83. Mari Episode
83. Mari Episode
Allen's plan to build an otherworld pyramid was thwarted by a joint operation between the Disciplinary Committee and the Puppet Duchess.
"Gah! You bastards don't understand a man's dream!"
The Mari fans and Allen showed no remorse even while being hauled away. Only after Scapul—that is, Dreul—personally came to lecture them did they even pretend to reflect.
That's right. Pretended.
Once released by the Student Guidance Committee, they immediately crossed over into the Helheim Kingdom, which lay beyond the Committee's reach.
There they secured a suitable stretch of forest where filming had taken place, and began constructing a temple even larger than the one they'd seen in the movie.
Naturally, the locals weren't going to just stand by and watch.
"Eat these while you work."
"Oh, thank you kindly."
They didn't just stand by—they actively helped.
In a country already brimming with Scapul fervor, they had no reason to oppose building a little Scapul theme park on unused forest land—not even city land.
And Allen, never one to stop at half measures, went a step further and visited the War God's Shrine to ask them to station a priest there.
"Our goddess, too, has gladly granted permission."
As if to prove she was family to God Rictus, the War Goddess joined the plan as well.
Fueled by a goddess, a nation, and capital, the Scapul Memorial Association became unstoppable...
And in the end, within a single week, the Warriors' Temple was erected—lacking tradition but overflowing with authenticity.
Dreul, who learned this news belatedly, gazed up at the structure soaring into the sky and lamented.
"How... how did things come to this..."
For now, as the future king, the existence of this temple was not without its merits.
Whether as a tourist attraction or propaganda material, that building would certainly prove useful.
The problem was that as long as that building remained, Dreul would now be remembered forever as Scapul.
Even after he met a lover, had children, grew old, and died.
His name would be remembered across the span of thousands of years.
'If only Scapul had been a sane character, I wouldn't mind so much, but...'
The problem was that while Scapul had been heavily glorified by the end, the Scapul before that had been a complete madman.
The facial gag where he'd smirk sinisterly before a fight was a given; he'd tear open his top out of nowhere, and his usual manner of speaking stretched out slow as a sloth.
When the scenes of him crossing the ocean wearing nothing but underwear, or shoving a sandwich into his adjutant's mouth with his fingers, surfaced in his mind to explain his madness, his face even began to flush hot.
Precisely then, he spotted those very scenes already being displayed in front of the temple out of the corner of his eye, like some sort of memorial hall promotional video, and Dreul staggered dizzily, bracing himself against a wall.
'So this is what Ceres meant...'
Before filming began, Scapul, who'd been rehearsing fight choreography with Celestia, had received a certain warning from her.
It was advice, if it could be called that: to steel his heart no matter what happened after filming ended.
At first he'd thought it was advice to not be nervous about the unfamiliar surge of popularity, but it was nothing of the sort.
She had roughly foreseen this situation.
As Dreul reeled amid the cheers of citizens venerating their national hero Dreul, Allen came up beside him.
He placed a hand on Dreul's shoulder, flashed a thumbs-up with the other, and spoke with a refreshing smile.
"I told you, didn't I? That I'd improve the Demi-Humans' image?"
Dreul, too good-natured to spit curses into Allen's smiling face, instead rubbed his face dry over and over and lamented.
"I picked the wrong man to ask a favor of..."
*
Separate from Dreul's centuries-long public roasting, the image of demi-humans had definitely improved.
It had spread as a somewhat macho image, and since that wasn't entirely wrong, the Helheim Kingdom saw no need to correct it.
They even rode that image.
- "We shall not be slaves! We shall become honorable warriors!!"
- "For Helheim!!"
- "Scapul saw me!!! He's going to take me to the Hall of Warriors!!"
In the middle of it all, a guy who belonged to a completely different worldview had somehow slipped in, but anyway, the image of Demi-Humans had certainly improved.
Originally, the word "barbarian" was so closely tied to macho that people could accept Demi-Human machismo without any sense of reluctance.
The problem arose when ideology became slightly distorted in the process, and Dreul complained that Scapul's bizarre antics were being promoted as traditional culture—but that was a trivial matter.
True, situations in which Demi-Human kids from the Hero Department ripped off their tops were becoming more frequent, but it really was a trivial problem.
Anyway, to draw a comparison to his previous life, the image of Demi-Humans had become something like a slightly unhinged macho American—a familiar, approachable image—and for this, a letter of thanks even arrived from the Helheim Kingdom.
- Thank you. <Sent by the King of Helheim>
Without exaggeration, that was exactly how it was sent.
