In the great hall of the ruined palace, an elderly masked woman sat in one of the chairs in the row on the platform. She was leaning on a sword of ice, using it as a cane. Her knee had been wounded and she’d swung a sword for the first time in a few decades, leaving her exhausted in both mind and body.
No trace of the hero remained in Ice Doll, Federation Government dignitary.
She was just a doll made of ice who hadn’t been able to carry out the mission she’d believed in or become an enemy of the world. The one saving grace was that the end of her biological lifespan wasn’t too far off.
The girl and boy she’d been fighting a moment ago had already gone to find their companions. They were planning to quell Yggdrasil’s rampage and calm the Great Cataclysm without boarding the Ark.
She wanted to sneer at their complete and utter recklessness. Yet for some reason, she had no qualms entrusting the task to them.
“Companions, hm?” Ice Doll murmured.
It occurred to her that the Daydream had mentioned that word before.
It had been seven years ago, when she’d ordered the girl to investigate Danny Bryant—a man who’d been labeled as a “specific threat.” But instead, she’d seen through the government’s plans and saved the Singularity, at which point she’d said that someday she would acquire a companion.
Ice Doll had laughed at the time. She’d thought the girl was being incredibly naive. The heroes who saved the world couldn’t have a family or companions. In her heart, she’d sneered at the inexperience of that hero, who was still a child.
However, now Ice Doll wondered if she had truly been the one who hadn’t understood. That girl may actually be about to reach the ideal world beyond that battered light alongside her companions.
“Did you know? In stories about saving the world, the protagonist is always a kid.”
That was what the Daydream girl had said seven years ago. Maybe Ice Doll had already been defeated back then—not just by that girl, but by Danny Bryant, who she had history with. And ultimately, by the Ace Detective.
Without warning, a figure appeared in the open doorway.
Ice Doll had had a vague premonition that she might see this person here.
“It’s been a long time. Are you here to kill me?”
Fuubi Kase, the former Assassin. Ice Doll had branded her a failure as a hero, so she’d thought that if anyone were going to execute her, it would be this woman. The Enforcer had vanished from the platform at some point. The only blade that could take her life now belonged to the Assassin.
“Hardly,” Fuubi Kase said with a contemptuous snort as she approached. “The Assassin’s mission is to kill innocent people. Don’t tell me you think that people like you, with the Federation Government, are innocent.”
Stopping a certain distance away, the woman took out a cigarette and lit it.
She had to have a personal grudge. It was the Federation Government who’d framed her for treason and kept her in prison for a year. Fuubi Kase had been operating under her own unique sense of justice at the time, and the government had considered her a dangerous element that needed to be kept under strict surveillance.
However, she either believed that desire for revenge was trivial now, or she didn’t think Ice Doll was an opponent worth killing. Exhaling a stream of white smoke, the woman gazed steadily at the icy official’s now-pathetic figure.
“You’re not going to sit there?” Fuubi Kase asked, pointing to the empty throne in the center.
“I’m not qualified to sit in that chair,” Ice Doll replied self-deprecatingly. “Only a true king may sit there.”
“—A king?”
That chair was empty right now. They’d kept it empty. That was all it was.
“If you haven’t come to execute me, then why are you here?” Ice Doll asked after waiting for the other woman to finish her cigarette.
But Fuubi Kase promptly lit another, then took two deep drags on it. “I did some digging into you people,” she finally said. “Most of the Federation Government members are aristocrats referred to as the progenitors of the human race and former Tuners who’ve saved the world in the past. Though the majority of those former Tuners didn’t even leave their names behind.”
Yes, that was the vanished history. The empty records. Tragic heroes whose true names and positions had been taken from them by the leaders of the time and been ordered to fight for centuries.
“I learned about that history just recently. Found out about several positions that had been forgotten.” As Fuubi Kase spoke, she stared directly at the empty chairs and Ice Doll.
“Doberman the Sorcerer, for one. Odin the Sage, for another. And—Ice Doll the Paladin.”
Ah, yes. That had been her position. The duty she’d shouldered and fought for.
For just a few moments, Ice Doll thought back over those four centuries of history.
“How did you find those records?”
“I stole a peek at the database of the world’s wisdom.”
It was simple: That knowledge had never disappeared in the first place. It had been remembered by the appropriate person. Even now, four hundred years later, the tale of those nameless heroes had been passed down.
“So it wasn’t just the Ace Detective.”
The Vampire, who should be extinct, had stood in her way once more. The Assassin, who she’d thrown in jail, was now seeing her in disgrace. And the Information Broker, who she’d thought they were rid of due to natural causes, had given her back her missing memories.
“You heroes four centuries in the future all have it quite rough, too, don’t you?”
Fuubi Kase looked at Ice Doll, her eyes widening slightly.
The icy official had removed her mask. She hadn’t really meant anything by it, only that she’d wanted to see the dazzling light coming in through the door with her own eyes instead of from behind the mask.
“So? There’s something else you really came here to talk about, isn’t there, Fuubi Kase?”
“Yeah. My job is putting you people in jail.”
Stepping up onto the platform, Fuubi Kase took out a pair of handcuffs. She wasn’t here as an assassin but as a police officer. Was there really an organization that could judge the Federation Government, or would they have to create one? Either way, the woman’s first job was cuffing her.
“But what do you think will happen if the Federation Government is dismantled?”
Fuubi Kase went still. Ice Doll hadn’t meant that as a threat; it was simply her duty to ask the question. Her final job as a government official.
“If we disappear, so will the Mizoev Federation. The fictional nation of justice, the absolute government authority, and the Akashic records—this world’s former standard for what is correct… When all of these are gone, what will you do?”
The nation of justice had played the role of a global police force. Once it disappeared, the fires of war that had stayed simmering below the surface would inevitably blaze up. It would be the Tuners’ job to stop them, but as long as they couldn’t use the System, they wouldn’t be able to use the power of their will.
“What sort of world will you make in the midst of a situation like that?”
The redheaded police officer seemed to think for a few moments before answering.
“Since people are born harboring malice, there’s never going to be a world where weapons aren’t necessary. Not unless somebody pulls what Abel did and tries to control the wills of the entire human race. But”—she cuffed the icy official, still sitting in her chair—“someone will show up who’ll shake off that human malice and extend an empty, scarred left hand to somebody who’s sitting there, hugging their knees. I’m betting that sort of person is actually what we refer to as the Singularity.”