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

Far away, in the west of the continent, there was a quiet and peaceful city.

It was famous for its beautiful garden, at the center of which was the Tower of Water, the ancient relic that produced a constant pure stream. The Noblesse governed, the Faust oversaw, and the Commons carried out the necessary tasks.

But this natural order and tranquility quickly fell into ruin.

The living and the dead. In this town, those two categories that were normally clearly distinguished were beginning to blur.

People with blackened skin and clouded eyes walked the streets. What looked like corpses that couldn’t possibly be alive were roaming around with unsteady steps.

They weren’t just roaming aimlessly, either. The walking corpses were seeking out the living. Those who couldn’t escape fast enough were surrounded by the dead and bitten.

The tragedy began with a single dog.

Infected with an Original Sin Conjuring, the dog could
cause a contamination conjuring by biting others. As the epidemic spread in just a few short days and screams echoed all over the city, there was still one beacon of hope.

There was a group that led the charge of rescuing the Commons, a combined force from the Faust and the Noblesse. The priestesses protected those who fled into the church with a barrier, and knights armed with swords pushed the moving corpses back. The area of the church was the last light of hope.

Then a graceful young woman appeared.

Her deep-blue hair hung over her shoulder in a braid, and she wore a perfectly arranged kimono without a hem out of place. She had soft, gentle eyes, perhaps reflecting her personality.

The knights hesitated. She looked like a harmless girl, but the situation was strange. She was walking closer among the corpses, making no effort to flee.

“Hey, you! Stop right there!”

Just as a knight called out to stop her, her shadow billowed and shifted underfoot.

“Pardon me.”

A sharp sound cut the air.

The knight standing in front of the girl was sliced diagonally in two. After a moment, his upper half slid to the ground with a dull
thud
.

The knight had been cut by none other than the girl’s squirming shadow.

“Damn yooou!”

It was obvious who was behind that. Judging correctly that the girl must be some kind of demon given human form, the other knight charged.

The girl in the kimono blocked the knight’s sword with her
fan. It was an iron fan, used for self-defense. She knocked the blade away and opened the fan fully, revealing a crest.

Guiding Force: Connect—Iron Fan, Crest—Invoke [Wind Blade]

With a flick of her fan, she created a violent gust of wind. The knights in its way were slashed into ribbons.

The last line of defense was broken. A swarm of walking corpses surged toward the newly formed opening.

“That will do, I suppose.”

The girl in the kimono jumped high into the sky. Blasphemously enough, she landed directly on the roof of the church. Using the symbol of faith as a foothold, she looked down at the people’s last resistance from above.

No doubt few people would believe this girl was responsible for creating the calamity that had overtaken this city.

“A zombie apocalypse, didn’t she call it? Yes, this is certainly worth watching. Now I understand why that girl recommended it to me.”

This tragedy all started with a single dog.

The dead attacked the living. Roaming corpses sensed live human beings, tracked them down, bit them, and made them into more of the dead. The epidemic was rapidly spreading through the entire city.

Currently, it had encroached on about 30 percent of the city. None of the dead attacked this particular girl as she watched from the center of the storm.

The reason was simple: because the girl with the fan was one of the dead, too.

Manon Libelle.

She was beautiful to behold, but she was no longer human. Her soul had been offered up in an Original Sin ceremony,
allowing her to be reborn as a demon. As evidence of this fact, she was taking great delight in the hellish spectacle created by her Original Sin Conjuring.

Suddenly, an impact rocked Manon’s body.

“Hmm?”

Manon blinked in surprise. After a moment, she realized there was a blade stabbing through her chest.

She looked around, but there was no one to be seen.

Despite being stabbed in the ribcage, Manon’s body didn’t spill a single drop of red blood. Instead, a black liquid stained the breast of her kimono.

“Aha! So you finally came? How very kind.”

Manon pressed her palms together delightedly in spite of the blade through the place where her heart should be.

