A silent, still warehouse.
A space where even the air seemed stagnant, refusing to flow.
Sophien’s breath brushed the tip of my nose. Her body lay atop mine as though overlapping it.
Like this, the emperor before my eyes was far too close.
As someone sensitive to hygiene, I instinctively found such proximity uncomfortable, but perhaps because the person was Sophien.
It was bearable enough.
“……”
At this moment.
The emperor’s vital signs appeared as steady as usual. Her breathing was regular, and the dilation of her pupils was as it always was, but there was one small problem with her pulse.
Her heart was trembling.
……Which meant she was not joking.
“Your Majesty.”
At that, Sophien licked her lips.
“Do not worry. I am merely curious. My predecessors must have done such things as well to give birth to me.”
“‘Such things’ are not kissing.”
“……”
Sophien gave no answer. Her eyes traced a deep arc.
That sight made me exceedingly uneasy.
“Then……”
Tap—
Her lips abruptly touched mine once, then pulled away.
A childish prank too ambiguous to even call a kiss.
No saliva was exchanged; it was merely contact of the sort that might happen by accident.
And yet Sophien’s heart pounded violently.
“I can hear your heartbeat.”
“……I see. How strange.”
She nodded, acknowledging it, then suddenly lowered her face. She rested her head against my collarbone.
“Your Majesty?”
“……A headache.”
That one word Sophien murmured.
In an instant, a crimson energy rapidly surged from her body. The red aura filled the warehouse in a mere second.
It was a death variable.
Immediately, I wrapped Snowflower Stone around my chest and heart.
Boom——!
The very next moment, a tremendous impact struck me.
An agonizing pain shook my entire body, as though my bones were being crushed.
“……Kh.”
I clenched my teeth. Blood flowed between them.
“Your Majesty.”
I looked at Sophien in my arms. But her eyes were already filled with red mana.
A figure steeped in killing intent, bereft of reason.
The murderous demon sealed deep within Sophien’s heart, the one who had killed her mother.
“Your Majesty.”
Sophien glared at me with empty eyes and condensed mana in her grip. Her nails and fingers grew viciously long, and the sharpness of her mana seemed capable of easily slicing not only the bones of 「Iron Man」 but even Snowflower Stone.
If stabbed, I would not survive.
“……Your Majesty.”
However, Sophien did not do it. Her hand was full of killing intent, but she merely stared at me without moving.
She did not continue on to the next action.
“……”
Time passed without a word, and the death variable that had filled the warehouse gradually thinned.
Right now, Sophien was resisting on her own. Resisting some murderous impulse boiling within her.
If so, as her subject, I had a duty to help her.
“……Excuse me.”
I placed my hand on the back of her neck. I pressed her acupoint very lightly.
Thud—
As all strength left her body in an instant, she collapsed into my arms.
“……”
The tension had been brief.
But a moment ago, I had truly felt my life threatened.
─Deculein. Are you all right?
Chiron at my chest asked.
“Yes.”
Thanks to the Snowflower Stone I had wrapped around myself in time—though my head was still somewhat rattled—there was no further issue.
If not for the Snowflower Stone, I would have died today.
─Is this what you had braced yourself for? The safeguard that god planted in Her Majesty’s instincts.
“Yes. It seems so.”
I let out a small sigh.
“Let us keep this matter secret.”
─……Will that help Her Majesty?
“Of course.”
─……
Sophien breathed softly in my arms. I brushed her red hair with both hands.
Chiron asked.
─By the way. Will Her Majesty’s love remain one-sided forever? Can it not become mutual?
“……Who knows.”
I gave a small smile.
“I do not think it is impossible.”
─……Truly?
Just now, when our lips had lightly touched.
There had certainly been a very small stirring in my own heart as well.
To begin with, if there was anyone besides Yulie whom Deculein could love, then Sophien, the noblest person on this continent, would be one of them.
For Deculein’s love, “status” is a necessary condition.
“So please keep it secret.”
─I shall.
“And for the time being, please stop giving Her Majesty any combat-related instruction.”
─……I shall.
Having finished speaking, I steadied my breath.
“Also…… I, too, for a moment.”
I was sleepy, unusually so.
Well, it was likely because I had consumed nearly three thousand mana in an instant defending against Sophien’s blow just now.
“……I will sleep.”
Holding Sophien in my arms, I closed my eyes.
Chiron did not answer, and my consciousness sank gently.
……Had about thirty minutes passed like that?
I heard a rustling sound in my arms.
