The Meeting (3)
"Her Grace Serpina will be with you shortly. Wait here."
Escorted by a soldier, I arrived at the audience chamber of the royal castle, found a suitable place to stand, and surveyed my surroundings.
The furnishings inside the castle… just enough to make the place look presentable, and no more. Of course, this wasn't the capital of Serpina's army, so there was hardly any need to dress it up.
I was turning over those thoroughly unproductive thoughts when the soldier who had brought me here spoke, eyeing me with open suspicion as I stood there blankly.
"What are you doing? If you've come as an envoy, show some respect."
"Respect?"
"Kneel."
Honestly.
I was sorely tempted to point out that kneeling after Serpina arrived would have been perfectly sufficient — but this was the heart of enemy territory. There was no reason to pick a fight before negotiations had even begun.
I knelt without protest.
"Good. If you're an envoy, wait like one. With proper manners."
Yes, yes. I understand, so please be quiet — I swallowed the words before they left my throat. If I was being honest, a soldier putting on airs wasn't enough to truly irritate me.
What struck me more was something else entirely. Every single soldier here seemed steeped in a kind of venom — the hallmark of Serpina's army, I supposed. The pride of serving an absolute sovereign who carried the overwhelming legitimacy of the Empire dripped from even the lowest ranks.
Which brought me back to the question: what kind of person was Serpina?
One thing I had felt keenly since possessing this body was that the characters I had known as data were, in reality, living people with personalities that no set of stats could fully capture. Even Airen and Reika, who had accompanied me here, had turned out nothing like I expected.
Serpina was known as a tyrant, and she bore the resentment of a great many people — but would she truly be the person of that reputation? Would she match the data I remembered?
The thought pulled an old memory to the surface: the life before I had been possessed into this world. I had listened to Zinor's counsel — accurate ninety-nine percent of the time — and gone as an envoy to propose an alliance with Serpina's army, only to be imprisoned by her and beheaded.
And now, here I was again: an envoy walking into Serpina's domain.
…
I swallowed dryly. I doubted anything would go that far… nothing would happen, right?
I had come here in the first place because a mind of Intelligence 100 had insisted, again and again, that this was the correct course. Judging by what had happened at the northern fortress when the meteor fell, that same mind would never have called a course that put my life in genuine danger "the most efficient option." So the odds were good that I would be fine.
Still, one thing nagged at me: the result that had come back as it depends on the will of heaven. Why did it hinge on my choice? What decision of any real weight could an envoy possibly make?
I was still untangling those stray threads of thought when—
Creeeak—
The sound of an old door opening, followed by footsteps approaching with unmistakable clarity. I kept my head bowed and waited for the sound to stop.
One step. Two.
After several more, the voice of the absolute sovereign — the woman the world called a tyrant, who bore every soul's resentment and fear upon her shoulders — finally reached my ears.
"Raise your head."
My ears registered a faint jolt of surprise. For a tyrant, the voice was far too slender, far too beautiful. And yet, woven through that beauty was a subtle, precarious fragility. There was no mistaking the charisma that could dominate a room by voice alone — and still, somehow, she felt as though she might shatter if handled carelessly.
I lifted my head slowly and looked at her.
…Huh?
Had I been my usual self, I would have thought simply: she is beautiful. Truly, breathtakingly beautiful.
Among all the women I had met so far, I could name perhaps three who ranked among the most beautiful: Lunarien Iniang, Airen Juliette, and Reika Nighthart. They were beauties beyond dispute — so much so that even those who held no fondness for them would have been forced to concede the point. Each possessed a distinct and striking feminine allure.
But the woman before me was, in that regard, something else entirely — a being of a different order. Her beauty was so violently absolute that it rendered those who came before her merely pretty by comparison. If the word beauty itself could take human form, it would look like this.
Golden hair that shone with a light almost painful to the eyes. Features in such perfect balance that even her distinctive accessories only heightened her allure. Pink lips that held a gaze as if by force. She was beautiful — so beautiful that every word I had ever learned failed to capture the how and the how much of it.
My eyes drifted lower. She was dressed in something closer to the garb of a general riding to war than the robes of any sovereign I had met. And yet, as if to prove that a ruler's aura did not come from clothing, she gave the unmistakable impression of someone who stood above knights — not among them.
And — honestly — her chest was large enough that the eye had no choice but to notice. Smaller than Airen's, but comparable to Reika's. Given that Airen's size was in a class of its own, that still put her firmly in the category of well-endowed. I preferred larger, and by that measure she was more than attractive enough.
Yes. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have been stunned by a beauty so overwhelming it made her reputation as a cruel tyrant feel almost absurd — and I would have been trapped for a long time in the whirlpool of that face. She was that lovely.
But something more important than beauty was true.
I had seen her face before.
The woman from my dreams…?
I was certain. The Serpina standing before me looked exactly like the woman who had appeared in my dreams.
