New Darlington.
It was a city located near the eastern coast of Faerie Britain that had once fallen into ruin until it was granted as a fief to Fairy Knight Tristan.
Thanks to that, it regained its vitality and was reborn.
However, for both the humans and fairies of Faerie Britain, this place was known as a fortress of demons and a city of terror, because its notoriety was second only to Camelot—or perhaps even worse.
Why?
It was because the lord of this city was a moody slaughterer, a blood-soaked individual who had killed over four hundred thousand fairies across a span of one hundred years.
She was the daughter of Queen Morgan, one of the most terrifying beings in Faerie Britain.
She was the only magus aside from Queen Morgan.
She was a demon who could behead a person with a mere flick of her harp string.
On the outside, she looked like a beautiful princess, but on the inside, she was a wicked vampire.
She was Tristan, one of the three Fairy Knights, standing alongside Lancelot and Gawain.
Today, like always, this Fairy Knight suddenly fell into a foul mood.
*Ting-ling-ling~*
A beautifully striking harp sound echoed throughout New Darlington.
It came from a theater that resembled an ancient Roman colosseum, circular in shape, surrounded by audience seats, though not massive, it wasn’t small either.
It was easy to imagine the place filled to the brim, packed with people cheering loud enough to pierce the sky and linger in the air.
In the past, this theater had indeed been bustling, as the number of fairies visiting each day was practically uncountable.
Almost every day, a bloody massacre was staged here, and the ones thrown into the circular theater at the center were usually humans captured from outside.
Some were rebels who opposed the Queen, others were slaves sent here, and sometimes even fairies from other cities who were fed up or bored would send their human servants into this place to make them participate in the theater.
And what those people had to do was perform a show.
What show?
Simply put, it was a battle to the death.
The one who won would survive.
The one who lost would die on the spot.
The killing would go on and on, and the battles would continue until only one remained.
Only then would that last person be granted freedom.
However, no one had actually ever seen that final champion walk out of the theater alive, because after winning, they would be taken away—and then vanish without a trace, as if they had evaporated from the world.
Unbelievably cruel.
Unbelievably brutal.
Unbelievably bloody.
Unbelievably terrifying.
Such was New Darlington’s National Slaughter Theater—a place that struck fear into countless people and filled just as many with wild joy.
Of course, the ones feeling ecstatic were mostly fairies.
For many fairies, watching humans get slaughtered, watching them kill each other—it was like a show worth enjoying, one of the finest forms of entertainment.
However, the moment that beautiful harp sound rang out, the fairies who had shown up in the theater today were destined to have their cheers turn into screams.
Because today, and only today, they were the ones being hunted.
*Splurt!*
A fairy’s head was suddenly sliced off by a surprise attack—it flew high into the air, while the body, gushing hot blood, slowly collapsed and dyed the audience seats red.
Right after that, the beautiful tones of a harp being strummed rang out continuously.
*Ting-ling-ling~*
*Ting-ling-ling~*
*Ting-ling-ling~*
*Ting-ling-ling~*
*Splurt!**Splurt!**Splurt!**Splurt!*
Whenever the beautiful tones of a harp rang out, one fairy head after another was cut off and tossed into the sky.
Needless to say, it was definitely the harp’s doing.
As the fairy holding the harp kept playing it, its beautiful melody transformed into invisible attacks. Like unseen piano wires slicing through the air, each stroke cleanly severed a fairy’s head, killing them on the spot.
In the middle of this utterly unreasonable massacre, the fairies who had come to watch a performance of human slaughter suddenly became the ones being slaughtered.
Some screamed and fled their seats, while others panicked in terror, running around aimlessly.
In an instant, the entire National Slaughter Theater was turned into a hellscape—an uncontrollably chaotic slaughterhouse.
"Wh-Why are you doing this to us?!"
"We were just here to watch humans kill each other!"
"Don’t kill us!"
"AAAAAAHHH—!!!"
Unfortunately, the fairies’ frantic escape and hysterical screams only served to irritate the fairy who had suddenly appeared in the audience and started slaughtering them with her harp.
"Noisy!"
Tristan, wearing a bright red princess dress, held the harp in her arms and shouted with a face full of annoyance.
"Stop running around like idiots. Just stand there and behave. You’re all a bunch of expendable scraps who’ll die off once you can’t pay the existence tax anyway, so why not let me enjoy myself a little?"
Saying this indifferently, Tristan walked slowly across the theater’s audience seats, her steps resembling a model on a catwalk in high heels.
As she moved, she strummed her harp, turning its music into sharp blades, transforming the strings into deadly white threads that sliced through the air and cut down one fleeing fairy after another.
"Seriously, this sucks—truly sucks."
"You trash fairies are already annoying just by existing, and now you can’t even be used to vent a little anger? What useless trash."
