“This is….”

“Kanna’s room, right?”

Within the newly materialized space in the House of Mistresses’ mysterious corridor, the four of us find ourselves standing in a quaint little bedroom surrounded by…

—Things.

Fox-like things, cat-like things, dog-like things, rabbit-like things, people-like things.

Suffice it to say, we immediately notice that there’s a problem.

“All of the rooms we could have found, why does it have to be the room of one of the people who isn’t a suspect, though?” Second Sister Rinne complains.

“Eden is…. sorry.”

“No, no, no, Little Eden, don’t apologize! Now it makes me look like I’m ungrateful!”

“That’s right! Ignore Rinne, you’re doing a great job! Super~!”

—No, no, no, that’s not it at all.

“There’s just… a lot of dolls.”

Yes, right now, inside the room we’re in, there are all kinds of dolls sitting in every possible place, tugged into every corner, staring at us with their pitch-black, beady eyes.

Animal-head people line up on a miniature graveyard placed on a desk, tiny foxes sitting from a small, dead tree potted in the corner.

Dog-head cats, cat-head dogs, a pink rabbit with their bright red stuffing a little spilled—and most eye-catchingly… life-size masked marionettes wearing eastern clothes creepily hanging from the ceiling like countless oversized wind chimes.

The scarlet flames within the lamps can only illuminate so much, so most of the stuff I’ve listed is only what’s not hidden by the shadows.

—Which makes everything all the more creepy… I’m sorry, Kanna, but it’s true.

Picking up a small figure of a rabbit-head person wearing eastern clothes, Second Sister Rinne turns to me.

“No, actually, Miwari, these are puppets,” she says.

“Is there a difference?”

“Puppets are designed to move, see?”

Second Sister Rinne proceeds to grab another rabbit-head ‘puppet' and bring both of them beside her face, before opening their arms wide and giving me a very wide smile.

“Like this~!”

“...”

For a few seconds, I lock eyes with the smiling Second Sister Rinne, not saying anything.

—Yes, very cute, but is this really the time and place for you to be doing this?

“Anyways, do we want to keep looking inside this room?” Taking a deep breath, I turn to the other two people in the room and ask. “With Kanna not being a suspect, I don’t think it’s necessary.”

A hand of a marionette accidentally bumps into my head, so I brush it aside as calmly as possible.

“But what if there’s some kind of clue in here, though? We should at least look around a little bit,” Ninth Sister Miho says.

“I guess… that’s true.”

…..

So, in the end, the three of us decided to spend some time looking through the room just in case there was something that might be useful later—respectfully, of course.

As I continue to walk around the room, avoiding the hanging limbs of the marionettes and crouching down to look at all the stuff Kanna has on her shelves, wondering what kind of scene this exact configuration of puppets is supposed to make, my shoulder eventually bumps into someone.

““Ah…/Ah!””

“Little Eden?”

Under the dim red lights, I turn to see the golden-haired little girl, curiously inspecting the puppets in Kanna’s room as well.

“Miw…” Eden slowly turns to face me while petting Bery the Cerberus. “Have you found anything?”

“N-no, not really,” nervously, I break eye contact and give a quick reply.

For some reason, I now find it quite hard to look at Little Eden's face directly.

It’s not like I have some kind of anxiety, well, as long as it’s not something directly related to a certain person who’s also in this room at this moment. But something about Eden’s presence is rather… terrifying, to me—because of that, I have never actually tried to find an opportunity to talk with her properly ever since all of this started happening, have I?

Now that I think about it, don’t I actually have a lot of questions I could ask? Why did she want to come here? Or… who exactly is she?

—Isn’t now a good time?

Clearing my throat, and tugging my hair behind my ear, I begin to say.

“Little Eden, if you don’t mind me asking—”

“By the way… what are they doing?”

Unfortunately, before I can finish speaking, something catches Eden’s attention, causing her to point behind me.

When I turn around to where she’s pointing, I once again see a sight that causes me to become temporarily speechless.

In this small and dimly lit bedroom, where the lamps on the wall bask everything in the color of blood—where the marionettes hanging from the ceiling are casting elongated shadows onto the walls—countless numbers of strange hollowed eye ‘things’ surround a small bed.

Second Sister Rinne and Ninth Sister Miho are sitting on that bed… playing with puppets.

“Hello-w~! Misters and Misses, are we ready to begin the banquet?”

“Yes, yes, come, come. Our guests are finally here, everything’s ready!”

