Chapter 15

Isabella Persie.

Born as the eldest daughter of the Persie family, she had always been taught by her mother:

“Love everyone around you. If you love them, those who remember it will always repay you.”

To practice this teaching, she was kind to everyone.

To her family, her neighbors, her friends, and even her lover…

The relationships she built brought her happiness, as her mother had taught. If things had ended there, she and everyone around her could have continued living a happy life.

But what if that kindness was misinterpreted as twisted love by someone?

“W-what are you saying, Isabella?”

David Hauer.

A man whose love for her was genuine. But that love was so excessive that it ultimately drove her to her death.

“Stalker? I-I was just watching over you. Because I loved you…”

“Love? Don’t make me laugh! You followed me everywhere, stalked me, stole my belongings, and ran away. If you’re not a pervert, then what are you?!”

As David took a step forward, Isabella began to retreat.

The image of her in my memories was different.

She was someone who was kind and loved by everyone.

But even such a virtuous woman was repulsed by the twisted love the man before her displayed.

“You ruined my life. My peaceful time with my family, my happy moments with that person—all of it was destroyed because of you!!”

“N-no. I… I was saved by you. When everyone abandoned me, only you… only you smiled for me…!!”

“I don’t know! I don’t even remember that!”

Did he know?

That the smile he cherished so deeply was just one of countless fleeting connections for her.

“Why did you have to taint the kindness I showed you? If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have been kind to anyone…!”

No, even if he knew, he wouldn’t have accepted it.

Because admitting that would mean the salvation he found was a lie, and his life would fall back into the abyss.

“W-what’s happening to my body…?”

At the end of his obsession, the woman who had been resurrected was now screaming as she looked at her own body.

A body made from the remains and filth of others.

Her cold, lifeless skin and still heart were a grotesque sight for a woman who had only wished for a peaceful life.

“Ah, ahhhhh!!!”

And that sense of alienation finally awakened her to reality.

The memory of her last moments slowly came back to her.

The sensation of being hit by a carriage as she fled from the man who had been obsessively chasing her.

“I didn’t want to die…”

She would want to deny it.

But she had to accept it.

“I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want it to end like this.”

As that regret pierced her heart like a stake, her sobs gradually turned into wails.

“I… I just wanted to love everyone. Why… why did it turn out like this…?”

Just by listening, I could tell.

She had truly lived a happy life and had a deep attachment to this world.

“…No.”

But the man who loved her didn’t listen to her voice.

“No, Isabella. You can’t be like this.”

He too was sobbing.

Because he loved her more than anyone else.

“The whole world abandoned me, but you… I even brought you back from the dead. After all my efforts, you should be looking at me!”

Even if his love had driven her to death, he was now wishing for her to reciprocate his love.

No, it wasn’t a wish—it was a demand.

Unconsciously, he knew he couldn’t receive her love, so he was trying to force her to love him.

“Don’t come closer… Stay away!!”

“Isabella. Listen to me.”

“What are you trying to do? I’ve told you so many times I don’t want you! Why did you bring me back just to torment me…?”

“Listen to me!!”

David’s shout echoed, and in response, Isabella’s body began to stiffen.

It was a natural outcome. The undead are bound to their summoner.

As long as the summoner lives, the undead must obey their commands. If left alone, Isabella’s afterlife would be at his mercy.

If left alone.

“That’s right, come to me…”

“Just because you smiled at me once.”

Unable to watch any longer, I quietly intervened.

“To expect her kindness, which she showed to everyone, to be directed solely at you—isn’t that too much to ask?”

Standing between David and Isabella, the control over her weakened, and Isabella collapsed to the ground.

The summoner’s commands are absolute, but in the end, it’s just black magic wielded by a human.

For a demon like me, interfering and disrupting it is incredibly easy.

“W-what…?”

“I understand. Even if I don’t know the details, you must have had your own pain.”

As I severed his vile desires, I shared my thoughts on the situation with him.

“Why is it only me who suffers? Why is there no one to stand by my side…? When you feel that way, the world seems cursed, and the first act of kindness you encounter feels incredibly warm.”

I sympathized with him.

I’ve met people who were abandoned by the world and sought revenge.

“…But the world has no obligation to respect individuals, does it?”

And knowing how such stories end, I couldn’t simply pity the person before me.

“…W-what?”

“No matter how much you crave a relationship with someone and assign meaning to it… expecting a reward without genuine interaction is arrogance, pride, and carelessness in human relationships.”

Those who hate the world don’t reflect on themselves, and thus their view of others becomes narrow.

At all times, the only thing that matters is their own turbulent emotions, and they pay no attention to the feelings of others.

You can’t expect the target of such selfish actions to respect you.

“What are you talking about?”

And the person before me had already fallen to a state where he couldn’t even accept that fact.

I knew all too well what society called such beings.

“Are you saying I’m wrong now? Who do you think you are…?!”

“I know. I know what evil is.”

Those who don’t reflect on their actions and act in ways that don’t earn respect from others.

Society calls such people evil.

No matter the circumstances or how much they suffered, the result was that the person before me had become what society called evil.

“I know very well. No matter your circumstances, the result is that you’ve become what society calls evil.”

“Stop talking nonsense!!”

David Hauer, unable to accept this, let out a wail.

As his intense magical energy surged and filled the space, David clutched his disheveled head and began to sob.

“I’m… evil? I’m wrong?”

Ah, what a pitiful and foolish man.

Surely, his life had been devoid of love.

Having never received love, he didn’t know what it was, and so he had simply taken a word he’d heard somewhere and tried to fit it into his own situation.

