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He remained still and silent, sitting straight on the throne, head tilted slightly upward from the dais the throne was raised on at the end of the room. He stared down at her, his hands grasping the ends of either armrest of the throne firmly.

Golden light, filtered through and—she was guessing—very likely enhanced by the enchanted windows serving as skylights in the otherwise windowless room, poured down in rays that illuminated the pathway to the Emperor and the being himself.

The rest of the room was left in darkness.

Thud, Thud.

Her footsteps were audibly compressed by the lavish purple carpet leading to the throne. The room was otherwise silent, which made her anxious after the activity of the city streets.

There were no guards present, but that was hardly a concern. The Emperor was likely the most ‘Blessed’ elf in the entire Empire, after all. If a mere Cursed could threaten his life, then he had no business being in his seat of power.

She finally stopped where the carpet ended, a few paces away from the dais, and a few more from the throne itself.

“Haa…” she sighed.

The Emperor’s eyes silently watched her. She knew what he was waiting for, and she knew him to be far more patient than her.

‘Damn it…’

She knelt on one knee, her back foot pressed into the soft carpet and her knee into the hard marble floor.

He only spoke after she bowed her head and stared down at the steps below the dais.

“You could have saved him, Eve,” he used her common name.

It wasn’t a question. He had, of course, read the report, and she had never known him to make a statement without knowing it to be true.

“Do you know that the temple originally wanted to kill you? ‘An abomination of nature’, they said.”

Her eyes traced the swirls of dark color in the marble steps.

His firm voice carried on, leaving no room for argument. Not that she would dare.

“I see you lost an arm.”

He left the rest of the words unspoken, though she was able to finish the sentence in her mind.

‘…Lose much more and there won’t be a use for you.’

Naturally, if there wasn’t a use for her, the Emperor’s protection would be withdrawn, and the temple would have her tortured and killed.

She waited in silence.

The Emperor’s right hand lightly clenched and unclenched the end of the armrest.

“The humans call them ‘demons’, the things you faced in that village. Tell me, how strong were they?”

She knew he had read her carefully detailed report, but he wanted to hear the words from her mouth.

“Strong enough to corrupt one of the temple’s ‘Blessed’, Your Majesty.”

Of course, she meant the Paladins, beings given holy power by the ‘System’ they worshipped so much.

“But not strong enough to corrupt you?”

“The thing was visibly surprised before I killed it. I believe they somehow corrupt people through the System.”

The creature’s final surprise had hinted at such, though it was nothing but a theory.

“Hmm…”

His deep voice rumbled through the throne room.

“The seekers have an idea of what to watch for now. That was the last confirmed sighting of them in the Empire.”

‘But…’

She waited for it. There was always a ‘but’.

“…I have a new task for you.”

Her mission was endless, and they would use her until she died.

“There have been reports of these… ‘demons’… in the other realms as well. Though I’m loathed to admit it, the orcs likely have better means of detecting them than we do, and the dwarves have always been solitary enough.”

The Emperor paused, perhaps thinking of how to phrase his next words.

“The humans… need to be watched.”

Her bowed head hid the irrepressible smirk that crept onto her face.

‘He can’t say it, not even in complete privacy…’

The Emperor couldn’t admit that another race could be a threat to them, especially when that race had been around for the shortest amount of time.

“Go to the human realms, sniff out these ‘demons’, and eliminate them if need be.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Thus, her mission was given.

“I don’t need to tell you that you have no association with us.”

‘…Which means I won’t have support if anything happens.’

The humans were notorious for their ‘need’ to level up at all costs, even if it cost the lives of others. More than a few of them had been known to hunt other sentients for ‘easy experience’.

She kept her head bowed, stood, and turned away, only lifting her gaze once he was clear from her sight while she walked back down the soft, plush carpet.

‘It’s not like him to be nervous…’

She kept seeing his hand clenching and unclenching the throne’s armrest in her mind.

“Whew… I think that’s the last of them.”

Velle wiped the sweat off her brow.

The building was usually only comfortably cool, but the mass of bodies going in and out with the constant work of handing out the pouches and logging Awakeners had warmed them up quite a bit.

I sat back on the stool behind the Association counter and thumped my head against the wooden wall as I relaxed.

“Damn… Almost reminds me of the DMV.”

The dwarf finished chasing the last Awakener out and firmly locked the door.

“Gods be damned, it sounds like a cursed place if it’s anything like that was,” he said as he returned to us and started rooting around under the Association desk for something.

Krrr, Ksh, Klunk

Velle let out a short laugh, “You’re not too far off.”

Finally, the dwarf pulled himself back from the desk, triumphantly holding up a bottle and a few wooden cups.

“Aha! I knew I had left it in here somewhere. Fancy a drink?”

He thunked the cups down on the desk and pulled the cork from the bottle.

Wine, by the smell and look of it.

He sloshed the reddish liquid into the cups and started drinking before Velle or I could even reach out to grab one.

“Damn, but you humans can make alcohol.”

I had dried dwarven alcohol before. Unfortunately, unlike what was commonly portrayed in fantasy media on Earth, dwarven alcohol tasted like shit.

I reached for my cup.

“How’s the rest of the planning going?” I asked as I took a sip.

“You’d have to ask Bernard, he’s doing the actual logistics of it,” she said.

“Ah… Yeah. I spoke with him before coming here.”

“Oh! Then you know more than I do at this point!”

The dwarf sloshed more wine into his cup, “Planning is always easier after a few drinks is what I say.”

Seeing the dwarf like that, I wasn’t quite as sure in my replacement for the city lord anymore.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked Velle, lightly putting the cup back onto the desk.

“What, making it so that people don’t starve and freeze to death?”

I shook my head and gestured vaguely with my hand.

“No, I mean… Why are you and Bernard doing all of this? I get that you want to save people and all that, but to what end?”

“…We can save people just to save them, you know.”

She frowned at me over her cup. It looked like she may have misunderstood my intent.

“No, that’s not really how I meant it… I guess I want to know what prompted you into it. Surely you didn’t arrive here after the Merge just wanting to help people, right? From what I’ve gathered, you and Bernard seem fairly new to the whole rescuing thing, but you’re both pretty experienced overall.”

Her eyes softened in understanding and she gave me a short nod.

“Ah… This question.”

She had evidently been expecting a question of the sort.

“You’re right, we didn’t start off like this. Bernard and I met after an… unfortunate dungeon incident.”

Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been worse than how Koise and I met.

“A bunch of Awakeners grouped together to complete a mass dungeon near the capitol and greed took over. Most of them either left the group after getting what they wanted, actively tried to take items from others, and fought over monster kills…”

It wasn’t unheard of. There was a risk to pick-up groups, after all, even in video games back on Earth.

Still, a near-death experience didn’t usually prompt someone into suddenly ‘wanting to save everyone’.

She didn’t continue with the story.

“And…?” I said, reaching for my cup again.

“And we made it to the end of the dungeon and saw something different.”

The dwarf looked between us, squinting in interest at whatever Velle was about to say next.

“Rather than an item or experience, we were shown just how many people are still in stasis, waiting in the dungeons that nobody wants to visit for rescue.”

“Aizen… More than half of humanity is still locked up in stasis. When they wake up, their last memory will have been of the chaos before the Merge.”

‘More than half of humanity…?’

If what she said was true, then that also meant that half of all humans that had made it after the Merge were active.

There wasn’t really an accurate census system in place, but it was pretty easy to guess that there were less than a billion of us in total.

Which raised the question…

‘Where did the billions of other people vanish to?’