Chapter 45 - Resolution Through Past Sight and the Occurrence of a New Incident
~ On the sea of the Gialpha Star System Fourth Planet (Gialpha Galaxy Empire, Capital Star)
Sangou finished the supply work to the supply transport ships of the fleet under Mechamiyue's command without incident, and then quickly slipped into her captain's shadow, easily returning to the capital star.
Incidentally, on board Sangou, Mechamiyue, who should be the highest authority of the fleet still undergoing supply operations, remained as a passenger.
Casually, Shin had obtained permission to temporarily take Mechamiyue around by making a request to his son, the emperor, cleverly snatching it away.
What he had finally gained through repeated ultra-long-distance teleportation was valuable enough to ignore the temporary mana depletion he suffered several times in the process.
After all, judging things comprehensively, it was obvious that making Mechamiyue cooperate with "Past Sight" was the best course for the current situation.
That said, that aside.
From Sangou's perspective, she was dissatisfied that lately she had been moving around relying only on the captain's Shadow Magic and Teleportation Magic, and that she rarely navigated space herself.
Therefore, she was becoming somewhat frustrated.
(Once the investigation of the incident is over, maybe I'll go on a pirate hunting cruise with the captain, combining it with a vacation.)
Sangou, who had landed on the sea of the capital star, was thinking such things.
"Now, Mechamiyue. About 'Past Sight'—can you only see it yourself? Can you show it to others or not?"
After returning to the capital star and settling down, Shin fired a question at Mechamiyue to finalize the future plan.
"Are you underestimating a goddess's power? Of course I can show it to others."
"Then let's go with that."
Shin brushed off Mechamiyue, who had indignantly said she could do it, as if nothing had happened.
That would hardly be amusing for Mechamiyue.
Therefore, the useless goddess thrust reasons not to do it at Shin.
"But I don't want to. It's not impossible if I also use visual sharing. But it would consume even more power."
"I'll take care of that. Then there shouldn't be any problem."
"Shin, do you understand how much mana would be needed to supplement that? Do you understand that?"
At this time, Mechamiyue herself actually didn't have an accurate grasp of the required amount of mana.
Therefore, there was no way Shin would understand it.
However, the one the goddess questioned was the strongest Hero from a fantasy world with mana cheat powers.
Even from Mechamiyue's perspective as a goddess, Shin was an existence outside common sense.
"There's no way I understand something like that. I won't know unless I try. But my instinct says it's doable. Besides, if it's impossible and danger arises for me, Kichou would step in to stop it."
Shin first trusted his own instinct.
In addition, he also relied on Kichou's intuition.
Kichou needs Shin, and their interests are tightly intertwined.
Because of that, if danger were to arise for Shin, her intuition based on racial traits would certainly not fail to work.
"A Dragon's intuition is indeed reliable. Wait, why is there a Dragon here? That's an existence that shouldn't exist in this world!"
"Now, now. It's actually here, so don't worry about the details."
From Shin's perspective, if something divine denied Kichou's existence and tried to expel her from this world, that would be disastrous.
After all, Kichou was already a member of the Asada family.
In other words, if such a situation occurred, Rouju would definitely snap.
Because of that.
Words tinged with intimidation inevitably flew from Shin, who feared Rouju.
What happened to the useless goddess who directly received such intimidation unguarded?
Combined with her self-preservation instinct, it goes without saying that she changed Kichou's reason for existence into something untouchable.
"R-right. Since she's actually here, I just need to accept that reality. There's no problem at all."
Even as she said that, Mechamiyue's face was twitching.
After all, having once been a proper goddess managing worlds, Mechamiyue realized at a single glance that Kichou was not an existence born in a different world and brought to this world.
Naturally, Mechamiyue also knew well about the conditions for monster spawning, growth, and what was needed for racial evolution.
In a world with not only no mana pools but not even any ambient mana, a dragon could not be born or grow, let alone evolve into a Dragon or Supreme God Dragon.
Accepting such an impossible existence was quite difficult.
Well, Shin didn't care about Mechamiyue's circumstances and pushed the conversation forward.
"When it comes to viewing, the issue is the time it takes."
"You need time equal to the duration of the event you are viewing."
Sangou offered her opinion on the captain's seemingly muttered words.
