The Executioner and Her Way of Life

To their own misfortune, they were wholly correct.

“H-hey, priestess! Don’t you feel any guilt about what you’re doing?!”

“Guilt, you say…?”

Momo repeated the man’s accusation as if it was a completely foreign concept.

“Hmm? I don’t quite understand. Why should I feel any remorse about cleaning up garbage? Guilt is a negative feeling when you’ve done something wrong, isn’t it? My actions are justified, so I’m fine.”

The men were at a loss for words in the face of such emotional detachment.

They had been trained to keep a level head, just as she had. Empathy only got in the way when one had to get their hands dirty or make cruel decisions. Thus, the assailants had deliberately trained their minds to be cold and inhuman when necessary.

Yet the girl in front of them was a different story entirely. She didn’t hesitate to hurt someone. Some rare individuals derived pleasure from inflicting agony, but that didn’t describe this girl accurately. She simply used any violent means she deemed necessary, with no emotional response either way. It wasn’t that she was suppressing her human emotions; she was merely as merciless as a conjured soldier carrying out its orders.

Was this the result of being raised under the church’s indoctrination? The strangeness of it all struck fear into the men’s hearts.

Normally, one felt reluctant to hurt another. Becoming an emotionless killing machine was impossible. This young woman must have been born different. The environment she’d been raised in had been utterly isolated.

“Now then, shall we get down to it?”

“Hrmm… Well, if it’s for Menou’s sake, I guess I have no choice.”

As a storm of unstoppable violence rained down upon the men, they were profoundly and painfully reminded of just how cruel the Faust could be.

Nearly ten more would-be attackers were taken away by knights.

They were charged with attempted assault after a failed pickup attempt and deemed a foolish group that was thwarted by girls who were nowhere near adulthood.

They likely wouldn’t have been arrested for a proposition alone, but the fact that they had attacked a priestess was a heavy crime. The knights did their duties with an almost unusual level of efficiency and sentenced the men to be punished, not wanting to incur the wrath of the Faust over something so trivial. The discipline was simply to be branded as would-be pickup artists. Although this was lighter than the sentence for kidnapping, it was painful for the seasoned warriors to be treated as common pests.

The Recruiter’s only remaining assailant was the one undercover as an inn employee.

Thinking of his comrades being interrogated at the knights’ station and lectured for trying to pick up young girls at their age, the incognito ruffian gritted his teeth.

He and his comrades were vanguards of the Fourth, warriors who fought for freedom. It was far too demeaning for them to be dismissed as idiots who gave in to lust. Better to suffer an honorable death on the battlefield than meet one’s end being treated as a sex offender.

“I think your aggressive nature is rubbing off on me lately, Momo.”

“You’ve always been a dangerous girl with an affinity for violence. Or don’t you remember that you tried to surprise attack me first?”

“Hey, I was just being nice. I tried to do it without hurting you out of the goodness of my heart.”

“That’s a strange definition of
goodness
. Are you sure you’re all right? Did you lose your common sense along with your memories?”

“I don’t want to hear that from you of all people…”

As he worked at the inn, the man’s murderous feelings toward the carefree girls grew ever stronger.

They had dragged his allies’ names through the mud, yet they were clearly unbothered. The final assassin decided on a nighttime assault to reclaim honor for his fellow Fourth remnants.

There was no need for a complicated plan of attack. He was a genuine inn worker. Years of hard effort had earned him the trust of his colleagues, so he could move freely through the inn without drawing any suspicion.

He would enter their room while they slumbered and kill them in their sleep.

It was a simple plan—so much so that it was surely airtight.

Soon, night fell and brought sleep with it. With the Master inn key stolen from the office, the man silently entered the girls’ room.

The two young women who had driven his comrades into shame and despair were resting peacefully in the faintly moonlit room.

The priestess girl slept with the utmost propriety. Her blanket was drawn up to her shoulders, and she was breathing softly and steadily. There wasn’t a hair out of place.

Meanwhile, the black-haired girl was the exact opposite. She had kicked off her blanket and tangled herself up in the sheets, clinging to her pillow with a bit of drool at her lips and murmuring “Heh-heh, Menou…” in her sleep.

It was a slovenly sight, to say the least. The obi holding her
yukata
closed had loosened in her sleep, revealing a great deal of pure-white skin that shone faintly in the moonlight. Under normal circumstances, it would’ve been lascivious enough to make one sweat.

Yet the assailant only felt infuriated to think that this sloppy fool and her friend had brought his comrades to ruin.

He reached out for the black-haired girl’s throat. Using Guiding Enhancement, he could snap her neck and be done with it in a matter of seconds.

It’s over for you. Now die.

With fervent anger, he began to close his hand around the sleeping girl’s throat.

The next morning…

Akari woke up completely unharmed and exclaimed in indignation.

“Aaargh! What the heck is wrong with this inn, huh?!”

She was angry enough to forgo her usual reluctance to wake up because of the man who was frozen like a sculpture by her bedside.

“First a panty thief, then a bunch of pickup artist creeps, and now a guy sneaks into my room at night… How many sex pests can live in a single town anyway?! This is messed up!”

It was a rare occasion that Akari, normally a sleepyhead, snapped awake so quickly. Her cheeks were puffed up with rage at having to turn in a criminal first thing in the morning.

“A tourist town shouldn’t be this unsafe!”

“Yes, very shocking.”

Momo, who had more or less figured out the situation by now, answered absentmindedly with a yawn.

After being given another ne’er-do-well, the knights and other citizens alike all expressed their sympathies. “Oh dear, so many people targeting a pair of pretty young girls traveling alone!”

“Maybe you’re giving off a pheromone that attracts criminals?” Momo suggested. “Even I’ve never been assaulted three times in one day, as I recall.”

“You don’t seriously think this is my fault, do you?”

“Well, I
do
think you’re a troublemaker…”

Momo knew full well that the offenses were due to the Fourth. She even had information that this inn was managed by a shady businessman called the Recruiter.

That night, Momo’s eyes had opened as soon as the man entered the room. She watched through half-closed lids to see if Akari would die at least once, but just as the man’s hand was about to brush against her skin, the
Suspension
conjuring automatically activated, much to Momo’s horror.

“I can hardly believe you made an automatic conjuring trap.”

“Yep. Usually, I can get my powers to do whatever I want, more or less. That includes automatic traps or whatever.”

If anyone touched Akari while she was sleeping, they would instantly find themselves on the receiving end of
Suspension
.

Incidentally, her main target was Momo. She used her Pure Concept to set unconscious defenses to punish the other girl just in case she tried anything while Akari was sleeping.

“Is that right…?”

Momo nodded with a carefully neutral expression, but internally she let herself grow warier of Akari. She had assumed from the girl’s overall blithe attitude that she couldn’t achieve more than simple conjurings on an enemy in front of her. That had been dead wrong, however. Conjurings that automatically activated under certain conditions usually required a great deal of preparation and forethought. If Akari could accomplish it without even trying, she was more dangerous than Momo had believed.

“And what if you had accidentally rolled over and touched
me
because of your poor sleeping habits, hmm?”

“…I—I would’ve dealt with it somehow. I can always just deactivate the conjuring,” Akari replied, well aware of her sleeping habits. If anything, she might have even been hoping that her willful negligence would lead to such a development. She couldn’t say as much aloud, of course.

“S-so what are we gonna do today?”

“Good question. I suppose for now…”

“For now?”

Momo shrugged.

“Shall we take a morning dip in the hot springs?”

The pair’s hideout on the run was swiftly becoming a pleasant vacation.