“Today’s meal consists of—the legs of this pathetic cat.”

“The head of this pathetic fox.”

““And the body of this good-for-nothing rabbit! We’ll eat them all from head to toe without leaving behind anything~!””

Despite the atmosphere that’s shrouded in red, and the casual talkings of ‘eating each other’...

The smiles on their faces are unbearably bright.

“What are the two of you… doing?” warily, I ask.

Instead of answering my question, the two of them simply turn to stare at me with those dark crimson eyes of theirs that reflect nothing…

""Hahahahahahaha~””

—And begin to laugh.

““Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha~””

—They laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh, all while their eyes remain fixed on me.

““Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha~””

—The scarlet flames on the walls sway along with their laughter, casting ominous shadows on their smiling faces.

…..

Eventually, they stop.

Then, the two of them continue to stare at me, as if waiting for me to say something.

So…

“...Are you done?” I ask flatly.

Immediately, Second Sister Rinne puts the puppet down and tries to suppress her smile.

“S-sorry, sorry, it’s just…” she starts to say.

“Whenever we do something like this, your reaction is always funny, Miwari,” Ninth Sister Miho concludes shamelessly.

“...”

—I knew it! Ahhhh~! Do you really think this is an appropriate time to tease me like this?!

“Haaa~ Anyways, I assume you two didn’t find anything useful either, right? So should we probably get out of here before we accidentally break something and make Kanna angry?”

Suppressing various emotions, I remain calm and try to be practical.

“Ah, yes. That girl is quite scary when she’s upset, I agree,” Ninth Sister Miho thoughtfully whispers.

“Um. Um.” Second Sister Rinne nods.

I turn to Eden and Bery the Cerberus.

“Little Eden, we don’t have anything else we want to do here, right?”

“Eden… doesn’t think so.”

—Good, because I don’t want to stay in this room with those two anymore, to be honest!

Eagerly, I stomp over to the entrance of the room and grab the door's handles.

But when I slide the door open.

A headless figure stands before me.

“...”

Clack—!

I immediately snap the door shut, then look behind me toward Eden, Miho, Rinne, and Bery the Cerberus with widened eyes.

The four of them nod their heads.

I gulp and look back at the door—only to see that there’s a bloodied tip of a knife sticking out between the gaps.

Realizing that the door's being kept ajar from the other side by the knife, I instinctually stagger backward, only to find that the moment I let go… the door will be forced open.

Shhh—!

—In a blink of an eye, the [Headless Body] lunges at me with a knife!

—————……….

[ Undercity - The Golden Catfish Restaurant ]

“And the answer to the question of what was the name of the principal who single-handedly stood ground in the battle of the Four Undead Emperors in 12BH and protected the Sorcerer’s Spire is?”

D-ding~!

““Eleineiss/The123rd principal of the Sorcerer’s Spire, Eleineiss Siol.””

“Congratulations! Both of you get two points!”

At the center of the grand stage, inside the Golden Catfish Restaurant, a number of podiums with each of the remaining participants of the beauty pageant standing behind them were currently basking under bright spotlights

—For in the fourth round of this strange, strange beauty pageant, the wheel had decided it to be a contest of [Historical Trivia].

As always, the reasoning given to justify the inclusion of this contest in a beauty pageant was, ‘Since the beauty of the body, heart, and mind, they all would be meaningless if the person doesn’t also have a beautiful personality. And since people can only create personality by relying on their past experiences and memories, the most crucial thing for someone to develop a beautiful personality is—that’s right! Knowledge!'

And so, after several rounds of back-and-forth questionnaire-ing enjoyed by the Chaos Angels within the Golden Catfish who were already far too invested in the competition, a few of the participants were currently tied for first in terms of the points they got from this round.

Right now, the audience are on the edges of their seats to see if anyone would be able to catch up to Vena or if she would just run away with the competition.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it seems like it would come down to the final round, after all. This is very exciting!”

The mechanical-rabbit-head presenter announced to the tensed-up audience, and spun around to face the also tensed-up participants.

“So, how about we jump into the fray one last time? If all of you are ready… 3… 2… 1…”

“—The final question!”

The presenter pauses.

“During the time of the Holy War, there was a kingdom in the north that was put in a crossfire between the forces of Chaos and the forces of Order… what was the name—”

Ding~!

“Auriande.”

…..

But before anyone could even have the chance to comprehend what the question was.

