The Founding Ceremony... And These Bastards Are Serious?! (1)

"The ones who tried to assassinate our Seoha are the Patriotic Subjects Association, no question. Directly and indirectly, the people involved come to seventy percent of the current administration's lawmakers, just as that doll-faced Miyabi woman said. Some of them will have joined only because they had no choice. So..."

"Deal with the ringleaders, and leave it there?"

"Four hundred seventy-five in the House of Representatives. Two hundred forty-two in the House of Councillors. Of those, only the ones deeply tied to the assault get punished here in Korea, for instigating murder and for murder itself. The rest, of course, will owe material compensation to match what they did."

Yeongeun finished and turned to Prime Minister Miyabi of Japan, whose face was creasing tighter by the second.

"You need to understand that you are besieged on every side. Once today is past, the great powers—the United States, Russia, China, India, and the European Union—will announce their support for Korea, and for Master Seoha of Grand Blue. The sweet bait, of course, is a high-grade phase stone estimated at two million and up."

They could write Japan off so cleanly in part because of the ability-user poaching affair eighty years back. Japan had paid enormous reparations, a great share of its economic foundation had collapsed, and it no longer offered much as a trading partner.

"..."

"Try to remember that a Mana Cannon was detonated in the skies over your country, and still the IWO and the Ability Users Association have kept their silence."

The prime minister had shut her eyes, her face so far gone it looked past rotting and ready to fall apart. Yeongeun turned a sly smile on her and went on.

"So you, the prime minister, will publicly and fully apologize for everything you have done up to now. An apology, the ringleaders handed over, and material compensation paid to Master Seoha. That is the furthest mediation our government can offer."

"That is far too excessive..."

She had the air of someone trying to drag this into a negotiation. I cut her off and came on hard.

At my threat that was not quite a threat, Prime Minister Miyabi's brow twitched, and a single bead of sweat slid down her forehead.

"Sound like a lie? Sound like a joke? You set the board and asked me to run wild. It'd be rude not to, wouldn't it?"

She was in a cold sweat now. I spoke one last time.

"The Japanese government, of course, I erase at the very last of the last. And drop any thought that TP expenditure might be a way to handle me. My recovery sits far beyond an ordinary ability user. If you don't believe it, you're welcome to experiment."

Having heard me out, Prime Minister Miyabi seemed to be testing how far the sincerity went. All of it, though.

At last, as if she had decided there was no other way, she bent forward. The short bob ending just below her ears swayed with her, and skin that looked white and smooth flushed red with humiliation. The apology came out in a voice like her insides snapping, fiber by fiber.

"I will... do so. I will apologize."

"Then our Master Seoha will restrain himself in the meantime. The moment you return, carry out what we agreed."

"...I will."

After Prime Minister Miyabi's surrender, Yeongeun took the lead in settling what we were to receive. I had expected her to wring them dry. She closed it, instead, at a merely reasonable level.

What Japan would do for me was this. The instant Prime Minister Miyabi landed at home, she would open a press conference, admit every act committed against me, and bow from the waist in apology, and she would transfer into custody the thirty-seven ringleaders and perpetrators who had taken part. The civilians swept up in the two attacks on me—the twenty-seven still hospitalized after falling under the Soul Reaper's mental domination in the museum incident—were each to receive ten billion won, several million dollars. The families of the five bodyguards, older brothers and sisters to me, who had died in the second assault were each to receive a hundred billion won, into the tens of millions of dollars. And I, the injured party, was to be given the Heavenly Gathering-Clouds Sword, called the treasure of the reigning Emperor of Japan.

It was not, of course, the Ama no Murakumo no Tsurugi of actual Japanese myth. It was a truly unique blade, found by chance ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠after the Phase World appeared. So Hwayeon explained.

No one knew what it was made of, or by what principle it worked. For someone like me, spending TP on physical reinforcement, Mana Bullets, Mana Cannons, Space Walls, and healing all at once, twenty percent off the cost was honey. Pure honey. For now the Emperor of Japan carried it around for show.

When the talk with the Japanese prime minister ended, we left the seeing-off to our Prime Minister. Yeongeun called Franc and Hwayeon over and began to whisper.

"Japan is not, as things stand, the sort to apologize nicely and back away."

"As my lady says. The chance that they are already at some scheme behind us is very high."

"So that's why you eased off where you did? Because this isn't going to end as it stands."

"Yes. However strong our Master Seoha's force may be, however great an explosion went off over their heads, they are certain to think he still cannot bring himself to attack them outright."

"Then we ought to station Miho and Hiarid with my parents-in-law for a while, and have them stand guard."