Probably because it was a country with a manly man as its king, they sent the letter like that too.
Additionally, they sent a golden life-size statue of Scapul, and since we couldn't very well put it in front of the club room, I had it set up over at our partner, Wrestle Kingdom.
- [Hey. Allen. Let's have a little talk, shall we?]
Judging by how Dreul kept seeking me out after that day, he seemed satisfied too.
As I was praising this happy ending in which no one got hurt, Nikolai posed a question.
"Boss. But won't this just lead to another kind of racial prejudice?"
"What do you mean?"
"Not every Demi-Human is going to be tough like Scapul, right? Individual differences exist. But if you create a racial prejudice like that, even if it's better than 'barbarian,' it's still prejudice."
"There are individual differences, as you say, but I can't agree with the word 'prejudice.' We decided that statistical facts are facts, not prejudice."
Nikolai had a point—not all Demi-Humans were macho—but ninety-nine percent of them were.
It wasn't for nothing that they say if your body is strong, you don't need to use your head.
When the bottom one percent of orcs had the physical strength of the top ten percent of humans, there was absolutely no reason their average wouldn't be a manly man.
"The king is chosen from among great warriors, and in a country where loyalty comes before law, that isn't prejudice. It's fact."
Perhaps Nikolai, accustomed to the racial differences of his former life, still wasn't used to differences between species.
Well, that was something time would resolve, so I didn't press the point.
Fortunately, Nikolai seemed to accept that this was the way of this world, nodding and leaning back in his chair.
We savored a rare moment of leisure in the club room.
The Mari Episode had just wrapped up, and since finals were slowly approaching, we were on a break from activities like during the last midterms, so there was nothing special to do.
Even so, the reason the two of us were holding down the office was because, ever since the Scapul episode—no, the Mari Episode—stuff kept arriving at our office, and we needed someone to watch over it.
As I leaned back in my chair, waiting to see which visitor would show up next, a new challenger knocked on our door.
"Come in."
The moment the door opened and a pretty, faintly pink-tinged foot stepped through the gap, I swept everything off the desk.
Soon after, the horns and white ponytail that appeared just when you'd start to forget about them entered the office.
"Is this Bon Voyage Studio?"
"Yes, it is."
With my heart pounding, worried she might have come to see me because her blood was boiling after watching the Scapul episode and sensing the Mark of Vengeance, I waited for her next words—and then from her lips came a statement I could never have imagined.
"Well... thank you."
"Excuse me?"
Scratching her cheek and averting her gaze—the classic embarrassed posture Version 2—she continued.
"Thanks to the drama your studio made, prejudice against us oni has eased considerably. Now even people meeting us for the first time acknowledge the oni's honor and struggles."
"Ah, I see."
"Your reaction is awfully dry."
"I'm not the one directly affected, so it doesn't feel real to me."
"Then will this help you understand?"
She pulled out some sort of poster.
It was a poster for the Great Adventures of the Archer Hero series—not a major franchise, but a moderately well-known series with a steady fanbase.
Still looking embarrassed, Skadi spoke in a voice barely above a mumble.
"I... was cast as the twenty-fifth protagonist here."
"Oh."
Hearing her say that made it hit home instantly.
I was aware of the discrimination against Demi-Humans that was subtly pervasive in this world, so I knew well what her casting as a protagonist meant.
"Congratulations, Skadi."
"Thank you. I'm grateful for the congratulations, and grateful for creating this opportunity for me. It might be nothing compared to the favor I've received from you all, but this is a gift."
She set a visibly expensive bottle of liquor on the desk.
I carefully received the bottle she'd placed down.
After that, she moved to leave, saying she had many places to go to give her thanks.
"I have to go all the way to the Sanctuary of Parma and back by today, so I'm afraid I can't stay long. Sorry."
"Not at all. I'm grateful you even came in person to give me a gift."
Apparently, she was going to see the Big Evil Wolf, known for having cast Dreul in Wrestle Kingdom. The words "You'll have to give me that liquor again anyway" rose right up to the tip of my tongue.
I saw her off and then returned to the office.
Then I checked the object I had swept under the desk right before she entered the office.
"It's not broken, is it?"
"The Necromancy Tower said they'd repair it for free anyway."
"Even so, you have to handle props with care."
It was Riv's prosthetic arm.
Seeing that the arm moved fine, I sighed in relief and packed it back into the box.
'Now that I think about it...'
Then it suddenly struck me—after she'd entered the office, her gaze seemed to keep drifting toward the desk.
'Nah. Must be my imagination.'
She just happened to glance that way because she was embarrassed and looking away.
