The Dog Needs a Master

”Why did you come here? Were you really planning to cheat on me?”

She had been gone less than an hour, yet for some reason he had come to fetch her again. He asked the question with a resentful tilt to his voice.

”You said you weren’t. Hmm?”

Erabelle stood with her hands clasped behind her back and endured his accusations.

When Dezeb told Camillia to leave, she fled without looking back, leaving Erabelle to deal with him alone.

At least it was the weekend, and no one else had come to the unit infirmary. Or perhaps that wasn’t fortunate. It was the perfect place to be murdered quietly...

”Lieutenant! You’re coming out with us again tonight, right? I heard the club’s packed with gorgeous—”

The door flew open, and the bright voice of the soldier who had burst in stopped dead.

Why did things always have to pile on like this?

”I heard you were h-here...”

Apparently, no one had told him who she was with. Well, misery loved company, and nobody wanted to die alone. That didn’t mean they all had to die together... Erabelle looked at the latest victim with mournful eyes and trembled.

”A club?”

Dezeb’s voice was cool beneath its hint of laughter.

”Sweetheart, can you afford the compensation you’d owe me?”

Of course Erabelle couldn’t afford the compensation Dezeb had specified. But she couldn’t cope with this situation, either.

She had to sit pressed against Dezeb’s side on the club floor, where everyone could see them, rather than in a private room.

From there, she made eye contact with Majia, who was staring at them. Barely dressed and surrounded by women, Majia glared in their direction, breathing hard. Erabelle worried he was going completely off the rails.

”Him too? How many people have you been cheating on me with?”

Dezeb tightened the arm around her shoulders as he asked. On his first day here, he’d picked a fight over whether she liked Majia. Now he was acting as if he didn’t even know him.

”Division Commander, I have never cheated on—”

”Didn’t you read the contract?”

”...I did.”

If he interpreted that broad, all-encompassing contract expansively enough, perhaps it could count as cheating... Still pinned to his side, Erabelle looked up at him sadly. He was already on his second bottle.

A few strands of Dezeb’s swept-back hair had fallen across his smooth forehead. The mouth curved in amusement closed around the neck of the bottle, then let it go.

”Want a bottle? It makes you feel awfully sexy.”

Even through the noise, his whisper sent a shiver through her, as though it were licking her brain.

”Th-that’s not proper liquor. What they sell on the floor usually has something mixed into it...”

”You know a lot about it.”

”......”

Erabelle quietly closed her mouth and followed his gaze.

He was watching the woman on the pole.

This seemed to be the show Majia had mentioned before.

The slender beauty removed her clothes one piece at a time. By the time she took hold of the pole, she was almost naked.

Each movement of her hips made the bills tucked into the straps of her underwear brush suggestively against her skin. After a while, she exchanged a few whispered words with a man waving a large bill, climbed down from the pole, and settled into his arms.

The problem was that Dezeb, who had been watching intently, stood up with his bottle. Erabelle looked at him in alarm.

With a smile in his eyes, he slowly took hold of the pole.

Erabelle grew restless. He set down the bottle and began unbuttoning his shirt, one button at a time. His hips moved languidly as he undid his belt.

It wasn’t hard for Erabelle to recognize the way he moved. He moved like that in bed.

Her face burned.

Fortunately, no one approached him. Instead, the people around her began tangling with whoever sat beside them. As if they had all lost their minds, they clung to the nearest person.

No one on the club floor was drinking or smoking anymore. No one was dancing, checking the music, or serving drinks.

Everyone was entwined with someone else. Majia, too, became entangled with the women beside him, all at once.

A low hum filled Erabelle’s ears as her thoughts grew hazy.

Dezeb undid the button of his pants, leaned against the pole, and slid down it again.

She couldn’t look away.

His gaze clung to her like a spiderweb... It took Erabelle a moment to register that the arm of the person reaching for her had been severed.

Bright red drops of blood sprayed into the air.

Before she could turn her head, Dezeb came up to her. He drew deeply on a hookah, exhaled the smoke slowly, and asked for a tip.

”...If you enjoyed the show, you ought to tip me.”

Dezeb trapped Erabelle between his knees and leaned against the sofa. Long fingers curved around the delicate nape of her neck and her jaw.

”How much are you going to give me?”

His low laugh tickled her ear.

”Or would you rather sleep with me?”

Erabelle blinked slowly.

”I’ll give you a good price.”

”...Pardon?”

