Chapter 458
Chapter 458
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 458
Chapter Title: Another Solo Play (17)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
****
There was something I'd realized after encountering these mutants here.
"Language was something I created out of necessity. The Lord and her flock can communicate via mental waves, but we can't do the same with flocks from other Lords. Our Queen lacks the same authority as the Queen of the Archive, after all."
"....Pardon?"
It was that every time they answered, I ended up sounding like an idiot, stammering "Pardon? Pardon?" over and over. Couldn't there be at least one normal thing about them?
'They created a language? On their own?'
Let me think. Where did I hear the rumors about Nigmi? That newsboy in the Rock City mentioned it in passing. Definitely....
"You said Nigmi encountered the Warlord and was routed about 18 years ago, so your meeting with Nigmi was...."
"Exactly 18 years, 9 months, and 3 days ago."
Eighteen years. Eighteen years and nine months.
So this guy was saying he'd waged war for 18 years and 9 months, merged other flocks, researched the Empire's history, and at the same time invented a unique racial language.
"It wasn't just a means of communication. As you mentioned earlier, our 'family' isn't on particularly good terms. We're gathered around Her Majesty the Queen, the only one in this world who possesses 'familial love' for the mutant race, but our feelings toward each other haven't changed much from the past when we killed one another to steal fragments. If I must use a metaphor, it's like how brothers with the same mother treat each other when the father is away."
"I read in books like *The Prince*, *Theories of Empire*, and *Theories of Monarchical Rule* that a unique language plays a huge role in strengthening a people's cohesion. Cultural isolation actually creates a focal point for the race, or so they say. It seemed necessary for founding our Mutant Empire in many ways, so I created it."
"Wha, whaaat...."
"It's not that impressive. There was a book in the archive on the grammar of the common tongue, and I simply borrowed it wholesale. Anyone who knows the common tongue can learn our language easily."
The words the Mutant King tossed out so casually were tantamount to insulting every linguist in human history.
Good lord, I'd thought the mutants using their own unique language meant some miraculous paradigm had occurred, but the one standing before me had simply created it out of tactical and cultural necessity. Alone, using books, self-taught.
"Th-that's incredible...."
"No such thing. It's thanks to someone recording all this knowledge. Personally, I greatly respect humanity's habit of documentation. They claim to live in the present, yet they obsess so much over what they'll leave behind after death—it shows their race has transcended death in some way."
"Then, have you read every book in the Grand Inquisitor's study?"
"Not all of them yet. There were many fallen buildings besides this one. The Temple of Wisdom was truly bizarre. How so many books fit into that small temple is beyond my limited knowledge."
I felt a bit relieved at the human touch in admitting he hadn't finished them all, only to be stunned again by what followed.
Oh, right—this room. He'd said the Grand Inquisitor's study only held books left out for reference.
.
.
.
.
So the ones he'd read once were in other rooms?
As I stood there dumbfounded again, Cauld flicked his bone-whip-like tail to yank open a door buried under a pile of books.
Clunk!
Crash!
It collapsed. Books.
Books stamped clearly with the Wisdom Church's seal filled the empty space.
The room next to the reception hall in the Grand Inquisitor's mansion had been a party hall.
A vast space, large enough to fit a hundred nobles eating, drinking, and dancing, with a high ceiling—now packed entirely with books and stacks of paper.
"....All of these?"
"Law. Governance. Hydrology. Agriculture. Architecture. Art. Diplomacy. I had to build an empire from a state of knowing nothing, and that temple was like a treasure chest containing all the world's knowledge. I wanted to personally thank the priests there, but unfortunately, they all died when the building fell. I moved the temple next to my residence, building and all. Out of respect for them, I left the originals inside the temple."
"Originals? Then these are...."
"Copies. I transcribed them while reading. I was studying language at the time, so copying them helped in several ways."
"Cauld, uh, no—sir, Your, uh.... Highness?"
I'd dropped formal speech in the hallway thinking he was cocky, but I couldn't hold back now.
What was the Wisdom Church? They preserved humanity's knowledge as their faith, scraping together everything from rare tomes to neighborhood gossip. Their specialty was 'compressed books' that held more text. And this Mutant King before me had devoured that volume in under 20 years—and not content with that, copied them all and stored them here. No wonder Cauld's handwriting in Nigmi's chronicle was so elegant.
An undeniable vast repository of knowledge.
The execution to shape a queen and her mere followers into a nation.
