Chapter 73: Life-or-Death Situation × 5

Marietta returned to the city of Satel, her body completely exhausted from working on the maintenance of the mountain path that had been blocked by a landslide. As she aimed to become an executive of the Orthodox to annihilate the Heretics, she took on every task available to solidify her position within the organization.

The pillars supporting Marietta’s mental state right now were the fact that she was being useful to Pomett, who had always taken care of her, and the time she spent forgetting everything else whenever she met her savior, Oakley.

“I’m back…”

“Oh, welcome back, Marietta.”

Marietta, who had wandered back to the garrison with unsteady footsteps, tried to enter the luxurious building while greeting the soldier holding a spear at the entrance. The soldier, as if remembering something, called out to her slender back and began to talk about a memorable event that had happened just a while ago.

“Come to think of it, Marietta, something strange happened today. A suspicious guy covered in sweat calling himself Oakley was looking for you. He was like, ‘It’s an emergency, let me see Marietta Valiere…’”

“Eh, around when?”

“This afternoon. He was incredibly flustered when he found out you weren’t there, and then he ran off with a pale face. Weird story, right?”

The soldier tilted his head, smiling half-heartedly in confusion. Marietta had a similarly confused look on her face, but first, she had to report the mission with the companions she had returned with.

After reporting to Pomett that the mission had been completed without issue, Marietta was relieved to hear that no further missions were being assigned.

“Hmm, good work on the mission. You may rest for today.”

“Thank you, Pomett-sama.”

Pomett, who had returned from a mission early this morning, had intended to depart again after staying for only a few minutes, but after her subordinates cried and begged her to please rest, she reluctantly decided to make today a day off. Even Pomett, who possessed monster-like vitality—enough to regenerate her entire body from a mere scrap of flesh—would die if, for example, all her cells were incinerated, and she could not escape death from old age. There was no precedent for an executive dying of overwork, but it would be a major problem if an executive died of overwork and couldn’t be revived.

For her part, Pomett had wanted to work hard and eliminate threats to the country, but she couldn’t refuse the request after seeing her trusted subordinates so tired from crying. Lured by the mild weather, she closed her eyes in her chair or read books she hadn’t been able to read for a while, and in her own way, Pomett enjoyed her first day off in about a year. Though, because she had forgotten how to take a break for the first few hours, she spent that time just rolling a pen around in her office.

Ever since the cities of Metasim and Daskell collapsed, she had been chased by various tasks. Feeling the atmosphere soften due to her first break in a long time, Pomett ordered Marietta, the subordinate she had kept a close eye on, to take a rest as well.

After pondering for a while whether it would be better for her—clumsy as she was—to deepen her bond with her subordinates, she worked up the resolve to squeeze out the words.

“…Ma-Marietta, would you like to go to the bath with me for a change?”

“Eh, go to the bath together? That’s a bit…”

“If you don’t want to, you can refuse. …I’ll go alone.”

Feeling Marietta’s subtle atmosphere of wanting to decline, Pomett tucked the blonde hair hanging near her temple behind her ear, as if to hide the poor timing.

Many of the extremely busy executives were stingy even with the time it took to bathe. To replace old physical tissues with brand-new ones, many treated bathing as a substitute for physical cleaning by regenerating their whole bodies from severed scraps of flesh. Compared to a bath, which took a certain amount of time, a “transfer” to a nearby location took only a few seconds. For the executives, bathing had become a kind of luxury.

Seeing Pomett lower her blue eyes in disappointment, Marietta panicked and waved her hands. Although they were much closer than she was with others, she felt hesitant to refuse an invitation from one of the great executives that the Kenneth Orthodox boasted of. However, the strange report about Oakley flickered in her mind, leaving her caught in the middle.

“No, that’s not it! It’s just, it’s an urgent matter, or rather there’s something that’s been bothering me, and after that’s finished, I’d love to go to the bath!”

“…If it’s not an inconvenience, may I ask what kind of business it is?”

“I’ve been going out a lot lately, right? Actually, I’ve been going to see Oakley-san, who I’ve been talking about for a while now.”

“What? You’ve been meeting with… ‘Oakley’…?”

In an instant, the gentle demeanor of the female knight Pomett shifted into something dangerous. Thoughts of baths and rest flew out of her head, and her mind instantly shifted into that of the “Fourth-Rank Executive of the Kenneth Orthodox.”

The Oakley Marietta spoke of matched the Heretic Oakley not only in name but even in physical appearance. Despite him being Marietta’s savior, hearing that she had been going to meet a person she herself suspected meant she couldn’t stay calm.

“Since when have you been meeting?”

“E-eh, well, we reunited a few days ago, but Oakley-san has lost his memory… he’s fuzzy on old stories and common knowledge and things like that. So, I felt like I had to teach him a lot of things.”

Marietta fidgeted, pressing her fingertips together. Pomett barely took in half of her words. She spoke before she could think deeply.

“Marietta, let me meet him.”

“That’s perfectly fine! Shall we go to the bath after that?”

“…Yes, let’s do that.”

Pomett stood up from the chair where she had been sitting deeply, and entrusting herself to an indescribable, ominous premonition, she brought out her holy sword and sheathed it.

“We’re just going to see how Oakley-san is doing and then go to the bath, so don’t you think the holy sword is unnecessary?”

“…It’s something like a lucky charm.”

Pomett acknowledged that her intuition was often correct. And even then, her bad premonitions were usually right. She had been trying to act honestly in accordance with those feelings lately, but there had never been a day she wished more than today that this sensation was off the mark.

I hope the savior of my cute subordinate and the Heretic Oakley are not the same person. Wearing private clothes—a long skirt with little exposure—Pomett strapped the sword to her waist and walked out into the streets ruled by the night’s darkness, accompanied by Marietta, who had also changed into her private clothes.