"If Mother didn’t still need your magical energy, I’d honestly hope every single fairy in this country dropped dead already."
"There are still humans around anyway—plenty of toys to go around, so whether you exist or not doesn’t even matter, does it?"
"Ughhh, just die already! Hurry up and die! Stop being an eyesore! All of you, just die!"
Tristan kept rambling like some spoiled rich girl complaining about how hard life was. Her tone didn’t carry much murderous intent, but more like she was casually grumbling to herself.
More importantly, that look on her face wasn’t scary at all—in fact, it was somewhat cute.
However, when a cute girl like her casually spouted off lines like those while chopping off heads nonstop in a public venue, turning a once-cheering theater into a sea of blood, the scene was more terrifying than any horror film.
Just like that, the slaughter lasted for a full hour.
An hour later, there wasn’t a single soul left alive in the theater—only puddles of blood and scattered corpses surrounded the girl, creating a scene straight out of hell.
If Riezel had been here, he might’ve recalled the massacre Shalltear had carried out in the northern forest of E-Rantel. It was just that, while Shalltear had looked satisfied after enjoying her bloodbath, Tristan still looked pissed.
"That’s it?"
"No way... I swear there were a bunch more fairies here just a minute ago..."
"Don’t tell me they’re hiding? Hey! Get out here!"
Tristan barked her demands without a shred of reason, but the one who responded was a man walking casually through the sea of corpses and blood, his expression unchanged, even smiling.
"Everyone already ran off scared, Lady Spinel."
He was none other than Beryl Gut.
"What the hell?!" Tristan complained in frustration. "I haven’t vented enough yet, Red Beryl. Aren’t there any stragglers left?"
"Even if there were, they probably wouldn’t be enough for you alone, milady." Beryl shrugged helplessly. "Besides, after the mess you just made, I doubt anyone will ever come back to this theater again. What a shame, this was one of the few forms of entertainment left in Faerie Britain, and now it’s gone."
"You don’t have to worry about that." Tristan sneered. "The more bloodshed and nonsense that happens here, the more excited those fairies get. Believe me, there’ll definitely be others coming back."
"Really? Fairies are really that interesting? Hahaha—!" Beryl suddenly burst out laughing. "Well, well, they are something else compared to humans, who panic the second their lives are in danger."
"You might not want to think too highly of them." Tristan scoffed. "They’re just stupid and don’t learn anything. Watching others kill or doing the killing themselves makes them all giddy and thrilled, but the second they’re the ones about to get killed, they freak out—just like the ones who were here earlier."
"Ah, so that’s how it is... that’s no fun anymore..." Beryl dropped his smile, lowered his head a little, and let the reflection from his glasses hide his eyes. "Even if evildoers are unforgivable, they should at least know they’re doing something wrong. If they’re totally clueless as they cause harm, then they’re nothing but worthless pests."
"What?" Tristan frowned, even more annoyed. "Don’t say weird stuff people can’t understand like that. It makes me look dumb, Red Beryl."
’Aren’t you dumb though?’ Beryl retorted inwardly but kept a cheerful look on his face. "Anyway, you’ve let off enough steam, haven’t you, milady? Are you seriously that angry just because Her Majesty the Queen is getting married?"
Hearing this, Tristan bit her lip.
Indeed, that was exactly why she was in such a foul mood, or else she wouldn’t have leaped into the audience and started slaughtering the cheering fairies, getting all pissed at their laughter and applause.
Her mother getting married was enough to throw this Fairy Knight completely off the rails.
However, Beryl didn’t quite get it.
"It’s just a wedding, right?" Beryl said in a carefree tone. "Shouldn’t be a big deal for fairies, should it?"
As far as he knew, while the Fairy Kingdom did have married couples, their relationships were way flimsier compared to human ones.
Why?
It was because fairies didn’t have children—or more accurately, didn’t need to.
Unlike humans, who had to pass on their bloodline, fairies were beings whose origins traced back to nature itself, so their way of giving life to the next generation didn’t rely solely on childbirth because there were other methods.
For example, the six original A-Reis, also known as the six fairies of the beginning, who came to the surface from the Inner Sea of the Planet, could naturally create offspring and members of their race just by existing, which was how the six great fairy clans of Faerie Britain came to be.
On top of that, when fairies from Faerie Britain died, they would return to the land, and after some time, a new fairy identical to the dead one would appear on that land with the same looks, same power, and same life force—it was as if they had been reincarnated.
In other words, the number of fairies in Faerie Britain didn’t really change.
Unless something unusual happened that prevented the next generation from being born, the population would always return to its original state, no matter how many died.
For that reason, the concept of having children didn’t exist among the fairies, which, in turn, made adoption more common.
