If There's No Demon, Make One
To X, a plot was a kind of physics.
If A exists, B follows. If B exists, C follows. Every novel in the world unfolds inside that chain of cause and effect.
So what happens when A itself disappears?
Obviously B never happens — let alone C.
Fallon. The character built to trigger Leon's awakening.
That character was gone. Not dead. Not missing. Erased, as if he had never existed at all.
This was not a problem on the scale of Leon's awakening event has vanished.
Andras — the demon possessing the imperial princess — had meant to use that incident as a diversion. A smokescreen, something to pull every eye in the wrong direction while he prepared the Hellgate ritual.
What he had been preparing for that operation was Fallon's Demonification.
A delinquent noble, rotten from birth and beyond any hope of reform — the easiest character in the world to turn into a demon.
But Fallon was gone, and there was no way of knowing what had become of that plot. Right now, X knew only one thing for certain.
Andras is cautious. Thorough to the bone. The original novel even mentioned he had another operation in reserve.
The problem was that X had no idea what that other operation was.
And more important than any of that was this alert.
The scenario will undergo a major revision.
That was the alert. The scenario had been rewritten on a massive scale.
So this is what you can do if you have enough points?
Fallon had been a character with a critical role. X had never imagined the system would simply unmake him — render him as something that had never been. If he had died, or gone missing, there would have been consequences X could at least try to predict. He had been stripped of even that.
Trapped inside a disaster with no clean edges, X had no choice but to think until his skull ached.
What if I use Editing Points to put Fallon back?
He tried it at once. The result was not encouraging.
Required Points: IMPOSSIBLE
It was not that the cost was high. It was Impossible.
He had not expected much. Even so, the knowledge that the option was closed at the root left him hollow.
I'm finished. There's no fixing this.
"What are you agonizing over? You look like the world's already ended."
X had been drowning in it for some time when a sullen voice cut in from beside him. Lola.
"Commoner, your face is way too loud. Everyone's staring."
She was not wrong. It was evening, the sun long gone, and the students studying in the library had begun to edge away from the wreckage of X's expression.
"It's nothing. Just something on my mind."
"What, studying not going well? Hmm. Want me to teach you? I happen to be an elite of a count's house—"
"Miss, your grades are lower than mine. The whole reason I'm here is to tutor you…"
"Nngh!"
Lola immediately threw a tantrum and stamped on his foot, but the attack of a girl with so little strength in her did not even tickle. She kept at it for a while, huffing and grinding her heel into him, then cleared her throat and tried again.
"So. What's the problem."
He obviously could not tell her. It was not the kind of problem that talking would solve. But keeping it bottled up was starting to choke him, and the frustration won out. X approached it sideways.
"I need to catch a demon, and there isn't one."
"Suddenly? Why a demon?"
"Because if there isn't a demon, the world ends."
"I have no idea what you're talking about…"
He had not said it so that she would understand, so that was fine. Of course, saying it out loud did not solve anything either.
Not until Lola spoke again.
"I don't know what kind of demon you mean, but… if there isn't one, can't you just make one? Or find something else."
"Demons aren't cakes or bread, Miss… Wait. Something else?"
Something snagged in the back of his mind.
Leon's awakening didn't happen because he fought Fallon. Not exactly. It happened because he fought a demon.
There were demons hiding in this academy. The prime example was Andras, possessing Princess Beatrice — one of the spy-demons that had slipped inside the school.
If he could use Andras…
It's an insane idea, but…
X let the thought unfold, slowly. He mapped Andras's current situation and projected the demon's next moves. He knew the original novel. He knew the setting. That was more than enough to work with.
A rough draft of the plan came together fast.
First, he needed the right tools.
"Miss, could you help me with something?"
"Uh. Huh?"
"I need you to spread a rumor. Just one."
Three days later, on Thursday, X sat in the Magical Truths classroom and listened to the room around him.
The conversations of students, overlapping, unguarded, drifted naturally to his ears.
"Is it true? There's a dragon at the academy?"
"Someone said they saw a dragon flying across the night sky. It's a dragon, right? So it's doing the Play, isn't it?"
"Then who is it? I bet it's one of the professors."
A rumor that a dragon was on campus had spread through the student body out of nowhere. It was not only the students. Among the faculty, too, the question of whether a dragon was or was not among them had grown thick and noisy.
That should be enough.
X was gauging how far the rumor had traveled when Lola, sitting beside him, asked in a sullen voice,
"Why did you suddenly spread a rumor that random? Not that it was hard for me, but…"
"Miss, if you throw out ground bait before you fish, the catch comes easier."
"I have no idea what you're talking about…"
Of course she didn't. X had started the rumor himself. Lola's influence as a count's daughter had been enormously useful for exactly this kind of work.
"Why a dragon in the first place? I mean, the stories about dragons living as humans for the Play are famous, but…"
"There's also a story that if you uncover a dragon's Play, they buy your silence with a fortune."
That was the truth of it.
In this world, dragons were the most powerful magical beings on the mortal plane — and they were bound by a rule that they must not interfere with the world at will. But a dragon lived across an ocean of years. So there was an exception, carved out so they would not wither to death from sheer boredom: the Dragon's Play.
To transform, and to live as that creature — that Play was the only entertainment a dragon was permitted. There was just one condition.
Do not let anyone discover that you are a dragon.
If the truth came out, the Play ended on the spot, and the dragon spent a long stretch of time under the Dragon Lord's surveillance. The setting was quite clear on the subject: living like that was so crushingly dull that death would be preferable.