"Sangou, if it's possible for visual sharing and you see past events, can you process them in the sense of 'understanding accurately' even if it's at several times fast-forward? I have a feeling that you, Sangou, could handle even the maximum fast-forward speed possible for Mechamiyue."
"That's right. It should be fine as long as it's not absolutely necessary to process it in parallel with another high-load task. Well, even if I had to parallel process, I think I could do it without issue. Hehehe."
The fact that Shin was breaking into a cold sweat at Sangou's tone at that moment was a secret that must never be known to anyone, and perhaps a trivial matter.
"Umm, 'maximum fast-forward speed.' If the processing could keep up with that, that would be equivalent to or exceed the information processing of a supreme-grade god. Ah, no, never mind."
Mechamiyue forcefully cut off the words she had started, which should have continued.
The useless goddess had an unnecessarily high crisis detection ability at times like this.
And Sangou's information processing ability was indeed high.
Of course, there was part of this that Sangou herself was not yet aware of at this point: "her status had risen as a result of using Shin's mana as energy for many years, increasing her performance."
Additionally, apart from the influence of that mana, since she was an organic spaceship, Sangou originally had performance improvements through experience.
To add, all the past cases that Shin's fate had drawn to him had become experience and firmly contributed to Sangou's growth.
At any rate, through such circumstances, the supply of mana from Shin to Mechamiyue began.
When it actually started, Mechamiyue would face an unexpected situation, but that too was probably a trivial matter that didn't affect the big picture.
"Eh? No way. If you pour it in all at once like this, I'll break. I'll break!"
The goddess faced a situation where she was about to exceed her limit of acceptance for the enormous amount of mana being poured in.
Panicking at the fact, she couldn't help but scream.
It wasn't that she had no past experience in transferring power between gods.
But the transfer of such a huge amount of mana, poured in by Shin without restraint, was something she had never experienced before.
Therefore, Mechamiyue panicked and ended up using the abilities of Past Sight and Visual Sharing.
To prevent overflowing from being unable to handle it by consuming it heavily.
The goddess, who only had enough ability to be demoted after a failure, had no choice but to do so.
"Captain. A bit of a problem has occurred. It's difficult to identify targets from audio-only footage."
"I see. For now, put aside those parts. Skip them."
"Yes. I'll compensate as much as I can."
Mechamiyue, who could hear such conversations, was terrified by both the content Shin and Sangou had said.
The amount of mana Shin was sending in, and Sangou's information processing ability.
These two were completely inferior even when compared not to her current ability, but to her peak ability.
Of course, she did understand that both of those might come with the condition of being specialized areas.
Still, she had to admit that at least partially, she was surpassed.
With all this and that, in the end, Past Sight was conducted on many related parties under Sangou's direction, and as a result, Mechamiyue was confined by Shin under the guise of "voluntary investigation cooperation" for three days.
At that time, Shin took additional proper procedures via the emperor to secure a schedule with enough leeway so that no problems would arise from the absence of a unit commander in the military.
What he should have was indeed a son in the position of emperor.
However, can using connections to force things in be called "proper procedures"?
There would be plenty of room for debate on that point.
Thus, everything that could be obtained through visual information was analyzed thoroughly by Sangou.
Shin had the results poured into him via Sensory Wave, and with Sangou's judgment added, his understanding of the incident deepened.
"Hey. This. The original large-scale terrorism had planners, collaborators, and perpetrators, and I think there are still some who have escaped for now. But almost all of them are either dead or captured. However, the problem is that the person who instigated the two perpetrators of the emperor's assassination 'does not exist'."
That was the case.
There were two humans who had a natural talent for that field and made criminal planning their hobby.
Those two happened to separately contact an underground organization that was scheming to "someday carry out large-scale terrorism."
The two kindred spirits who met through the underground organization hit it off and successively crafted criminal plans.
Perhaps that was the fate of people who projected themselves onto perfect criminals in mystery novels.
In the first place, these two only took crime as a theme for their mental games.
They did not propose their plans to others or try to have them executed.
But the underground organization subtly mixed in their own original plans among the themes given to them, using them as a source of "methods they wouldn't have thought of themselves" or "ideas."
At first, those two were relaxed when news reports about the crime methods they had thought up began to appear.
"There are people in the world who come up with similar ideas."
"Our ideas were proven right in the real world."
They passed off various similar news with such conversations, but as the number increased, they couldn't just let it slide.
"No matter how I look at it, isn't this situation strange?"
