Before Oakley was reassigned to the Northeastern Branch…
On the outskirts of the holy land Metasim, Alex waited alone for Joanne Sagamix to arrive.
The reason Alex had joined the Aros Temple Cult was simple: curiosity.
He wanted a front-row seat to watch the world sink into chaos. That was it.
From that one, stupidly shallow desire, he’d stepped into the dark.
At first, he’d been just another grunt at the old castle stronghold.
He never got to fight any of the named Orthodoxy executives, was never chosen to act as Joanne’s marker, and somehow managed to survive without ever staring real death in the face.
He’d hear rumors now and then about Joanne’s exploits and savor them like good wine, going to bed every night with his heart racing, hoping the next day the world would be even more of a mess.
Then, one day, that young man appeared, like a comet blazing across the sky.
One moment, he was a nobody; the next, word spread that he’d been chosen as Joanne’s new marker. After that, it was a whirlwind. He racked up achievement after achievement, shot straight up the ladder as Joanne’s aide and an executive candidate, and rocketed into stardom.
The young man’s name was Oakley.
So, this is what it means to have talent, Alex thought. To just erupt into prominence like that.
The Mobile Fortress Plan he’d proposed to the executives was especially fascinating.
Deeply impressed by Oakley’s feats, Alex had quietly become his secret fan. It was after he’d started watching Oakley that the incident happened.
He saw it.
He saw Oakley and Fuankilo trying to kill each other.
A devout heretic murdering one of the executives. How could a jester of chaos like Alex not be intrigued by such an insane development?
During Fuankilo’s funeral, his eyes never left Oakley. By then, he was completely, hopelessly enthralled.
And now, today, Alex had been summoned by Joanne, who was rumored to be Oakley’s lover.
As he waited at the appointed place, he felt like someone standing by for a secret rendezvous. His chest ached with a strange anticipation, fit to burst.
A few seconds after the set time ticked by, Joanne appeared, clad in a pitch-black robe.
Her snow-white skin stood in stark contrast to the dark cloak, her pale, silky hair framing a face lit by those sensual, gleaming eyes.
She really is beautiful, Alex thought, and not for the first time.
“Yo,” she said. “Kept you waiting?”
“Not at all, Joanne-sama,” Alex replied, grinning. “I’d wait days for you if I had to.”
“Mm.” She brushed aside his passionate words with effortless ease.
The reaction stung, just a little.
Even so, Alex pressed on, trying to find out why she’d called him somewhere so out-of-the-way.
“By the way, Joanne-sama,” he said, tilting his head, “if you just wanted to talk, you didn’t have to drag me outside Metasim, did you? I mean, there’s tons of places where we could be alone, like the torture room or wherever.”
“What I’m about to tell you would be a huge problem if anyone else heard it,” Joanne answered, her voice dropping low. “I decided to tell you because I trust you. So, I’m asking you—keep this to yourself.”
“You… trust me.”
To be trusted by the most dangerous person in the world. What an honor that was. They’d barely even spoken before this, and yet… maybe working so earnestly had finally paid off.
Alex savored the sweetness of that single word like a fine liquor.
While he basked in it, Joanne began to speak, stringing her words together in quiet fragments as she glanced around at the darkness.
Alex had no way of knowing it, but she was on guard against Pawk’s zombies, those puppets he used to watch from the shadows.
“So, Alex,” she said softly. “What do you think of the Aros Temple Cult?”
“Think of it? I… don’t really know what you mean,” he answered, thrown off balance.
“I’ll be blunt. Let’s say the cult succeeds in conquering the country. Do you honestly believe a paradise, one everyone wants, will be born there?”
“Eh…”
A dry, stinging wind seemed to brush over Alex’s scalp. This wasn’t the kind of conversation he’d expected. He had the instinctive feeling that if he heard any more, things would cross a line they couldn’t come back from.
Normally, Alex loved the unexpected. He lived for it, even. But right now, every warning sensor in his body was screaming. A wave of primal dread jolted through him so sharply that he almost clapped his hands over his ears on reflex.
Joanne caught his thin arms before he could.
She held them in place, denying him the luxury of not listening.
Her lips curled into a dazed, almost rapturous smile, as if to say, “You were always meant to be pulled into the Oakley faction.”
Then, right by his ear, she began to whisper dangerous truths, taking her time, savoring every word.
“Aros-sama’s plan is to offer up all the Orthodoxy believers as a living sacrifice, become a perfect god, and create his ideal nation. But even if he does achieve that dream, there’s no way that ideal country lasts very long. The cult’s scattered too many sparks across the world. You’ve noticed it too, haven’t you? Deep down? Aros-sama’s plan is nothing but a fairy tale.”
It was a kind of thinking no cult member could afford to ignore, a heresy among heresies. Any ordinary believer would have completely fallen apart, panicking and scrambling away on hands and knees to report her to another executive.
But Alex was different.
He rejoiced at being allowed a glimpse of this woman’s true heart.
His vision blurred with the strength of the emotion welling up inside him.
Hold on, hold on, so first we had Oakley-senpai shaking things up, and now even Joanne-sama’s showing signs of rebellion? The factions in this cult are getting real interesting, ain’t they?
He’d been taught that traitors had to be eliminated. That was the rule.
Yet Alex’s mind was inexorably drawn toward the dangerous light burning in the girl before him.
“From earlier, you’ve done nothing but criticize Aros-sama,” Alex said, a shaky grin on his face. “What about you, Joanne-sama? What kind of dream do you have?”
“I wish to create my ideal world,” she replied without hesitation.
“Hearing just that, it doesn’t sound all that different from Aros-sama’s dream.”
“It’s a little different.”
Joanne brushed her bangs back with one hand. The words that followed blew Alex’s mind clean open.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said calmly. “There are too many people in this world. So, I’ll thin ’em out. I’ll leave just me, Oakley, and you, and kill every other human being on the planet. Then there won’t be any nations, any friction, any of those annoying concepts. I’ll have my ideal world. A nice and small world.”
Her words were so extreme that Alex was struck speechless. Her screws weren’t just loose; they’d been fired into orbit.
No, this went beyond that. Even for him, that idea was something he’d never once considered. His cheek twitched as he stared at her.
He sat there for a while, silently chewing over what she’d said.
Then Alex slowly, almost reverently, reached a kind of quiet, overwhelming high. Being force-fed such a dangerous ideology, being dragged bodily into this girl’s plan, set every nerve in his body on edge.
He was thrilled. His heart hammered.
His chest hurt with sheer, delirious joy.
This… This is the chaos I was looking for, he thought, his legs so weak with exhilaration he thought he might actually collapse.
His knees buckled, and he landed hard on his rear.
Joanne, wild and feral like a wolf, reached a hand out to him.