My sensitive perception sensed it, and Sophien also seemed to have woken from sleep, letting out a small breath, but she did not raise herself.
“……Professor?”
Instead, she burrowed into my arms.
Calling to me as a koala might cling to a tree, and even letting out a strangely cozy yawn.
* * *
Myeolji (滅地).
As its dictionary meaning, “a destroyed land,” suggests, it is “a place where life does not grow.”
Here, demonic beasts and demons swarm day and night without distinction, neither grass nor streams exist, and the concentration of demonic energy in the atmosphere is so thick that gas masks are essential. Yet it is not the underworld, where one dies the instant one sets foot inside.
Not only the Altar, but also adventurers who explore Myeolji and seekers unafraid of death come and go in considerable numbers.
It is merely that life cannot be sustained without outside resources.
“……”
The emperor’s younger brother, Creto, is in that Myeolji.
In the Altar’s headquarters known as Sanctuary, in the place dug deepest underground beneath Myeolji, he is staring at a crystal orb.
“People are coming.”
Quay’s crystal orb, which reflects the entire continent, is quite fascinating even to the mage Creto. After all, it can observe any place he desires without any limitation of range.
“Yes. I did not kidnap them.”
The scene currently projected by the crystal orb is a certain “procession.”
Countless humans approaching this place, the Altar’s Sanctuary.
Each carrying a bundle on their back, they are leaving the inland where life grows and coming to Myeolji, which is filled only with death.
“They are coming on their own feet.”
Quay said. Creto looked back at him.
“They are trying to believe in and follow my revelation. Voluntary belief and faith.”
“……Will you ‘preserve’ them too?”
At Creto’s question, Quay gave a small smile.
“Preservation.”
It was a very small privilege that Quay, who claimed himself to be god, had promised Creto.
Even if the continent were recreated and everything reset, Creto’s existence alone would be preserved and remain.
“No. Their original sin will not be washed away. For now, that privilege is yours alone. But their souls will remain. They will be reborn with the same souls, but they will live lives different from now.”
“……What is the point?”
Creto’s jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth.
“Rebirth in which both memory and body disappear would be no different from death.”
“From a narrow perspective, you are right. But human memories are ultimately no more than human in scale. All their years, from a cosmic perspective, are merely tiny specks of dust.”
“I am human too.”
Creto spoke firmly.
Quay shook his head with a benevolent face.
“……No.”
Then he placed a hand on his shoulder.
“You are different.”
“……”
Perhaps because he had lent his body to Sophien, Quay felt strangely fond of Creto.
Then again, Creto’s birth in the first place, and Sophien’s unusually deep bond toward her own blood kin, had all been part of Quay’s plan—“a very small step.”
“You will obtain what you desire. If the continent is recreated, all magic on the new continent will begin with you. The magical knowledge in your head will become the foundation of the new world.”
For that reason, Creto was a child who contributed to his faith simply by existing.
A privilege of this level was only natural.
“……”
But Creto turned away without a word. Expressing neither affirmation nor denial, he left alone.
“I will give you time. Humans do think a lot, after all.”
Quay would gladly give him the time needed to agonize.
For he already knew what the answer would be.
* * *
Meanwhile, Epherene, who had briefly returned to the Floating Island, was peering around a magic shop. She clutched her bulging wallet tightly in both hands.
“Do you really have to buy it on the Floating Island?”
Allen asked. Epherene nodded.
“Of course. The equipment there is way too outdated. The Floating Island advances practically every day. How can we use facilities from three years ago……”
“Still, the Floating Island is too dangerous. The ‘Purge Officers’ might be watching you, Miss Epherene.”
Purge Officers. In religious terms, they were a profession like inquisitors, the armed force of the Floating Island. Their targets were usually magic murderers who invented and tried to distribute overly dangerous magic, but this time, Epherene had caught their eye.
In the magical world, the crime of “damaging the mysteries of magic and mana” was that enormous.
“So what? With your talent, Assistant Professor Allen, you can run away in a single step.”
“I don’t want my power to be discovered as much as possible either……”
“Huh?”
At that moment, a familiar back of the head caught Epherene’s eye.
A child waddling along with both arms full of very high-end magical items.
She quickly approached her.
“Lia!”
“……?”
Lia.
She had thought she was an adventurer, so how had she come up to the Floating Island?
Epherene asked happily.
“How did you get up to the Floating Isla…… huh?”
“……”
Lia was silent. Ziiing—she looked at her with a blunt face.