Vena had already pressed the buzzer and answered it.

“C-Congratulations! That’s, in fact, the correct answer. As expected of our Super Maid.”

Surprised, the mechanical-rabbit-head presenter stutteringly gave Vena a salute.

While the people were still in shock, the quick-witted presenter swiftly recovered from the unexpected situation to get the show moving along.

“Alright then, ladies and gentlemen, let’s tally up the points and see how it affects our new standings!”

On the giant monitor spanning four floors, the list of names of the remaining participants along with the number of points they gained from each round were shown.

“In clear first, of course, we have Miss Vena. But the second and third place are not as far behind as you’d think.”

After four rounds of competition, the original 24 participants had been reduced to only 5. Despite Vena’s dominating performance in the first three rounds, the lead she had going in the final round was still only 10 points.

“It seems there are a few clear favorites going into the final round, so in order to make things interesting, we are going to make this a double points round so that all five of our remaining participants would have a chance at first or second place!”

‘OoooooooooOoooohh~!”

“So let’s end this competition, the only way it could possibly be done in the Undercity...”

As the presenter spoke, the drums began to roll.

The stage began to shake slightly, and on the face of the giant wheel that was used to decide the contest for each round before this, every other symbol was changed to only one thing and one thing only…

—Two swords, clashing!

“—[Trial by combat]!”

Simultaneously, that phrase got plastered onto every screen within the Golden Catfish Restaurant!

“Calmness, elegance, and a well-trained mind. Just like how the true character of a person will always show itself while under pressure. If you can’t even look pretty while fighting, how beautiful are you, really?”

“OoooooooOOOOoooooooOOOoooooooHHHHH~~!!”

Then, he turned to the remaining five participants, standing on the stage.

“The rules are that there are no rules, use every means available to make your competitors admit defeat. But please do remember that this is still just a beauty pageant…”

“Now that’s all the preface is said and done.

“Let us…

“Begin—!"

But then….

After the presenter finished speaking, rather than an outburst of intense violence that everyone was anticipating, in the next moment after the announcement was made...

—There was only silence.

Silence…

And a feeling of cold that began to creep up everyone’s spine.

Even the people who are somewhere else in the Golden Catfish could feel it—as if a cold, dense mist had crept into every room and snuffed the heated atmosphere of this whole place in an instant.

So, slowly, one by one, the audience gulped, and their eyes turned to the source of that feeling.

In the middle of the grand stage, one of the five remaining participants’ figures continued to exude a terrifyingly dark presence on a level that made everyone forget to breathe.

And then, with a level of pressure felt before only by those who had been in the presence of a true “god”, the kind that made even the bravest among the Chaos Angels feel a feeling of unsurpassable hopelessness they’d never tasted before in their lifetimes...

“Please, resign.”

—Vena said with a pleasant smile.

….

Everyone: “”“...”””

—We hadn’t even had the chance to get excited yet, Sis, are you in a hurry?

The audience wanted to complain.

But alas… rules are rules.

“A-after five rounds of competitions!”

The mechanical-rabbit-head presenter immediately turned to announce.

“Housekeeping.”

“10/10.”

“Elegance.”

“10/10.”

“Martial Prowess.”

“10/10.”

Although it was very sudden, everyone in this place knew that there really was no point in continuing.

The audience recovered from the double shock caused by Vena’s actions, and excitement began to once again return to their eyes.

—Now that we think about it, forcing everyone to resign without lifting a finger is… actually kind of cool!

As the presenter continued to announce the conclusion of this event, the audience was also getting ready for one last—uproarious cheer.

“Miss Vena, loyal servant to her Lady and a bonafide super-maid! Ladies and gentlemen, It looks like we have the winne—”

But before he could finish…

“No.”

—A voice resounds, loud and resonance, coming all the way from high above

"E-excuse-me? Master Casandro?”

The rabbit-head presenter looked up, asking for clarifications.

After a few seconds of silence.

“Breasts… too small.”

Everyone: “““...”””

Back on the stage.

Vena’s smile turned slightly cold.

[Vena... Calm down.]

“It has to be this person.”

The person who was responsible for everything that was happening in the Undercity tonight, and the person who put up a job for kidnapping Eden, causing him to eventually be trapped inside this domain.

—And the only person who was not at all intimidated by her display of power.

Booom—!

Without any hesitation, Vena kicked the ground, launching herself from the stage directly to the president's suite on the top floor!

—————……….