Chapter 239
Oh?
Losing the chance to obtain the power I use must have come as quite a shock. Zeber didn't show his face at the laboratory all day. The chimera Harvesters almost never leave the lab, so what I can learn is limited. Or he might simply be busy. No matter how high a seat you hold, you still have to do the bare minimum of work to keep it, don't you?
In the meantime, I decided to look over the chimeras I could observe easily.
First, warmth. There is almost none. To be honest, they're on the same level as insects. The only one with even the faint light and warmth of a child rotting away in the slums is the chimera Harvester they call an assistant. Simple clones are of little help when it comes to gathering warmth.
Then again, now that I've said clones — a Harvester might be useful. Make one a soldier, and it would go out, kill people to its heart's content, and bring the warmth back. I could take the lead and make the soldiers myself. Or I could slip into living things, use the way they grow stronger with me inside them, and harvest warmth from one step behind while pretending not to notice. The blame would fall on whoever started the war.
In that sense, I hope Zeber puts the Harvesters to good use. It would be nice if he saw the profit they could bring and acted on it. But what if this incident cools his attachment, or he decides they're too difficult to control and seals them away as they are?
That's all right too. I'm certain the seal will come undone someday. Just as in the second world, I will be called.
So I stay still, like a part in a machine.
In any world, the beginning is waiting. By my nature, it is difficult for a good person to be the one who summons me. It is always the vicious, the sort who cluster together, who call — especially in the manner of Yasle, or of Daegon. Theirs is a method of summoning you can reach only after throwing away the last scrap of ethics. So rather than needlessly making enemies, I play the victim and watch.
Even if I never act with hostility toward other living things, they hand me warmth on their own. In the first world, Yasle got a taste of the Harvesters and ended up using them as soldiers, never once understanding the danger. I failed to make many Harvesters in the second world, but that was only because I couldn't resist the chance to devour Daegon and Yuanshi Tianzun. I don't regret it all that much. I didn't obtain a great deal of warmth, but I came away with a vast store of knowledge, and it connected me to the third world, didn't it?
The third world is very stable. I've released quite a number of Harvesters, and they aren't multiplying past the point of control. It's fine if they bear children and spread. The children born of Harvesters are under contract with me, but because I am not inside them, no matter how much they increase, the world will not break the way the first one did.
On top of that, the body I use in this world — Belle — has settled rather nicely into a position that receives a certain respect. There is no income, but I can live without working. If I ever need money, I can simply turn a few stones into gold.
And so I was spending a leisurely winter in the building before the Royal Academy when, one day, word reached me that I was to leave the residence.
At last, what had been coming arrived.
"So it's an eviction."
"Yes. That is correct, Lady Belle. From next year, a number of foreign royals will be enrolling at the Royal Academy, and so you will be moving to another place."
Ah. Of course. This building was meant for that use to begin with. I'd heard that was why people dispatched directly by the royal household worked here. Perhaps because I had stayed so still inside all winter, the maids had kept me company, and from them I learned a number of things.
Unexpectedly, every maid was of noble birth, and among those of higher standing there were even daughters of count houses — not heirs to the title, of course, but third and fourth daughters, the sort with little chance of rising, who had taken employment instead. That was why the people working here could make conversation when someone of rank arrived and, if it came to it, judge a situation properly and act. Put plainly, most of them were not the sort you could treat carelessly, even if you showed up in a foul temper. The man I had taken for a mere butler of noble birth was, astonishingly, a royal of a collateral line.
Setting that aside.
"Foreign royals are coming?"
"Yes. Before I explain — Lady Belle, are you aware of the present situation in each of the nations?"
I turned my memories over for a moment. Finding nothing I had seen with my own eyes, I shook my head.
"No."
At that the butler said we ought to speak properly, and brought tea and refreshments. Then he gave me a brief account of the neighboring countries. In one, an anti-machine movement had risen just as it had here, and civilization had declined. In another, the three great companies had been suppressed so harshly that the common people and the government were fighting. He also said that the shock from the great nations alone had thrown the smaller countries into severe economic crisis. The whole world, he told me, had fallen into chaos.
A few memories glittered in that I knew it way, flashing scraps of information about economic panics and the like.
And so, he went on, several royals were taking refuge in this country, which had kept the chaos well in hand. Having said that, he fell silent for a moment. Some of the Harvesters' memories insist that the silence is meaningful. I don't really understand.
The butler said those royals would come to live in the buildings around here, and that this building would be among them. In other words, I was to get out.
