Superimposed Karma (3)
"……!"
The question came so unexpectedly that I failed to respond properly and handed her a free strike.
"How interesting, Swen."
"Pardon……?"
"I did not think the question I just asked was so troubling as to put such a look upon your face."
"……."
Serpina regarded me with clear, unwavering eyes as she spoke, and for a moment my words failed me again.
She was right. Of all the questions a sovereign might most desperately want answered, that one would surely top the list.
Anyone who had so much as glimpsed the nature of my ability — if they were a ruler — would ask that first.
I had already received that same question from Jennis, so as long as I remained on the rolls of Serpina's army, there was no real need to take it again. Still — this was the first time my own lord was testing my power. I could not refuse to enter it.
Can Serpina von Aingart become the unifier of the continent?
The answer rolled out exactly as I had expected.
[That is not so.]
The problem isn't the answer.
The problem was how to say it.
In a way, the solution was simple. I could just lie.
Something like, I cannot determine who will become the unifier of the continent — given Serpina's temperament, she was unlikely to press me further. And since there truly were questions the Mind's Eye could not answer, such a reply would carry a measure of credibility.
I would not even need to explain the mechanism that only I understood. A vague excuse — that I was not in good condition today, or that the movement of the stars made the reading difficult — would be enough for her to accept. The entire premise rested on her firm belief that I possessed an absurd ability to know the correct outcome without fail, after all.
So would that be fine?
This question was not about Serpina.
It was about the person answering it — about me.
Am I all right with lying?
If the one asking had been Yuuri or Lin, I would have lied without a second thought — No result comes of that question. I bore them no ill will, but neither were they people who held any real meaning for me. They had been my lords, yes, but there was no need to invest affection in a nest I would someday leave. I had felt little attachment to the way their nations were run, and they, for their part, had never particularly wanted me with any intensity.
But Serpina was different.
She had kept saying she wanted to have me. Not by threats or coercion — she had approached me with a purity almost unheard of in an absolute monarch, listening to my words, careful not to earn my hatred.
She treated Irene, someone precious to me, with genuine kindness. And the way she conducted herself toward her nation and her generals told me a great deal as well.
If there was one thing she shared with the others, it was that Serpina's army, too, was a nest I would eventually leave……
And yet — why could I not make so simple a decision?
Why was my chest burning like this?
There are moments in life that arrive like this.
Moments at a crossroads, when a fierce intuition shakes you to your core.
And when enough time has passed and you look back on that moment, the surest way to have no regrets is this —
To answer as your heart leads you.
"My lord……."
I looked into Serpina's glittering golden eyes and spoke slowly, carefully.
"You cannot become a sovereign capable of unifying the continent."
I delivered the truth that held her fate.
"……."
My choice was to speak honestly.
I knew full well that telling her this straight would do me no favors. But I did not want to deceive Serpina with a lie. Perhaps some part of me also hoped she would accept her fate.
Because I believed that was the way to keep her alive.
The more she reached for an impossible destiny…… the more the faith people held in her had twisted into murderous intent.
"Is that so?"
"Yes. You cannot become the unifier. That is the result."
As for Serpina's expression — it was calm.
Not that any peace could be read in that face. How could I even describe the feeling?
After several minutes of silence, the answer that finally came from her was rather anticlimactic.
"I see."
"……Does it not trouble you?"
I was surprised by how matter-of-fact she was, but thinking about it, such a reaction was not strange at all.
I could be certain of the proposition that my words are always correct through inductive reasoning drawn from everything I had experienced and everything I knew about this world. From Serpina's perspective, however, there was no evidence beyond my own claim.
Of course she was treating me with the utmost seriousness, and she was familiar with the keyword Mind's Eye, which seemed nearly identical to my ability. Still, for someone as consistently logical as she was, crumpling at the bald declaration that she could not be the unifier would have been out of character.
Knowing the Serpina I knew — yes. At this point she would probably say something like, If that is Our fate, then We need only twist that fate from this moment on, and laugh softly afterward.
But the answer that came back to my question was of a kind I had not anticipated.
"No. We merely felt a quiet relief that the answer was as We expected."
"……Pardon?"
"We thought as much. That such an opportunity would never come into Our hands — We had already anticipated that much."
Serpina's shocking admission. This time, it was I whose surprise showed plainly on my face.
"You thought that?"
Serpina smiled bitterly.
