Karatena Wallmix, who’d appeared out of nowhere, was a far bigger obstacle than I’d ever anticipated. Calling her “small fry” would be a joke. She was more than capable of becoming the biggest stumbling block of my life.
“Eeh, really?” Alex asked.
“Think about it,” I said. “If someone who’s been loudly insisting I killed Fuankilo just happens to die soon after… That’d be suspicious as hell. They’d keep an even closer eye on me.”
“Ah… Yeah, that makes sense,” he admitted.
Most believers who heard about Fuankilo’s “accidental death” had probably thought the same thing: Could someone like her—an executive with that broken resurrection trick of hers, that lawless healing magic—really die so easily in some unlucky accident?
Aros had ruled it an accident, but it was far more natural to assume someone had killed her. And once you followed that line of thinking to its obvious end, one name rose to the surface.
Wouldn’t that mean that Oakley, who’d clashed with Fuankilo while she was alive, killed her himself?
Once that rumor started rolling, it would probably never stop.
No, in light of Whip’s reaction earlier, that kind of rumor had already started forming.
That was exactly why it was so dangerous for Karatena, Fuankilo’s number one disciple, to start shouting, “Oakley is the one who killed her!”
“Starting tomorrow… No, maybe even starting today, the rumor that ‘Oakley Mercury killed Fuankilo Legacy’ is going to spread like wildfire,” I said.
“Eh? H-How come?” Alex blinked.
“Because Karatena failed to expose anything back there,” I replied. “She couldn’t pin the crime on me in front of them. So now she’ll try to crush me using the people around us instead.”
If she’d thrown the accusation out in front of Stella, Joanne, and Whip, then managed to win even one of them over and corner me into confessing guilt, Karatena’s plan would have been a complete success.
But instead, Joanne had fabricated an alibi for me on the spot, and Whip and Stella had both shut the suspicion down.
At this point, the next move Karatena would take was obvious. She’d start spreading rumors embellished with extra drama, all out of spite, stoking doubt among the believers and dragging my reputation into the mud.
Some of them would believe it.
Even if they didn’t, people who thought it was interesting gossip, or those jealous of how I’d climbed the ladder by getting close to Executive Joanne, would help fan the flames.
Either way, the commotion would only grow.
In the end, the top of the organization, Aros himself, would step in and make his ruling: to prove Oakley Mercury’s innocence, he would peer directly into my memories and judge from there.
Unlike Fuankilo’s curse, which judged truth or falsehood based on answers to questions, Aros’s magic could literally look into a person’s memories.
The downside was massive. It risked utterly shattering the target’s mind.
Because of that, it wasn’t used often, but conversely, that meant Aros would use it if he decided it was necessary, and if that happened, it was over.
Without meaning to, I now had an unremovable time bomb wired into my life.
If I killed Karatena, the uproar would explode: “Oakley eliminated the one in his way.”
If I left her alive, she’d keep swimming around, chumming the water with more rumor and suspicion.
Either way, Aros would eventually be dragged into it, and the ending, me standing under his judgment, was already locked in.
I couldn’t use Joanne either.
Our close relationship was practically public knowledge at this point. If she killed Karatena, it would just be, “Joanne was acting under Oakley’s orders,” and the suspicion around me would deepen.
Karatena Wallmix! Damn it, I didn’t see the checkmate seed coming from there!
Threatening her would do nothing.
She was completely chained to the memory of the dead Fuankilo and in no mental state to listen to anything other people said.
Every escape route had been blocked.
This was the moment the pretty little ideal I’d had of pulling strings from the shadows and rising to executive rank shattered to pieces.
Alex watched me press my fingers to my brow and offered a wobbly smile.
“Uh… Are we, like, in serious trouble right now, senpai?” he asked.
Joanne said nothing.
I thought she was just small fry, but she’s moved in the absolute worst way and thrown everything into chaos. And this time, no matter what I do, I can’t evade suspicion. What do I do? What the hell do I do!?
The same chill I’d felt when I first realized I’d completely screwed everything up in Metasim crawled down my spine, mixed with a tremor of emotion that made it impossible to hold back the urge to cry.
I should have seen what Karatena was aiming for much earlier. I should’ve killed her. Back before we ever came to the Northeastern Branch, back when we crossed paths in the holy land Metasim.
But that was impossible. Who the hell could’ve predicted this?
A wave of nausea born from anxiety and impatience crashed through me.
I’d faced no-way-out situations many times before, but this one was on a completely different scale. If I simplified all my previous crises, they were basically all one-on-one fights.
The psychological war through Fuankilo’s curse right after Metasim collapsed.
The spiritual showdown where Joanne and I smashed our souls together.
The fight to the death with Fuankilo herself.
In every case, if I could just deal with that one opponent, I could pull through.
This time was different.
Now, everything surrounding me—the Aros Temple Cult itself, the organization, the mass of people—had become my enemy.
Unlike one-on-one fights, which I could overturn with a few ideas and some tools, a one-against-many battle, especially when group psychology was involved, offered almost no chance for reversal.
I’d lost at the opening move, and by the time I realized it, I was already in a state where there was nothing left to be done.
There was no winning line. I genuinely couldn’t think of a way to turn this around.
At this rate, I’d be swallowed by the big current and slowly strangled to death, like a neck wrapped in silk and squeezed over time.
My whole body flushed hot, and I nearly started clawing at my own head in sheer frustration.
What stopped me was Joanne’s gentle voice.
“It’s okay, Oakley,” she said softly.
“Huh?”
“I’m not going to let you die,” she whispered. “No matter what. I’ll fix this somehow.”
She meant it. Those words were her true feelings. But it was so obvious she was also trying to exploit me at my weakest moment.
Joanne was on my side, but she saw everyone except me as an enemy. She was hiding a fathomless plan in the pit of her stomach, watching and waiting for her chance to destroy the world.
I was going in circles. I had no one to trust.
“Just focus on what you can do right now,” she said.
It sounded like the kind of thin comfort people offered when they wanted to kick the problem down the road, but annoyingly, it was also true. If I wanted to survive the bleak future ahead of me, there was only one thing for me to do: I had to get stronger.
When the time for morning assembly came, Karatena, Whip, and Stella all gathered together.
Karatena made a point of ignoring me, her expression tight with barely concealed irritation.
Whip, on the other hand, took charge of the visitors from the other bases, cheerfully announcing she’d be showing us one of the Northeastern Branch’s unique facilities: the breeding pit, known here as the Bug Farm.
It was located in a section of the cave that was darker than the already dim surroundings, practically the deepest part of the whole complex.
“This is our Bug Farm, where we raise the lovely critters of the Hidden Insect Corps!” Whip declared.
When the door swung open, a lukewarm gust slapped me in the face. A beat later, a stench like something trying to claw its way up my nostrils hit us, and Alex clamped both hands over his nose, loudly gagging.
“Bleh—! That smells awful!”
Flustered, he lost his footing on the slick floor and went down hard, flailing. A moment later, he was rolling in some kind of white slime and screaming, while Joanne, watching from the back, clicked her tongue.
“Noisy idiot,” her face said plainly.
Whip lifted her torch and pointed it farther into the room.
In the circle of light, we saw piles of something, some kind of organic remains and the corpses of parasites, all heaped together in loose mounds.
It looked nothing like a place for “management” or “cultivation.” The sheer awfulness of it made Celestia cover her mouth.
“To call this a breeding facility… This is beyond unacceptable,” she whispered.
“We deliberately make the environment like this,” Whip replied cheerfully. “It helps us raise the strongest individuals!” She extended a feeler from deep in her throat and let out a shrill, metallic cry.