The Sevan Civil War (3)
Several months had already slipped by since I sent Riel off to the Sevan Administration on assignment, after giving her a thorough round of head-pats.
She should’ve wrapped something up by now.
That thought was drifting through my mind while I buried myself in the usual mountain of work when—
> Ding♪
An alarm popped up out of nowhere. I couldn’t hide my confusion.
What now?
There hadn’t been any quests or events worth mentioning lately. The sudden appearance made me glance around the office for a second before I hit the pause key.
[PAUSED]
I decided to check what the alert actually was. The moment the notification fully resolved, I realized Riel had handled my request far more thoroughly than I’d expected.
Event: End of the Sevan Civil War!
The civil war that erupted within the Sevan Administration under the leadership of the Sevan People’s Sovereignty League has, as of today, reached its conclusion.
Though the League’s fleet brought the Administration’s capital world into threat range and the conflict saw its share of twists and turns…
Contrary to every pundit’s prediction, a regular fleet of the Holy Sevelian Empire intervened in the civil war at an extraordinarily early stage.
As a result, the League’s fleet was annihilated in less than a week.
Upon receiving the news, the Sevan People’s Sovereignty League signed the instrument of surrender delivered by the Administration, bringing a brutal civil war to an end with startling speed.
Loyalty of the Sevan Administration toward the Holy Sevelian Empire +100 for 10 years
Public opinion within the Sevan Administration shifts toward pro-alien sentiment.
Loyalty of nations subordinate to the Holy Sevelian Empire rises slightly.
Ohhh…
The loyalty gain was pure candy. I nodded to myself, thoroughly satisfied that sending Riel had been the right call. Then a single fact hit me.
Wait… “as of today”?
[PAUSE RELEASED]
I immediately unpaused, pulled up the large terminal on my desk, and checked today’s date. After confirming the day Riel had left and calculating the one-way travel time from the sacred motherworld of Kazan to the Sevan Administration three sectors away, the conclusion was unavoidable.
“Incredible.”
Riel had effectively ended the Sevan civil war in less than a single week. Of course, for now the only source was an event message—the status window—so I couldn’t exactly throw a party yet. Still, that was no reason to sit on my hands.
News this big won’t stay quiet. An official dispatch should arrive any day now.
With a feat of that magnitude, the Imperial Palace would almost certainly send both a formal citation and some kind of reward for Riel. So, at the very least, I decided to prepare a congratulatory certificate of my own and began drafting the text.
A few inquiries and pieces of actual work got pushed back as a result—minor slip-ups, nothing more—but…
Our Riel did it! She actually did it!
Feeling for all the world like a doting uncle whose soul had been possessed by pure parental pride, I poured every ounce of unrestrained eloquence into writing Riel’s award.
Three months later.
“Ahem, ahem… let’s see… This Minister hereby recognizes your meritorious service and… and…?”
“Minister, if you could lower your tone just a little more there, that would be perfect.”
“Right, got it.”
The Foreign Executive Ministry and I had finally decided to hold a modest award ceremony and welcome reception for Riel’s return.
“Our boss looks pretty happy that Deputy Boss Riel’s coming back.”
“Of course he is. The sheer volume of paperwork Deputy Commander Riel used to handle was beyond imagination.”
A handful of Purge Squad members with time to spare had even given up precious free hours to attend the quiet little event. Since neither Riel nor I particularly enjoyed loud, flashy affairs, both the ceremony and the reception were confined to the Foreign Executive Ministry’s reception room.
Inside that room I set the carefully typed certificate on the table and killed time chatting with Meteorn, the most senior of the attending Purge Squad members and one of their unit commanders.
“How far out is Riel?”
“Her shuttle just entered orbit, so she should be here any minute.”
“Come to think of it, it’s been a very long time since we’ve seen Advisor Riel operate independently.”
“Has it?”
“Yes. If my memory isn’t playing tricks, for the last five years she’s been practically glued to you, Minister—like you two shared a single mind.”
“Hmm.”
“Sometimes I almost wonder if you and Advisor Riel aren’t actually a married couple.”
“If we were, we’d be at each other’s throats every single day.”
Meteorn let out a hearty laugh and agreed.
“Indeed, Minister. Your words ring true.”
We kept up that sort of banter for a while until a sound drifted in from outside the reception room.
—Shhhhhhh… vwooom!
Meteorn tilted his head, listening, then turned carefully toward me.
