Chapter 157

“……Eh-hehhh… Brother… How’d…you like that? Did it turn you…on?” “—Shiro?! …Whoa, don’t tell me, is this alcohol…? We’re both underage…” Shiro suddenly conked out, and Sora scrambled to grab the clearly drunk, red-faced Shiro before she fell. —Seriously, what’s going on? he meant to scream, but amidst the haze in his head, the best he could do was to groan it. …He looked around to see what appeared to be the inside of a tavern. It seemed Shiro had stood on the bar to put her skirt over him. There were two glasses of a frothy liquid that looked for all the world like beer—maybe ale, if we were talking about Dwarves? Dwarves made merry in this scene straight out of some fantasy game with steampunk elements. But all the ruckus and the sights felt terribly far away… A voice answered his foggy head— “Don’t worry, this spirit oil is my own brew. I’d never cut it with such swill as alcohol.” It came up from an unfamiliar old man who sat next to him and downed his own glass. He was a man such as you might see anywhere, yet one you’d never see anywhere. Still, somehow, Sora felt he had seen his eyes before. His suspicion deepened. —Who was this guy? Or rather… “Looks like it’s a little too spiritual for a human like you. But it’s good, ain’t it?” Nothing seemed real, except Shiro asleep on his chest… …What was this……? “So? How ’bout the rest of the story? Aren’cha gonna tell me?” …The rest…of what story…? I mean…what…am I even……doing here……? “The story of your world. Ain’t there more?” …………Oh yeah… That’s right… I was talking about that, I think… Sora felt his doubt washing away with his grip on reality, and somehow it seemed to make sense. He took a swig. “Aaagh… Ahh, where was I…? Did I tell you about how it sucked?” “Ya did. Heard that part.” “Did I tell you about how it was a nightmarish dystopia full of idiots like me?” “Heard that part three times or so.” “Oh, okay. Then that’s the story. That’s all there is to it… Damn, this is good… More, please.” Sora concluded that those two statements summed up that world. The man poured the “spirit oil” or whatever into his empty glass and said— “Ya said, ‘But they’ve got more hope than these guys, at least.’ Where was that goin’?” I went there? Me…? I must really be drunk… This has gotta be booze… A suspicion surfaced in his dozing mind, but— “…Aaah… That’s righhht, they’re all idiots. All they do is fail. If only they’d say they were choosing the wrong paths on purpose at least… It’s a world of rules set by a lost cause…” —once he chugged his glass, it washed right out. Leaving it at that, Sora collapsed on the counter. Still nothing was clear to him except the heat of Shiro on his chest. Aimlessly, he thought… …Yeah. A race of fools, making one mistake after another. That dear old world of mine, built of failure and error and wrongdoing. They made so many mistakes, to the point that they grew to fear making mistakes… …and made the worst mistake of all: To learn that they should never make a mistake again… It was a bad joke. It might be a mistake, they said, so what might not be a mistake, you had to eradicate before you even knew it was a mistake. —What was a mistake…? If we knew that, we wouldn’t make mistakes in the first place…would we? “Oh…but yeah. For that reason…they might still have more hope than you guys,” Sora felt, grinning as he lifted his head from the counter. “…At the very least, I don’t think they’d hole themselves up in a place like this.” These guys had built flying battleships way back in the Great War, along with bombs that could smash entire continents. —And six thousand years later, this was all they’d managed… It’s quite ironic, but there’s such a thing as being too clever for your own good. Just using your sensibility to create exactly what you imagine—see…the thing with that was— you’d never go past your own imagination, you know? “…Didn’t you say…it was a turd of a world?” The man frowned at his smile of hope and conviction. “Mmm? Oh… Yeah, that world and its rules can kiss my ass… But I’m just talking about the world, you know? Can’t you see what’s written herrre?! …Hic…” The spirit-drunkard displayed his shirt, which read, I PPL. “‘I love people’… Don’t it embarrass you to walk around shoutin’ out your love like that?” …It is kinda embarrassing when you point it out, so knock it off. Sora smirked as he answered, then awkwardly blushed and looked away. “Humans never change. They’re just gonna keep making mistakes… They’ll keep messing with the world, keep messing up the rules.” He imagined as much, though he figured it would happen in a manner as ugly as ever. …His old world. Earth—six thousand years later… Past 8000 CE…the eighty-first century… Hmm… That was so far away he couldn’t even imagine it. Well, anyway. That world wasn’t going to get shelved as science fiction by any means. It was either going to be a space opera or a spectacle of the rebuilding of civilization too outrageous to even be described as postapocalyptic. …And…well, knowing humans, the latter seemed more likely. But like the humans here—Immanity—they wouldn’t give up the ghost so easily. So. Sora thought back to those distant humans, and he announced one of their possibilities loudly, with a smile. “They might blow up their home planet, maybe even the solar system—or actually, perhaps