The Gift
From the Commander, I heard something unexpected.
"The officers are looking for me because of the ban on participating in the subjugation campaign?"
"That's right."
I frowned as I asked,
"What for? Don't tell me they want to go out on the campaign?"
"No one insisted they had to go. But they said they wanted to hear why their participation was forbidden."
So they would stay put if ordered, but they still wanted to know the reason?
Which meant…
"They seemed to know you were involved."
"Couldn't you just have told them Father forbade it?"
Commander Father answered with a faint smile.
"I would have, but Yosef and his people were curious as well."
Yosef and his people?
Yosef was the name of the pro-Hayden faction leader.
So not only the pro-Daphne officers, but the pro-Hayden ones had grievances too.
Well, it made sense. The pro-Hayden officers, at least, had once fought on the battlefield alongside Luna Moon herself. Of course they would resent having their participation banned by none other than Luna Moon's son.
I had been leaving them alone, since they weren't manpower I needed for the Second Apocalypse ten years from now. Looking at it the other way, though, there were still ten years left—so I ought to manage their complaints for the time being.
"Well… fine. If they want the reason, telling them isn't hard."
"But are you really all right with this?"
All right?
It didn't sound like he was asking whether it was fine to tell them the reason.
"All right with what?"
"Going out with only a small elite force."
The Commander looked at me with concern in his eyes.
"Of course, the practicality of the gem-location identification method you devised has already been verified repeatedly through other soldiers. But if that bastard who attacked you last time shows up again, things could turn dangerous in an instant."
So the Commander was bothered by the existence of the Unicorn Area player as well.
Naturally. Anyone who crossed into another zone just to shoot a regressor's son would be hard to ignore.
"That bastard… won't show up."
He had said with his own mouth that he looked forward to me coming to his zone, so he was probably waiting quietly on that floating island.
True, simply believing him just because he said so was a little strange. But the odds of a guy who made a show of arriving on a hoverboard, struck a dramatic pose, dropped a cool line about looking forward to me coming to his zone, and then vanished—only to break his own word and appear again—felt pretty low.
The Commander still looked unconvinced.
"How can you be so sure?"
"A regressor's instinct."
"Hmm…"
The regressor persona really was convenient at times like this.
"If you say so, then I suppose…"
Then the Commander brought up something else unexpected.
"Meursault will be going on this subjugation campaign as well."
"What? Meursault?"
"He says he's worried about you."
"I'm the one worried about Meursault…"
After heading outside the zone with him twice, I knew the truth. That guy had dumped every single point into brain stats. His gun stance was awkward, his stamina was trash—he was not the kind of soldier you brought on a prolonged subjugation campaign.
And the person who knew that best was volunteering to join just because he was worried about me?
"His heart's in the right place, but… I don't think having Meursault along makes me any safer."
"I told him the same thing, but he's stubborn. So you'd better stay 'safe,' as you put it. Otherwise you stand to lose a great deal."
If anything happened to Meursault, Daphne probably wouldn't forgive me either. I would have to go see her anyway—to ask about the otome game routes, and to pass on the news of Meursault's participation.
"And you no longer need to attend the academy."
"Really?"
I had been getting sick of sitting through theory classes with the cadets, so this was welcome news. But for someone who had told me to keep going until I could dodge bullets, he was giving up pretty fast.
"Even from the rumors alone, it was clear there was nothing left for you to learn at that school."
"Rumors?"
"The rumor that after you killed a furred crocodile with a single shot and eliminated eight cadets using only one arm, Platon knelt in front of your dormitory and swore his loyalty."
How far was this rumor—or origin myth—going to spread?
The officers sat in the conference room, waiting for the Commander and Haydam to appear.
This was the second time Haydam had attended an officers' meeting. The first had been to introduce him. Now there was not a single officer who did not know who Haydam was.
On the very first day he appeared, one officer had died. Not long after, he had gone hunting outside the zone alone and brought back a hippo-pig. He had thrown a charity party for children his own age. In the training simulations he had annihilated the opposing team twice—once by personally eliminating eight graduating seniors, and once while already injured. That injury, it turned out, had been sustained while bringing down a large-class monster: a furred crocodile.
Extraordinary.
