Will You Join the Calamity Subjugation Force?
"Would you not also join the subjugation force?"
So that was what this was about after all.
I had already guessed as much from the moment he asked, out of nowhere, whether we knew about the calamities.
This place was the world inside Destiny, the game I had once played.
I had progressed through three chapters of Destiny's story, and in the original, the first field practicum corresponded to Chapter Two.
And the existence of the ancient calamities known as the Banished was first mentioned in Destiny from Chapter Two onward.
Given the timeline, talk of the ancient calamities was due to come up sooner or later—but I had grown far too complacent, assuming this world and the original game were completely separate realities.
For the subject of calamities to come up here… I let my guard down completely.
Dante had gone from the gallant hero of the original to a halfwit who only shouted about looking cool, fun, and sexy.
I had become Blanc, maid of the Leonhart ducal house, instead of M of the Path of Void—Number Nine, Mu-myeong.
The young lady's relationship with Fell had changed drastically from the original.
A character who never existed in the source material had joined the Owl Class as one of our own.
In the original, the first field practicum had taken us to the Federation; now we had arrived not at the Federation, but at the royal capital.
There were already more than enough reasons to treat this world and the original as entirely separate things—reasons enough to overflow.
So I had believed the original's flow had been completely rewritten… and yet, somehow, talk of the calamities still found its way in.
On top of that, in the original this subject was only ever mentioned lightly to the protagonist, the Holy Swordswoman. I had never imagined for a second that he would drag the young lady and me into a conversation about calamities.
"What… are you talking about?"
To the young lady, what he was saying now was a bolt from the blue.
Her mother, Lady Saia S. Leonhart, had left this world because of the Hydra's deadly venom.
Preas, the central city of Riomaine Province, had escaped the Hydra's poison—but the other cities and villages of the province had suffered catastrophic losses.
These days people said the railways had restored Riomaine Province to a glory greater than before, but that did not mean the victims of the Hydra had simply vanished.
Even Asabella, head maid of the Leonhart estate, had lost her husband and daughter to the Hydra, had she not?
To a young lady who had grown up watching the pain the Hydra left behind, the idea that a calamity might return was something she neither wanted to believe nor could bring herself to believe.
And yet she could not simply reject it, either, no matter how much she wished it untrue.
The one speaking of it before us now was the Sage who had defeated that very Hydra.
Unlike us, who had never faced the Hydra ourselves, he was a hero who had stood against its venom with his own body and brought it down. The young lady could not dismiss her teacher's words.
"Ancient calamities are reviving? How do you know that? No—I only asked why you hid the fact that the magical beasts had gone berserk. Why are you suddenly telling us all of this?"
Still, the young lady was not about to take her teacher's word at face value.
No matter who was speaking, a matter this grave demanded careful verification of its truth.
And that last question was one I had wanted to ask the teacher myself.
"I shall answer them one by one."
Perhaps it was the way the young lady refused to panic in the face of such a shocking revelation and instead answered with composure—despite the barrage of questions, the teacher looked not the least bit annoyed. A faint smile even touched his lips.
Good posture.
Even though the person across from her was clearly the one holding all the power, she still took responsibility and voiced her grievances over the injustice her party had suffered.
She did not fall into panic upon hearing something so shocking; she responded with a cool head.
She neither blindly denied the other party's words nor blindly accepted them.
He had taken her for a little brat more swayed by emotion than her reputation suggested—but apparently that was not the case.
"First, I shall answer how I know that the ancient calamities are reviving. The same ill omens that were detected when that fucking poison dragon came back to life are appearing all across the continent."
The Hydra had never revived in any ordinary fashion.
Even before its resurrection, an unsettling miasma and mana had blanketed the land, and the Hydra's thralls had begun to appear one by one.
The hunters of the subjugation force at the time had started calling those things ill omens, and so the name for the miserable parasites that came packaged with every calamity became "ill omens."
It was a fitting name, given that they always showed up whenever a calamity was about to strike.
And now, those ill omens were beginning to show themselves again, little by little.
"Is there any chance the ill omens appear, but nothing actually revives?"
It was far too hopeful, far too optimistic a thought—but it was a possibility he himself had considered more than once.