"Yeah."
In the end, when they realized they had been skillfully used by others, the two first became purely angry.
And at the same time.
They awakened to the pleasure of having their plans verified.
From there, they could no longer resist the appeal of creating and executing an unprecedented massacre terror plan in the palace, also serving as revenge against the underground organization that had used them.
As a result, the assassination of the Gialpha Empire Emperor, which could be called the underground organization's "long-cherished wish," was achieved.
That was also "indirectly delivering the fatal blade."
However, from the underground organization's perspective.
Regarding the assassination of the Gialpha Empire Emperor specifically, it was not something they intended.
After all, they had not hoped to be used as a decoy and annihilated in exchange for the emperor's life.
Such facts were revealed by Past Sight and Sangou's analysis.
"In other words, we were searching for a mastermind who never existed in the first place. In normal investigations, this would just be a cold case. But what should we do about it? Even if we just announce that 'the perpetrator is the real culprit and there is no mastermind,' no one will believe it, right?"
"Indeed. We need to think of some appropriate method."
Shin and Sangou continued their conversation calmly.
Even as Mechamiyue was teary-eyed beside them, they kept ignoring her as if to say, "I don't care about that."
"Hey. Can I go home now? Right? Say 'yes'! Please!"
She had been fast-forwarding Past Sight continuously at a speed she couldn't understand herself.
Still, since visual sharing with Sangou was mandatory, she had to keep watching it even if she couldn't understand.
This for three days.
Frankly, what Mechamiyue was made to do was "torture level."
It was only natural that Mechamiyue broke down crying.
Well, through this experience, her abilities as a goddess were strengthened somewhat, and there were aspects of growth.
Therefore, it wasn't that she gained nothing.
But still, for her, the pain far outweighed the gain, so perhaps it's unfortunate that she couldn't say, "It was good."
"Thanks. You really helped me out. I'll send you to the military quarters, so rest well there. The remaining four days that have been applied for will be treated as leave. Good for you. And when that's over, I'll definitely take you to your fleet. Oh, and by the way. If this gets out, you'll probably get requests for cooperation every time a major incident occurs, but well, do your best."
Shin told Mechamiyue that this might not be the end, adding insult to injury.
(Captain. For Mechamiyue to do that, your mana supply is essential. But if that situation occurs, don't you realize you'll be caught up in it too?)
It was essential for ending things peacefully that Sangou did not voice that thought at that time.
Shin sent Mechamiyue, whose face became one of despair in that flow, to the military quarters without any argument.
To the captain who returned using Teleportation Magic, Sangou indicated that she had kept quiet.
"It must be tough for you too, Captain, continuing to supply mana from now on."
With that, Shin belatedly realized that revealing this method would be self-sabotage.
"That's a problem. Hey, Sangou. Please, think of a good way!"
Shin immediately surrendered and ended up making an unreasonable request to Sangou.
"Father. I understand the results. But as you said, if we just announce this, no one will believe it."
Being a private confidential discussion, the conversation proceeded in a casual manner.
However, the content of the discussion was hardly casual, but perhaps a serious atmosphere didn't suit Shin, who was also a incompetent Hero.
Because of that, this might be fine as it is.
"That's right. How to convince those around us? You have a plan, Shin?"
Laura looked at Shin with hopeful eyes.
"I do have one. It's a bit awkward to say it's 'just right,' but there is a palace investigator who died just before the incident, a person with no family left. I feel very sorry, but there's a way to have that person take a bit of the blame."
Have the video data skillfully edited by Sangou based on visual information from Mechamiyue be presented as the results of that investigator's findings.
And make it appear that it was discovered by chance in the investigator's room after their death.
These were the gist of the plan Shin proposed.
Solid evidence had been obtained by an excellent investigator.
But just before that evidence was to be submitted, the person in question died suddenly due to an unfortunate chain of coincidences.
Since the deceased was a solitary person with no family, the discovery was delayed.
Fabricate such a story.
To reiterate, the investigator in question had no surviving family.
Therefore, the pension accompanying the posthumous medal would be incorporated into the budget increase of the War Orphans Pension Fund.
The matter would be concluded in such a way.
Shin felt somewhat pained to use an unrelated dead person in this way.
But the reality was that there was no other good method.
Sangou's custom-made solution was a ruthless means that used whatever was available.
However, Sangou edited only the motive part to look like instigation by the underground organization.
