episode_0195

Now, there is no one to stand in Victoria’s way.

Victoria is crossing the city. I wondered why she was heading towards the city center, but I guess she was probably going to the eastern part of the city.

The address the letter came from was the eastern part of the city. Referring to the memories of the harvest season, the eastern part of the city is where the rich, middle class, common people, and poor people live among the four classes.

High-density buildings are built here and there, and there are commercial buildings on each main road. As the city modernized, buildings were uniformly built, so buildings of almost the same shape are lined up along the roads that stretch out in a jumbled manner.

It looks like they just built the buildings in bulk without any road planning.

However, the direction is stretching in one direction.

The east side, upstream of the river.

They are building cities haphazardly, going up the great river that flows from east to west.

To put it simply, the river flows north of where the current Bern City Hall building stands.

The west is the old city. It is now a slum where the poor and working class live. And the south is where the middle class and above live. Or used to live.

Victoria is from the South.

Beatrice was the Bern City branch manager of a fairly large company, and Maurice was a researcher at a subsidiary of Gun & Lepus Company, a leading corporation, before he left the company.

anyway.

Lastly, the eastern part is a residential area that has grown as people who were drawn to the lights of Bern City came to the city and settled down there to find work.

And Maurice and Beatrice moved over there, you know.

I think Victoria is headed that way.

I share what Victoria sees and feels, but it’s a little frustrating not knowing what she’s thinking.

Meanwhile, it is harvest time in Bern City.

Those in power, in particular, began to grumble as soon as Victoria disappeared from sight.

They say things like, “She was a witch pretending to be a good girl, unlike what the newspapers said,” or “She’s a piece of trash, so even the royal family knows it,” or “Everything the media says is fake.”

He spoke in fits and starts, as if he was desperately trying to shake off the dirt that had stained his own reputation. As if he thought he would be in danger if he couldn’t somehow discredit Victoria.

The square was instantly filled with curses.

That was when.

Gigi …

The sound of steel distorting caused people’s eyes to turn upward.

It’s the sound of a lightning rod that’s high up in a building being torn off by the sea that’s floating upside down in the sky. The sea is quite high up, unlike Nantes where it was lower than the ceiling of a one-story building. But something as tall as a lightning rod still reached the sea.

It’s really funny how the harvester’s heart beats so loudly at that time.

This is a total disaster, especially since Victoria didn’t do this on purpose.

But the fear created in that way didn’t last long. In order to forget the fear, I shouted even stronger words. Just like a dog that is scared barks loudly, the words become increasingly more intense.

The blame has become something to be dealt with somewhere. Instead, the story has changed to make it seem like Victoria is the culprit behind what’s happening now.

It’s amazing how quickly things change when someone with malicious intent instigates them. The harvesters all look at the person. They don’t run fast. They just walk slowly and add a few words.

If the harvester isn’t really focused, he won’t be able to understand what he’s saying. He’s not even talking loudly.

Like a plague, wherever he passes, those who shout his words simply repeat them.

Could it be that there is some kind of brainwashing magic?

no.

No, you can’t use magic in Bern City yet. Some harvesters are standing where the power devices are gathered.

If you listen to their conversation, they say that when the proper magical power increases beyond a certain amount, the machine is adjusted so that only the corrupted magical power remains and it operates until it malfunctions and then stops.

Yes, that’s right.

Among the harvesters, there were several who knew how to operate wind-up machines like Morris.

Half of the harvesters who could teach people or research institutes are already dead, but they are still moving.

Anyone who questioned or pointed out what was wrong with the clockwork machine was assassinated.

The protests escalated and some of Bern City’s residents began to flee the city.

Until now I didn’t know why, but now I know why.

At that time, the Marquis Gaston pushed back the person who was assassinating the intellectuals who were labeled as the leaders of the protest, and tried to push the protesters into the city and kill them all.

If there was a space where magic could not be used and there was no one in that space who could use superpowers, Gaston would have succeeded.

Or even if they could use magic, Gaston’s army was strong. Armed with wind-up equipment, they would have been successfully subdued.

But the harvest season was a factor and it failed. So, when the company threatened to not pay them if things continued like this, they became anxious and set up a command center in Nantes and attacked the city in earnest.

So, people were destroyed one by one in a jar called Bern City.

iced coffee.

okay.

I figured out why the supposed corporate people were making the Purple Twilight Society violent. And I also knew that their plan was already a success.

It’s treason.

There is no fool who does not know what treason means in a monarchy.

Even if Gaston fails, he has no choice but to thoroughly search for survivors and kill them, so that no one from Bern City can set foot in this country.

Whatever the traitor says, it will be buried.

Rather, they will try to leave nothing behind what they say.

That’s clever. But since it’s a fundamental flaw, it’s bound to happen in other cities someday.

I don’t understand why they are blocking it like this.

Or maybe it’s not such a big idea.