Since possessing this world, I had dreamed of her from time to time. In those dreams I spoke happily with a golden-haired woman. I never knew what we talked about — even in the dream, the substance of the conversation was never clear. We never managed to speak for long before she began to drift away from me. I would reach out to catch her as she receded, and upon waking I would call desperately for a name I could not remember.
This was not the first time I had seen Serpina's face. But the Serpina I remembered from the game had been nothing more than crude pixel art. The gap between a portrait in memory and a living person was nothing new to me — so I had never once imagined that the face from my dreams belonged to her.
I called the dream back again. The details shifted each time, but the ending never did. In every dream, I always… called out ■■■■'s name in a voice full of longing.
That's right. In my dreams, I had always been calling Serpina's name…?
And in that instant—
"…Swen…?"
"…!!!"
The memory of the dream had left my vision briefly disordered; only then did her face fully register. Her eyes had gone wide and white, and she was staring at me, trembling.
That she was startled to see me was secondary. What mattered was that she had spoken my name — a name I had not yet given her.
And for some reason, a vision flashed across my sight: her, weeping openly, sobbing without restraint. Why? Why did a scene like that exist in my memory?
"Ah…"
"…"
We stared at each other's faces in silence for a long time. After several minutes, the shock began to cool, and my mind started turning again.
Right. Something is clearly going on here… but until I know exactly what it is, there's nothing I can do about it right now.
Coldly speaking, the only established fact was that the woman from my dreams had been Serpina. Nothing else was settled. For reasons I didn't understand, she knew my name — but ever since the meteor, my existence had become fairly well known. It wouldn't be strange for a sovereign to have heard the name of someone currently making the rounds of rumor.
Yes. No point in making a fuss. Just do the job.
With that, I carefully broke the silence between us.
"…I have come today to deliver a message from our sovereign, Lady Yuuri."
I bowed my head, then at last brought out the matter at hand. Serpina, across from me, did not answer for a long while… and then, returning to her original manner of speech, she replied.
"…Speak."
I glanced carefully at her face. The confusion that had tangled her features had settled into something considerably calmer. The reason she had been so startled to see me still bothered me… but negotiations came first.
"Lady Anima Ingram is an indispensable talent to our army. We earnestly beseech Your Grace's clemency."
"You demand the release of a prisoner?"
"That is correct."
"And the terms?"
"Naturally, we do not come empty-handed."
I raised my head and met her eyes as I spoke. I hadn't noticed it in the earlier shock, but she carried the unmistakable aura of an absolute sovereign — the kind that could press down on a person's spirit without effort. That didn't mean I could afford to lose a contest of wills.
"Seven thousand nine hundred gold. We believe we have prepared the utmost courtesy for a prisoner release. We ask only that you make the wise choice befitting a great power."
"Is that so? Seven thousand nine hundred gold."
It was, without question, an overpayment. The going rate for a prisoner release was usually two to three thousand gold; for an exceptional general, five to six thousand. Anima was no poor commander, but a cold assessment would not call her exceptionally outstanding either. Serpina would know Anima's true worth well enough — and our army had judged that this sum would satisfy her.
I had obediently followed the decision as an envoy, but privately I had never agreed with the judgment itself. Because if I had been Serpina—
"I am sorry, but I cannot release Anima on those terms."
"Meaning…?"
"Lacline Castle."
Serpina looked at me, her expression unwavering.
"Without Lacline Castle, this will not do. Gold alone does not balance the ledger."
Exactly. If I had been Serpina, I would have demanded Lacline Castle as well.
She had almost certainly grasped that Anima Ingram, ability aside, held enormous personal importance to the Asius Army. And in that situation, the single greatest prize she could realistically wring from us was Lacline Castle. Zinor's counsel had not been heeded, and even from our side, holding three territories against a great power like Serpina's army was a heavy burden. For her, this was a perfect chance to take whole a castle she had bloodied her hands for and still failed to seize.
If this proposal had truly come from Serpina's own mind, then she was no mere product of bloodline sitting on that throne. She had reached a judgment uncannily close to my own — and I was the one who knew every most-efficient path in this game by heart.
But we could not hand over the castle either. An ordinary envoy like me had no authority to make that decision in the first place. Would I have to withdraw empty-handed? But then I still couldn't understand why this had been the most efficient choice.
At that moment, Serpina's firmly closed lips moved again.
"…Or so I had intended to say."
"Pardon?"
"To be frank, I meant to open negotiations by demanding Lacline Castle. But I have changed my mind. Lacline Castle no longer matters to me."
She said it while looking straight into my eyes. Was it my imagination? Her golden gaze seemed to blaze as though she had swallowed the sun itself.
"You want Anima Ingram released? Well — that can be arranged. But there is a condition."
And as I heard her next words, I began to understand — just a little — why the prediction had come back as it depends on the will of heaven.
"Swen. If you come to me."
"…What?"
"Exactly as I said, Swen."
She smiled faintly at me — the first time her expression, which had never once faltered, shifted.
"I want you."