Dark Fantasy’s Extra Chapter 91

“What are you talking about?”

I stubbornly kept up my act.

“Your acting skills are quite good. But you can’t fool my eyes.”

Princess Bari said as she placed her palm on my chest.

Though it was just a small, delicate palm’s worth of coldness, it was chilling enough to make my heart skip a beat.

“It’s cold, isn’t it?”

“…Are you under some curse?”

“Curse, a curse… I wonder if that’s what it is. Me, and my sisters too…”

Princess Bari spoke in a crawling voice while gazing into the distance.

“Are you perhaps worried about me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re so warm. Ah yes, this warmth of life, and this kindness.”

Princess Bari spread her arms wide and embraced me.

My heart was pounding like it would burst.

How should I escape?

“That’s why, the sorrow when taking it away…”

“Stop talking nonsense and get off me.”

I tried to calmly push her away without letting my voice tremble.

“Fufu, how brazen.”

Her eyes glowed.

And I died.

“Ah, aah…”

Death.

Death itself brushed past me.

The bitter, metallic taste rising from deep in my throat.

That very taste of death always felt after barely surviving a lethal battle.

“Gaaah!”

Rather, that familiar taste helped me come to my senses and I shoved Princess Bari away.

But unlike during the castle’s earlier tremor, she didn’t budge at all, and I alone fell and tumbled to the ground.

That’s fine then.

At least I got away.

I immediately detonated a smoke bomb and poured magical power into [Acceleration] as I fled.

But I tripped over something and fell again.

Looking down, I saw a small black bone hand protruding from the ground gripping my ankle.

“You’re quite a well-trained hunter.”

Princess Bari walked toward me leisurely.

“But you’re in the palm of my hand.”

And then a headache hit me from the side effects of rapidly using magical power.

Pain like my head was being split open.

But I have to somehow, somehow do something.

I didn’t come here to end like this.

I have to save Chris!

“Nnngh…!”

The restraint on my ankle was strong.

I had a strong feeling that there was no way to break free.

I immediately managed to just raise my body while kneeling and drew out Crowty’s mithril dagger.

“My, that’s made of mithril…”

My target wasn’t the bone hand but my ankle.

It’s a much better gamble than trying to break free from a witch’s restraints with my meager strength.

“Excellent.”

But even that was stopped when a black skeleton protruding from the wall bit my arm.

“You truly are an excellent human.”

Princess Bari said in rapture.

“That will to immediately try cutting off your own leg while being such an intensely living human… It makes me a bit envious.”

An icicle stabbed into my spine.

She is the witch who rules over the dead.

Not even death can be a refuge…

“Ah, what a shame. I’d love to make you one of my generals but… I’ll have to yield this time.”

Yield?

Me?

…To whom?

“The moment I first saw you, I thought you’d be perfect.”

“Perfect for what? What are you scheming?”

“Don’t worry. It won’t be such a bad experience.”

Black skeletons emerged from Princess Bari’s shadow, completely bound me and dragged me down to the castle’s basement.

“By the way, shall we introduce ourselves? I’m Bari. And you are?”

“Like I’d tell you.”

“Hmm, I’d prefer to hear it from your own mouth rather than forcing it out… But I suppose that won’t happen.”

Why won’t it happen?

Princess Bari can use corpses to draw out souls and manipulate them at will.

Though it seems somewhat difficult with particularly strong souls, she could play with a lower-ranked hunter like me like putty.

And honestly speaking, I don’t have confidence I could resist that torture.

How could anyone possibly endure pain inflicted one-sidedly while already dead.

“Then it will be just my one-sided story, but would you like to listen?”

I don’t want to hear it.

I don’t want to get directly entangled with witches.

Especially not with this horrific being who can even take away death itself.

But contrary to my feelings, Bari began her story.

“You see, I actually have many sisters. We all got along well in the past, but after a certain incident we split up and now we’re fighting each other…”

Please don’t tell me such things.

It’s too much for an extra like me to hear.

Though of course I already know all of it…

“But since we’re all similar in strength, there’s no clear way to settle things decisively. Ah, though our eldest sister did use her head to temporarily… push away everyone except the youngest. Including me.”

By pushing everyone away, does she mean the sealing?

Then that must be referring to Saintess Belle…

I already know that Belle is the eldest of the witches.

And the youngest she mentioned must be Red Hood Karen.

“But in the end it was just a stopgap measure. Plus she badly injured herself doing it, so her condition must be terrible.”

That’s correct too.

That’s why Belle, who is called both the pinnacle and origin point of Beast hunting, has to keep 1st-rank hunters around as her direct guards.

Single-handedly sealing four beings of equal power must have come with quite a price.

