Chapter 22: Please…kill me

Arthur's gaze fell upon a piece of exposed wall. The man was not being kept in a cell like he had hoped for, like what would be humane. He was chained up to the wall, a thick spiked chain gouged through the centre of his chest attaching him to the sediment behind, his legs or rather what was left of them fastened with severed metal clams to the point where they completely shut off blood flow, leaving two emaciated black stumps, his frail mangled arms one split into a string like noodles and the other a limp paste that possessed what Arthur could faintly make out through disbelieving shaking eyes to be the nubs of something resembling fingers.

Arthur was going to throw up. His stomach couldn't stand the sight of the man, and neither could his sanity. He was from a world where violence and especially torture…If this could even be called that anymore, were frowned upon and seen as barbaric acts of cruelty that wouldn't be allowed to stand in society. Sure Arthur was a victim of violence despite all this, but that didn't mean he liked to see it. He was fine when his body was being messed up because, well, it was him. He held little self-worth; the only thing he actively cared about, though foolishly, was his own life. It was paradoxical.

*Blagh* Once again, the scalding hot sensation of half digested food and gastric acid burning their way up Arthur's severely cut oesophagus made its presence known. He wanted to vomit…but he couldn't. Arthur knew that if she were to find any traces of him now, his life would end up ruined…so Arthur repeated the process from earlier. Stealing his mind, he attempted to swallow a cooled variation of the same meal his stomach had reluctantly prepared for him, except this time, he failed. Just when he was about to perform the act, his eyes betrayed him. Instead of focusing on the ground like Arthur had trained them to, they decided to look, to get a full overview of the man that existed opposite him, and what they saw would burn a memory so hauntingly vivid Arthur would have trouble sleeping the rest of his time at the Zepar estate.

What filled his gaze was the visage of a man so absolutely brutalised he couldn't even be considered human anymore. His hollow bone tight face was without a jaw or anything on the bottom half of his face. His tongue had been severed or rather trimmed to the point that it could barely be seen despite having such an exposed view of it. No flesh lined the inside of his mouth. It was just pure empty air. The pipe leading to his oesophagus had its flesh peeled back, leading one to view the mangled muscle that still furiously attached itself to the bone, while forced through the cartilage was what could be likened to an IV, something that pumped a red liquid into the man's body that Arthur could only reluctantly identify as a weak healing potion, something strong enough to keep this man on the verge of death alive by regenerating his spilt blood, and keeping his brain and heart stimulated but nothing more, his life itself was hell, and this wasn't even the complete appraisal of damages.

The top of his skull had been clumsily opened or rather smashed, giving view to the unfortunate man's brain sprinkled with fragments of sharp bone, many of which were sunk so firmly into the soft flesh of the man's brain that only the top could be identified.

In the place where his eyes should have been were nothing more than empty sockets. He had been made blind to the world around him, both a blessing and a curse. The only thing that could be deemed as somewhat undamaged were the man's ears. Sure they had been damaged, torn, cut and shredded but judging from his earlier feat of calling for Arthur, their function seemed to remain at least somewhat intact. For all intents and purposes, the man was a corpse, a corpse that was unfortunately still in our world.

And it was at this point that Arthur's pale face went deathly, he couldn't restrain the urge anymore, and he doubted whether he'd be able to in the first place. Not only did he have the disgusting cooling pile of crudely dissolved breakfast already simmering in his mouth, but on the other end of the line was a fresh batch being forced up his throat. No matter what he did, he'd overflow. No matter what Arthur did, he was helpless. If he were to vomit now, she'd surely find traces of it, whether it be because of the lingering smell or the wet stain left behind on the blood caked stone floor. 'This is…his blood,' Arthur's iris's shook in realisation, his gaze quickly shifting to his now cupped hands, 'THIS IS HIS BLOOD *BLEGH*' And with that, the dam broke, orang dyed vomit with hints of crimson spewed forth from Arthur's agape mouth and directly into his blood soaked hands, Arthur had had an idea on how he would deal with the issue, but now…Arthur really didn't want to go through with it. The mere notion repulsed him to the point he doubted whether performing such a grotesque act would even make him human anymore. 'I-I can't,' Arthur shakily affirmed, his cheeks bloated and mouth filled with suppressed excrement, his eyes tunnel visioned on his cupped palms where a pool of the stuff lay, its orange hue now a deeper shade of red. 'I-I I don't want to drink his blood, that's so wrong, that's, that's, that's fucked…but, I don't want to die,' like a devil and angel were on his shoulders pressuring the boy Arthur began to doubt himself.

