The Babel Cult, and Scala Cervello. (3)
So, having heard this particular piece of news straight from the horse's mouth, I was, how should I put it.
“That a child so young should possess both self-sacrifice and grand magnanimity in equal measure—and the ability to carry them into practice—is nothing short of a blessing from God Himself!”
“Uhhh......”
“Do you have any idea how marvelous that is? I'm so moved that I can scarcely keep my emotions hidden!”
“Oh geez.”
“And yet even in the midst of all that, she refuses to hide her eroticism—transforming herself into the very avatar of eros that knows neither age nor gender! Aha, ahahahn!”
“Whoa......”
I am losing my mind.
Just as the gallery reactions suggested, watching Ms. Cervello put “simultaneously deploying flattery and slander” into actual practice made me think, quite easily, that this was going to be anything but simple.
Worse, ever since she'd started openly broadcasting that fawning, she'd begun flushing red in the face and wriggling her body in these strangely coiled, serpent-like ways. And then she even tried to reach out and pat my head like I was some kind of pet, which left me feeling a profoundly uncomfortable weight on my shoulders.
Of course, the blushing head-patting attempt was halted when Ilena stepped in, seized the woman's wrist, and—like a mother bird shielding her chick—wrapped my whole body up in her own arms and held me tight against her chest......
“That is remarkably rude of you, Branch Director Scala Cervello.”
“Oh my. It seems Lady Benya is simply so much my type that my maternal instincts ran wild without my noticing. Do forgive me, fufu.”
“My, my~ You're soft and squishy too, aren't you, assistant~?”
“Please bear with it for just a moment.”
“Mmh? Mmmh...... mmmmmmh...... I see, so that's what it was? Well, I'm hardly one to talk—looking at her myself, it does rather stir the maternal instincts, doesn't it.”
“It is nothing of the sort.”
“???”
“Fufu. Apparently such a thing does exist, Lady Benya.”
The enormous milk tanks were busy pressing down on my horns and skull, so there was no way on earth to check what expression Ilena was making. But having witnessed the two of us together, Ms. Cervello finally donned a look of dawning comprehension—and, wordlessly signaling that any further teasing would provoke the adjutant (read: assistant) into open hostility—left me nursing one deeply unsettling thought.
Wait. Has my adjutant been devoting all that loyalty(?) to me this whole time... because of maternal instinct?
Anyway, once that round of idle chit-chat had gently run its course and everyone had composed themselves, the conversation drifted back to the real business at hand.
Call it what you will, but frankly speaking, forging an “alliance” of full-throated mutual support was, in our current situation, more or less a secondary matter. Why? Because as I'd mentioned before, the Babel Cult—much like the Earth Alliance and ACIC before them—had played a deeply significant role in our conquest of the Milano System.
On top of that, with the transfer of ownership of the megacorp they'd held, plus the full-throated support of the branch itself rolled into the bargain, the ledger had tipped decisively in our favor. Even if we formally elevated them to strategic-partner status—bound to us the way Heisenberg was, sinking or swimming together—the “change” we owed them back would still come out ahead.
And they knew it too. So after all manner of back-and-forth, with the psychological distance between us shrinking, we ended up sitting cross-legged and at ease, enjoying a proper tea time together...... and it was while picking up one of the after-tea snacks—a wafer-style cookie—and nibbling away at it that Ms. Cervello finally decided to bring out the true main course.
“Then, shall we move on to the main topic at last?”
“Yep.”
So what on earth was she planning to say, that a woman who normally spoke so briskly had spent all this time dragging her feet? I soon found out. Her firmly closed mouth opened at last, and the moment the words inside it reached my ears——
“What we desire is just one thing. In the near future, a Saint Selection Rite is to be held within the Babel Cult, you see.”
“A Saint Selection Rite?”
“Yes. It is an event in which saint candidates scattered across the entire universe are evaluated, and a new saint is chosen from among them.”
“To put it simply: the Babel Cult selects its single strongest military asset through a process of voting and formal verification.”
“......Hmmmm.”
On the surface, it had sounded like a request to work as a sort of campaign staffer for a fairly democratic-sounding institution, so at first I just tilted my head, thinking, what's so hard about that?
But right then, a faint, inexplicable sense of foreboding crept over me—and just in case, I opened the gallery to dig up information on this. The results:
If you get chummy with a branch director, sooner or later you're gonna hear talk of this thing called the "Saint or Holy Maiden Selection Rite."
And when that branch director asks you to back her, support her candidacy,
some of you out there nod along thinking it's like a real-world election campaign.
Do NOT accept that carelessly.
Why, you ask?
Because the Babel Cult's saint selection isn't some vote for an honorary title. It's a total war that's basically one step short of a battle royale.
"What the hell does that mean," you say? Well, by the genre's own grammar, saints and holy maidens are always a cult's supreme combat asset.
Sure, in your typical fantasy world with a "holy, 100% good-guy church," the top asset would be more of a healer-support flavor.
But as I've said before, this place has zero good guys—everyone's Outer God-flavored. So the saints aren't "support ONLY." They're the ones who both heal you AND beat the living shit out of you.
Worse, once you become a saint or holy maiden, as the cult's strongest asset you can channel the Outer Gods' power at will and become a superhuman among superhumans, well beyond what people normally call "transcendent."
On top of that, you get the privilege of mobilizing the cult's inquisitors, its combat paladins, or its punitive fleets whenever needed. In short: a monster with a total monopoly on both political power and raw force.
And a position like that naturally breeds every kind of vicious, rat-fucking infighting imaginable over who gets selected.
Backing your branch director with supplies and troops might not be enough. If she decides it's worth it, you could end up personally thrown into the fighting.
The one silver lining: once you've declared your support, a war against another cult gets classified by cult HQ not as hostility but as an "internal conflict."
Meaning you won't get a crusade-style "punitive fleet" dispatched over it, or a pack of inquisitors showing up to concave your skull, when the heathen bastards attack you.
The actual problem is that whichever rival branch director hates the one you support, along with her entire faction, will come over to beat the shit out of you.
So if you want to declare support, at minimum make sure you've got the firepower to defend yourself against whatever comes first.
Or, y'know, help out because you're so head-over-heels you'd dedicate everything to them, body and soul.
No idea what that's like, so don't ask me about the latter.
“Huh. Interesting.”
The situation was delicate indeed—delicate enough to plunge me straight into an agonizing debate over whether I should accept this... or not.