Chapter 3 [Illustration]
The massive facility I had entered was a dungeon. The foul odor that wafted through the place and the horrifying sight in front of my eyes left me speechless. The corpses I had seen in the corridors were mainly those of demons slain by the infiltrating human soldiers, but the ones here... They were all human corpses.
“Blargh...” I gagged.
There were no guards around as they had probably gone to participate in the battle, but it seemed as though they had killed all the prisoners right before they left. I was about to vomit but managed to hold it in.
Most of them had been so brutally torn apart that it was impossible to tell what had caused this gruesome massacre.
I had no time to hesitate like this, but my hands and feet trembled uncontrollably. Writing about a scene and witnessing it firsthand were worlds apart. Just looking at the mangled, unrecognizable corpses was torture in itself. The smell of blood mixed with feces filled the space.
Some of the prisoners’ bodies lay right outside their open cell doors, as though they’d tried to escape. It was a gruesome sight, to say the least, and I was disgusted beyond words. But this was part of my plan and what I had been searching for.
“This is insane... absolutely insane...”
Were the sins of my past life so great that I had to survive under these circumstances? To the point of stripping the clothing off unidentifiable corpses just to blend in?
The reason I’d discarded my splendid clothing was to replace it with the patchy clothing left behind by the human prisoners. It was the best plan I could think of, but it did require me to strip off pieces of clothing from what remained of the lifeless flesh, barely distinguishable from rag dolls. Holding onto any pride in this situation was pointless. I stripped off my underwear, put on the rags, and rolled around on the filthy floor.
Intentionally spreading someone else’s blood across my face felt disgusting and frightening.
I could not see my reflection, but I surely looked wretched. I finally succumbed to despair and bent at the waist to throw up.
“Blarghhhh!”
I retched but nothing came out. Echoing from outside was the distant roar of soldiers.
My plan was complete and I was ready.
Whether I locked myself in a cell or pretended to be a prisoner who tried to escape, it was time to act. From now on, all I could do was to pray that my camouflage spell would go unnoticed.
But as a demon, who exactly was I supposed to pray to?
Damn it.
In the midst of this wretchedness, I roamed the prison cells. Not a single person was alive, even in the overcrowded cells where people were crammed together. Did they really have to kill every single one of them?
Was this what demons truly were?
And then...
Sob, sniffle...
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of weeping reached my ears. At last! There was a survivor. I couldn’t determine who exactly it was, but someone was alive down here. Instinctively, I moved toward the sound. Fear surged within me, but I couldn’t resist; I had to walk toward the sound. It was as if my body acted before my thoughts.
The urge to help whoever was alive in this horrifying place took precedence over logic or common sense. That brought with it a simultaneous feeling of relief, confirming that I was still a decent human being.
“Who... who’s there?” I asked uneasily.
Sob... sniffle... hghh...
It was a faint and feeble cry, like that of a small animal. I passed by several cells, each with its own horrifying scene, as I headed toward the source of the crying.
Sob... Uhh... Woo...
Finally, I found a little girl who looked like a human. She was clutching something and her voice cracked as she cried.
It wasn’t difficult to put together what had happened, as corpses and body parts were also scattered about. I didn’t want to speculate on the gruesome details, but from the evidence, there must have been around ten victims, excluding the weeping girl. She seemed unaware of my presence, her arms wrapped around an unrecognizable corpse as she sobbed.
I couldn’t determine the cause of death of the person she was holding and had no idea how the girl herself had managed to survive. However, one thing was clear: the lifeless body she clung to was someone dear to her.
“Hey, snap out of it...” I said to her.
“...Ugh, sniff! Hick!” she wailed.
It was only after I rattled the cell bars that the girl finally raised her head and looked at me. Despite being covered in blood, I could see her blonde hair and golden eyes. She appeared to be around sixteen years old and was extremely skinny. Startled by my presence, she instinctively stepped back.
“Sob... Hick... don... don’t come close to me...”
The girl seemed to have lost her composure, muttering incoherently. I quickly reassured her, “No, it’s alright! I was locked up here just like you.”