This was because if it were publicized that the motive was simply "proof of concept for a criminal plan," there was concern about a wave of copycats.
Nobunaga and Laura rather took the stance that "it's fine to distort the facts regarding this part. So please, by all means, make it look like instigation."
The truth was buried by power.
Thus, the video compiled by Sangou was widely announced, and the terrorist incident of the emperor's assassination was completely brought to a close.
Of course, it goes without saying that by this point, the remaining fugitive members had all been arrested.
"There's no way there's evidence."
The captured criminals each confidently asserted that.
Even when shown the evidence video data produced by Sangou.
"That's fabricated video."
The criminals who had left no evidence insisted on that.
Moreover, it was actually true that the evidence was falsified.
But no matter how loudly they shouted, they could not resist the death penalty without trial, authorized by Emperor Nobunaga's imperial decree.
This was perhaps the decisive difference between the Free Democratic Alliance and the Gialpha Galaxy Empire.
However, even if a trial were conducted in the Free Democratic Alliance style, the evidence fabricated by Sangou was too complete to be absolutely disproven.
Therefore, except for the timing of the execution, the result might have been the same.
In any case, Shin's work as the supervisor ended with this flow.
("I've seen the past facts. That's irrefutable evidence!" or something. That's an absolute taboo in mystery novels or similar dramas, huh.)
That Shin thought such things afterward was his own secret.
With the investigation of the emperor's assassination incident concluded, Sangou enjoyed a long-distance voyage for the first time in a while in the outer regions of the Gialpha Galaxy.
Of course, the captain Shin and Kichou were also together.
The main purpose of Sangou's voyage was to head from outside the Radaburg Duchy's star system into even more undeveloped space, surveying unknown space.
But there was also the secondary objective of "increasing places where Shin can teleport," making it something of a walk in a sense.
That aside, if Sangou undertook such a long-distance voyage for the first time in a while, she naturally noticed her own changes.
"Captain. Sangou's performance has increased. Maneuverability and cruising speed, among others, but basic performance has improved compared to the time of manufacture. An unexplained increase in performance has occurred due to some influence other than the baseline improvement from experience."
"Ah, that. Mechamiyue said that 'things exposed to Shin's mana for a long time may undergo evolutionary or qualitative changes, or a rise in rank, or something. It wouldn't be strange if that happened from now on.'"
"Now that you mention it, she did say something like that."
"And Sangou is no exception. So, is that it? Is there any negative effect?"
"I see. So that's it. There are no negative effects at the moment. I was simply reporting the performance increase."
"Well, to put it simply, it means the mana is becoming more attuned to Sangou's entire body. In other words, it's like a strengthening magic is being continuously cast on the body naturally. Someday, Sangou might even be able to use magic. Well, if she has the aptitude."
"That will be interesting to see."
Sangou using magic.
Would such a future come?
No one knew.
Still, it was a thought that expanded the imagination.
"Speaking of 'increase,' for me too, since the time at Orze, actually I've been having a bit of trouble controlling it. It feels like the amplification rate of my power suddenly went up. If I put a little force, I get more result than I expected. So I still haven't been able to test my full power. It's somehow scary to release my full power."
"So even the captain has such things happen."
Shin had intended to attack only the floating island where the Demon Lord's castle was, but ended up blowing away a satellite on the line of fire, which was due to such circumstances.
To put it bluntly, he had "failed to control his power during the attack."
Incidentally, though Shin never learned the truth, the Hero's power that was re-bestowed upon him when his body was reconstructed was multiplication rather than addition.
Therefore, it was only natural that he found it difficult to control his vastly increased power, but since Shin himself didn't understand that, he was in his current state.
"It's already been over ten years since we returned, and I still don't feel like I can handle it properly. Of course, it's better not to be in a situation where I have to use my full power. I was originally strong anyway."
"That's true. The captain is ridiculous. You're not within human limits."
"Don't call me 'ridiculous'! It's the power of a Hero! All Heroes are strong! It's not just me!"
(Isn't that definitely wrong? Isn't the captain special, not the Hero?)
Sangou thought that, but she had no evidence to support it.
If forced to say, "Mechamiyue's words during the mana supply could be a clue."
So she didn't particularly point that out.
"Let's leave it at that. Ah, Captain. There's a reaction from space janitors a little far away. They don't seem numerous, but if left alone, they'll increase. May I gather them up?"