*
This was how the days passed, with the whole world ablaze over the rivalry between Mari and Scapul.
One day, a letter arrived at our club.
Thinking it was another thank-you note from the Demi-Humans, I opened the envelope and began reading the letter with a light heart.
And the further I read through its contents, the more my mood plummeted straight down.
After reading it, I irritably flung it to the corner of the desk, and a question flew in from Nikolai asking what was wrong.
"You read it."
At my words, Nikolai read the letter too.
Halfway through, his gaze stopped on the letter, and he suddenly hurled the paper onto the floor.
His eyes wild for the first time in a long while, Nikolai erupted with a shout.
"Would you look at these fucking elves?!"
What had made Nikolai that indignant was an official document from a senator, of all things, demanding that Magical Mari's protagonist be changed or a new magical girl be added.
With a rider that, otherwise, Magical Mari might not be able to air in the Hyphen Kingdom.
The basis for this claim was that, under the Hyphen Kingdom's "Elf Quota System," Magical Mari had been receiving promotional benefits, but due to the newly appearing adjutant, the elf ratio had dropped below 0.1, violating the quota system.
Naturally, Nikolai could do nothing but rage at this absurd logic.
Part of it was his work being insulted, but the method was all too familiar to him.
"Isn't this exactly the Chinese way of doing things?"
The Five-Starred Red Flag, popping up just when you'd start to forget about it, was spreading its spirit across worldlines.
Nikolai, as if his PTSD from his past life had flared up, practically recoiled from the letter as if having a seizure.
It seemed he reacted that way because he'd never imagined he'd see that sort of behavior from elves.
But I'd spent the past ten years growing thoroughly sick of the elves' shitty behavior, so a letter like that wasn't enough to make me lose it.
"You don't seem used to elves being assholes. Then again, why would elves ever come all the way to your territory to pull that kind of shit?"
"Boss, you seem used to it."
"Beyond used to it—they're practically sworn enemies. Ever since I first started shooting the John series, they've been insisting that the John-style combat technique is originally elven."
"Wow... fucking..."
Nikolai barely held back the curse about to burst out.
I knew that feeling well.
So well that I'd seriously considered making elves the villains in John 2 and dragging their image through the mud.
But ironically, it was also elves who had calmed me down at the time.
"Back then I seriously considered trashing the Hyphen Kingdom's image, but both the kingdom's council and the royal family sent official apologies. So I held back."
The difference between the Hyphen Kingdom and China, however, was that its leadership had their heads screwed on straight.
The leadership that contacted us was endlessly friendly toward humans, and their response was so swift and clean—they went so far as to expel the lower house councilor who spouted that nonsense—that the image of elves in my mind didn't sink to the absolute rock bottom.
Hearing this, Nikolai raised a new question.
"Then what happened with the senator who sent this letter?"
"Elves just live that long. An elf who's spent ages digging a single well is indistinguishable from a corporation. Their influence is corporate-level, but they're actually an individual. The Hyphen Kingdom leadership can't control every one of those individuals either, so they've got headaches."
In cases like this, the repertoire was always the same.
The leadership would cut off the head of the lunatic who sent that insane official document, and we'd receive a six-line apology.
We are sorry/ This is the leadership/ We have expelled that bastard/ Elves are sorry every time/ Please show leniency/ We will manage these bastards properly.
Of course, since the one trolling this time was a senator, the beheading might take a bit longer, but the leadership could be trusted regardless.
After hearing my explanation, Nikolai finally seemed to calm down and sat back in his seat.
Then he tossed the crumpled letter to me and cracked a joke.
"Do you have any intention of accepting this? If you just turn a blind eye, the good senator would probably line your pockets generously."
I snorted at Nikolai's words and answered.
"Are you crazy? Why would I? Did I look to you like I'd do something like that?"
"Just wondering. I don't know exactly when World War IV broke out for you, Boss. You might not know what happened to those Hollywood movies eaten away by capital over there."
"Hey, I at least lived to see up to that point before the war broke out, man."
Along with a remark that I wouldn't touch stocks, I burned the official document.
Ordinarily, keeping this document intact would have been more advantageous for pressuring the leadership, but this time I burned it as a gesture of trust that they would handle it themselves.
I deliberately held the burning document out the window and waved it to show them.
Around the time I threw the letter, now turning to ash, out the window and closed it, the expected six-line apology arrived.
I waved the apology in front of Nikolai and smiled.
"See?"
"Now that is a point in their favor."
"Likable. I mean, why do you think I accepted Ceres as a protagonist in the first place?"