70. The End of Peace
70. The End of Peace
My mother, a former Tower Master, had fallen into mental corruption after the Dina episode.
The moment I got that message, I took a portal straight home.
"I'm back, Father."
The second I arrived, I headed straight for his office.
When I opened the door, my father greeted me with a face that looked like he hadn't slept in roughly three days.
It was the same face he'd worn after he'd pulled three straight all-nighters to process knight-order applications after I'd filmed John 1.
Seeing those hollow eyes, I felt irrationally guilty, so I led with an excuse.
"...It wasn't me."
"What do you mean, it wasn't you?"
"This time, it wasn't my fault."
Normally I'd have groveled, but in this case I felt genuinely wronged.
If you looked only at the result, sure, it was my responsibility—but what was I supposed to do, apologize for making the production so immersive and well-made?
My father didn't even respond to my excuse-like defense; he just got to the point.
"Your mother is in her room."
"I know that. But why do you look like that, Father? Did you fall into Mental Corruption too?"
"It wasn't me—it was my subordinates who fell to it. I'm in this state because I've been pulling duty shifts in their place."
"Good grief."
So that's why his eyes looked like that.
I gave the exhausted middle-aged man a chipper “Hang in there!” and headed straight for my mother's room.
The moment I reached the second-floor hallway where her room was, I couldn't help muttering to myself instinctively.
"Wow. Even Middle Eastern terrorist tunnels were brighter than this."
As you'd expect from someone ranked among the great archmages, my mother was making her mood very clear with her mana.
I walked down a corridor where merely breathing made you feel equally depressed, then gripped the handle of the room that was the source of all that gloomy mana.
Sure enough, the handle wouldn't budge.
"Hah..."
She wasn't going through some belated adolescence, so why was she acting like this?
With the complicated feelings of a parent dealing with a problem child, I knocked on the door.
"Mother. It's me, Allen."
"..."
"Your second son."
"..."
"...The priest who's producing <Magical Mari>."
The door opened.
And my affectionate mother came bursting out in her stocking feet and greeted me with tremendous enthusiasm.
"How could you do that! How could you do that to her!!"
She was so delighted to see me that she grabbed me by the collar and shook the hell out of me.
My head whipped north, south, east, and west like an inflatable tube dancer outside an event venue.
"For someone who's depressed, I'm glad you've got so much energy, Mother."
"Do you have a human heart at all!?"
"Are you listening to me?"
"How could you do that to Dina! Did you have to strip even that away from her just to feel satisfied?!"
"You're not listening."
"I told you to stop tormenting my girl!"
"Why exactly am I being treated like this when I'm your son?"
After I'd served as Mother's therapeutic punching bag for about ten minutes, getting rattled this way and that, she recovered a sliver of reason.
"How dare you show your face here?"
"Mother. I may not look it, but I'm your son. I came because I was worried about you."
"I have no son like you."
"Oh, for crying out loud."
I took that back.
Her reason had not returned.
At this rate, it did not look like we were going to get anywhere, so I simply made a one-sided declaration.
"I'm going out to hunt for traces of Riv with the Dina Knight Order members."
"...Is it related to Dina?"
"I can't tell you that."
Only then did Mother pull herself together.
She did take the combat staff she had used during active duty out of the vault, but...
Having accomplished my mission of getting Mother back on her feet, I straightened my rumpled clothes and headed back to my father's office.
Clunk.
Despite the door opening with a bang, Father was still nodding off. I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Father. It's me."
"Mmm... yes. Is that you, Evan? Are the children well?"
"...It's Allen."
"Sorry. I haven't slept."
"Right. I can tell. Anyway, Mother's recovered. Probably."
"...That 'probably' sounds ominous."
"I'm uneasy about it too, but I think her running around with a magic staff is better than being holed up in her room in a depression."
"Don't tell me Ella opened the vault?"
"Well... that's what happened."
"Ahh. My head..."
Father pressed his forehead and leaned back in his chair.
He could envision a former Tower Master—a quasi-strategic weapon—rampaging through the Empire, so the thought of cleaning up afterward was already making his head spin.
I offered my disheartened father a perfunctory word of comfort.
"People don't actually die from going a week or so without sleep. Just hold out for four more days."
"You call that something to say?!"
Barely dodging the nameplate Father hurled at me, I fled the house as if making an escape.