—At that same moment. Oakley, whose true identity had been seen through by Father Dordon, had bitten off the priest’s finger that had been thrust into his mouth.

“—Gyaaaaaaaaahhh!!”

Startled by the painful counterattack from the young man who should have been devoid of vitality, Father Dordon jumped back while clutching his own left hand. An ear-piercing scream echoed through the empty church.

After confirming that most of his index finger and a portion of his thumb had been bitten off, Father Dordon glared at Oakley, exposing his rage. His expression was full of shock and anger, but it was soon overwritten by a throbbing, ecstatic pleasure and anticipation.

“…Slurp, slurrrrp. Good. Has there ever been a boy who could make me this excited before? No, there hasn’t, has there, Oakley-kun? If I’m caressed like that, even I, at my age, will get an erection, you know?”

Leaving the blood dripping with a loud plop, the priest adjusted the position of his massive, hardened phallus with his blood-stained left hand. The priest’s eyes possessed an eerie mass, like that of seafood, and it seemed as though he had completely flipped a switch.

Oakley, facing the pervert, surrendered himself to a pulse of hunger that had welled up impulsively, and in the momentum, swallowed the enemy’s finger. He had no way of knowing it, but he had been saved by the explosive cannibalistic impulse of Stella, whom he had hated and feared so much.

Up until now, what had saved him when he was struck by extreme terror and anxiety were the remnants of the two girls who had been stewing in twisted love for him. The uncontrollable cannibalistic impulse derived from Stella had saved the current Oakley and simultaneously tormented him. Due to the influence of the abnormal other-self derived from Joanne, he had begun to think—even without his memories—that his path in life was only here. Even if he tried to be a decent human being, he was forced to walk a path that deviated from human reason. There was no choice but to fall together with Joanne and Stella. Sharing a heart with Joanne, and with the contamination by Stella also progressing, there was zero way to escape their domination and mad love.

And Father Dordon did not know that this domination would transcend all space.

Joanne, who had a deep connection with Oakley through the ring finger of his left hand, already sensed his abnormality. She didn’t know the name “Father Dordon,” but she shared the chaotic mental circuits caused by the fact that her beloved was about to be attacked by a stranger.

If, by any chance, Oakley’s left ring finger were cut off and hit the ground, Joanne, a master of transcendental healing magic, would appear instantly to protect Oakley in the name of love.

Although there was no direct connection of flesh, Stella, who had begun to acquire a connection through phenomenal mental pollution, also vaguely noticed Oakley’s abnormality.

Changing scenes to the Northeast Branch—Joanne, who was visiting the base for some business, faced Stella, and both of them had bloodshot eyes due to their most beloved, Ross.

“Hey, Stella. You kinda get it, don’t you? My Oakley is in a pinch right now. He’s being attacked by some outrageous pervert in the Orthodox city.”

“…So that’s what this throbbing was. …But, to call someone an ‘outrageous pervert’… is that really something for you to say, Joanne?”

“Huh? …Huh? Are you the type of person who tells jokes…?”

Basically, the two of them did not get along. There hadn’t been a single argument they didn’t have since Oakley rose to prominence. …Nevertheless, in the face of the irregular born in the city of Satel, Father Dordon, they were prepared for battle, as if to say they could go at any time.

The feelings they held for Oakley were genuine. One wished for the construction of a world for just the two of them, and the other wished for feeding each other with their beloved, ripened man. Even if the endings were different, they could not, under any circumstances, allow Oakley to die here and now.

“You, you can’t transfer over there because there’s no piece of flesh on Oakley’s body, right? Should I throw you over there?”

“…I don’t really want to rely on you, but I’m asking. …Because I absolutely won’t forgive you for eating him before Stella does.”

“…I don’t forgive you for trying to eat Oakley either, you know?”

In any case, the more Oakley was cornered, the more the probability increased that Father Dordon would be made to go missing by the Heretics. No, it would be fine if just Father Dordon went missing. It was more likely that the city of Satel would be reduced to a scorched field by the two enraged Aaros Temple Order executives.

“If things get one step more dangerous, I’m going to go save him. …You have no complaints with that, right?”

“…Yes. …I’d like to refrain from flashy actions for the sake of the Holy Capital Sasfect raid strategy, but… I have to at least prevent Oakley from being eaten.”

“My Alex is on the move. …If he can do something about it, maybe I can avoid causing a scene, but it might not go that smoothly.”

The scene returns to the city of Satel. Just as Joanne said, the Heretic Alex, who had snuck into the city, was drawing his bow from the shadows inside the church. Because of Alex’s bad habits—”anything is fine as long as it’s fun” and “I want to watch until the very last second”—no arrow had been fired until now—thus, Oakley was being carefully protected by the massive blessing of the Heresy. It was Father Dordon who was in danger of death.

—However, with Marietta and Pomett approaching this location, the situation was about to become even more chaotic.

Oakley Mercury, who was once affiliated with the Heretic camp and had planned to destroy the order from the inside, but now suffered from amnesia and wandered the world.

Father Dordon, a heinous criminal affiliated with the Orthodox camp who had used even the existence of Heretics to satisfy his own desires while hiding his own crimes. A genuine deviant who had experienced both murder and rape.

Alex Eagley, a dog of the Heretic camp and a pawn of Joanne who had a self-destructive desire and did not mind his own safety as long as it was for “something fun.”

Marietta Valiere, a candidate for an executive position in the Orthodox camp who had a somewhat excessive devotion to her savior in an unstable mental state that had yet to heal.

Pomett Yawster, the fourth-ranked executive of the Orthodox who advocated for overwhelming justice.

When these five people—all with different intentions, backgrounds, and affiliated organizations—gathered in one place, an development that no one could predict would unfold.