Wasn't living the one thing he prioritised most in the world? Wasn't that the one goal driving him forwards in his quest to conquer the heroines? He had always been looking out for a future version of himself, yet if he let the contents of his stomach spill right now, there would be no future self for him to protect, no projected version of himself he could escape to. And on the other side of this argument were the morals set by society and the innate sense of right and wrong the boy who had given himself the name of Arthur felt, and drinking someone else's blood fell on the wrong side of the scale. It didn't matter if he had gotten it from the source or not. He wasn't a vampire. Arthur was a human. He couldn't understand the grotesque nature of such a thing.

'So which option is it, to remain a perfect human like you imagine yourself to be with all your excellent morals or to live, to survive the day in hopes of reaching a happy future…The choice is obvious,' The two figments of Arthur's imagination questioned.

'I…I want to live,' Arthur affirmed, steeling his mind once again to swallow the lingering gastric present that resided in his mouth before consuming his next meal.

*Gulp* The burning liquid slid down Arthur's throat just as well this time as the first, in the way that he didn't go down well at all, chunks of scalding gastric acid splattered against the inside of his trachea once again, burning his throat to the point of blood, before finally, he heard the dull thump of the half liquid half solid fall in place at the bottom of his stomach, Arthur had completed the first and easiest part in his goal to dispose of the evidence, and with the completion of such a task his head now craned towards his cupped hands.

Arthur didn't want to do this. He didn't like the idea of drinking someone else's blood whatsoever. Sure there were the health risks that came with such an action which is definitely a preventative to all those that would even think of performing such a disgusting activity, but that factor didn't even apply to the mentally distressed boy. His potions could easily heal him of whatever ailment plagued this man's blood. No, Arthur didn't want to drink the stuff simply because Arthur hated the idea of intaking a part of another human into him. Spit and stuff were fine but blood, don't you need that to live, to function as a person. And drinking this worn and torn unknown man's blood didn't exactly appeal to him as much as, say, Vienna's.

'Here-*gulp* we go,' Arthur readied his stomach and raised his palms to meet his lowered lips. He wanted to make the process a fast one, so Arthur gulped the stuff down with a pained depressive frown. He could feel the increased irony taste press against his lips, though he forced his mind not to focus on that part. Arthur didn't want to be sick again, so he thought of better meal pallets, like the rest of the vomit that struggled to find its way down the funnel that was the boy's swollen, bloody throat.

A minute passed with Arthur, experiencing nothing but both mental and physical torment. If he knew that this is what exploring that stench would result in, then the boy would have surely walked past the abruptly ending corridor without a second glance.

'*gag* *gasp* *gag* Immediately after consuming the bile liquid, Arthur pulled up his previously lowered blockade. The rotting stench that racked his mind in that brief time was more palpable than ever around the tormented man, to the point where Arthur could only reluctantly affirm that the reason for the miasma was him, something he couldn't do anything to stop and or fix.

'I…hate myself,' Arthur self-deprecatingly commented, his vision now returned to the living corpse that sat or was he standing? Well, whatever it was, he existed opposite the grimacing Arthur, the urge to vomit surfacing in his mind with just a brief look at the man's whole appearance. 'Do I talk to him? I mean, he knows that someone who has an oddly high pitched male voice has been down here…and there's no telling whether he'd tell her that or not…fuck. Why did I have to yell earlier? Why did I have to bring this shit upon myself? Shit, I don't think there's any damage that could be done talking to him further than what I've done to myself already…and If he does speak…I would say I'd kill him, but that would just reveal that someone has already been down here as well,' Arthur pondered, 'whatever I do, I'm kind of fucked. However, If I leave right now, there's still a chance he might just think that the voice he hears was some kind of inward delusion,' Arthur affirmed, turning his back on the helplessly brutalised emaciated man.