When people are intoxicated with power, they do astonishingly foolish things. Just look at the faded memories and you can see that when a former president of a great nation says something out of place, or when the CEO of a huge company goes wild on social media.

Sociality is something that is created to survive against someone who can hit you in the head. If no one can hit you, sociality naturally collapses.

Because it’s not necessary. Thinking takes a lot of calories. In other words, it’s a painful act. And the human body doesn’t like activities that burn a lot of calories. For example, if you don’t exercise even a little bit, your body loses muscle at a rapid rate.

I think so too.

It’s much easier to do whatever you want than to have to discipline yourself by measuring this and that. Not in terms of right or wrong, but in terms of burning calories.

If an ordinary person does that, they will be punished with violence, but if you stand on top of that violence, there is no reason to change. Since there is no threat to life, there is no need to think about it.

Logically it seems strange, but biologically it’s not strange.

Do you know what this means?

It means I was right.

It means that if you give them power, they will kill you without hesitation. Victoria and other harvesters are showing me that.

When making a harvester in the future, I think it would be a good idea to make the harvester someone who is in a more extreme situation to develop superpowers.

Hehehe.

While you’re making plans for the future, the sun is slowly rising in the distance.

As the sun rises, the harvesters move into the building at a fast pace like insects living in a house, because huge boulders or metal shells are flying in from afar.

By the way, there is no gunpowder in the metal shell. It is just solid metal. Even if the magic power is strangely distorted, the laws of physics such as inertia are maintained, so it shoots rocks or metal from a distance.

Although it has less destructive power than a bomb, an object that has been accelerated to an incredible speed using magic has the power to gradually carve away a city.

So after the soldiers came in and were annihilated, we surrounded them from outside the area where they couldn’t use magic power and pounded them with artillery fire.

But today the magic isn’t coming.

Perhaps someone who survived in Nantes, where the Marquis Gaston had his headquarters, contacted me. There was a lot of warmth in Nantes, but it wasn’t a total annihilation.

The lucky Nantes harvester who survived doesn’t know that what happened there was done by humans. If you listen to the story of the survivor through the eyes of the harvester, there is no mention of Victoria’s actions.

In addition to the fact that he had given the order to shoot the protesters, a story spread that the angry sea god had brought down a divine punishment.

The sea came down from the sky.

No one ever says that it’s human work.

At that time, most of the protesters and soldiers were either evaporated or knocked out by the artillery fire, and I don’t know what happened after that.

Or even if you know, you don’t say anything.

“Huh, it’s morning already? How much time is left until school? ”

Polaris’ gaze rose from the bed. And he stretched. It was still dawn, and there was still a lot of time left until school, but why did he wake up so early?

I woke up and woke up too.

“It’s morning.”

“Who? Huh? Bell? What, this isn’t the blanket I was covering myself with… … . Ah.”

He looks around the room and me with a dazed expression, as if he’s completely awake.

“Here is… … .”

“This is Victoria’s house. This is the guest room.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

Judging from the stuff left inside, it doesn’t seem like they’ve completely moved. Most of Victoria’s family’s stuff was still there.

I think Maurice and Beatrice sent the letter after they fled east.

So there is no word on where he is now.

As Victoria checks the addresses and gradually approaches the address where the letter was sent, she can check the other side too.

I got up from my seat and kicked the blanket away. I quickly unrolled it and put it back in its original state. Then I took Polaris, who was still standing in the corner of the room with a dumbfounded expression, and took him to the bathroom.

Although the water wasn’t running, I lightly touched the reality and quickly washed the baby before going down to the kitchen.

Oh, yeah. We didn’t have any ingredients.

“The infrastructure is still alive… … ”

Polaris, who follows me, mutters. It is not alive, but a reality that has been distorted. Unlike the second world, it is distorted more lightly than I thought.

There, when you pour water, it cracks, but here, it doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s the difference between the world, or because it’s a place where water originally comes out, or if my skills have improved.

But if it works out, it’s all right.

So I sat Polaris down at the table, took some warm bread out of the microwave-like heater, and grabbed some fruit juice from the fridge.

At first, I tried to use milk, but it was strangely hard because reality was so hard. I thought it would crack if I used force, so I used fruit juice and it changed. Does that mean that if something is possible, it can be easily changed?

I picked it up and placed it on the table.

“Is that all?”

“I guess.”

“But still bread and juice.”

Polaris is throwing a tantrum while tearing a piece of bread and putting it in his mouth. But then he suddenly stops talking and his face turns pale. Huh? Judging from Polaris’s senses, it doesn’t seem like his throat is particularly sore.

“Yesterday, this place was completely emptied… … . Yeah. That’s right. I’m grateful for this.”

Polaris ate silently, with an expression that seemed to be closing her eyes from something scary. I also ate something light and looked outside through Victoria’s eyes.

Now Victoria is standing in front of the military barricade, wondering how to break through here.

After I finish eating, I should go over there.