Knights of the Animal Kingdom
Simon and Lorraine walked side by side down the corridor of the Lecture Hall.
"You want to stick with me?"
When Lorraine asked back, her face carried a knowing, wry sort of feeling.
"Yeah. Just one game—that's all I'm asking. Please."
"It's not like I mind."
Lorraine swept her raven-black hair, dark as the night sky, back from her face with a fingertip.
"But this isn't like you at all. What's the real reason?"
"Mm, no reason."
Simon forced a smile and answered breezily.
"I just wanted to talk with you."
"……"
Lorraine lowered her long lashes. After a moment, she gave no verbal reply—just a small nod—and walked on.
Her acceptance secured, the two began searching the building together.
Searching made it sound grander than it was. They simply wandered the corridors, and whenever a classroom gave off the right *feeling*, they'd step inside, rifle through desks, and pop open drawers.
After all, plenty of students were lying in wait around the Kizen campus, hunting for Student Kills.
"Wahaha! If you want to pass through here—!"
A boy guarding an alleyway bellowed his challenge and was just about to lunge when—
"!"
He spotted Simon and Lorraine, went white, and dropped into a low crouch.
"…You can just walk right through! Please, go ahead!"
As he stepped aside, Lorraine gave a small wave of thanks as she passed. Simon followed behind her without so much as a reaction.
'I-I almost got flattened just now.'
Sweat beaded on the boy's forehead and dripped down.
'Those two, walking together? Are they off to arrest the Student Council President or something?'
This place was dangerous. The boy cleared out of the building at speed.
"Ah, found one here!"
Resuming the search, Simon pointed at a yellow card stuck to the wall. But Lorraine shook her head.
"Pass. I've already got yellow."
Lorraine was clearly hunting for her own set of seven differently-colored cards. Simon pulled his glasses out of his subspace and put them on.
"Leave it to me. Which colors do you have?"
"Navy and yellow."
Simon held navy and orange. If they each picked colors the other didn't need, they'd be set.
With the glasses on, the entire building glowed yellow. Meaning only yellow cards would spawn in here.
Simon promptly led Lorraine out of the building, and this time they entered one that registered as blue through his lenses.
"Lots in here."
The two combed the empty classrooms for cards.
Something he'd only recently discovered: even within the same blue terrain, a closer look revealed lighter patches and darker patches.
And the odds of finding a card shot way up in those darker patches.
'What would I have done without these glasses?'
Simon dug through a desk drawer and immediately turned up two more cards, but this one had an entry condition—they couldn't get in.
[Difficulty : Medium]
[Party Size : 2]
[Entry Condition : One male and one female student must enter together.]
"Not bad."
They'd found a card that admitted two. The difficulty looked reasonable, too.
It was a little odd that the condition specifically required one male and one female student together, but.
"Let's take this one."
"Okay."
Lorraine stepped onto the card first and was sucked in; Simon followed right after.
[Entering a new game.]
A memory stirred—Simon as a child, listening to a fairy tale in Anna's lap.
"All animals that walk on two legs are great," the Pig Princess once declared.
The Pig Princess had been one of Simon's favorite characters as a kid.
Her personality was so bold and satisfying—she trounced villains left and right.
"Mom! Then what about the animals that walk on four legs?"
"Animals that walk on four legs were treated as livestock, dear."
"That's weird. Why would a pig discriminate against pigs? The only difference is walking on two legs versus four."
"I suppose it mattered a great deal to them. So the four-legged pigs worked and worked to learn to walk on two."
Recalling that old memory, Simon opened his eyes.
The reason such a memory surfaced was obvious: the world inside the card he now stood in looked like the fairy tale of his childhood brought to life, scene for scene.
All around him, animals in tailored suits and elegant dresses stood on two legs, sipping wine.
'Hm.'
Simon rolled his eyes diligently, scanning the room. In this lavish banquet hall, dogs, rabbits, goats, sheep, and more held wine glasses and made conversation.