People always searched for hope even in the worst of situations, and ended up clinging to threads as thin as that.
"Unfortunately, no. The Federation's shrine maiden foresaw the revival of the calamities in the future she beheld."
"Ah…"
At the mention of the Federation's shrine maiden, Leonhart's expression hardened.
It was common knowledge that Lura O. Bemus—shrine maiden of the Ios Federation and princess of the Deribant Federation—possessed the prophetic eye known as Insomnia, the Eye of Time.
That Insomnia had foreseen the calamities' revival. It was ironclad proof that they would return.
"And as for why I hid the berserk state of the magical beasts from you—I wanted to see how you would handle unexpected anomalies or crises in a combat situation. Well, your skills turned out better than I expected, so there was never much of a crisis to speak of."
When these kids had first set out on their mission, he had tailed them in secret and watched them hunt.
He had wanted to see their capacity to adapt—but their skill had outstripped his expectations so thoroughly that he had not even recovered his investment, and simply gone home.
The way Blanc had glanced in his direction suggested she had half-caught on to the tail, and he could hardly order students to take on B-rank magical beasts just to test the two of them further.
Still, he had learned that the pair was more capable than he had thought, so the whole exercise had not been entirely useless.
"Ahem."
He had been talking more than usual; his throat felt dry. He poured water from the glass on the table, drank, and checked their reactions.
Leonhart's face was twisted.
The talk of calamities already had her head spinning, and her expression said she could not begin to understand what any of that had to do with the beasts going berserk.
Blanc, sitting beside her, was unreadable.
She had always been hard to read, and right now she was even more so.
At least the fact that the smile she wore in every situation had vanished meant she was taking this seriously.
"Hmm…"
That one ranked higher in priority than Leonhart, so being unable to read her face was a real shame.
Still, it was not as if there was no way to persuade her. In fact, persuading her would be easier than persuading Leonhart.
From what he had observed over a little under a month, that one's principles of action were remarkably simple.
"Leonhart. Once you graduate from the Academy, have you any thought of joining the Calamity Subjugation Force?"
If Leonhart joined the subjugation force, that one would surely follow.
In the end, he needed to persuade Leonhart if he wanted to catch both rabbits at once.
Preas today was prosperous enough to be called the Empire's second capital—but when I was little, it had not been a city full of life.
Even after the Hydra was subdued, the suffering of its victims did not end, and the complete devastation of southern Riomaine Province had left the territory's economy in ruins.
Wherever I walked, I heard people crying out in pain.
Wherever I turned my gaze, I saw people wracked with agony.
Everywhere, people were suffering, and their eyes were full of hatred and resentment.
That was why, as a child, I had been afraid to walk through my own lands.
Taking in all of those emotions had been more than my younger self could bear.
"Leonhart. Once you graduate from the Academy, have you any thought of joining the Calamity Subjugation Force?"
And so, when my teacher proposed that I join the Calamity Subjugation Force, I could not answer at all.
I never wanted to see people suffering because of a calamity again.
If a calamity rose once more to torment people, I wanted somehow to stop it.
But I was afraid.
Out of nowhere he told us a calamity was reviving, and then told me to join the force that would stop it.
It was not an immediate demand—it was after Academy graduation—but it was still a proposal I could not answer lightly.
On top of that, it bothered me that he had invited only me to the subjugation force when Blanc, stronger and more capable than I, sat right beside me.
Obviously he had made the offer thinking that if he brought me in alone, Blanc would follow.
The sly calculation of it—persuading only me without any regard for Blanc's own wishes—made irritation surge up inside me.
And the fact that the calculation was not even wrong made it all the more stifling.
"Blanc…"
I looked at Blanc, seated at my side.
Until a moment ago she had been listening to the teacher's story with an expressionless face—but when our eyes met, she offered me a faint smile.
Neither of us said a word, and yet simply locking gazes was enough for us to read each other's thoughts.
That smile of Blanc's meant she would follow my decision without reservation.
"Haa…"
My choice—a single word from me—would decide Blanc's future.
Ordinarily I liked that she trusted me so completely, but in a moment like this, that trust felt heavy.
"Teacher."
But looking into Blanc's eyes, I found I could decide how to answer his question.