The Transcendents
Regrettably, no one else had managed what Ciel had—awakening their own soul and flashing that spark of inspiration. Then again, it was never going to be easy.
It was as rare as a machine crafted by human hands suddenly gaining a soul and declaring itself human.
If the feat had been that simple, there would hardly have been zero cases across thousands of years. I gazed down at the dwarf standing before me with a distinctly disappointed air.
“Hmm. Right. Is there anything else you need?”
“More iron ore, if it please Your Majesty. The quality of the ore you provided last time was excellent—truly to our liking.”
“I’ll see that it’s prepared.”
Unlike the elves, who had accepted Earth’s culture and begun to change, the dwarves showed neither wounded pride nor reverse astonishment even after laying hands on Earth’s goods.
Where the elves had tasted Earth’s desserts, been stunned by the flavor, and understood that such things were completed through efforts impossible in As, the dwarves remained thoroughly indifferent.
Even when presented with semiconductors formed from hundreds of millions of transistors no dwarf hand could ever fashion, or engines of mind-bending complexity, they merely snorted.
—So what is a lump of scrap like this supposed to do?
To a dwarf, smartphones and gas-turbine engines alike were nothing more than non-magical scrap metal. No matter how magical their performance, they registered as primitive and backward in dwarven eyes.
Perhaps if they had at least sampled Earth’s beer and burst into cries of wonder, things might have been different. Unfortunately, the dwarves of As did not drink beer.
And there was a simple reason for that.
Because I don’t know how to make beer…
Had they truly been creatures that arose naturally over the passage of time, they might have stumbled by chance upon the art of brewing beer or liquor and come to regard it as their very lifeblood.
But of course nothing of the sort ever happened in As. In this land no one accidentally discovered grain going rotten; nor did any fool, mourning the waste of food, try eating it or rise to the challenge of experimenting with it.
In that light, humanity’s greatest weapon might well be the frontier spirit itself—the very thing the races of As lacked, bound as they were never to do what they had been told not to, and to fulfill only the tasks they had been given.
I could only speculate that it was one of the functions of the soul. My subordinates, possessing none, had naturally lost even the possibility of challenge.
Is there truly no one else?
I smacked my lips in regret as I left the Dwarf Kingdom. The elves, once sedentary hunters, had begun to awaken their souls after tasting chocolate and cake. How, then, was one supposed to shock the dwarves into awakening theirs?
Should Earth’s tanks roll across the soil of As, reduce their kingdom to rubble, and turn them into a colony? Not only was such a thing impossible—even if it were possible, it was a sight I had no desire to witness…
It was a difficult problem. The question of whether it was right to force upon them the things I wished to see, as though crushing their souls in the process.
Even if I committed such an act and they did awaken, problems would remain. What I wanted was conversation with equal intelligences—beings with whom I could speak amiably as peers.
Anything less would simply create another race that hated me.
Difficult. Still so difficult.
Omnipotent.
Even after becoming a ninth-circle archmage who could accomplish almost anything she set her mind to, the world’s affairs remained stubbornly full of such thorny matters.
Though Astria styled herself the Dragon King of As, that did not mean every living thing upon As obeyed her. The throne of As more closely resembled a feudal arrangement than an absolute monarchy.
As many creatures refused her rule as followed it; even among the dragons themselves there were those who opposed her. Yet she remained the one closest to true kingship, and thus she held the name of Dragon King.
And of course—
—That damned bitch Astria…
There existed transcendents strong enough to rival her, strong enough to dare eye the throne itself. Remnants left behind by a younger Astria in the days when she had known loneliness.
Losers of their age who had been defeated by the Dragon King and scattered across every corner of As.
Among them, the Spider King—Hyponix—ground her fangs especially hard whenever Astria’s name was spoken. And into that spider’s territory—
—You dare send these into my domain? What the hell are you thinking?
“Mmph! Mmmph!?”
U.S. soldiers, reeking of Astria’s scent, lay bound. Even while Astria had been busy savoring civilization in America, American forces had continued their reconnaissance of As, until at last they had blundered into the domains of others.
And—
Contrary to the optimistic hopes of the higher-ups—who, because Astria had proven kinder than expected, had begun to believe that beings from other worlds might be safer than feared—
this one was far closer to the monsters America had always been so wary of.
—Trying to expand her territory, is she? Looking down on me!?
Crunch—!
The Spider King’s rage raced along her webs and began to pulverize the bodies of the soldiers bound within them. Eyes wide open, the men tasted the horror of every bone in their bodies shattering to fragments; their eyes rolled back and foam flecked their lips.
Just as Hyponix, regarding the hairless monkeys steeped in Astria’s scent as a declaration of war upon her domain, prepared to tear the soldiers apart—
“Mm. Hi.”
—!?
Something light settled upon her webs. Sensing the faint vibration, Hyponix whirled about in shock. The moment she confirmed the identity of the intruder, she began to tremble and bellowed a name that had no business being there.
—Th-the Great Sky King!? Y-you shouldn’t be here!
“Mm. I got banned from approaching. So I can’t go in.”
—Do you not fear the Dragon King!?
“But… here is fine.”
—W-what?
The next instant, wings vast enough to blot out the sky unfurled with a single beat.
“This is your territory, after all.”
Crunch—.
With a sound like the shattering of a hard cookie, Hyponix’s headless body toppled bonelessly to the earth.
Having swallowed the Spider King in a single bite, Aiteru spat out the leftover shell and fur with a disgusted ptew, then tilted her head repeatedly at the soldiers still bound where the spider had left them.
At first she had wondered whether Astria herself had stepped outside her domain, but that was not the case. They carried her scent, yet they were not her retainers.
She had thought they might be elves under Astria’s rule, but their appearance was somehow unpleasant and their ears were far too short. Even the clothes they wore looked as if someone had torn pieces of forest into shape—creatures she had never seen before.
“What are you guys?”
“Mmph, mmph!”
“Hmm… weird. Astria made it so everyone with a mind can talk… so why can’t you speak?”
Watching the American soldiers thrash about with their mouths sealed by spider silk, Aiteru cocked her head in genuine bewilderment.
Thanks to Astria’s magic, every intelligent creature should have been able to exchange words… Could these large beasts somehow possess less intellect than insects?
How pitiful.
“Or maybe they’re sleeping…? Since they won’t come out of that stuff, maybe that’s it…”
“Mmph! Mm-mmph!”
“Hmm… If I go ask, I’ll get scolded, right? Then…”
Observing soldiers who could not speak for lack of a free mouth and who refused to escape webs she herself could have slipped free of with trivial ease, Aiteru concluded they must be miserable little things too pathetic even for speech.
After all, she had never once met anyone who could not talk simply because they lacked a mouth… and she was, at her core, a birdbrain!
“Okay. Let’s take them.”
Fortunately for the soldiers, they gave off a scent she adored; that alone made them collectibles worth keeping.
And so—
“Mmph! Mm-mmph!”
“Mmph!”
“I’m not gonna eat you, so don’t move.”
—the American soldiers were collected. Far, far from this place—though only a few wingbeats for her enormous wings—they were carried off to her nest.
A few days later, the U.S. Secretary of Defense came in person to As.
“—I beg this of you, King of As.”
“……What is the matter?”
“Please—save our soldiers!”
He had come bearing a plea for the rescue of American troops who had gone missing in As.
“I don’t know the details, but…”
I regarded the Secretary of Defense, who stood with his slightly hunched back bent low, the sparse crown of his head fully exposed, and spoke.
“First, why don’t we talk.”