She had been offered a lot of discounts lately. Erabelle felt uneasy.

”Why? Don’t you like me? Am I not good enough?”

”N-no, that’s not...”

”How about 1 cp? I’m practically giving it away. Buy me, and I could even reduce the compensation.”

”I-I’ll buy!”

Dezeb smiled and whispered that there was a motel upstairs.

Erabelle squeezed her eyes shut. When she came to her senses, she was standing in front of the club elevator with his arm draped over her shoulders.

《She’ll care if she finds out.》

Dezeb buried his nose in Erabelle’s hair and shot a sidelong glance.

《Why? She might ignore it.》

《She’s known that human for years. She thinks of him as a younger brother.》

He had joined Majia Olor’s mind to that of some random person sitting beside him.

《Maybe they’ve fallen for each other.》

Humming to himself, Dezeb pressed the button for an upper floor.

《Dezeb, she’ll notice.》

《...Is there absolutely no chance she’ll notice and ignore it?》

Of course there wasn’t. He buried his face against the warmth of her neck and let out a pained groan.

《Take them away and heal them all.》

So there would be no injured people for her to worry about, he drew back every shadow he had spread through the club and pressed the button to close the elevator doors.

Kay was depressed.

With a hologram of the planet projected before him, he stared at the area seething with black shadows, his face heavy with gloom.

”We’ll pay for the damage immediately,” Ol said.

Kay gave a hollow laugh.

”Are you planning to annex this place to your divine domain too?”

”There’s a planetary deity here. We couldn’t.”

”That doesn’t mean you’re going to get rid of it because it’s in your way, does it?”

”Not yet.”

”...Fuck.”

Unlike the other Dogs, Ol didn’t play along with jokes. Then again, the fact that Kay was joking with these things at all was absurd...

But they had been running into each other for more than a day or two. After repeating the same lives together more times than he could count, Kay and the Dogs had developed a strange relationship.

Lately, he was too tired even to hate them.

”...Why did it have to happen here?”

He pressed a hand to his aching forehead, then noticed his arm was still trembling, not yet fully healed, and laughed bitterly again.

”Why put a restriction on him in the first place?”

”There was a brief problem involving Sanctuary.”

”...Again?”

Kay’s expression darkened. He clicked his tongue.

”I had a fair idea when I saw what he’d done to the place... Wait. Sanctuary still managed to escape extinction after that?”

There were strange things about this situation in more ways than one. Even the feeling of unfamiliarity was unfamiliar to Kay, and his frown wouldn’t ease.

”The balance was restored. For the first time since that day. Isn’t that what matters to the First Divine Seat?”

”...Everything could repeat itself.”

”Could it?”

Kay heard absolute certainty in Ol’s question that it would not. It wasn’t so much that he found it hard to believe as that he was afraid to believe it. He said nothing.

”Well, even if it does, there’s nothing we can do.”

That much was true. Kay ground out a curse and spat. Ol watched him closely.

”The First Divine Seat has changed a great deal too. I remember you being rather refined.”

”...Fuck. How long ago was that? You’re the strange ones for never changing.”

He stuck a cheap cigarette between his lips and scowled. It was his last one. With his arm injured, even going out to buy more would be difficult.

”We’re very tired too.”

”And you’ll still bark in whatever direction your Master points.”

”It’s our nature.”

”That damned nature... After tens of thousands of years, you’d think you’d have evolved a dozen times over.”

”It’s also only been a few decades.”

Kay sighed again.

”Vermilion doesn’t seem to know anything. Where the hell did he make his life vessel? Who did he use as the sacrifice? Don’t tell me it was the Second Prince.”

There was a reason people recoiled from black magic.

It always required a sacrifice. There was only one way for a lich to make a vessel.

They chose a suitable victim, removed the victim’s organs bit by bit without killing them, and kept those organs alive.

Usually, they put them in a glass jar fitted with a defensive system.

A jar was easier to move and maintain than a prison. It was also easier to keep the sacrifice in a state of suspended animation and to make eye contact with the caster.

The vessel had to remain somewhere the caster could see it.

The limit was roughly a hundred days. A lich that failed to look upon its vessel within that time would collapse.

”......”

Instead of answering, Ol moved his eyes toward the seething area of the hologram.

”If you don’t want to answer, fine, but why are you looking—”

Kay broke off, his face filling with horror.

”...It can’t be. Can it?”

”It’s probably what you’re thinking.”

”What...?”

Kay faltered.