A Method to Become Virtually Invincible
"……You want me to ask you a question?"
"Yes."
That was it.
A request I had never made of anyone until now—yet if it could be made to work, it would become a method that rendered me virtually invincible.
The core of my Intelligence 100 ability was simple: whatever I said was always correct. Whether the path twisted sideways or some natural disaster struck, events would resolve exactly as I had declared. That absolute rule never changed.
On its face, it was an unprecedented cheat ability. But it came with several rather troublesome conditions. The most bothersome of all was that someone else had to pose a question to me before I could make any prediction.
In the game, a player always had to form a plan first and then ask the strategist for confirmation. The accuracy of the strategist's reply depended on their Intelligence stat; at 100, the answer was guaranteed to be correct. The fact that I could only answer when questioned was clearly modeled after that system. This world was, after all, the world inside that game.
I could hardly go around openly asking people to keep questioning me in my place. Explaining the mechanism of the ability itself was already awkward enough. If I suddenly said, "Ask me what would be best," I would be lucky not to be treated as a madman.
Even if I decided to try, finding someone willing was another problem. I would first have to prove that my words always came true, and even then, without a believable foundation, they might dismiss it as coincidence.
But Serpina was, in that regard, the perfect person to ask.
She trusted me deeply. More than that, she had reasoned her way closer to the true nature of my ability than anyone else. And she fulfilled the final condition that would let me wrap this absurd power in a plausible package.
So perhaps she would notice. Perhaps she would realize that I needed "questions"… and cooperate without a word of protest.
After hearing me out, Serpina stared straight into my eyes for a long while, lost in thought. Then, in a thoroughly serious tone, she posed her question.
"……Do you believe that leaving the rebellion at Linenheit Castle unaddressed is the correct course for our army?"
Perfect!
She seemed to have grasped the true intent of my request reasonably well. I quickly fed the question she had given me into the ability.
Is leaving the rebellion at Linenheit Castle unaddressed the correct decision for our army?
The fate of a unified empire approaches.
The answer didn't change.
One more puzzle piece clicked into place. Whether we suppressed the rebellion at Linenheit Castle or not had, as I had suspected, nothing to do with Serpina's death. The conclusion remained the same either way.
In other words, to avoid the fate of a unified empire—that is, Serpina's death—I needed a different approach.
I called the first question I had received back into my mind. If the matter of taking Linenheit Castle was irrelevant… then what remained was the dispatch itself. And if Serpina was going to die, then whatever happened was somehow connected to her.
"My lord."
"……Very well. What question do you need me to ask this time?"
I was grateful that we understood each other so well, but I could not forget to prepare a wrapping that would somehow justify this situation. Setting that aside for the moment, I needed a new question.
"The question I would like you to ask this time is: 'Would it be efficient for our army if Lady Serpina herself took the vanguard and led the dispatch to Linenheit Castle?'"
"You mean to say that it would be the correct decision for me to personally take the vanguard and march on Linenheit Castle?"
The wording was not a perfect match, but as long as the meaning came through, the result would not change. I immediately input the question.
And then—
It is not so.
—at last I obtained the non-answer that was the answer I had been searching for.
……This is it.
The conclusion that Serpina personally leading the dispatch would not be efficient. The answer alone did not explain why, but I already understood.
If Serpina died, the nation called the Serpina Army would seize the destiny of becoming a unified empire. That was what "the fate of a unified empire approaches" meant. But if Lady Serpina survived, that destiny would remain with Lady Luna.
Every prediction was made with the nation I belonged to at its center, and right now I was a general of the Serpina Army. Naturally, from this country's perspective, letting a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity slip away would be an inefficient choice.
Therefore—
"My lord."
From this moment on, once again for the sake of saving her life—
"This time, I believe it would be the correct decision for you to personally lead the army and dispatch yourself to where General Irene is stationed."
—I had to persuade her somehow.
"……Your grounds?"
"There is something I very much wish to tell you. I mean no disrespect to my lord, so please remain calm and hear me out."
I slowly bowed my head once, then looked straight into her eyes as I spoke.
"Do you remember the conversation we had last time? In truth, my lord's words were correct."
"……What do you mean by that?"
"I am able to… discern the most rational outcome that can currently be reached."
"!!!!!!"
Her pupils contracted sharply.
A means of explaining this absurd ability. Under ordinary circumstances no such thing would exist… but if fortune was with me, it was precisely because she was a woman of the Aingart royal house.
"I possess something called the Mind's Eye."
"What…… did you say?"
"By closing my eyes and contemplating a problem that has been posed to me as a question… I can derive the most efficient answer. That is the Mind's Eye—the ability I have kept hidden until now."