"We have prepared several places where you might live. Look them over, and choose whichever pleases you."
A few memories light up at that. They say it looks like offering a choice out of respect, but it is in fact the method used when one means to send someone somewhere lower. I understand. It would be difficult to keep that many residences fit for someone important, wouldn't it? And lodging a foreigner in the royal castle for long could become a burden. A guest who was only staying for the time being has to leave.
"Yes. I understand."
I nodded without protest. The butler waited until I rose, then called someone — the maid who had mostly worked in my room. She took me outside. A carriage was waiting, and in it we truly went from place to place. She showed me six houses, from a fine residential quarter in the capital to a spacious mansion on the city's outskirts. I chose the smallest of them.
The maid wore a strangely pitying look, but I'm fine. Compared with living in the second world, this is a place with a proper civilization. The commercial district is right beside it, too, so coming and going will be easy. I have no money at the moment, but that doesn't mean there's no way to earn any.
"You're truly going to live here?"
"Yes. It isn't far from the Royal Academy, and I can manage all of it myself."
The implication was plain enough: there were better places, so why choose this? But I really am fine. From the collapsed first world I took in a great many memories of people who did this kind of work. Move to another world, and the properties of materials change, so some things have to be adjusted. Cooking, especially. I'm perfectly good at following a memory exactly as it goes, but I don't know how to cook something tasty out of ingredients I don't recognize. All of that depends on the mind, and mine, I'm told, is short on creativity. Had I been gifted that way, I might have gone to another world and done all sorts of things under the banner of showing them the cuisine of the last one. But it's beyond me, so what can I do?
The rest of housekeeping, though, I know well. Not only housework — I can manage, more or less, anything stored in the memories. The one thing I absolutely cannot do is anything that uses mana, and that says it all.
"If you have chosen, Lady Belle, then I have nothing to say."
Meaning she had a great deal she wanted to say, and was swallowing it. She told me the luggage would all be sent by tomorrow. We shook hands and parted. The door clicked shut, and a slightly dim house met my eyes.
In an instant, the house had changed. Now I would be living alone.
Come to think of it, I had always been with someone. And this time I had a house to myself. The feeling is strange.
Still feeling it, I stepped in from the entryway to look the place over in earnest. Inside, the house was kept to a reasonable degree. The interior was neat, and furniture stood farther in. I was glad it wasn't an entirely new house.
While I was at it, I went through the kitchen, the washroom, and the rest. Those rooms were rather empty. But I know where to buy what, and I can simply do as the maids did when they looked after me at the residence. I checked not only the layout of the rooms but the structure of the plumbing as well. While I was about it, I inspected the places hands rarely reach and tore open every empty space to look inside. The house was fairly old, but there were signs it had been repaired. I went over every corner. No insects, no small mammals, no reptiles wandering about.
And fortunately, running the water or using the fire doesn't take mana. More precisely, I don't need to spend my own mana to use the fixtures. The objects themselves might use it. But I can't sense mana at all, so I'll file that part under unknown.
Once I had confirmed every detail, I cleaned the house. Time passed quickly while I worked, and before I knew it the day had darkened.
Around then, several people came in carrying heaps of luggage. Most of them were maids who had worked at the residence — no, people I ought not to call maids anymore.
"Oh — did you tidy all this yourself, Lady Belle?"
"Yes."
For some reason they all went about the house with eyes that inspected every detail. When they said they would look the place over and went into the rooms, the maid who had first brought me here came over with a wry smile.
"I'd heard you could manage, but I didn't know you'd do it this well."
"I have professional knowledge. But what is all this luggage?"
"Ah. We've brought everything you used, Lady Belle."
Things I used. Right — the clothes I wore were all secondhand, so they had to be thrown out or brought along. Looking through them, I found not only clothes but ornaments, and all sorts of cosmetics as well.
Then, all at once, I turned to the people watching me as though they were looking at something uncanny, and asked.
"This is a housewarming, isn't it?"
"It is, isn't it?"
"Huh? A housewarming? What are we eating!"
These people — aren't they strangely livelier than when they lived at the residence? When I allowed that it was, we somehow ended up cooking a meal and eating it here. A small party was held.
Afterward it ended in farewells: they would drop by now and then, and if anything came up I was to come see them anytime.
Where the noisy crowd had been, I sat alone in the quiet house.
Now I can let Belle's body rest, and sort through the memories I gained from the Harvesters.