My Disciple Has Everything Planned
As I expected, the imperial family made no particular move of their own.
"If not that, some other noisy problem might have erupted by now."
The world of power never knew a quiet day. Anyone who held the grail called power could be certain that others would come running to snatch it away — and that defending it meant living in a permanent state of frantic busyness. The loss of a single master-class fighter who was not even a superhuman could vanish from their minds in an instant, and no one would find that strange. Compared to superhumans, masters were considerably less rare, and from the imperial family's perspective — an institution that dealt in superhumans — one master was hardly anything special.
Of course, had they been living through peaceful, uneventful days, the loss of even a single master would have been treated as a grave matter, with people shrieking that the imperial family's authority must not be allowed to waver. But the present was so far from peaceful that the two could scarcely be said to inhabit the same world.
From the start, it was obvious that the imperial family regarded a knight of mere master rank — not even a superhuman — as a horse to be ridden and discarded at will.
Most of the knights who were thoroughly used by the imperial family and then cast aside ended up dead. But a rare few survived. Those survivors abandoned their names and altered their appearances however they could. Having discarded their names and done everything possible to bury their former faces, they could hardly look ordinary. The worlds left open to such people were inevitably limited: the mercenary trade, and the underworld. Even after they were no longer knights and had thrown away their names, the habits of a lifetime spent trying to live uprightly usually kept them from the underworld. So they became mercenaries.
I had once crossed paths with a former imperial knight who had drifted, by one path or another, into that mercenary world. The shock of being betrayed by the imperial family he had sworn lifelong loyalty to must have been severe; he lived with his mouth shut. He never spoke. The first time he opened his mouth in front of me was the night before he died, when he was thoroughly drunk. No — the first and last time. He laid out his past in a calm, even voice, then collapsed as if falling asleep. The next day…
He was dead.
I heard he had been run through on the spot by knights for an attempted assassination of a member of the imperial family, left with holes all over his body, bleeding out where he fell. He had been an outstanding fighter. Even so, he achieved none of his supposed goals and failed to cut down a single person who stood in his way.
Because I knew his skill so well, I alone could reach the truth. He had never gone there for revenge. He had gone there to die. That was why he had never truly intended to kill any member of the imperial family, and never intended to kill the former comrades who drew their swords to protect them. He was simply too exhausted to keep living. He needed a place to die, and in the end he chose the imperial family he had never been able to hate completely.
Even after betrayal had butchered his life and trampled it thoroughly underfoot, he still could not bring himself to resent them. A one-sided love so wretched it was almost grotesque, was it not? For all that, the imperial family disposed of his corpse the way one disposes of trash. Out of a sense of obligation I could not bear to leave him like that, I quietly recovered his body and buried him somewhere decent.
So I know.
Imperial knights are pitiable creatures beyond any help. Of course, among them there are those who do the work for their own gain rather than out of loyalty… but the knight I met yesterday was not that type. No matter how thoroughly that loyalty betrayed him, no matter how thoroughly that loyalty ruined his life, he would still insist there had to be meaning in it. He would never abandon that desperately wretched one-sided love.
"Even I have to admit it's a rather unpleasant hobby."
The fact that I had already killed him was an unchangeable result of the past. What meaning could there be in thinking about him now? None at all. And yet I could not stop myself from thinking about the person I had killed. I did it so that I would not grow used to it.
The moment a person becomes perfectly adapted to the act of killing another person, they can no longer be called a person. That is why, after I kill someone, I try as hard as I can to think about it. It is little different from self-torment, but if I do not do it, I fear I will adapt without even noticing.
In this world, people killing people is unavoidable. Calling it an inevitable choice for survival would not be an exaggeration. A world where people not killing people was the natural state of things would be beautiful as a dream — but at least in the present world, people killing people was not considered strange. Even so, one must never come to feel that people killing people is natural. One must never adapt to it. If you adapt, if you reach the point of feeling nothing at all in the act, then you are already no different from a demon. You have already ceased to be human. That must not be allowed.
A human ceasing to be human is the final line that must never be crossed — the last absolute that a human being is bound to protect. You do not need to ask a god in person to know that. It is so self-evidently true that it ought to be an immutable law of the world.
"Honestly… living is just one tiresome thing after another."
That, too, was one of this world's truths.
"…The First Prince has struck a deal with the Emperor. He has been promised investiture as Crown Prince."
"I see."
Madam Rain, master of the empire's foremost information guild, Dark Moon — the head of one of the great powers said to hold absolute authority in the underworld — was laying out information as if reporting to someone above her.
She managed information. She knew better than anyone that information was the most profitable commodity and, at the same time, the most powerful weapon. And so the thing that inspired absolute terror in her was the opposite: the unknown. Because she felt the absolute strength of information so keenly and understood it so thoroughly, she could not help but understand with equal clarity the absolute dread that rose from the unknown.
And for her, there was one absolute unknown in the present day.
Hero Sera.
