**Chapter 62**
—
When Belloc regained consciousness, he found himself in the devil’s paradise—the *Black-Red Order’s biological laboratory*.
And he was strapped down upon the experiment table, his limbs bound by chains of iron.
They were there, too.
The experimenters—expressionless, cold, gazing down at their “subject.”
> “Then, depending on the degree of decay, we shall record the pathological changes occurring within the subject’s body.”
At those words, the tips of Belloc’s feet began to blacken and rot.
> “No, no, it’s not me, it’s not me…!”
The rot spread from his toes upward, slowly devouring his body.
But death did not come easily. There would be no merciful end—only the next phase of the experiment.
> “We’ll sever his limbs now, and observe how long the subject remains alive.”
> “We’ll extract the organs and replace them with those of a beast.”
> “We’ll drain his blood to the fatal limit, then inject him with fresh chicken blood.”
> “In cooperation with Lord Walter of the Blood Flame, we shall heat the subject’s blood to its boiling point while he yet lives, and observe the results.”
> “Aaaahhh! Aaaahhh! It hurts, it hurts—it hurts so much!”
There was no trace of a devout seeker of truth, preaching the necessity of sacrifice for the sake of progress.
Belloc screamed and writhed, and his personal hell had only just begun.
—
—
At last, the girl withdrew the tendrils that had been teasing his brain.
> “Hee… heeheehee… hngh, hhhhhuuuhh!”
The Sixth-Circle black magician Belloc drooled and burst into insane laughter.
After laughing, he began to weep like a child.
And then, like a child again, he clung to his captors, begging for forgiveness.
> “Why are you begging *me* for forgiveness?”
> “P-please, please, please, pl-pleeease…!”
> “Before the grand truth you so worshiped, weren’t the victims’ sufferings *acceptable sacrifices*?
> Wasn’t that what you all chanted about—the ‘wheel of history’ you so revered?”
Dale tilted his head faintly as he looked down at him.
> “Is that wheel of history you worship so fleeting that it turns over just because your own place upon it has changed?
> Then what meaning does it have to turn such a wheel at all?”
A wheel that could only turn through blood and sacrifice—better that it shatter entirely.
With a face utterly devoid of emotion, Dale said:
> “Speak. Reveal every detail of the experiments the Black-Red Order conducted that day.”
Belloc flinched, bowing his head rapidly.
> “If you tell the truth, I’ll grant you death here and now.”
That meant he wouldn’t have to return to that hell. He could die here.
Realizing that, Belloc opened his mouth without hesitation—
and confessed everything he knew of the Black-Red Order’s deeds during the Empire’s unification war.
It was all unspeakably revolting.
Yet, it matched closely with what the *Crimson Marquis* Yuris had once told Dale.
This was not the Empire’s “true secret”—not the reason they had gone to such lengths to silence the truth.
The Empire would never bother hiding mere records of cruelty and torture.
Thus Dale asked again.
> “I—I don’t know the deeper details!”
> “Oh? You don’t?”
> “I-I swear it! I really don’t!”
> “Then I suppose you’d better go back to your hell.”
As Dale raised a tendril to impale him—
> “The Arrowhead Project!”
Belloc cried out suddenly. Dale froze mid-motion.
> “It—it was an experiment to reach the realm of the *Ninth Circle!*”
> “A Ninth-Circle experiment?”
The Ninth Circle—the ultimate destination of the magical path.
A realm no mage in all history had ever reached.
The domain of the gods, accessible only by mortals who became *demons.*
> “We—lowly unit commanders—didn’t know the details! We were only puppets, following the orders of the top officials!”
> “Then as a puppet, spit out everything you *do* know.”
Belloc obeyed frantically, his words tumbling over one another.
> “They—they created a confined area and inflicted suffering to provoke negative emotions in the subjects,
> and within that special barrier, they concentrated those emotions…”
He described it—the deliberate creation of a living hell,
from which despair, agony, and corrupted thoughts would be harvested as energy.
> “They sought to use those negative emotions as energy to open a *gate*—a gateway leading to the World of Truth…”
That was the true purpose of the Black-Red Order.
The grotesque biological experiments were mere secondary objectives.
> “So our orders were simply to secure enough negative emotion to fuel the experiments!”
Living sacrifices, nothing more—necessary fuel for their true goal.
That was all Belloc knew.
Dale did not expect more.
During the war, he himself had been nothing but the Empire’s executioner—
a hound unleashed for slaughter, ignorant of the Empire’s greater intentions or the Order’s secret purpose.
But there was someone who *did* know.
A man who, as a commander of the demonic legion, had known the whole truth.
And at that thought, Dale’s composure wavered.
He saw the man’s face in his mind.
A man he had once believed incapable of sin—
who had severed ties with the Black Tower’s darkness and preached the sanctity of life,
who had renounced the Empire’s so-called “justice.”
> “Father…”
Dale whispered.
The Second Division Commander of the Black-Red Order—*the Black Duke.*
Even after the war, when the Empire sought to secretly preserve the unit, Dale’s father had disbanded it by his own will.
Standing against the First Division Commander, *the Crimson Marquis Yuris,*
he had personally brought an end to the Black-Red covenant—
all for what he had called *“a pitiful scrap of morality.”*
But that could never be a reason for forgiveness.
