Project Alice-02 (4)
"Sir Vik...tor..."
A hand rested against her slender cheek.
Pitiful tears and lukewarm body heat mixed together, staining my palm.
"Yes, I'm right here."
"Ugh, huu..."
Maybe the tension had finally left her, because Alice swayed and leaned into me.
Her delicate shoulders trembled like they might shatter at any moment.
Afraid she might really break, I carefully pulled the girl into my arms.
"You held on well."
A whispered line.
A few words of relief sat in my voice.
As I patted her sniffling back, I turned over a useless thought.
'......For now, should I call this fortunate?'
Only for a moment, but Alice's body had turned pitch-black.
It was the same sight I had run into during the practical training a few months ago.
The form she had taken when Nightmare consumed her and the [Black Queen] stole control.
It looked like that thing had tried to cross through the window into this world while Alice had lost her reason.
'Did I not discipline it enough back then?'
A power that tried to devour its master whenever it found an opening.
Still, thanks to Alice coming back to her senses in time, we avoided disaster.
We had nearly ended up facing the swarming enemies and a Nightmare legion all at once.
'It's not like I didn't expect a meeting with OZ...'[1]
But I never thought a few words would drive her to the brink of going berserk.
It wasn't even a deep conversation. At most, they had seen each other's faces for a moment.
And yet, Alice had quickly lost her reason.
'That must mean the wound has festered that badly.'
Experiments, torture, Nightmare.
Every moment she had spent there must have stayed with her like trauma.
At the same time, I was proud that she had managed to shake off that Nightmare in the end.
Maybe the trust we had built up had paid off, because the girl recovered her breathing from my warmth alone.
"Haa, haa..."
"It's all right. Breathe slowly."
Her breathing was a little rough, but she was trying not to lose herself.
Those sob-laced breaths felt almost desperate.
I carefully supported the girl's head.
Srrk-.
Meeting those clear, tear-wet blue eyes, I fixed her gaze so it wouldn't wander anywhere else.
As if telling her not to look away, as if telling her to focus only on me, I tied our gazes together in that instant and sank mine into her pupils.
Only I was reflected in those eyes.
""......""
A silence that lasted only a moment.
But the girl's sniffling gradually died down.
I smoothed out her disheveled hair and quietly spoke.
"Miss Alice."
"......"
"I'm here with you."
"......"
"I will never let that ugly face come near you."
"Sir Viktor, I..."
After hearing me, she went blank, and tears welled up softly again.
I stroked Alice a few more times.
"Dame Yarpa."
"Yes, Deputy Commander Garulik."
"I leave Miss Alice in your care."
"As you command."
Ranne quietly approached and supported Alice.
The aura of her rampage had completely settled by then.
I turned around and looked at the one who had caused this whole mess.
<Oh my... To think you got yourself a boyfriend while I wasn't looking.>
"Pleased to meet you, father-in-law."
The Mage of Life, OZ.
It sounded like a holy epithet, but in truth, OZ was a mad psychopath standing at the front line of chimera-related projects.
Even among the Cultists, OZ was a core figure counted among the top three, and a great evil who had brought about the end of the world several times.
'Looks brutal too.'
A face with no eyes, nose, mouth, or ears.
From what I heard, even those grotesque features were OZ's own work.
<What a polite son-in-law I've gained.>
"Thank you for looking favorably on me. I do have one request, though. I would appreciate it if you stopped calling yourself Miss Alice's father. Putting aside how disgusting it is to watch, the person in question seems to suffer quite a lot from it."
<Ah, then that is truly fortunate! I want that child to suffer, you see.>
"You crazy bastard."
<Isn't that how children are? They grow up a little and pretend not to know their parents.>
"That was the least funny joke I've heard lately. If it wasn't a joke, please hang yourself at once."
<Unfortunately, this body won't die from something like hanging.>
OZ smiled grotesquely.
No, could something like that even be called a smile?
It was a horrific expression.
<Ahh... Still, I'm glad. I got to meet Miss Alice like this.>
"Are you planning to imitate paternal affection at this point?"
<No. I only wanted to check. How well she has been living after escaping at the cost of killing her older sister.>
"What a strange thing to say. That was an accident. I doubt Miss Alice did anything that could be called the cause."
<Why wouldn't she have? Every single action she took was a trigger. If she hadn't dared to think of leaving the laboratory, if she hadn't dreamed of the outside, if she hadn't dared to try becoming happy, if she had stopped her sister when her sister suggested running away... then she never would have died.>
"What?"
<At the very least, on the day they left the laboratory. If the one running ahead through the corridor had been the younger sister instead of the older one, she could have died in her place. She provided this many causes, and yet you say she didn't kill her?>
"That logic exceeds imagination."
It was bullshit.
But even after I dismissed it that way, OZ kept talking as if it didn't matter.
The goal wasn't me, but Alice behind me, who would be hearing this conversation.
'Is OZ trying to provoke her?'
Sure enough, Alice had gone pale.
OZ sounded utterly excited as he asked in an exaggerated voice.
<How was it? The outside you stepped into after sacrificing your sister? Were you happy enough? Was it worth killing your sister? I'm so, so, so curious! Hurry and answer me! I'm sure it will become excellent research material.>
"Stop."
