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Chapter 6: Insight
AMID the dysfunction plaguing the Divine Nation of Lenea’s political center, someone was enjoying the dumpster fire much like a third party watching a disaster movie rather than being a part of it.
Sludge Atou was the person in question.
“I don’t have the full picture, haha!”
In the private chambers assigned to her within St. Amritate Cathedral—Lenea’s empire-management headquarters—Atou gave up trying to find an impossible solution to the problems bombarding the country. She decided to just wait until the idea came to her.
Now that she was free from her role as Mynoghra’s second-in-command and had her own room, Atou could enjoy flopping back onto her bed and rolling around like it was nobody’s business.
Ė n̈ũm ӑ . î d
“Ahh,” she moaned. “Lazing around in bed in the middle of the day is the best…”
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
She was enjoying the ultimate laziness possible. She would be in for a full four-hour lecture from Elder Moltar if he ever found her like this in Mynoghra.
Unfortunately, she was affiliated with Lenea—or, more accurately, she was an NPC belonging to a tabletop role-playing game now. So there was no one to give her harsh but honest advice when she shut herself away in her room and took a nice, long breather. Not that anyone here had any right to critique her.
Although the Game Master had fundamentally changed her alignment to his own, Atou was originally a Witch belonging to an enemy empire. Lenea needed to treat her like a ticking timebomb that could go off on them at any moment—not someone they’d want getting involved in running their nation, no matter how shorthanded they were. At the end of the day, Lenea’s leadership found Atou’s natural airheadedness to be too much to handle now that she was freed from the constraints of being affiliated with Mynoghra.
But Atou’s attitude wasn’t the only issue Lenea had.
W̌е̄b̆ nо v̂ ёl_ Ēǹum а
“Still though, there’s a limit to how lazy you can be,” Atou said to herself. “Saints Soalina and Fenne seem kinda reserved and estranged from each other, and Witch Erakino is a pushover. And Commander Fjord, the guy who actually does all the work, has gone kinda AWOL, doing his own thing. And then there’s me, holed up in my room because I find their prickliness disagreeable… Huh? Putting it like that, it seems like the Commanders of this nation are relatively screwed, doesn’t it?”
Lenea’s problems stemmed first and foremost from a lack of unification among its leadership. Standing at the top of the food chain were two inexperienced Saints, with a Witch and a Game Master thrown into the mix as oddballs. The priests governing the cities and villages had begun doing things at their own discretion due to the delay in instructions from the Cathedral. And then there was the mess with the Order of Paladins, resulting in Fjord openly avoiding the Saints.
Lenea was currently like a multi-headed beast, where each head was trying to take the body in a different direction, resulting in it going nowhere.
“Keep this up, and King Takuto will conquer them in no time. Isn’t that right, my king?” Atou asked the peculiar Takuto doll she was lovingly embracing. The lump of cloth and cotton she’d spent all her time crafting into a makeshift doll was far from perfect, but it spoke volumes about how much free time she had to kill.
Dilarang mengopy novel dari Enuma.id.
She wasn’t entirely uninterested in the Paladin Murder Cases. The serial murders were the work of none other than Takuto, after all. They might be adversaries now, but as a woman who lived by a Takuto-first mindset, Atou had no reason not to devote her thoughts to matters where he was concerned. And so, it had become her daily routine to stare at the Takuto doll on her bed and speculate about her former master’s schemes.
Assuming King Takuto is the one causing this series of incidents, he must have a reason for it. Well, I know his primary, most wonderful objective is getting me back. But this is a very roundabout way of doing that.
Е̃ n ù ṁ а
Atou heard someone hastily running through the hallway outside her room. She assumed it was the sound of a clergyman rushing back to work after oversleeping during his short nap. Atou no longer had any concept of work, so his plight was none of her concern.
Is he playing it safe because he’s wary of the GM’s abilities? No, that can’t be it. King Takuto must have established some sort of defense against the GM’s ability since they still can’t identify the culprit behind the murders. If he does have a defense against it, you’d think he’d rescue me right away.
Warm sunlight streamed into the room through the windows. Atou was still evil-aligned, but perhaps her association with the TRPG forces dulled the negative effects of sunlight, as it comfortably lulled her into sleepiness.
What is King Takuto thinking? Or rather, what is he waiting for?
Atou had asked herself that question a thousand times already. The answer didn’t make itself known as time idly passed by in vain. She kept circling back to the thought that he hadn’t established a countermeasure yet, but the Paladins wouldn’t keep dying if he hadn’t. The most straightforward conclusion would be that he was doing this to reduce enemy numbers—but that wasn’t it. Murdering the Paladins was the means to an end—not the end objective in and of itself.
Takuto was trying to do something through these murders.
Baca cerita ini hanya di situs resmi Enuma.id!
No matter how she thought about it, Atou couldn’t figure out what that something was. She felt it was something he couldn’t do if Lenea’s leadership was unified and had proper communication.
Atou held the Takuto doll over her head and stared at it hard. She must’ve squeezed it a little too tightly, because his already deformed face crumpled under her grip.
“C-Could it be…you’re actually a tad angry, King Takuto?”
Atou suddenly had a very bad feeling. Even if she hadn’t willingly pierced Takuto’s heart, her tentacle definitely did the deed. There was no guarantee she hadn’t incurred his wrath by betraying him, whatever the circumstances that led to that heinous act.
Once the thought occurred to Atou, her anxiety swelled, and she felt like she could hear the crushed Takuto doll whisper, “…I hate you, Atou.”
“I couldn’t live with myself if that’s true!” Atou cried at the top of her lungs.