He'd braced for them to talk in animal bleats and barks, but they spoke perfectly proper Continental. Good pronunciation, too.
The two-legged stance looked utterly natural. The way they gripped wine glasses with their forefeet like hands wasn't even awkward—those paws seemed made for the purpose all along.
'A world this well-crafted…'
Simon felt he finally understood why Endolas Vaudeville's ability ranked among the Ten Continental Mysteries alongside Nephthys.
"Simon."
Simon turned his head. The moment he spotted Lorraine in a dress, his face went scarlet.
'Guh.'
Her outfit left her shoulders bare and dipped low at the chest, and the skirt was so short it barely covered her lower half. On top of that, she wore an animal-ear headband.
Far too embarrassing an outfit for a student to wear.
'…Is this Endolas Vaudeville's taste?'
He felt vaguely dirty for glimpsing a middle-aged man's strange preferences. Lorraine seemed bothered by her outfit too, tugging at the short skirt as she complained.
"Black again."
'…That's what bothers you?'
Simon smiled wryly.
Simon himself was in a party tuxedo, though compared to the meticulous detail of Lorraine's design, his own was sorely lacking in effort.
'Still, a black shirt *under* a tuxedo is pushing it.'
And on his head, just like Lorraine, sat an animal-ear headband.
"Pfft."
A horse in a suit passing nearby glanced at the pair's getup and sneered.
"Four ears. What a hideous creature."
"Humans, honestly."
Somehow, Simon got the feeling they weren't exactly welcome guests at this animal gathering.
He tried to pull off the ridiculous animal-ear headband, but it wouldn't budge from his head.
"Simon."
Lorraine approached, ears twitching.
'……'
Simon's face flushed a shade redder. The outfit was one thing, but the contrast between her cool, impassive expression and those absurd animal ears flopping about was almost unbearably unbalanced.
"What are we supposed to do here?"
"No idea."
At that very moment, a new message floated up before them.
[You are 'Knights.']
[Knight Objective : Protect the Pig Princess until time runs out.]
'Knights?'
Their roles and duties had been assigned.
Lorraine glanced around and murmured.
"Then there must be others with different roles, too."
Barely had the words left her mouth when new messages appeared.
[An 'Assassin' hides among the animals.]
[Assassin Objective : Assassinate the Pig Princess before the party ends.]
[There are two assassins.]
[The assassins are animals attending the party. They cannot be identified by appearance.]
'Aha.'
Now he understood everything.
There was no doubt about it—this place was a world Endolas Vaudeville had conjured from the famous fairy tale Anna used to read him: *The Animal Kingdom*.
And two of the animals attending this party were real Kizen students. They were after the Pig Princess's life.
"Our being knights is probably obvious already, huh."
"It is."
Their appearances hadn't changed—they were still fully human. It was safer to assume that whatever they did, the assassins' eyes would be on them.
"So where's the Pig Princess?"
Both pairs of eyes darted about.
Among all the pairs of animals, not a single pig was in sight. No animal dressed in a gown grand enough to be called a princess, either.
"Let's start with gathering information."
"Right."
The two split up to ask the animals various questions.
"Excuse me. Where might we find the Pig Princess?"
At Simon's question, an elderly wolf in a suit waved his arm dismissively, as if the whole thing were a bother.
"Madam, might I have a word?"
A goat in a dress blew a scornful snort and ignored him.
'Ugh, this is going to be rough.'
While gathering intel, he'd planned to probe whether any of them were Kizen students in disguise, but the animals as a whole were avoiding Simon and Lorraine.
"Looking for the Princess?"
Just then, a fox sprawled across a sofa chuckled dryly.
"She hasn't come out yet. The star of the show always appears last, you know."
This fox was unusually articulate. He hopped down from the sofa and padded up to Simon.
"Well, aren't you something."
He studied Simon's face from every angle.
