I was put in solitary confinement.
After I'd triggered a fortress riot over a tray of pig swill, and then been forcibly conscripted by an icy beauty who piloted a war-suit over two meters tall, I did not immediately embark on any grand, sweeping adventure. On the contrary, I was "escorted" back to the same room where I'd woken after surgery—no, they called it "Observation Cell Seven."
It was the same room: a rock-hard bed, a table, a chair, and a metal toilet welded into the corner that made me feel my dignity being challenged every time I looked at it. Even my "roommate" was still there—the half-man, half-machine servant that had led me to the canteen before.
It stood by my bed like the most dedicated statue in existence, utterly motionless. When I moved around the room, its head would track me.
Otherwise, only that green electronic eye would blink occasionally, proving it was still running. Outside the door, there were now two fully armed guards, standing ramrod straight like a pair of doorposts. This treatment was, without question, maximum-security inmate grade.
Night fell, but I couldn't sleep.
Partly because the wound in my chest still throbbed faintly, and partly because everything that had happened during the day was so unreal it kept replaying in my head—especially my first "intimate encounter" with the Inquisitor.
It had happened amid the canteen's wreckage.
When her ice-blue eyes locked onto me like a fire-control radar, I felt like even my DNA had been analyzed.
She'd asked me two questions. First: when her people were fighting "daemons," what did I see? Second: in the canteen, what did I see that triggered the riot?
You have to understand, at the time I was hungry, terrified, and my brain was mush. So I told the truth.
"On the first question… I saw your people—uh, Captain Kairen and the others—just go completely insane." I tried to recall that bizarre scene, forcing myself to describe it in scientific terms. "Some of them were shooting at thin air. Some were wrestling pillars. One guy was smashing his own head into a wall… like a mass hysteria episode, or like they'd inhaled some kind of hallucinogenic gas. As for the daemons and sorcery you mentioned… honestly, I didn't see anything. From my perspective, they were just… yeah, harming themselves and attacking an enemy that wasn't there."
As I spoke, I watched her reaction carefully.
Her face didn't change at all, but that faint "curiosity" in her ice-blue eyes seemed to deepen. She didn't argue with me. She didn't give me the look that said, "You ignorant mortal wouldn't understand." She simply listened in silence, like a researcher recording anomalous data.
"And the second question?" she asked.
"The second one is even simpler." The moment I thought of it, anger surged again, along with the nausea and the hunger. "I saw a tray of pig swill. No—calling it pig swill is an insult to pigs. What I saw was garbage, a rotting mess of random parts and stinking paste. Then I looked up and realized the entire canteen had their heads down, eating this stuff like it was the finest meal in the sector. I couldn't take it and shouted, asking how they could eat something like that."
I spread my hands, innocent as a lamb.
"And then they all acted like they suddenly woke up. They finally saw what was on their trays, and then they started vomiting, started smashing up the canteen… the rest you already saw. Honestly, I think the main blame is on logistics and the cooks. Feeding people something that inhuman? They deserved to get beaten. What I can't understand is how those soldiers could eat it with a straight face until I said what everyone was thinking and it all exploded…"
Wait.
When you put it like that, it sounds like I really did start the trouble.
I felt a flicker of guilt, so I lifted my chin stubbornly and pointed at the filth on the floor.
"...Just look at it. Is that something a human being should eat?"
I finished.
The canteen fell dead silent.
The Inquisitor just stared at me—quietly—for a full half minute. That gaze made my skin crawl.
Then she said something that blindsided me completely.
"I see." She nodded lightly, her tone as flat as if she were confirming a lab report. "An absolute, exclusionary cognition of 'reality.' Your perception can overwrite—perhaps even reverse—others' senses when those senses have been distorted by Warp influence. In the city, you 'did not believe' daemons existed, so the daemons in Kairen's perception vanished. In the canteen, you were 'certain' the food was rotten refuse, so the 'delicacy' masked by compulsion sorcery reverted to its true state."
She took my plain, materialist complaining and wrapped it in a conclusion that sounded impossibly grand.
Wait a second. This was basically that classic palace-drama trope, wasn't it? The Emperor thinks the concubine is heavenly beautiful, and then the Empress points it out and he finally realizes it's a skin-wearing demon…
"I'm not as mystical as you're making it sound." I waved both hands quickly. "I'm just a normal person. I believe in science, not ghosts. Seeing is believing. That thing was garbage. Nobody's going to convince me it's edible."
"'Normal'?" The Inquisitor's mouth lifted—just barely—into an arc so small it didn't even qualify as a smile. It was closer to cold mockery. "A 'normal' person who can pull rigorously conditioned Imperial soldiers out from under the influence of Warp phenomena. A 'normal' person who can break large-scale compulsion sorcery with a single sentence. You have no idea what you are worth."
She stepped closer. A faint scent—incense blended with ozone—washed over me.