“Ah. It seems Advisor Riel has arrived.”
“Has she?”
It had taken a bit longer than expected, but everything appeared to have gone smoothly. I started to rise and greet her myself.
“Ah, I’ll go meet her first, sir!”
“Hmm. Not a bad idea.”
One of the Purge Squad members shot out of the room with the crisp energy of a fresh private. Meteorn offered an apologetic look.
“My apologies, Minister. Our subordinate just stole the first meeting with Advisor Riel without permission…”
“What kind of weird phrasing is that? You make it sound like I’m married to her.”
“Ah… yes, that does sound rather strange, doesn’t it…”
“Exactly.”
Even so, the idea of me—well over 180 centimeters—being married to Riel, who looked maybe early teens by my previous life’s human standards, was absurd.
If I ever did something like that, Artraia would decide the pedophile rumors about me were true and lock me up “to correct my twisted tastes.”
While I was entertaining that ridiculous thought, the hallway outside the reception room grew noisy. The voice belonged to the squad member who had just left, and the remaining men inside started fidgeting for no good reason.
“Tsk. Making that much racket right in front of the commander…”
“My apologies. I’ll call him in separately for another round of education soon.”
“Eh, it’s been a while. He’s allowed to be happy.”
On a day like this a little noise was fine. I let their comments slide.
“Minister? You in there, yeah?”
Riel’s voice came through the slightly open door without any of the earlier racket. I stood to welcome our little advisor home.
“Yeah, hurry in and get your congratu—”
“Oh.”
None of us in the reception room managed to finish the welcome.
—Thud.
“What is it, yeah? C’mon, I told you not to do stuff like this.”
The reason was simple: the Riel who walked in was so much larger and stronger than the one who had left that the difference was almost violent.
What the hell…
She easily cleared two meters. Her entire body was packed with pure muscle—veins standing out in sharp relief, body-fat percentage well under ten percent. She looked like a gene-modded super-soldier. And yet her face and hair were still exactly the same. The visual was pure shock.
“A-Advisor Riel…?”
Even the Purge Squad members, who had seen every kind of horror imaginable, couldn’t form proper sentences.
“What… exactly happened to you?”
Even the usually unflappable Meteorn looked completely blank. The atmosphere in the room turned strange in an instant.
“Eh, a lot of things happened, yeah.”
Despite the stir, Riel spoke with perfect calm, as if it were nothing.
Right. No matter how much her appearance changed, Riel is still Riel…
“Oh, right—Minister? I’m back, yeah.”
“Uh… yeah. You’ve… grown a lot.”
When the muscle-bound Riel stepped right up to me and greeted me, my body instinctively shrank back. The Purge Squad members had already clustered together and started whispering while staring at her.
“Didn’t Advisor Riel get a little… too big?”
“Maybe it’s a growth spurt.”
“It’s only been half a year…”
“Are we sure that’s even Advisor Riel and not someone completely different?”
They were trying to keep their voices down so we wouldn’t hear, but unfortunately my earpiece—permanently linked to Meteorn in case of emergencies—picked up every word.
Kids, I can hear all of that.
I had to pour every ounce of willpower into keeping a straight face while looking at Riel. But then…
“….”
Don’t tell me Riel heard them too?
Her expression grew steadily more dejected the longer the whispering continued. The moment I saw that face, I realized exactly what we were doing to someone who had just returned from a half-year long-term assignment.
“Riel. You really did an incredible job.”
“Minister?”
“So what if you got a little taller? Plenty of people out there like tall women.”
I picked up the certificate from the table and held it out to her.
“Riel, this is the award we prepared for you. Originally I was going to present it the moment you walked in, but I hesitated and now the timing’s a little awkward.”
So what if she looked a bit different? This was the galaxy—home to every bizarre life-form imaginable. Getting flustered over a tall, muscular woman was just pathetic.
Maybe she sensed that thought.
“Minister…!”
Riel’s eyes filled with tears of pure emotion. She called my name, then—
“I knew it—you’re the best, Minister!!”
—launched her violently powerful body into a full-speed tackle-hug combo.
“…!!!!”
—Crrrack!
The result of that brutal combination landing on a fragile ordinary human was catastrophic.
The next day I requested extended leave from Artraia, citing “poor condition.” The Imperial Guard she sent with orders to “stop joking around” took one look at me and immediately transferred me to the Imperial exclusive hospital, where I spent the next month recovering.