However, before he could even take a step away from the corpse, the man would speak again. This time his barely formed words, only pronounceable via the base of his tongue, would shake Arthur once again, luring the boy in to stay with his harsh whispers only for the cause of it all to arrive when he would finally turn tail and leave.

"kow you there", The voice whispered in its oddly familiar tone of voice that still caught the boy off guard. Of course, Arthur knew that one's voice would undergo a drastic change after being subjected to the same type of torment as the man before him; however that didn't mean that there'd be zero traces of the original tone, and it was these traces that resonated with Arthur, a sudden sense of guilt welling up within his chest and to the brink of his eyes that he quickly repressed, he had his suspicions and Arthur knew he was most likely right in them, yet Arthur prayed he wasn't…Arthur didn't want to be the cause of this.

There were very few people Arthur had interacted with since coming to this world, and the people outside this household and worthy of such punishment were even fewer. There were only two people, one person who Arthur naively refused to kill and another who simply ran away from the scene of the crime. And though the idea of this man being one of those two, mainly the former lessened Arthur's guilt towards the whole thing, he still refused to accept the possibility that his actions, his misplaced kindness…was it even kindness or just foolishness could bring such despair to someone, the mere thought that possibly killing someone on his first day in a new world could have led to an overall more guilt free version of himself hurt Arthur, he didn't like that thought at all yet he was forced to ponder it. 'Did I…do this,' Arthur unsteadily questioned, his mind turning dark while tears began to profusely spill from his swollen eyes into his cupped hands. Even at a time like this, Arthur still made sure to leave no traces of his existence behind. Who knows, maybe if this man even told the girl the truth, she might not believe him. Arthur wouldn't believe his ex-captors if they were ever going to say something, so who's to say that girl wouldn't do the same.

Yet even with these thoughts, Arthur remained silent. He didn't want to confirm his suspicions. As long as it wasn't a definite answer, Arthur could still cling to the hope that his naivete at the time wasn't something that could degrade a man to such a state. He had changed since then. If the situation called for it now, Arthur wouldn't hesitate to take a man's life, at least Arthur hoped he'd be able to.

"Kill me…lease…kill me," The man began to ritualistically chant despite having his jaw severed and his speech slurred to the point of near incomprehensibility. Immediately a horrific bolt of guilt shot through Arthur's body. His mind couldn't hold out any longer. He had tried to suppress his suspicions, to suppress the almost guaranteed possibility that he had been the root cause of all of this man's suffering, but he couldn't deny it anymore. He had driven a man to such wishes, to make them beg for a death that Arthur still could not give him, not because he was scared of taking a man's life but because he feared the androphobic girl that may find out about her little stress ball breaking and directly pin point the guilt to him, the one person possibly dumb enough to just jump into such a place without even asking permission from the higherups nor reporting the stench in the first place.

'System, can you please just pull up the trust meter and description for this man…please' Arthur begged through clouded eyes.

{Trust: -80% (Hate)}

{Description: The first man beaten by the host upon his arrival in the world of Avalon, he holds great resignation towards your very existence and to the fact that you stopped him mid crime}

Upon reading through the system's confirmation, Arthur's heart gave an irregular thump of involuntary denial, which was promptly forced into one of acceptance. His blood seemed colder than usual, almost chilling, his gaze became unfocused, and his knees folded in upon themselves, tears profusely spilt forth from his almost dried tear ducts. He had done all of this, though not directly. He was the cause for this man's suffering, for he had created the very girl that brought about such severe judgement. It seems like no matter how much Arthur tried to fight it, no matter how much he tried to avoid giving Charlotte the epithet she would have earned in the future, some things were simply inevitable. Charlotte was a yandere. Arthur had no argument against this, it was merely a fact, and even more so, she had earned her original title even earlier than in the original canon of the game. She was now truly the man slayer and a super enhanced one at that. 'I-should I have just killed him?' Arthur blankly questioned, though the thought was too late to be having now. No matter how much Arthur regretted his actions, he couldn't change the past…at least not yet, and even then, he'd still do the same thing again, time was a fickle thing, and he knew better than to mess with it.