“…So what? I’m not interested in your sister squabbles.”

No, rather it’s better not to hear it.

If Belle were to find out that I heard such stories, she’d probably try to bury me too.

“Fufu, but it’s nice to have someone listen. I’ve been alone for such a long time, you see. Sometimes creatures would approach, but you know? You can’t really converse with creatures.”

Princess Bari continued mumbling things I shouldn’t hear while taking me down to Spider Castle’s basement.

Though she spoke in roundabout ways rather than telling everything directly, with my knowledge from my past life I could understand it all.

“Do you like flowers? Actually, I’m not an archaeologist but someone who tends to flower gardens.”

Princess Bari’s resurrection flowers.

Those flowers that bloom using human blood and souls as fertilizer can revive the dead in exchange for the lives they’ve devoured.

They come in different colors based on how many human lives were sacrificed, with higher tiers possessing unbelievable powers.

Due to that simple yet powerful ability, countless people worshiped Princess Bari in the past, and that’s how the Temple of the Western Sky was built.

If you side with Princess Bari and see that ending in Blue Paper Moon, she ultimately succeeds in creating the ultimate white flower and creates a world where no one dies.

Even as the consciousness of all living beings erodes and collapses over time, they will continue living.

No different from the already dead…

“Growing flowers isn’t easy.”

“So you’ll turn me into fertilizer?”

That might be better actually.

At least I’d die for certain.

“Hmm… something similar perhaps?”

Similar?

Just what is she planning to do?

I couldn’t recall anything else from what I knew about Princess Bari.

Is this part of Hilde’s original story then?

On the way down I observed my surroundings.

Though it was already an old castle and not in great shape from fierce battles in the past, I could roughly distinguish signs of recent combat from the state of the dust.

And I could tell there had been some kind of fight here.

Did Princess Bari kill all of Arachne’s minions?

Or could it be that… could it be that Maia was…?

But we arrived at this castle’s dungeon without any clear answers to those questions.

“Please wait here a moment.”

Princess Bari locked me in one of the dungeon cells and left.

My hands were still bound by some unknown curse-like thing and couldn’t move.

Though I know several ways to escape physical restraints, I can’t do anything about magical ones like this.

Moreover, an undead wearing oriental-style armor stands guard right in front of the iron bars.

From my memory, it should be a Nether Warrior around mid-tier Beast level.

In Princess Bari’s domain these pour out like mobs, but right now I only see one.

“Hah… damn it.”

I lay down on the cold, damp stone floor and sighed.

Though I didn’t feel good, strangely my heart was calm.

I knew… I knew something like this would happen someday.

My life was always walking a tightrope, and I never thought I’d always win in these life-or-death gambles.

I knew such an end would come.

But…

“…I can’t end here.”

I raised my upper body.

For now only my hands are bound, everything else is intact.

They didn’t even take away my mithril dagger.

Just how arrogant are they?

If I can just somehow deal with the Nether Warrior in front of me, I can escape and…

“I-is someone there?”

Just then I heard a voice from the next cell.

“Yes. I was just captured. What about you?”

I turned my ear toward that cell.

I could sense the presence of multiple people.

“Same here… Hah, damn it…”

“How exactly did you end up captured here? And how many of you are there?”

“Originally there were 10 of us, but now only 3 remain.”

“…What about the other 7?”

“That black woman took them one or two at a time. They never came back.”

“How long have you been imprisoned here?”

“About 2 weeks? Probably a bit longer, but being here so long makes it hard to keep track of days properly… How did you end up captured?”

“While looking for a missing friend…”

“Ah… Well, since we’ve met like this, let’s introduce ourselves. I’m Morrison. Do you know Cranion? We’re all from there…”

“I’m…”

…Wait.

“…Oz. I gather herbs. I also came to Cranion.”

I gave a fake name and occupation.

Something feels off.

“Oh, a fellow townsman!”

“Yes… Do you perhaps… know about Winter of Salvation?”

“…Ah.”

I could hear sadness in the voice from beyond the wall.

“So you were one of our ‘comrades’.”

“Don’t tell me… you were the ones who went to capture that disabled hunter?”

“That’s right. It was us.”

“…”

These bastards…

“Hah, I never imagined things would turn out like this. This wasn’t the original deal. I need to let the others know…”

“…Since I don’t know the details, could you explain? What exactly was this deal? And what did that black woman deceive you about?”

I asked as calmly as possible while suppressing the rage that threatened to explode.

Remembering getting punched by Crowty at headquarters helped me maintain a minimum of composure.

“Well, it’s not like we can get out of here anyway, so I’ll tell you everything.”

The cultists who attacked my comrade Chris began their story.