No matter what means or methods she employed, the existence called Sera remained nothing but the unknown to her. That was why Madam Rain could not help but feel fear toward Hero Sera. And no force in the world subjugates, cowes, and commands obedience as surely as fear.
In the end, she submitted to Hero Sera.
It was not simply because she felt fear. If the most terrifying existence is your enemy, you have no choice but to tremble in fear alone. If that existence is an ally, the story changes. You still feel the fear — but at least, as an ally, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the blade of that terror will not immediately take your head. The difference is enormous.
Most important of all: if that most terrifying existence granted even a single request of hers, she could obtain what she had so long desired. For her, no option existed except submission — and she had accepted that.
"So is that everything you've found out?"
At Hero Sera's question, Madam Rain swallowed dryly. If she disappointed her here — what would become of her? The mere thought was enough to make her hands want to shake. But concealing such things was a basic skill. If she could not hide even this much, she would never have risen to her present position. She desperately suppressed every tremor. Then she opened her mouth with calm composure, as if nothing were wrong.
"Medusa has vanished, and at the same time a small stir has been observed within the imperial family. The First Prince, who until now had appeared to be stirring up all manner of trouble while in reality doing almost nothing, suddenly moved, made a deal with the Emperor, and closed it. Putting that together, my conjecture is that Medusa was connected to the imperial family — and that its true identity is the 'Imperial Reapers,' a notion long dismissed as an unrealistic conspiracy theory. With their disappearance, the Emperor fell into crisis. The First Prince, having discovered this, offered the Crown Prince's seat in exchange for sparing the Emperor's neck for the moment… but in truth, the imperial family already belongs to the First Prince — no, to the Crown Prince. That is the conclusion I have reached."
"Hmm. An interesting hypothesis. But I get the feeling you deliberately left out the core of it."
"…Yes. I believe that at the center of all this stands you, Hero Candidate Sera. That Medusa — more precisely, the Imperial Reapers — was eliminated, that pressure was applied to the First Prince, and that the entire current of the imperial family was transformed in a single stroke… I believe all of it was by your design."
"Hmm. Your basis?"
"…It is only my inference so far, so I do not yet have solid proof. If you give me time, I will construct it into a perfect form."
"No need. It's the correct answer."
"Then, as I thought…!"
"Yes. I was irritated that the trash that needed to be cleared away at once was being left to drag on. I simply arranged things so it could be cleared away immediately."
She spoke as if it were nothing. As if she had merely done something trivial without difficulty. That was how it sounded.
In that moment, even Madam Rain could not stop her hands from trembling.
As the head of an information guild she had seen countless powers and countless strong individuals… but Hero Sera was on an entirely different plane. The conviction rose unbidden that the Hero who could kill the Demon King could only be her, and no one else.
"The empire is going to change completely."
"What should I do?"
"Do I really need to tell you what to do?"
"Shall I inform the nobles that behind the Crown Prince stands a superhuman of the outer heavens, whose identity cannot be known?"
"I knew I was right to leave this to Madam."
"To hear such words is an honor beyond anything I could ask."
Madam Rain was trembling with excitement.
Hero Sera had not simply shaken the Emperor because she disliked him. By seating the First Prince as Crown Prince, she had made certain he understood with absolute clarity who in this world he must watch most carefully and obey — and at the same time, she would have the nobles told that behind the Crown Prince stood a superhuman of the outer heavens who surpassed even the Imperial Reapers. Faced with an existence of the outer heavens that outstripped the Imperial Reapers, the nobles would have no choice but to feel still greater fear toward that absolute unknown.
This was not merely a change of leaders.
She had remade the very structure of imperial power so that she could move it however she pleased.
And Madam Rain was witnessing that historic moment from closer than anyone, obtaining the information with her own hands.
Not to tremble at this, Madam Rain sincerely believed, would be inhuman.
Right now, she was truly, purely lost in that thrill.
Did I break her in a little too thoroughly…?
Sera felt the weight of Madam Rain's gaze — eyes sparkling far too brightly as they fixed on her.
Madam Rain was a woman who looked toward nothing but ruin, who beyond that cared chiefly for information, and who feared the unknown. To change her, Sera had decided to become an absolute unknown herself…
She should have broken her in only moderately. Instead she had done it so earnestly that she seemed to have gone too far.
There had been times when Sera had called her "older sister" and followed her — but she had never experienced the reverse. From Hero Sera's perspective, Madam Rain behaving like this was something she simply could not get used to.
Imagine: the person you had been calling "older sister" and diligently following until yesterday suddenly, the next day, starts calling you "older sister," trailing after you with eager little steps and clinging affection. Anyone would find that bizarre. That was exactly how Sera felt right now.
But once you've started, you have to see it through to the end.
That was one of the lessons infinite regression had taught her. Finishing something halfway produced worse results than simply shutting up and pushing all the way through — even if the whole thing was so strange it bordered on grotesque.
And so, today as well, Hero Sera continued to play the absolute unknown and keep Madam Rain in line.
Better that I break her in myself than have her develop a romantic interest in Master.
She was carefully executing a rival-elimination operation as well.