kscans

Chapter 40 - Chapter 2: Part One. The Strategy Meeting

"Then, Alfina-sama. Allow me to ask one more time."

A sharp, elderly voice echoed through the vast, circular conference room.

"Yes."

The high status of the room was proven by the throne placed within for royal councils. She now sat in a place she had not even been permitted to enter when she delivered the New Year's prophecy.

The man questioning her was a thin, white-haired man dressed in opulent ceremonial robes. The Kingdom's Prime Minister, Duke Cypress Grynisias. He was the organizer of this strategy meeting.

Incidentally, the throne had remained empty ever since the first meeting, where a certain person had shown up merely as a formality.

"Are you certain that the calamity foretold by the prophetic crystal is one of starvation?"

"Yes, I believe there is no mistake..."

Alfina recalled the tragic vision. The painful sight of emaciated limbs, unnaturally swollen bellies and feet. A child, the light gone from their eyes, rummaging through the grass on the roadside. It was a scene that would make one want to cover their eyes, if it were not being streamed directly into her mind.

"And that it will come from the north?"

"Yes. However, that is merely the direction from which the calamity will arrive. As for the location or the cause..."

"But that is strange. No matter how much we examine the information we have gathered on the farmlands, there are no signs of a poor harvest. The season is already late summer. The ears of wheat are beginning to ripen."

The old man pressed his hand on a thick stack of papers on the desk. As was clear from how easily he had cut Alfina off, she was likely nothing more than a tool to him, a means of conveying the crystal's images.

"The crystal cannot see the calamity directly. Therefore..."

Undeterred by the old man's cold eyes, Alfina tried to fulfill her duty. Still, she could not help but compare this to the time she had tried to decipher the previous prophecy.

Back then, a boy her own age had confronted her about her naive thinking. His words were blunt and his questioning was relentless. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, never broke his polite and courteous demeanor. And yet, why did the two feel so different?

"...Just because it was right once, doesn't mean it will be right again."

The man who spoke was her brother-in-law, or her cousin by blood. His attitude was clearly hostile.

"If it's wrong, then so be it. But preparing countermeasures under the assumption it will be correct is how one should respond to a crisis, is it not?"

A man in a knight's uniform adorned with medals, the second youngest in the room after Alfina, offered his support.

"Both of your Highnesses' opinions are most reasonable. However, this time and the cost of this investigation are not free," the Prime Minister added his own assertion subtly while mediating between the two princes. The agenda had not progressed for more than half an hour.

"Let us conclude today's meeting here. We shall have the Oracle Princess continue to face the crystal. We will focus our efforts on finding any signs of a poor harvest. Howell, continue your investigation of precipitation levels. Rodos, create an inspection plan for the stockpiles in each territory. Pay special attention to any domains that might be misrepresenting their designated reserve quantities."

The Prime Minister was no longer even looking at Alfina as he began giving orders to the bureaucrats. In response to his instructions, eight men and women began to move. Some officials started discussions with the Second and Third Princes. Even to Alfina, who was ignorant of politics, their movements felt coordinated, like a team.

In fact, she knew from previous meetings that the Prime Minister and his subordinates were working diligently. Confirming the stockpiles in preparation for a famine was surely the right measure to take, just in case.

Even so, was this truly enough to deal with an unknown calamity? The anxiety welling inside her grew with each passing day.

It was precisely because she had seen him solve the first disaster as if by magic that she couldn't help but think. With this approach, they probably couldn't have prevented that last disaster.

Aren't they just doing what anyone could do, only more accurately than anyone else? Isn't investigating itself becoming their objective?

Walking toward the door that led back to the sanctuary, she bit her lip.

◇◇

The heavy door closed before a bowing Clau. Alfina was now alone in the hexagonal room. In the cold, stone chamber, the girl instinctively wrapped her arms around her shoulders. In the center, a round altar held the prophetic crystal.

A red, magical energy wavered and rose from the transparent sphere, seeming to taint the very air in the room with its ominous presence. Fortunately, or perhaps not, there was no new reaction. In any case, this prophecy had already formed a clear image.

From the sleeve of her priestess robes, she took out a book. When she opened it, a bookmark with a pressed, reddish-purple flower appeared. She clutched it to her chest, left the table, and sat down on a small bed.

"I wonder what he's doing right now."

Is he still at the academy? An image of Ricardo came to mind, surrounded by girls like Mia and Rilka, who were so much closer to him than she was. She felt pathetic, shut away in a room by herself, facing an ominous crystal.

"Ricardo-kun..."

The whisper escaped her lips. During the first prophecy, when she had no one else to rely on, he alone had extended a hand to her. During the Shoken Festival, Hilda had tried to isolate her by forcing her to manage the courtyard that no one cared about. She had initially given up on the festival she was secretly looking forward to and accepted the role. But before she knew it, she was at the center of the festival, right alongside him.

"No."

Alfina shook her head. She had to fulfill her role. She had to prove the worth of her birth. For her beloved parents. That, in the end, was her own wish.

He had his own objectives. Although she didn't fully understand them, she knew that his dream was a very big one. After the Shoken Festival, when he explained the mechanics of stocks and holding companies, even her aunt, a powerful feudal lord, was left dumbfounded multiple times. She had also seen firsthand a glimpse of how busy his daily life was.

Furthermore, he disliked standing out. At the very least, it was clear he didn't desire the position of a hero who saved the nation in the slightest.

After the first prophecy was resolved, Alfina, worried that he was so poorly rewarded, consulted with Luiza. Encouraged by the words that dancing with the princess at an official function was the highest honor, she had invited him to dance. Looking back on it now, that was probably the wrong move, too.

She felt sorry about it, yet she was bewildered by the part of her that couldn't regret that action.

