Chapter 106: The Constellation's Work 1
Chapter 106: The Constellation's Work 1
The Academy sprawled across a massive island at the center of the donut-shaped continent.
The number of Incarnations within its walls was nearing the thousands,
and dozens of Constellations kept a watchful eye on its affairs.
Just recently, they had even performed a ritual to establish a Temporary Sanctum and summon a single Constellation—me—through a Descent.
If you asked a hundred people to name humanity's most crucial location, a hundred and forty would answer: the Academy.
"What the hell is going on?"
And now, a body had turned up dead in that very Academy.
"Get ahold of yourselves!"
Because of this, chaos had spilled well past the bounds of my Temporary Sanctum.
The Academy buzzed like a hornet's nest after a rock hit it.
The Incarnations in charge of security prowled in every direction, growling like enraged beasts.
A world where reverence for Constellations and Incarnations bordered on madness.
That near-mad reverence must feel like pride and confidence to the ones on the receiving end.
This was the Academy, where only Incarnations who had won the continental tournament could enroll.
The security chief out there chewing someone out, the young guard hanging her head—
every last one of them had reached the finals of the continental tournament.
With these thousands of high-caliber Incarnations, how could they have failed to notice a person being murdered?
Right beside a Temporary Sanctum where a Constellation had descended?
"This incompetent wretch cannot even repay the grace bestowed upon us and dare not lift her head. I can only offer my deepest apologies."
The list of things I'd provided for them was not short, so the headmaster herself was bowing her head to me now.
I'd been passing most of the goods I received as payment for Incarnation treatments on to the Academy, so she must have rushed over immediately.
In hard cash terms, I was donating a monthly budget in the hundred-millions. This level of courtesy was only to be expected.
I'd sent the two Incarnations who had been making a fuss in my Temporary Sanctum back to their posts, and right after, the security head and the headmaster had come to apologize.
The timing was good, really—the headmaster was right in front of me.
In this situation, with a body found behind my building, I had a suspicion and tossed out a question.
"I've suffered no harm; there's no need to bow your head to me. More importantly, the victim...?"
I was an outsider in any security matter, regardless of being a Constellation.
But maybe she judged she couldn't keep secrets from one who gave so generously.
"Yes, and to our shame... it was one of our own cadets."
The headmaster quietly slid a small ID photo across the table.
The picture of a woman grinning broadly and energetically was unmistakably the face I'd seen in the forest yesterday.
Broad shoulders and a gallant impression, more handsome than pretty.
A close-quarters combat-class Incarnation, apparently, given the muscular frame I'd watched take a man in an Amazoness pose.
I couldn't reconcile that photo with the withered corpse that had looked like a mummy abandoned for years.
"Do you... have any insight?"
Was it the shock that the Academy had failed to find even a trace of the culprit?
She caught the slightest shift in my expression at the photo and immediately asked.
Fair enough. It's a murder case—asking to see the victim's face is a bit pointed.
"She's the person I saw yesterday. I watched her heading behind this building with a man who appeared to be her lover."
Under normal circumstances, I'd have kept my spying to myself,
but when the person in question is the victim of a murder, how could I hide it?
Setting aside the gender-reversal, it might have been youth itself—a pair stealing a fresh, young romance away from the faculty's eyes.
Instead, she was a victim. Not peacefully departed, but a corpse mangled beyond easy identification.
"With a man, you say?"
The headmaster's brow furrowed instantly.
A faint hint of suspicion flickered up, then was immediately washed away by a flood of powerful guilt.
Puzzled by her inexplicable reaction, I asked my own question.
"Yes. Is something strange about that?"
"Hmm. We, checked CCTV and took statements from other cadets and instructors to trace the victim's movements."
The headmaster hesitated, then screwed her eyes shut and spoke to me.
To shake off her own doubt.
"The victim was moving entirely alone, from the morning until the point her whereabouts became unclear."
※
Just outside the door of the Temporary Sanctum, figures with twitching ears bustled about.
And I mean that literally—not figuratively; genuinely pointed ears were twitching.
Black suits, sunglasses, wireless earpieces and radios plugged into their ears,
and atop their heads, sharp black ears pointing up.
'Dobermans?'
Unlike Loyal Fang, a special unit made up entirely of female Beastkin—with ears and tails only—
was combing every inch around the building as if picking out lice.
The headmaster had listened to my story, frowned, bitten her lip, left... and then a hundred-plus personnel immediately mobilized.
Lee Ha-rin, who came back shortly afterward, explained the reason to me.
The Academy was prepared for terrorism on every front.
The number of Authorities applied to this island alone—not counting the Incarnations—was near a thousand.
Drinking water and food supplies were inspected as a baseline, and the students' movements were technically all tracked.
They didn't make it public, but privacy had been thrown to the dogs: everything was being recorded and checked in secret.
To avoid revealing this, Constellations observed and told instructors which students to give demerits to.
A place without instructors? A spot free from prying eyes? A moment a Constellation might not be watching?
None of those things existed anymore.
The instant you stepped onto the dock, every movement on this island was checked and recorded in real time.
If even simple motion was logged, what of mana manipulation and Authority activation?
But the culprit hadn't been recorded.
What I saw with my own eyes was a couple—a man and a woman.
Yet what the Academy's security system recorded, from the morning onward, was only a single female cadet moving alone.
Witnesses in the vicinity, the mechanical CCTVs, even the logs checked through mana and Authority—
all had concluded "the female cadet entered the mountain alone."
