Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? (LN) - Volume 16: - Chapter 1 - Ariel 1

Ariel 1

“Now, since some of you don’t know what’s going on, let’s review, shall we?”
I begin addressing everyone gathered in front of me.
We’re in a wide-open area about a thirty-minute walk from the town closest to the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
I took in all the people who were in the elf village and sent them flying here with the spaceship I requisitioned from the elves.
The people present are members of the demon army and reincarnations.
Obviously, I didn’t save a seat for the survivors of the imperial army.
I need to get these people to hear me out so the demon army and reincarnations can choose what to do next.
But that’s got nothing to do with the imperial army.
I sent them straight to the nearest city.
“First of all, to set the stage, this world is on the brink of destruction. You can thank Potimas and the idiotic humans who went along with his plans for that. And, as you may have guessed from my use of the present tense, we haven’t gotten the world out of danger just yet.”
That’s the major premise of this whole thing.
Potimas popularized the use of MA energy.
It was like a dream come true: an all-purpose energy with the power to make humanity evolve.
But they should never have tampered with it. In truth, MA energy was really the life force of the planet itself, and the more people used it, the closer the planet came to death.
“Now, right before the planet finally fell apart, Güliedistodiez—who was only one small god at the time—made a deal with the much more powerful god D and got the life support known as the system put into place. You can see the details regarding how the system works if you look at your Taboo skill.”
The system takes the growth, skills, and stats that people gain by fighting, collects them all when that person dies, and puts them toward the revitalization of the planet.
Which means the inhabitants of this planet have to fight.
That’s also why they were split into humankind and demonkind and made to perpetutate an endless war.
Demons are really humans who evolved with the influence of MA energy.
Although the demon race is declining, they can’t stop fighting, because they have to atone for using up so much MA energy.
And it wasn’t the fault of their ancestors, either. They have the very same souls that have continued to be reborn over and over.
Though they lose their memories each time they’re reborn, the souls are still trapped in this world, forbidden to return to the regular cycle of death and rebirth until the planet’s reconstruction is complete.
That punishment applies not only to demons, but to every living thing in this world.
“It’s been many long years since the system was created. But we haven’t been able to completely rebuild the planet.”
We couldn’t do it. We still can’t!
At this point, it’s no longer possible to complete the process without sacrifices.
“Lady Sariel, who serves as the core of the system, is reaching her limit, and soon she’ll disappear completely. On top of that, the human souls that have been reborn again and again are wearing thin. As time passes, there will probably be fewer and fewer souls that even can be reborn.”
This world doesn’t have much time left.
“So now everyone has to make a choice. Who dies? A god? Or all of humanity?”
That’s where the world quest comes in.
“Personally, we decided the humans should die. To save Lady Sariel, even if we have to sacrifice more than half the population of the planet to do it.”
A significant shudder runs through the audience at that.
Can’t say I blame them.
We’re trying to save a single individual by obliterating over half the population.
Based on numbers alone, you couldn’t possibly claim that’s a fair exchange.
There’s a saying that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. By that logic, any politician would surely prioritize the many over the few.
My choice is the opposite of that. It doesn’t seem like the right one, does it?
But I’ve been aware of that from the start.
I decided long ago to cast aside all concept of right and wrong in order to fulfill my selfish desires.
“Of course, I never expected humanity to accept our choice. That’s why we made our moves behind the scenes. All that was left was to destroy the system before anyone figured it out… But apparently D didn’t like that idea.”
I shrug.
Nobody would roll over and die just because you told them to.
I know I certainly wouldn’t, and someone like White would fight back tooth and nail.
No one wants to die. That’s a totally normal part of being alive.
Potimas’s determination may have been on an extreme end of the spectrum, but even ordinary people don’t want to die.
No normal person would offer up their life for someone else’s sake.
Anyone who would definitely couldn’t be considered normal.
So I knew perfectly well that no one would approve of our actions.
Taboo hadn’t been installed in everyone’s minds like it is now, so even if I had shouted the unpleasant truth about humanity at the top of my lungs and declared that I was doing this to save Lady Sariel, the people would only believe what they want to believe.
No doubt there would’ve been a chorus of “That can’t be true!” “Don’t be ridiculous!” thrown back in my face.
Just as no one wants to die, no one wants to admit to sins they don’t know they’ve committed.
