Chapter 15 - Why Are You Doing This?
10 min read ·
Katya’s world was always divided into two colors.
Black and white.
Not figuratively. The world she saw through her eyes consisted of those two colors alone.
Hadn’t they said it was part of the process by which the divinity forcibly protecting her entire body disrupted all her senses?
Heat, cold, the movement of air, the feel of clothing, taste, smell...
Perhaps it would have been different if she had never known those things. But she had been robbed of those sensations after offering her first vow, which made it all the harder to bear.
A body that could feel nothing. Of all her ruined senses, only sight and hearing had remained intact. Even now, long afterward, she vividly remembered her despair when the divinity coiled inside her body had begun warping those as well.
Dead things looked black. Living things looked white.
And when she looked at herself in the mirror, she was always gray.
A person alive only because she could not die.
In a world divided into black and white, she alone existed in that state. As though she had been isolated from the world.
It was unbearably tedious. So much so that she no longer cared what happened to anything.
That was how it had been, until a moment ago.
“Holy shit—!”
The Lionhearted’s scream reaches her from one side.
A bullet streaks toward her, trailing white so brilliant it seems to cling to her optic nerves. And the instant it pierces her heart...
‘It hurts.’
That sensation, forgotten for so long, returns as well.
An outside force overwhelms and suppresses the divinity lodged in her body, something no one has ever accomplished before. In that moment, her physical senses return.
For a fleeting instant, that brief moment when her heart is pierced, color returns to the world.
Every shade and hue.
A sight she thought she would never see again in her lifetime unfolds before her eyes.
The black night sky. The moon shedding pale light. People’s expressions. Their faces. The air. The blood spraying around her.
The world as it truly is, not in black and white. The same world everyone else sees.
And standing at its center is a man named Aiden Kellermain, meeting her eyes with a smoking revolver in his hand.
“—”
The image seeped beneath Katya’s eyelids as though flowing, melting, and adhering there. She held it firmly in her sight, as though she could not bear to waste even the time it took to blink.
As the divinity within her vanished, her body lost the strength to stand and crumpled.
But even then.
Still.
And still.
Until she lost consciousness and everything went dark, Katya kept that man in her sight.
As though she would never let him go.
▣
As always, the cleanup was exceedingly efficient. Rounding up the remaining criminals, confiscating the smuggled weapons, and detaining the unconscious Katya had all taken less than a few hours.
Of course, even with such a tidy resolution, there was bound to be at least one person who felt uneasy. In this case, that would be Aiden, glaring at his status window with an utterly grave expression.
It was good that everything had ended without any deaths, that Noel was fine, and that Aiden himself had come through uninjured. Strictly speaking, though, it was entirely fair to say that for him, things were only beginning.
-Skill Info
◆ Dharmic Power: Savior’s Vow
※ Unique – Only this character possesses this skill!
Prohibition: Save the world.
A one-of-a-kind vow offered to Urgan, God of the Supreme Vehicle. Power increases significantly when taking actions related to the vow offered.
- Quest Info
◈ Act 1, < Rift in the Capital >
- You have formed close relationships with important characters in the main scenario.
- You are formally incorporated into the scenario. The scenario will be restructured around you.
... There was no taking it back now.
Aiden let out a hollow laugh. He had ended up doing the very thing he had never intended to do.
Of course, having come this far, he did not particularly regret it.
‘Without the protagonist, everyone dies anyway.’
With that person absent, Aiden alone knew the world’s future and could prepare for it.
More importantly, the people swept up in the future that awaited a world without its protagonist would include Aiden himself and his family.
He had no reason not to do this.
He slapped his cheeks with a sharp smack and took a deep breath. Now that he knew what he had to do, he would naturally have to take a far more active approach.
Above all...
‘Nothing has gone the way it did in the original.’
Starting with the protagonist’s absence. Then there was Katya’s sudden appearance, the unknown mastermind behind the weapons smuggling, and the bad blood between the Emperor and the second imperial prince.
The framework of the original scenario had not strayed far from what he knew, but the details filling it were worlds apart from his memories.
What he needed to do now, then, was bridge the gap between this real world, with its misaligned gears, and the original world he knew. Only then could he prepare for Act 1 to begin in earnest.
He already knew the broad course of events. But he would have to examine each person involved in how that episode unfolded.
♠ Main Quest
◈ Act 1, < Rift in the Capital >
Chapter 1 will begin soon!
Aiden narrowed his eyes at the window that appeared before him.
‘Chapter 1...’
That would be the “ghost knight” disturbance in the capital. An incident deliberately engineered by the organization involved in weapons smuggling to deepen the city’s unrest.
Every night at set intervals, an armored ghost knight would suddenly appear and roam the streets, leaving the citizens terrified night after night. As he recalled, the protagonist’s role was to defeat the ghost knight and restore their peace.
In the original, this was about when the protagonist became involved with Noel, giving the sense that the scenario was finally getting underway.
“...”
Of course, Aiden had skipped that entire process and taken the position of Noel’s sham husband.
“Ah, Aiden.”
“... Thank you for all your hard work.”
Speak of the devil. Noel trudged into the room, looking exhausted.
It took a great deal for her to look like that, but given the scale of the mess she had to clean up, it made sense. He could not imagine how much work she had been buried under, single-handedly dealing with the aftermath of a foreign royal causing that much trouble.
“How is the princess doing?”
“She’s cooperating more quietly than I expected.”
