A Reason to Make Her Stay
…Well, fine. Having come this far, I suppose I can't deny it.
With those words, Tiamat's avatar carefully draped a coat over the thin gown she wore.
Considering how nonchalantly she'd been sprawled out until a moment ago, it seemed she was suddenly feeling modest about it all.
Of course, that wasn't the important part right now.
I intend to leave this country.
Is that so.
The goddess Tiamat.
She had just admitted she was planning to leave South Korea for the first time in years.
"You don't seem surprised?"
"No, well…"
Because the avatar standing right in front of me was simply too obvious about it.
Others might not be able to tell, but for someone like me, who could distinguish her true body, the truth stood out almost painfully. Even hearing a bombshell like that, I felt oddly relieved instead.
If anything, it made sense, in a way.
The situation had looked strange at a glance, after all. It would've been far more disorienting if she'd claimed she was just taking a vacation out of nowhere.
"You're not wrong. Then tell me—do you have any guess as to why I came to this decision?"
That was exactly the problem.
Honestly speaking, I couldn't even begin to guess.
But still.
Everything in this world has cause and effect. One plus one makes two, and flowers bloom where water has been poured.
In other words, there had to be a reason for Tiamat to want to leave South Korea.
And there was exactly one event of late that could have changed her mind.
Their true objective.
Is she planning to betray us?
Honestly, that was the first thought that came to mind. But it wasn't a suspicion I could carelessly voice.
I considered it a fairly reasonable line of judgment on my part, sure. Tiamat was a monster. And as she herself had admitted, she knew very well what the power of an extra-standard rank monster was capable of. There was plenty of motive to panic and flee.
But that was still my own biased read on things.
What if she said it wasn't true? No matter how you sliced it, branding a partner who'd never caused a single problem as a traitor without any real evidence—
That wasn't something my character would allow. If we were still at our usual level of bickering, maybe, but in the end, the only answer I could choose was silence.
"My cute little one."
Watching me like that, Tiamat gave a small laugh and spoke—looking far more worn down than usual.
"I've had my suspicions, of course. It's because of their objective."
I nodded along.
Novus Ordo Seclorum. The New World Order.
Literally, the new world that would arrive after the Third Great Cataclysm. Traitors who had sworn to abandon humanity under the pretext of desiring a new order.
But that was the extent of what I could predict. I still couldn't fathom why Tiamat herself would say such a thing.
Until now, Tiamat had dutifully carried out her responsibilities as a descended Constellation without a single issue. It felt a bit wrong to say this, and she'd talked like that, but it was hard to imagine that this Tiamat would suddenly flee in terror of an extra-standard rank monster at this late stage.
If she truly wanted to run from the Third Great Cataclysm or the extra-standard monsters, there had been far more suitable moments to do so.
If I had to pick one culprit—
"It would have to be Dr. Pyeong So-woon."
"Huh?"
"Hm?"
Why was Dr. Pyeong So-woon's name coming up here?
The mood just went full Pyeong So-woon.
"You're aware, I trust—that woman is the genius of the century."
That wasn't an exaggeration. Just look at the new spells I'd recently learned, not to mention the fact that she'd taken the very first steps toward developing artificial gates.
Her only shortcoming was a total lack of talent for combat; when it came to mana engineering, a talent like Pyeong So-woon wouldn't come around again for another hundred years. Even I, who'd dismissed her as nothing more than a frog in the Korean well until I saw her in person, had no choice but to concede that much.
"Then consider this: what happens if, by some mischance, they get their hands on one of my avatars?"
"Ah—"
"You know full well what the name of the goddess Tiamat is worth. So what would they do with it?"
Of course, unlike Tiamat's framing, acquiring an avatar was generally supposed to be impossible.
Hell, if that were actually possible, Kim Minchul would've equipped himself with gear forged from Tiamat's avatar material ages ago.
An avatar was, in the end, an authority that projected one facet of the self through mana. Even if an avatar met its death, it would simply return to mana before long—vaporizing, quite literally.
