The Case of Being Reincarnated as a Heretic Mob Character in an Eroge Where Everyone is Extremely Determined - Chapter 43

Chapter 43: Yeah, That’s Another Form of Love

After the bath, I was tasked with taking care of Joanne’s wet body.

When my hand accidentally touched something big, Joanne let out an exaggerated moan.

I shuddered. Such a coquettish reaction was unimaginable from the previous Joanne, so I felt an unfathomable creepiness.

Seeing my reaction, Joanne’s face returned to a serious expression.

“Huh? You’re not reacting much.”

“Please stop with the creepy act. It gives me the chills.”

“Is that so?”

Under Joanne’s intense gaze, as if she were observing me, I began the task of transferring the source of contamination to Celestia.

Returning to my room to get a change of clothes, I’m surprised to find that the once disastrous interior has been completely restored to its original state.

Pork must have cleaned it up during the day. Even the bloodstains that should have been in the grooves of the floor were completely gone. I could see the meticulous operability of the poison thorns and her personality.

After changing into clean clothes, I met up with Joanne and decided to look for Celestia, who was probably out somewhere.

“Do you know where Celestia might be?”

“Stella said she might be coming back from the facility tour soon.”

“Facility…”

When it comes to important facilities of the Aaros Temple Order, there are human breeding cultivation facilities that serve as the financial source for the cult, research facilities that manufacture special chemicals necessary for the operation of human production factories, and educational institutions that raise children who have just established a sense of self into full-fledged Believers.

She must have been visiting the human production facility that is planned to be constructed underground in Metashim.

Just thinking about the womb bag, I feel like I’m about to have a severe rejection reaction.

Not only was I implanted with false memories, but the mere fact of being born from a lump of flesh that didn’t resemble a human being was quite unpleasant.

The ‘normalcy’ of having parents with blood ties was a pretense, and it weighed heavily on my mind, causing no small amount of psychological damage.

To undermine the foundation of the cult, it is important to defeat the seven Executives, but it would also be effective to go around destroying these facilities.

However, these facilities are guarded with extraordinary security.

Magic that inhibits recognition by Aaros has been cast, and the area around the facilities is always watched by groups of corpses controlled by Pork and skilled monitors.

In addition, there are classic snares and ballistae reinforced with Pork’s thorns defending the important facilities, and unless there is an attack by a large-scale army of the orthodox or an Executive, these facilities are unlikely to be shaken.

The fact that they are introducing Celestia to such important facilities means that the cult side intends to never let her go until she dies.

Or perhaps they have calculated to kill her if there’s a risk of her being taken back.

In reality, there are few ways to break Celestia’s brainwashing.

My outrageous idea has to succeed, or we have to try Cress’s ‘brainwashing reversal,’ it is a foolproof strategy that can be called ironclad.

“Anyway, let’s split up and search for her. I will speak to Pork-sama and Juanquiro-sama myself to smooth things over.”

“Got it.”

Joanne, draped in a jet-black robe, set out to explore the now lively sacred land of Heretic, Metashim.

I needed to get permission for my experiment, so I headed to either Pork or Juanquiro to ask if I could borrow Celestia.

As I made my way to the underground space under construction, I spotted Juanquiro giving orders to the Heretics.

I wasted no time in bringing up the matter of Celestia.

“You want to borrow Celestia? That’s fine, but… have you come up with something terrifying again?”

“There’s something I’m curious about. If we were to exchange and ‘transfer’ the organs of Joanne-sama with those of Celestia-sama maybe we—”

“—Okay, that’s enough.”

I had prepared a reason to force a connection, but I was interrupted by Juanquiro, who twitched her cheek in a grimace.

“Would you like to see it too, Juanquiro-sama?” I asked, to which Juanquiro’s expression turned as if to say it must be a joke. Realizing I was serious after looking into my eyes, she frantically searched for an excuse and waved her hand, saying, “I’m busy right now.”

“Please make sure not to break Celestia, okay?”

“Of course. By the way, where is she now?”

“Maybe she’s in her room. I think she’s in this town.”

“Thank you.”

Joanne should be on her way to Celestia’s room.

As I climbed the stairs from the underground space to the surface, I could see Joanne shaking her head and looking around.