"I do not yet know where you come from, and for now I do not care whether you are a suspicious element or some manner of relic." She looked down at me with those ice-blue eyes and declared, each word clipped and final. "From this moment onward, you are my attendant. A very useful 'tool.' Your food, clothing, shelter, and security will be handled by me, and by the Inquisition under my authority. In exchange, what you must do is simple: remain at my side so that I may 'use' you at any time."
I was stunned.
What was this? Forced conscription? A suspicious vagrant of unknown origin skyrocketing into the personal staff—no, the personal equipment—of someone at the top of a terrifying institution?
Some trashy light-novel title I'd once seen poked its head into my thoughts.
"I Got Isekai'ed An Became A Young Lady's Toy."
...
"Sigh."
Lying on that plank-hard bed, I let out a long breath. What even was my life anymore?
Then I realized there'd been some faint disturbance outside—no, these strange noises had been going on for who knew how long. I'd just been so lost in my own spiraling thoughts that I hadn't registered them. There were hurried footsteps, muffled shouts, and even dull pops that sounded like gunfire mixed with sharp, miserable screams. The entire fortress felt like a boiling boiler, or a roaring hive. This wasn't normal busyness. This was abnormal chaos.
My heart clenched as a dreadful possibility surfaced.
Was this connected to what I'd started in the canteen?
My line—"this food is pig swill"—had been a fuse. It hadn't just lit the soldiers' anger. It had lit a fire under the fortress' order, and maybe under the Inquisitor's suspicions about the fortress itself. That woman's execution speed was ridiculous. The moment she smelled something wrong, she didn't hesitate—she flipped the table.
A chill ran through me.
Was this a purge? How many heads were going to roll tonight? And the spark for all of it was… me being unable to tolerate a disgusting meal. This world was insane.
That night, I barely slept. Partly because anxiety and guilt sat heavy on my chest, and partly because the noises outside—rising and fading, surging and slackening—never stopped.
By the next day, nothing had improved.
No one came to interrogate me. No one came to "educate" me. I was simply locked in Observation Cell Seven, my only companion the servitor who couldn't be coaxed into saying anything useful.
At some point, it delivered breakfast—or maybe lunch. A palm-sized gray sealed pouch. I tore it open and found a brick-like gray paste shot through with fibrous strands. A larger sealed pouch of the same material contained water. Both were stamped with an ornate letter "I" and an emblem made of three bars.
I squeezed out a bit of the paste and tasted it. I nearly threw up on the spot. The flavor was hard to describe. Like wet cement, rust, and expired protein powder mixed together. Strictly speaking it wasn't "bad," exactly, but… it had a pure, nauseating sense of "matter." My tongue refused to acknowledge it as food.
But hunger is the best cook.
In the end, after going too long without real food, I pinched my nose and finished the pouch of something that wasn't even worthy of dog food. At least it looked more sanitary than the canteen's biochemical sludge. That strange stamp on the packaging was probably this world's version of a "quality seal."
Eat, drink, piss, shit—everything happened in that tiny space.
Every time I had no choice but to use that freezing metal toilet, the servitor stood there at my bedside and "watched," its green electronic eye blinking like it was recording my waste data. That voyeuristic humiliation hurt more than any punishment.
I tried to chat with it, just to keep my mind from rotting. But apart from specific times when it changed my dressing or injected something, and the moments when it responded to basic survival needs, it only ever answered in the same handful of lines.
"Directive confirmation in progress."
"Insufficient clearance."
"Please wait."
It had less personality than a cheap home assistant.
By afternoon, I was so bored I'd started studying the metal grain of the wall panels. The initial fear and unease had been ground down by the endless waiting, leaving only a blank fog about the future. I finally understood how solitary confinement could be torture.
Just as I was starting to drift off, the door clicked and opened.
The Inquisitor stepped inside.
She had shed the god-descending heavy armor and now wore a robe of brilliant white—opulent, yet cut with the sharp lines of a military uniform. The collar and cuffs were embroidered in gold with a double-headed eagle and skull motifs, making her already striking, martial beauty look even more regal and untouchable.
Without the war-suit, she wasn't absurdly tall—but she was still statuesque. Considering the towering heeled leather boots she wore, her true height was probably only slightly less than mine. (I'm one-eighty.) Her platinum hair was immaculate. Her face showed no fatigue, as if the upheaval that swept the fortress last night had nothing to do with her at all.
She looked at me—hollow-cheeked, dark circles under my eyes—and didn't even frown. As if I weren't a living person, just a tool that had gotten slightly dirty.
"Get up." Her voice was still cold and direct. "We're leaving."
No explanation. No greeting.
What could I say?
I climbed down from the bed and followed behind her in silence, like a dog led on a leash—blank-eyed, obedient—walking toward an unknown place that might be a park, or might be a veterinary clinic.
(End of Chapter)
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