The humanity to not discriminate against lower ranks like Bellabel, who lacked combat prowess, and the inclusiveness that made them love him.
And on top of that, the overwhelming presence and martial might that had intimidated me.
'Cauld—is he a god?'
When I first heard there was a Mutant King, the image that came to mind was a monster devouring nations whole. You know the type—guwoooosh, smashing walls in one blow, munching armies like snacks.
But the one before me now was the polar opposite.
'A true king. Not even the warlord type. A proper nation-builder archetype.'
A perfectly filled hexagon character, no empty sides. If they had just settled somewhere quietly and grown, they could've built a Mutant Kingdom by now without issue. They even had burly large mutants who could stack walls like blocks.
'Had they not wasted it on this pointless Empire fixation, they might've become a force to rival the Warlord's soul mages and their armies.'
Nigmi and the Professor were clear enemies. Just as Nigmi feared the Warlord, her mutants would try to eliminate him by any means. I'd gotten this private audience with Cauld because I'd said I had a way to kill him.
The mutants' strength lay in their numbers, absorbing any nearby life to mass-produce more. But this land was steeped in the Emperor's curse, preventing the production organs of various Lords from properly absorbing nutrients.
If Nigmi and her mutants hadn't fixated on the Empire and settled elsewhere to grow normally.... 'Warlord Army VS Mutant Empire' might've become 4th World's main conflict. That could've made it clearable in a more straightforward way.
'The system would've seen that future through simulation.'
Extragame entities like the Professor—or futures without me—were all revealed by GG's simulations. The detail about the Warlord ambushing Nigmi's flock 18 years ago already suggested the World had foreseen the future and intervened early. It had subtly arranged environments and events to lead the Professor to Nigmi. The battle happened, Nigmi nearly died and regressed to a childlike state.
"....Why didn't he finish her off?"
"What do you mean, didn't kill? Who are you referring to?"
"Pro— I mean, the Warlord. Why didn't that bastard kill Nigmi and let her go...."
Crunch!
"Ah, aaaah! Not like that! I meant there's no way the enemy let our Queen live, so perhaps Queen Nigmi inflicted a fatal wound on him too, and they were evenly matched—that's what I was speculating!"
A grinding sound like he was chewing his own teeth came from Cauld's mouth, so I quickly backpedaled. Just hearing talk linking to the Queen's death seemed to enrage him; the sage-like calm he'd maintained throughout shattered as he growled his response.
"....Her Majesty has forbidden any talk related to the Warlord. She knows us as we know her. He knows that if we learn of him, we'll seek him out. He thinks our power is too weak to protect her, that she'll be torn apart in his hands."
Grind!
"But when I first met her, I heard a few things. One phrase screamed like a shriek while thrashing in nightmares. That's all I know of what happened between that Warlord scum and Her Majesty."
"What did she say?"
Hoo—haaa.
"....'You weren't originally like this.' When I asked Her terrified Majesty after waking from the nightmare, that's what she said. The axe that chased her to the sea to sever her neck, that horrifying shadow—it staggered and fled at those fearful words."
'Nigmi unwittingly struck his weakness perfectly.'
Eighteen years ago was just a few years after entering 4th World. At a point when his mind was still mostly intact, the Professor realized from that one phrase that he was unknowingly moving according to the system's will—and panicked. He'd thought he was vigilant and acting on his own, but the outcome matched what the system wanted.
So he let her go. To prevent the system-desired result right then.
'Nigmi suffered severe wounds and drifted here. If the battle never happened, would the Western Continent be like this? Could a large intelligent mutant flock have arisen?'
I couldn't know the countless branching futures based on variables, but one thing was certain.
'The Empire's current state. Mutants moving in Lord-flock units, the capital going mad from the Emperor's curse. The Western Imperial Territory flipping contrary to my expectations—that's not what the system wanted! The opposite!'
This place I was in now. The capital's situation deviated far from the system's 'perfect prediction.'
It meant even if it manipulated circumstances around the Professor to move him, it couldn't fully control the situations arising from him.
Me and the Professor. Dust compared to all of 4th World, but that speck made 100% into 99.999...%.
One near-dead mutant's furious cry had pierced that slim possibility.
"....So that's why they didn't come here. There's a reason they left easy prey like the Western Imperial Territory—on the verge of collapsing on its own without the Warlord Army touching it—and went to the Teldrat region."
