12

‘There was no chanting. …Was that magic that had reached the level of spellcasting without chanting? No—if that were the case, it wouldn’t have such a complex effect that even I wouldn’t recognize it. Then what was that… what was it?’

With both hands locked in restraints, Corbelli could not even cover his right hand as pain tore through it, and he fell silent, his face contorted.

“……If you are going to stay silent, then you may as well squeal.”

After Lizelotte spoke, Corbelli’s right middle finger lost its vitality as well.

“Gaaah…!”

Tears spilled from Corbelli’s right eye on their own. The right side of his face tightened so hard it looked as though it might cramp.

“Do not endure it. While you squeal, you may answer as well. How kind I am. I am opening that mouth of yours that would not open. Be grateful.”

“Hah… hah… One original volume from the Original Canon series is kept by the Next-Era Luminaries.”

“I see. And?”

“……”

“……How greedy you are, you filthy pig.”

Agony lanced through his right ring finger.

On top of that, his little finger rotted away, dropped to the floor with a soft plop, and vanished into ash.

For the first time since being thrown into this cell, Corbelli screamed from pain.

He saw his right hand becoming unusable. A burning heat, a crushing agony—both crashed over him at once.

“Go on. Just keep moving your mouth. That alone will satisfy me.”

Desperate to be freed from the pain, Corbelli found Lizelotte’s beautiful, arrogant-sounding voice—her words—strangely soothing as they reached his ears.

“We… divided one volume into multiple parts, and we carry the Original Canon as a holy relic—a source of mana…”

Corbelli answered in a rasp. Tears kept overflowing from his right eye, wetting the cold stone floor.

“You dull creature. To treat the Original Canon—one of the factors that advanced your culture this far—as mere ‘things.’”

“……That’s enough. I answered your question, didn’t I?”

“Indeed.”

Lizelotte glanced at her fingernails and replied curtly, thinking they had grown enough that she ought to trim them.

“……And you don’t have time, do you? That other woman said it. Why don’t you hurry up and leave?”

Corbelli was terrified by how Lizelotte inspected her nails as if she had no interest at all in his current state.

She was nothing like the interrogators until now. They acted with the intent to hurt him; they used torture as coercion through pain.

But Lizelotte—

Lizelotte did not recognize what she was doing to Corbelli as torture. Corbelli would not open his mouth; then she would make him open it.

If his mouth opened, she would make him produce a voice. If she inflicted excruciating pain, he would make a sound. Even screams were “a voice.”

‘If this woman isn’t stopped, she’ll go as far as it takes.’

If the fingers of his right hand disappeared, then his left hand, then his right foot, then his left foot. And if fingers were gone, she could simply move upward from there.

Even if he lost all four limbs—if his mouth opened, if his voice came out, that would be enough.

That terror—that madness—was what Corbelli felt emanating from Lizelotte.

“Ah. You mean my conversation with Mireine. Then rest assured.”

Lizelotte spoke bluntly, as if to say he was asking something utterly trivial.

“The time I spend here with you is no more than a blink to Mireine outside that door.”

“Huh?”

At Lizelotte’s words, Corbelli let out a slack, foolish sound—forgetting even the pain in his right hand.

“Hm? You were worried about time, were you not? Be at ease. The flow of time binds me in no way.”

“……Impossible!! There is no magic that interferes with the passage of time!! Don’t make a fool of me! If you just want to keep abusing me until you lose track of time, then say so! That would be a hundred times better!!”

Corbelli called himself a sorcerer. He lacked true skill, but even so, his knowledge and pride regarding magic were on the level of an accomplished mage.

Precisely because of that, “interfering with time” sounded like a fairy tale—or worse, when spoken to a mage, it was nothing but outright contempt.

To interfere with the flow of time: a phenomenon everyone dreamed of. Young boys and girls wished they could become adults sooner, while those with little time left feared time’s advance. Happy moments and cruel misfortune alike became the past, equally bound by time’s shackles.

Countless mages dreamed that dream, yearned for it, and then drowned in it.

Mage after mage produced nothing and ended their lives in vain—an unforgiving paradise of illusions.

Knowing that history, any mage—including Corbelli—would naturally bristle at Lizelotte’s words.

“Why are you shrieking on your own? No one said it was magic.”

“If it’s not magic, then what is it!? Some magical tool, is that what you want to claim!? Ha—then tell me when such a divine artifact was ever created!”

With his right hand still wracked by pain and his left hand fixed by restraints, Corbelli slammed the desk with all his strength.

Fear of Lizelotte and the agony in his right hand were swallowed by his raging anger.

“……It is sorcery.”

“Sorcery? Ha—sorcery I don’t even know, even though I’m a sorcerer—”

As Corbelli was about to shout, “Don’t spout nonsense,” a boy flashed through his mind.

That boy had manifested a mysterious right arm and overwhelmed Corbelli’s group with an unknown power.

“Limit Release: Miracle Right Arm.”

Just recalling its eerie presence sent a violent chill through him.

“You saw it too, did you not? Ains’s right arm—his sorcery.”

“N-no way… you…”

“Well, interference with time is merely a secondary effect… but I will show you one thing directly. In exchange, I will take both your hands.”

Corbelli froze with his right hand still planted on the desk, and Lizelotte lightly snapped her fan against it—pap.

“First, fix your attention on your right hand. Observe carefully the price you will pay. —Limit Release: ‘Arbitrary Flow: Acceleration.’”

It was the same invocation of power from another dimension as Ains.

Though anger had ruled him, Corbelli heard Lizelotte’s unfamiliar incantation and came back to himself.

Fear, unease, anger that would not fully fade, and a twisted hint of expectation—those emotions tangled into a messy knot. Fighting down nausea, Corbelli fixed his gaze on his trembling right hand.

Lizelotte’s sorcery activated with Corbelli’s right hand as the target.

In the next instant, Corbelli felt the blood flowing through the vessels inside his right hand—and the countless cells that formed it—begin to boil.

It was not like being burned from the outside of the skin.

What was the same was the excruciating pain that accompanied it.

“Gaaah—aaagh!”

Tears overflowed from his eyes. The same phenomenon as his earlier shriveled fingers.

“How is it? I lowered the acceleration a little compared to before—are you tasting it properly?”

Corbelli’s right hand continued to change without pause. From the wrist bound in restraints onward, only that portion was stripped of life as though it had been thrown into hell.

In a gloomy cell where no sunlight entered and no wind passed through, Corbelli’s screams filled the space.

Lizelotte watched with an expression of rapture.

His throat went hoarse, broke, and still Corbelli did not stop. He kept crying out like a broken toy.

Even Lizelotte’s grotesque way of enjoying it like the chirping of an animal no longer mattered to Corbelli now.

This continued for some time—and then his voice finally ran dry.