"Yeah, do that. I'll leave the extermination to Kichou this time."
"Master, I love you~"
After such a conversation, Kichou used her breath to completely annihilate the space beasts gathered by Sangou.
Kichou's breath was, of course, far inferior in power to Shin's Total Annihilation Slash.
But it possessed enough attack power to easily eliminate space beasts called "space janitors."
Kichou felt that her experience was still insufficient, but that there was "two or more stages of evolution ahead."
The unique Dragon race in this world was hungry for combat opportunities—or rather, situations where she could earn experience.
With no particular new discoveries, Sangou returned to the capital star after completing the voyage through undeveloped space.
However, it goes without saying that on the way back, they relied on the captain's teleportation.
Sangou's frustration was somewhat relieved by the series of long-distance voyages and the fact that she had noticed her own performance improvement.
And that aside, the Hero's fate power that Shin possessed was bound to bring some work.
The next incident was waiting for him right at his home in the imperial capital.
"Shin. Good timing. A work request just came from Nobunaga. According to a military report, 'The Radaburg domain army was attacked by what appears to be an organic spaceship.' The request is to investigate that space and eliminate the threat if possible."
"Sorry, Rouju. I was just in that area until a moment ago, but I didn't encounter anything like that. Well, it's fine. I'll talk to Nobunaga directly later."
"It's okay if you can't deal with everything in advance. You always come back safely. There are many noblemen who are absorbed in work and don't come home, or hang around their mistresses' houses, but you're not like that, Shin. (Though one could say that this house itself doubles as a mistress's house, so I should overlook that.)"
Rouju highly valued her husband's problem-solving abilities.
Although she did mind that women increased around him in the process.
Currently, Shin had four wives: Rouju, Rinju, Ranju, and Silk, and two mistresses: the beastman woman Miu and Corvette, the elder sister of Deli.
However, the only woman Shin had chosen of his own accord was Rouju alone.
But even with Rouju, he hadn't confessed to her.
Therefore, from Rouju's perspective, the "woman he chose of his own accord" might be open to debate.
Everyone other than Rouju was the result of Rouju herself actively moving to attach them, giving Shin a relationship with women that was rare among noble houses.
Well, it was also partly because he was spineless.
Incidentally, Rouju's actions were probably largely influenced by her upbringing: "Elf women rarely bear children, so taking multiple wives to secure an heir is like a lord's duty."
However, her biological father Orega completely ignored that and only married one woman, Rouju's mother Renju.
But overall, the result worked in a positive direction.
Therefore, one could say, "You never know what will turn out to be fortunate in this world."
At any rate, Shin, having obtained the information through Rouju, began to act in response.
In that flow, Sangou made the following statement.
"Captain. Regarding the data related to the organic spaceship that the Radaburg domain army engaged, which was sent via the Imperial Military. Considering the encounter location and combat situation, this is strange."
The existence of an organic spaceship that should have fled from the Gialpha Galaxy would develop into a situation that forced Shin and Sangou's involvement.
That was the moment it was confirmed.
Thus, the Hero Shin succeeded in brilliantly bringing the curtain down on the emperor assassination terror incident that he had no choice but to handle.
At that time, it was discovered that Mechamiyue had powers as a goddess—extraordinary powers by human standards—and that Shin and Sangou each had abilities surpassing a goddess. Those were probably trivial matters.
After all, the investigation of a difficult case that was originally unsuitable for Shin's and Sangou's abilities was easily resolved through the combination of a goddess's cheat ability, Shin's limitless mana, and Sangou's outstanding information processing ability.
Additionally, separate from that, news of a new problem reached Shin.
In the space where they had gone for a walk, also to relieve Sangou's frustration, they discovered "space janitors" that should rarely exist in the Gialpha Galaxy. Did that mean something?
And with the reappearance of an organic spaceship other than Sangou near that space, what would be triggered?
No one knew the future.
The Hero, who had casually bothered Mechamiyue and used "Past Sight," was later made aware by Sangou's pointing out that the future use of that ability would be a dangerous case for himself.
Given that he had the ability to sense that Laura and Nobunaga would certainly notice that if they knew the details of the incident's resolution, Shin ended up telling his son Nobunaga, "Except for cases that really can't be helped, relying on the special abilities of me, Sangou, or Mechamiyue is forbidden!"