Chapter 26: Charlotte/morals

Immediately a bolt of fear ran down the paralysed spine of Arthur. His body shook, and his pupils shrank. He was right. Charlotte was here. She had been waiting for him for hours since he left the training arena, eagerly anticipating both his return and the promised payment for his departure from the lone girl.

Invisible hands clutched at the boy's rapidly beating heart, bringing it to a grinding halt with his hurried breaths following suit. Blood spilt from the boy's clenched fists staining his creamy flesh with its horrible crimson colour, while clarity began to return to Arthur's panic-stricken brain along with an exorbitant amount of pain. He had to remain calm in the face of the overly analytical girl no matter how much his instinct screamed at him to do otherwise. If he seemed out of place or anxious, she would know it immediately, thanks to her weirdly obsessive nature.

"Hello Charlotte," Arthur politely greeted, life now filling the empty space in his pupils. At the same time, faint drops of water began to spill from his clenched palms carrying with it any traces of the fear that previously reigned over his still frantic mind. For a second, Charlotte released a brilliant pearly white smile from her beautiful face, one that seemed to carry all the love in the world for the seemingly calm peasant. Though it was only for a moment before her nostrils began to flare as the strangely familiar scent of Arthur's blood began to plague her sinuses. Like a bloodhound, her gaze instinctively shifted away from the boy's glorious face that filled every inch of the young marquise's infatuated mind and moved towards the child's hidden palms that he had stashed away in the pockets of his emerald green blazer.

"Are you hurt, Arthur? I smell blood?" Charlotte inquisitively questioned, not bothering to hide the fact that the girl had committed the scent of the boy's blood to memory or attempting to expand on how such a feat could even be possible with how little Arthur actually bleeds on his usual day-to-day basis.

"Um…" Arthur briefly hesitated, his hands instinctively grasping hold of the paper-thin lining of the blazer's pockets. At the same time, his mind started to whirl like the centre of a tempest in a ferocious attempt to come up with an answer to his yandere's question. 'There's no point in trying to lie to her by saying I'm not injured. She'll just see through whatever facade I try to put on…so my best bet is to place the blame on someone…or something, preferably the latter of the two…After all, I don't want any more pointless deaths at the moment. I've already seen enough.' Arthur inwardly monologued, taking into account the overwhelming infatuation the girl held for him in his answer and taking the necessary precautions to prevent any more pointless bloodshed.

"Yes…" Arthur bluntly replied. Hearing this, Charlotte's eyes momentarily became bloodshot from the overwhelming rage that exploded forth from the little girl's overly infatuated heart. She wanted blood. No, she wanted the head of whatever person or thing dared to desecrate the sacred body of her dearly beloved. Arthur was hers. She owned him. From the tiniest of hairs on the boy's head to his one and only heart, everything belonged to her, and likewise, she belonged to Arthur. So to hear that someone or something had gone out of their way to draw blood from her one and only saviour, well, it filled the girl with more hatred than even the demons held towards their feathered counterparts.

"Who…" Charlotte darkly responded, her eyes morphing into twin voids of utter devastation that seemed to consume all the light in Arthur's brightly illuminated room, leaving her to be the one and only apple in Arthur's soulless eyes while a chilling aura of intimidation leaked profusely out of the girl's taller than average vessel filling the empty area with an overwhelming sense of despair that made Arthur's little amount of hair stand on end.

"No-*gulp*" Arthur released an audible gulp while his words came to an abrupt halt. In front of him, Charlotte's form began to morph once again, twisting and contorting until her figure became an unrecognisable monstrosity that seemed to spite the heavens with its hideousness. Arthur watched with bated breaths as Charlotte's tightly gripped hand began to unravel, stripping off layer upon layer of flesh until it became nothing more than maggot-infested bone while freshly hatched larva chewed through her bloodshot eyes in a futile attempt to feed, her face began to decay giving way to a horrific and almost hollowed view through the girl's oesophagus. Dark bile began to excrete from every pore of Charlotte's previously perfect body, coating her in a fresh layer of bloody body paint and dying her Tyrian purple night dress a horrific brown.

"Arthur, are you ok? You look pale," The grotesque girl called, placing her flesh-stripped hand against Arthur's pale cheek. Immediately a bolt of fear ran down the peasant's petrified spine. His pupils shook in their sockets, becoming unfocused and losing the gleam that came with life.

Arthur wanted to die.