Noel sighed, took off her hat, and swept back her hair.
“Since no one was hurt, we’ve settled on keeping things quiet on both sides for now, rather than needlessly escalating the matter.”
“I see.”
“It’s a relief, certainly. Though I’m not satisfied.”
As the earlier incident with Prince Daniel had demonstrated, the authority of royalty defied imagination.
Frankly, even if both incidents had come close to self-defense, Aiden had harmed two members of the Holy Kingdom’s royal family. It would hardly have been strange for his own safety to come under some sort of threat.
If both sides were willing to quietly bury the matter, that was hardly a bad outcome for him, either.
“The Holy Kingdom says it will dispatch another delegation to discuss the related issues.”
“A delegation?”
“Even setting Princess Katya aside, the question of what to do with you as a wielder of divinity remains unresolved. It will take some time, but they say they’ll follow formal procedures and send a large delegation this time.”
Which meant someone with a fairly high position in the Holy Kingdom would be coming.
First they had sent a princess just to see Aiden, and now someone like that would follow...
“...”
Aiden did some quick calculations in his head. He already had a rough idea of who the Holy Kingdom’s senior figures were. If one of them came with the delegation, what he needed to do was...
“That’s good news.”
“Pardon?”
Aiden ground his teeth as he answered.
“I’m going to collect everything they owe me.”
After all, Holy Kingdom royals had picked fights with him twice in a row. At this point, he would be getting a raw deal if he didn’t squeeze something out of them.
The corner of Noel’s mouth quirked at the sight.
“Are you plotting something?”
“I certainly am.”
“... I rather look forward to it.”
Just let them come. He would make sure they had a very interesting time.
While he turned that resolve over in his mind, Noel continued with a sigh.
“And... Princess Katya did set a condition for staying quiet and refraining from another rampage for now.”
... It really said something about her that she would set conditions just to refrain from running wild. Still, he ought to hear it.
“A condition?”
At Aiden’s bewildered question, Noel scratched her cheek. Evidently she found it disconcerting herself.
“... She requested a meeting with you. She insists that you come see her.”
▣
Aiden scratched his head as he looked ahead.
When he heard that Katya was being held in the detention cells beneath Capital Command, he had imagined a rather grim atmosphere. The sight before him, however, of Katya sprawled across a bed and rolling around, was enough to dispel that expectation at once.
She resembled a lazy cat, without the slightest trace of her earlier ferocity...
“She looks... freer than I expected?”
Given her personality, he would not have been surprised if they had used every means available to restrain her. Yet aside from being confined to the room, she seemed subject to no particular restrictions.
Noel answered him with a wry smile.
“... Actually, things were quite ugly until just now.”
“Were they?”
“She became that docile the moment I told her I would bring you.”
“...”
It was a little surprising that a princess who had rampaged like such a monster could become so docile over a mere meeting with him. But instead of voicing his bewilderment, Aiden simply nodded slowly.
Her reaction was not incomprehensible.
-Quest Info
◈ Life Is Beautiful
- Katya Heinkel Craven desperately wants something from you. Do everything you can to help the target fully experience “sensation”!
★ You have successfully made the target feel “pain.”
★ You handled the incident wisely. Speak with the character to claim your reward.
Ever since receiving the quest, he had expected to become more deeply entangled with her. Surely there was no way to avoid attracting her interest after giving someone who could feel nothing the stimulus of pain.
‘I don’t know what the reward is, though...’
The description had said the way Weaver of Fate applied to her would change. Presumably, that meant his actions would change the nature of his relationship with Katya. In what direction, however, remained unknown.
‘... I just hope it isn’t anything too bad.’
He sincerely meant that.
Of course, having accomplished the goal of letting her feel something, he did not expect it to come back to harm him. But one never knew. Few people were as fickle as Katya. She might harbor some sort of resentment toward him...
“Ah.”
While those thoughts passed through his mind, Katya spotted Aiden just outside her cell and sprang upright.
“You’re here!”
A strange expression crossed Aiden’s face at her exuberant voice. Nor was it just her voice. Her face wore an utterly unclouded smile that seemed to employ every muscle she had.
She looked like a pet reunited with its owner after a long absence.
“...”
What was this?
The scene was as bizarre as watching a giant dinosaur trying to act cute.
“You know, I’ve been giving it a lot of thought!”
Even as Aiden stiffened, Katya continued brightly, utterly unbothered.
“I’m not going back to the Holy Kingdom!”
“...”
Aiden turned a stupefied look on Noel. He was seeking an explanation, but from the way her mouth hung open, this was clearly news to her as well.
“...”
Wait. Setting aside how she intended to manage that, what she planned to do, and whether it was even possible, there was one thing he had to ask first.
“... Why...?”
The instant he managed to squeeze out the question, an answer came, as though she had been waiting for it.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
She meant it literally. Still beaming, Katya continued as though she could not fathom why he would ask something so obvious.
“You’re here. Why would I go back there?”
“...”
As those words sent an inexplicable chill down his spine, a window suddenly appeared before Aiden’s eyes.
-Quest Info
◈ Life Is Beautiful
- Related quest completed.
- The way “Weaver of Fate” applies to “Katya” will change!
- Bond type changes to “Obsession”!
- The target will now pay close attention to your every move. Her relationship with you will take on immense importance in her overall mental state.
- Additional skills are unlocked for copying!
... Uh.
What?