After all, our claim is basically “You people must die to atone for the terrible sins committed in your past lives.”
That would never fly with people who couldn’t even remember those past lives.
In a way, you could say that installing the Taboo knowledge in everyone’s minds and making them remember all that was a positive for us.
Not that I’m grateful to D for that, since it had the much bigger downside of telling everyone about the consequences of destroying the system, which we were trying to keep secret…
Based on what I’ve gathered from White and Gülie, D intervened for the sole purpose of keeping things interesting, but that just made things needlessly complicated for me.
I mean, if D hadn’t gotten involved, we definitely would’ve won by now.
If we could have just kept the consequences of destroying the system under wraps, Gülie and Dustin wouldn’t have tried to stop us, and we could have achieved our goal.
But nooooo, that would’ve been way too boring for dear old D.
Instead, we’re now caught up in something we have no way of predicting the outcome to.
Not to mention, the rules put us at one hell of a disadvantage.
But let’s ignore the rules for now.
Right now, what I need to explain most urgently is what we’re trying to do.
“First things first, our goal is the absolute destruction of the system. The idea is to use the energy that runs this massive conjuring known as the system to rebuild the planet instead. The big upside is that the planet would be restored, and Lady Sariel would be set free when the system she’s trapped inside is destroyed.”
It’s a win-win. The planet would be restored, and Lady Sariel would be set free…
…Unfortunately, Lady Sariel is already past the point of saving.
Even if we freed her now, we couldn’t keep her alive.
At best, we could avoid her total destruction by sending her soul back into the cycle of death and rebirth, and entrusting the rest to the next generation.
But there’s probably no need to mention that part.
“The downside, as you already well know, is that about half the population would die. The destruction of the system would mean that the accompanying skills and stats, and the energy that creates those, would be taken away by force. Anyone who can’t handle the impact of that, or whatever you want to call it, would die on the spot. Also, the impact in question would be bigger, based on how many skills a person had, or how high their stats were.”
The worst-case scenario would be that the soul gets destroyed and can never return to the cycle of death and rebirth, but I’ll leave that part out, too.
While there’s a big difference between regular death and the destruction of the soul, I don’t think they’d get it, even if I explain it to them. Honestly, even I don’t fully understand it.
Either way, it means the end of one’s current life. I doubt the rest makes much of a difference to anyone who’s alive.
But that’s also why I’m not going into detail about Lady Sariel, either.
Nobody’s going to agree to letting half of humanity die to save someone who we already know is going to die anyway.
“The other downside is the disappearance of the system itself. That means skills and stats will all disappear. Many things that the existence of the system made convenient won’t be possible anymore. Since skills and stats are such a big part of everyday life, it’s pretty easy to imagine that the system’s disappearance would immediately present some major challenges.”
Skills and stats are really just methods of obtaining energy for restoring the world.
But over the years, they’ve become integral to the human experience.
Stats are useful for physical labor, speedy delivery, and so on.
And there are more skills than you can count at this point, being used in all kinds of ways.
If they disappear, the people who depend on them will be in trouble for sure.
But wait, there’s more…
“It’s not just humans who will lose their skills and stats. Monsters will, too. And I suspect monsters are even more dependent on their skills than humans.”
Humans aren’t born with skills; they acquire them as needed. So while they’d be inconvenienced if they lose their skills, they probably wouldn’t die.
But monsters are born with skills that they need to survive.
Like the Swimming skill for monsters that live underwater, or the Fire Resistance skill for monsters that live in hot climates.
I can only imagine what’ll happen if they lose those…
Maybe their survival instincts and natural adaptability would kick in, or something.
But if we’re being realistic, a lot of them would die.
And that doesn’t just apply to monsters whose skills help them adapt to the environment. A lot of monsters would also become significantly weaker if they lost their stats and skills.
Then the ecosystems would be thrown way out of balance.
Prey animals might be driven to extinction, harmless monsters might turn savage… Any number of things could go wrong.
“So yeah, it’d be total chaos, more or less. Half the population will die when we destroy the system. And the other half will die off in the chaos that ensues. That’s my estimation. For human losses, that is.”
In the worst case, I think it could be even higher than that, but I’m hoping the surviving humans can work together to prevent that sort of outcome.
That might be irresponsible of me to hope for. But I don’t have the strength to live much longer while still being useful.