<You don't even think about your sister, do you? She was just one experimental subject. You killed that and gained freedom, so don't you think that was a reasonable trade? Weren't you secretly thrilled? If you went back to that time, you'd kill your sister again, wouldn't you?>
"It's useless. Miss Alice won't be shaken."
<Really? I wonder if that's true?>
Fuck.
I spoke like I was composed, but I couldn't let this continue.
Alice was definitely carrying guilt about her older sister.
OZ had dug into that gap well.
'Even if this bastard deserves to be chewed to death, I guess that still makes OZ her father for now. Knows the daughter's weak points frighteningly well.'
I changed the subject.
Alice was vulnerable to trauma.
She would collapse quickly under lines like that.
It seemed better to give her a clear target instead.
So that the girl wouldn't sink into self-blame, I exposed the truth about the incident that day.
"And... shall we stop with the bullshit now?"
<Hm? What do you mean?>
Something I had noticed during the conversation.
I glared at OZ with cold, unimpressed eyes.
"You were there, weren't you?"
<There?>
"I mean the day Miss Alice's older sister died."
<What a strange misunderstanding. I wasn't at the laboratory that day.>
"Then where were you?"
<I had briefly gone away on a business trip.>
"Lie."
<......>
Maybe because my certainty was so firm.
OZ, who had been about to play dumb, was stopped by my point.
'You can't fool me.'
The explanation was strangely detailed.
OZ had definitely said, 'If the one running ahead had been the younger sister instead of the older one, she could have died in her place.'
How did OZ know that?
Who ran first, when they escaped, details like that were never shown in the original story.
It made no sense for OZ to know something even I didn't know while claiming to have been away from the scene that day.
"You were watching, weren't you? While pretending to be away from the laboratory."
<Oh my, you have quite a sharp mind.>
"You were there."
<Of course. I watched it clearly with my own two eyes?>
"I wonder if you only watched. Could it be that everything that happened that day was actually a play you arranged?"
<......>
It was a simple deduction.
If OZ had been at the scene, why let the laboratory collapse?
Why let the projects escape, and why leave one of the Alices to die?
Sometimes, things that didn't make sense revealed the answer if you flipped them over.
"It was you, wasn't it? The person who leaked information to the Church."
The person who quietly leaked information and made the branch get attacked.
The person who made the Alices in the laboratory escape.
The person who tampered with the corridor security system and killed Alice's older sister while making it look like an accident.
"It was all you."
<......>
All of it was a setup OZ had arranged.
OZ must have known everything, from Alice being rescued to her heading to the academy.
<Oh-ho.>
Which meant everything had been in OZ's palm.
After hearing me, OZ seemed genuinely impressed.
<To think I made only a few verbal slips, and you used them as clues to strip away the whole truth... You have impressive insight. I want to recruit you as my laboratory assistant right this instant. With your talent, the spectrum of life could become even richer.>
"Why did you set all this up?"
<That, too, was part of the investigation. I needed to drive the experimental subject into as much despair as possible. I simply judged that only by pushing her to the edge of the cliff would the window inside her grow beautifully.>
"......"
So OZ was saying it had been necessary.
The answer, free of hesitation, even carried pride.
<Miss Alice was material destined for greatness.>
<That was why... I planted her in the academy ahead of time.>
<I knew that if left alone, she would be consumed by Nightmare and explode spectacularly within a few years.>
OZ's calculation was accurate.
In the original story, around next year, Alice, unable to endure the corruption, would be swallowed by the [Black Queen].
The Nightmares born from her would run rampant, and undying dreams would turn the world into hell.
<That is it.>
Grandia Academy.
The deepest part of the Empire.
A place where core promising talents had gathered.
Hiding a disaster in a place like that, so the awakened weapon would massacre everything around it.
<That is the true intent of Project Alice.>
Project Alice-02.
The project had not failed.
It had simply flowed according to the script written from the start.
Alice and the teammates listening to the conversation with her all froze completely.
A heavy shock.
OZ grinned and grinned.
<So... all of you should run away quickly.>
<What stands before your eyes is a seed that will destroy the world.>
OZ's voice rang over the scene he had arranged with such glee, as if this were the climax.
Those words were meant to collapse everything Alice had built until now.
Her blue eyes shook.
The kids stood beside her in silence.
"......Ha."
I laughed dryly.
I had already roughly deduced it in my head, but hearing it directly felt different.
It felt filthy.
Far more than I had imagined.
"You said this was all a board you laid?"
<That is correct.>
My voice sank.
How long had it been since I got this angry?
If I didn't crush OZ here and now, I felt like I would be too pissed to sleep tonight.
'You must have thought everything was in your palm.'
But your experiment missed one variable.
Me.
"This won't do. It seems you need a bit of a scolding."
<Haha! I'm truly looking forward to seeing how you will scold...!>
"Activate. Thorn."
The coin I had quietly thrown in front of OZ a moment ago.
Puh-eok-.
The scythe, compressed into coin form, shot up from the floor.
The thickly stretching thorn reached the bridge of OZ's nose and tore a palm-sized hole straight through that face.
"......"
"Like this."
A simple line.
OZ, with that entire head blown away, simply hung there, dangling from the thorn.
"Do you still have anything left to babble about?"
"......"
Seriously.
Who told you to bully my favorite, you fucker.
[1] OZ evokes L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz stories, most famously The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, fitting the route's cluster of classic fantasy-literary allusions.
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