Anomalies Are Also Humanity
The Human Dignity Committee
'...Good grief.'
The 100 Million Ghost Parade, and the Rules
The sublimity of vowing to become the world's rule for the sake of the persecuted — and the two women who stood before it and voiced their convictions without flinching — both of them drew a gasp of awe out of me. Every party had a reason anyone could accept, and so they stood opposed. Life and death. Something beyond even that: precious threads of a life that must never be lost, all of it staked on the table. And yet, in the end, they honored one another, yielded a single step, and settled it through words. If even one piece of that had been missing...
Their own lives hung in the balance, yet the anomalies and humans watching that bold exchange never once interrupted. The shaman, who staked everything on persuasion. The Ghost Parade, which held the collective will of a hundred million souls but refused to simply crush its way through — leaving room, looking back, and choosing. If a single element had been lacking, if anything had gone even slightly astray, the conclusion they reached could never have existed. That is how sublime, how majestic it was.
The Great Shaman said so herself! The Ghost Parade told her not to throw her life away — and so, in her place, it carried out her will for her.
After all, the Rule of never tolerating the persecuted also covered something else: it forbade beings standing above a shaman's sorcery from tormenting those below them with their own power.
And so the shaman rewrote her sorcery: "Those whose lives are spared by me must fight the external entities."
Such an obvious phrase — and yet it was the one that persuaded factions who could never unite for their own advantage. Thanks to it, the external entities were annihilated by anomalies and humans alike, sharpening the blade called the Rules.
"And the shaman...? Did the shaman die?"
Yes. Regrettably... the sorcery was premised on her death from the moment it activated, so there was nothing to be done.
"A shame, honestly."
Then shall I tell you what came after?
"Yes."
Shuten-doji repented of his past and starved to death rather than feed on emotion, and the Kraken appointed an innocent mermaid as his successor, later pouring all of his power into her and raising her into a Great Anomaly. The Great Anomaly Mermaid you know today is that very figure.
"And the Crusaders?"
They lived ordinary lives, and then died ordinary deaths — declaring they had no right to extend their span, refusing immortality to the very end.
"...Impressive, all of them."
From that point on, both humans and anomalies changed — so that they would never shame themselves before the Rules, which watch over us still.
How did they change? Anomalies began leaving the traces of their lives in their names. Much like a human becoming a judge or a lawyer, they started weaving professions into their names and titles.
'Then what does that make Stalker...?'
The idea itself looked perfectly noble. It was just that the only anomaly anyone could name as an example was Stalker, so... yeah.
Unique proper names like Shuten-doji or Kraken grew scarce, and once species and professions entered the naming, the Rules honored the change too — optimizing each anomaly's abilities toward whatever their name implied. A lawyer's power to defend someone, for instance, would grow stronger still.
"But doesn't that only work out well for the anomalies?"
Humans found them easier to deal with as well. These days anomalies guard their dignity so as not to shame the legacy of their names, you see. Unless an anomaly is of particularly low intellect, you can safely assume it will almost never act outside the bounds of its own name.
'That's... actually true.'
Stalker had lived up to the name "Stalker" and fixated on me relentlessly — yet the moment I won, it had let go with something like relief, acknowledged my victory, and handed over an invitation. Come again next time, it said. It valued promises, too. Dignity, it seemed, mattered enormously to an anomaly.
Which is why the Three Laws proposed by the Human Dignity Committee are, in practice, simply written down versions of laws everyone already followed anyway.
"The Three Laws? What are those?"
The three are: Do not speak falsehood. Do not begin before reading the rulebook. Do not exercise violence not specified in the rulebook.
"Ah. That."
Clause 7 of Stalker's rulebook. It had seemed so utterly out of nowhere that I'd wondered what on earth it was doing there — but apparently it was a law that the collective entity known as the Human Dignity Committee had imposed on all anomalies.
In essence it is a law demanding that even low-intelligence anomalies — or anomalies driven to the very brink — hold on to their dignity to the last. That's why no one really pushes back against it.
"But then what is the Committee, that everyone just obeys them like that?"
A collective entity, a Great Anomaly, and successor of the 100 Million Ghost Parade — someone who holds all three titles at once... I think it would be faster for you to simply watch the footage. This is also one of those videos priced by the second. Recorded by the Broadcasting Station — the third great change of the era.
"The first would be the Rules, so what's the second?"
The moment the collective entity now known as Hell truly became Hell.
Long ago, when anomalies imprisoned human souls in Hell on absurd, fabricated charges and tortured them there, this collective entity was born.
But that particular video includes battle footage of the Great Anomaly Judge, so it's expensive... ten days' worth. Please purchase it separately some other time... for me it's far too steep to even consider.
The outcome and other details can be found plenty of other ways, so I recommend gathering those separately later.
It's not exactly basic information, but it falls under the category of common knowledge — the level where you'd get laughed at for not knowing it.
'A thirteen-million-won video. Yeah, that's not happening.'