She had a hunch as to the identity of the invisible assassin. Pulling the dagger out of her chest, she held it out politely toward someone she couldn’t see.

There was a ripple in the empty air.

Guiding Camouflage.

It was an adaptive camouflage technique using the phosphorescent light of Guiding Enhancement. As the disguise fell away to reveal a dark-red-haired priestess, Manon bowed her head reverently.

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Master Flare. Darkest of all the darkness of the Faust. The most successful taboo hunter in history. You’ve slipped past even the Elders who try to control this world and tried to carry your blade into the abyss. I am but a humble demon who attends on Pandæmonium by some strange coincidence; my name is Manon Libelle.”

“It’s been a while, kid.”

It’s been a while.

Those words sent an uncharacteristic thrill of joy through Manon’s chest. Manon and Flare had indeed met once, a long time ago. Manon’s mother was a lost one, considered a taboo. It was none other than Master Flare who had killed Manon’s mother right in front of her eyes.

To Manon, it was an event that changed her entire outlook on life, but she had assumed that Flare wouldn’t remember it at all.

“You’ve certainly put on quite a show here.”

“Oh yes. It would have been simply impossible for me to track you down. I used the Fourth to investigate, but even then, the most information I could get was that you might be in this general area. Thus, I created a stage you would have no choice but to stand upon.”

Manon had managed to figure out through her research that Flare was likely in this area, but she couldn’t get a more detailed location.

And so she caused this massive tragedy.

If a taboo destroyed an entire city, surely an Executioner in the area would be unable to ignore it. With that in mind, she’d decided to incite a zombie apocalypse. With guidance from Pandæmonium, she’d created a corrupt conjuring that spread from the dead to the living.

“Where is Pandæmonium?”

It was an abrupt question, but Manon simply put a finger to her lips, her demeanor unaffected. She smiled mischievously, like any girl her age trying to tease an adult.

“That’s a secret.”

“I see. Fine, then. If I slice that stomach of yours open, you’ll spill your guts, right?”

“Actually, I have a question for you as well. It’s about the method by which a lost one can return to the other world—in other words, the ceremony that can send someone in this world back to Japan.”

“There’s no such thing.”

“Pardon? But of course there is.”

Manon paid no mind to the priestess’s denial. She simply continued with the assumption that it did exist.

After all, she already knew about it.

“Its existence is the whole reason that ancient civilization fell a thousand years ago.”

The Four Major Human Errors and the
Ivory
hero.

These five people had destroyed a civilization at the height of humanity out of a rebellion against this world because they wanted to go back to their own.

There was a brief silence.

“…Listen, Manon Libelle.”

The Master sighed.

It was a long, heavy sigh. The words that followed were no attempt to feign ignorance, but based on certain knowledge.

“There’s no such thing because we would never let that happen.”

“Aha!” Manon giggled.

So it really did exist. A path to the other world. For Manon, it was a means of going to her mother’s homeland.

“Hee-hee-hee…ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, Master Flare. I’ve decided. Just now, I made up my mind!”

Manon smiled so charmingly that anyone might fall for her. She knew exactly what kind of chaos she had to cause and stated it in a clear, loud voice.

“I am going to the other world—to Japan. And I shall plunge this world into chaos as my sacrifice if that is what it takes to get there.”

Flare didn’t answer. She charged her dagger with Guiding Force and activated a crest conjuring.

Guiding Force: Connect—Dagger, Crest—Invoke [Guiding Branch]

Branches of Guiding Force spread from Flare’s dagger. They reached not just for the false body Manon wore for show, but toward her real self, her shadow.

“Oh dear…”

The Guiding Force that formed from Flare’s dagger by way of the crest conjuring spread out like real branches and pierced through Manon from the inside.

Any ordinary person would no doubt die immediately.

However, the attack didn’t kill Manon. She moved her shadow and tore the branches apart. As soon as the connection was broken, the branches made of Guiding Force inside Manon vanished as well.

The branches weren’t particularly strong, but it was a crest conjuring with any number of practical uses.