Next to her was the silver-haired beauty, Celestia. Seeing the two of them, who were supposed to be incompatible, walking shoulder to shoulder made me reconfirm that the current situation had deviated from all possible routes of the original story.

Celestia, who was supposed to become my ally in the future, is on the Heretic side, and Joanne, who was supposed to be an enemy, is on my side—though I still can’t fully trust Joanne.

It really goes to show you never know what will happen in life.

“Oakley, do you need something from me?”

“Just a little thing. Let’s go, Joanne-sama.”

We took Celestia by the hand and headed to the torture chamber that we’ve been frequenting lately.

“I wanted to conduct a little experiment, so I asked you to come. It’s going to hurt a bit, but please bear with it.”

“You say ‘a little,’ but you’re holding quite an impressive blade. That’s rather ominous, isn’t it?”

“Should I explain the content of the experiment? We will exchange the internal organs with Joanne-sama and then observe the progress over several days. That’s the outline.”

“…Where do you come up with such a bizarre idea?”

“My brain?”

“That’s a serious and boring answer.”

Even if one has the title of Executive, it doesn’t mean their physical strength is exceptionally superior.

The strength of their skin is no different from an ordinary person’s; a knife can easily pierce through it.

Becoming an Executive doesn’t grant one the peculiarities of reptilian scales or an insect’s exoskeleton.

They are merely endowed with an extraordinary healing ability.

Imitating the skillful dissection I had experienced, I proceeded to exchange the insides of Joanne and Celestia.

The organs placed inside Celestia were originally mine, but as ordinary people can’t distinguish internal organs by sight, Celestia accepted my organs quite readily without pointing out anything.

If anyone were to see through it, it would be Stella. She is so sensitive to the smell of blood and flesh that she might notice something amiss, even if it’s neatly tucked away inside.

I had already spoken to Joanne in advance and decided to keep her distance from Stella for the next few days.

Then, four days later, when I saw Celestia looking no different, I reached a conclusion.

Memory transfer through secondary transplantation does not occur.

Conversely, Joanne, who had received Celestia’s organs, also showed no significant changes.

This is the greatest mystery.

“This concludes the experiment. Thank you, Celestia.”

“No, please call me anytime if I can be of help.”

“…Ah.”

After switching their organs back, I locked myself in my room to ruminate on the experimental results.

The likelihood of memory transfer occurring due to secondary transplantation is low.

This is still can still be understood. But why didn’t Joanne, who should have had Celestia’s organs transplanted for several days, show any signs of memory transfer?

I began to suffer from memory transfer immediately after receiving Joanne’s heart.

Although individual differences exist in various people, it was unexpected that there would be no change in either party after four days.

(Setting Celestia aside, something is weird with Joanne. Why didn’t that woman even show a hint of struggling with another’s memories like Celestia? While accepting my organs, she was sweating like a waterfall, but during the experiment and even in these four days, I couldn’t confirm her sweating even a single drop. Is it possible that a person who has experienced memory transfer once develops a resistance to it?)

The more I think about it, the harder it becomes to accept the results, especially since I had found a glimmer of hope in memory transfer.

And as I agonized, a familiar husky voice whispered behind me as if seeing right through my thoughts.

“You and I understand each other’s hearts, and we love each other more than anyone else in this world. That’s why that phenomenon occurred.”

I stood up in surprise at the sudden appearance of Joanne, knocking over the chair with the back of my knees and causing it to slip and fall over.

When did this woman sneak into the room?

It was supposed to be locked.

My consciousness sped up with sudden anxiety. The curtains fluttered at the edge of my vision. My gaze was drawn to the window as if being sucked in, and the route of intrusion became clear.

The window? She had climbed up from outside.

“…If you had knocked, I would have let you in.”

“Mmm, I wanted to see Oakley’s profile while he was deep in thought. Sneakily so.”

I’m relieved that I didn’t mutter any fatal soliloquy.

However, being trapped alone in a space with the current Joanne is unnervingly creepy.

The visible madness has hidden itself inside, and the fact that she seems like a sane person at first glance is nothing but terrifying.

But it’s bad if she realizes that I’m on guard.