Despite knowing the repercussions of such an action, he couldn't help but crave the sweet release or, in his case, painful curse of death. At least if his soul were to be tortured for eternity, Arthur wouldn't have to live through the hell that would be his chaotic future. He had seen enough already, and clearly, his paranoid mind agreed with the sentiment; otherwise, it wouldn't force such delusions of fear upon the terrified boy. Arthur couldn't handle it anymore. Sure it had only been a couple of hours since his life had been flipped on its head. Yet, in such a short amount of time, he had been forced to bear witness to horrors and atrocities that the human mind could barely comprehend the severity of time after time again, with little to no respite from the monsters. He didn't feel safe here. He had never felt safe here. This house was a hell that only served to fuel his paranoia, with Charlotte and her obsessive antics being the leading cause of his internal anguish.

Arthur's life, if it can even be called that, began to flash before his eyes from the time his school had been called off courtesy of a freak blizzard. He had been forced to walk through miles upon miles of piled snow, eventually getting hypothermia and even an acute case of frostbite simply because his parents refused to pick him up and the school refused to house him before landing himself in the hospital for over a week, where he remained alone and isolated without so much as a single visit from any friend or family member, to the time his parent's up and abandoned him for over a month without a key to his house nor any means to replenish the lost food in the already desolate cabinet, lest he wished to tempt any passing by robbers who could have possibly ransacked the place taking his parent's precious items that he swore to protect mainly because they held more value to them then he ever did. 'Thinking about it, my life never really had any value, now did it?' Arthur self-loathingly mocked, his ears tuned out from the world around him, forcing himself into a sense of self-isolation despite the rampant calls of the obsessive girl who tearfully called out to the soulless husk of a boy, begging for him to simply give her so much as a nod or even a twitch of a finger to affirm that he was still with her.

'Maybe I really should just die. I mean, I'm not fit for such a dog-eat-dog world like this. I can't bring myself to kill someone so easily like the novel protagonists I saw myself as before my transmigration, nor do I share their unshakable will and determination to accomplish whatever goal they set themselves on. I'm not like them at all, no matter how much I want to be. They're special. Prophets or sometimes reincarnations of almighty gods whose morals are as loose as a prostitute's vagina, while I'm just some nerd who got too obsessed with a game and is now facing punishment for my actions. Sure my soul and bloodline might be unique, but what's the point in having it at all if I'm never going to be able to awaken it? Wouldn't it have been better for one of the other transmigrators to have my gift rather than some useless person like me? All I have is my knowledge, which seems to be flimsy at best in this horrific world, and my useless fucking bloodline!' Arthur inwardly cried, yet no change occurred on his frozen face. Even if he refused to acknowledge it, one thing that Arthur had going for him was his seemingly prodigious and yet instinctual skill for acting that, even under the influence of an almost paralysing terror, refused to drop the facade that the boy wore of a now pale-faced hero.

And it was under this pressure that Arthur came to a revelation that would surely shift the course of his life in this world. His mind focused on that word over and over again. Replaying its meaning on a constant loop…that was until…Arthur began to break 'Morals. What are morals? Nobody in this world seems to have them. Charlotte certainly doesn't. And yet they seem to be the one thing weighing me down. Chaining me to my useless past life.' Arthur inwardly mocked as visions of the two brutalised bodies once again began to plague the fracturing mind of a soon-to-be enlightened boy. However, instead of being disgusted or even repulsed by the horrific sight, Arthur only took one step closer on his road to enlightenment. Sure they had died, sort of. And sure, it was his fault that they had to suffer such a grim fate, 'But so what? They were going to die anyway, right? Everyone in this dog-eat-dog world will eventually die. It just happened that they decided to pick a fight with the wrong person, and they suffered the repercussions of such a foolish decision. If Charlotte hadn't gotten to them, then I'm sure one of the guards would have, and then if they hadn't killed them, they probably would have picked a fight with someone else and died anyway. That's just how this world works. Yeah exactly. It's kill or be killed, and weakness will only lead to more suffering on the part of the prey. And I don't want to be weak. Not anymore. I want to live. I want to change. I don't want to be the useless Arthur that held no self-value yet craved the unattainable love of his parents. I'm done with that. I don't need them anymore. Not when I'm going to have all the heroines of this world.' Arthur inwardly screamed, his eyes regaining the former light of life that he had so effortlessly let die out not even seconds earlier.

