The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Vol. 3: The Cage of Iron Sand

“I can’t kill you, so don’t worry, I’ll hold back.”

Sahara’s expression sharpened at the challenge. While she was distracted by her thoughts, Menou moved forward.

Menou approached Sahara with unhurried, unsteady steps. There was confusion mixed into the other girl’s rage. Menou’s approach was simply too vulnerable. As she advanced without even readying her dagger, her defense was so full of holes that Sahara must have questioned if she had gone mad with desperation.

Just as it seemed like she might be staggering with exhaustion, she suddenly shifted from sluggish steps to top speed.

“…?!”

Sahara gasped. She couldn’t react in time to the sudden change in tempo. When she quickly drew back, she played right into Menou’s hands. Menou’s kick struck her squarely in the chest as she retreated.

“Nngh—”

Sahara grunted in pain, but she didn’t stop moving.

Holding her ground against the impact of the kick, Sahara used her metallic right arm to counterattack. With the high output of Guiding Force behind her strikes, Menou couldn’t resist them in this state, no matter how hard she tried. No, even if she were at full power, she wouldn’t be able to withstand those attacks alone.

But that was fine.

Guiding Force: Connect—Scripture, 6:5—

It didn’t require all that much force to kill a person.

Sensing the construction of a conjuring, Sahara’s attention whipped toward Menou’s scripture. She moved to stop her,
unwilling to give her enough time to invoke a scripture conjuring at such a short distance.

Menou abandoned the scripture conjuring.

The small amount of Guiding Force she’d put into the scripture promptly dispersed. Sahara’s expression contorted with surprise. What was Menou playing at? As she stood disoriented in shock, she saw Menou raise her scripture.

The priestess drove a corner of it into Sahara’s side.

“……!” Sahara let out a silent shriek of pain.

What Menou had just struck her flank with was a nearly five-hundred-page, metal-reinforced book. The resulting pain was enough to send a normal person writhing around on the floor. Sahara withstood it, but that was the most she could do.

Her movements stopped completely. With an almost relaxed motion, the blade of Menou’s dagger cut through Sahara’s right shoulder.

Sahara looked at her opponent.

Even covered in sweat, with her bangs sticking to her forehead and wisps of hair clinging to her cheeks, Menou was still beautiful.

“You still want to keep going?”

Menou smiled. Sahara grimaced.

It was all too obvious who had the advantage here.

Why had it turned out like this?

Fully aware of her inferiority, Sahara still fought desperately.

She wanted to escape from her current self. She wanted to be something, anything, different. Wanted something else that she couldn’t put into words.

She’d wanted it from the day Master Flare first brought Menou.

Menou was in the position Sahara had wanted. She wasn’t better than Sahara in some way. It wasn’t like Sahara couldn’t beat Menou—she’d won in training plenty of times. It didn’t seem like Menou had more potential than her, either. Their circumstances weren’t even all that different.

So why couldn’t she lay a finger on her?

“Damn it…aaaaall!” Sahara yelled, overcome with frustration. Ignoring the pain in her shoulder, she launched herself at Menou.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Sahara was supposed to become a new version of herself. She wanted to change, to be a completely different person.

She thought she could change, if only she leveled up and got stronger.

Both of them had been saved by the same Master. She hadn’t really set out to save anyone, just happened to rescue them in the process of hunting taboos. That was true for both Menou and Sahara.

But one became her traveling companion, and one was left behind.

What was the difference? Sahara gnashed her teeth.

Only that one was in the right place at the right time.

That was the only way to describe it. The girl who looked up to Flare never caught her eye, while the girl who had lost everything ended up becoming her successor.

Why couldn’t it have been Sahara? She raised her fake right arm to pound this unanswerable question into her opponent.

“We’re not different at all.” Menou quietly gave her an answer. “I’m not really special, and I don’t have any hidden talents. I’m sure you knew that much already.”

Why would she say something like that?

She wanted Menou to brag. If she put on airs and acted superior because she was the one who got chosen, at least Sahara could have hated her. It would validate her long-held grudge.

Sahara gritted her teeth. Why didn’t Menou act more conceited? She was raised by Master Flare, became the youngest Executioner in history, and had defeated so many powerful opponents.

But Menou’s dagger was damningly silent.

“I don’t want anyone to try to be like me. Master felt the same way. It makes sense, doesn’t it? An Executioner exists only to kill other people, after all.”

Sahara wanted Menou to be a worse person.

“I don’t want anybody else to have to kill people.”

The more Menou was a good person, the more miserable Sahara became. She felt tiny and horrible for being unable to accept a beautiful girl like Menou. Just being near her made her heart twinge in pain. In the end, a smile from Menou was enough to fill her with loathing.

If Menou had been a bad person, Sahara could have forgiven herself for hating her.

But Sahara was the bad one.

She childishly envied Menou, resented her, challenged her to battle—and most pathetically of all, she was on the verge of losing.

But what was she supposed to do about being bad?

She couldn’t alter the way she felt just by living her life. She
couldn’t become a different person just by hearing the right words. Even if she tried to change herself, she would still be the same deep down.