The problem was the rebuttal: so what? Since when did artificial gate development have anything to do with reality?
To put it bluntly, Dr. Pyeong So-woon had succeeded in developing artificial gates without a single divine patron. There was no doubt that knowledge pumped in by the monsters who had become tendrils of that organization had been used to the fullest.
"So how can you be certain they lack the technology to contain an avatar?"
In the first place, according to Tiamat herself, avatars were a fairly common function among Constellations. If the monsters really intended to avenge their mythological defeats and descend upon this world—
Then they'd very likely already prepared countermeasures against the divine Avatar ability.
No, it would be there, one hundred percent. Otherwise, they could never have hoped to topple the gods.
Take Dionysus of Greco-Roman myth, for instance—a god said to have over a hundred aspects of himself. If there existed no countermeasure against avatar abilities, then by simple arithmetic, one might have to face not the Twelve Olympians but twelve hundred.
For monsters who had already tasted defeat once to be capable of reversing the outcome, it was only rational to assume countermeasures existed as well.
And—
It felt wrong to say this, but from that point on, the name of the goddess Tiamat became excessively dangerous.
Specifically, here's why.
The number of high-rank monsters the New World Order had deployed so far was nothing to sneeze at. Counting them one by one: the three dragons encountered when they first met Hayeon. The demon released into the Academy Underground Gate. The Succubus Queen, the Guishui Mountain spirit, and even a nine-tailed fox. Adding Duduri, summoned through the Manpasikjeok during the field exercise, brought the total to eight.
That meant they were deploying high-rank monsters at a pace of nearly one a month.
Tiamat, meanwhile, could mass-produce at least ten high-rank monsters on her own. And that was the bare minimum—if she started counting in earnest, twenty or more came easily. Even including the assault by the Marriage Cult and the hired killers sent from among dispatched hunters, the numbers would still fall short.
And then there was the legend that the monsters she conceived went on to become the progenitors of every monster in Mesopotamian myth.
More monsters to kill? As far as I was concerned, that was welcome news. But the enemy's forces being endlessly replenished carried a rather different meaning.
Besides, the biggest problem lay elsewhere.
Tiamat's Blessing.
The authority that had crowned Kim Minchul's final moments. In other words, the power to elevate a human into a monster.
It presumably stemmed from the tale that Tiamat had shaped humanity from the blood of the monsters she conceived. And if those bastards got their hands on a function like that—
There would absolutely be those among them willing to give up on humanity as a species entirely.
The New World Order. What kept the reckless ambitions of the powerful cooperating with monsters in check was nothing more than the limits of their species.
Did they really think that if they sincerely sold out the country, they'd be granted equal standing with the monsters who led the invasion? Our nation's elites weren't idiots.
Realistically, if the Third Great Cataclysm broke out under their plan, the best our country could hope for was to become a human ranch. The traitors who sold out the nation were operating on the belief that even that would be impossible if the extra-standard monsters descended without their cooperation.
But.
If they heard that they could become monsters?
These were people who had already sold out humanity once. There would certainly be those who sought to be reborn as complete monsters and claw their way into positions as the extra-standard rank monsters' underlings.
And worse—if that authority were refined and used for nothing more than terror—
What is this, an all-in-one gift set?
Mass monster production. Reinforcements of high-rank monster forces. And on top of that, the ability to elevate humans into monsters.
Even the reason the gods and monsters of Mesopotamian myth had once sought to secure Tiamat's person began to make sense.
Isn't she basically a strategic resource?
"So?"
"Mm-hm?"
"…Mmm."
"I owe an apology to the children who have devoted their faith to me all this time. And so, I intend to leave."
Tiamat's opinion was set, and I had no way to refute it.
"I shall not ask who it was that whispered such notions into your ear. But—"
Calmly, Tiamat asked. Weary, and yet somehow hopeful—a complete reversal of how she'd been when I first set foot in the uppermost floor of the Association.
"Do you have even a single reason why you should keep me here?"
…And.
Unfortunately, I found myself short of the words needed to answer her question.