As a result, without the need for childbirth, their marriages weren’t exactly stable. Instead of forming a real family, it was more like building a shallow alliance of mutual benefit. Some fairies even got married just for fun, curiosity, or just to see what it was like.
In this kind of setting, marriage in Faerie Britain wasn’t just unprotected by law, but could barely even be considered a social custom. Some twisted fairies even had a habit of hunting down their own partners.
Simply put, marriage in Faerie Britain wasn’t just meaningless—it could also be dangerous.
Knowing all this, Beryl figured that Morgan wanting to marry the savior, the one foretold to overthrow her rule, might simply be a twisted kind of amusement.
Who knew, maybe the groom who married the witch wouldn’t even survive their wedding night.
Morgan was, after all, a woman whose name was stained with scandal in the legends of his original world, often called a whore by many.
Wouldn’t it be more fitting for things to turn out that way?
Beryl believed it to be like that, but—
"...You have no idea what Mother has done." Tristan clenched her teeth in anger.
"What?" Beryl raised an eyebrow.
"No one but me knows—for these past 2,000 years as queen, Mother has been longing for someone." Tristan continued in an extremely irritated and displeased tone.
"Longing?" Beryl responded in shock and disbelief. "No way... Longing for someone for 2,000 years? You mean Queen Morgan?"
"Hard to believe, right? But it’s the truth!" Tristan said, clearly annoyed. "I don’t know who that person is, but Mother spent half of her reign developing two kinds of magecraft just for him."
"Even I wasn’t allowed to use those—the new ’Garden’ and the ’Stake.’"
"At first, I thought that the Garden and the Stake were high-level special magecrafts only Mother could use, like the Tower, but later, she told me they were actually just like the Mirror—something she could’ve handed down to me."
"She just couldn’t do it, because those two only worked for that one guy—they were magecraft made solely for him!"
As Tristan spoke, she angrily flung out her arm and used her sharp nails to slice open the corpse of a nearby fairy, tearing it apart.
"I realized then—Mother’s heart had always belonged to someone. If she were to marry, it would only be with that guy, so there’s no way she’d be like other fairies, marrying just anyone."
Upon hearing all this, Beryl lowered his gaze.
"Hmm... that’s... really surprising..."
He muttered under his breath first, then spoke again.
"So, you’re saying the so-called Child of Prophecy from the rumors is actually the one Her Majesty the Queen has been waiting for all this time?"
However, the Child of Prophecy had only arrived in Britain sixteen years ago, hadn’t he?
How could Morgan have longed for that man for 2,000 years?
Something was definitely going on here that he didn’t know about.
Beryl’s thoughts began racing, but before he could figure anything out, Tristan spoke again.
"I don’t care about this Child of Prophecy or whatever!"
Tristan screamed, her pretty face twisting a little.
"I don’t care who Mother wants to marry, as long as that person doesn’t take away any of Mother’s love for me!"
"I won’t let anyone be more important to her than I am!"
"Mother can love as many people as she wants, but the one she loves most has to be me!"
"Otherwise, I will..."
She stopped and didn’t finish the sentence.
Her eyes shimmered with emotion, and whatever she was thinking made her eyes turn red.
Seeing this, Beryl’s eyes widened.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Lady Spinel, you’re not thinking of killing Her Majesty’s future husband, are you?" Beryl gave her a troubled look. "I mean, I still find it kind of hard to believe Queen Morgan would care that much about one man, but if what you said is true, then hurting him—even if it’s you—would surely get punished, right?"
Beryl knew Morgan spoiled Tristan a lot.
Even if Morgan didn’t show it outwardly, the way she indulged Tristan was pretty obvious.
If Morgan’s husband had only shown up for some unimportant reason, then Morgan probably wouldn’t have cared if Tristan took him out, and definitely wouldn’t have blamed her.
However, if the man Morgan chose this time really was the one she had waited and longed for over the past 2,000 years, as Tristan claimed, then no matter how much Morgan doted on her adopted daughter, she wouldn’t forgive Tristan if she dared lay a finger on him.
Even so, Tristan didn’t seem to realize this—or maybe she was just ignoring it on purpose.
"If he’s the one Mother chose, then at the very least, I should be allowed to check him out first, right?" Tristan took a deep breath and flashed a bewitching smile. "If he dies easily, Mother might think she picked the wrong guy."
Upon hearing this, Beryl really wanted to retort, ’Even Lancelot and Gawain couldn’t deal with him. What makes you think you can?’
But in the end, Beryl didn’t say it, because saying that would mean stabbing Tristan right in her biggest sore spot.
’...Forget it.’
Beryl lowered his head, hiding his eyes behind his glasses.
’Either way, I want to see what this so-called Child of Prophecy is like too, so I might as well take a look and see where he came from.’