Franc, who had been listening with a slightly worried look, turned to Yeongeun.

"If such is the temper of Japan's high officials, is there not some chance they will seize on this affair as a pretext and open a war?"

"Oh my. Then we'd welcome it, wouldn't we? While we hold off the Self-Defense Forces, Seoha charges into Japan, smashes every base on a military strongpoint, and turns the Imperial Palace and the national infrastructure into a wasteland."

"They can just pay back the debt they've run up invading our country."

Yeongeun said it laughing. Franc could not get a word out. She only stared, blank.

"There's more in the works besides, so trust me!"

"All right. Cover the rear for us."

"Heh. Leave it to me."

After that we brought in Aunt Hyeryeong, who had been waiting outside, and Miho, and told her what had happened in the reception room.

"Will the Japanese prime minister actually carry out everything that was just said...? If history repeats, I suspect this too will be dragged out day after day on excuses and pretexts."

She had put her finger on exactly the part we had already been thinking. A capable woman, Aunt Hyeryeong.

"The odds she won't are high."

"..."

Yeongeun turned to Aunt Hyeryeong, who was sighing, let out a short laugh, and gave her cheek a light pinch.

"The moment Prime Minister Miyabi goes back and brings this up, the chance she is impeached and forced to step down is nine in ten or better. I'll bet my own seat on it, if you like."

We moved to the refreshment room with Yeongeun and kept listening. Everyone else had been sent away, of course. It was only Yeongeun and us. I had sat down quietly on the sofa and was listening when she smiled, speared a neatly cut piece of fruit on a fork, and slipped it into my mouth.

"And so, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠once Prime Minister Miyabi steps down and the ranks are scrubbed clean, the chance they swear they know nothing of it sits at more than ninety percent of that already nine-in-ten."

"And you accepted that woman's proposal anyway?"

Franc asked it with a face that did not understand. Yeongeun waved a hand, as if even that would be no trouble.

"If it comes to that, the heads of those great powers will issue condemnations of Japan, all at once. Once Japan is curled up under the censure of the world's powers, our Master Seoha declares that a Japan which refuses to apologize will be forgiven no further, marches in, and starts redrawing the terrain with Mana Bullets. Fill the lakes. Cut the rivers. Clear the mountains."

Hearing that much, Aunt Hyeryeong nodded and murmured.

"Then a war breaking out over it won't happen. Unless the heads over there are thoroughly stupid, they'll know a military provocation means ruin."

"Right? Japan's a nation of war criminals that's been turning that problem over and over since it lost the Second World War."

A question rose while I listened, and I asked her.

"But those great powers you mentioned, ma'am—why are they taking our side? Is it really the phase stones?"

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

"That's right."

Yeongeun touched thumb to forefinger, drew a circle in the air, grinned, and went on.

"That's the ticket into this auction of ten high-grade phase stones. The condition is that, in exchange for taking part, they publish a statement condemning what Japan did. Right and wrong were clear from the start, but the countries that stayed still—because they had no reason to step into another nation's mud fight—were offered an enormous piece of candy called a high-grade phase stone, and asked only to watch from the side. You see?"

When Franc had heard all of it, she frowned as if it still made no sense.

"Why would Japan do such a thing at all? What gain is there in harming an ability user from the country next door..."

"It isn't only Japan. There are plenty of places that will swipe a gifted ability user from some other country the instant they get an opening. A strong ability user is bound to become a stepping stone for a nation's growth. Someone on our Seoha's level isn't a stepping stone. He's closer to a space elevator, isn't he? So Japan reached out a hand first and had a look. Only they thought they were stepping on an earthworm, and looked down to find a viper!"

The answer must have gone past anything she had pictured. Franc's face drew tight, and she let out a sigh.

Listening to Yeongeun, I was struck dumb. Perhaps Jeral Packard, the world's first S-Class ability user, had hidden himself and gone into seclusion over filthy fights just like this, nation against nation.

As if she were not finished, Yeongeun kept on.

"So they stepped, thought something felt wrong, and were still glancing around for cues when our Seoha went ta-da and turned B-Class. And a cheat-like ability besides, one that could wipe their country away with a few flicks of the hand? Any nation that even once thought of doing something about Seoha is feeling a cold lurch in the chest at the speed of his growth. And Japan, which moved twice in that short span, is the one that got made the example."

At Yeongeun's smile, which one could almost have called wicked, the young ladies who were still innocent looked as if the sense had been knocked clean out of them.

That day, coming out to see us off, Yeongeun had one last thing to say.

"Master Seoha only has to waaait, nice and slow, until Japan's answer comes out, see what kind of show they put on, and then move. OK?"