even destroy the universe over some silly mistake.” And then they’d grudgingly go looking for new pastures—like Disboard. “And then come here by ‘intermundane travel,’ like—Hi, guys …Ha-ha!! I can see it. ” They’d leave all the races of Disboard far behind. For better or worse, they’d be someplace no one—not even humans themselves—could ever imagine. Riding on his confident laugh…Sora started to drift away……and another laugh…seemed to follow him “Gah-ha-ha-haaaa!! You think big, kid. That’s stark ravin’ mad. I like it.” ……Seeing the man disappearing, hearing him, Sora thought— “It’s like you say. Ya can just run through your world like a spendthrift with a fortune. Smash it, melt it, use it as fuel, process it.” —Who is this…? Correction: What was this…? “I don’t know what your papa was thinking, but it’s the duty of a kid to outdo his parents. You’re gonna smash up space. Fantastic. Ya gotta be a good kid and hand it back reshaped into a form they never imagined.” A man such as you might see anywhere, yet one you’d never see anywhere—and not a man. Still, somehow, Sora felt he had seen his eyes before…and now he remembered where. —The Holy Forge… His eyes were like that divine pillar of fire… No—he was its very existence. And he continued— “So. Whaddaya got to do to bring kids up like that? Won’cha give me a little hint how to raise my kids?” Ha. Ah-ha-ha-haa!! How should I know…? It’s because you’re so well-behaved as to go and ask that that your kids end up like that, isn’t it, “Papa”? And then…since when had it been like this? “……ter… Master?! Please, answer—Please! Master!!” Sora suddenly recognized the plaintive voice calling him and opened his eyes… “Oh, Master, you are safe! I acted quickly to seal off the explosion, but I feared the worst!!” Amber eyes containing crosses and tears broke into a smile of relief. Sora wondered: …Hmm… What just happened? Where am I…? Gradually his consciousness stabilized, but even so he could not escape his confusion. He looked around. It was a terrible spectacle. “…Ohhh, I see… So that’s a near-death experience… That’s not something you see every day…” Shiro likewise woke up and looked around, and they held each other. Finally, they remembered everything. They broke out in a cold sweat—and strained smiles. It was the plant they’d viewed from Fiel’s control room—Was. Apparently, Jibril’s protection had allowed it to merely get blown away without a trace. They’d cheated—that being the very foundation of science. This was the result of one little experiment Sora and Shiro had done. That’s right: “I told you so, I did!! It was such a failure, it was!!” Til had performed the experiment at Sora and Shiro’s behest. The experiment was—to extract the essence from the E-bomb on display and engrave exactly the same seal as used for Lóni Drauvnir’s “big boob essence.” …The base essence was of a different concept. Voices flew at them from all directions telling them it was pointless to apply the same false seal. But they boldly ignored them. You never know until you try, and all that. Sora and Shiro obeyed their instincts, and the result— “Failure? You calling this a failure? This was an epic success!! Ha-haaa!” “…Just as we imagined…the result, was like nothing we imagined… Good…” “If you call this a success, then I’ve done nothing but succeed my whole life, I have!” Sora and Shiro answered with cheery grins, while Til shot back with tears. “That’s right. Til, you’ve just opened the door to the divine realm only two others have ever seen before.” Yes—Sora grinned not at the ruinous result neither Fiel nor Chlammy nor even Jibril, who’d regained her composure, could believe as they gaped, but at the side effect. Someone once said failure is what leads to success… Yeah, whatever. Though a race that never failed would probably never even have heard of that. “All the failures of your life, Til—now, just at this moment, have turned into success.” Success was just a byproduct of wandering. Just a fancy name to dress up failure with. “No one can say what was wrong…and what was a failure.” Yes, no one could say: Was it really wrong? Was it really a failure? Were they really even…fleeing…? “Dwarf is the race that thinks they know. That’s why Veig’s lost.” Sora’s declaration was bold, and then suddenly he added: “—Alll right. We gotta work together to beat Veig, don’t we, dear friends?” Having revealed their chance of victory by empirical proof, Sora turned back to the two with the same words he’d said two days before—with the most sarcastic smile imaginable. “…………Chlammy?” “It’s just as Sora says, Fi. We can’t win by ourselves. Even Sora and Shiro can’t.” Fiel turned her eyes to Chlammy with a bitterly forced smile, but Chlammy smirked back with a trace of enlightenment. They nodded to each other reluctantly. “Why, that’s quite all right… We’ll do all we can to help you win, since you’re our beeest friends. ” “In exchange, if we win, we hope to receive a token of appreciation…as friends, you know?” They quoted claims from two days ago, including Sora’s, to tell him the deal was on. Sora nodded back contentedly. “Okay, Jibril. Why don’t you just jaunt on over to Veig and tell him the schedule?” Jibril greeted Sora’s savage sneer with a bow and vanished. In other words… “—It starts at noon four days from now. The