'System, please-please just tell me what I should have done. I-I don't know what to do anymore. I didn't want anyone to end up in such a state, yet even now, I can't even force myself to hate the punishment Charlotte's given him. He touched her, he tormented her with his sickly taunts, doesn't he…kind of deserve this,' Arthur hollowly questioned the system, unaware that when he reached the very end of his query, his eyes had begun to morph from their usual form into that of two swirling twin voids.

{The system can't give the host a proper answer to that question. It all depends on where the host's morals lie}

The system mechanically responded, though unknown to Arthur, was the underlying fact that it took the being that resided in the interface a great deal of effort to remain calm under such a question. After all, what type of wife would be able to stay calm when their husband is on the verge of near mental collapse.

'Please…please just tell me what I should have done. I don't care about all this moral bullshit anymore. You're like a super enhanced computer or some secret god, right? So tell me with your almighty wisdom what I should have just done…I can't be bothered thinking about this anymore.' Arthur solemnly demanded, yet no response came from the system. He had to think about this by himself.

The more Arthur stared at the corpse like the man, the more he came to feel an odd sense of joy in the visage. Hadn't Charlotte done this by herself and for herself, hadn't she been the one to request for the perpetrators of the crime to be moved from whatever cell they were being held in at a nearby prison or maybe in the house to this very room to get her recompense through all the suffering they had put her through, hadn't she gone into this dungeon with the same mentality Arthur possessed when he convinced Iris into sparring with him?

Charlotte had been mentally and almost physically damaged by this piece of shit that existed before him. Yeah, that's it. This man wasn't a man at all. He was subhuman filth, a creature, a worm just like Arthur was in the eyes of his own parents, he had attempted to take something that wasn't his, and he was punished for it. Isn't that how the world works.

The more Arthur thought about it, the more Charlotte's presumed reasoning made sense. This world was twisted, it was kill or be killed, and Arthur knew that. He was naive when he let this man live, but with this new flawed sense of judgement, he began to see this outcome as the better of the two. By allowing this man to live, he had granted Charlotte the chance to take her revenge against her abuser, something that Arthur had no right to take away from the girl if she so desired it. This was…good. This wasn't his fault. He wasn't the one that brought this man to beg for the sweet release of death. That was Charlotte. All he did was allow her the opportunity for retribution.

Arthur's eyes began to unconsciously swirl once again, his previously cupped hands clenched in defiance. Sure he played a part in all of this, sure, Arthur had let the man live instead of taking his life, but that was where his contribution to the suffering ended. Or at least that's what Arthur told himself; however, unfortunately, somewhere deep inside of him, the morals of his previous society nagged at him, their ideals burrowing deeper into Arthur's mind along with the guilt that came with them. He couldn't disregard his place in all of this by throwing the blame on Charlotte, no matter how much he tried. His mind simply wouldn't allow it, at least not yet. He was still too fresh to the world to have to bear witness to such suffering.

'I-I-I-I I don't know how to feel,' Arthur cried, the pressure he applied to his clenched fists now enough to draw blood. He was lost, tormented by the polarising ideals that ran rampant in his overheating mind. Was this right? Was this wrong? Just how much of this was Arthur's fault? What would have happened if he had not shown up in that alley? Sure Arthur knew that Charlotte would be saved by her guards but would such an outcome still occur? Was this an unavoidable fate?

Such questions tormented the young boy's mind…until eventually…they stopped. There was no noise, just the pure sound of eerie silence stretching across Arthur's previously cramped brain's vast and now empty expanse. Nothing was telling him what was right and wrong anymore. The voices had given up on trying to influence the boy into a decision. Arthur had rejected them…He didn't care anymore. He was tired. And more importantly, he was scared. Scared that if he were to stay down here any longer, that demon girl would come barreling her way into here, leaving him with the sole option of joining in on Charlotte's escapade less he wished to be subjected to her misguided love. He had reached a decision, and that was that nothing in this world mattered at this moment apart from himself.

He wasn't going to beat himself up over an inevitable outcome that ultimately had little to do with him. 'I don't care….' Arthur dazedly thought his now apathetic form hidden underneath his makeshift odour preventative. His folded knees slowly bringing themselves up to a standing position, he turned. Arthur wanted to go back, just being here was a risk to his mental health, and the stress of the future weighed heavily on his psyche, and yet, something urged him to stay, in the empty plain of his mind, one thought once again surfaced.

