The undying one was deeply satisfied with the fullness he had not felt in so long. Having polished off an entire can of beans by himself, he headed toward the yard, smacking his lips.

“The canned food here tastes like shit, but you managed to turn it into this! Good ingredients taste good even raw, but making something foul taste delicious—that is true skill, the very essence of cooking! With cooking skills like yours, Lieutenant Colonel, you will make a fine bride!”

The Military State officer walking beside him, Lieutenant Colonel Callis, looked none too pleased by the compliment. She clicked her tongue in irritation and replied coldly.

“Tsk. By that logic, the command sergeant major, who can make a hundred dishes out of a single can, must be the bride of the century. Stop spouting nonsense and assist me with my mission, trainee.”

“A hundred! Now that is tempting. Is this command sergeant major a woman as beautiful as you, Lieutenant Colonel?”

“He is a bald old man with a mustache. He had a granddaughter this year.”

“Hahaha! Never mind, then! I shall content myself with your cooking, Lieutenant Colonel!”

The officer grimaced so severely that it was visible even beneath the brim of her cap, pulled low over her face.

“Do not imagine I will cook for you every day, trainee. This was a special exception.”

The undying one looked as though his world had collapsed.

“Why?!”

“I should be asking you that. Why should I, an Instructor, be responsible for a trainee’s meals?”

“You could make mine while you make yours! I have no talent for cooking, and this country has no decent ingredients! Forgive me for saying so, but every time I tried to grow fond of this country, the mere thought of canned beans made me shudder! But with you around, Lieutenant Colonel, I think it might be a little more bearable!”

Apparently irritated by the whole situation, the officer pressed at her forehead through her cap and answered.

“Just finish the job. Then I will consider it.”

“Understood! Now, let me see. You said you wanted to befriend the dog lass? You must be terribly shy, Lieutenant Colonel!”

“Enough of your nonsense!”

“Haha. All right. Remember, that promise to cook for me is between friends. Be sure to keep it!”

It happened just as the two stepped out of Tantalus’s main building, chatting normally—almost amiably, depending on how you looked at it.

Emerging after all that chatter, the undying one spotted me and waved.

“Oh! Teacher! It has been a while... Huh?!”

Just as he was about to approach me in greeting, his right arm jerked of its own accord, then shot up menacingly as though it intended to punch me.

There was still a considerable distance between us, but its threatening intent came across clearly. Not just to him and me, but to Tyr as well.

Startled, Tyr’s eyes glowed red.

“Hugh!”

At that same instant, an army thousands strong rose from the darkness at her command.

The bottomless pit was a place untouched by sunlight. Everything lay submerged in shadow.

That was why Tyr’s power could extend everywhere. Wherever shadows connected, her authority over darkness could reach.

The countless shadows within the bottomless pit were Tyr’s arsenal, her barracks, and her soldiers. The darkness surged forward as one to protect me.

Tyr shouted in fury.

“Earthfolk...! You dare try to harm Hugh!”

“Wait! This is not my doing!”

Even the undying one, the body’s actual owner, seemed caught off guard. As though his self had split in two, he firmly restrained his right arm with his left and spoke.

To none other than his own right arm.

“O spirit of the offering! Why are you angry? Hm? What was that?”

After conversing with his right arm as though it were a separate being, the undying one addressed me with a puzzled expression from beyond the shadow army that had risen like a wall.

“Teacher. My right arm took one look at you and now wants to give you a good punch! Did you have some disagreement with it while I was unconscious?”

“What?”

A quick read of his thoughts suggested he had indeed had something resembling a conversation with his right arm.

You could communicate with that thing? Fascinating.

But a disagreement?

All I had done was use his right arm like a rag to wipe up blood so I could deal with Tyr. When it got dirty, I scraped it clean and used it again. Occasionally, I dug out bits of flesh with a skewer and scattered them around.

... If the arm had been conscious, I supposed that was enough to make it clench its fist. Haha.

I laughed awkwardly and hedged.

“Ahaha. Well. It is a long story.”

“I obtained this right arm by offering my original one to Mother Earth. It is a great hand that symbolizes mercy! Yet it is this furious! I am curious what on earth happened!”

“Well, I swung it around a bit, and it picked up a few curses...”

“Curses? Hmm. It says that is not all. Did you try cooking with it, or perhaps offer it up as a sacrifice?”

The right arm had a good memory, too. It seemed to remember even better than the Regressor.

Not confident I could fool it, I answered honestly.

“Some crazy vampire named Finlay went on a rampage, so I borrowed your right arm’s power. I used it to take out several familiars made of blood and darkness.”

“Would that not qualify as a sacrifice?”

“Oh, would it?”

I scratched my head and laughed. The undying one laughed along, then made a hearty suggestion.

“Very well! Teacher, take just one punch!”

