"Fighter jets. Does he intend to use force if negotiations do not go well?"
Kal'tsit spoke as she watched the metal objects soaring across the heavens.
Theresia, who had never seen an aircraft in her life, watched them with curiosity, but that fascination was short-lived.
What was currently approaching was powerful enough to render such machines mere trifles.
"Greetings, everyone. I am Vladimir Park. I hold the modest title of Chairman of the Central Committee of the International Communist Party."
The Union armored vehicle that had boarded the deck of Rhodes Island vomited a man from its steel belly.
It was Vladimir.
Theresia watched as Vladimir—or perhaps she should now call him Si-hun—stepped out and calmly extended a hand for a shake. She whispered to Kal'tsit beside her.
"Kal'tsit, you said you were the one who discovered this ship, correct?"
"Yes, it's a relic of the Old Humans. Why do you ask?"
Theresia continued, her lips trembling slightly.
"...Then may I ask if there are facilities capable of defending us when such an armed force enters the ship? It seems to me that with the current personnel on board, it would take both you and me acting together just to barely hold them back."
Hearing this, Kal'tsit looked at Theresia's hands.
Before she knew it, the King of Sarkaz's hands were shaking.
Kal'tsit allowed a thin smile to grace her lips.
This time, it was Kal'tsit who took Theresia's hand to steady her.
"Theresia, do not be so tense. You have been pushed too hard recently."
Then, she spoke firmly.
"There are no such facilities as the ones you describe. However, Park Si-hun has no intention of harming us. So, stay calm and remain steadfast."
At Kal'tsit's reassurance, Theresia seemed to find her composure, returning the smile.
"Right. I must have been more exhausted than I realized. I have shown a pathetic side of myself that I usually wouldn't."
Theresia cleared her throat.
Once her voice was steady, her expression shifted.
Adopting a mask of cool professionalism, she turned to Kal'tsit.
"Well then, shall we go?"
*************************
"Comrade Chairman, is that woman truly the Lord of Fiends who is supposed to be friendly to us?"
"Comrade Litvinov, calling Comrade Theresia 'that woman' in front of the Chairman is the height of rudeness. Control yourself."
My attendants, Litvinov and Neurath—diplomatic advisors to the International Communist Party—were bickering.
Both had only recently graduated with their doctorates, and they were still green. However, they were talented enough to fill my gaps, which was why I had brought them along.
Listening to them, I did find the situation a bit strange.
Why were Theresia and Kal'tsit reacting like that?
Could it be that they had been mimicked by a slime or something? (Of course, slimes do not exist on Terra.)
Is this one of those 'scenarios' you only see on the Pupille site—the one that's been cropping up recently on the Union communication network?
The one where two close friends are consumed by a slime and then everything becomes a mess of—
Naturally, as a gentleman, I have never visited such a site.
I hope the readers do not misunderstand.
Wait, readers? What 'readers' am I talking about?
I struck my own head hard for a moment.
Damn it, my thoughts are wandering again.
Perhaps it's because my mind is aging, or perhaps it's because I took a breath of Originium dust on the way here, but my state of mind felt slightly erratic.
Regardless, setting aside my senile delusions, their reactions were definitely suspicious.
Right then, Neurath poked me gently in the ribs.
"Ahem, Comrade Chairman. The two of them are watching you."
This insolent little brat, his blood hasn't even dried yet...
Of course, such 'crusty old man' complaints—like 'how dare a thirty-year-old poke a man over a hundred years old'—did not escape my mouth.
That was because I had been standing there like a fool, staring blankly at the ceiling of the Rhodes Island landship, while Theresia and Kal'tsit were waiting for me in place.
Um....
Feeling embarrassed, I whispered into Neurath's ear.
"Hey, you rascal, why didn't you tell me sooner?"
"But Comrade, your expression was so solemn that I didn't dare wake you from your thoughts."
I couldn't even find the words to scold him further.
I coughed to clear my throat, desperately trying to pull my scattered dignity together, and stepped forward.
To discover the true nature of the anxiety Kal'tsit and Theresia felt toward me.
And to finalize the negotiations to aid Babel.
"Urp, did I drink too much vodka yesterday? My head is pounding..."
"Idiot, this is a diplomatic venue!"
...And to prevent these two rookie diplomats from signing a contract full of poisonous clauses.
I stood before Theresia.