That was the line. The moment to act arrived sooner than I had thought.

August 1st. On the day of Grand Blue's founding ceremony, and of the auction of the high-grade phase stones, something broke.

Not at our ceremony. Next door.

In the building right then there were six B-Class ability users alone, and one of them was an ability user past A-Class. Add one Peak-Rank aberrant and one High-Rank subspecies. A man who had come to commit terrorism would take one look at me, say he would just be going, and run. Who picks a fight with that?

At any rate, just as the founding ceremony and the auction were drawing to a successful close, Prime Minister Miyabi of Japan—she had paid our country an unofficial visit—was assassinated in her own home.

The ceremony itself had been held in the grand banquet hall of Business Support Building 2, extensively remodeled for the day. Notable figures of the domestic industry were there, the bosses of Azure Palace, Eshban, and Muhwa Ridge, and the chairmen and vice chairmen of the firms ranked first through tenth in the business world. I had expected Branch Director Kang Hyunwoo as well. He sent word that circumstances would not allow it, and a congratulatory message in his place. From the total lack of any reaction out of IWO and Ability Users Association headquarters, I guessed those circumstances amounted to this: he could not do anything that might look like choosing a side.

The ambassadors and responsible officials who had come for the phase stone auction attended the founding while they were about it, and everyone congratulated Grand Blue on setting out. Gathered from thirty minutes before the start, they took one look at me, eyes flashing, and came over working to get acquainted. That was when I saw how far their sense of me had changed.

Begun at two in the afternoon, the ceremony proceeded in an ordinary way, among guests who were anything but ordinary packing the hall, while domestic and foreign journalists lined one wall and filmed it live. It opened with the founding declaration from my sister, head of Integrated Management, and the national rite, and then Grand Blue's PR video played on a massive panel screen.

There were two videos. One was about me. The other was raid footage of the Grand Blue raid team, combat led by the two bosses, Hwayeon and Boss Park Jiwoong. The two of them appeared in turn, ranks ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠formed, hundreds of Mid-High Rank aberrants driven and hunted in military fashion. It felt like a short war film.

Then came the uncut video about me. Not the sample Yeongeun had slipped out on the quiet, but the uncut high-definition cut. The moment it began to roll across the panel, everyone quit what they were saying and doing and locked onto the screen. It ran from the third circuit of the Elephant Ouros Mountains, through the verification team, to the Floating Sky Islands I had walked with my sister, edited with a fantastical hand until it was, quite literally, a fantasy film.

The guests stared quietly at the screen. Woven between the battles with the Flavius, footage shot on Yongyu Island played my abilities so handsomely that admiration came up on its own, and in the moment the Mana Cannon showed its dreadful majesty a silence fell in which the hall did not produce so much as a cough. At the panorama of the Floating Sky Islands, filmed as I ran the air above them, mouths dropped open. At the sight of me meeting Album Cetus and Purus Balaena—two whales suspected of Calamity rank—and speaking with them, they cried out in shock.

When the twenty minutes of Grand Blue's video and mine came to an end, every person present rose at once and applauded. It wasn't even a film. I didn't know what the reaction was for, but good is good. I let it pass.

After that I took up the remarks my sister had prepared, set Franc and Miho at my side, and was about to climb the podium when the applause refused to break. I got a little flustered. Through the pouring sound I read the two-minute text—the background that had let Grand Blue be founded, thanks to those who had helped, thanks to the people who had come. When I finished, Yeongeun stood from the front row, where she sat with the ministers and ambassadors of each nation, came up onto the podium, and gave me a brief embrace.

We might have been changing a shift. I came down, and she stood at the podium and spent five minutes praising me, making the case for how fine I was, and sending a blessing and a word of support for the raid team's days ahead. After that I went back up with my sister and Aunt Hyeryeong, meaning to close the hour-long ceremony with a final ten minutes of questions.

"Ahead of preparations for the auction to follow, we will take ten minutes of questions regarding Grand Blue—"

Before I could finish, a man in his forties with a magnificent Kaiser mustache threw his hand into the air. Putting yourself forward like that in a room like this was against form, or so I had heard. The Kaiser fellow, who by any look of him was neither American nor British, opened his mouth in fluent English.

"I am given to understand that Master Jung Seoha alone, in all the world, has tamed a Peak-Rank aberrant. By what means, may I ask, did you tame a Peak-Rank aberrant?"

Mm. I knew this one was coming. Not from me. From Aunt Hyeryeong.

"That I could tame them is entirely thanks to my ability. What ability that is, no comment."