She didn’t know what was right, couldn’t dislodge her deep-seated self-loathing.

So instead, she selfishly made her wishes to someone else.

“I’m begging you, please, just leave me alone.”

The next thing she knew, there were tears in her eyes.

Even if she left Menou behind, Menou didn’t disappear. She kept hearing rumors about her. She kept finding out about her accomplishments. Far away from her, Menou’s fame still gnawed away at Sahara’s heart.

Whether she was controlled by the Mechanical Society or not, Sahara’s ideal of Menou already threatened to crush her heart.

So there was nothing she could do anymore.

She figured it out, whether she wanted to or not.

How exactly did she want to be special? Sahara suddenly realized the terrible answer.

Without a doubt, Sahara just wanted to be Menou.

“One arm wasn’t enough.”

A voice whispered in Sahara’s mind.

“The person you want to be—you can’t become her. Wonder what you are missing? I’ll tell you.”

The faint whisper came from her right arm.

“You have to be that
Vessel
.”

It was Sahara’s own voice.

“Everyone says the same thing. They want to be strong. They want to be special. They want to be better. They want to be like that person they see in the distance. They want to be anything other than themselves. It’s selfish. So selfish. Yet so dear. That is the desire that drives you.”

A vision of Sahara’s own self appeared in front of her, like standing before a full-length mirror.

Sahara reached out for the illusion of herself. For the left hand that was supposed to someday hold a scripture when she became a priestess. She hated herself more than she could describe. From the moment she became aware of this self-loathing that was lodged too deep to destroy, she lost all hope for her life.

“I understand. It’s a feeling that so few people can relate to. You hate yourself. Your reflection disgusts you so much that you could vomit. Try as you might to figure out why you hate yourself so much, you spend your whole life rejecting yourself.”

She wanted to be someone else. It didn’t have to be Menou.

“So cast off that person you hate so much. Destroy the bug that is your own self.”

She just wanted to be rid of the person she was.

“Become a
Vessel
.”

Sahara nodded.

Guiding Force: Merge Materials—

As if to answer her prayer, a conjuring began from her right arm, independent of Sahara’s own will.

It wasn’t just Guiding Force that the conjuring was attempting to consume.

Paint Over—Pure Concept [Vessel]—

The conjuring from her right arm entered her spirit and ate into her soul. As she felt herself becoming someone else entirely, Sahara felt only relief.

Finally, this awful display of hers would be over.

Activate [Possession]

The Pure Concept of
Vessel
that slumbered in Sahara’s right arm invoked a conjuring.

Sahara was sucked into her right arm.

There was no other way to describe what happened. The metal that made up her arm consumed her shoulder and spread further. Her prosthetic right arm covered the rest of her body like a film, until Sahara herself could no longer be seen. The metal that surrounded her split apart the three components of her life—body, spirit, and soul—as if devouring them all, transforming them into three colors of Guiding Light.

Sahara’s body was broken down thoroughly—not physically, but into different colors of light. She turned into particles of red, blue, and green.

Menou was paralyzed at the construction of the conjuring that occurred.

A Pure Concept.

Particles of light finer than sand unfurled with a
shush
ing sound. The Primary Colors were impossible to discern from reality even for Menou’s sharp eyes.

Sahara’s spirit must have been gradually eroded and changed without her realizing it. In this battle, when she gave up whatever was left of herself, her right arm consumed her spirit entirely and took over her body. It used the soul and spirit of the girl called Sahara as materials to create what she wanted.

And the resulting conjured soldier looked just like Menou.

“Ah, ah, aaah…”

The conjured version of Menou made wordless noises as if
to test its vocal cords. It was a strange voice, sounding at once natural and inorganic.

“Aaah, ahhh…ahhh, so annoying.”

The nameless conjured soldier tilted its head. Its movements were mechanical, artificial. Otherwise, only one feature distinguished it from the real Menou: long hair untied by a ribbon.

“Damned bugs.”

A shiver ran up Menou’s spine. She instinctively understood what the conjured soldier in front of her was, whether she wanted to or not.

It wasn’t just one Primary Color. It was a perfectly complete conjured soldier, with all three components: red, blue, and green. A legendary wish-fulfillment being that could destroy nations and create worlds.

“Bugs. Damned bugs. Begone from my world. I will crush bugs. This world is still full of that horrid bug known as annoying emotions. I must destroy them. I must consume them. I must correct them. I must overwrite them.”

Menou sensed obvious hostility.

Consumed by self-loathing so strong that she abandoned herself, Sahara had become a conjured soldier. The Pure Concept of
Vessel
was giving her the power to fulfill her desire to defeat Menou by turning her into a nameless conjured soldier.

“I must crush all bugs to bring peace to my world.”

Sahara’s inferiority complex and self-contradiction were mingling with
Vessel
’s behavioral principles.

Menou glared sharply at the
Vessel
conjured soldier.

It had clearly modeled itself after her own existence. It
wasn’t really Menou, of course, but an ideal concept of her. It was the Menou whom the girl Sahara had aspired to be, alike yet separate.