Tears filled the girl’s eyes, and she appeared to be overwhelmed by fear and sadness. She stared at me, processing some kind of thought after seeing another fellow survivor in a similarly grotesque outfit to hers.
“I’ll...I’ll get you out. Let’s both get out of here!”
She examined my eyes, arms, and legs and probably concluded that I was just as terrified of all this as she was. After a moment, she slowly nodded, as if she had decided to trust me. She was still trembling, but it was as if she had no choice but to trust anyone she encountered.
I wondered if this simple act of trust was her way of acknowledging that we were in the same situation. My fear was not an act, as it stemmed from the fact that my thoughts and feelings were still just as human as hers.
“Uhh, do you happen to know where the keys are? I’ll get them.”
“Um, probably... over there,” she replied hesitantly, pointing.
My will to help the girl came from my natural altruistic drive to help others in need, but also from the selfish desire for her to be my witness and defend me for saving her, which would increase my chances of survival later.
***
I grabbed a bundle of keys from what looked like the office at the end of the prison block. While I restlessly tried each key one by one, the girl continued to cry; it was as if she had lost all hope.
“Can you hear the sounds outside?” I asked.
“Yes...” she replied with a sniffle.
The shouts of humans could be heard from outside, and although I couldn’t provide her with specific details, I wanted to assure her that things were going to be okay.
“We’ll be alright.”
In fact, there was no way we wouldn’t be okay because, after all, the humans were destined to win this battle. The humans were soon going to claim their victory over the demons. The girl responded with teary nods as if overwhelmed with emotions.
Finding the right key to her cell took so long that I started to question whether opening this door was worth it. Nevertheless, I still wanted to rescue the girl from the horrific place she was in.
“Going outside might be dangerous right now, but... let’s still get this cell unlocked, even if we don’t go out,” I told her.
“Yeah... okay,” the girl’s voice trembled heavily.
Ironically, meeting a fellow human who was also alive seemed to make it harder for her to control her emotions instead of calming her down.
Although I was just as scared as her, I was the more mature person, at least in the real world, so I needed to hold myself together.
“Calm down... we can survive. We’ll make it.”
That was a message of assurance not only to her but also to myself. We had to escape this wretched place and survive.
I constantly whispered to myself, as if hypnotizing myself to stay calm, to reassure us that we could make it. A quick glance was enough to tell that the girl was in a dire state. I had no idea how long it had been since she had been captured, so who knew when her last meal had been?
Oh, right.
“Wait, just a moment. I’ll be back!” I told her.
“Huh? What? Where are you going?”
I dropped the keys and quickly dashed over to where my clothes were. The girl seemed to keep calling for me, but I was searching for something specific among my discarded clothes.
I returned, holding onto something I had retrieved.
“This was over there, where I found the keys earlier,” I said as I handed her a biscuit.
That was not exactly true—it was the biscuit that had been left in my pocket, the one that had made me furious when I’d discovered it was the only thing in my pocket. I realized that I had discarded it along with my clothes earlier and thought it would be a good idea to give it to her.
“You’re probably hungry. Here, have this.”
Her eyes widened when she saw the palm-sized biscuit that had suddenly appeared in front of her. Surely she felt miserable and depressed, but she was probably also suffering from a hellish hunger as well.
“You... how about you... you don’t need this?” she said as she stared blankly at the biscuit in her hand.
“I’m fine. You eat first.”
I started trying out the keys again, and she continued to stare at the biscuit in her hand, unsure if it was safe to eat.
Snap!
A few moments later, while I was still busy with the keys, something was suddenly pushed into my mouth.
“You, you... you should eat too,” she said as she offered me half of the biscuit, holding back her tears.
It had to have taken tremendous determination for her to share the biscuit when she was surely incredibly hungry.
I felt an unknown rush of emotion. I muttered to myself, frustrated by this whole situation. What horrible sin had she or I committed to end up in such a situation like this? Hadn’t I already been punished enough by dying from something as trivial as hate comments? It felt unfair, and my eyes welled up from the bitterness.
“Thanks,” I responded.