No—this went far beyond "extraordinary."
When they heard he was going in and out of the operations room with Meursault, they had assumed the Commander was simply making him learn. But the moment the ban on officers participating in the subjugation campaign was issued, everyone felt that this order was different from anything that had come before. Neither Commander Hayden nor Major General Meursault had ever issued such a command.
Haydam had clearly been involved in the subjugation operation. The Commander had allowed it. And the officers—pro-Hayden and pro-Daphne alike—thought the same thing.
Dangerous.
Showing no respect even to the pro-Commander officers who had been comrades-in-arms with his mother, Luna Moon, was an extremely dangerous act. It would have been better if Haydam had openly hostile toward the pro-Daphne officers and made a clear play for revenge on Luna Moon's behalf. At least then they would have known what he wanted.
But Haydam's current course of action…
Unpredictable.
If he were doing this to curry favor with the Commander, he was choosing nothing but the riskiest stunts imaginable. If he were trying to solidify his position in the zone, he was ignoring the officers entirely. And if it were mere childish bravado… he seemed strangely urgent, as if something were chasing him.
Even stranger was the Commander's attitude of tolerating it all. The Commander the officers knew was not a man who would entrust zone affairs to a child. Was even the man called Iron Blood soft when it came to his own blood? Yet if it were simply because an heir was precious, shoving his only young son into a subjugation campaign made no sense either.
They could not read the intentions of either the Commander or Haydam. But Anton judged that now was the time to drive a wedge between them—just in case Haydam truly was a fake, and just in case a successor for Daphne was born someday.
That was why showing Luna Moon's portrait at today's officers' meeting was so important. After repeated checks, he was certain the grave was not something dug only a year or two ago, even if the exact date was unknown. He had also confirmed that the slum residents knew nothing of Haydam. And most of all, he had found signs that the grave had been disturbed not long ago.
Piecing it all together, Anton believed he could plant the suspicion in the Commander's mind that Haydam was not Luna Moon's true son.
Claiming outright that Haydam is a fake would be far too dangerous.
For one thing, Haydam looked too much like the Commander and Luna Moon to be a fake. The moment Anton saw the portrait of Luna Moon—completed with Daphne's help—even he had wondered whether Haydam really was the true son and the slum residents' testimony simply mistaken. For another, the information Haydam had rattled off at the first officers' meeting was the kind of thing he could only have known if he had heard it from Luna Moon. How he had known the name of a newborn puppy was beyond Anton. And finally… the boy had already proven far too much to be dismissed as a fake. Even if he were, the chances were high that the meritocratic Commander would refuse to cast him out. If the officers openly denounced him as a fraud, that contrary man would only protect him more fiercely.
So for now… planting doubt is the best I can do.
In other words, he would slowly guide the Commander to reach the conclusion himself that Haydam was a fake. Just as he had not simply told Daphne to gift the portrait, but had led her to decide for herself that she should gift it. People with strong convictions like the Commander and Daphne tended to believe even more firmly that something was "right" when they chose it themselves rather than hearing it from someone else.
Just then the Commander and Haydam entered the conference room with indifferent expressions. Anton smoothed his hardened face and watched for the right moment to produce the portrait.
"Since you all already seem to know I was involved in this operation, I'll just say it straight."
The moment he stepped into the room, Haydam threw a fastball.
"This operation is small elite. Resources are limited to begin with. Taking a huge force out and wasting bullets on a subjugation campaign is inefficient. The combat rations you officers eat and drink while you're out there are all zone property too, you know."
"Small elite? I have no idea how many men you're even thinking of when you say that."
Yosef, head of the pro-Commander faction and normally well-disposed toward Haydam, seemed to have had his pride thoroughly wounded this time; he spoke through gritted teeth.
"Do you know how many soldiers it takes to bring down a large-class monster? I heard you finished off a furred crocodile that was already half-dead. You don't seriously expect every monster we go after to be in that condition, do you?"
"Even a half-dead furred crocodile was still something I took down myself. Let me ask you the opposite: when was the last time any of you personally hunted a monster?"
"Th-that is…"
When Yosef's words faltered under Haydam's question, another officer flared up and stepped in.