The system was anxious. To her, who acted with everything under her gaze, this Western Imperial Territory had drifted infinitely from prediction.
No matter how many GG authorities she acquired, she couldn't rewind the past. Unless resetting the entire World and starting a new one, there was no reversing past events in 'Professor's 4th World' with him as a player.
Eighteen years, nine months, and three days ago, the Professor snapped out of it at Nigmi's scream, spared her contrary to the system's expectation, and that surviving Nigmi became a butterfly effect, turning the entire Empire into land beyond the system's 'perfect' simulation.
'This is an opportunity. The current Empire—no, this [Nigmi's Mutant Empire] flock's very existence is a group completely escaped from the system's sight! If the system is a player, it failed the key event of killing the [last surviving ancient mutant], and as a result, 18 years later, the entire Western Imperial Territory slipped from her control!'
I'd seen this canyon's mutant flock only as a means to the capital, but no longer.
They were a massive blind spot. To the godlike being overlooking the world, a hole they hesitated to approach despite their overwhelming force.
"Cauld. No, Lord Cauld."
"Pick one honorific."
I spoke to Cauld, calm once more, seemingly recovered.
"Nigmi is a foolish ruler."
Crunch!
"Follow her words, and you'll never achieve what she wants."
"....I know. And it doesn't matter. Just as you chase a meaningless upward curve, following her is all there is to forming our kind."
Cauld breathed heavily, swallowing rage. Well, with that entrance momentum, even if I or he were fine, the books here would suffer.
"You'll die, you know?"
"If we die following her like that, so be it. We've lived realizing our value."
"I wasn't talking about you all—I meant Nigmi."
"....Stop."
"If I stop, will the world stop for you? You're so smart—how can you not see this?"
"Grrrrr!"
Touching their reverse scale brought a clear reaction.
Clang!
The king's tail lashed out in frenzy, clashing with my sword tip.
"Serving your foolish ruler brings joy? Fine, that's your racial trait, not my business."
Clack, crunch!
"If you're going to serve, serve properly. Right? Your child-queen is saying 'let's all jump off the cliff together.' Following happily—isn't that too selfish? Just following makes you happy?"
"How dare you...."
"Did she really want the Empire to mean charging together and dying to curses?"
Could this wise lion-headed king not have thought of something so simple?
Surprisingly, yes.
'They're still Mutation Blood at heart. They see themselves as different, but ultimately not.'
I'd conversed with the king for over two hours. As Hyde, a pro at reading people, that was plenty to grasp Cauld's personality.
'Their consciousness is structurally incapable of imagining a bad future for the queen.'
I'd seen 3rd World's mutants, Teldrat region's, and Western Imperial Territory's.
Teldrat's mutants were beast packs with a leader. The only difference from Western Imperial Territory's was this side had a being called queen.
'Mutants are a race that serves the pinnacle: the queen. There just wasn't one until now.'
In a hive, if the queen dies, a worker eats royal jelly to become the new queen.
Same here. The requirement: a mutant possessing the 'racial mind' inherited from the queen.
Cauld, sharing her boundless racial emotion, naturally served her as the new queen, racial pinnacle—and at that moment, Nigmi became the world's center to him.
He owned knowledge to fill a banquet hall, yet couldn't imagine a future without Nigmi. Just as we couldn't accept the world suddenly returning to nothing.
'Despite all sorts of mutants including Cauld, this flock's head is solely childlike Nigmi. No matter Cauld's wisdom, what moves them is Nigmi's reckless childish whims.'
That had to break.
For this race, the Mutant Empire variable, to form.
"Don't you want to build an Empire?"
Anyone else, no—but him, possible.
"A more perfect one. One continuing for a hundred, a thousand years under your name, as Nigmi desired."
Cauld. This contradictory mutant who turned from sage to beast at 'Nigmi' and 'death,' devoured library-worths of books solely for her, yet charged into meaningless Empire rush nullifying it all.
"Don't you want to remain by the side of Nigmi who achieved her desire, beside your happy queen?"
This is where it started. Not just joy in serving the queen, but craving more.
Dyeing his 'mutant race ideal' with human color.
Huff, huff....
Cauld's excited breathing slowed, the tail piercing my throat gradually losing strength.
The king turned without a word, but I'd heard enough answer.
"See? Better to live if you can."
Cauld's eyes brimmed with shockingly pure greed.
He wanted to live.
Thus, he'd confront the Warlord.
That death-like living being in this 4th World now.
****