Chapter 134: Transaction 2
Chapter 134: Transaction 2
Scarcity defines a product's value.
Scarcity and utility, wasn't it?
Water is everywhere in human society and infinitely more useful,
yet a diamond—scarce but with little practical use—costs more than water.
Something along those lines.
By that metric, the race called 'Dream Demon' is truly remarkable.
Its scarcity is staggering, but it also possesses a certain degree of utility.
Just like right now.
"So. What do you want?"
"Your magic power. I have no intention of doing anything untoward to a man, so don't be so guarded. I'm in the same boat as you."
She flashed her teeth—sharp as a shark's—and went on.
Her attitude said she was absolutely certain I would accept the trade.
But there were things I needed to confirm before agreeing to anything.
'If it's legal, then why did the Incinerating Tyrant...?'
The Incinerating Tyrant had unmistakably burned his way across the Northern Continent.
Even if it was wasteland, that was still excessive force.
What kind of police force sets off a bomb in a public square
because a criminal slipped in among civilians?
Two possibilities.
The Incarnation-killer had belonged to a Northern Continent syndicate from the start.
Or the entrance just happened to be in the Northern Continent's wastelands, and there was no connection at all.
One thing was certain.
The future in which the Incinerating Tyrant goes completely off the rails hasn't changed yet.
"What about information instead of magic power? If this is a legitimate business site, I have some pretty important information."
"Information? In this situation, what information could possibly be worth more than a Dream Demon's magic..."
The woman, who had been cackling, suddenly shuddered.
I watched her eyes—once full of nothing but dark circles—bleed black.
She stared into empty space, her mouth full of sharp teeth hanging slack.
Not empty space, actually. She was clearly staring at something.
"You, that... you son of a bitch. What kind of information?"
Unmistakable hostility blazed into being as she glared at me.
No, not hostility toward me, exactly.
It was the wariness of a cornered animal.
'Do demons have precognition or something?'
Well, this was a world where every kind of Authority existed.
Divination of the future, danger sense—she must have something.
Judging by the cold sweat now streaming down her forehead—
"Why the Incinerating Tyrant... no, that's not it. If that madman is getting involved...?"
I'd assumed she was some instinct-driven, feral demon
because of the way she gnawed on chunks of narcotics with those pointed teeth,
but she seemed closer to the intellectual type than I'd thought.
She'd taken the crucial piece of information I mentioned—someone from another continent—
added her own vision, and was deducing the answer on the fly.
"Fuck. That bastard came to our turf?"
No need to ask who she meant by that bastard.
She meant the man who had killed the Incinerating Tyrant's reserve guards.
I gave a small nod in affirmation.
If I was being honest, the one in a hurry here wasn't me—it was her.
The economy shaking and the Northern Continent descending into chaos
had little to do with me, a Constellation from the Eastern Continent.
She, on the other hand—a demon businesswoman from the Northern Continent—was in a tight spot.
"When? Do you know when?"
Every trace of her earlier nonchalance had vanished.
But then, if a space battleship were about to fly in and burn down your building, your city—
could anyone stay relaxed in that situation?
"You said this was a trade. How about we share what we both know?"
The fact that I had many questions of my own was probably a stroke of luck for her.
I ignored the two who had been standing there like folding screens and sat down in the office chair.
A back-and-forth clash of wits, probing and weighing—
a transaction like that never happened.
Instead, I was dealing with something closer to an information vending machine—
a demon who answered whatever you asked and then threw back a question of her own.
When I asked why she was in such a frantic rush,
she answered at once, apparently with no thought of hiding anything.
"So, what did you see with that danger-sense ability?"
"A future where one of the drug-manufacturing bitches, knowing nothing, gave shelter to the killer, and the Incinerating Tyrant decided burning down a single city was acceptable and started driving his fleet this way!"
What could you say when she'd just experienced a future of being crisped golden-brown by a laser beam firsthand?
I could see the words speeding up as she tried to placate me even while trembling.
The situation had gotten far more tangled than expected, and I was the only one she could rely on.
Putting the story together, it went like this:
The secret passage in the wasteland we'd found wasn't a secret passage at all.
Strictly speaking, it was a kind of freight elevator
meant for transporting narcotics destined for military bases.
They would load the product onto trucks in an underground parking garage and send them straight out into the wastelands,
where the shipments were then distributed to various bases. That was how the transactions worked.
Why go through all that trouble?
Just like loan sharks—legal, but with a poor image—
drugs were legal, but their image was bad, so they built back channels.
They wanted the money, and they also wanted to build connections with Constellations and Incarnations while cultivating a corporate image.
The multiple entrances hidden in the wastelands existed for the same reason.
Meaning it wasn't just one or two companies manufacturing and researching narcotics.
The criminals' den wasn't under the wastelands.
Corporations had dug these back routes for their own convenience,
and a single criminal had simply slipped into one.