Miho was dressed in an adorable modernized hanbok, traditional Korean dress cut for the present day: a pale yellow-green jacket, a skirt red as blood, gold tassels laid across it. I swept back her snow-white hair, and she smiled a fox's smile, ears flicking without pause. Then she rose on a wind, hooked her arms around my neck, tugged at my clothes, and spoke.

"...So she says."

"Splen...did. A Peak-Rank aberrant so devoted to Master Jung Seoha—Grand Blue's future stretches bright and far."

Miho isn't Peak-Rank, though.

The man with the Kaiser mustache sat, and at once the handsome man at the next table—brown-skinned, looking thoroughly of mixed blood; the second prince of the United Arab Emirates, if I had it right—flashed his eyes. His face said he simply had to buy this, and he called out in English.

"Have you no thought of transferring Miss Miho, the Peak-Rank aberrant! If you will only transfer her, I am prepared to empty every asset I possess!"

I had considered concealing what she was. There was no particular reason to, so I answered him straight.

"Miho is not a Peak-Rank aberrant. She's a High-Rank subspecies. And she's already like family, so a transfer is not a thing I entertain. Above all, I doubt she would obey anyone but me. Miho, feel like going with that man?"

She crumpled her small face as if she meant it, and hid behind my back. The prince of Arabia had been insulted, after a fashion, but he wore the look of a man shot through the heart by an arrow of love, went limp, and sat. A prince with an eye for little girls. A dangerous man.

After him, a genuinely handsome man of the pretty sort—blond hair, blue eyes—rose and questioned me in a mainland British accent.

"Orléans Nightquill, of Britain's Blue Raid Team. I am told that besides the six-tailed fox called Miho, there is a Peak-Rank aberrant of a race called the Flavius. Rumor says she is like an angel descended to the mortal world, and yet I do not see her in the hall."

"You'll be able to see that one soon enough."

"Justin Timber, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. In the Grand Blue Master's PR video, you appeared to converse with an enormous whale judged to be an aberrant. Might we know what was said?"

At the words of the white-haired man in his late fifties, asking with extreme care, the hall around us went quiet.

"He asked me to pass on that he missed his wife. And..."

"Gulp. And?"

"That if I called, he would come and help once? My own guess, but he's Calamity rank at the least. Maybe even Transcendent-grade..."

Silence settled again. I looked at Deputy Secretary Justin Timber, whose face had gone the color of his hair, and smiled a little.

"Doesn't seem there are any more questions. We'll stop here."

I closed the questions in a tone a little too light. The people seated around him wore the look of having missed their chance, and regretted it. But the ten minutes were already gone, weren't they?

They say an ordinary raid team's founding runs half a day. This is a floor where you don't survive without skill, and the result is enough to show. On my view that there was no cause to spend four hours on a founding, we had cut it to a quarter, and filled two of the remaining three hours with the high-grade phase stone auction. Which meant it was time for the real game.

I came down from the podium and sat beside Yeongeun, and right on cue Department Head Kim Pyochung took the stage—not in his usual rumpled suit, but in a finest one, fitted to him like Colin Firth. He opened with a little wit, announced that the auction would begin, and applause like thunder broke out. The sound seemed to prove the raid team's standing, and the bright road opening ahead of it. I felt a swell of something like pride.

A vast milky-white curtain drew aside, and at the figure of Hiarid revealed there the applause died in a hurry. We had styled her as an angel on purpose. The look of her went past imagination: a dress white as snow, four pure-white wings stirring, ten high-grade phase stones carried in a rectangular case of special clear material. The guests could not even gasp. They stared at her, blank, then came to themselves and began, frantically, to photograph and film her on smartphones and Certifiers.

The hall had sunk into silence before that beautiful angel, but the mood was climbing, and even I could feel it. The auction, contrary to expectation, was led not by Aunt Hyeryeong but by our Department Head Kim Pyochung, turned out like an expensive playboy. I remembered only the slovenly version of him and had worried whether he would manage, and I was faintly startled at how smoothly he carried the proceedings.

Ministers of the nations at the founding were there, Korea's conglomerates including Suseong and NG, and the government itself. The American deputy secretary of the Treasury and the prince of the United Arab Emirates swept up three each, and of the four that remained China won two. Russia and Britain each took one of the last pair, and so the hard two-hour auction ended. The ambassadors and ministers of Australia, Germany, France, Italy, and India, who had secured not a single stone, expressed their mood with deep sighs.

A single high-grade phase stone began vaulting through the tens of trillions of won—tens of billions of dollars a bid—and our government, along with Suseong and NG, was left swallowing dry. Watching Suseong and NG come up empty, I caught a savory smell from somewhere, and a smile rose on its own.