Galaxy TV (3)
"Oh my! Welcome, and thank you for the donation! I'll pull myself together and give this my best shot! Aja aja, fighting!"
On screen, a cute girl was picking out her weapon ahead of a dungeon raid. Laid out before her were a short spear and a short sword.
"Hmm... which one should I use? I still haven't picked my main weapon!"
Ahem.
He wasn't about to say something so petty in a mere chat message. A donation message was as good as his personal chat window, after all.
"Ahh! A donation! Is today some kind of special occasion?! Thank you so much!"
The girl, her brown hair tied in twin tails, bowed repeatedly toward empty air in gratitude.
"In that case, shall I try the short spear?"
Just then—
Huh? Swords are fine weapons too, but...
"Ahh! A sword, you say?"
The girl looked a little flustered.
What do I do? Whose advice should I take?
Excuse me? Spear noob? Was this guy picking a fight right now?
A vein bulged on Karlstein's forehead.
Granted, he wasn't some grand master of the spear — he simply favored it because it was easy to handle and let him steamroll opponents with raw physicality. But still.
There was something off about the way this "OneArmedBlindSwordsman" talked.
An irritating tone. Deliberately grating on the nerves.
He could not lose to this.
The rebuttals came flying back and forth without pause.
Hm. What is this?
He could just concede and let it go, but... what was this subtle unpleasantness stirring his manly instincts?
Naturally, the donations were flying fast and thick.
And as the argument raged on, a beaming smile spread across the girl's face.
Until, finally—
A swordsman executing the classic "so what's YOUR rank?" maneuver.
Me? The Head Admin and Emperor of the Galactic Empire.
...Not that he could actually say that.
A hundred thousand points? Still, flexing at him with points was a bit...
And so the two of them settled the score through personal attacks and a full-on money flamewar.
The chat window, of course, descended into utter chaos.
As the amounts kept climbing, other viewers began trickling in one by one.
And in the middle of it all, "SlapsWithMoney" committed a crime.
A hundred million? At first, the viewers thought they'd misread it.
Are you insane? What could possibly matter enough to spend a hundred million points on?
Spending habits utterly beyond the imagination of an ordinary person!
Faced with the titans' duel of wallets, the girl could only stand there gaping, unable to get a word out.
A donation's supposed to make you happy when it's a reasonable amount. A hundred million?!
It was a number with no grounding in reality whatsoever.
"..."
In the end, the swordsman conceded defeat, trembling with fury over a hundred million points. Of course, exiting with a claim of moral victory was the established rule of the internet.
Ding—
Either way, from the girl's perspective this was a total jackpot. Her dazed eyes quivered violently. She had just earned enough in an instant to retire from dungeon raids for life and play around in luxury forever.
"Th-this is..."
"O-one, ten, hundred, thousand... Hup! Ye-yes! Tha-thank you so much! I'll use the spear, absolutely! Thank you!"
The girl finally burst into tears of gratitude.
Karlstein quietly rubbed the area under his nose.
Well... it's not like spear-versus-sword even matters...
The one who fights better will win regardless.
He had donated in the first place because he found the girl's grit admirable — scrapping out a living and hunting monsters in a harsh otherworldly environment. Supporting a girl who was the breadwinner of her family — he'd enjoyed himself to the fullest with that charitable spirit in mind.
"SlapsWithMoney" and "OneArmedBlindSwordsman" now stood side by side at first and second place on the official patron rankings of HawawaHighSchoolGirl's channel.
When a screenshot of the ranking, donation amounts and all, spread through the community, it stirred up controversy for a good while.
Who the hell ARE those two?
They should've just given that money to me instead. I'd have done anything they asked.
Went to pick a weapon and hit the jackpot of a lifetime.
A screenshot of the girl sobbing her eyes out got immortalized in the community as well, drawing the envy and indignation of users far and wide.
Afterward, streams with concepts like "Sword vs. Sword-and-Shield," "Spear vs. Sword," and "Mage vs. Knight" popped up like mushrooms after the rain.
And a considerable number of users came to a realization.
Wait... if this takes off, it's a complete life turnaround?
The donation system. It's just. Insane!
The ranks of users earnestly waiting for a patron's favor to shine upon them swelled by the day.
Naturally, Karlstein didn't go that far. The brief fun had been enough for him.
"Hm-hm-hm. Now, what should I try next?"
Of course, the only reason he could afford to lounge about like this was that he'd worked hard. He'd been diligently attending to matters of kaiju and ether for some time now.