"It is an honor to meet you, Lord of Fiends. I am Vladimir Park, Chairman of the Central Committee of the International Communist Party."
Having finished my introduction, I offered a smile and extended my hand.
Shortly after, a soft and warm hand met mine.
"The pleasure is mine, Chairman. I am Theresia, Sovereign of Kazdel and the Lord of Fiends to all Sarkaz."
The moment our hands met, I felt something rapidly entering my mind.
It was a sensation I could not fathom.
*********************************
'Where is it?'
Theresia's Arts, having infiltrated Si-hun's psyche, were scouring through the memories within his ego one by one.
Theresia shared her vision with the Arts wandering through Si-hun's inner world.
The world of Si-hun's psyche was structured like a house.
An ordinary house that could neither be called poor nor wealthy.
The point where Theresia's Arts opened its eyes was in the bedroom area of that house.
The first things that caught her eye were the chests of drawers.
'Shall I start by looking here?'
Theresia opened a drawer and began to examine the papers inside one by one.
'Hmm... Middle school Korean composition contest grand prize, academic excellence award, perfect attendance award? This is all from so long ago!'
Everything was so incredibly ordinary.
As she wondered if most Old Humans enjoyed such a life, Theresia opened the next drawer.
'Dankook National University diploma, Bachelor's degree, Master's degree... he was certainly an elite. I suppose that's why the Old Humans chose him for the role of Overseer.'
Theresia closed the drawer and looked around.
She spotted a tidy bookshelf.
Scanning the shelves, she saw books with names that meant nothing to her, and some that felt vaguely familiar.
'The Conquest of Bread, Mutual Aid, Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, A Theory of Justice, On Liberty... Some of these are familiar, while others I've never heard of....'
After inspecting the bookshelf, Theresia turned her gaze away.
But after looking through the shelves and drawers, all that remained was an utterly average room.
It was a bedroom furnished with mundane items like a bed, with nothing special about it.
There was an object that looked like a monitor, but no computer was visible.
In the end, Theresia decided to leave this room.
'His true memories must be elsewhere. Not in these fragmentary hints.'
Theresia headed for the door.
She expected some kind of lock, but the door opened just by turning the handle.
And what met Theresia's eyes was a hallway so long its end could not be seen.
'...What is this?'
The hallway stretched on, and statues stood on either side.
No, they were more like embalmed corpses—sculptures that were cold yet unnervingly lifelike.
She saw a succession of middle-aged and elderly men with thick beards, hairless men, and those wearing spectacles.
Their only commonality was that they all possessed the appearance of Old Humans.
Theresia felt a vague sense of dread as she slowly walked forward.
As she continued down the hallway, she came upon a half-broken door.
'...Why? I've never seen a broken door like this in an ego-world... Not even Kal'tsit had one.'
The tattered door bore the clear marks of having resisted something with all its might.
However, she had a strong intuition that the repository for his memories lay beyond it.
The sensation of instinct drove Theresia forward.
She practically pushed the door open and stepped through.
Inside, she saw a research laboratory of magnificent scale.
There was a storage cabinet here as well.
'I should try opening this one too.'
Theresia smashed the cabinet's lock with her fist.
Then, she opened it.
'...Huh?'
It was strange.
Positively bizarre.
'Middle school composition grand prize, academic excellence award, perfect attendance award... they are the same awards I saw in the room earlier. The grades match exactly. But the schools that issued them are different...?'
Her head began to throb.
It felt as though something were tightening around her skull.
It was undoubtedly the toll of maintaining this particular Art for too long.
'Guh... Just a little longer, please, hold on...'
Theresia endured the worsening headache and moved further inside.
She passed by bookshelves with torn books and headed toward a room in the corner.
Monitors hanging from the ceiling were shrieking warnings of an intruder.
Passing through the monitors that flickered with red light and static, she finally reached a door.
It was a door with a futuristic design.
Unlike the domestic door she had seen before, there were no knobs or handles.
However, the door was somewhat twisted, and it seemed she could force it open if she tried.
'...I have no choice.'
Theresia shoved her weight against the gap in the door.
With a grating screech, the door slowly yielded, revealing a massive monitor and computer within the shadows.
But as she approached, it wasn't what she had expected to see.
[Signal Lost]
'...Why?'
The part where the computer's memory should have been—the repository for Park Si-hun's memories—was shattered, as if someone had destroyed it intentionally.