At that moment, Arthur's dirty brown eyes seemed to blind all who beheld them with the fire of determination that shone so brightly behind them, reflecting the illusory image of a group of blindingly, no, not even the word blinding could capture the pure beauty of the women that shimmered before the boy like the most dazzling of oasis's in the driest of deserts. No word could describe the ephemeral beauty each one of the girls seemed to exude nor the overwhelming power they possessed. These were the goddesses. The girls Arthur set his heart on capturing once again, no matter what. His new goal in life. It didn't matter if they had no clue who or what the boy was. He would make them love him. Like he did so effortlessly in his past life. 'And if I need to lose my morals to accomplish such a goal, then so what? It's not like I could have kept on living here with them anyway! From this point on, I swear on the name of the goddesses that I, Arthur, will make every heroine fall for me no matter what.' Arthur inwardly screamed as, unknowingly, his left eye began to release a faint golden light that seemed to illuminate several invisible chains. All of which stabbed into Arthur's frail body like a human pin cushion, yet no wound could be found on the boy's unblemished figure. And without the knowledge of their host, they began to break. Shattering under the overwhelming golden light that latched onto the chains like the parasites that they were…until eventually, the colour of Arthur's left eye returned to its usual dirty brown hue, leaving one singular chain wrapped around the boy's dainty neck.

A new sense of weightlessness filled the unknowing boy's body. He felt…free, as weird as that was. However, Arthur couldn't bask in this new sense of freedom for long, not when he saw the absolutely devastating figure of the girl who stood before him. Tears streamed down Charlotte's bloodshot eyes while an indescribable yet palpable sense of bloodlust seemed to fill the room, which though primed, had yet to be directed at someone or something. Her Arthur wasn't responding to her. It was like he had died for a second. Charlotte felt helpless. Was this her fault? Had she done something to annoy her dearly beloved? No, that was impossible. She had made sure to never act out of line when she was in the presence of her precious peasant, even suppressing the overwhelming amount of hatred that bubbled in her brain whenever Arthur so much as spoke to a member of the opposite sex, whether it be Iris, Vienna or anyone else, in Charlotte's mind no one other than her deserved to hear the boy's angelic murmurs. His every word acting almost like gospel to the devoted girl. So then why? Why was Arthur ignoring her?

"Charlotte?" Arthur solemnly whispered as two warm arms wrapped around the frantic, shaking figure of the helpless girl pulling her into a gentle embrace that filled her heart with an unmistakable warmth. 'W-wh-what's going on? Why is Arthur being so assertive,' Charlotte inwardly screamed. Usually, she would have to be the one making moves on the boy, with Arthur always remaining passive towards her advances, so then why was he now being so bold? Had he finally fallen under the girl's spell, recognising Charlotte's unmistakable charms for what they were, at such a thought, the young marquis's heart skipped a beat as delusions of the future began to fill her already cramped mind. However, these delusions would ultimately be crushed the moment Charlotte lifted her gaze away from Arthur's exposed frail chest to get a better look at her presumed lover, whose eyes peered at her not with the warmth of a partner but with the concern of a friend. He hadn't fallen for her, not yet, and such a fact didn't bother the love-struck maiden. It didn't matter if Arthur were to not fall for Charlotte after a month or even after a century. In the end, Charlotte was sure that she would make the boy love her.

"Arthur~" Charlotte purred with heated breaths, her sinuses doing their best to fully capture the divine scent that her god had so graciously blessed her with while her clouded eyes remained locked with Arthur's dirty brown, that was until a bolt of mixed worry and rage panged the girl's infatuated brain reminding her of the other all to familiar scent that seemed to pester her consciousness, the stench of Arthur's blood. Immediately another chilling blast of intimidation exploded forth from the previously tame girl filling the room with an intense aura of despair. Yet, Arthur remained unfazed, sure he could sense the sudden drop in temperature as his body began to release an involuntary cold sweat, but that was all. None of his hairs stood on end like they previously did, nor did his body perform an automatic jolt. Arthur was calm.

"You still haven't answered me, Arthur. What's going on with your hand?" Charlotte seductively whispered, her warm breaths tickling the very bottom of Arthur's now scarlet ears while her arms wrapped around the child's skinny frame returning his embrace with her own. "And more importantly, you still haven't told me who did this to you?" The girl continued her gentle tone turning into one of pure malice.