“Are you sure about this?” Manon ventured, changing the subject. “There will only be more casualties if you waste your time on me.”

This calamity would continue whether Manon was there or not. Even now, corpses were continuing to chase down the living.

“Seems you’ve got the wrong idea.”

Her response wasn’t even cold, just indifferent. Flare undoubtedly had the strength to save the people being assaulted by this tragedy, yet she made no effort to stop the casualties unfolding around her.

“An Executioner’s main priority is executing taboos; protecting citizens is not part of our mission. No matter how many people die, my job is done as long as I kill the taboo that killed them. In this case, that means all I have to do is kill you.”

The priestess clearly didn’t care in the least how many people died in the city below.

She doesn’t seem likely to give me an opening, then
, Manon thought. Even if she sent the nearby corpses after the priestess, the branches made of Guiding Force from Flare’s dagger would likely fend them off with ease. There was no point trying to attack with numbers when her opponent had a crest conjuring that could cover her in all directions.

Well, in that case…
Manon activated the summoning she’d prepared in advance.

Guiding Force: Sacrifice—Original Sin, Pride of Fiends: Body, Soul, Spirit—Summon [Hungry Hell Ghost]

Immediately, the dead bodies on the street began to melt. She had offered the corpses wandering around the city as a sacrifice to invoke a summon conjuring. As the bodies rotted and dripped to the ground, the resulting liquid gathered between Manon and Flare, taking on a horrific new form.

“They’re not exactly high-quality sacrifices, but there certainly is strength in numbers.”

Compared to a living person, the body, soul, and spirit of
a corpse was far inferior. But with high enough numbers, one could still summon a powerful demon.

This zombie apocalypse was nothing more than a ritual to create more sacrifices. It was another method Manon had learned from Pandæmonium.

A giant mass of flesh formed. It took on the giant shape of a flabby, swollen baby, bigger than any building in the area. Just a single flail of its arm was enough to destroy part of the city. If it lost its temper and started screaming and crying, the sound could corrupt the spirit of an ordinary person. How could anyone fight against such a demon? Any normal human would surely give up and despair.

How would a living legend among Executioners contend with this giant enemy?

As Manon watched her eagerly, Flare stood looking colder than ever.

“How nice of you to gather all the pesky little flies in one place for me.”

With that, she threw her dagger.

Manon furrowed her brow.

The demon she’d just summoned wasn’t the type of enemy that could be defeated with a stab. As she wondered what Flare was thinking, her question was answered by the conjuring that activated as the dagger flew through the air.

Guiding Force: Auto-Connect (Conditions Met)—Guiding Branches, Crest—

An automatic invocation. The sphere of branches that had grown from the dagger’s hilt formed a three-dimensional crest.

Invoke [Mistle Sword]

The Guiding Branches rapidly expanded.

They absorbed the Guiding Force of their target and kept growing, the branches shining brightly as they stretched outward. The giant baby Manon had summoned began to shrivel, the twigs tangling around its body as they absorbed all of its strength.

The demon’s body scattered into dust. But the mistletoe-shaped mass of branches made of Guiding Force didn’t stop growing there—they pierced through the summoner, Manon.

“I’ll give you thirty seconds. Get Pandæmonium here.”

It was a straightforward demand.

I see.
Manon was wondering why the priestess didn’t finish her off, but now it was clear. Manon had a summoning contract with Pandæmonium. Flare wanted to hurt her and make her summon the Human Error.

Manon cast her gaze aside carefully and brought up the question she’d been saving for Flare.

“As long as we’re here, would you mind if I asked you about something?”

“I’m starting the countdown. You have thirty seconds.”

Flare’s strength didn’t waver for a moment. She began counting.

“You see, I discovered some fascinating materials in Grisarika Kingdom.”

“Twenty-five seconds.”

“It was the experiment log of a person who became archbishop. Apparently, one of the taboos she committed turned an entire village pure white. Isn’t that just awful?”

“Thirteen seconds.”