—
—
> —Hey, big brother.
A voice murmured in his mind.
> —Can I play with him a little longer?
The girl’s skirt quivered as the tendrils beneath it wriggled eagerly.
Dale turned toward the man once more—
the one now begging desperately for death.
> “N-no… no, please, don’t play with me, please, please—!”
> “Play with him until you get bored.”
Dale’s voice was utterly indifferent—void of any emotion.
*Pchhk!*
Shub’s tendrils pierced downward, wrapping around the six circles in Belloc’s heart.
> “Guh—kugh!”
Just as the young vampire had devoured a black elder’s blood to become a black-red sorcerer,
so too did Shub now absorb the dark mana within Belloc’s body.
It was not a privilege exclusive to vampires.
Like a vampire feasting on human blood,
Shub’s tendrils drained the darkness Belloc had built over a lifetime—
the distilled essence of a Sixth-Circle black magician’s power.
At Dale’s feet, black mana surged, darker and deeper than ever before.
—
—
At that same time, high in the Black Tower—
The Seventh-Circle black magician Edgar stood there.
His head severed, limbs torn, abdomen split open and entrails spilling forth—
it could not even be called a battle. It was a massacre.
Yet he still lived.
Because the *Angel of Death* had not permitted him to die.
Amid the scattered bones and flesh,
stood a man with six black wings—dark as a raven’s shadow.
> “…How can this be…”
> “Did you really think I returned from that world having gained *nothing*?”
That world—
the *World of Truth* that the Black Tower’s mages so desperately sought,
the divine realm beyond the veil of death.
> “Ha… haha.”
Edgar laughed softly—not from pain or resignation.
He cared not that he had lost, that death awaited him.
He only found his own folly absurd—pathetically so.
> “Yes, that’s how you’ve always been.”
He smiled faintly, looking upon the *Angel of Death*—Alan of Saxen—
who stood before him, shrouded in six dark wings.
> “And now, it’s my turn.”
He chuckled quietly, facing the coming shroud of death.
> “At last… I’ll reach the same world you once touched.”
Even if it meant crossing a river from which there was no return.
> “For truth… is always found within death.”
> “…”
> “I’ll be waiting for you in hell, Alan.”
> “Farewell, my friend.”
Alan of Saxen answered, spreading his six ominous wings.
> “—Nevermore.”
The Angel of Death spoke.
Raven feathers scattered through the air.
Silence fell—and Edgar’s body, sprawled upon the floor, finally stilled.
That silence would never be broken again.
It descended like feathers—black and cold as a raven’s wings.
—
—
Before dawn, in the pale light of early morning,
Charlotte Orhart’s black blade swept through the darkness.
She did not hesitate to become the sword that guarded House Saxen.
Not all death knights were equal.
Even if raised by a Sixth-Circle necromancer and wielding an *Aura Blade*,
most were crude, hollow imitations—nothing compared to the death knights Dale commanded.
> *These things can’t even compare to Dale’s.*
They were not true knights.
They had no pride, no honor—only undead bodies driven by borrowed will.
> “For House Saxen!”
> “For Lord Dale!”
Charlotte swung her sword without hesitation,
calling her master’s name proudly, fulfilling her knight’s vow—
even at the cost of her life.
> “Hold formation! Don’t break ranks!”
> “We fight for our commander!”
The hundred heavy-armored mercenaries fought desperately to maintain their line.
Then, suddenly—
The death knights’ black swords froze mid-swing.
A hush fell.
*Thud.*
As one, the death knights knelt, driving their blades into the ground.
> “Wh-what…?”
One of the Night Raven knights whispered, bewildered.
But understanding soon dawned.
> “You have fought well.”
> “D-Dale!”
The heir of the Black Tower stood there.
He reclaimed the death knights once controlled by the elders—
restoring to them the pride and honor they had long forgotten.
> “Charlotte, knights of Saxen.”
Dale spoke to them—
to Charlotte and all the armored blades who stood ready.
> “Whether in life or in death, we shall never forget the pride and honor of the blades sworn to Saxen.”
Across the ducal castle, the battle that had raged through the night drew to its end.
The *Black Prince of Saxen* walked between the kneeling death knights,
proclaiming the end of the elders’ assault.
> “And so I promise you—those who dare defile their honor shall be granted neither mercy nor forgiveness.”
His voice was cold.
Utterly devoid of emotion.
—
—
*The Saxen Ducal Castle.*
The darkness of night faded; dawn’s dim light rose.
In the pale twilight, the *Black Prince of Saxen* sat upon the grand throne of the great hall.
His mother and young sister beside him,
and the loyal blades of Saxen standing guard around them—
while the corpses of those foolish enough to oppose House Saxen lay scattered behind.
Sir Helmut Blackbear, the strongest knight of the North.
Eris, the Black Executor.
Sephia, the elven sorceress.
Charlotte, and the Night Raven knights of Saxen.
Even the elite *Grave Guard*, the Duke’s personal guard, who had not drawn their blades before silence returned.
Upon that throne sat a boy of only eleven years,
commanding order across the castle with calm authority—
and not a soul there could think of him as merely a child.
The figure of the *Black Prince of Saxen* seated upon that throne
was—beyond all doubt—the Duke of Saxen himself.