What exactly is Hell? I was willing to buy it for myself someday — but not now. Given how strongly Kkamangi had advised against it, the footage was clearly mostly the Judge fighting Hell itself, not the aftermath.
Then let's begin!
Right in the middle of those thoughts about Hell, Kkamangi finished the payment and started the playback on the round terminal — and up came not the video from before, but an entirely new one.
From the very opening, five of them are present: Mermaid, the Chairman, the Chef, Stalker, and the Station Director.
A colossal press conference hall. Mermaid, swimming within a gigantic sphere of water. The Chairman, seated upon an enormous cushion. The Chef, slouched in a chair mid-yawn. The Station Director, wearing a meaningful smile. And Stalker, legs elegantly crossed — five Great Anomalies sat in a row, and behind them, countless anomalies filled the seats.
Thud. Thud.
Before the empty microphone, something entirely black came walking — at a pace that was slow, and yet never once sluggish.
The hall was utterly silent. It was an enormous space, yet the Great Anomalies in front and the anomalies behind them alike stared at the collective entity called the Management Bureau without uttering a single word. Still, anyone watching the video could see the truth of it. The Great Anomalies at the front — the ever-smiling Station Director excepted — wore expressions that were blank or openly sour, while the anomalies in the back, unable to speak because of those seated before them, all wore the faces of beings seething with rage or biting down on their indignation.
A single, hair-thin fuse. Anyone could see that the situation needed only the smallest spark to detonate. But because the Great Anomalies at the front were listening in silence, no disturbance broke out, and the thing poised on the verge of exploding remained utterly motionless.
The hall was boiling over. And yet I felt as though a single, tiny fuse had been attached to all of it — a fuse spun from someone's blood and flesh. The fuse, however, had not yet moved.
And on the back of that stumble, the fuse began crawling toward the flame of its own accord.
"So... so you're saying everything you've done until now was meaningless...?"
Someone asked. The voice came from too far away to tell whether it belonged to the front rows or the back —
And with that faintest tremor, the flame caught the fuse.
"You son of a bitch! Then why did my sibling have to die!!!!"
"If you chose your own path, you should have seen it through to the end! God damn it! Then why is my friend dead! Why did you kill them?!!!!"
"You acted like dogs, so why do you think we held back?! Because you were walking! Your own path! That's why we held back, you bastards!!!!!"
Rage, resentment, resignation, hollow emptiness — everything began to pour out at once. The Great Anomalies yawned as if bored, or kept smiling, or nodded along while facing forward — but never once did their gazes stray from the being before them. And though every anomaly in the hall roared its fury as one, the reason was not the same as the humans'.
'We endured all this time because we respected your will — but if you deny the deeds themselves, then everything becomes meaningless.'
The dignity anomalies were bound to keep. The path each of them had chosen to walk. They had swallowed their resentment and rage out of respect for the road the collective entity had traveled under the name of the Management Bureau — but no longer. The collective entity, the Management Bureau, had abandoned the path called the Management Bureau.
The moment the Management Bureau continued, silence returned. They had flared up in an instant, but a majority of the Great Anomalies had not yet joined the outrage — and so the hall held itself back.
"If you know that, you shouldn't have abandoned it, damn you!"
At those words, some massive something bellowed. A cry long bottled up inside — but when the Great Anomalies all turned their heads, it lowered its head, retreated backward like an apology, and silence descended once more. We respect you, so we will hear you out. But whatever rage comes after — you will bear it yourself. No one spoke those words aloud, yet the collective will of the anomalies saying exactly that hung palpably in the air.
The mood softened, just slightly. An atmosphere that had said we hate and resent you, so we will hear nothing you say shifted, visibly, into one that said we despise you still — but we will listen, for now.
Silence. The raging, resentful atmosphere settled. But what filled that space was resignation, and a hollow ache. Not a single word was spoken, and yet it was heard all the same — what are we supposed to do? A wordless echo, asking how anomalies and humans could ever advance together toward a world where all are happy, filled the hall from wall to wall.
The Station Director, who had been smiling without pause, spoke on everyone's behalf. But the being at the front did not open its mouth; it simply stood there, still. And I, too, racked my brain over and over for some way an answer might be found — but nothing came. For tens of seconds — tens of minutes, by the feel of every watcher and every listener — that silence pressed down upon the entire hall, until—
The slaughterer before their eyes had spoken. The resigned and the head-bowed jolted in shock, lifting their faces once more to look at the one gripping the microphone.
Something that could not be named seemed to well up and fill the hall. Hope? No. It was nothing so positive. Denial? No. Nothing so negative either. Resignation? Despair? Enlightenment? None of those.
The belief that we could become something better. The belief that, not in this present age of wandering and hatred, but a little further on — one more step forward — it was possible. And the moment that belief filled the hall to its edges, the black being before them spoke again.
[[[We will become anomalies.]]]
The being that had been black from head to toe began, slowly, to change. Cracks spidered across it, little by little, little by little — and then the black flaked away, falling like ash, as something white emerged beneath, bit by bit. It was the birth of the Great Anomaly, the Human Dignity Committee.