Leandro moved ever deeper inside. The path kept going. There was no night or day in the cavern, and by now he couldn't tell how much time had passed or how far he had gone. He didn't even know whether it rained outside.

A faint dampness clung to the air. It was thick, stale moisture like mingled breaths. Soon, the source appeared: a massive hedge of thorns. Viscous air seeped through the gaps. Long, pulsing masses filled Leandro's view as they swelled and contracted.

Larvae of many sizes slid along the floor within the fence, feeding on corpses. The stone under them was slick with the fluids they excreted. There was no stench of rot. Judging by the ceaseless working of their mouths, anything brought here was eaten before it could decay.

Leandro halted. He had seen countless monsters, but never larvae like these. They planted tiny feet as they moved and, with absurdly dainty hands, seized human bodies and chewed them in steady bites.

The smallest were around ten centimeters; the largest were a meter or so. The bigger they grew, the longer their limbs became, and human features slowly emerged upon their blank faces.

"G-grr...?"

The largest lifted its head and looked at him. A slick tongue licked its freshly formed, featureless maw, and it was the only one that had a tongue at all. Threading saliva spilled from it.

"F... fresh..."

It could speak. The sound was wet, almost crawling into the ears.

Leandro met the creature's gaze with cold eyes. The larva stared back with black bead-like pupils, then bowed and trembled, returning meekly to its meal. Leandro wondered if these things would mature into humans in the chambers, but the bodies in those vessels were too perfect and platonically human.

By comparison, even the largest larva, barely a meter in length, had only the roughest shape. It strove toward human likeness but couldn't match even a ruined one.

Black ichor, blood, and slime oozed from holes in heavy blobs. Their forms collapsed as they moved. As larvae, they seemed stable. Maintaining a human shape, however, was beyond them.

Their posture failed, slapping sloppily against the ground. The sound was repulsive. Leandro's grip tightened on his sword. These were crucial signs that could be used as evidence. He couldn't destroy them, blind to what lay before and behind.

He passed by them. More of the formed larvae appeared ahead. Some had faces, some had bodies that imitated humans with finer precision. Yet nothing about them suggested they would one day become the people sealed in the chambers.

Leandro walked on through the thick air. The cavern widened, shedding even the pretense of nature, until its artificial vastness was unmistakable. After some thirty minutes, he sensed a terminus. The end lay ahead, leading into a dark, high hall. A single presence waited at the foot of a broad staircase. He knew them well.

Leandro continued moving forward.

Fwoosh!

As he reached the center of the hall, torches flared to life in a circle around him.

One, two, three, four... twenty-nine.

The figure, arms folded, had a pair of thick, powerful limbs.

A deep voice wavered with a teasing lilt, singing in rhythm. "Happy birthday to you~ happy birthday to you~ happy birthday, dearest~ happy birthday to you~! Kyaa~! Congratulations on your twenty-ninth birthday! Thank you for coming all this way!"

"..."

Leandro recognized the person's face.

The man kept talking to Leandro's silence. "Ahh, how sad. The Commander doesn't even know his own birthday. When flowers wilt from overwork, the maiden can only weep."

He slipped a hand into his broad chest and drew out a handkerchief embroidered with purple violets and a white rabbit, dabbing at his eyes.

Without turning his head, Leandro jerked a thumb behind him. "You built this entire floor?"

Duke Lawrence fluttered the cloth with a coy flourish.

"Not a maiden's solo, dear. A masterpiece crafted by many hands over long years. The darling little larvae... the maiden does manage those, for now."

"Do they grow up to become the humans in the chambers?"

Lawrence shook his head, twisting his torso so that the heavy muscles of his chest swayed side to side.

"No, no, not so. They try so hard, but impossible! Impossible, I say. Come, take the maiden's hand and I'll explain it all."

"I'll hear it at leisure." Leandro cut him off, then crisply and deliberately said, "Duke Lawrence Tartier, you are under arrest for murder; solicitation of murder by coercion; coercion; habitual abduction and enticement leading to death or injury; habitual unlawful arrest and confinement leading to death or injury; disposal and mutilation of corpses; defilement; abuse of authority; subversion of the constitutional order; and obstruction of rights through abuse of authority. You will have ample time to make your statement."

The duke shrugged. "Ho... hohoho... Forget such foolishness. We are special, aren't we? Laws are for pigs and cattle to keep their numbers in check. Why do you think I pushed you to high positions?"

It didn't matter. However, Leandro had been appointed, and his position served the peace of the citizenry.

"Terribly dangerous, you know. The maiden is not alone. The entire nation will hunt the marquis!"

For once, his voice sounded grave. It was a warning.

"They granted this authority because it's dangerous," Leandro said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"The position of high lord. We are given absurd powers to dig into what is arduous and foul. With both prosecutorial and judicial authority, nothing we do will ever be easy, will it?"

"Uhuhuht!" Lawrence's thick neck muscles rippled as he smiled. "Such entertaining words. Sad as it is, this is what makes you so captivating."

"I told you, you are under arrest. Do not resist."

"Oh my, how thrilling. But I've prepared a present for the fool who forgot his birthday. Once you see the gift this maiden has brought, your thoughts will change entirely!"

Leandro froze mid-step. Lawrence's voice brimmed with confidence, which was rare, even among all the encounters before.