"Did We not tell you? When We walk the streets, when We sit upon the throne, and even…… in this very moment. Merely by breathing, We can feel the malice directed at Us. Opportunities would wither the moment they arrived, as if they had never been. Nearly everything We attempted at what We believed to be the right timing ended in failure."
"The nation did not collapse. Having inherited the foundation of the Empire intact, it would have been stranger for it to fall overnight so long as there was no pointless struggle over the throne. But those moments — each and every one of them. Looking back on the times when it felt as though everything in this world hated Us…… We could not help but think it."
"That perhaps We were never destined to become the sovereign of a unified empire."
"My lord……."
"Swen. Have you never found it strange? Why a nation that has pacified the entire northern continent and possesses the greatest national power has, for so long, been unable to rebuild the glory of the old unified Empire. Why so many rebellions keep arising. And why…… as with the chance to march south that We missed this time, something always seizes Our ankle whenever the moment arrives."
At her words, I could only bow my head in silence.
Even if I fed why is that so into my mind, of course nothing came out but [Unknown.]
"But illuminated by your Mind's Eye, everything becomes perfectly clear. We…… were simply never born with the destiny of one who can achieve it. What flows through Us is not the fate of building a unified empire — only the last blood of the Aingart Empire. If the karma of the Aingart family, which has endured this far by devouring so much blood, is what holds Us back, then perhaps——"
She looked at me and smiled that bitter smile again.
That smile. The one that looked as though it might shatter at any moment — fragile beyond measure.
"——the final obstacle standing in this nation's way may be Ourselves."
What I had just heard only confirmed it further.
Serpina truly was a person of insight.
From the single premise that she herself could not become the unifier, she had inferred that if she died, the destiny of unification would pass to this nation.
Of course she knew far more about this country than I did — but even accounting for that, few people could look at themselves with such ruthless objectivity.
Yes.
She was not incompetent.
It was simply that…… so long as she lived, the goddess of fate was taking Luna's side rather than hers.
That was all it was……
And yet — why?
Once again, a whim that was not quite a whim began to seize control of me.
"However — this is only the result as of now."
"……What?"
"At this exact moment, the answer to the question of whether you can unify the continent is that you cannot. That much is correct. But the predictions of the Mind's Eye are valid only for that specific point in time. When circumstances shift even slightly, it is not uncommon for an entirely different answer to emerge."
What I said was not a lie.
It produced a result for this moment alone. There was no absolute force that could never be changed, no matter what happened.
She had already escaped a fate that should have killed her — twice. The fact that she still stood alive before my eyes was proof of that.
"So I feel it is a little premature to think that way. For now, why not focus on governing the nation, and strive so that the best possible outcome may yet come to pass?"
Having said that, I found myself startled by my own words.
If I were purely Luna's strategist, there would have been no need to say any of this.
I would not have felt that I would regret failing to tell her the truth. The best course would have been to string her along with some ambiguous non-answer like I cannot tell.
Shaking her unnecessarily risked disrupting the destiny that would make Luna the sovereign of a unified empire.
In the first place, had I not been fighting tooth and nail to keep Serpina alive precisely in order to keep my promise to Luna?
And yet here I was — speaking not out of any concern for who would become emperor of a unified empire…… but solely from the wish that Serpina not fall apart.
I did not want her to be sad. I did not want her to be cowed by superstitions about karma and dark deeds.
It was an utterly emotional judgment. Why? What was she to me?
"Swen……."
Serpina heard my words and could not continue for a moment — then,
"……Ahaha."
She broke into a bright, open smile.
It was the first time.
The first time she had ever laughed with such pure delight.
In that instant, the sunlight pouring fiercely through the window struck her gleaming golden hair and the pale white of her cheek with brilliant force.
"Thank you, Swen."
"……!!"
"If We are to seize our chance, We will surely need the help of your Mind's Eye."
Having said so, Serpina stretched her hand out toward me.
An absolute ruler.
To reign above her subordinates and extend that pure white hand forward in command was, in itself, enough to convey an extraordinary elegance.
As one of her generals, I had looked up at that hand and felt the full weight of the charisma of the absolute sovereign known as the Tyrant of the North.
But in this moment —
the Serpina reaching her hand toward me was not an absolute ruler looking down from above.
She was a companion, matching her stride to mine.
"I look forward to working with you, Swen."
Thump.
Thump.
Against the pounding of my heart — so fierce I could feel it with perfect clarity — there was nothing at all I could do.