Did Something Go Wrong?
Had something gone wrong?
Ever since I'd handed the administrative work over to Pharaoh, I'd found myself with a bit of breathing room. That spare time let Besk turn his attention to matters inside the Academy as well, and thanks to him, preparations were humming right along…
"Where's Pharaoh?"
"He is resting."
The one actually doing his job at his desk was someone else entirely. A woman wearing a golden hawk mask, dressed in the very garb she'd worn during the days of Pharaoh's empire, answered with clipped formality as she flipped through an enormous stack of papers.
Under her hands, the documents were being stamped APPROVED one after another in rapid succession. That, too, was surely something Pharaoh had ordered her to do — or so I assumed, but when I asked, she shook her head.
"It was originally my duty to begin with."
"Hmm…"
Serek.
The power broker once known as Pharaoh's Left Hand, someone so deeply enmeshed in politics that she'd at one point had a hand in every piece of intermediate trade running through the empire. Back then, a saying had spread among the kingdoms as though it were plain fact: if you want to win Pharaoh's favor, first win Serek's.
She ultimately lost her life to the demons, though.
Pharaoh had always valued his relationships with humans, and I had little doubt her influence had something to do with the way he'd carried on about it.
"Now that I think of it, it's been a long time. Did Pharaoh summon you personally?"
"Yes. Under Pharaoh's authority, I was able to open my eyes once more."
"How long can you stay manifested?"
"Not very long. But it is enough to see me through a workday."
Serek was a being whose soul had been half-destroyed by the demons. Pharaoh had pieced her back together and bound her to his own soul, just as I had done with my own passenger — but summoning her at all was pushing it.
Pharaoh himself had lost his physical body and existed as a parasite clinging to a stone statue. One could only imagine how much worse it was for her.
"……"
Her body was made entirely of sand.
"Shall I say something to him?"
"There is no need. I am content with this."
"I don't think you are."
By the very nature of the Void Space, soul-summoning was supposed to be impossible. And from what I understood, this was the first time she'd ever awakened. Making someone who'd just opened her eyes for the first time in thousands of years start working immediately — wouldn't that feel a little too cruel?
When I said as much, the hawk mask flinched.
"…I didn't expect you of all people to say that, Lady Lily."
"Hmm?"
"N-nothing. In any case, all administrative matters have been handled. Should anything else come up later, His Majesty will deal with it himself."
"So are you two really nothing more than colleagues?"
"……"
There had certainly been plenty of talk back in the day that something was going on between them. But neither Pharaoh nor Serek would ever give a straight answer. Pharaoh had kept quite a few wives and concubines, and Serek hadn't been among any of them.
Tap, tap.
Having gathered the last of the papers, she slid the whole stack into a single pile.
"We are nothing more than colleagues. And…"
"And?"
"…Even if there were something, I'm sure it would be nothing but my own delusion."
Even if she was the only one he'd chosen to summon, out of all the countless people who had surrounded Pharaoh, after thousands of years had passed.
That, too, would probably be a delusion.
"…Ugh, this is unbearable."
I left Pharaoh's office.
"We're nothing."
"Why not?"
"Because there's nothing to be."
His preparations complete, Pharaoh stood in his golden mask, surveying the surroundings. The Academy's grand hall, finally and truly finished. In just a little while, the incoming students would begin filing in, one by one.
"I don't know what Serek told you, but I simply asked her to continue the administrative work she'd always done. It was her original duty, so what's the harm—"
"Asked her?"
"…I commanded her."
The golden mask trembled, just slightly. Seeing things like this, the two of them really were exactly alike.
"By the way, when exactly are you planning to go conquer the desert?"
"Once things have settled a bit. I've been putting considerable care into the Academy — I can't simply barge in out of nowhere, can I?"
"Why not just put off teaching those greenhorn brats?"
"Absolutely not. Time is of the essence."
With the new year turning, less than four months remained until the Kraken revealed itself once more. Between now and then, the player base as a whole needed to be raised to a higher standard.
"Do you really think that octopus thing intends to kill everyone?"
"It is more than capable of it. If it emerges, things will indeed grow dangerous."
"Hmm… but what does it matter? This place doesn't even border the sea."
However strong the Kraken might be, that strength held only within the ocean. On land, the Kraken could hardly flex its power at all.
"How easily those words fall from the lips of one who turned a land into a desert with a single stomp."
"…Making a sea, is it. That's rather grating."
Pharaoh let his displeasure show, plain and unhidden. For Pharaoh, Emperor of the Desert, the sea was a superfluous thing — something to be rejected by nature. And no doubt the Kraken felt precisely the same about him.
"Then I suppose we'll have to stop it after all."
"I don't care either way."
"Rasty."
Beautifully put-together as always, Rasty stepped up onto the dais. Today's outfit leaned closer to professor than princess.