"Allow me to introduce...!"

From the darkness of the hall, a long shadow extended. At its end rose a pale, human-like being. It had arms, legs, hands, and feet, and a face etched clearly into its features. Unlike the larvae, it did not crumble easily. Yet it lacked the flawless stability of the bodies preserved in the chamber. The mature woman's body drifted at the tip of a long, black tentacle, merely lingering there.

"Ta-dah!"

"..."

For the first time in his life, Leandro lost the courage to look straight ahead. The illusion he thought he had burned away from his memory stood before him. He blinked hard, wondering if it was an illusion.

The woman at the tentacle's end parted her lips. "S... so..."

In terms of what she thought or what she felt, nothing could be read in the voice that trembled from her heaving chest.

"So... son...?"

Reality tore apart, and Leandro's mind collapsed with it. The voice was exactly as he had last heard it when he was seven years old. The tip of his sword wavered with turmoil. Screams he had long buried were edged deep inside him.

"Fufufu... Knight Desery Batyenne, how does it feel to see your son again after twenty years?"

"Happy... I am so happy..."

"Do you hear? Your mother says she is glad!"

If this was hell, Leandro thought, it was not as hot as he had imagined. However, this was not the afterlife. Nor was it some magic that re-created the mother he had carried in his heart. He knew better. What appeared before him was connected to something else entirely.

Crunch... crack... crunch...

A low, revolting sound reverberated. The jewel in Leandro's possession flared, light bursting outward. It was his mother, as she existed in memory. She had not aged twenty years, but was preserved standing next to evil itself...

"Uh... uhh..."

Desery Batyenne, thirty-three years old, writhed in agony beneath the light. Covering her eyes as though they might burn away, she pressed her pale fingers to her face. From between them leaked screams like bloody clots.

Lawrence waved his hand. "Oh dear, oh dear. That will only cause her pain! Your mother suffers! Throw that stone away at once!"

Leandro clenched his teeth and gripped Ilien's relic tighter, red welts marking his palm.

"This... this was your bargaining chip?" he growled.

The duke nodded. "Not perfect, no, but soon we can extract more from Garbera. A refined specimen will be made. Your mother will be resurrected!"

As if mimicking Leandro's clenched fist, the duke raised his own and shook it, eyes gleaming.

"More than resurrection, immortality! True immortality! Memories, happiness, all reborn! As our research advances, even her appearance, her habits, every detail will be replicated!"

Immortality?

Leandro closed his eyes. His "mother" was bound to them all: the grand staircase, the ceiling, and the walls of the hall. Beneath the stone architecture, like a sheath, he sensed the monstrous presence he should have slain ten years ago.

"..."

Now Lawrence shook both fists in the air, overcome with ecstasy.

"Unlike the flasks, which require consent and yield only one perfect body... the larvae can be developed! One year — just one year — and we can sculpt as you wish! Would you prefer your mother ten years younger? Older? Age is no limit! We can even match mental age... fufufu... surely you desire this?"

Lawrence's words no longer reached him. With a triumphant smile, as though unveiling the world's last great secret, he opened his hand.

"Numbers! That is the key! We can make not one mother for you, but five, ten! A mother of ten years, twenty years, forty, fifty, every age, yours to keep! Perfection itself! If one is damaged, rest assured, we can always replace her!"

No thought came to Leandro. The man before him had raised his "mother," consumed by Garbera, in secret, for years.

Had her consciousness endured? And if so, for how long? If some fragment of her remained, what thoughts lingered there?

Law vanished from his mind. Morality, ethics, and duty were all gone. Honor, passion, life, and death were all erased. His heart filled with a single, searing hue of blue.

Leandro lowered his sword. The blade, as it fell, drank deep of pale, translucent smoke.

"Was it because of you?" Leandro asked.

"If you wish... Sorry?"

He didn't need to ask, but he wanted the final confirmation.

"Did you kill my mother?"

Lawrence did not even think to deny it.

He nodded. "Ahh... Knight Desery Batyenne ventured too deep. It could not be helped. But how proud she must be to see her son grow so splendidly! If you like, you can enjoy not one but two forms of immortality! Let me explain..."

Leandro's closed eyes tightened further.

Crunch... crack... crunch...

Focusing, he became aware of the faint but pervasive sound filling the chamber. Like a heartbeat, countless tendrils writhed all around him.

What had Garbera fed on? How has it grown?

What he had once slain and what he had read in books was nothing compared to this vastness. These vines formed the hall itself. Only a woman's shape emerged outside, but the monster encircled him from every angle.

He sensed malice and hunger. And before him stood the Empire's foremost blade. Combined, it was the perfect storm of death. Yet rage beyond measure, hatred, despair, lament, washed his heart cleaner than ever before.

Crunch... crack... crunch...

Leandro shut away his senses and opened his heart. From honed sight, sound, touch, and smell, he moved beyond perception, into intuition, resulting in instinct sharpened into revelation. Once shattered, the mind could be as clear as crystal.

"Ahh... you mean to refuse?" Lawrence asked.

Leandro gave no answer.

A streak of blue lightning flashed toward the duke. One streak turned into twenty, then to four hundred, and finally thousands of shadowy tentacles wove out in all directions, striking to block the onrushing light.