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?
　The crowd's banner, "Death to traitors! which the crowd had been holding up, was swept up in the wind and covered the girl's body. She wore it like a cloak to hide her tattered underwear.

　A headless knight, if you will.
　Kahle had an idea about the undead.

　--Dullahan ......!

　It was a high-ranking undead that should never have been born from an execution site.
　It had the power to make cursed prophecies that could kill people, and it was also a powerful warrior. A party of experienced adventurers could barely take on one of them.
　I've never even heard of a Dullahan in the form of a little girl. ......

　But this Dullahan (temporary) was even more beyond Kahle's expectations.
　She thrust her sword at the crowd from the air and chanted something.
　By the time Kahle realized that it was a magical chant, she had concluded her chant.



"Deathcloud x (Cross) Energy Drain.
　Assembled Spell ...... "Evil Sacrament".

　She said this in a flat, matter-of-fact tone, like a government official reading off a document. Kahle shuddered, wondering if the voice of a child, devoid of any emotion, could be so horrible.

　It was a magic Kahle didn't know, but he knew it was an offensive magic.
　She knew it was an offensive spell because something flew out of the sword and exploded in the middle of the crowd, leaving only a corpse in its wake.

"What ......?

　At first Kahle didn't understand what had happened, because so many people had died so easily.
　With a thud ...... and a powdery sound, a blood-red mist rose over a certain area, and the people in it turned into standing, dried-up corpses.
　There were dozens of skeletons with human skin attached and dressed. They collapsed helplessly on the snow-covered cobblestones.

"Aaahhhh!
Aaahhhh!

　The surviving crowd screamed and fled in unison. They rushed to the exits of the several plazas, kicking and crushing each other, and bumping into the onlookers in the rear who were still unaware of what had happened. Those who fell down somehow were crushed into a bloody mass of flesh.

"Hmm. So this is magic. ......

　Kahle's blood ran cold as she heard the girl above her mutter.
　For her, this was just a way to see what she could do. Just like when Kahle pretended to check her shoulder before work.
　Dozens, if not triple digits, of people had died just for that.

So next time, let's try the sword.

　The girl standing in the air looked straight down. The girl standing in the air looked straight down. ...... To be precise, she looked down at her neck, which she grasped in her left hand.
　The girl's gaze was so gentle and joyful that Kahle felt numb.

　The first time Kahle had cut off someone's head, on the night of the 14th, he had cried and vomited all night, unable to bear the pressure of having killed someone who deserved to die, even though he was a diabolical serial killer.
　But what about this girl? She didn't seem to care that so many people had died. On the contrary, she seemed to be enjoying it. Or maybe this is what the undead are all about.

　--No. This is a monster. There's nothing I can do about it. ......!

　The only people in the girl's line of sight were the knights and Kahle who had led the two condemned men away.
　The knight, who had been giving an impassioned speech from atop the execution table, was finally about to draw his sword with trembling hands.

　Almost at the same time as Kahle raised his execution axe. The girl kicked in the air and danced.
　Her blood-red sword swung with blinding speed. Her swordplay was as light as if she were dancing.

　Before Kahle's eyes, the knight was dismembered while standing.
　The body of the knight, his armor cut into pieces, fell onto the snow with a splash.

"d*mn ......!

　When Kahle thought that there was nothing more he could do, he turned his back on the girl and jumped off the execution table.

　But then the tip of a red sword crossed Kahle's line of vision.

　By the time she realized that her neck had been cut off from behind, Kahle's head had left her body and was flying through the air like a ball kicked up by a child.

　--I see. So this is what it feels like to be decapitated. ......

　Kahle's consciousness fell into darkness as he looked down at his body lying face down in the snow with only his neck.