Chapter 22
1.
An upscale restaurant in District D-1.
A reunion with Ceres, the woman I’d spent the night with after selling Arbel’s corpse in my first run.
The road to get here had not been cheap.
I’d invested four days’ worth of effort, the money it earned me, and all the information I’d gathered into this dinner date with her.
Like a die-hard chairman fan working a construction site for a camgirl.
Of course, what that die-hard chairman and I want is a little different.
Anyway, it’s different.
I made a cold, calculated investment.
The reason I avoided Ceres during my second run was because I’d mistaken her for a ‘snitch.’
After that, I figured I had no way to curry favor with her unless I offered up Arbel’s corpse as tribute.
What is a mage?
Unlike a normal person like me, they’re all insane in one way or another.
Even if she’d shown me some favor, it was still hard to bring myself to stake my life on forcing a meeting.
But after everything I’d been through, I’d changed my mind.
Right now, I’m so short on options that even ‘dying well’ has to be one of my strategies.
And if things go south?
The effect of 「Trivial Amnesty」! Activate ‘Once, a mistake made against an existence clearly stronger than yourself will be forgiven.’
End turn!
This should be fine, I guess.
“Cute little child. Do you know? This time is very precious to me. Far too precious for you to interrupt.”
Ceres leisurely wiped the corners of her mouth with a napkin.
Truthfully, once a woman... no, a person reaches 2.4 meters tall, anything they do ends up looking a little ridiculous.
“But for the sake of your admirable courage....”
But as Ceres set down the napkin stained with red lipstick, I felt something entirely different.
I’ll give you one minute.
Terrifying. My legs were shaking.
It felt like sharing a table with a savage beast that had learned table manners.
Well, it was understandable.
What I’d learned about her while roaming the black market wasn’t just that she rented out her favorite restaurant every day at 10 a.m. and enjoyed brunch there.
The Eight-Foot Widow, Ceres Cassian.
One of the eleven directors who ran Twilight Resource Development.
A mage who handled the ‘Death’ aspect, estimated age over 250.
Her exact rank was unknown.
But she was estimated to be at least Rank 4.
Ceres was a labyrinth monster reigning over the Necropolis, where life and death were hopelessly intertwined.
Feigning calm as best I could, I quietly swallowed.
“What happens if I can’t convince you within a minute, Director?”
“Let’s see? Right now I feel like gouging out those pretty eyes of yours, castrating you, and selling you off to the sodomite street.”
G-G-Goodness, what a taste!
That’s one hell of a joke!
“Haha, by any chance, are you planning to send the two bodyguards outside to the sodomite street too?”
…….
Iicebreaker joke and Ceres gave a slight smile.
I’d hoped the mood would turn into something like ‘bwahahaha,’ ‘hohoho,’ or ‘ehehehe’ from here.
But Ceres’s smile only stretched the corners of her mouth, like rotting cheese.
Don’t do that....
It’s seriously fucking scary.
Is this amnesty thing really supposed to work?!
I just can’t picture this woman saying, ‘Well, that happens sometimes in life. Have a safe trip~’???
Still, there was one thing that gave me confidence.
In both my first run and now, Ceres had said the same thing the moment she saw me.
‘You have good eyes. Eyes that are mad.’
If I think back to my first run again....
‘I didn’t speak to you in the ossuary because of your sister. I saw ‘you’ first.’
She’d said that too.
It was clear Ceres had some kind of expectations for me.
If I really had potential, wouldn’t joining her be the way to make that potential bloom?
“I’d like to serve under you as an attendant, Director Ceres.”
“Would you? Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you. Twenty-eight seconds left.”
Whaaaat!!!
We got along in my first run!
You said you liked me!
You said if I drowned myself in madness, I could become like you too!
I’ll use ‘Trivial Amnesty’ and end my turn before it’s too late!
======
「Exhumation Monocle」
- Effect: Over the past month, you can peek at up to three pieces of the target’s past that they most want to hide.
- Note: You can only glimpse actions the target is aware of. Remaining uses: ‘2’.
======
That was what would have happened if I didn’t have the ‘Exhumation Monocle.’
“Hmm, unexpected.”
“Twenty-two seconds….”
“To think a director of Twilight Resource Development would have such poor judgment in people.”
“Julien. See that little brat off properly.”
“Yes, Director.”
Julien strode toward me to ‘see me off.’
His immaculate suit and expressionless face were the very picture of a model watchdog.
So... on the ‘outside.’
Even Cedric, of all people, couldn’t stop retching when he learned his secret.
“If it were me, I don’t think I’d need an attendant who diligently collects the stockings his superior threw away.”