As selfish as it is, I don’t really care what happens to the world once we achieve our goal.
All that matters is the end result.
“On the other hand, if you don’t choose our approach… If you choose to side with Dustin and the Word of God…these sacrifices won’t happen. Life will continue as it is now…at least, I think so.”
I corrected myself at the last minute.
Because I have no idea what Dustin and his people are planning to do from here on.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know what Dustin and the others are thinking. But based on what was said during the world quest, I’m guessing he’s got something up his sleeve.”
Otherwise, they wouldn’t be opposing us like this and offering the options of saving people or saving a god.
There’s no proof that the depleted souls of humanity would be saved if they just keep up the status quo and go on saving energy.
So the implication that abandoning the goddess will somehow save humanity probably means that they’ve got some kind of plan, too.
“I don’t know what that plan might be. So I can’t tell you the positives and negatives from their perspective. For all I know, they might even have some groundbreaking plan that would get the world out of this mess with far fewer sacrifices than our plan. But since we were given the choice of either saving a god or saving all people, it’s safe to assume that their plan doesn’t favor Lady Sariel. So there’s no point.”
Lady Sariel is my top priority.
“I will save Lady Sariel, no matter the cost. That’s what I’ve been striving for all this time. So I have no intention of changing course now.”
I’m going to see this through, even if I have to sacrifice more than half of humanity to do it.
“Now, that should be enough for you to understand our position. Next we’ll go over the rules again, and discuss the conditions for our victory.”
I think my explanation has made my stance clear to the audience.
“Firstly, as I’ve been saying this whole time, our goal is to destroy the system. Let’s assume their goal is to stop us.”
It’s possible there’s more to the other side’s goal than just that, but there’s no point in worrying about it when we have no way of knowing.
All we can do is aim to achieve our goals.
“And as it happens, the destruction of the system is already underway.”
The audience murmurs in surprise at that.
I wave a hand to calm them down and continue.
“That doesn’t mean it’s going to be destroyed any minute now, though. A job that big can’t be accomplished in such a short span of time. For reference, it’s sort of like demolishing a huge building, you know?”
It takes time to properly destroy a structure that big.
We’ve had to slowly dismantle the giant conjuring known as the system while saving up energy to put into restoring the planet.
It’s not the kind of thing you can just blow up with a controlled explosion. It takes time.
“Naturally, the other side is going to try and stop us. So we need to focus on defense until the system’s destruction is complete.”
Basically, we’re on defense, and they’re on offense.
“In fact, they’re already in the process of trying…”
White and Gülie’s battle is already underway, for one thing.
I’m sure Dustin is already hard at work behind the scenes, too.
“Like they announced in the world quest, the god of black and the god of white have already begun their battle. By the way, the god of white is on our side. Oh, and even though it’s begun, it’s not gonna end right away any more than the destruction of the system. So don’t freak out.”
A battle between gods is one of attrition.
It’ll take a pretty long time before a winner is decided.
Especially in the case of White and Gülie.
White has got ridiculous survival abilities, yet her attacks are on the weak side for a god.
She’s the type to stubbornly stay alive and slowly chip away at her opponent.
I don’t know what Gülie’s power is like exactly, but I just know White won’t go down without a fight.
First of all, she’s so tough that I had to give up on destroying her even before she became a god.
“They’re probably fighting in an alternate dimension, so we can’t interfere with their battle directly.”
Not that any of us could probably do much to affect a battle between gods anyway.
They’re on another level entirely.
“But the world quest has given us a means of indirectly affecting the battle.”
Namely, by praying.
You can pray to one of the gods and send power to them.
I imagine the power from each individual prayer is quite small.
But if it comes from every living person in this world, it’ll add up to a lot.
Every vote counts, or something like that.
As a result, even the most powerless people now have a means of affecting the outcome in a way that matters.
In other words, all of mankind can participate in this fight.
“To put it bluntly, the outcome of this battle is now directly linked to which side emerges victorious.”
Both White and Gülie are too far apart from anyone else in terms of power.
They’re each strong enough to wipe out the other’s army of followers all on their own.
At my strongest, I might’ve been able to at least put up a decent fight against Gülie… Not so much in my current state, though.
On top of that, White is the one in charge of destroying the system.
