have the most wonderful soul!!”

Her small butt wiggled on top of him as she shouted in delight.

Meanwhile, Quenser could no longer resist in the slightest.

Was it over? Would this lunatic who had confused war with a hobby either strangle him to death or snap his neck?

“…Hh…”

How long had it been since he had stopped breathing?

His mind grew blank. He lost all sense of time. He could no longer see Skuld’s face as she laughed loudly and arched back again and again as she relished the pleasure of this act.

And then a scorching and trembling impact ran through him.

Skuld’s hands went limp.

With his windpipe and blood vessels released, Quenser’s mind grew clear. He still felt dizzy, but he did his best to think about what had just happened to him.

(It was a lot like when I screw up some work and get an electric shock… Was it a stungun? No, a projectile spark shot?)

Someone must have fired some wired electrode pins at Skuld and released a high voltage current that reached Quenser through her body.

She wobbled while sitting on top of him.

He followed her gaze and saw another girl in a special suit much like the one Skuld had worn.

“Ver…dandi…?” muttered Quenser.

After looking back and forth between her sister and her prey, Skuld tried to press her weight down on Quenser’s neck once more. She did not bother begging for her life. She silently focused all of her efforts on killing before her own life could be taken.

Another high-voltage current surged through her.

Skuld’s small body convulsed.

“You…”

Verdandi walked over and used the bottom of the handgun-like spark shot to hit Skuld on the cheek.

“You are a disgrace to the Faith Organization!!”

With a loud noise, Skuld’s body finally went entirely limp. She fell off Quenser and collapsed onto her side.

Verdandi simply glared at the boy whose vision was flashing in and out, who could not get up, and who continued to cough.

But when she heard footsteps rushing down another passageway, she swiftly got to work.

She pulled out a grenade, placed it in Quenser’s hand, and artlessly pulled the pin.

“You won’t die as long as you hold onto the lever. Your friends can take care of the rest, you burden.”

With that said, she hoisted Skuld up over her shoulder with the electrode pins still stabbed into her. She likely intended to withdraw while the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were busy with Quenser.

“With Skuld back, we have no more use for you. You were reported as a POW in the Faith Organization and no one really knew what to do with a student like you anyway. I’ll overlook you this time.” Verdandi spoke as a Faith Organization Pilot Elite. “But just this once. Don’t forget that your First Generation is powerless in the face of our tactics.”

“…”

There was nothing he could say.

Verdandi was right.

Keeping his mind from falling into darkness and making sure he kept his hand on the grenade was the most he could manage.