“That can’t be. It’s the world that’s wrong. The world that didn’t love me is wrong! I was just trying to find someone who would love me…!”

But in the end, that was just his personal story.

The world doesn’t care about individuals, so it has no obligation to correct those who have gone astray.

And the future that awaits those who have no one to hold them is simply a repeated fall into deeper and deeper depths.

“Ah, I see. You’re not Isabella!!”

The vile malice that awakened at the end of that fall now began to turn toward the woman who had been swallowed by evil and met a miserable end.

“Isabella… My Isabella is someone who loves only me. An Isabella who doesn’t love me shouldn’t exist!!”

In response to his will, the undead around him began to merge, growing in size and taking shape.

It was the result of twisted love.

A grotesque monstrosity, nothing more than a shell inflated to a massive size.

“Hahaha! That’s right, it doesn’t matter what Isabella was like. It doesn’t matter what the original Isabella was like. I’ll just create a new Isabella who loves only me with my own hands!!”

As the man laughed maniacally at the monstrosity before him, the pitiful woman sat trembling on the ground.

She must be terrified. And she must be unable to understand.

No one could have imagined that a life lived kindly, following her mother’s teachings, would lead to such an outcome.

“Really…”

Feeling pity for her, I stepped forward and faced the monstrosity before me.

“This is truly a disgusting story.”

-Wham!!

The massive creature moved.

The upper half of the monstrosity, which had taken the form of Isabella, pressed down on the ground and turned its gaze toward me.

It was a projection of the summoner’s will.

At that moment, David’s face was filled with a mad confidence.

“Hahahaha!!! Just be crushed. Be crushed and become one with my Isabella!!”

Did he think this moment of realization would lead to something greater?

If I hadn’t intervened, this might have become a major incident, even if it wasn’t mentioned in the game.

“…Baskervill, you’re still hungry, aren’t you?”

But like picking up trash on the side of the road, I couldn’t just let such a vile story unfold before my eyes.

I quietly reached out toward the giant fist coming at me and gave an order to the familiar sleeping within me.

“Devour it.”

And with a crunch!! A massive mouth emerged from my hand and bit into the monstrosity’s arm.

No, it tore it apart and swallowed it whole.

It happened in an instant, and what followed didn’t even give the summoner time to react.

“W-what? What’s…?”

-Crunch, crunch!!!

Before long, the mouth had grown into a massive form, pressing down on the monstrosity and tearing it apart to make it its meal.

And that act wouldn’t stop until all traces of it were gone.

The mouth devoured everything in its path, and its stomach was like a bottomless void.

“W-what? Why is my Isabella…?”

-Grrrrrr…

At the end, the hellhound that had devoured the monstrosity quietly raised its head and looked down at the summoner before it.

With the eyes of a predator, it stared at the pitiful man who had become its prey.

-Roar!!!

With a roar, David, who had completely lost his sanity, turned and began to run.

“Ahhh, ahhhhhhh!!!”

The confidence he had just moments ago was gone.

Having just awakened to his realization, only to see the companion he had created crumble before him, it was no wonder his spirit broke.

“Ah! My, my leg…!”

I threw a knife into David’s ankle and quietly followed after him.

Step. Step. Making sure the sound of my footsteps reached his ears.

“…Do you still think your love was genuine?”

I wanted to let him know that the time for his judgment was near.

“If your love was truly genuine, why didn’t I let it come to fruition? Why does the world keep interfering to prevent your love from succeeding?”

“Ah, ahhh… Don’t come closer. Don’t come closer!!”

David waved his hand, trying to stop me from approaching.

I stabbed a knife into his palm, closed the distance between us, and firmly stated one fact.

“That’s because, from the beginning, you were never qualified to love anyone.”

No matter the reason, the result remained the same.

“Having never been loved by anyone before meeting her, you were never qualified to express love. Because you couldn’t acknowledge your own ugliness, you ended up destroying even the one who showed you kindness.”

If only he had reflected on himself, how might the future have changed?

If he had looked at himself before hating the world, realized his own twisted nature, and accepted it.

Could he have prevented the tragic ending where everyone became unhappy?

“N-no. I…”

He wouldn’t want to admit it.

That he had grown up unloved and undeserving of love.

“Admit it. Your twisted nature is what killed her.”

But the world is cruel, and to survive in such a world, you must learn to accept your own ugliness.

“And accept it. The punishment you’re receiving is because you walked the wrong path from the beginning.”

Even if he deserved sympathy, the reason he was being judged here was because of that.

Because I couldn’t accept such a twisted nature, I pointed my knife at him.

“Ahhh, ahhhhhhh!!!”

Facing that, David finally lost his sanity and screamed.

With everything denied and consumed by fear, there was no more madness left in him.

In this situation where even escape was impossible, all he could do was accept his guilt and face the judgment before him.

-Stab!!

The knife I threw to seal his fate was aimed at him, and unable to face reality, he fainted on the spot.

Even though the knife had missed his neck and embedded itself in the ground beside him.

-Thud.

Foaming at the mouth, David lay trembling on the ground.

I quietly retrieved the knife I had thrown to scare him and whispered beside his unconscious body.

“Well, it’d be a waste to kill you here, so I’ll hand you over to the authorities.”

After all, I came here to make money, and I can’t just kill a bounty I can exchange for a reward.

Besides, in my experience, the hell where the dead go is too comfortable a place for evil people.

The souls of humans who fall into hell lose their sense of self and become slaves to the demons’ spells.

Even those who deserve punishment lose their consciousness and are left to perform meaningless labor.

Rather than that, it’s more fitting for a criminal to be locked in a cell in this world and tortured for the rest of their life.

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