Leaving behind those commands, Kudou Riku took Emil deeper into the forest. After watching him depart, Anton turned to Dora.
“Very well, let’s hear about the current situation.”
“Right away, mother.”
Dora complied obediently and detailed everything that had happened during her absence.
“I see,” Anton said, nodding after listening to her whole story. “Meaning you accompanied Majima Takahiro for a while.”
“Yes.”
“I see. So that’s why you questioned our king’s reasoning all of a sudden.”
“Huh?”
“Well, if you’re not aware, then that’s fine too,” Anton said indifferently.
“I don’t really get it... Do you know, mother?” Dora asked curiously. “Why does our king go to such lengths to keep Berta at a distance? I want to know.”
She still wasn’t aware that she’d never so much as harbored such doubts before. She didn’t know she was changing. Anton didn’t bother to point this out either. She didn’t possess such useless functionality or emotions and simply rebuked what could be called her child.
“Know your place, Dora. Surmising your king’s intentions deviates from being his subject. We simply have to obey his commands.” Anton paused there for a moment before adding, “Besides, you wouldn’t understand Berta’s matter even if I told you.”
“Very well...” Dora nodded somewhat reluctantly.
However, strangely enough, Anton didn’t stop the conversation there.
“You’re mistaken on one matter.”
“Mistaken? About what?”
“You called Berta our king’s second servant, remember?”
“Yes. I did.”
Dora couldn’t tell what was wrong about that.
“That one isn’t the second,” Anton said.
Dora was dumbfounded. That only stood to reason.
“Even though she’s B?” Dora asked.
Kudou Riku used a phonetic code from his world when naming his servants.
The doppelqueen Anton.
The scylla Berta.
The dirty sludge Caesar.
The nightmare stalker Dora.
The Mad Beast Emil.
The elemental dragonfly Friedrich.
The tripdrill swarm Gustav.
The headless zombie dragon Heinrich.
The servant of a past savior, the corpse of the carapace wyrm Ida.
Each was given a name in alphabetical order from A to I. Naturally, Dora knew nothing about the details of how Kudou Riku had subordinated his first named servants, Anton and Berta. She believed they’d simply come in that order. There was nothing forcing him to name them that way, but there wasn’t much point to messing with the order either.
“You mean the first were out of order?” Dora asked.
“No,” Anton answered, shaking her head. “I was the first to be given a name. That’s why I’m Anton. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we became his subordinates in that order.”
“Ah...”
Anton nodded upon seeing that Dora was beginning to understand.
“We were only given names after surviving the kudoku poison jar method. Unlike you and Emil, who possessed strength from the very beginning, I was given a name after becoming our king’s servant. In truth, there were countless others dominated by him before me.”
In contrast, in Majima Takahiro’s case, the order he’d given names to his servants was the same as the order he’d acquired them in. Kudou Riku’s servants were different. Almost all of them were normal monsters with nothing special about them. Only those who’d clawed their way to greater heights had been given names. Dora hadn’t realized this because she’d been given a name upon her birth, and all those after her except for Friedrich had followed this pattern too.
“I see. Then I’m mistaken,” Dora said. “Berta was the second to be given a name. Much like you, there were many servants under our king’s command before her.”
Dora sighed in understanding. She frowned a bit because she was ashamed of how ignorant she’d been. She rebuked herself to be more careful so that she could live up to being one of her king’s servants.
That was why she didn’t notice that Anton clicked her tongue at Dora’s sudden understanding. Dora also didn’t notice that this was a hint as to why Kudou Riku kept Berta at a distance.
Anton knew. She knew about their king, and she knew about the pitiful wolf. Berta had expressed her thoughts many times now. For example, she’d spoken to Ayame about it before.
“It’s a memory of failure, back before I had a name. I’m filled with regret every time I recall it. Why couldn’t I be Anton? Why am I Berta? I know regretting it doesn’t mean anything at this point...”
This fact frustrated her greatly. She’d also said something similar to Lily.
“Slime, I heard about it. You saved the one who is falsely similar to my king, didn’t you? If you had chanced upon my king instead, maybe things would’ve been different.
“But you weren’t there during my king’s beginnings. Instead, it was...
“Or maybe...if I weren’t Berta...if I were Anton, then maybe something would’ve changed.”
Once again, there had been regret behind her words. What did it mean to be Anton? What did it mean to not have become Anton?
The monster given the name Anton didn’t speak on this matter any further. She was like a machine, possessing no emotion. She existed only to do what she was meant to. At the very least, that was how she saw herself. Thus, she moved on to what was necessary right now.
“More importantly, I still haven’t heard about one thing,” Anton said. “Our king mentioned that things might get stormy. Why did he say that?”
“Ah, right. Forgive me. I didn’t mention that part,” Dora said, making an awkward look before answering. “That said, I don’t really understand either. It seems our king realized something when he spoke to Kaneki Mikihiko.”
“Meaning?”
“Our king told him that he saw Okazaki Takuma’s corpse.”
Kudou Riku and Majima Takahiro had discovered Okazaki Takuma’s corpse inside the fabricated world. Okazaki Takuma had used his Almighty Vessel to imitate the Fairy Ring’s ability to teleport. He was the perpetrator behind the forced teleportation. However, when he did, the true Fairy Ring, Shimazu Yui, had resisted, causing the teleportation to fail and dealing him a fatal blow.
Weakened by this, Okazaki Takuma had found himself alone in a labyrinth rampant with monsters. It wouldn’t have been strange for him to die in there. That was why, upon encountering the horror that was once Travis right after finding the corpse, Majima Takahiro had naturally assumed that Travis was responsible for the visitor’s death. The course of events had simply led him to believe that.
However, in truth, that had been no more than conjecture. Kudou Riku had seen things differently. As the one who’d inspected Okazaki Takuma’s corpse, there was something only he knew.
“Our king asked Kaneki Mikihiko whether he killed Okazaki Takuma. He then informed me later that Okazaki Takuma had been killed with a sword.”
At the very least, the wound was far too unnatural to have come from Travis. It made more sense if a human had killed Okazaki Takuma rather than a monster. Kaneki Mikihiko had been the prime suspect. After all, he’d done everything in his power to help his best friend and to obstruct Harrison’s forces. That was why Kudou Riku had questioned him.
“So? What was Kaneki Mikihiko’s answer?” Anton asked.
“‘I didn’t kill him,’ or so he said.”
Anton’s spawn, using Juumonji Tatsuya’s form, stood there in contemplation for a short while.
“The only other ones there were the Holy Church forces...but it’s very unlikely they killed Okazaki Takuma. They had no reason to.”
“Yes. I believe that’s the case,” Dora agreed.
“Likewise, it’s unlikely Majima Takahiro’s servants killed him while they were separated. If so, they would’ve been able to link up with Majima Takahiro near Okazaki Takuma’s corpse.”
In that case, one possibility came to mind.
“In short, there’s one answer,” Anton said indifferently. “Someone who isn’t part of the Holy Church or Majima Takahiro’s group was there with their own agenda, and...”