There are voices that make you feel bad even when you hear them again after a long time.
- Ahem! Ahem! You picked up the phone?
After we’d fought like dogs once, and then lived pretending not to see each other.
It was Director Hedwig of Hiaka Academy.
Her true identity was the System Constellation⧉, Rank 3.
And an existence who grasped strange things happening in this world faster than anyone.
“This is Dante Hiakapo.”
- Oh my, oh my? Who could this be! I went out of my way to give a professor title to a man with no past and no student ID, and now he’s getting cocky and picking a fight with the director. Isn’t this Professor Dante Hiakapo, the part-time lecturer who doesn’t teach, doesn’t do research, and doesn’t even come to work? So nice to see you~
“.......”
Even talking again for the first time in forever, it took just one sentence to make me feel bad.
I think that, too, is a talent.
“......Hedwig. You’ve heard about the incident that broke out in the Empire recently.”
- I don’t know!
“You can’t possibly not know. Doesn’t it shake the very foundation of the System?”
Even as I spoke,
I didn’t expect much.
From what I’d felt for a long time, System⧉’s standards were completely arbitrary.
It was like game operators changing their minds with no internal rules.
And right now, it was a world outside System⧉’s domain.
- Do we even need to know! Our role is already almost over, you know? Ahem ahem!
Listen to that shameless voice.
When they said their role was over, it meant I’d already gone past the final chapter.
Whether I was strong or weak, I killed the Demon King.
So from the moment the game ended, System⧉ wasn’t going to get involved.
But something felt off.
“Hedwig. Don’t do this. I need your help. Like you know, once the 100-series curse started circulating, uncontrollable errors started bursting out. Recently, there were even rumors that the Reaper Assassination Squad Ω evaporated entirely. If you corrected Error Space, you have to correct this too.”
- I told you I don’t know! Isn’t the whole reason you went to End Ocean to gather information because you didn’t even care about me? I’m sulking~
“Do you really not know?”
- I don’t know.
“You don’t even know what kind of curse the 100-series curse is?”
- I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know! You told me before not to interfere, remember? My head went ding. Ding-dong-dang~
“.......”
At the point where it was like a kid throwing a tantrum,
I realized one fact.
‘What.’
This one really doesn’t know.
Even more indifferent than I thought.
‘.......’
Of course, if System⧉ tried to figure it out, it would know quickly.
From what I’d figured out, System Constellation⧉ was like a company.
There were planners, an art team, programmers.
There were even lazy operators who tried to screw me over, and who’d poured “merit” into Kaiser.
And Hedwig was the incarnation of the in-game operations staff among them.
‘If I ask another team, it comes out right away.’
I found the direction of persuasion.
“Hedwig. Listen to me carefully.”
- Perk?
Operators were the ones who had to take responsibility until the game ended.
At minimum, Hedwig had that much sense too.
One sentence was enough.
“The 100-series curse is the curse that makes a Demon King.”
The game still wasn’t over.
- ......Pardon?
.
.
.
Among the stars floating in the night sky that day, a double-hypercube star began moving in the shape of a four-dimensional figure.
「 ⧉ 」
The System Constellation⧉, which had stopped after I cursed it for doing nothing but spewing bugs, started rolling again.
- How can you only say that now!
Hedwig called me again over ten hours after hanging up.
- I detected a few higher-dimensional language errors, but this is hard to fix!
- It’s not that I can’t fix it, but you know our style, right?
Yeah.
I know better than anyone.
That slow, sluggish patch process.
And even then, if it’s an error you can’t touch, you just pretend you don’t know.
Otherwise, why would Eve still have horns on her skull?
- Still, I found the core language clump first, so I’ll proactively fix that part.
I asked what kind of language it was.
- It’s the part where the value the 100-series curse is trying to jump across is overflowing. I’ll correct that~
It was an answer that meant it would cut the chain of inheritance.
Even if we killed the enemy who inherited the 100-series curse this time,
if the 100-series curse jumped again, it would all be meaningless.
Only System⧉ could correct that, and I got the answer that it would.
At least, that was enough.
- Handle the rest yourself. Fight on, you house bastard~!
After that, I hurriedly caught a flight headed for the Empire.
If there was a difference between an in-game “airplane” and an “airship,”
an airship was a ship floated in the sky, so you could stand on the deck.
An airplane was like a real airplane, so it had no deck.
Naturally, the airplane was faster, too.
“Have a nice trip.”
I bowed my head and boarded the airplane, and in that instant, a strange feeling touched my mind.
It was a passive called “spiritual premonition” that I naturally gained after becoming a [Constellation]. It doesn’t work offline, but online, it can read nearby sensations.
Someone was harboring fierce killing intent.
By habit, I turned my eyes toward 【Script】—then realized my mistake.
Because of what Hedwig said yesterday.
- But to fix this bug, I have to fix the errors in 【Script】 too, you know? ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) They’re all rooted in a similar error. Mmhm!
So it really was an error.
But acting like I didn’t know, I asked what kind of error.
- If you can hear an enemy’s thoughts in an assassin game, what are you supposed to do!
So from now on, it said that 【Script】 wouldn’t appear in a state where you were marked as a red dot on the [Mini-map], or where hostility was distinguished and shown as a red dot.
‘......Do I have to find it?’