"The idea of excluding us just because we don't personally join the fighting is something only someone who still doesn't understand the military could say, young master Haydam. We hold our positions as commanders of our respective units. Charging into battle yourself is not the only way to be a soldier. Someone has to dress the lines. Hunting a single large-class monster necessarily requires high-level strategy and massive amounts of supplies."
"I can identify the location of a monster's gem with the naked eye."
"So just because you know where the gem is—wait, what? What did you just say?"
The officer who had been grilling Haydam faltered and asked again in confusion.
"Y-you can see the location of the gem with the naked eye…?"
The faces of the other officers listening nearby wore similarly stunned expressions. Even Anton, who had only dragged Haydam into the officers' meeting to show the portrait, looked at him in shock.
Haydam spoke as if the enormous confession were nothing special.
"I know the rules for identifying a gem's location. It means you don't have to spray bullets like an idiot, drop the thing, and then go looking for it afterward."
"I-is that… really true?"
"It has already been verified."
When even the Commander stepped in to confirm the verification, the officers began to murmur.
"Is that even possible?"
"There's a rule to the gems' locations…"
"So the story about killing a furred crocodile with a single bullet wasn't just a rumor?"
Anton had heard from Platon that Haydam had killed a furred crocodile with one shot, but he had dismissed it as his immature son exaggerating out of excessive admiration. Yet the boy truly could hunt large-class monsters with a single bullet.
"Even I, who's only faced large-class monsters a few times, picked up the skill quickly. So why should I trust people who've spent decades on subjugation campaigns without ever figuring out something this basic, and let them come along?"
"…"
This time not a single officer stepped forward. Silence filled the conference room.
In that moment, every aging officer was thinking the same thing.
At this rate, we'll be discarded.
They were too old to join subjugations themselves, yet they had held their positions by virtue of decades of experience and knowledge. The appearance of an alien being who far surpassed that experience and knowledge was more than enough to plant a sense of crisis in them. And he had already declared he would not take the officers on the campaign.
Anton decided this was the moment to show the portrait.
"Understood. We will not participate."
When Anton stepped forward and accepted the ban, the other officers looked flustered, but none rose in opposition. The pro-Daphne officers, knowing Anton was about to present the portrait, watched him with eyes that hoped he would overturn the entire board.
Anton continued.
"We've all grown quite old, haven't we? Insisting on participating at this point would only prove that we've grown not only old but also lacking in judgment. It's time we stepped aside and yielded our places to young blood. And so…"
Anton paused briefly, then added quietly,
"I intend to retire, effective from this meeting today."
"A-Anton, sir?!"
"What are you saying?"
The pro-Daphne officers, who had been waiting only for Anton to produce the portrait, leapt up in great alarm—but Anton paid them no mind. He looked at Haydam and spoke.
"An old man on his final road has brought one gift with him… will you accept it?"
Even the retirement announcement had not changed Haydam's expression in the slightest, but at the word "gift" a subtle look crossed his face.
"Don't tell me that enormous thing behind you is my gift."
Luna Moon's portrait had been painted in a massive frame and moved into the conference room early that morning. Even covered by a white cloth, the silhouette of the frame showed through, making it clear enough that it was a painting.
"I don't really know the value of things like paintings."
Watching Haydam speak with clear reluctance, Anton lifted the corner of his mouth in a smile.
"Once you see it, you'll know its value at once."
With that, he yanked away the cloth covering the portrait and fixed Haydam with a sharp gaze, watching for any change in expression.
Well then, you little impostor. Let's see if you can slither your way out of this one too.
The slightest hesitation, and he planned to immediately press him on why he couldn't recognize his own mother's face.
But Anton's expression soon filled with disappointment.
The look on Haydam's face as he gazed at the painting was not the look of someone who did not know the person in it. That gaze, filled with piercing longing and even a trace of resentment—that was unmistakably the gaze of a young child who had gone far too long without seeing his mother.
Then the thin, trembling voice that left Haydam's lips declared the failure of Anton's plan.
"Mother…?"
Before the officers' meeting.
I had heard from Daphne that Anton was preparing a gift for me.
"They're working on a portrait of Luna Moon."
A portrait of Luna Moon.
I understood at once what that meant.
Anton is suspecting my identity, is he?