The problem, then, was the Incinerating Tyrant's bottomless madness.
A man who, for the sake of revenge, had set fire to his last remaining colonial planet
and chosen to wander the cosmos for eternity.
This wasn't a matter of burning down the house to catch the bedbug.
He was a man who set villages on fire. Did anyone really think he wouldn't burn a city?
"First, we have to find that bitch somehow."
One conclusion.
We had to find the killer who had hidden among the clinical trial participants.
If we found her, we could claim an enormous reward from the Incinerating Tyrant.
If we didn't find her in time, an orbital bombardment would fall on this city.
"You son of a bitch. What did I do to deserve this?"
The demon's fingernails had sharpened alongside her teeth; she bit at her fingertips
as her Authority kept firing off warnings.
A loud, grinding metallic screech filled the air.
Unlike me, watching with detached calm because it wasn't my problem,
Wilhelmina was twitching and restless, like someone gripped by psychosis.
When the Unfading Giant Tree and I had tried to speak our true names,
our mouths had snapped shut against our will—hadn't they?
'Come to think of it, she's a Constellation too. How did she say her name?'
"What demon uses their real name? An alias, obviously!"
She shouted it as if to say don't pester me, and her magic stirred.
Behind the undulating dark-red magic appeared a kaleidoscope of women's faces.
It looked like the multi-panel screen of a video conference.
She'd handle things from here on her own.
With that thought, I dispersed my clone.
※
The Unfading Giant Tree's reaction was exactly what I'd expected.
"So? What happened?"
"First, I told the Constellation I met there."
"There was a Constellation there?"
Her eyes went round with surprise at the unknown detail,
then her cheeks flushed pink, embarrassed by her own ignorance.
She always tried to show a dependable, guiding presence as a senior and an older-sister figure,
so she probably thought a minor slip like that was humiliating to reveal in front of me.
I explained the situation to her as the blush spread from her cheeks to the tips of her ears.
That what we'd seen hadn't been a crime syndicate's emergency escape route,
but a drug-transport passage used by legal narcotics companies.
And what I'd discussed with the demon Constellation after meeting her.
"A demon?"
"Yeah. A demon."
The other details were fine, but her expression darkened at the mention of a demon.
Now that I thought about it, her world had been destroyed by a Demon King.
Even knowing she was from a different world, a different species,
the word "demon" still weighed on her.
The color drained from her pink-flushed cheeks,
and her perked-up ears drooped low.
A man would have to be blind to miss that.
It was too delicate a subject to broach with words,
so I quietly reached out and pulled her into my arms.
Times like this, having a big body was useful.
"And then?"
"Well, she apparently had a danger-sense Authority. Probably because of that, she saw a future where the Incinerating Tyrant wipes a city off the map."
"A city? You clearly told me..."
"Right. What I saw was the wasteland being flattened. He's probably planning to raze the wasteland first, and if that doesn't get results, then move on to the city."
I kept talking as I stroked her slender, delicate back.
The gentle sensation of her leaning against my chest.
Beyond the screen, within that black fog,
a Constellation was frantically inspecting her businesses,
terrified that the city where her whole foundation lay was about to be obliterated—
but the small warmth I felt right here in my arms mattered more.
"Oh. The black fog disappeared."
"She must really be in a hurry. Well, it's the city where everything she's built is gathered."
On the screen, the black fog slowly dispersed.
At the same moment, a completely exposed scene filled the display.
Men in nothing but underwear who had been dancing with poles were scrambling to throw on clothes,
and women who'd been splayed out, legs wide, while men lapped at them in a drug-soaked haze
were getting slapped awake by suit-clad Incarnations who'd come running from somewhere.
"Mm. That's, uh, a bit much to look at."
A drug-fueled orgy
was apparently too stimulating for an elf who'd only just become acquainted with men.
The pale face that had lost its color at the mention of demons was now blazing red again.
At the same moment, a scream rang out from the screen.
A voice filled with magic power, aimed at the empty air.
Without a doubt, that was the demon's voice.
"Hey! Dream Demon! You're watching, aren't you? Help me out here!"
there was nothing I could do to help her.
What, was I supposed to comb through everything on my screen and cross-reference it with a sketch?
Why would I do something that tedious?
"Um, isn't that—isn't that calling for you... eep?!"
"I've got no reason to help her. More importantly, hmm?"
As I spoke, I slowly slid a hand downward.
Maybe because my hands were now so thick and large,
the moment I slipped it beneath the hem of her clothes, the fabric nearly came apart at the seams.
Watching the rosy flush that had lingered at her ears spread all the way down to the nape of her neck,
I traced slow, leisurely circles around her navel with my fingertips.
"Honestly, really. A boy who doesn't even know to be embarrassed..."
At the same time, a tiny hand stretched around behind me and tapped lightly against my thigh.