From her perspective, I am someone who has formed a bond deeper than family or lovers through profound interaction.

I’ve decided to devote my body and soul and be dyed in her ‘color,’ so if she senses any rejection from me, there’s no guarantee that she won’t lash out.

“…memory transfer is a phenomenon that can’t be explained with words. There might be some truth in what Joanne-sama is saying.”

“Right?”

If the time spent together and emotions are important factors in memory transfer, then opting for an organ transplant with uncertain results is not worth the risk-reward balance.

The only people close to Celestia, other than her family, are the Orthodox Executives.

It’s impossible to search for Celestia’s family, whose whereabouts are unknown. And pinpointing and extracting the organs of an Orthodox Executive is too difficult.

Rather than going to the trouble of detaining an Orthodox Executive and performing the procedure, it seemed much more realistic to induce Cress to ‘reverse brainwash.’

“In other words, to break Celestia’s brainwashing, we have to make contact with the Orthodox Executive’s Cress.”

I’m scheduled to transfer to the Northeast branch.

There, I plan to hone my skills as a spy, and if I can infiltrate the city of the Orthodoxy… that’s probably where I’m at.

It’s an endlessly long road.

However, it’s clear that sending Celestia, who knows the secrets of the cult, back to the Orthodoxy side will yield a considerable return.

It’s something I absolutely must see through.

I reworked the plan and refined it in my mind. Just before I’m about to share it with Joanne in some form, her chaotic eyes narrow.

“Hey Oakley. Even though you’ve filled my head…. have you been avoiding me?”

“…Yes?”

“Even when I was in the bath or when I was experimenting next to Celestia—I’ve always been aware. The color of your eyes when you look at me has changed just slightly. Still, it’s a clear change.”

Joanne stares at me with her arms crossed. Her expression is unreadable.

To a fatal extent, she used to be terrible at lying and keeping secrets.

Her emotions were always on display, and if she tried to tell a lie, she would stumble over her words.

She was supposed to be such an easy-to-read person, but now, Joanne was different.

“I was looking forward to it, you know. I thought that if I were reborn, I could do that sort of thing with Oakley for the first time. But these past few days, you haven’t looked at me with those eyes. Even when I made it obvious in the bath, trying to seduce you, you ignored it all. Isn’t it cruel not to even let me have hope? I can be hurt too, you know?”

From the moment Joanne began to speak until she finished, not a single eyebrow moved.

Facing her, I said,

“Now is not the time to be lost in such thoughts.”

“Such thoughts, huh?… Well, fine. There’s some sense in what you say. But I wish you’d also value communication as lovers…”

It’s hardly something that needs to be said now.

Or is there a reason she wants to interrupt the current flow of things?

“Is there something you want to say? What’s the reason for changing the subject?”

“Reason? Ah, I couldn’t care less about anything other than our future together. Oakley’s goal was to destroy the Aaros Temple Order and let Kenneth Orthodox take control of the country, right? I really couldn’t care less about that. Maybe that’s why the topic got sidetracked.”

“Yes…?”

Joanne rattles on at a rapid pace like a broken doll.

Pressured by her intensity, I lose track of the original topic.

“I want to be with you. Always. Forever. To make that happen, we need to break through the current situation surrounding us. I understand that if one faction gains supremacy, things will settle down, but if Kenneth Orthodox takes control of the country, Oakley and I will be cornered as remnants of the Heretic and will undoubtedly die. On the other hand, even if the Aaros Temple Order takes over the country, it won’t extend the lifespan of you, who came from a womb bag. In the end, I’ll be alone and unfulfilled. I want an eternity with you.”

That’s the new answer that Joanne’s madness leads to.

A conclusion that deviates from my thought process appears before me in a terrifying form.

“In other words―the third faction should win. The Oakley faction of the Aaros Temple Order. Neither Kenneth Orthodox nor the Aaros Temple Order. Kill them all. The detestable Orthodox Phoenix and even the Guru-sama I loved so much kill them all. Crush them. The only ones who should win are us. That’s the only happy ending.”

—The worst chaos.

The mental fusion that had been progressing beneath the surface manifested in the worst possible way, beginning to lure me into an unknown future.