What if he were to talk?

What if this husk of a man were to tell Charlotte that he had been here, wouldn't that greatly affect Arthur's future in the Zepar household. Wouldn't he be forced into joining Charlotte in this sadistic science experiment to measure just how much pain a human body could withstand? He had glanced over the idea in passing before, answering it with the same delusional sentiment he wished the girl to have, but he knew that answer wouldn't hold, if this man were to spill the beans. Even if sceptical at first, Charlotte would definitely do some digging into his claims.

So what was Arthur to do? He could leave now, but that wouldn't relieve him of the stress that plagued every cell of his being. He'd find himself haunted by the possibilities of what if…what if he had talked, what if Charlotte was watching him, waiting to see him make even the tiniest of slip-ups in his act to pull him into joining her side.

He couldn't kill the man. That would be too obvious of a giveaway that someone had been here. Charlotte had made sure that her captor had just enough potion to live through whatever slow-paced torment she inflicted. No, what Arthur needed was a guarantee. He needed to know that no matter what, this man wouldn't tell the truth of what had happened down here…Yet there was nothing he could think of that could silence the man, the only true guarantee in this world was death…the one thing Arthur couldn't provide.

"Thr", The man groaned, interrupting the seven-year-old boy from his wary stream of thoughts.

'What?' Arthur questioned, 'What is Thr? What's he trying to say? Why couldn't Charlotte have left your tongue intact so you could at least form a coherent sentence instead of all this cryptic bullshit' Arthur jumpily continued. The longer he spent in close proximity to this man, the more paranoid Arthur became.

"Othr"

'Othr now, othr, othr, what does that sound like,' Arthur questioned, his mind sifting through a torrent of words before eventually, it stumbled upon an image, a misplaced piece of information that clogged Arthur's mental filter. The image of a man, a fat, ugly man, the same man that had been together with this piece of subhuman filth when Arthur had encountered the two in that fateful street. A man that just so happened to share an almost identical appearance to the previous state of the being before him.

'Brother, he was his brother,' The revelation came to Arthur like a bolt of lightning, with the following thunderclap of information being an overwhelming sense of dread. If he was here, chained up to a wall, then where was his brother, Arthur doubted that Charlotte would have let the man go, which only left one answer to this rhetorical question Arthur had to forcefully propose.

'He's here…but then why isn't he answering his brother….why haven't I heard him at all' Arthur questioned his apprehension towards the man's plea growing. And it was when this growing dread reached its peak that Arthur saw it. From the corner of his eyes, he watched the man's flattened arm slide across the crimson coated stone, leaving a fresh layer of blood coloured paint in its wake, before finally, it stopped, its position directly pointed at…Arthur, what remained of his fingers hovering in his direction.

'What's going on? How does he know where I am?' Arthur panted. All colour drained from his face once again. This was bad. If he really did know where Arthur was, then any hopes of escaping from this situation in one piece might as well have been thrown out the window. If before Arthur was anxious from the mere possibility that the man had heard him approach, then right now, he was outright terrified. How could this man convince himself that Arthur never existed when he had the ability to vividly point out where he stood…unless he wasn't pointing at Arthur, he had no reason to, no, what he did have reason to point at though was the location of.

'His brother,' Arthur's trembling eyes shot open in realisation, his head and body spun in tandem in a viciously fast one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn that at any other time would have surely given the boy whiplash, his feet staggered from the momentum of the move yet Arthur remained standing, petrified.

What met the boy's gaze was not the brutalised body of this man's brother like he had expected but something much, much more harrowing. Red, Arthur's vision was filled with the brilliant hue of blood, a colour that made his stomach instinctively churn.

On top of what appeared to be a raised piece of stone flooring, painted in a deep, violent crimson, was the man's brother. Or at least what remained of him. What Arthur saw could not be classified as a body, nor even a corpse. It was just…red. Red chunks of crimson flesh littered the top of the raised surface, all indecipherable from one another. There was no head, no heart, no nothing, only blood stained rotten meat.