“What?”
Ceres’s eyes narrowed.
Julien, who looked like he could be the headmaster of a butler school, stumbled spectacularly.
“What else was there? Ha... should I even mention this?”
“Say it.”
Julien’s eyes rolled back as he rushed at me in a panic.
“Shut up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You bastard!!!!!!!!!!! Do not defile my loyalty with your treacherous silver tongue!!!!!!!”
Come on, old man. Even if I hit the nail on the head, you can’t react like that.
“Enough.”
At Ceres’s gesture, Julien’s body froze.
Instead, he turned desperately to Ceres and pleaded.
“Director Ceres!!! My loyalty comes from admiration and reverence purer than fresh snow…!”
“Bullshit. It’s a product of filthy, black lust and desire.”
“You bastard!!!!!!!!!”
Ceres lowered her raised hand, her face completely expressionless, and asked me.
“Again?”
“That bastard fucks a goat, and the goat’s name is Ceres.”
I was honestly horrified.
Turns out there really are goat lovers.
As soon as I got the Exhumation Monocle, I did plan to smear Ceres’s aide and fill the vacancy....
…But I didn’t expect the abyss to be this deep.
Ceres took a steady breath and asked quietly.
“...Again?”
I hammered the point home.
“He was fucking it yesterday too.”
…….
Ceres’s eyes turned cold.
They were eerie eyes that already lacked life, or rather had a somewhat hazy look, but now the light in them had vanished completely.
“Stop! Stop! Director Ceres! This is all slander! It’s all lies!”
He was so flustered that his denial bordered on a seizure.
His desperate screaming was honestly a little pitiful.
But it’s not like I made any of this up, right?
Honestly, if it were just stockings, Ceres might have forgiven him.
Who told him to name a goat after his boss and get frisky with it?
“That’s absurd! How can you doubt my loyalty because of the slander of some outsider I met today? Haven’t I served Director Ceres as her executive secretary for three whole years? My loyalty weighs more than my life!”
Honestly, I expected Ceres to interrogate him with magic, or at least investigate.
But Ceres’s response to his desperate self-defense was brief.
“Is that so? Then kill yourself.”
“Pardon?”
“Didn’t you say your loyalty to me weighed more than your life? Then kill yourself right here.”
“Th-th-that’s…. D-Director Ceres! I didn’t mean it in that sense….”
“If you can’t uphold it, you shouldn’t have spoken it at all.”
Without pressing him further, Ceres lifted her hand lightly, as if calling a waiter.
“Eat.”
Julien’s face went pale.
“Director Ceres!!! I really—”
Julien, the goat-fucking executive secretary, vanished.
His near-screamed excuse was muted as neatly as a cassette tape getting cut clean in two.
As if he had never been here in the first place.
The sudden silence was chilling.
If Julien had been reduced to a bloody pulp, or if the restaurant had been drenched in blood, it would have been less scary.
So this is magic of at least Rank 4? Is there even a way to counter it?
Cold sweat trickled down my forehead.
Still... my predecessor’s disappeared.
Who’s going to hand over the job now?
Hah.
I took a cigarette from the case, lit it for Ceres as she brought it to her lips, and continued.
“I don’t fuck goats.”
Ceres let out a dry laugh and exhaled smoke.
“You seem to have just enough nerve to be cheeky. You want to become my attendant?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What rank are you?”
“I’m Guts, a Rank 9 fixer from the Get Money Office. We just opened recently.”
“Rank 9?”
A faint gleam entered Ceres’s eyes.
“Well, violence isn’t the only measure of competence.”
In her eyes, it would look like a Rank 9 nobody had uncovered an executive secretary’s hidden deviance, so of course her interest would be piqued.
It would also look like proof of my competence.
“Can you drive?”
“Yep!”
“Perfect. Julien used to drive. You look serviceable enough as a chauffeur.”
Nice!!!
I’d approached Ceres with the monocle to try out a new route, a new playstyle.
No matter how I looked at it, starting from absolute zero at the bottom just wouldn’t work.
Isn’t there a saying that if you’re going to work as a servant, do it in a lord’s mansion?
First, I’d directly subcontract her ‘side jobs,’ build trust and affection, and worm my way into her bed to settle down as a kept man!
I’d bring my potential to bloom under the warm folds of Ceres’s skirt!
That was the aim of this run.
And yet I’d landed a big catch by getting hired as her chauffeur!
“I’ll do my best!”
I gave a ninety-degree bow.
“There’s something I need to confirm first.”
“Please, instruct me.”
“When I choose an attendant, I value obedience above all. Given my position, I never know what nasty bastard might try to get close.”
