HEO 40

“Your Highness, please calm down. You’re too agitated.”

“Wolf! Please trust me! I’ve got a good intuition! The night before I died, I had a nightmare and my heart was pounding. It still does! I feel like something terrible is about to happen!”

Red Eagle screamed as if he were possessed. Overwhelmed by the intensity, Wolf took a step back. Stop it, damn it. You’re scaring me too…

Red Eagle pointed at the skeleton.

“Look, Wolf. It looks like it could throw even innocent people into a lava pit. If you don’t obey its commands, it will inflict worse punishment. More horrific torment!”

P-please, stop…

〔The clown’s fifth rotation has ended.〕

Another notification sound. Wolf and Red Eagle screamed and clung to each other. Silver returned just in time.

“What’s with you idiots? Are you scared?”

Silver looked at them with a pitying gaze. The prince and his attendant, their cheeks flushed crimson, hurriedly pulled away. Wolf cleared his throat awkwardly.

“How was it, Silver? Did they say they’d do what the god ordered?”

“Like they would? They’re all huge families, seven or nine members each. To form groups of six, they’d have to leave family members behind, and they can’t…….”

〔The clown’s fifth rotation has ended.〕

Before Silver could finish his sentence, the voice interrupted.

〔The clown begins its sixth rotation.〕

“…That thing.”

Silver glared at the clown and murmured softly. The clown was rotating with incomparable speed since its first appearance. Wolf’s mouth went dry. If things continued this way, the rotation would end soon.

Then something happened.

“Sir!”

Red Eagle called out brightly.

“Come quickly! Hurry up! Hurry up!”

“Haha!”

A familiar laugh rang out.

“Wait! I’m coming, kids!”

Wolf turned around. Black Weasel was running toward them. Behind him, he saw a man and a woman sprinting side by side.

The man looked familiar to Wolf. He was the warrior who had picked a fight with Black Weasel and Silver at the inn tavern. The woman was one-eyed. She wore an eye patch and carried crutches tucked under her arm. Her rags, beyond imagination, made her look like the riffraffs who had been causing trouble for visitors on the docks.

〔The clown’s sixth rotation has ended.〕

“Across the finish line! How about it, brats!”

Black Weasel slapped each of the three boys’ backs in turn. Red Eagle raised both arms high, and circled Black Weasel while cheering.

〔Thank you to everyone who followed the guide well despite the tight timeline. Now, I’ll give you a break. While the clown rotates nine times, greet each other and introduce yourselves. I won’t increase the rotation speed to accommodate your rest.〕

The clown began twisting its limbs and rotating again. Black Weasel pointed at the three boys and said something in Stoll to the warrior and the woman with the eye patch. He seemed to be introducing them.

[Friends, I beg your indulgence for a moment for my stupid sons who don’t understand Stoll.]

Black Weasel turned to look at them and pointed at the warrior.

“This fine fellow is’Charging’ Rock Racoon, chief warrior of the ‘Descendants of Clear Water’ tribe.  I barely made it back after pulling him out. What do you think, don’t you feel reassured just looking at him?”

Next to the warrior chief was the one-eyed woman.

“She says she doesn’t know her own name. She seemed unusually clever, so I brought her along.”

“That’s weird. Don’t people usually think someone who doesn’t know their own name is incredibly stupid?”

Silver eyed the woman suspiciously. She flipped up her eye patch to reveal a perfectly good eye, then spat onto the floor.

“You really think she doesn’t know her own name? She’s probably just making excuses because she doesn’t want to tell me. All the others were complaining about why there’s no alcohol or hallucinogenic herbs in hell, but this one was different. She was stamping her feet, shouting that they had to form groups of six quickly or else they’d be in big trouble. She’s got good instincts.”

“Alright. Good instincts, then. Even if she’s dumb.”

“I told you she isn’t dumb! Trust my eye for people, Silver!”

Black Weasel thumped his chest.

“I picked the chief warrior as a comrade because he looked like he has a decent head too. You can’t climb that high on brute force alone! You two, prince and servant, you hear me? Wake up! To survive here, brains matter most. Your heads!”

“Um, sir. Aren’t we already dead?”

A confused Red Eagle asked. At those words, Black Weasel’s eyes widened as if he’d spotted an arrow flying at him, then he clamped his hand over his mouth.

“Ugh, slip of the tongue! That earlier bit was, um, what was it… a habitual expression? Something like that. What I meant to say was, to get anything done here, your butt…no, your head is what matters. Ha ha, this Atania language is so nuanced, I keep mixing up the words…”

Wolf frowned. Black Weasel was rambling. Strange. That shameless human wouldn’t panic over a foreign language slip-up. Could it be he’s acting like this because his thoughts were exposed?

Maybe…?

‘So this nightmare is a drug effect?’ Just as he was about to welcome the thought,

“That bastard Bingapsu said he once met someone who got out of here alive by chance.”

Silver angrily gestured toward Black Weasel. Wolf doubted his ears.

“He says it was a smart, sharp-witted blacksmith, and insists we can come back to life if we use our heads well. That’s why that bastard keeps singing ‘head, head, head, head’. Haa… That guy’s going to mess with my head too.”

Silver clutched his forehead and closed his eyes. His expression was agonized, like someone sentenced by a doctor to swallow bitter powdered medicine every day for the rest of their life. Wolf felt all the energy drain out of him. He had suspected the assassin and his assistant had ‘something’ going on, but he never imagined that ‘something’ would be this… What… Was this place really hell…?

Black Weasel gasped.

“Silver! We agreed to keep that a secret!”

Before the stunned prince and his servant, the assassin and his assistant pointed fingers at each other and started arguing.

“What secret? It’s all your delusion! Face reality! We’re dead, you bastard!”

“I told you it’s not a delusion! I really saw that blacksmith! She had brown hair full of gray streaks and a really big butt!”

“Wasn’t she a big assed fisherwoman instead?”

Wolf scrubbed his face dry with both hands. Listening to their bickering made him feel like he was going to lose his mind too. Then the voice spoke.

〔Break time is over.〕

Immediately followed by sounds. Thud! Thud!

As if heavy iron balls were being thrown into the bare ground. Countless times, from all directions. In a very short time.

Silence.

Wolf couldn’t even blink. About ten paces away, the innkeeper’s family, who had been clinging to each other just moments before, were gone. The other families were gone. The laughing, staggering madmen were gone. The people chattering idly as if nothing mattered were gone. Only blood spurted everywhere from that spot.

Wolf’s mind went blank. No thoughts came to him. Only the crimson veins blocking his vision like bars entered his eyes.

“Aaaah!”

Red Eagle slumped down and screamed. Wolf flinched and threw his head back.

“Wolf! W-Wolf… Th-those people, they suddenly… crushed…! Like ants underfoot…!”

Red Eagle, who had been clutching Wolf’s clothes and wailing, went limp. He was covered in blood from head to toe, as if he’d been dunked headfirst into a vat of red paint. Wolf slowly raised his hand and rubbed his cheek. Bright red blood smeared across his knuckles. The blood spurting from the crushed bodies had splattered all the way here.

Unlike him, Silver quickly lifted the hem of his own clothes to block the blood. A deadly chill hung over his face.

“Stop crying.”

Silver added after addressing Wolf.

“This place is hell.”

〔Do not be agitated.〕

The voice spoke.

〔They were disposed for not following my guidance. No disadvantage will befall others.〕

Wolf felt a pang of nausea at those words. It defined the massacre as “disposal.” Among the victims were several infants and toddlers.

Even if you’re a god, how can this be acceptable? This is excessive!