"You still look awfully young, though."
"That's because I am young."
"Of everyone here, you're actually the old—"
CRUNCH!
Her authority of blood fused the statue's feet and the floor into one.
"Silence."
"…Insufferable creature."
"Have you two really been playing this game for thousands of years?"
"We haven't been playing."
"That vampire did nothing but sleep. Her total time awake doesn't even add up to three hundred years."
Which was to say, Pharaoh had effectively whiled away those thousands of years all alone, staring into the void.
"…Shall I loosen the restrictions on her soul's usage a little?"
"At this late stage?"
"You could spend a bit more time with Serek, then. Power flows far more freely in the Void Space than here, after all."
"I would rather you did no such thing."
Hmm.
I studied Pharaoh closely. Rasty, too, went hmmm… and studied Pharaoh closely.
"He does seem rather embarrassed, doesn't he?"
"You know, I've actually heard him before — the way he goes on about Serek… Serek…"
"Oh my."
Really?
"When did that happen?!"
"It's true?!"
"Mm-hm. He must have thought I was asleep. He threw an absolute fit."
"Gah."
"…You accursed wretches."
Pharaoh's golden mask began to shake as though steam were boiling off it, kicking up a wind of sand.
Ah, we just cleaned in here.
"Hey, you can't kick up sand in here."
"Exactly. Do you have any idea how much trouble the person who cleans this place has to go through?"
"…Damnation. When do the others even arrive?"
Pharaoh stomped off and slid down to sit against the wall. He was thoroughly sulking.
The other monsters, hm…
"Shall we start gathering them again, one by one?"
"No harm in it. Though I'm not sure any of them are still alive."
"We have at least one."
Karabus, the crab monster dwelling within Crimson Predator, the hammer I'd claimed. With the Blue-Red Stone's restrictions all but gone now, if I wished it, I could wake him and manifest him in reality this very moment.
However…
"I don't think we should take him out right now."
"I was thinking the same, unnie. The moment he sees daylight he'll crow to everyone about how he's finally got someone backing him."
"I can hear every word."
That was part of it, but there was a more fundamental reason Karabus couldn't come out. Karabus hailed from the sea — from the deep, no less. With the Kraken on the very verge of awakening, his existence could easily become poison if we weren't careful.
"He's such a pushover, that crab would probably defect to the Kraken's side."
"True enough."
"Besides, he absolutely hates you, unnie."
The monsters I had captured fell into three broad categories.
The first were monsters who each had their own story, their own tragedy. Rasty, who had suffered as a lab experiment, or Myoshin, who'd been forced to choose the fate of her entire species — they were examples of this kind. These ones didn't particularly hate me; if anything, some part of them was rather fond of me.
"That's fair."
"Right?"
"Mm. So could you drop the formalities already?"
The second category were monsters who had gone berserk over some specific grievance. Like Pharaoh, who'd lost his empire and sought to build a new one, these were beings trying to reclaim their past glory. They disliked me, but they at least understood — or grudgingly agreed with — my way of thinking, to a degree.
"I don't agree, mind you? And I don't understand, either."
And then the third and final category.
"I said I don't agree."
The ones who simply raged like mindless beasts. Monsters who'd been beaten down by demons or angels while growing in power, and then took their fury out on humans as a vent for their spite. These ones held genuinely ill feelings toward me. Beyond the level of Pharaoh's mere 'dislike,' they outright loathed my very existence.
"Still, Karabus is practically a saint compared to some of them."
"…Huh? That buffoon, a saint?"
Rasty looked thoroughly unconvinced, but it was the truth.
"Some of those things hunted humans methodically, remember? Killing them systematically, one by one."
"Ah. Those garbage heaps."
Beings who went beyond venting their spite and schemed outright to exterminate entire populations. I'd have gladly seen those schemes aimed at angels or demons instead, but their minds never turned that way — they never dared try it on beings who could fight back, and instead aimed only at weak species like humans. Vile creatures, through and through.
"…So when exactly do the greenhorns show up?"
Pharaoh clutched at his mask as though his head were starting to ache. Lost in idle chatter, the time had apparently crept up on us.
"We'll start calling them in one at a time now."
"Now this, I'm curious about."
"Not me."
"Rasty."
"What?"
"What happened with Candy Star?"
I distinctly remembered being told her hands would be looked at. When I'd checked earlier, with time to spare, it didn't seem like anything had been done to them at all.
Rasty let out a long aaah~ and shook her head.
"She tried about three times? Then apparently decided the answer was no, and gave up. I think we'll have to call her in separately later and do it then."
"She gave up?"
"Mm. If anything, it was Yena who went absolutely berserk over it."
Candy Star — no, Choco — had given up.
That was a surprising result. Knowing Choco's personality, I hadn't expected her to throw in the towel so easily.
Had something gone wrong?