I refused without hesitation.

“Sorry. No. If it hits me wrong, I will die.”

“I will go easy on you! I doubt my right arm will be satisfied otherwise!”

“Isn’t that up to your right arm? You aren’t the one doing the punching, so how can you go easy on me?”

“Is that so? Haha! Then see that you take the punch gently!”

While the undying one and I were laughing and chatting, Tyr, who had taken his words seriously, cried out indignantly.

“Utter nonsense.”

Her influence was beyond that of anyone else in the bottomless pit. At a single word, the ground rumbled, the shadows stirred, and the darkness swayed ominously.

Even the undying one shut his mouth in fright. Tyr warned him in a voice that seemed dredged up from the very floor of the abyss.

“Hugh chose those means only to save me! If you must blame someone, blame me, earthfolk.”

The shadow legion parted before Tyr. Its movements were coordinated and perfectly synchronized, like identical shapes projected by light.

Leaving her dark army behind, Tyr stepped forward to face the undying one. Her blood-red eyes fixed on him.

“If you insist on striking someone, strike me. If that will satisfy you, I shall take his place. But if you mean to harm Hugh... I will stop you by whatever means necessary. Even if that means erasing you from existence.”

An army unto herself, the Progenitor of all vampires. The Queen of Shadows.

Her blood was a power imbued with dominion. To earthfolk, who maintained their immortality by absorbing vital energy, it was as good as a curse that prevented regeneration.

Facing the legendary Tyrkanzyaka, the undying one scratched his head sheepishly and laughed aloud.

“Haha! So it was to save your lover? That I can accept!”

Immediately afterward—

“L-lover?”

The immense aura that had seemed poised to engulf the bottomless pit vanished without a trace.

The roiling darkness calmed, and the trembling earth held its breath. The shadow army glanced at one another for a moment, then began sinking into the ground all at once, as though by prior agreement.

All that remained was a girl too flustered to know what to do.

Amid the dissolving army of darkness, Tyr flailed about like someone who had been burned, repeatedly clenching and unclenching her hands.

“Wh-what nonsense. Hugh, Hugh. Look at that frivolous earthfolk. What strange things he says.”

While everyone watched Tyr’s behavior in disbelief, the undying one nodded vigorously and shouted.

“What an adorable lover you have! Very well! I shall speak to my right arm separately and settle this! Even it should understand that much! What do you say, my spirit of the offering?”

The right arm, which had been fiddling with the undying one’s chin, briefly curled its fingers into a circle, seemingly displeased. Then it snapped back down and fell silent beneath his shoulder.

The undying one announced cheerfully,

“My right arm says it understands, too! You are a lucky man, Teacher!”

I replied dryly.

“You’re the lucky one. If it hadn’t understood, Tyr would have physically beaten some understanding into you until it did.”

“Haha! You are not wrong!”

“Well, that is what happened. Please tell your right arm I am sorry for swinging it around without permission.”

“That apology seems a little late!”

“I did not realize your right arm was the one I needed to apologize to. My thinking has not become quite that separatist yet.”

“Hahaha! I understand!”

The undying one had never intended to hit me in the first place. Had he truly been furious, he would have lunged at me.

Being so difficult to kill made him correspondingly indifferent to harm.

A slash from a sword, a stab from a skewer—even having an arm cut off—was fundamentally no different to him from an affectionate touch. It was all physical contact that could not kill him.

In other words, he was a good-natured man who could laugh off a punch or an injury. So long as you did not impugn his honor or his tribe’s, he was safer to be around than anyone else in the world.

That was why he could stay so jovial even with the officer.

And why I had woken him up.

“Well, then! I have work to do, so I shall be off!”

“Goodbye. I hope it goes well.”

“Until later! You two enjoy yourselves!”

“You too.”

Waving broadly, the undying one retraced his steps and approached the officer, who had stayed out of sight. His booming voice carried all the way into the yard.

“Oh, I genuinely almost died just now! It seems going this way will be rather difficult!”

At his nonchalant reply, the officer glared at him disapprovingly and growled under her breath.

“... Rash. Can you not even withstand a simple threat from the Progenitor?”

“Of course not! The Progenitor is damned strong!”

“Is that something to say so proudly?!”

'Even if he was not as transcendently powerful as the Progenitor or a Beast King, I thought I could at least rely on him a little...!'

Naturally. In a place inhabited by a Regressor, a Beast King, and the Progenitor of vampires, mere immortality was hardly an impressive calling card. In fact, each of those transcendent beings possessed a form of immortality of their own.

The undying one, who had been left lying around after simply losing an arm, was a little out of his league against them.

Of course, he had no particular regrets about that. There was nothing humiliating about not being stronger than a natural disaster.