Even Epherene was startled by the state of her appearance.
“Uh……”
Her cheeks were very hollow, and her face was sharp.
Her eyes somehow looked fierce, and her lips were crooked too, making her completely different from the kind Lia she remembered.
“……I came up with a recommendation letter. Because I’m an adventurer.”
Lia answered curtly. Epherene scratched her temple for no reason.
“Um…… wait?! What happened to your hand?”
One of Lia’s hands looked strange.
No, one of her hands was missing. It was completely gone below the wrist.
“I never had a hand in the first place.”
“……Huh?”
“I’d been wearing a doll hand until now, but it broke. I’m going to get it replaced.”
“Ah…… why did it break?”
“Training. Then, goodbye.”
Bow—
Lia lowered her head and trudged away. As if she had nothing more to say, no, as if she no longer had the strength to speak.
Epherene watched her back and muttered blankly.
“……What happened to her all this time?”
This was rather bewildering. A child who had clearly been nice and cute was now like an utterly exhausted, razor-sharp graduate student.
“Miss Epherene! Hurry and buy it, hurry. We don’t have time.”
Allen pushed Epherene’s back. Epherene went “uh, uh, uh, uh—” and entered a shop, and as soon as she did, she found exactly the research equipment she needed.
“Oh. That’s exactly what I was looking for. Excuse me. How much is this?”
She carefully asked the price, but immediately recoiled in horror.
“Five million elne?! This microscope and mana solution set?! My entire fortune is five million elne!”
“Yes. It is a high-grade magical item.”
“But Professor’s lab had these lying all over the place!”
The microscopes that had been rolling around Deculein’s lab as if they were nothing.
She vividly remembered clinging to one of them to make a magic crystal core, but here, one of these cost five million elne……
* * *
While Epherene was shocked by the prices on the Floating Island.
Lia, who had returned to the Yukline mansion, was having her hand assembled by the puppeteer Deculein had brought in.
Crackle— crackle—
Mana connecting the doll to her blood vessels sparked like electricity.
“Does it not hurt?”
The puppeteer suddenly asked. He seemed intrigued by Lia, who was dryly indifferent to the pain of the operation.
Lia answered.
“I’m used to pain.”
“Hoho. Is that so. Hohohoho.”
The old woman laughed merrily, and Lia looked at her while considering the quality of the doll.
In truth, since she was a puppeteer Deculein had brought in, Lia had never doubted her, but she seemed to be even more remarkable than expected.
At this level, she was practically on par with Al Roth.
No, was she Al Roth?
“Studying under Yukline seems to be quite difficult, does it not?”
The puppeteer asked. Lia pondered for a moment, then nodded.
“……He drags out my bottom.”
His teaching, of course, was perfect.
Every night and every morning, he pinpointed only the most essential parts and bestowed insights close to the essence; he seemed to remodel her body from the beginning like some chimera; and above all, he tightened the mental tension to an extreme degree.
However, his words and actions touched her very roots.
They kept poking at her deepest pride, and the contempt he occasionally spat out stirred an instinctive rage within her.
“But I’m going to be acknowledged.”
Even so, that was not the reason she was immersing herself in this now.
The emotion blooming in her chest: “I want to be acknowledged.”
Not because he was Deculein.
Because he resembled Kim Woojin.
“Would you not suddenly fight him if you burst?”
At that question, Lia twisted her lips.
“……If we fight, I’ll win.”
At that, a smile bloomed on the puppeteer’s lips.
“Hoho. Is that so?”
Crackle—!
One large spark. Lia flinched, and the old woman tapped her wrist.
“It is done. You should be able to move it like your own body. It will not break, and it will fully assimilate with you.”
“……Let me see.”
As she moved the doll wrist this way and that to appraise it, her eyes widened before she knew it.
“……It’s perfect. Perfect. It feels like my own hand.”
“Hoho. Indeed. However, I feel you will soon have need of repairs.”
“Why?”
“While negotiating the price with the lord here, I took a slight look at your curriculum.”
Curriculum?
Lia tilted her head.
“It said you have practical combat training next week.”
“……”
At that, Lia’s gaze naturally turned outside the window.
Deculein was sitting at the tea table in the middle of the Yukline garden, reading.
“……I can do anything. Even if it’s fighting the lord directly, I just have to avoid hitting his face.”
Below the neck, he was not Kim Woojin, so she could do that much……
That aside, if it was practical combat training, did that mean going outside?
Exhausted by indoor training until now, Lia smiled for the first time in a while.