Е num̈ а
She heard someone bang loudly on the wall from the next room over to shut her up, and she clapped a hand to her mouth. She wasn’t reacting that way out of consideration for the person next door—she wanted to dispel the discomforting anxiety eating away at her.
“King Takuto is definitely the type to never forgive those who oppose him. Anyone who underestimates him is doomed. His revenge is always a hundred times worse than what was done to him. He’s like an unstoppable knife that has left the concepts of mercy and forgiveness behind once unleashed! Oooh, please forgive me, my king! What have I done! I’ve gone and failed you!!”
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The malice and murderous intent gleaming in Atou’s crimson eyes belied her words. She would kill Takuto if he appeared in front of her. She held reverence akin to a budding love for him, yet she could still kill someone who meant so much to her. Was that the result of the GM’s brainwashing? Or was it simply her innate nature? Either way, Atou had the right mentality to be labeled a Witch.
“But, my king? What methods are you using to make this possible?” she wondered. She came back to this same question, despite never finding the answer. “No Hero in Eternal Nations has an ability that could help, as far as I know. Even if you had summoned that swindler of a Hero, he shouldn’t be capable of sealing the GM’s abilities and causing the series of mysterious events that are happening now…”
Until now, Atou had been trying to figure out Takuto’s abilities and methods from how he’d been killing the Paladins. But that was of minor importance when it came to the bigger picture. She felt like she was overlooking something fundamental. Without remembering that fundamental factor, she couldn’t put the pieces together.
With the knowledge she had of him right now, Takuto should have never survived the injuries he’d sustained in Lenea’s surprise attack. Some sort of gimmick had to be at work—some sort of game mechanic—but nothing in her memories fit.
Ѐ n̄ u mа
“Hmm…mmm…?” she groaned.
Or at least, there shouldn’t have been anything that fit.
“Wait…? I feel like I’m forgetting something.”
She had this niggling feeling like a splinter stuck in her finger. The answer was almost on the tip of her tongue. And yet she couldn’t recall enough to form a full thought about what that was. It was that kind of strange sensation.
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As someone who’d played hundreds of thousands of rounds with Takuto and who knew almost everything there was to know about Eternal Nations, she couldn’t shake this nagging feeling.
The problem was that this was an improbable premonition to have about Takuto Ira. Under any other circumstances, she would have forgotten all about this disconcerting feeling. But luck was on her side this time.
W̆ eb n ö v́е̃l Еnum̌ á
“Oh, that reminds me, there’s a perfect way to deal with things I’ve forgotten. I’m a member of the TRPG club, so I can roll the dice for answers, too,” Atou realized in a moment of divine insight.
It was impossible to learn anything to do with the Paladin Murders. Lenea had reached a dead end no matter how many times they tried, changed their questions, or how they went about it. It was also impossible to unravel Takuto’s secrets directly. Erakino and the others experimented in every way possible and never got anywhere.
But it should be easy to derive the identity of Atou’s inkling of a suspicion. She had merely forgotten something. How could Takuto possibly prevent her from remembering what she already knew?
She didn’t need to use the GM’s overpowered abilities for something as simple as this. She could just roll the dice herself. If her roll failed, then…she could hunt down Erakino and ask her to put in a request with the Game Master, even if she hated the thought of it. Thinking of it that way, it was an easy task with no downsides.
“It’s a tad inappropriate given the situation, but I feel kind of excited!”
It shouldn’t be that big of a deal, since it was something she couldn’t remember even when she tried. There was something novel and entertaining about using another game’s mechanics, especially when she’d lived her whole life as a 4x game character.
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Everything is fun the first time you try it. Even if nothing comes of it, I’ll still get to experience something new. With that casual feeling, Sludge Atou rolled the dice.
“Um, rolling for Insight! Make me remember what I’m forgetting about King Takuto!”
Atou rolls 1d100=98 for Insight
Outcome: Success. Atou can more easily recall her memories!
With that, fate changed.
“Huh? What a strange ability. I assume it succeeded? Let’s see, hm, I’m starting to remember now. Takuto Ira, who has taken on the name of the King of Ruin…”
Еnŭm̈а̌
Atou nodded along to the memories for a bit, until one suddenly made her jaw drop and her eyes spread wide. The excitement gave way to her face draining color…
“…No! It can’t be!!”
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She finally remembered the bit of information she’d forgotten since coming to this world. That revelation dealt a fatal blow to her.
◇◇◇
“YOU want to…talk?”
“Yes, that’s right, Saint Soalina. To tell you the truth, I have some reservations about this phantom. I would really like to consult you on the matter.”
Е̄n̆ ūm̊ a.іd
In an unknown, deserted corner of St. Amritate Cathedral, Saint Soalina received a peculiar request from High Paladin Fjord. She couldn’t read his intentions behind the highly irregular proposition. And the situation she found herself in was even weirder. It was strange enough that he had found her in this seldom-visited reference room deep below the Cathedral. It was even stranger that he wished to speak completely alone and out of sight. If that wasn’t alarming enough, she felt an overwhelming, mysterious pressure coming from High Paladin Fjord, unlike anything she’d sensed from him before.
Something about him differed greatly from all the other times he’d consulted her and given reports.
“Um, then please let me gather the others—”
“…Don’t.”
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He shot down her hesitant suggestion. It seemed he wanted to consult her about something he didn’t want Fenne or Erakino to know about. Soalina’s suspicions ballooned, but being bewildered was about the only thing she could do right now.
“Please let me confirm this with you alone, Saint Soalina. If my fears are founded, then we must proceed with the utmost caution.”
Е̄nu_m̆а̂ . іd
Fjord had picked the one phrase she couldn’t refute.
What was he about to confide in her? Soalina could only give a reluctant nod in response to his overpowering intensity.
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