She had nothing to give him. She didn't even know what he wanted.

"If only you would wish for something, anything."

Alfina whispered to the bookmark. Her fingers, tightening unconsciously, slightly warped the shape of the reddish-purple flower.

◇◇

Two days after the shareholders' meeting. I walked down a deserted hallway and met up with Mia in the empty library, then entered the head librarian's office from the archives.

It's just like a secret base.

It was sad I couldn't call it a sophisticated hideout for adults, but the sheer messiness of the room only added to the atmosphere, so I couldn't complain. How could the head librarian possibly get any work done in here? Oh, right, he wasn't doing any to begin with, so I guess it doesn't matter.

"I've heard nothing about the prophecy."

The hobbyist, also known as the head librarian, said in response to my question. Alfina hadn't come to the academy for the last two days. It seemed she wasn't allowed to leave the sanctuary.

"She's a hero for her part in the last monster flood, isn't she?"

"Perhaps she got on the Prime Minister's bad side at the last festival. ...Just kidding. That duke isn't such an interesting fellow. He's the type who likes to compartmentalize things. If he thinks my specialty is irrelevant, he won't give me the time of day. Other than that, all he cares about is the budget and the budget."

I seemed to recall him complaining once about his research funding being cut.

"Well then, I want to know about the crystal's mechanism. How does it work?"

"The mechanism of the prophetic crystal, eh? I did look into it out of curiosity when I was at the court."

Fulsy stopped tinkering with his antenna.

"But what will you do once you know?"

"Senpai is worried about Alfina-sama."

"No, a power that shows the future is incredible, right? So..."

As a former twenty-first-century human who couldn't quite shake his scientific literacy, the word "prophecy" still felt unsettling. On a related note, I knew plenty of economic forecasts, which were prophecies that were so reliable in the sense that they were always wrong.

"What I found out is that no one is ever likely to understand how the crystal works. A magic tool of that class is a so called artifact. It's questionable whether it was even made by human hands."

"It's that much of a black box? But that ring you used before is also a magic tool, isn't it?"

"Well, that's true. In the sense that you channel magical power into it to get an effect, the ring and the crystal are no different."

Fulsy stroked his own ring. The circuit for channeling magical power, what you might call a magic circle, faintly emerged. I thought of them as a group of switches that could be controlled to some extent by responding to human will, but I lacked the aptitude to use them.

"Alfina... the current Oracle Princess is special in a way, right? For prophecies to be popping up this frequently, is it because of the user's aptitude, or is it an environmental factor? I want to determine that. For example, the crystal shows a sign when a prophecy is coming, right? If the frequency of those signs hasn't changed, but more prophecies are appearing, then it's due to the Oracle Princess's aptitude. If the signs from the crystal themselves are increasing, it means the environment is changing in a way that creates more situations that would produce prophecies, in other words, more calamities."

"You should have said so from the start. I have data on that."

Fulsy opened a cupboard. He handed me a piece of paper with numbers lined up in handwritten boxes.

"These are the records of the signs from fifty years ago up to five years ago. Across four generations of Oracle Princesses, the frequency at which the crystal glows has not changed. Mind you, there's a chance they were all just decorative figures with no aptitude."

"Alfina-sama said that this year, including minor ones, this is the third time," Mia interjected. Is that information she got during their naked bonding...? No. I see. According to the records, the crystal only reacted once a year, if at all. A frequency of three times in half a year was extraordinary.

"So there's a possibility the environment has changed in a way that's increasing calamities... In that case, it's just as I thought."

My eyes turned to the antenna Fulsy was holding.

"Indeed. Considering the hitherto unseen fluctuations in the western magic vein, it's possible a major shift in the flow of magical power is occurring. That lends credence to your hypothesis. Your way of thinking is as peculiar as ever. Instead of dealing with the disaster itself, you try to investigate the cause or the environment that creates it. Normally, people have their hands full just dealing with the disaster after it occurs. At most, they might prepare for what they think might happen."

There was a world where it was possible to manipulate the environment with science and technology. Still, we could only react to large-scale disasters. And sometimes, that environmental manipulation created its own disasters in the form of things like pollution.

"..."

"Hmph. My point is, don't be in such a rush. Let's get back on topic. We've established a measurement station in the west, simple as it may be. The antenna has been improved, and the paper's sensitivity is higher. And our measurements from tree rings, which could only go back thirty years, see here, can now go back eighty."

Fulsy proudly took out a sheet of black paper. The gradations on it were much clearer than the last one. With the corrections from the decay curve Mia helped create, it was apparently possible to read nearly a hundred years of magical fluctuations in places where red-leafed trees grew.

Seeing this clear progress, I calmed down a little. This project was almost too blessed with talented people.

"You're right, I was getting ahead of myself. But with this, couldn't we take measurements in the Empire too?"

"Straight to foreign affairs, are we? It seems your definition of 'getting ahead of myself' is different from mine."

A world where technological innovation was happening by leaps and bounds... No, enough of that.

"If the Empire is having trouble with monster damage, it must mean there's an increase in magical power from the magic veins, right? Doesn't that sound interesting as a long-term sample of the changes, Sage-dono?"

"Hrmm, that is indeed something I'd like to know. But can we obtain a sample?" Fulsy said, his eyes now completely those of a scientist. Mia looked at me with concern. No, I wasn't about to go play lumberjack all the way in the Empire.

"I'll try to sort that out with my connections as a merchant."

I would be able to discuss that very topic at a meeting later.

"Hoh, I'll be looking forward to it."

"Alright, next I have a question about the geography of this continent, including the Kingdom and the Empire."

"Do you even understand the flow of this conversation?"

"It's no use, senpai is..."

As I tried to spread out a map of the continent, the exasperated gazes of my two companions stabbed into me.