Death, it turns out, is a more merciful punishment than you’d think.
I mean, just grab a few passing humans and put them through torture for a day, and you’d get the hang of it.
It doesn’t take long for those begging for their lives to switch gears and start wishing for death instead.
Usually, it’s just a matter of three days tops. Most of the time, it’s even shorter.
It happens because pain scares them more than death. This is true for both humans and monsters.
When you suffer unbearable pain, you find yourself longing for death instead.
Amy was in a similar state.
All her nails were pulled out, probably to stop her from self-harming or committing suicide.
Looking closer, the wounds from self-harm were prominent too. She wanted death. More accurately, she seemed to want to escape pain that was scarier than death.
But she couldn’t do it alone, so she was asking me to do it for her.
Surprisingly, I could understand her feelings.
I too knew by experience that death is a surprisingly merciful punishment.
“… Feel free to take the fragment. It’s worthless once you’re dead anyway.”
Amy’s voice trembled weakly.
It probably took her a long time to come to terms with the words she finally spit out. I couldn’t read her memories at the moment, but I felt like I knew.
Though death is scarier than pain, it still accompanies its own pain.
That much is generally accepted. Just because pain is frightening doesn’t mean death is light.
Death also comes with a hefty dose of pain. That’s why living beings instinctively fear death.
But considering she uttered such words, it seemed she had gone through something horrific.
And then it made sense why she was terrified when she first saw me.
Her situation was pitiful.
That’s why I approached her, gripping the worn-out dagger from the intense combat.
Its edge had grown quite dull.
You know, it’s true that stabbing with a dull blade hurts even more.
As I wondered if it was appropriate to give a monster longing to escape pain a painful death, I hesitated.
A single poke wouldn’t do the trick, so I had to stab her multiple times. It would probably hurt way more than she imagined.
Amy squinted her eyes shut, bracing for immense pain, but I let her down.
“….”
I ended up not stabbing her again.
Putting aside the sympathy I felt, this sense of refusal was something I couldn’t just get used to.
“Not stabbing…?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why…?”
“I don’t know.”
After waiting with her eyes closed, Amy finally asked.
Logically, I knew I should do this. I should fulfill her desperate request and free her from this horrific nightmare.
But it was hard. Stabbing a human felt different from stabbing a monster.
There was no way that a regular stab would kill her. After all, she was the Seed of the Demon King.
She must possess regenerative powers and durability unlike a mere human. Maybe not as much as me, but still.
So if I was going to kill her, I needed to put more strength into it. Yet I found myself unable to do that, which was frustrating.
“You’re the only one who can do this.”
“I know.”
“Then why…?”
“I don’t know.”
I left most of my responses as “I don’t know.”
It wasn’t that I was ignoring her; I just couldn’t figure out my own feelings either.
Why?
I was the one who used to stab and kill humans like it was a game. I had killed so many that I can’t even count them anymore, earning the title of a murderer.
And here I was, hesitating to kill a single monster. Have I become a monster to my very bones?
Amy said she didn’t recognize me as kin.
Since she said it, I might not be her kin after all.
If that’s the case, then there’s even less reason to hesitate. I was thinking deeply about why my current state was like this.
Today was another long thought session.
I may have been unconsciously comparing myself to her.
She’s a monster wishing for death. For her, life is nothing but a succession of pain.
I’m a half-monster wishing for death. For me too, life is but a succession of pain.
Yet Amy found someone worthy of killing her, while I hadn’t.
Both Amy and I wished for death, but only she could fulfill that desire.
Maybe the feeling I had toward her wasn’t kinship or sympathy but rather jealousy.
You get to escape from hell while I’m stuck here.
I thought it was a bit mad to feel envy for a monster about to die.
I finished my lengthy contemplation.
I decided to kill Amy.
Not killing her would just be my selfishness born out of petty jealousy.
“Open your eyes, Amy.”
Still, I didn’t plan to send her off painfully at her last moment of wanting to rest.
I slowly met her gaze as she opened her eyes. Perhaps due to the fatigue in her eyes, the blood began to flow again, but I didn’t care.
Even if she’s the Seed of the Demon King, putting a non-resisting being to sleep isn’t that hard.
And then,
“Goodnight, Amy. I hope you’re reborn as a human in your next life, not as a piece of trash of a monster, which is hard to find advantages for in this era.”
I left my last words behind with a bitter heart.
After snuffing out a single life, the process of taking the fragment of the Demon King wasn’t difficult at all.
*
After taking the fragment, some time passed, and as I expected, the security began to come down.
It was probably because they couldn’t reach Albert for contact.
I hid myself from view and secretly snuck away while avoiding their gazes.
Later, when news of Albert collapsing spread, the entire Empire was thrown into chaos.
But that was none of my concern now.
Getting back was quite a struggle, dressed in the tattered state I was in.
I was covered in blood, and most of my clothes were torn, making it look like I was half-naked.
Plus, I was in a state of unmasking, so I could only pray that I wouldn’t run into anyone who knew me.
After arriving home, I collapsed onto my bed.
Even after coming back, I had to endure pain that made it feel like my eyes were about to pop out for quite a while.
When I looked in the mirror, my eyes were stained a shade of crimson.
They were red to begin with, but this time it was a different kind of red, if that makes sense.
For a while, I decided not to open my eyes.
I washed my sweat-drenched body and lay back down on the bed.
Amy was dead. Since she was wishing for death, I let her close her eyes.
At that point, a question popped into my mind.
What does death feel like? How did Amy feel when she closed her eyes for the last time?
No matter how much I thought about it, I couldn’t reach an answer.
After all, I had never experienced death.
In a way, I envied her for being able to close her eyes forever.
Pain is scarier than death. My life too has been one filled with pain like hers.
Will I ever be able to find someone to kill me someday?
I don’t know.
Today too was a complicated feeling.
“….”
As I fell deep into thought, I became hungry. I hadn’t had a proper meal in a while.
The bit of Albert’s blood I had was nothing but a drop in the bucket.
Usually, right after you eat a meal, the feeling of discomfort arises when you’ve had less than zero food. It’s especially hard to control your instincts when you have a taste for the sweet stuff.
Should I have something to eat before it gets too late?
I pulled out the spoils I took from the Empire’s underground and held them in my hand.
It looked quite far from being appetizing, to be honest. Honestly, I wondered if I could even stomach this.
But surprisingly, it turned out I could.
There was no rejection from my body like when I ate other foods. The moment it entered my body, it felt like we were merging.
It felt like something was fitting together inside of me.
Last time I ate something, there wasn’t any remarkable change in my body. The only thing peculiar was that while eating this piece, the memories of the subject didn’t flow into me, but flashes from the past did instead.
I don’t know why. But the memories from that day definitely felt like my own. It was a fleeting film, but still.
‘… the past.’
For me, the past was a terrifying thing.
I couldn’t find any fond memories since I fell as a monster in this world.
If the fragment of the Demon King drags out my past memories by some means, I’d be a bit worried.
It was because the fragment that came from Amy was larger than that of the Shadow Monsters.
Even so, if I ate this, I could probably last at least a month.
When I ate a fragment smaller than this, I managed to last easily for about two weeks.
“Ha.”
I had been lost in thought for too long.
It’s not like I had many choices anyway.
I took a large bite of the fragment of the Demon King.
Is this what the Demon King tastes like?
It wasn’t tasty this time either.