"I thought, no way, it couldn't be—but a real human, here."
"…Are humans not allowed?"
"Humans walk on two legs too, so it's not like you can't come. You're not 'livestock,' after all. Still, to think a bare-skinned, embarrassing creature like you made it all the way here. My, my."
The fox grinned slyly.
"Do try not to trouble the Pig Princess."
With that, he swished his tail and sauntered off.
Simon stared after the fox with a grave expression.
'He's not an assassin, is he?'
His behavior was a bit suspicious, but seeing how freely he rattled off information about this world, Simon didn't think he was a Kizen student.
Simon struck the fox from his mental suspect list and continued observing the other animals, striking up conversations where he could.
'Whoever turned into an animal, they're good actors.'
He'd hoped at least one of them would show a flicker of fluster at the sudden situation, but every animal in the banquet hall was acting perfectly natural.
If one of them had been lurking stiffly in a corner, glancing around nervously, or reacting strangely to the others, Simon would have guessed assassin immediately. But not a single animal fit the bill.
'The Pig Princess hasn't arrived yet, so no need to rush.'
So Simon and Lorraine gathered what information they could and then regrouped. They loaded plates with cake and desserts, sat down at a table, and compared notes. Lorraine, it seemed, had received the same cold shoulder from the animals.
Pulling their findings together:
One. This party was hosted by the Pig Princess, who was scheduled to appear at the very end of the event.
Two. Humans ranked at the very bottom here.
Three. The animals revered the act of walking on two legs as sacred. Even the humans they despised were allowed into the banquet hall on that basis alone.
Four. They loathed four-legged animals and considered them livestock.
Simon spoke up.
"The motif of this game is the fairy tale *The Animal Kingdom*. You getting the picture?"
"Not really. I'm not great with fairy tales and nursery rhymes and that sort of thing."
"Yeah?"
Simon gave Lorraine a rough summary of the story. Honestly, it wasn't a complicated tale.
The farm animals rose up in rebellion, drove out the humans, and founded a kingdom.
In the early days it was a society where all were equal, but one day, out of nowhere, a pig who'd begun walking upright on two legs declared itself "a greater, more evolved, higher-order being than the rest of you" and tried to set itself above every other creature. It then styled itself the 'Pig Princess.'
Many animals, envious of the Pig Princess, strained to stand on two legs as well. The Pig Princess took pity on them—and before long, a 'class system' formed among the farm's animals.
Two-legged animals wore luxurious clothes and ate expensive food.
Then one day, living like a tyrant, the Pig Princess looked into a mirror and realized she had become exactly like the humans she so despised—and hanged herself.
"? What was that, all of a sudden?"
Lorraine, who'd been following the story intently, furrowed her brow.
"What kind of fairy tale is that? Is it a horror story?"
"The children's version ends there, with the Pig Princess realizing her wrongs, going back to walking on four legs, and living happily ever after. Anyway, here's what I'm thinking."
Simon laid out his strategy for the game, and Lorraine nodded in agreement.
And so, a little breathing room opened up before the Pig Princess made her grand entrance.
"By the way, Simon."
Lorraine said.
"You said there was something you wanted to talk to me about."
"Oh."
He'd been so wrapped up in the game, he'd completely forgotten.
After all, that had been one of his reasons for approaching her in the first place.
Simon brought it up as casually as he could manage.
"It's about Professor Silaje."
"?"
"What kind of mission could he possibly have taken, to resign as a Kizen professor out of the blue?"
Lorraine blinked.
"Why do you want to know?"
Simon's mind raced.
"W-well, obviously I want to know! He was one of my favorite professors first semester, and then he just vanished without a word."
"Hm."
Lorraine closed her eyes and thought for a moment before answering.
"It's classified, so don't tell anyone else."
"Yes! Of course."
Her voice shifted, dropping into something quietly conspiratorial.
"Professor Silaje entered a dungeon."