Deep Beneath That Sea — 6
The Royal Academy is royal. That is to say, it is a place the state sees fit to invest in.
There is a counter for sending letters right inside the school buildings. It isn't in the dormitories, though, but in the building where classes are held, so we had to go all the way there. At first I thought that strange. When I dug properly through the memories, however, a school has to send word of its children to any number of parents. The volume of mail was bound to be heavy. If anything, it would be stranger for there not to be a post office inside the school itself.
So Victoria and I set out for the main building, where the post office was.
The first floor. To the left, the classrooms where students ordinarily studied. To the right, the administrative office. Step inside that, and there it was: a dedicated counter that served exactly the same purpose as a post office. Victoria didn't know any of this. It wasn't information one came by easily, but fortunately Kanna had known.
When we reached the office and Victoria hesitated without going in, I smacked her on the back. Why get nervous over something like this? Where had the Victoria who used to butcher merfolk gone? I caught her by the hand, led her inside, and made straight for the place where letters could be sent. After that I called her over to write her home address. Looking at what she wrote, I caught the mistake and took hold of her hand. I chided her for forgetting that her parents had moved, then copied down the address written on the envelope of the letter she had received. I handed the letter to a clerk whose eyes were shadowed, as if he hadn't been able to sleep properly in days, and we left.
"They'll actually get it, won't they?"
"If nothing goes wrong, they should."
I used to see their faces now and then through the Harvesters. Judging by that location, they live in a district well removed from the heart of Berne City. At present most of the Harvesters in Berne City are holed up in the city center, holding their ground. Only a very few have left Berne City altogether and moved to other cities nearby. The Bett family might even have gone out beyond Berne City entirely.
Morris and Beatrice aren't Harvesters, so I can't be certain, but I at least have never seen them among the people resisting in the city center. Through the Harvesters, I have every face of those holding out in there memorized. So, barring something truly unusual, the letter ought to reach Victoria's family.
I had also hinted to the king that something out of the ordinary was unfolding in Berne City, and manufactured the incident of Victoria making contact with her parents. I had done everything that could be done. Now I quietly sorted through the situation as it currently stood.
Warmth was coming in only here and there.
The groups of Harvesters sending it fell, broadly, into three.
One was the Harvesters of Berne City. Most of them belonged to the Purple Twilight Society and were trying to raise something on the order of the Yellow Turban Rebellion. It was certain to produce a great many casualties, and I was looking forward to it.
Another was the Harvesters of the Brightshin Slums. More of them had died than I expected.
Where does a slum-dweller, newly grown in strength and stamina, go to find work? The answer is work that spends that strength. Delivering goods, hauling heavy things up and setting them down — that sort of basic labor. And most of it is not done inside a building. It is done outside. And outside, the black thorn-trees had lashed outward in a fury.
Indoors, people collapsed after being pricked by thorns that crept in little by little. Most of those who had been outside were struck by the black thorn-trees charging down the roads. Those who died on the spot in the middle of the street died happily. Most had some part of the body torn away by thorns and sank into sleep in agony while the blood poured out of them. And then they died, slowly.
Even someone who might have lived, had the bleeding been stopped, cannot stop it once consciousness is gone. On top of that, if I called up the senses I can still perceive even while they sleep, there were thorn-trees that burrowed into the people who had fallen on the ground. They might not have taken a wound that could kill them before they fell asleep, and still have been stabbed to death afterward.
For the record, Maleficent paid no mind to people dying that way. She simply laid a curse to put them all to sleep, meaning to hand them to the royal family as hostages and serve up a humiliation. After the Harvesters had struck her dozens of times, she had been thinking that if they wept and wailed and apologized, she would turn into a dragon, breathe fire, and burn the capital down.
The Harvesters who fought her...
There are not many people with supernatural powers in the capital, so even if every one of them dies it is no great loss. That side of things is all the same to me. What I do regret, a little, is that far too many Harvesters died overall.
Even so, it isn't entirely bad. This is still only the moment just after the hardship has passed, and repairing a ruined city will take a great deal of labor, so for the Harvesters who survived in the capital it ought to be a good stretch of time. And if their lives come into bloom, the descendants of the Harvesters will multiply.
Hehe.
Last were the Harvesters of other worlds. These ones move with the power they have newly gained, each trying to overcome the reality they find themselves in. A primitive civilization does not produce especially much warmth, and an advanced one does not produce especially little. Warmth simply comes according to how that person acts. The production of it creaks and grinds, and still, like the dividend on a safe stock, it pays out a little warmth at a time.
From my point of view, at least, this side is running well. I don't imagine the first taste will bring me a great deal. I can be patient.
