Escape (2)
‘What the...! Why has the Ten Commandments contract activated?! I’m certain there were no errors in management...!’
Wilhelm stared at the holy stigmata of the Ten Commandments engraved over his heart, his face frozen in shock. The stigmata was a kind of enforcement right that only appeared when a contract violation notice was sent. Yet Wilhelm had not once broken any clause of the Ten Commandments in nearly seven years, so this was enough to drive him half-mad.
As Wilhelm desperately racked his brain, trying to recall which provision he might have violated, Plea let out a sigh of relief. Even for her, this contract breach had been a complete gamble—there was no way to know if it would work or not.
A moment later, Wilhelm, still restrained by me, asked,
“Is that really what matters right now?”
“As expected, Director, you’re someone who can be reasoned with!”
I flashed him my brightest smile and tried to butter him up just a little.
“The condition for this negotiation is ‘letting me go outside.’”
“You already know that’s not what I mean, don’t you?”
My calm, deliberate tone carried a hint of reproach. The director clicked his tongue.
“Exactly!”
The director’s answer was firm.
“Even if it means you die?”
“...”
“What if I refuse to sign it?”
The director drew in a sharp, incredulous breath. Just as he said, refusing to sign a contract wasn’t an option for me. Obviously. I was the one supplying the vast majority of the mana this country consumed. Unless Helline’s leaders were complete idiots, there was no way they’d just wave goodbye to such an energy source. They’d use any illegal means necessary to keep me locked up.
“It’s impossible, right?”
“Sure!”
He was the one who asked, so why was he double-checking? Did I really seem that unreliable...?
“Nope.”
Then he’d seen right through me.
The director’s voice was thick with anger, practically growling as if he might burst in here at any second. My legs nearly gave out from the pressure, but I kept a faint smile on my face and tapped my two index fingers together.
“Let’s meet in the middle.”
I kept tapping my index fingers together as I spoke.
“See? You want to keep me from leaving, but I have zero desire to rot away in this boring research institute until wrinkles cover my face, you know?”
This was where it got real. If I couldn’t convince the director here, it was over. He’d die, and I’d have to start from scratch with his successor. I hid my fear behind a smiling mask. The slightest crack would become a fatal fracture.
“Let’s find a compromise. Ultimately, when you say ‘you can’t go outside,’ what you’re really afraid of is me creating variables you can’t control, right?”
That was why he’d kept me locked away in this institute where both the environment and the situation could be perfectly controlled. I’d muttered it casually, so the director didn’t deny it. He simply stayed silent, waiting for me to continue.
“Then we just need to go somewhere without those variables.”
The director sounded intrigued. This underground research institute had been designed to minimize every possible variable I could create by interacting with society, so he probably believed there was no place that could control me more perfectly than here. And he wasn’t wrong. There probably wasn’t any other location as perfectly suited to controlling me as this institute.
But that didn’t mean there were no places outside that could control me. There were plenty of places outside that could restrain me exactly the way the director wanted.
For example...
“Right. How about the Academy?”
The director dismissed my words as nonsense.
He was right. In the future, this Academy would be invaded by demons. Although they would eventually repel the attack, the Academy would be half-destroyed and even some students would die.
But this research institute? Not only was it cut off from the outside, its very existence wasn’t even public knowledge, so the chance of anyone launching an assault was essentially zero. To him, the Academy must have looked less like an impregnable fortress and more like a shabby wooden palisade surrounded by crumbling stone walls.
I could understand the director’s worries. He was probably thinking about what would happen if I wandered around outside and got kidnapped by a foreign spy... In crude terms, keeping me locked up guaranteed steady profits. There was no reason to take even the slightest risk.
But here’s the thing...
Whether it’s this or that, it all comes down to weighing gains and losses in the end.
My existence was basically a pension. Like a goose that lays golden eggs just by being kept in the house. That was why the director couldn’t bear to let his precious goose outside where a cat might snatch it away.
But what if that goose could bring in money in ways other than just laying golden eggs?
“Director, you know the kind of benefits a single superhuman can bring, right?”
An S-class hero was a pillar of the nation simply by existing. Most modern weapons had no effect on them, and the strength of a country’s military was judged by how many S-class heroes it possessed.
“In your eyes, Director... do you really think my only value is that of a mana extractor?”
“I’ll propose it again, Director. Please send me to the Academy.”
“I will become a hero and take the place of the missing Number One.”
Silence fell.
The director was so stunned he couldn’t speak. Then, as the plausibility of the idea sank in, he remained quiet, lost in thought. Up until now, he had only ever seen Plea as a mana generator. The very concept of raising her as a hero had never once crossed his mind. So her statement struck him as remarkably fresh and gave him a chance to reconsider her other potential value.
She’s... not wrong.
Just from what she had shown during training, her specs were already enough to crush mediocre C-class heroes. If she received proper hero training at the Academy and became a fully polished hero? S-class? She would definitely reach it. The same went for a seat among the 5 Greats. If she really took the place of the missing Number One, then with only five years of investment, they could elevate the nation’s power by several levels.
“Then...!”
Plea might have thought his words made sense, but from Wilhelm’s perspective, this was nothing more than a gamble. Would he choose safe, steady profit? Or would he roll the dice in hopes of several times the return? The director had once lost a fortune at a gambling table, and that experience had made him swear off gambling entirely. The same principle applied now. He would not gamble.
It was an extremely rational statement. A perspective that looked at the nation rather than himself. But Plea could see the one thing his broad vision had missed.
“But what about you, Director?”
“No. It’s just that in everything you said, you didn’t include the benefits that you yourself would create.”
“I’ll propose it one more time, Director. In exchange for attending the Academy, I will provide you with the increase in national power that comes from having an S-class hero, as well as every single benefit your continued survival will generate. Do you still think this is a gamble?”
At those words, the director burst into loud laughter. His empty office filled with the sound of it.
Yes, she was right. This was no mere gamble.
“Does this balance the scales of negotiation?”