The final condition that would let me package this impossible power in a plausible way. That condition was the keyword Mind's Eye.
Of course, I could not forget to lay down some precautions.
"Naturally, it cannot be applied to every question, and there are any number of cases where prediction is impossible depending on the situation, my physical condition, the movement of the stars, or the weather… but in any event, I can produce results that approach nearly one hundred percent accuracy."
I strung together a series of plausible-sounding words to leave myself escape routes for the ability.
The reason both Zinor and Serpina had been able to guess at my power, even roughly, was that the two of them knew the legendary tales of a strategist who possessed the Mind's Eye. Even so, it remained nothing more than a legend from ancient stories, so under normal circumstances anyone would have thought I was spouting nonsense.
But from the moment people began to mistake me for having summoned a meteor—as if the legendary existence known as a "mage" were real—that legend had started to spread. That was not all. Quite a few people had witnessed the time I went with Reika and shattered a castle wall. Yes. Mages existed. Reika, who always greeted me with a smiling face whenever I returned home, was living proof walking around, and a tiny handful of people including myself and Zinor knew that fact. I had also used magic when suppressing the rebels to rescue Jennis.
If one assumed that a secret had to remain completely unshared with even a single person in order to stay secret, then the continent had already begun, little by little, to accept the existence of mages. In a situation where the legendary existence of mages was gradually being proven real, another legendary keyword—the Mind's Eye—had become something people were ready to accept.
It was truly ironic. In the end, I was the one who had created this entire situation. More precisely, it was the result of continuously acting according to my "one-hundred-percent-correct advice." Whether I had predicted everything this far in advance, or whether each successive guess had simply piled up until I somehow arrived at this outcome, I could not say…
"So please, listen to me here. That is the best possible method our army can choose, my lord."
At the very least, I was confident I could persuade the woman before me, who already held a certain degree of conviction.
Serpina listened to my words and, for a time, said nothing at all, staring at me as still as ice. Then she carefully parted her pink lips.
"……Do you know?"
"Pardon?"
"Does General Irene also know of this ability of yours……?"
It felt like a somewhat abrupt question given the situation, but it was not one I could not answer.
"Lady Irene does not know. You, my lord, are the first person I have ever spoken to about this ability."
"Is that so……?"
She remained silent for a moment, then spoke in a trembling voice.
"Why……?"
"……Yes?"
"Why did you keep something you had locked away so tightly—even from General Irene, who is precious to you—and tell it only to me?"
The trembling voice was one thing, but her manner of speaking felt strangely unfamiliar. The woman who always elevated herself and used the language of a sovereign now seemed to be asking me simply as one human being to another.
Come to think of it… what had I been relying on when I confessed this ability to her?
Even with the precautions I had put in place, revealing a power this absurd carried more than enough risk of becoming dangerous to me. In the worst case, locking me away and continuously extracting answers to questions was a somewhat extreme but perfectly possible method. My martial strength was pathetic; subduing me would not be difficult at all.
Even so, I wanted to persuade Serpina.
Was the reason so that I could protect the destiny of continental unification that belonged to my true lord, Lady Luna……?
……No.
Let me be honest. That was not the only reason. If it had been, there would have been no need to take the risk of revealing my ability.
I simply wanted to save her.
I wanted her not to die.
Leaving every calculation of interest behind, that alone was the single, shining truth.
"I wanted to save my lord—no, Lady Serpina."
"!!!"
"That is all."
As I spoke those words, I felt something grow hot inside my chest. It was an emotion I was feeling for the first time in my life. What on earth was this feeling?
I watched her face flush red as she trembled and stared at me in shock, and I found myself swept up in an emotion I could not name.
"……."
Serpina gazed at me for a long while in silence, lost in thought—then slowly turned her body and spoke.
"……You are telling me to take the field myself?"
"Yes. That is correct."
"Very well. ……Swen, I shall follow your will. However—"
Serpina turned her head and looked at my face. The scent of citron that clung to her gently soothed the heat that had been kindled in my chest, as if stroking it with a pleasant touch.
"You will have to tell me more later. In greater detail."
"What…… do you mean?"
"……Everything."
Having said that, she flushed slightly and lifted the corners of her mouth into a crescent-moon smile.
"You will have to tell me everything, Swen."
Ah.
That smile.
For an instant, the image of her smiling so lovably in my dream flashed before my eyes. Yes. The soft, beautiful smile I had seen in the dream was exactly that smile. Not the dignified laughter of an absolute ruler seated upon a throne, but the smile an ordinary young woman might wear when she was thoroughly delighted in a flower field.
——Because her smiling face is so beautiful, it would be wonderful if she could always smile like that.
It was an absurdly sentimental thought for someone who had just revealed part of an ability he had never told another living soul.