Which was why the stories existed — that if you found out a dragon was at play, you were paid a staggering sum to keep your mouth shut. And which was why people reacted so sharply to a rumor that a dragon was hiding among them.
Assuming, of course, that you could actually prove it.
Lola was still looking sour when the fish X had come to catch walked into the classroom.
"Shall we begin today's Magical Truths class, everyone?"
Maria opened the lesson with her usual gentle, benevolent smile. X caught the faint tremor in her eyes all the same.
She's worrying about the rumor. Of course she is.
Maria's condition, in small ways she probably thought she was hiding, looked poor. She would trail off in the middle of a sentence. She would veer, without warning, into an entirely different topic.
I might have overdone it a little…
His conscience twinged. He talked himself down. Considering how she had been hounding him all this time, this much was letting her off easy.
X spent the rest of the period waking Lola, who had dozed off against his shoulder, and waiting for the lecture to end.
When it did, he called after Maria.
"Professor Maria. I'd like a word with you, if you have a moment. A consultation."
"X? A consultation?"
Color bloomed in Maria's face as she turned to him.
"You've finally decided to become my teaching assistant, haven't you?"
"No. That's not it."
X drew out two white masks, the kind with nothing but eyeholes punched through them, and held them up.
"Professor, are you able to perform enchantments as well? Something's come up that I need to find, and I require a magic tool."
"An enchantment? I can, but what sort of magic are you looking to inscribe?"
"Perception-blocking magic, and disguise magic."
"Mm. Third-Circle and fifth-Circle illusion magic. And a dual inscription, at that… I couldn't do that for you cheaply."
In this world, enchantment genuinely did devour money. It consumed a considerable quantity of mana stones and gemstones. But Maria's true nature was that of a dragon. Enchantments of this level were, for her, barely work at all. She had only given the answer a reasonable person would give.
X, of course, had not the slightest intention of paying — and did not have that kind of money in the first place. That was why he had come to her.
"Professor. Are you aware of the rumor going around the academy lately?"
Maria flinched, inwardly. If X was talking about a rumor, there was only one it could be.
"Well… yes, I am. A dragon in the middle of its Play, here at the academy? It's absurd."
"And if it were true… what would you think?"
"If it were true?"
"I know a way to find out who the dragon is."
Maria laughed at him, silently, behind her smile.
What nonsense. If it were that easy, would a dragon even bother with the Play?
A dragon's Play was not something you uncovered lightly. It took a mage of comparable class, or another dragon. X, however, had come prepared.
This is the part that matters. This is how you cook a lizard and eat her alive.
He laid the design out with care. Information only a dragon would know, set against information a human would not. A little theater mixed in. The key was the ratio of truth to lies. A story fitted together with exquisite precision chambered itself in X's mind.
"The truth is…"
And the words that followed made Maria go still with shock.
"I met a dragon, a long time ago. She was in the middle of her Play as well."
Start with a large lie. Make it so wildly implausible that verifying it becomes impossible. That is how stories always begin.
"…Is that true?"
"You're wondering where my knowledge comes from, aren't you, Professor? The truth is, I learned it from her. From a dragon."
Understanding arrived in Maria all at once. If a dragon had personally passed knowledge on to him, then X's way of thinking was, in fact, possible. It was still an absurd claim. That much had not changed.
"A dragon wouldn't hand over knowledge that easily. And besides, for a student who supposedly learned from a dragon, you…"
"My magic is terrible. There's a reason for all of it."
X arranged his face into something as mournful and aching as he could manage, like a man who had never stopped carrying a precious bond.
"Letia was my friend, and my teacher. Thanks to her, I grasped magic faster than I had any right to."
Letia was a name he had invented on the spot. Dragons at Play all used aliases anyway.
"But the year I turned ten, I found out she was a dragon. I saw her coming back from her homeland."
When the other person begins to doubt, you mix in a little truth. Dragons did, in fact, return periodically to report that they were still alive to the Dragon Lord. That single detail turned Maria's surely not into wait — really?
"Letia said that since I knew she was a dragon, she would take back everything she had taught me as one. So most of my magical knowledge, and my mana, were stripped away."
"She didn't take your memories? I thought they usually bought silence with treasure, or simply erased what you knew…"
"She made me one offer. Since she had raised me as her disciple all that time, she told me to try and find her. Using this."
Sometimes a story is not enough. Sometimes you have to show proof. X drew out the evidence he had prepared in advance.
"…A needle?"
It was a needle made of iron. To Maria's senses, it held not a scrap of mana — an ordinary needle. And in truth, that is exactly what it was.
But once the story X had told was laid over it, it was no longer ordinary at all.
"Letia told me that if you pierce a target with this, it forcibly dispels a dragon's polymorph magic. An artifact, she called it."
"…!!"
Maria recoiled before she could stop herself — a full-body flinch, the motion of someone trying to get away from the needle because she was afraid of it. Watching her, X was certain.
Got you.
He kept his face politely puzzled.
"Oh? Professor Maria. Why are you pulling away?"
He turned the point of the needle toward her and extended it, slowly.
"If a person gets pricked by this artifact, it just stings a little. There's no need to be afraid. It only works on a dragon's polymorph magic."
The needle crept, bit by bit, toward Maria's fingertip. She was caught against the chair. There was nowhere left to go.
What? Is this real? An artifact like that exists? That's impossible. But if it is real — why would that dragon give something this dangerous to a human?!
Maria's mind filled with panic and confusion. And as if that were not enough, X's words began, little by little, to close around her heart.
"Professor. You've always been so curious about unusual things."
Then the tip of the needle touched her fingertip.
The dragon's thoughts stopped.