Then, out of nowhere, a Constellation who'd been holed up in a Temporary Sanctum started talking about an unknown, unrecorded figure.
But what would I gain from lying here?
If you assume my words are true, the conclusion is absolutely absurd.
That someone deceived every single security system in the Academy,
the sightseeing Constellations and monitoring Incarnations,
and every student who witnessed the victim—without a single exception.
Considering the Incarnations at this Academy are all powerhouses within the continent's top ten,
how ridiculous a story was that?
"Pardon the intrusion, Constellation."
"Tell them not to mind me and to do their jobs."
"Thank you for your consideration, Constellation!"
I was flabbergasted hearing all this;
imagine how the headmaster, the woman in charge of all of it, must feel.
And the security chief, hearing the same news?
This. This was the result.
Canine Beastkin in sunglasses roamed in every direction, noses working nonstop with snuffling sniffs.
Glancing up, I saw figures circling endlessly against the bright blue sky.
They'd called in everyone—mages capable of flight, winged Beastkin tribes, the works.
What truly impressed me in all of this was that, though they hadn't found the culprit, they had identified the Constellation connected to it.
A man seducing the victim,
a revolting magic power oozing from his tongue,
even an Authority that manifested as a black fog like sooty smoke.
"So, the Heart of the Exiled Serpent?"
"Yes. Unless a new Constellation has appeared, we believe Heart of the Exiled Serpent is correct."
"Can you tell me what kind of Constellation that is?"
At my question, Lee Ha-rin—who had no intention of leaving the Temporary Sanctum—immediately launched into an explanation.
"To begin with, there isn't much information about Heart of the Exiled Serpent. The known data consists of—"
Just as I was wedged between Kim Ha-eun and Lee Ha-rin and about to listen, a headache rolled in that made my eyes screw shut instinctively.
A sharp, stinging pain that was familiar yet never became easy.
A prickling headache, as if someone had poured a carbonated drink between the folds of my brain.
Usually, a headache feels like being jabbed with something sharp
or a dull, bludgeoning throb, doesn't it?
This was different—a wave of torment like carbonation fizzing and popping inside my skull.
Knowledge rose naturally alongside the headache.
Without a doubt, this was from the message dispatched by The Incinerating Tyrant.
Like a safe that unlocks when you input the combination,
the moment I heard the name Heart of the Exiled Serpent, facts began bubbling up.
A futuristic SF world was that Constellation's origin.
A modest SF realm—more advanced than my world, but not remotely on the level of The Incinerating Tyrant's universe.
A Constellation from a world where humanity had left Earth, colonized the moon, and begun terraforming Mars.
And he was the one responsible for the destruction of his own humanity.
"Constellation, are you all right?"
The second my brow furrowed, both Incarnations rushed to my side.
To sort through the rising knowledge, I waved a hand to signal I was fine and gently massaged my temples, collecting my thoughts.
An SF world where lunar natives and Earth natives were hostile, on the very brink of war.
Heart of the Exiled Serpent, greedier than his abilities warranted, had spent his entire life dealing in division and slander.
A repulsive human who filled his own self-esteem by spreading malicious libel, loose rumors, and tearing others down.
As luck would have it, such a man entered the arms industry and, with his meager skill, even climbed to a director's seat at a moderately sized company.
Had he stopped there, he could have lived large as a lunar tycoon.
But he couldn't quell his greed. To multiply the profits of his arms business, he decided to prod the already-volatile tension between Earth and the moon.
He probably figured he'd sell weapons off the back of a few modest skirmishes and a bit of heightened alert,
but centuries of accumulated ill will were far too immense for Heart of the Exiled Serpent's abilities to finely control.
And plenty of people already found him contemptible.
And so, true to his name, Heart of the Exiled Serpent
was sealed in a cryo-pod on his corporate moon and exiled into the far reaches of space.
Launched into outer space with nutritional supplements that would last a century,
it was a death sentence in all but name—no one was going to thaw him out in the middle of the void.
But just as a single young man's bullet sparked the First World War,
one businessman's silver tongue sparked a devastating war between Earth and the moon.
The moon was destroyed, and Earth's surface melted entirely from radiation.
The survivors: the terraforming agents on Mars, and one criminal adrift in space inside a cryo-pod.
And, with grim irony, the last one to remain alive was the very criminal who had been the catalyst for the war.
That was the Constellation, Heart of the Exiled Serpent.
"Are you truly all right?"
The headache faded. A complicated knot of emotion churned in my chest.
I patted Lee Ha-rin's back—she looked about ready to cry from worry—and spoke to Kim Ha-eun, who hovered awkwardly nearby.
Seemed she'd been torn between clinging to me like Lee Ha-rin or running to fetch a medic.
"I'm all right. Would you open the door?"
"Ah, yes."
Looking uneasy, Kim Ha-eun opened the door of the Temporary Sanctum.
Standing there was the enormous suit of steel armor I'd seen a few days prior.
The Imperial Guard of The Incinerating Tyrant, so palpably oppressive just to look at, stood there with solemn courtesy, not even thinking to knock.
And in that moment, everything clicked.
"So. What does His Majesty desire of me?"
"Vengeance."
From within the hissing, fizzing armor, a heavy female voice emerged.
This crazy bastard couldn't ditch his old habits, and now he'd gone and touched someone he never should have in this world, too.