“Haha! Even for a friend, I cannot do the impossible! That beautiful girl may seem harmless at first glance, but she is the Progenitor of blood fiends! A mere warrior like me cannot defeat her in battle!”

Hearing him confirm it outright, the officer clenched her trembling hand into a fist.

'I expected as much, but I did not expect him to roll over so easily...! This is supposed to be my helper? He cannot even serve as the slightest deterrent!'

“Well, if I gave it everything I had, I might manage to tickle her a little! But then my body would be cursed, never to rise again! Haha, best we avoid contact if possible! And that goes for you as well, Lieutenant Colonel, not just me!”

The undying one stated the facts calmly. Eventually, the officer regained her composure and spoke.

“... Enough. I never intended to oppose the Progenitor in the first place. I also meant to avoid approaching that convict laborer if possible.”

“Convict laborer? Do you mean Teacher?”

“Teacher? A convict laborer is nothing but a convict laborer. What do you mean?”

“Is he not an Instructor? He called himself one when he introduced himself. That makes him my teacher, does it not?”

“That bastard even impersonated an Instructor...!”

I could feel a piercing glare from beyond the wall. Though she could not see me, the officer hurled every imaginable curse in my direction.

'Infuriating as he is, I cannot touch him while the Progenitor is so protective of him. Calm down, Callis. Do not waste your energy on irrelevant matters.'

My vampire shield was as dependable as ever. I knew I had been right.

The officer quickly collected herself and addressed the undying one.

“As I said, the objective is the King of Dogs. You know about the King of Dogs, I assume?”

“Of course! The dog lass!”

“Yes. It is not that the King of Dogs refuses to follow me... But for some reason, whenever that convict laborer calls her, she immediately runs to his side. Regardless of where she is.”

“Oho! Teacher has such an ability? I rather envy him!”

“This is a serious matter. If the King of Dogs keeps behaving that way, the entire plan will fall apart.”

The Lords of Creation’s aim was to obtain a Beast King. She had infiltrated Tantalus to secure Azi, the King of Dogs.

The reason she, a mere lieutenant colonel—compared with Tantalus’s residents, at any rate—had been sent in as the advance scout was that securing the King of Dogs was itself an exceedingly simple objective. To entice the King of Dogs, who was loyal to humans, all one needed to do was make eye contact and speak. Lieutenant Colonel Callis had meant to test that.

Then she had run into an obstacle: me.

'Our plan never accounted for the King of Dogs resisting. She is loyal to humans, and with her pact with the Military State in place, she would have come along if we asked. But... if that convict laborer keeps interfering to the end, we have no options.'

Restrain a Beast King by force and carry her off? Utterly unrealistic. If they had that kind of power, why bother trying to use a Beast King? They could simply conquer the world with it.

They were targeting the King of Dogs because such tremendous power was easy to control.

But the world worked the same way for everyone. If something was easy for you to control, it was easy for others, too.

“Then why not tell Teacher the truth and ask him? Explain why you need the dog lass and ask him to let you have her!”

If that were an option, the Lords of Creation would not be a secret society.

When the officer fell silent, the undying one nodded as though he understood.

“Hmm. So in the end, you must overcome Teacher! I always find it such a struggle, having to outdo someone else!”

“He is nothing special. But somehow... right now, he has...”

The Progenitor, Tyrkanzyaka.

The officer recalled her power.

Darkness encompassing all this land, and the power of the Progenitor who ruled it. That power alone could quite literally tip an entire country.

'A mere convict laborer... Removing him would not be difficult. But the Progenitor behind him would never agree to negotiate. And fighting her...'

The officer reached her conclusion. It might be different if the Lords of Creation could bring their full strength to bear. But here in the bottomless pit...

'Impossible. Perhaps on the surface, where the sun shines, but fighting the Progenitor here... would be suicide.'

CLACK. CLACK.

The officer’s jaw trembled.

Her mission would fail.

Because I would interfere. Already conditioned to the bell and the entertainment I provided, Azi would not go trotting after the Lords of Creation just because they called.

Yet the Progenitor behind me was too frightening for them to remove me.

Perhaps, if she reported these facts as they stood, the Lords of Creation, realizing how difficult this task was...

'Might abandon me as a disposable pawn... and wash their hands of this.'

She had fought tooth and nail. Through her efforts, she had secured her father’s legacy just before it was to be burned away.

She had joined hands with the Lords of Creation, repeatedly braving death to earn the military merits they offered her. She had even received two medals.

Lieutenant Colonel Callis had built her life up, step by step, toward becoming a Level 4 citizen.

Now a single stroke of bad luck threatened to bring it all crashing down.

The officer trembled. Pulling her cap still lower, she gritted her teeth and repeated to herself,

'I will not fall apart here. I will find a way, somehow. Even if all I have right now... is an unreliable helper.'

Her resolve firm, the officer slowly began to move.