venue, units, and participants…are a secret until ten minutes before. ” …there was no sense in playing a game otherwise than on their turf. —You’ll regret allowing us to take the initiative, Veig… …Meanwhile…at a rest stop far northwest of the capital, beyond the door of a little medicine shop with a sign that read BUSINESS SUSPENDED. Inside, a red-haired girl approached a clerk with a smile from across the counter… Yes. “Come. Lead me to Sora. ” It was Steph, who in less than three days had tracked down the apothecary of Sora and Shiro’s that Chlammy and Fiel hadn’t managed to find in three weeks of searching. Her smiling visage inched closer to Emir-Eins… “…Query: Coordinate identification method unknown… How did you find us?” Even an Ex Machina was intimidated by the something she detected in that insistent grin. So Emir-Eins inquired, but Steph’s smile only deepened as she answered. “Oh, it was simple. I only had to tell on you to that department of government known universally to be the most able of all.” Indeed. That administrative agency where somehow the most competent personnel inevitably pool… Namely: “I told the tax office banknotes were being used by an unlicensed business…and learned the location of this shop the next day. ” And that was that. All there remained afterward was the paperwork and carriage travel time. The girl spoke with a smile that was nothing but mild and genial. Emir-Eins— “Qu-Query: Reason for focus on banknotes unknown.” —involuntarily took a step back and queried over and over in her head, which buzzed with errors and alerts. “Paper currency was printed less than one week after the coup d’état. And in less than two weeks it went into circulation? That’s absurd.” Steph answered immediately and conclusively, still smiling, that you only had to stop and look at it for a second to see. And she expounded: “It was as if they’d been thinking of it since before the coup. Or perhaps it would be better to say: They’d been made to think of it by Sora and Shiro’s massive publicity for the printing press with their glamour shots of Holou. ” At last Emir-Eins had nothing to say, but Steph went on, with a different tack. “However—I know Sora and Shiro have no interest in money.” She wiped the smile off her face but kept her definitive tone of voice, which said that she knew the two better than anyone. Gradually that tone grew more heated— “So, what they’re collecting is banknotes. The banknotes issued by the Commercial Confederation, which Sora and Shiro themselves caused to stage a coup. They must represent a code only readable by Shiro—or, indeed, you! A crib subject to a time limit up until competitors crowd the market—but possible to gather in one place by those who pounce on the currency first!!” Then, her tack changed once more. “That is what is really behind the medicine. And you’ll of course explain to me the details. ” Definitive as ever, she smiled again. Emir-Eins swallowed, feeling as if her mouth was full of saliva, not that an Ex Machina was capable of secreting it. Emir-Eins now realized a little late the weight of what had been entrusted to this person—the entire government—by none other than her master and his sister. She deemed the smiling visage before her as a threat. When it came, in particular, to politics and economics, this woman of unknown name was unmistakably the cream of the crop—the real thing—no… Correction: Logically evident fact. Serious error occurred in unit’s analysis. That is all. Indeed, this very woman had been trusted to manage the unprecedented scheme of a multiracial commonwealth almost single-handedly. She was the backbone of “ ” themselves. There could be no doubt: She was a player…!! Error: Fails sanity test. How is this possible?! Contradicts appearance! Unexpected value for unnamed entity! Steph seemed unconcerned with the struggle of Emir-Eins to resolve the inconsistencies swarming her head with errors. “I’ll say it just once more: Lead me to Sora. ” She was smiling—but her eyes didn’t move. “…Negative acknowledgment: This unit assigned by Master to remain in Master’s absence. Executing duty of wife. Frau of master… Blush.” But Emir-Eins silenced her thoughts warning her of a threat and resisted. First of all, her master’s commands were absolute. She would execute them to completion. And second: “That was not a request, but an order. Will you please not force me to use my last resort?” “Ridicule: Methods of woman of unknown name to force this unit to act: None. Taunt: Go right ahead—” Emir-Eins had announced as much with certainty—but Steph’s continuation revealed to her why her heart had defined this woman as a threat: “I’ll accept that I love Sora! How do you like thaaat?!” “Cancellation/correction/contrition/capitulation: Command acknowledged. Directing to master. Executing now. Deactivating safe mode. Lösen: Shurapokryphen… Entreaty: Please… Don’t.” Emir-Eins had no evidence, but she knew that the heart needed no such thing. Recognizing this declaration as an ultimatum, she surrendered unconditionally. She still didn’t know why—but she felt that this rival, who lied to herself, would be insurmountable the moment she stopped lying. Foreseeing a premonition of the fall of her master, and even his sister, Emir-Eins at last took her formidable rival across space.