“How do you know that? You’re talking as if you and Lilybet, the Heart of the City, are total strangers. Are you really pretending to be Lilybet while having the real one trapped?!”
“Hehe, how do you think I know?”
“I’m tired of riddles! I’m already suspicious of why you came down here with me, so why do you keep twisting your questions like this?!”
“Hahaha, sorry! Okay, I’ll explain everything, but first…”
Hana didn’t mean to kill her, but the mana engraved on the pipe was pulsing with an unusual power.
The pipe and plumbing, enchanted by Lilybet, moved like living tentacles, binding Hana’s body.
“W-wha-what are you doing?!”
“I’m sorry! I just need this, so please bear with it for a moment, Miss Kim Hana!”
She can’t move at all.
Even though she possessed extraordinary physical abilities as the Slime Empress, the pipes enchanted by Lilybet perfectly restrained Hana.
“You say you’re sorry and yet you do this?! This is why humans…!”
“Wahaha!”
At Hana’s words, Lilybet let out an awkward laugh, as if to say sorry.
“One thing to point out: I’m not human like you! And I swear I won’t take your life or hurt you, as long as you don’t try to escape.”
“Then why did you tell me everything?! And why did you share that with me?”
“Hmm? In comics or fairy tales, at this point, the hidden figure usually spills their past or reasons for their actions, so I thought I’d share that too!”
“……..Just for that reason?”
“Honestly, I also wanted to play the hidden figure role from those tales, but I have too many disqualifying factors for that! I’m more like a child throwing a tantrum than cunning or wicked. Wahahaha!”
With that, a shadow cast over Lilybet’s face.
“And for my final words, I must say something to my companion.”
“Final?”
“I’ll tell you soon, so just sit tight! Haha!”
By the way, did you know?
For the protagonist, hatred is also a trigger for awakening and power-ups!
The death of a companion.
The loss of a lover.
The sacrifice of parents.
The absence of what they wanted to protect.
“You see, in comics, usually, something like that leads to a mental awakening, right?”
“I don’t watch comics, so I wouldn’t know…”
“But Lilybet had none of that.”
This princess was blessed with talent, so she was fine physically and intellectually, but mentally, not so much…
In simpler terms, she just grew tall!
“The blessed princess only cared about herself. Because that’s how she lived! Everyone revered her, showered her with countless expectations, and she was born into a high position! She took that for granted.”
Thus, Lilybet was only angry about her pain and harbored hatred toward the lowly goblins who chopped off her arm.
If she became a Hunter like that, she might have evolved into an excellent monster hunter, fueled by her hatred.
In fact, many awakened individuals born with taste have transitioned to being Hunters fueled by their hatred for monsters.
“But the problem was that this princess was blessed with remarkable talent.”
If only she had a slightly different story, perhaps she could have been a warrior or a mage, even a magical companion to a hero like those in fantasy media on Earth.
“Thus, the hatred-stained Lilybet furiously slaughtered monsters. Every time she fought and lost a body part, she stuffed stones and wood into the wounds and enchanted them to replace her flesh. With every piece of her flesh that fell off and was replaced, she grew stronger.”
“Is… that even possible?”
“From the perspective of normal human common sense, it would obviously be impossible! A little girl who lost an arm, stuffing branches into it and enchanting them? Hahaha! People would curse you for writing such things in a novel! Wahahaha!”
“Also, according to the wiki, the royal searchers found the princess without delay…? What happened with that?”
“Hah, of course, the royal family wouldn’t publicly reveal their flaws! By the time they found the princess, it was already too late!”
Lilybet laughed as if talking about someone else’s story and pounded on the Heart of the City.
As if asking why it happened.
The impression that she was reminiscing about a regretful past wasn’t an illusion.
“By the time they discovered her, Princess Lilybet was no longer even human.”
“One arm was wood.”
“The other arm was a rusty knife used by goblins.”
“Her legs were made of sand and rocks mixed together like LEGO pieces.”
“And in one eye, some gem-like mineral was embedded, likely replacing her insides with something like leaves, stones, soil… or maybe even the insides of other monsters.”
“Moreover, since her supplies had run out, she was chewing on the flesh of some monster. Like a beast! Hahaha! The princess, who used to slice steak in a magnificent palace, was now eating raw goblin meat to survive! What a hilarious scene that must have been! Wahahaha!”
Well, Hunters do sometimes cook and eat monsters when their supplies run low!
In fact, it’s a regular academy teaching as an emergency cooking course for Hunters.
And maybe it was then?
