Chapter 96
It was the perfect chance to escape, but Cynthia was so distracted by his completely crushed hands that she couldn’t even think of getting up from where she was.
If she ran away like this, it felt like he would really break both his legs and his torso, leaving only his head… and cry.
She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
With trembling hands, she took his broken, bone-protruding, mangled hands in hers, almost in tears, and saw Segleninde give a radiant smile. As if even her concern for him made him happy.
“You were right. There’s something I’ve been hiding from you all this time. I’m not human. I’m a being that lives by feeding on the life force of humans.”
Segleninde began speaking, calm but still showing traces of nervousness.
At some point, he had simply come to exist in this land. Every year he held banquets, luring victims to this mansion, and he had used their life force as his nourishment.
“But not everything in this mansion obeys me. In the first place, this time something happened that I hadn’t expected, so there were many who slipped from my control. I’ve never tried to harm you of my own will. Never. Really. And, so… Ha, really, I never meant to kill you…”
Now Segleninde was rambling a bit. Normally, this was information only obtainable through hints picked up while exploring the mansion in the game. It was the first time the ‘hidden mastermind’ had confessed it himself.
But Cynthia could not bring herself to believe him. There was still one decisive issue remaining.
“How am I supposed to believe that’s the truth? You… You knew all along that I was a fake fiancée, but you pretended you didn’t.”
The suspicion that Segleninde had only pretended to have lost his memory.
If he didn’t mean to toy with her and kill her, there was no reason for him not to reveal until now that the memory loss was all a lie. Did he really think she still believed he didn’t know?
On the other hand, she had a faint hope—a yearning. That, perhaps, he had known she was a fake from the start, but now that his feelings were real, it didn’t matter to him anymore, and he would tell her so.
But the next moment, as she saw Segleninde’s face harden, Cynthia realized something was going wrong.
“…Fake?”
“…Huh?”
“What do you mean? You… weren’t my fiancée?”
Something had gone wrong. Clearly, terribly wrong.
“…So you’ve been deceiving me, all this time?”
He looked at Cynthia, his face a mix of betrayal, confusion, and emptiness, wounded to the core.
Cynthia flinched and started to get up. Her mind was blank, so white it was impossible to think of anything. No excuses, no idea what to do, just the thought that this made no sense crashing again and again through her mind.
He really had lost his memory.
A message from the teddy bear appeared.
Segleninde’s chilling red eyes, which had been staring straight at Cynthia, read the message that appeared between them. He immediately used his regenerated hand to snatch up the message window in its entirety.
“What is this? What’s done?”
As another message appeared, Cynthia wasted no time—she blew a whistle.
At her signal, the Ghost Rats poured in through the gaps in the collapsed wall and under the door, instantly tying up Segleninde and pushing his discarded sword far out of reach.
Taking that opportunity, Cynthia grabbed the magic device, now charged with magic by the teddy bear, and shouted.
“Mansion, full release!”
The moment the magic device, now filled with power, received the release command, a huge message appeared.
Ruuuumble!
A huge sound echoed from directly below, from the First Floor, as the great front doors swung open.
The message did not just appear in the space where Cynthia and Segleninde were, but throughout the mansion, wherever there were still survivors. At last, it announced the moment of true liberation.
Cynthia didn’t miss her chance. Only one of Segleninde’s hands had regenerated, and his sword had disappeared somewhere. While the Ghost Rats held him down, Cynthia flung open the door to the outer hallway and dashed out.
Segleninde, his face drained of color, watched her disappearing back as she ran farther and farther away.
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