If we lose her, we won’t be able to accomplish that anymore.
So basically, whether White wins or loses also decides whether we win or lose.
“Which means our side just has to pray for White’s victory. In more ways than one.”
Despite my best efforts at humor, nobody cracks a smile.
…I bombed that one.
“So, anyway, you might think that means there’s nothing else we can do, but you’d be wrong.”
I keep talking as if I didn’t just totally bomb.
They’re all still listening with serious expressions, which must mean most of them didn’t even notice!
“If White loses, it’s over for us. But even if she wins, they still have ways of keeping the system from being destroyed. Unfair, isn’t it? So we’ve got to put a stop to that.”
At a glance, the rules make it seem like this is a fair fight, since anyone can participate.
But in reality, we’re actually at a pretty big disadvantage.
One reason is the conditions for victory.
If White goes down, we officially lose, yet if Gülie is the one who loses, their side will still have another chance at victory.
“Their play is interfering with the system directly. People with the special Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues skills have something called ruling class privileges, and only those who have gone through a process called establishing ruler authority have the ability to access the system. By doing so, they can prevent the system’s destruction.”
The conditions for this are really quite strict.
First, you have to have a rare Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues skill.
On top of that, you have to apply to have your ruler authority established, and get that request granted.
Possessing the skill alone isn’t enough.
Incidentally, the method of applying is written in Taboo.
In other words, you need to have a Seven Deadly Sins or a Seven Heavenly Virtues skill, and max out Taboo on top of that in order to have any way of getting ruler authority.
Although I guess someone else with maxed-out Taboo could teach you how to do it.
White used this loophole to make Natsume get ruler authority.
But at any rate, that means there are fourteen people at the most who have access to ruler authority—a difficult hurdle for sure.
That’s true even now that all of humanity has Taboo installed.
Except in a way, the numbers don’t even matter, since one of the few people with that authority happens to be the Word of God pontiff, Dustin: the leader of the opposing side.
All Dustin has to do is stop the system’s destruction himself.
“That being said, just having ruler authority doesn’t mean you can stop the destruction of the system whenever you want. You have to go to a specific place where you can interface with the system directly. And that place happens to be in the deepest part of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.”
Deep at the bottom of the Great Elroe Labyrinth is the door to the system’s core, where Lady Sariel is sealed away.
The entire labyrinth is really a path to that place, and at the same time, a fortress that protects it.
“In other words, our job is to prevent anyone from their side with ruler authority from approaching that place.”
Dustin is definitely going to come here.
In which case our role is defending the labyrinth to prevent Dustin from getting to its heart.
White’s victory.
And the defense of the Great Elroe Labyrinth’s core.
It’s only when we achieve both those goals that we can claim victory.
To put it another way, their side only needs to prevent one of those two things to win.
In that way, these rules obviously put us at a disadvantage.
But the biggest disadvantage to our side is probably the ability for everyone to interfere in White and Gülie’s battle through prayer.
Nobody wants to die. Of course, more people are bound to pray for Gülie.
The rules are fair in that they allow anyone a chance to decide the future, but unfair to us in that they put our side at a considerable disadvantage.
Even so, we’re the ones who are going to win.
“Now that you’ve heard all this, it’s up to you to decide.”
A murmur of surprise runs through the crowd.
No doubt they were expecting me to tell them to side with us.
But I don’t trust anyone except me and mine.
I’m not going to ask someone to have my back when I suspect they might stab it.
“We’ll defend the Great Elroe Labyrinth ourselves. From this point on, anyone who sets foot in the labyrinth will be considered an enemy and taken down on sight, no matter who it might be. So if you want to side with us, I’ll ask you to do it from outside the labyrinth.”
I can’t let anyone who may or may not be an ally get close to the finish line.
“We’re heading to the Great Elroe Labyrinth now. To be perfectly honest, we’ll have our hands full too much to offer you guys any more help. So you’ll have to decide what to do for yourselves, and take independent action accordingly. I won’t blame any of you for whatever happens, even if you turn against us. No matter which side wins, I intend to accept that as the will of the world.”
At this point, we’ve got bigger fish to fry than pointing fingers.
It’s not like either side is right or wrong.
We just want to protect different things, that’s all.
No hard feelings, if you ask me.
“That’s it. I wish all of you good luck.”
With those words, I ended my speech.