What I am turning over now is something else. When I give out the knowledge of Daegon and of Yuanshi Tianzun, which of the two will develop the world more splendidly? Giving knowledge does not mean everyone receives it, and no one who receives it puts it to use at once. So I need a great many subjects on whom to test the knowledge I hand over. Like a cleric in a classic game, I expect I will have to keep seeking out the places where the wounded are and making Harvesters of them. There are still plenty of people left to turn into Harvesters.
"Haa. It really is a frightening world."
Perhaps because I don't talk much to begin with, it was only around the time we had walked the whole way toward the main gate that Victoria muttered that and finally opened her mouth. Is it? Maybe so.
"Let's go get some air outside."
"Let's."
I nodded at what she said. By nature she has no objection to being alone, or to work that means sitting still in one place. But the situation she was in now must have felt stifling. Is it normal to worry because you don't know what has become of your parents? Most of the memories say it isn't, so it must not be a given. Then I will take it that Victoria grew up properly loved.
That Victoria wanted to go outside to ease an anxiety about her parents that had only just taken shape. The moment I said I would come along, she broke into a bright smile and stuck herself to my side, then dragged me straight out the main gate. She had not been outside long, though, before she stopped thinking there would be any fun to be had. The places the witch had clawed her way through were still there. Deep gouges remained in the roads and the buildings, and in places the bloodstains had not yet been wiped away. The city felt bleak more than bright, and the people wandering the streets, along with the wreckage left untended, showed that what had happened only a little while ago was real.
"I want to go back."
In the end Victoria said that, and turned her steps in low spirits. Once she was back at the dormitory she drove me off, saying she was tired and wanted to rest. I knew she would be in there alone, sunk in gloom, but there are days like that. I left her and returned to my lodgings.
The next day.
It was still a weekday, but this week the Royal Academy was closed. To make good use of the empty time, I left my lodgings early in the morning. I was not going out to make new Harvesters, the way I usually do. Nor was I heading anywhere near Brightshin. Brightshin itself is a district whose streets grew old and shabby until they aged their way down into a slum, so it sits almost at the center of the capital. The place I was bound for this time lay outside the capital.
I wished I had some faster means of getting there, but all I had was my body, so I ran hard. Fortunately the memory of running in the first world remained, and running itself was not difficult. If anything, without a large chest like the one I had had then, keeping my balance and running were both much easier. Even so, it was only a little faster than an adult walking at a brisk pace. Being short is a problem I cannot help.
So I ran for a long while, and around the time the sun stood at its height, I reached the edge of the capital.
Unexpectedly, there was no city wall. No — I had already passed the traces of the old wall a long while back. Here, too, the city had grown until the ground where people lived long outstripped anything a wall could enclose, and there was no wall left to control who came and went. Countless people passed in and out, and there were just as many police moving among them. Until now, the capitals of the worlds I had been in were mostly wrapped in walls. Feeling, by that comparison, just how old a city this world's capital was, I walked on.
And I arrived where the buildings vanished and nature drew near. The boundary between city and wild. Half-dried earth lay scattered in every direction, as if an underground gas pipe had burst. The trace of the thorn-trees bursting outward. I crossed that pit and came out on the other side.
Beyond this was the wild. Not that no one lived there. People clinging to me would be a nuisance, so I went a little off the paths they traveled, then kept heading west. Mountains showed far off, and beyond them the sea spread out. This country is shaped like a crescent moon, open on the left. Geographically, the capital sits on the upper point, and Berne City on the lower. It is not perfectly symmetrical, of course. The side with the capital has more plains.
Anyway, that is not the important part. To the west there is a mountain range that blocks the sea wind coming in from west to east. Many fearsome monsters live there, which is also why the region has so many old territorial powers. When monsters go ricocheting about like pinballs, these ones do not move. They hunt whatever comes in, right where they stand. Kanna's memories say that leaving them alone is more profitable than mounting a subjugation, and so they have been left alone.
And Maleficent had lived in that place.
Yes.
That's right.
In short, I was going to collect everything that had belonged to the one I hunted. This world is not like the first, where the station I occupied made it impossible to own anything, and it is not like the second, where the age was so poor there was nothing worth owning. Shouldn't I take what can be taken?
The moment I reached the foot of the mountain, the wild grew thick at once. There were far more lights moving here and there, and sharp gazes as well. But that was all right. Crushing reality until a living thing becomes an object is hard to use often, but it is not something I cannot use. I only have to be careful not to break the world. Catch one big one, and the rest will bow their heads on their own.
I don't make plans that detailed anyway. I am not clever enough to, to begin with. Just — this ought to work out. That much. I live as things come, carefully keeping only to the concept I have set for myself, so that a contradiction does not arise somewhere. That this flesh was never a living person is another reason I do not hesitate. There is no need to feel sorry, is there?
Thinking that, I walked up the mountain range where the witch's house stood.