3 [1-3] Zero Day Attack Victims Meeting (1/2)

It was the executioner, Kahle, who first noticed the change.

An executioner is usually a lowly and despised profession.

But Kahle was proud of his work. But Kahle was proud of his work, because it was a job that someone had to do.

And in public executions, the executioner is a hero. It felt good to work in the midst of thunderous cheers.

Kahle is not interested in politics. He thinks it's just people in the clouds doing dumb things.

So when he heard that the execution was to be carried out on the former king's queen and the former king's abandoned daughter, he didn't think anything of it. Killing them must have meant something to someone somewhere. For Kahle, it was the same as always, just a job request.

Drop a couple of guillotines and be done with it. It was supposed to be.

He almost missed it because of the cheering, but Kahle soon noticed a strange sound coming from beneath his feet.

The body of a decapitated girl. The shackles that had bound her to the execution table were popping off.

I wonder if it has been broken.

...... No, no.

The body that should have lost its head slowly began to rise.

He tore off the restraints with all his might. That's a hell of a lot of strength.

Kahle didn't panic at the sight of this anomaly, and immediately put his hand on the execution axe he was carrying.

Kahle's main job is to chop off the heads of the condemned with the execution axe. He has been trained by his father since he was a child, and has already reached a mature level of skill in his thirties.

Recently, the guillotine has been used in Ciel-Teirah, so he has fewer opportunities to wield his skill, but he still carries an axe to deal with the occasional undead.

It is rare, but not negligible, that a condemned criminal who has died of remorse is resurrected on the spot as a zombie-like low-grade undead.

It is Kahle's job to take care of them when they do.

--......!　I told you to call a priest!

In his heart, Kahle is poisonous.

The priest is supposed to cleanse the place and mourn the condemned before the execution. It's also to prevent the undead from arising.

But the knights would have none of it and rejected Kahre's proposal. They said that since we were killing a bandit, it was out of the question to give him a proper mourning, and that no amount of blasphemy would be enough.

Sure enough, here we are. Kahle was not happy to be forced to cover his own ass.

Still, Kahle had no doubt that a single blow from his axe would destroy the undead.

Until the moment the axe struck the moving corpse.

The response was strange, as if the axe had struck the ground.

--What ......!

It was a full swing, but the blow from the execution axe, which would have decapitated a large man, only made a shallow cut through the girl's body.

And then Kahle saw.

The girl's skin, which should have been battered and scarred, became glowing as he watched.

The shaggy silver hair growing from her guillotined neck took on a beautiful silver glow.

”Hey!　There's something wrong with you!　Hey!

Kahle shouted. !” Kahle shouted at the knight on the executioner's table, who was cheering and barking ”Justice has been done” and ”A new dawn”.

Kahle's voice did not reach the knight who was shouting over the loud noise. After yelling back several times, the knight finally looked back at him, annoyed.

By then, it was all too late.

No, it was all too late, just because Kahle thought so at the time.

There was a flash of scarlet, and the guillotine was cut.

The rail containing the blade was cut in two, splitting it into three pieces and raining down around the execution table.

There was a scream. Several people seemed to be trapped underneath.

But there was no time to look down. Not only Kahle, but most of the crowd was like that.

They were watching with their mouths hanging open.

Floating above the execution table, something that shouldn't be possible: ......

--What the hell was that?　What the hell is that?

A girl on death row was floating in the air. She landed on the frame of the guillotine she had cut off.

Her headless body grabbed her long silver hair and held her own head. In her other hand was a sword, red from tip to hilt. It looked as if it had been carved out of a giant jewel, or as if it had been shaped by blood. Had he used it to cut through the guillotine?