"Nobody did this to me, though?" Arthur responded by acting with the pure innocence a youth would usually possess by playing into his apparent age. Pulling his arms away from the rigid back of the panting Charlotte, Arthur displayed his cleansed hands to the crazed demoness. No blood caked the surface of his skin though minor fingernail length cuts could be found on his palms. The wounds were clearly not severe enough to have been inflicted on him by someone else, nor did there exist an object in the household that could replicate such a unique wound. "See, I just did this to myself," Arthur beamed, his brilliant smile momentarily cutting through the almost palpable pressure that exuded from the young Charlotte, whose point of interest fleetingly shifted between Arthur's blemished palms and his pure smile.

"Why…" Charlotte darkly muttered, momentarily stunning the young boy. Had Arthur done something wrong, did Charlotte see through his act? Such fruitless questions plagued the exasperated mind of the young child who had never felt the warmth of genuine care or love. "Why did you do this to yourself, Arthur?" Charlotte continued, tears welling in her bloodshot eyes as she forced Arthur's shaking hands against her smouldering cheeks.

"I…um…" Arthur mindlessly muttered, his mind too perplexed by the sudden care for his well-being to even form a cohesive narrative, "I don't know why? I kind of just…did it, you know?" The boy answered as Charlotte's already overly concerned face proceeded to darken.

"No, I don't know, Arthur, nor do I understand why such an action would even tempt you." The young girl ferociously scolded though her face soon turned gentle as she watched Arthur's expression begin to softly melt under the genuine care that was so forcefully thrust upon him. "Please don't do something like this again, ok. You shouldn't be injuring your own body for no reason whatsoever. That's what weaklings do, Arthur, and I can assure you that you are not weak," She continued, placing her snow-white hands atop Arthur's. All the while, her eyes proceeded to seemingly peer into the boy's soul with her loving gaze. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have been able to save me," Charlotte hushedly whispered, her voice so low that it completely bypassed Arthur's senses, who remained pacified by the girl's rhythmic pats like a trained house cat.

"Mmm," Arthur unknowingly purred his head, performing a gentle nod of affirmation towards Charlotte's scoldings."Can I go to bed now? I'm tired," The boy sluggishly continued, the efforts of the day now weighing on his weary eyelids.

"Eh, so soon?" Charlotte jumpily replied. Arthur had only just returned to his room, and yet he was already heading to bed. What about his training? Didn't Charlotte need to throw more things at him so that he could hone his newly developed technique? But more important than any of Arthur's needs were the whims of Charlotte. Didn't Arthur promise her a massage, Charlotte sure as hell remembered that fact and had been eagerly awaiting the boy's return for hours with only delusions of the potential pleasure acting as a barricade between her isolation in Arthur's not-so spacious room and her unceremonious interruption of the boy's lesson?

However, even if such selfish thoughts rampaged through the young marquis's mind, Charlotte knew better than to voice her displeasure to the clearly exhausted Arthur, who had already begun to trudge his way towards the singular bed that stood like a golden bastion of hope in the centre of the otherwise desolate area. His steps were uneven and clumsy, while his breaths seemed elongated and laboured. Something greater than exhaustion was clearly plaguing the boy, but whatever ailment it was went unnoticed by the occupants of the room. Arthur had done enough today, and even Charlotte begrudgingly acknowledged this fact and simply moved the broken promise to the back of her mind to be rediscovered whenever the girl saw it fit.

"Night~" Arthur sleepily stated, his eyelids now feeling like twin boulders that he had done enough to resist and now allowed to seal his weary eyes shut, encasing him in a void of absolute darkness while his body limply collapsed atop the large bed without so much as a blanket to cover his exhausted body.

Seeing such a beautiful sight, Charlotte could only relent to the boy's rather blunt dismissal of conversation and quickly joined the sleeping Arthur atop the spacious bed that she wished would be a little smaller. Her gaze remained locked on the figure of the sleeping boy for hours with little to no breaks except the occasional need to blink as she waited for her soul to be claimed by the divine world delusions…At least in them, she could have her way with her hero. And soon enough, the desire to sleep began to overwhelm the consciousness of the elegant Charlotte, who hardly put up a fight against the waves of drowsiness that berated her brain and simply let herself be swept away to her perfect world…but not before giving the dreaming boy beside her one quick peck on his exposed cheek.

Blissful silence filled the desolate room as the children remained motionless, trapped in their consciousness and unaware of the chaos that was brewing in the heavens as the gods began to franticly search for a way to cancel their game and annul their agreement with a particular group to end the life of one boy who had so casually bent the very nature of fate to his unknowing whim.