Time to Return to Everyday Life (?)
Now, it was time to return to everyday life (?).
Anyway, once I came to the realization that the veterans' affection for newbies was truly admirable, I also came to understand that, one way or another, the tech tree was a genuinely, staggeringly complicated structure.
But none of that mattered right now, because conquering our happy, smiling Milano System took priority over everything else.
After all, the veterans had kept repeating it from the start — tech trees, omens, and all the rest could wait; first, shut up and take over an entire star system, then we talk.
If only for that reason, I found myself naturally drifting away from those topics on the gallery around this point, refocusing on the practical side of things instead.
And so, while I was quietly rummaging through the gallery hoping to scrape up whatever useful information I could —
Sure enough, another squabble broke out among the users, escalating to the point where they were spamming the gallery with their infighting at the exact moment I needed information.
So, in the process of quelling these gallery brawls — conveniently enough, using footage I'd captured while carrying out the refinement work on Woolong and Ggomuli — I managed to keep the chaos at bay in an extremely peaceful fashion, and before I knew it, three whole days had passed since I'd thrown myself into the tech development and experiments that were my actual job.
By then, a full three months had slipped by since I'd possessed this world, and at the very moment I was giving Ggomuli — back in his mini-aquarium as a marimo ball once more — a pat on the head along with some decidedly lukewarm congratulations(?), it happened.
"Doctor, may I come in?"
"Ohh, my assistant! Finally, something's come of it?"
"Indeed it has, Doctor."
There stood Ilena — the possessor of our magnificently cool-headed bag of intellect, Ilena the 'Assistant' — come to deliver her report in person for the first time in ages.
Skipping the trivial details and cutting straight to the heart of what she'd come to tell me —
"......To summarize it in percentages, the planetary conquest rate of our Demonia Empire's Milano branch currently stands at just over 55%, decimals omitted."
"Ooooh...... we've taken half, which basically means we've swallowed it whole!"
Such a snappy result greeted me, and I felt an involuntary smile spread across my face. How very satisfying.
Though if you pressed into the details, the story was a slightly different one.
"Great, great! So can we call ourselves the rulers of Milano now?"
"No, Doctor."
"Eh?"
"Expressing things in percentages tends to create a visual illusion like this, which is precisely why I generally avoid using them."
"Aww."
"Strictly speaking, we currently hold roughly 90% of Milano-V alone. Beyond that, we have yet to secure the key facilities or major cities of any of our other affiliated planets."
"Is that so......"
"It is. Milano-III, our capital planet, is the worst of all — our branch's control there doesn't even break 10%. Which is exactly why this won't be easy."
"Hnngh. No, it certainly won't be."
Right. That was the thing about "over 55%" — it was only measured against the total territory, rated roughly the way you'd grade a land-grab within that space, nothing more.
In the areas that actually deserved to be called "controlled," I was informed we were still being outpaced by the Milano System's central government.
Of course, before, if it had come to direct conflict, we could have been said to lose 100% of the time, no questions asked — but now?
This was the combined result of every manner of backroom deal struck while I languished in prison, plus all the treaties and negotiations Ilena had spent the last three days running herself ragged to secure.
"The Earth Alliance and Babel Cult branches currently stationed on Milano-III have agreed to side with us."
"Hmm? You actually got them on board? What did you say to them?"
"It was simple. Both branches declared that so long as the long-standing ACIC monopoly could be broken, they were willing to support us — or at the very least, look the other way."
"Ohh-ho."
"The Babel Cult in particular was — outwardly impassive, but visibly delighted — at the promise that helping us conquer Milano could earn them authorization for 'official proselytizing' and 'removal of indigenous religions.'"
Things seemed to be proceeding far more smoothly than I'd anticipated, and I found myself thinking, huh, this is actually going pretty well!
And since the conversation had unfolded that way, I naturally concluded there was no need for me to press further on the matter.
Instead, I recalled how, during my time in prison, the Red Scourge had run rampant yet again while the central government had failed to mount any proper response against our forces — and I raised the question of whether that wasn't a problem.
At my reaction, Ilena tilted her head for a moment......
Then clapped her fist into her palm with a sharp thwack, her whole face lighting up with sudden understanding.
And when I asked what on earth had prompted that reaction, this is what Ilena had to say:
"I see it now. To deceive the enemy, you must first deceive your own allies. That was your design, was it not?"
"What are you talking about, assistant? My dear assistant?"
"You needn't spell it out for me one by one. Of course you'd kept it hidden all this time — preparing for any eventuality. I should have known."
"No, seriously, what are you talking about?"
"Well, naturally — you wished to conceal the fact that the rampaging Red Scourge were all, in truth, cultivated by your own hand. Was that not your intention, Doctor?"
"......Hmm."
Yes. That.
What followed her words was genuinely difficult to summarize, but if I compressed it as much as humanly possible:
The "second rampage of the Red Scourge" — one of the root causes that had gotten me released from prison in the first place — had, as it turned out, not actually been a real berserk rampage at all.
No. It was this: back before I'd been thrown in the slammer, I'd not only worked the bio-factories of Milano-V to the bone, but had built extra 'Black Scourge Hives' here and there across the system — and the creatures those hives had produced had simply been given red skins and deployed on a simulated rampage.
Listening to this, I found myself savoring the experience of my facial expression management becoming extremely, extremely, EXTREMELY difficult in very short order.
Worse still, apparently even amid all this, she'd been every bit as thorough about control measures as ever —
"In case any suspicion might fall upon you, I deliberately let the creatures operate autonomously for two to three days after your release, so that they could raise a proper ruckus."
"Uh. Hm. Right, of course you did."
"And thanks to that — entirely unintentionally — the sympathy generated by your imprisonment combined with the lingering sense of crisis that the Red Scourge incident was not yet over, and the two compounded......"
"Compounded how?"
"Into exactly what I mentioned before: the planetary governments, the councils, and the branches of the Earth Alliance and the Babel Cult all adopting a favorable stance toward us."
"I see."
"After all — was this not all part of the plan you personally set in motion, Doctor?"
"......"
I couldn't speak for anyone else, but at the very least, the person best qualified to know that I possessed neither the capacity to have planned all of this nor to have executed it was none other than me, myself.
And so, watching Ilena film her deranged misunderstanding-fest in real time, directed at me out of absolutely nowhere —
I came to understand, at long last and all too belatedly, both why the protagonists of so many misunderstanding stories react with bitter heartache the instant they see the people around them weaving delusions about them —
And also why those same protagonists flail so desperately to escape the situation.
But that, in turn, meant the reverse was equally true: no matter how hard I flailed, escaping my current circumstances was simply impossible.
And so, per the established grammar of the genre, I realized these misunderstandings would surely keep piling on from here on out — and with that realization, I resolved to give up, accept the situation as it was, and simply minimize my stress however I could.