The memories were unreadable.
Even as she raised a hand, a headache that felt like her skull was being pulverized washed over her.
'Khh...! I truly have no more time left...'
Theresia made one final attempt to touch the memory card.
At that very moment—
—Grab—
Something caught her by the shoulder from behind.
Theresia froze, not even noticing the cold sweat pouring down her forehead.
And someone tilted her head upward.
"Forgive me, but you can go no further without the authorization of the Master. Withdraw from here."
They were the statues she had seen earlier.
Those sculptures were looking at her with human-like eyes, all speaking the same words in unison.
It was grotesque.
Things that looked human yet were fundamentally not were all focused on her.
Ah.
Theresia tried to inhale, but no air came.
It felt as though her windpipe was blocked, not her lungs.
In that moment, she realized.
This wasn't the usual mental defense of the powerful people she knew.
For such individuals, their own willpower would simply make her headache manifest faster; they wouldn't have this kind of active interference.
That left only—
A boundary.
An intent.
Or a specific set of rules established to guard these memories.
Theresia gritted her teeth.
If she retreated now, she might never get this chance again.
For one final time, she reached out for the memory card.
And in that instant.
A pain that felt like her brain being shredded assaulted her.
Her vision turned white, and simultaneously, darkness began to bleed in like spilled black ink.
Her Arts screamed.
It might sound strange to say that Arts can scream, but that was exactly what happened.
Something that wasn't her physical body was warning her that she would die if she went any further.
Even so, she did not pull her hand away.
'Just a little... just a little more.'
Then.
The statues moved.
Just one step.
Only one step, and yet the entire hallway shook.
The monitors on the walls vomited static all at once.
SIGNAL LOST.
SIGNAL LOST.
SIGNAL LOST.
Red windows wrapped around Theresia's body with a speed vastly different from before.
This wasn't mere eviction.
It was expulsion.
Theresia tried to hold on.
But the ego-world was not a place she could cling to.
The ground beneath her feet vanished, and the sensation in her fingertips crumbled.
And finally—
Between the statues, another figure appeared.
A silhouette far clearer than the sculptures.
That silhouette spoke briefly, and with great calm.
'If you come too deep, both the Master and you will be broken.'
...Theresia could not be certain whose voice that was.
It sounded like Si-hun's voice, or perhaps the voice of this thing called the 'Master.'
In that instant, her vision collapsed entirely.
Reality was inverted.
There was no pain of her body tearing apart.
Instead, her heart gave a single, violent lurch.
As if her heart were slipping out of its proper place.
And Theresia—
Opened her eyes.
'...'
Before her eyes was Si-hun's face.
He was still wearing a smile, but it was frozen.
Only then did Theresia realize her hand was still resting atop his.
His fingertips were cold.
She could barely tell if they were her own hands or the hands of another.
Kal'tsit quickly stepped forward.
"Theresia?"
Kal'tsit's voice sounded incredibly distant.
Theresia heard the sound of water in her ears.
Like the ripples of a lake. Or the sound of blood filling her ears.
When Si-hun's attendants tried to move, Kal'tsit raised a hand to stop them.
"Do not move. Right now...."
Her sentence trailed off.
Theresia looked into Si-hun's eyes.
Those eyes belonged to a person.
But behind those eyes, it wasn't just a 'person' that resided.
Something ancient was there.
Too many scenes were held within.
Too many nameless faces.
And at the very end, there was a blacked-out void.
Theresia tried to open her mouth.
Her tongue was paralyzed.
It wasn't that her throat was dry; it felt as though her voice were locked away.
Even so, she forced the sound out.
"...The memories..."
Only that single phrase barely escaped her lips.
The smile on Si-hun's face vanished, just slightly.
He said nothing, but Theresia understood that the silence was a form of warning.
The moment Kal'tsit tried to support Theresia's arm, Theresia's head slumped.
Vision bled into black once more.
Her body could no longer endure the strain.
But just before she lost consciousness, Theresia looked at Si-hun one last time and uttered a final word.
"...You... what are you..."
She remembered nothing after that.
Her world was cut short.
Theresia collapsed into Kal'tsit's arms.
And a moment later,
Park Si-hun also slumped over, caught by his frantic attendants.
On the deck of the Rhodes Island landship, a silence settled that made it feel as though time itself had stopped holding its breath.
========================
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