As the girl nibbled on the biscuit, tears streamed down her face. It was hard to tell whether she was crying because the biscuit tasted good or because she was so sick and tired of her helpless situation. The taste of food after enduring such extreme hunger had to be beyond imagination. Although I couldn’t fully comprehend it, I had a sense of why she was crying.
Clang!
Before I could even take a bite of the biscuit, the iron cell door swung open.
***
The cell door was open, but the girl didn’t seem to want to leave. Perhaps she couldn’t bear to leave the corpse she had been holding onto. I initially intended to free her, but I knew that venturing outside would still be dangerous for both of us. I also knew that my best bet to survive would be to stay with her, and so, ironically, I unlocked the cell door just for me to get into the cell as well.
“Do you think... we’ll be able to kill the Demon King?” she desperately asked.
“Of course,” I replied.
‘Well, he’s probably dead by now,’ I thought to myself.
I felt no attachment to my “biological father”, as I didn’t even know what he looked like. The girl trembled, burying her head in her knees.
“Artorius said he would come to rescue us...” she muttered.
Unfortunately, Artorius was going to perish in the war along with the Demon King. He wouldn’t be able to come to save us, but someone else would.
“Yes, someone will come to rescue us,” I responded.
I wasn’t just giving her false hope. I knew it was going to happen. What mattered most to me was not the Demon King, but whether the human army would come and rescue me in time.
“I don’t hear any sounds from outside now,” the girl said, her trembling intensifying.
It was true. The once-deafening cries that filled the castle had suddenly ceased. The girl was growing increasingly fearful, afraid that it was the humans who had suffered defeat and not the demons.
I reached out and gently placed my hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay, everything will be fine.”
“Is that so?” The girl seemed surprised that I was saying this.
“You... seem very calm,” she added.
Her words made me feel a slightly uneasy twinge of guilt.
“Oh, no. I’m, I’m actually really really scared too,” I quickly replied.
I might have exaggerated a bit just because I was trying to sympathize with her, but I was genuinely terrified as well. In fact, she was probably going to be perfectly fine, as she was on the human side, I, on the other hand, might die in an instant!
Fortunately, it seemed like the girl wasn’t suspicious of my oddly calm demeanor.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
My name in this world was Baalier Junior. Since the Demon King, Baalier, had died, my name had technically become Baalier. However, I would be crazy if I told her that. It would be like advertising myself for execution. As a matter of fact, anyone in this world bearing the name of the Demon King would probably be immediately executed.
Eventually, I gave her the best answer I could think of.
“Well, actually... I can’t remember.”
“I-I don’t really know. I can’t remember anything. Who I am, why I’m here... none of it.”
It was the most convenient answer to get around this.
Amnesia.
I came up with a scenario where I’d lost all my memory due to merciless torture from the demons.
I couldn’t believe I had to come up with such a ridiculous scenario.
“Wow... I feel so sorry for you...!”
The girl lunged and wrapped her arms around me as if she felt extreme pity for me.
Wow. I didn’t think she would believe me that easily. It made me feel guilty about what I had just said.
I could feel the small amount of force she was trying to exert with her tiny, frail arms.
“If we can get out of here... Once we get out... I promise I’ll help you find your memories ... I promise.”
‘Huh? How are you going to do that?’
Thump, thump!
Before I could finish my thought, I heard the distant sound of someone running. It echoed loudly, and as it came closer and closer, I realized that it wasn’t just a single person, but a group of people.
“Sir! This seems like the prisoner’s cells!”
“Sir! They seem to be all dead!”
The voices definitely belonged to humans.
A group of people who appeared to be either knights or soldiers rushed toward our cell, and I made eye contact with one of them.
“Survivors! We have survivors!” The exclamation of the person who discovered us echoed through the prison cells.
Tears welled up in the girl’s eyes. My heart pounded madly and I felt a mixture of fear, excitement, and relief.
Then a middle-aged knight arrived, and when he saw the girl, his face contorted in shock.
“Oh, oh... Princess... Your Highness!”
'Wait... What did he just say?'
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l