Involuntarily Arthur released a gag of repressed disgust. How, how could Charlotte do such a thing. If before Arthur had managed to reason his way out of the man's scenario, now he simply couldn't. Sure she had been grotesque and downright evil with the man's torture, but this, this…disgraceful display of poorly butchered meat was inhumane. And this wasn't even the man that Arthur had fought, this was merely the person that had followed his brother's orders to grab the girl, a subservient human who ran away at the slightest inkling of reprucions, and this is what Charlotte did to him. There was no reason for Charlotte's desecration of this man, and Arthur would have to simply have to deal with it.

Arthur could feel his very mind shake in his head, his gaze tunnel visioned upon the bloodied table, the unfortunate apple of his eye. He felt faint, like his head had been detached from his body, with only air connecting him to his thoughts. '.....' No comments about the scenario left Arthur's mind. He was too dazed to even think of anything. He didn't even feel fear, no the sensation he felt when looking at this maggot-infested corpse was simply one of despair, the realisation of his quest finally ringing in his mind. He was meant to capture all the heroines. He would have to tame a girl so horrifically brutal and jealous that she would destroy a man's body to the point of indistinguishability, even if her reason was justified like Arthur believed it to be. Wasn't this just too much? Wasn't this just too inhumane? Despair seeped into Arthur's bones, chilling him to his very core. This wasn't a game anymore. If Charlotte were to go so far as to do this to her attackers, then what would she do to any of his potential harem candidates…the mere thought of such a horrific scene sent waves of helplessness through Arthur's soul. Charlotte was never meant to be a yandere. Arthur had never prepared himself for dealing with one so early on in this world. He wasn't strong enough, nor was he good enough at acting to convince the girl to tone down her obsessive impulses. But that didn't mean that Arthur would always be weak.

In fact, looking at the gore filled scene in front of him, Arthur felt an odd sense of…determination welling up inside of him. 'I-I need to get strong…so that nothing like this will happen to the heroines in the future,' Arthur apathetically commented, the strange urge to mutter his heroines names oddly present in his mind. Turning back to the corpse like man, Arthur was at a standstill. The kindness in his heart urged him to reveal the tragedy that had happened to his brother, all the while, his rationality and selfishness pleaded with him to remain silent. If Arthur were to speak now, it would be paramount to suicide. He would be revealing the truth of his illusory presence to the man who held nothing but ill will towards him.

"....."

Arthur remained silent. He couldn't do it. No matter how much the corpse-like man begged him, Arthur couldn't grant him the peace of mind of knowing his brother's fate…His life was just too precious….Arthur was too selfish. 'Sorry,' Arthur mournfully wept, one singular tear rolling down his pale face before being consumed by the finely made silk shirt wrapped around his mouth and nose. This was the only way he could at least partially guarantee his safety. As long as he remained silent, the man would hopefully gaslight himself into believing that whatever he had heard here today was nothing but the flame of dying hope's final hoorah before it was extinguished from his cold, unfeeling heart.

Arthur's mind was blank throughout his entire return trip to the ladder. He knew that thinking about the whole scenario would only feed into his lingering paranoia, so he simply attempted to avoid the situation as a whole.

Shutting the large wrought iron door, Arthur was serenaded out of the despair filled room with the choir of squeaking hinges and gifted with a final memento of wet blood, the trip up the ladder was uneventful, with Arthur only left alone to mull with his thoughts, something that even the splintering wood of the ladder dared not interrupt.

'I've seen all of this, and yet…the moment I exit through this trap door, I'm going to have to go back to my annoying heroic act, oblivious to the true nature and horror of the world around me….' Arthur sighed, his dainty hand pressed against the wooden trapdoor. Usually, at this point, one would be overwhelmed to look back at the world they had escaped from. Still, Arthur's gaze remained fixed on the door leading to both his salvation and the forced repression of his knowledge. He had no regrets that concerned what he had seen, only a weird sense of mixed self-loathing and a newly formed urge to get stronger. An unhelpful desire in a world where the rate of progression one goes through is fixed by your latent talent. Only the wealthy and knowledgeable could increase their strength; luckily, Arthur possessed the latter trait in bulk.

Finally pushing the trap door open, Arthur was momentarily blinded by the stream of light that flooded his Irises. A torrent of relief flushed through the boy's body. He was safe. No one was here waiting for him in the empty hallway. He had escaped.