*
Rewinding time a little, before preparing the event, Allen and Nikolai had conducted a logical analysis.
After that episode, the Dina Knight Order suffered devastating damage.
The reason was that once the misery inflicted on their favorite crossed a critical threshold, they themselves had broken as well.
This type of phenomenon is often observed in idol franchises or gacha games.
If a fan's favorite character is treated somewhat poorly, they might protest to the production team or developer, but when the treatment crosses the line from poor into outright abuse, the fandom takes so much damage that it can collapse entirely.
Regarding this, gacha game expert Nikolai offered a clear answer.
'We just need to show that we care about Dina, and give them hope that Dina can rise again.'
===================
Five days had passed since the heartbreaking Dina-and-Riv episode aired.
The Dina Knight Order, as if they had become knights of a fallen kingdom, were all floundering in a state of mental corruption.
The studio tried to soothe them, but that only worsened matters by making them feel their own behavior had saddled Dina with a negative image.
Then newspaper companies suddenly began distributing breaking-news extras.
"Extra, extra!"
Most members of the Dina Knight Order didn't even have the strength to pick up a newspaper, but one of them finally opened the extra edition.
The front page featured a restored photograph of Riv's faint afterimage beneath the headline [Riv Is Watching Over Dina.]
"?"
They immediately snatched up the paper and devoured the article.
The gist was this: the John Pursuit Squad, who normally chased John's traces, had this time found traces of Riv.
The process was absurd.
Running out of material for their fan activities, the moment Riv appeared they had started scouring the real-life locations where he might have carried out missions.
Strictly speaking, they'd applied their previous experience from restoring John's Directive and combed every alley, but either way, they found Riv's traces.
After pursuing and pursuing his traces, they discovered that Riv had "recently" been frequently visiting the third floors of specific inns.
They began searching for commonalities among the windows.
Every one of those windows overlooked the academy entrance, and a symbol had been carved into each sill.
And those symbols were the notes John would leave when a target passed through the entrance.
Once you knew that Riv, as played by John, had left these marks, deciphering their meaning wasn't very difficult.
It was Dina.
The report ended there.
Their minds going blank at the thought that their favorite was once again being targeted by Riv, the Dina Knight Order headed for Hetairo Island.
The only thought in their heads was that the same tragedy must not be repeated for those siblings.
Gathered at the inn, the Dina Knight Order, not to be outdone by the John Pursuit Squad, began tracing Riv's trail.
Then, one member of the Dina Knight Order discovered something strange.
- 'Wait, isn't this the mana signature of a ghoul?'
Since the observation came from a former Tower Master, the order trusted her words and followed the ghoul's trail.
And they discovered a startling fact.
Riv was eliminating ghouls.
And in the past afterimages created by restoration magic, Riv made a shocking statement.
- "The ghouls were repelled by magical girls. I will withdraw."
He had been repeating this same report again and again across multiple locations.
Only then did the Dina Knight Order realize the truth about Riv.
Riv had not been targeting Dina.
For some reason, he had been watching over her and protecting her.
Once they realized the truth, they continued the pursuit with renewed hope.
And the trail led to a small building.
As they hesitated to step forward, since it was private property, the door opened and an arrow was drawn in the air.
At the suspicious invitation, the order hesitated—until they remembered that they weren't actually tracking the real Riv but were following an event prepared by the studio. Only then did they feel at ease and enter the building.
Inside the windowless building, they followed the path illuminated by the lights, and at the end of that path, they discovered something placed in the center of a small room.
A prosthetic arm, charred jet-black, and a pendant, smashed and split.
The Dina Knight Order began showing signs of an impending collective seizure.
But when one of them stepped over the threshold of the room and suddenly collapsed to their knees, sobbing, the others, struck by curiosity, also stepped over the threshold.
The moment they crossed the threshold, the illusions of the burned prosthetic arm and shattered pendant fell away, revealing an intact prosthetic arm beneath them, carefully cradling the repaired pendant.
And surrounding both objects were multiflora roses.
- Big Brother! Do you know what wild roses symbolize?
- What is it?
- It means longing for family!
From inside the room came the young voices of a boy and a girl.
At the end of this entire event, the Dina Knight Order was finally saved.
==================
Allen, who had watched it all on a screen, raised a toast and murmured.
"If it fails, it's a spoiler. If it succeeds, it's an Easter egg."