“If you tell me to bark, I’ll bark. If you tell me to roll over and show my belly, I’ll do that too.”
“Is that so?”
Ceres rose from her seat and walked over.
Her hand was a long, narrow fork.
The same fork she’d just been digging around with inside a snail shell.
She caressed my cheek and whispered in a sweet voice.
“Could you really obey no matter what I do?”
“Of course. I’m not a charlatan like Julien, who only talks big.”
I answered right away, but....
Damn... why do I suddenly feel uneasy?
“Then let’s see how obedient you really are.”
The fork in Ceres’s hand slowly approached my eye.
Its sharp tip gleamed in the sunlight.
Ah, don’t joke around. That’s not funny~ You’re joking, right? We’re doing WWE, right? This isn’t real, right?
You’re about to stop right in front of me, right?
“Who sent you?”
“Huh?”
-Squelch
A wet, squelching sound rang out.
“……Ngh?!”
You fucking!!! Bitch!!! Are you insane?!!!!
Who stabs a person’s eye with a fork?!!!!
With pain like a metal skewer scraping the inside of my skull, my vision vanished.
Wet sounds rang out one after another. A sticky liquid I couldn’t tell was tears, blood, or vitreous fluid ran down my cheek.
“W-wait, wait, wait! Gyaaaah! Why are you doing this?! Gyaaaah!”
“To be honest, I’ll stop at one eye. Do I look stupid?”
Through my remaining eye, I saw Ceres moving the fork around as if she were prying a snail out of its shell.
Does this bitch actually think I’m a snitch?
“I know everything. Spill it—once you do, you’ll feel better.”
“……Nnngghhhh!!!!”
“Why did you approach me? And with such interesting information in hand.”
No one’s got my back anyway.
If I showed even a hint of backing down here, that woman would just make me her next Julien anyway.
Dead is dead, no matter how you die.
I gritted my teeth and shouted with my eye wide open.
“Money! Money! Money! I came here to make money! I filtered out a bastard who fucks goats, so why the hell are you stabbing people’s eyes like a lunatic, you crazy bitch!!!”
Ah, I shouldn’t have sworn.
“Hmm~”
Ceres gave a satisfied hum and pulled the fork out of my eye socket.
Sticky blood-colored liquid pattered onto the floor.
“As expected, you... ”
Ceres’s lips curved into an arc.
Whether she did or not, I was just in a hell of a lot of pain.
Ah, my head hurts. My eye hurts.
Fuck. Fuck. I feel like I’m gonna puke. This fucking psycho.
“Sorry, I guess I was mistaken. Come here.”
“Mistaken, my ass—this isn’t something you just brush off with a ‘my bad’… huh?”
When her touch once again caressed the area around my eye, my vision returned.
Aside from a faint ache in my eye, the pain vanished as if washed away by water.
Recovery? Regeneration? How did she do that?
-Thunk
Ceres threw something, and I caught it reflexively.
It was a heavy car key with elegant silver ornamentation, and a gold coin.
Three 100,000-bios gold coins.
Still, my mood got just a tiny bit better.
“Go wait by the car. That’s compensation.”
“Yep!”
“Hehe, did that hurt a lot?”
“Not at all! In life, people can mistake a job seeker for a snitch!”
Bitch.
Is that what you say after gouging out someone’s living eyeball with a fork?
If she thinks she can calm my anger with this pocket change, she’s mistaken.
I’ll never forget this humiliation, Ceres. I’ll definitely get my revenge.
House Montravent repays favors with bunny girls and grudges tenfold.
I’ll use your sleazy record as bait and make you submit.
I adjusted the monocle.
Though I say that, it isn’t just personal feelings.
Now that I’d officially become her chauffeur, it was the perfect time to dig into Ceres’s background.
When you get a job, you’re not supposed to collect your boss’s stockings; you’re supposed to collect their weaknesses and exploit them.
On the way out to the restaurant’s garage after receiving the keys.
I aimed the monocle at Ceres, who had calmly resumed her meal as if nothing had happened.
[Remaining uses of 「Exhumation Monocle」 (1/3) ]
[Below are the three pieces of ‘Ceres Cassian’s’ recent past from the last month that she most wants to hide.]
1) Two days ago, Ceres Cassian researched ways to break a ‘precept.’
2) Fourteen days ago, Ceres Cassian threw away all the high-heeled shoes in the dressing room.
3) Twenty-eight days ago, Ceres Cassian leaked Twilight Resource Development’s ‘Project Z’ (the dispersal of biochemical weapons within the Necropolis, estimated deaths: 250,000) plan to Overnus Pharmaceuticals.
…….
“Huh?”