Terror inside the airplane was a problem, and if I dropped somewhere weird midway, the time and effort to fly there would be too much.
Even an ultramarathoner wants to take a car when going to another city.
So I got up briefly and looked around.
And my eyes met someone’s.
“Yo.”
It was Quan, the Espionage Constellation│ㅅㅇ).
Just in time, the seat next to me was empty, so Quan strolled over and sat down.
“Judging by your complexion, you survived nicely.”
“Heh-heh. It’s been a while, Professor. Have you been well in the meantime?”
“What brings you here. Because of what happened in the Empire?”
“No. That’s something you should handle yourself, Professor.”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
These [Constellations], this one and that one—none of them were cooperative in the face of a world-class threat.
“I came to see you, Professor. I thought I should tell you about the incident from a few days ago.”
The incident from a few days ago?
Then Quan held out a palm.
“Would you like to hold a man’s hand? Heh-heh....”
Up until just now I hadn’t thought anything of it, but suddenly I didn’t want to touch it.
“.......”
Still, I put my hand on it for now.
Then an image projected into my head.
‘This is.’
From the spirit’s viewpoint of Espionage Constellation│ㅅㅇ),
it was the witch of Reaper Constellation Ω.
And scenes unfolded of her talking with a guy called “Legion,” then fighting.
‘.......’
At this point, I was pretty surprised.
Because the power of Reaper Constellation was even stronger than I thought.
‘At that level, that woman could easily kill a full-power Jinksythe by herself.’
Back then, when Cross Constellation† and four Grandmasters killed Bomiteka,
Bomiteka hadn’t properly eaten enough at the time,
and it was a battle that came with significant sacrifices, enough to even drag down Cross Constellation†’s ranking.
But Reaper Constellation Ω looked at least twice as strong as that Cross Constellation†.
“...Quan. How am I supposed to interpret this?”
But during the fight, something strange happened.
With a single word, the Reaper assassins stopped.
“That is Legion’s ability.”
“It doesn’t seem related to Demon King-ization. Is it some coercive force I don’t know?”
“No. It’s different. Demon King-ization is, in the end, nothing more than an incident achieved by borrowing the power of a higher-dimensional language.”
......A higher-dimensional language?
I knew.
‘Code?’
C language, C++ language, Java, and so on.
I’m just a gamer, so I don’t know the details, but I remembered hearing similar mentions a few times.
“If it’s like that....”
Even as we spoke, the footage kept going. The witch fighting unleashed a skill close to an Authority-level skill, and—
Right after that, I frowned.
The target of the skill flipped and poured onto the witch.
“......!!”
This didn’t make sense.
It was a scene shocking enough that even I could be shaken.
‘Did it change the position value of the attack?’
No.
Not that.
‘It changed the target value.’
As evidence, all the splash damage still went into Legion.
But the main hit—
the strike target—
was changed from Legion to the witch.
Since there was no “tell” in that process, the witch couldn’t even react defensively, and she was sliced by her own attack.
“......Shocking, isn’t it?”
Without answering, I kept rewinding that part.
While I did, Quan continued.
“There won’t be no price. From what we estimate, it doesn’t cost currency. There is an empty space on the paper allocated to the 100-series curse. When the language fills that space, it seems to take time to erase.”
“.......”
“In other words, if you use Reflect about four times, there’s no empty space on the paper, so you have to erase it with an eraser.”
“.......”
“From what I’ve grasped, that language is omnipotent. Whether it’s a dragon, Jinksythe, or a Constellation... no one can avoid it within the language’s domain. And even you won’t be an exception.”
“.......”
“You have to find it. No—let me change that a little. Only you can find it. The solution to that problem.”
“Quan.”
“Yes?”
“You’re noisy.”
“Yeees~!!”
That line that popped out at the end—“Will you help me.”
In the end, the witch became Legion’s side.
Maybe because I’d already seen Reflect, my confusion was less than expected.
But the aftershock was much bigger than Reflect.
“Quan. How much paper does that language ‘Will you help me’ take up?”
“About twice as much as Reflect. But once someone becomes your ally, you can record it for about one-tenth the space of Reflect.”
To put it as an analogy, you could cast up to two nets at once and pull two people to your side.
But if you put the caught fish into a fishbowl,
you can remove the net and free up space.
‘This is....... a race against time.’
A sense of crisis surged up hard.
“Do you know who else became Legion’s side?”
“I don’t know that much. It’s not like I can see the whole world, you know? But I did share this fact with the Constellations.”
“You’re motivated for once. You, who watched even when people were dying.”
Then Quan crossed its arms and smiled slowly.
“Because we’re really X’d.”
That was true.
‘It’s like a zombie outbreak.’
If we dragged this out, Legion’s faction would swell like a snowball.
And it would be a faction made only of the strong.
***
“Wait, wait a second!”
Right as the airplane door was about to close, someone burst into the airport lounge with a dozen or so attendants like they were about to smash the place.
“P-Princess? You can’t do this here!”
“It’s my call! Are you not getting out of the way?”
It was Princess Rebecca.
Princess Rebecca, who was famous to the public for always being dignified—and for becoming more and more elegant while living her married life—
was now yelling at the lounge staff like a child.
“Open the door!”
“Pardon?”
“I’m getting on too!”