The Food Chain
Spirits exist on the far side of nature.
Just as fish appear where the water runs deep, a water spirit reigns wherever the essence of water gathers thick, ruling that power as its own. They belong to the human world and, at the same time, do not—so the creatures of that world may sense them only faintly, never clearly enough to know them for what they are. Now and then, though, people who live close to the places where spirits play take nature's essence into their bodies and learn to see them. Those are the humans spirits call contractors.
When a spirit joins hands with such a contractor, the effect on the human world can be immense. The prime example was Lupin's pigeon magic.
"So what you're telling me, Star Sis, is that I only summon white pigeons because my thinking's too narrow?"
But that was only because Lupin didn't really understand them. A spirit takes on a form only at the moment it is summoned into the human world. The miracle called a spirit's manifestation is born where the spirit's natural essence meets a human imagination.
She had spent five straight years living wild with the sky for a blanket, which was precisely why she could shape spirits as she pleased—and yet she loathed pigeons so thoroughly that she had locked them into that single form. Besides, what does pigeon magic mean to a modern person? A white pigeon, obviously. No wonder her brain had seized up.
"Think. Come on, think..."
A memory no bigger than a pigeon screamed that it was in pain, as if to ask what answer she expected to get by grinding it like this. A buzz shot through her frontal lobe, and Lupin let out a miserable groan.
"Ugh. Do I just have to imagine them? Just swing wild and hope I hit something?"
It was, surprisingly, very close to the right answer. Earth has more than three hundred species of pigeon. Imagine something plausible enough, and stumbling onto a real one wasn't impossible.
"...Right. Somewhere in the world there's probably one that looks like a parrot."
That, too, was correct. There really is a green-bodied pigeon—the green pigeon—and a gaudy one besides, the pink-necked pigeon.
"What about something like a peacock? A tuxedo pigeon?"
Right again, back to back. Some sport a magnificent crest worthy of a peacock—the crowned pigeon, none other than the King Pigeon—and others carry white tail feathers stark against a dark body, the white-tailed pigeon.
"Forget it. I'll just think at random. Whatever pops into my head, I'm calling it...! Help me out, treasure chests!"
Snap!
She flicked her fingers, and pigeons of every color poured out.
"Ooh."
Once she had called the whole flock, the ones she had actually lucked into amounted to just four kinds. Even so, the pigeon preening with the elegant bearing of a little peacock drew a gasp of admiration out of Lupin herself. She was fiddling with this one and that, every variety under her hands, when a notification finally appeared.
Growth Value Spirit Affinity I can now be promoted.
Her Spirit Affinity was climbing. Dumbfounded, Lupin smacked her own forehead. To think that even another species inside the same pigeon family would satisfy the condition. No wonder every other discipline had been disgustingly easy while this one alone stayed fussy. If she had known, she would have shaken off the PTSD ages ago and memorized far more pigeons while she wandered the world. The regret arrived late.
Of course, had Lupin studied the world a little harder, it was something she would have known perfectly well. A spirit's form changes according to the contractor's will, and sometimes that spirit is dangerous enough to burn the world to ash—history books record the fact in brutal detail.
At any rate, after she had pawed through pigeon after pigeon, her Spirit Affinity soon reached Grade III. One of them even spoke to her first.
— The essence of spirits runs abundant in you. Among contractors I have seen many of the beastfolk and the long-eared races, but a pure human is a first.
It was the King Pigeon she had been holding in her hand and stroking only a moment before.
"Oh. Is that so?"
— It is. Humans live in flocks of their own kind, so drawing close to nature is difficult for them. For a human such as you to form a contract is, even for us, a matter of no small interest.
"Aha. So that's how it is."
Talking like that, she suddenly remembered how foul the white pigeon had been from the very first moment. Had Spirit Affinity really been the whole problem? Even so, this was ridiculous. A gap of two lousy grades, and she had gone from being treated like a Black slave out picking cotton to suddenly standing as a commoner. What even was that?
"Would you happen to know what other pigeons there are?"
— We manifest in the human world in the form you desire. We cannot take a shape you do not know.
"That's a shame..."
There went Lupin, who had been scheming to cheat her way straight to Grade X. A pity—but a conversation that actually worked was worth something, wasn't it? What she had wanted from the start was to ask them questions.
"There's something I'm curious about. Sometimes you attack people, and sometimes you don't. What's the standard?"
— We act according to the contractor's will. Put another way, we did as we did because you wished it.
"Huh? What's that supposed to mean?"
— It is tied to the tenor of your inner self as well. Should you desire a merciless assault, we annihilate the enemy without hesitation. But when you summon us for some particular purpose, we strike back only when the other side attacks first.
Lupin was struck by a great revelation. So that was it. That was why she had swept away everyone who swarmed the safehouse in a single stroke. When she had sent them out to find a Secret Safe, finding the safe was the goal, so they had circled the area and only returned the attacks that came at them. By modern standards, it was a reactive defense system running on AI, striking only the enemies it had been sorted to strike.
What the hell. That's stupidly broken.
— Is there anything else you wish to know? The hour of the contract is drawing to a close.
Already that late. Reluctant to let the moment go, Lupin gently stroked the crest feathers on the King Pigeon's head. Not every pigeon was a bad one, after all.