Lilybet ceased to feel ‘taste.’
As long as she could absorb nutrients, that was enough.
Since she couldn’t feel the taste, she sought out bizarre and intensely stimulating foods, far removed from the culinary arts of humanity.
“The only food she could somewhat pretend was ordinary was ‘mint chocolate!’ She could barely feel the heat on her tongue and the slight bitterness of cocoa. It was far better than feeling nothing at all!”
“……….”
Hana remembered how Shia’s expression soured while making the Uranium Dragon stew.
Others might not know, but at least Lilybet was able to eat what the saint couldn’t because she couldn’t taste it.
“So, she was killing and being killed. Even the royal family couldn’t stop her. Once engulfed by the flames of hatred, the princess either deceived people or brought them down by force and headed into the dungeon. The only thing the royal family could do was cover up the fact that their princess had turned into a half-mad person.”
Thus, the colorful blood of monsters flowed like a river.
The piled-up flesh of corpses created a mountain.
Lilybet spared no monster.
Whether it walked on two legs or four, whether it had countless legs or none, she killed them all.
Kill, devour, make them her own.
When her arms and legs were severed, she embedded their bones and teeth into her body.
Fortunately, being a princess, she benefited from the royal family’s ample budget, allowing her to enchant her severed limbs with high-performance materials to gain strength.
The problem was, each time she replaced her flesh and bones with something else, her humanity dwindled to weaker than mere embers. Her hatred and anger towards monsters only swelled uncontrollably.
“Then one day… after razing a dungeon and slaughtering all the monsters there, Lilybet turned around.”
[Huu, huu…!]
[……Gguk…]
[Huu, huu, huu… Huu… Mom…!]
“Beneath the mountain of corpses lay a child. Perhaps it was a beastman. Clinging to the half-cut corpse of its mother, it cried.”
With cat-like hands and feet, the beastman had only recently been classified as ‘monsters’ by the Hunter Association since the Earth gate had only recently opened.
But to the princess, the backstory didn’t matter at all.
There were monsters there. A dungeon existed there.
So the course of action was clear.
Monsters had to die.
The monsters had to be eliminated.
All must be devoured.
“…So?”
“Thus, the princess saw the beastmen she had turned into corpses. A mountain as high as can be. Blood flowed, and hatred didn’t wane. The princess tried to choke the sobbing beastman child with her cold metal fingers.”
Yet the beastman child said something at the end.
[What have we done, you monster!!!]
At those words, the princess tried to stop her hand.
But her arm was already filled with deadly intent, and the beastman child had died.
“In that moment, a crack formed in the princess’s heart! A pinch of guilt squeezed itself into the chasm concealed by hatred and rage!”
Yet that pinch was enough for the princess to realize the mountain of corpses she had created.
“At that moment, she realized what she had been doing all along.”
Oh, looking at what I called monsters, it turns out I was the one who became a monster!
“Of course, for humans on Earth, it’s common sense that monsters and beasts should be killed. However, the princess wasn’t foolish! Is there really anyone who deserved to die from the start? Humans kill each other, and amidst all kinds of good and evil, countless lives have been slaughtered just because they weren’t considered part of humanity! Princess Lilybet finally sensed the weight of that countless lives!”
It would have been better if she hadn’t realized it and remained mad!
“And then something slipped into the crack in the princess’s heart!”
Lilybet pointed her finger at the very center of the Heart of the City.
It was a black gemstone.
Or rather, it pulsated strangely, almost like a heart.
“Do you know what that is?”
“I have no idea…”
“It introduced itself as a Fragment of the Demon King.”
“Is it… sentient?”
“Yes, it has tremendous power, tempting Princess Lilybet to hold hands and grant wishes! Wahaha! Isn’t it just the clichéd “monkey’s paw”?”
Burn away your hatred and anger.
I’ll make your desires come true.
I have the power to do it.
“So, what do you think Lilybet did? Ah, just so you know, she didn’t fall for it, nor did she go over to the Fragment of the Demon King. Would she really believe the words of someone who looked like they wanted to destroy the world?”
“…Did she perhaps use it to create the Green City?”
“Correct! Unfortunately, there’s no prize for you!”
With the Fragment of the Demon King and her talent, which might have made her a hero on Earth, creating a bizarre dungeon with unlimited resurrection wasn’t impossible.
“Lilybet, realizing the mountain of corpses she built, was almost driven mad. She had lived until now through anger and hatred, but now that anger had transformed into guilt piled up from the blood of monsters and beasts. And then she realized.”
There was no one to pray for the monsters.