Even at this very moment, a torrent of intelligence was pouring into his main account, with Aria vetting it all and briskly dispatching whatever needed handling.
The research sector, meanwhile, had talent from every field poured into it and was progressing smoothly, with astronomical investment already committed wherever it was needed.
Needless to say, then — Aria hadn't handed over a cool ten billion for nothing. Nobody would say a word if he took a little rest.
And so he whiled away the hours posting nonsense threads on the community and watching all manner of videos, soothing body and mind.
Yes. This is the good stuff. That feeling of doing absolutely nothing productive with your time.
It was then that one particular stream concept caught his eye.
"An avatar blind date?"
What's this?
[Heading off to propose a marriage to a neighboring kingdom's princess! Word is she's an absolute beauty~ Depending on donation points—]
A marriage proposal?
Mocking me — still single even after becoming Emperor of the Universe — with talk of marriage?
Unforgivable.
He'd punish them with money!
"We are all in attendance, I see. A rare feat, given how seldom these members gather."
A silver-haired woman's languid, decadent voice called the meeting to order. At her word, the dark expanse around them stretched outward without end, cubic polygons reassembling themselves throughout the space — and one by one, figures of people materialized upon them.
All of them gazed silently at the woman at the center.
The First Chancellor of the Galactic Empire. Chief Secretary.
Aria.
She appeared to be an ordinary commoner without even a family name, yet not a soul present could afford to look down on her.
After all, she was, by any measure, the closest confidante of His Majesty the Emperor.
That was a fact no one could dispute.
The same held true even for the handful who knew she was not human at all, but an android terminal.
Her opening declaration made the air of the virtual conference room grow heavy.
"Hm."
Among them stood a hulking man in the corner of the room, hovering nervously at the edges.
Milo Lanka.
A great hero who had survived even the brutal crucible known both as the Lüpyr Star System Assault Operation and the Single Number Subjugation War.
A member of the National Salvation Hero Assembly and the one who held the sub-tanker position whenever His Majesty was absent — he was, by rights, a member of the very highest stratum of the Galactic Empire.
And yet even he could barely breathe in this conference room.
There was Aria, presiding over the meeting. And beside her, at her right hand, stood the starlight-haired woman — Maxien Asteria.
Those two alone were terrifying enough.
When he cautiously rolled his eyes toward the far corner, he spotted a small, hooded figure, engulfed in its cowl.
Camilla Vashatiret.
From the gas mask fitted over her mouth, a steady metallic rasp echoed through the chamber.
Shhaaa... shhaaa...
But no one dared to object.
Karlstein Babylon and Maxien Asteria notwithstanding, she was one of the great heroes and head of the Executive Bureau.
No one in existence dared cross Camilla Vashatiret.
Only Aria, the undisputed titan of domestic affairs, or Maxien, the Cosmic Sword Saint, could have talked her down — and the two of them had long since grown used to the sound and stopped paying it any mind.
The same went for Milo.
"I trust you have all reviewed the circumstances of the matter at hand?"
"..."
As they nodded or watched in silence, not one of their faces showed a trace of bewilderment.
Every single one of them had come fully briefed, as befitted members of His Majesty the Emperor Karlstein's inner circle.
"Is His Majesty's person unharmed?"
At someone's question, the head of the Medical Bureau delivered the answer.
"No notable symptoms have presented. A genuine relief."
"To think he wielded that power and yet..."
"We must not let our guard down all the same. Given that a Single Number is involved, anything might yet occur."
A small stir rippled through the conference room.
But it quickly settled at Aria's next words.
"His Majesty the Emperor's Mental Immutability is functioning without issue. There is no cause for concern."
Everyone clicked their tongues in awe.
"It borders on the miraculous."
"If not for His Majesty, who among us could have withstood it?"
"Precisely so."
"Hoho. His Majesty truly is remarkable."
Admiration and reverence suffused the chamber alike.
And yet, in the midst of it all, a single sharp voice silenced every mouth present.
Shhaaa... shhaaa...
"...Maxien. Aren't you being just a little... incompetent...? Making His Majesty... resort to that power..."
It was Camilla Vashatiret.
The atmosphere had turned so cold it ached in one's lungs that Milo found himself suddenly longing for home.
At least as he saw it, this National Salvation Hero Assembly had long since degenerated from a supreme council into an arena of mutual suspicion — a cutthroat pageant for the position of Empress-in-waiting.
Why on earth was I summoned here?
Sturdy, muscle-bound Milo wanted to weep.