"Now that I think of it—why do all of you make contracts with me?"
— A spirit has only one reason to contract with a human. We desire the power that comes from the stars—the aura you offer as payment when the contract is made.
"And if you have aura, what changes?"
— In the spirit world, aura is a foreign power, and at the same time one of the few happinesses granted to spirits who possess not a single amusement. That very thing becomes honor and authority, and raises a new order.
A spirit that has contracted with a human even once gains a form of its own and carries, however faintly, a trace of aura. That alone places it among the nobility of spirits. And so a spirit that contracts with humankind again and again fills itself with aura until it stands at the peak of the spirit world.
"So that's why the Pigeon Queen kept her nose so high in the air..."
— You paid the white pigeon a great deal of aura for her price. It could not have been otherwise.
So that was why the creature had tried so desperately to get a rise out of her—to be summoned more often, and have still more aura offered up. Lupin had nearly walked straight into a terrifying net. She hadn't been wrong to feel the thing was basically a thirty-year-old assistant manager.
But now that she knew her enemy, it was time to pay it back. Back when she was an office worker she had taken those kicks to the shins without mercy, but not anymore! A thousand and one ways to feed the white Pigeon Queen the taste of defeat, submission, regret, and utter ruin rose up in her mind, and Lupin tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"Anyway, thank you. That helped a ton."
— I shall look forward to the day we meet again.
A soft rustle, and the hundred summoned pigeons vanished just like that.
Heh heh heh.
Lupin let a wicked little laugh slip out.
"Ah. I think I might actually be starting to like pigeons."
Said the person who used to bristle the moment she so much as saw one.
"You want to... learn about all different kinds of pigeons?"
When Lupin drew up a new travel plan and announced it, Yegor asked with a baffled look.
"But why ask me."
"Because you're the senior adventurer here, obviously. Who else would I ask?"
"There are plenty of senior adventurers who aren't me. Go by career alone, and other people in this association have seen more of the world."
Barging in among strangers with no sense of the room, Lupin could do just fine. The moment she had to single one person out and actually speak to them, she got shy.
"I'm a little shy with people. Hehe."
And she expected him to believe that? Yegor was at a loss for words.
"Oh—or I could look into how pigeons live for you instead. I'm already really close with the people at this branch."
"If you do that, then I am thank you."
"I'll go find out right now!"
Motivation detonating, Vatslava shot off toward the next table. A person parched for recognition is just that desperate.
Yegor offered a suggestion.
"Vatslava says she'll look into it, but if we're going to move anyway, I was thinking we might follow Administrator Tasili."
"Master? Now that you mention it, where did she say she was going?"
"If you don't know that... She went to the capital of the Rostov Republic."
"And where's that?"
Yegor privately concluded that teaching a six-month-old puppy would be considerably faster.
"Novi Rostov."
"Novi? They've got a thriving slave trade there?"
Yegor glared.
"Slavery is strictly forbidden across the Imperial Alliance. And why would you hear 'Novi' and think of slaves."
Lupin has no idea that novi means "new" in Old Rostov. They were speaking the common tongue, but she carries a bug that swaps every sound she hears into Hangul—so Novi lands in her ear as nobi, an old word for a bonded serf. She could hardly help the leap. And yet the word slave itself she had said perfectly clearly, in the common tongue.
"Anyway, how long does it take to get there?"
"About six days by train."
"Gah. Six whole days? Isn't there a stop in the middle?"
"Six days on the direct line. Eight if you transfer. If you want a waypoint, there's Vostokopolis, close to Dongbaek—or if you turn north, Viskogorsk."
Dongbaek. A nation at the far eastern edge of the continent—the sort of place her homeland, Korea, might have become if it had succeeded in closing its borders and remained a kingdom all the way through. It was also where she had stopped before finding the last treasure chest in the Rostov Republic. But the place was so exactly like the Korean peninsula that she had no reason to go there now. The pigeons were all more of the same, too. If she was going anywhere, it had to be west or north.
"Vis... Vi... let's go to Bismarck."
"Then we'll need to make some preparations."
"Preparations? What preparations?"
Yegor had no intention of talking back to a decision made by his employer. Still, traveling alongside her, a few things nagged at him—namely, the present state of Viskogorsk. It was the city closest to Dragon Valley at the northern edge of the republic, stuck out in the remote mountains, with more escaped criminals than anyone could count. Just recently, hadn't an entire mafia organization pulled up stakes and moved in? It was bad enough that even the central government had given up on the place, told them to sort it out themselves, and stationed troops only at the train station.
And what kind of person was he supposed to be guarding? Vatslava, who drew people to her even if she simply stood still. Cutting someone down was not difficult for Yegor, but under the circumstances he would rather not see blood spilled in someone else's country. However long they meant to stay, he needed at least some measure in place to avoid a fight.
"Nothing you need to worry about. I'll handle it."
Lupin, however, was the exception to those precautions. The notion of her being taken down by criminals who had fled into the mountains was beyond imagining—and the more she cut loose, the more eyes she would draw, which would leave Vatslava relatively safe. For the sake of the mission, Yegor was perfectly willing to discard even his employer.
"Ah, what? Why am I the only one getting left out? Tell me too!!"
