"Making up myths is human nature. Once someone truly exceptional has something about them that people can't understand, others become obsessed with it and create a whole series of myths they wholeheartedly believe."
"Clearly, Minister, you are the myth the wizards of France have created. But no matter how high they place you on a pedestal, strip away the outer layer and, in the end, you're still just a human."
As Lolita spoke, she seemed as though she wanted to sigh, but the fountain pen lodged in her eye socket made the movement look awkward and horrifying.
"As long as you're human, you're bound to have all kinds of sinful thoughts. In the past, those thoughts were restrained by your position and power, so you had no way to act on them and could only bury them deep inside. But once you're raised high enough, all those restraints disappear."
"So anyone who reaches a high position will eventually do things that are disgraceful, even monstrously evil."
"For thousands of years, there hasn't been a single exception."
"This has nothing to do with whether someone's character is noble or whether they're kind-hearted."
"It's simply human instinct, just like an animal drinks when it's thirsty and eats when it's hungry."
"Everyone has long since grown used to this and is perfectly willing to follow this unspoken rule. Only those who go too far, leaving everyone else with no way to survive, or those who are simply too weak, get singled out and executed as villains."
"Minister, you're exactly that kind of person. You're too weak, your desires are too strong, and most importantly... you're too stupid."
"So I don't think you have much to complain about, ending up like this."
Lolita spoke with complete sincerity, like a priest preaching to his flock.
Unfortunately, the French Minister of Magic wasn't paying attention to her at all.
From beginning to end, his eyes remained locked on the Aurors standing behind Lolita.
They had already gathered together. Using their fingernails, they painfully tore open each other's chests, slowly pulled out the organs inside, then stitched their own bodies together with one another.
The horrifying scene had gone beyond anything the French Ministry of Magic had ever known. His scalp went numb, and he nearly fainted.
Fortunately, after serving as Minister for so many years, he had accumulated enough experience and willpower.
At last, he managed to drag his mind back from the brink of collapse and said to Lolita in a trembling voice,
"I've had enough. You... what do you people want?"
Perhaps realizing the minister had gained nothing from her sermon, disappointment appeared on Lolita's bloodstained, corpse-spotted face.
She sighed.
"Foolish man! I love every person in this world, whether wizard or Muggle. I wish for all of them to be free from disease and war, and to live prosperous, peaceful lives. At the same time, I also love myself. I long to make myself happy. So in essence, I'm just an ordinary human as well, a lowly individual burdened with original sin."
"But fortunately, although my desires and ideals have different priorities, they follow the same path. So I will keep walking it without hesitation until everything I dream of becomes reality."
"That is what I want to do."
"Next, I'll head to the International Confederation of Wizards and seize control of Sky City."
"That won't be particularly difficult for me. I'm sure you understand that well enough. After all, I've already taken over the French Ministry of Magic without you noticing in the slightest. And because of its overconfidence, the International Confederation's defenses aren't actually much stronger than those of the French Ministry."
"After that, everything becomes simple."
"You and I both know how magnificent Sky City is, an entire continent in the sky. If that city were suddenly to fall, just how much destruction would it cause to the people below?"
"Not to mention that the spatial engine inside Sky City contains the magical power voluntarily contributed by countless wizards over the past several centuries."
"If all that magic were released at once and converted into spatial power by the engine, enormous spatial rifts would spread across more than half the Earth's surface."
"Even if those rifts couldn't exist for long, they would still kill over ninety-five percent of all living creatures in the world!"
"And with that, the Sword of Damocles hanging above everyone's heads would be complete."
"I believe that under a threat of this magnitude, the world will enjoy a long period of peace!"
As she spoke, Lolita spread her arms wide as though embracing the sun.
Across from her, the French Minister of Magic was shaking violently.
Pointing at her with a trembling finger, he stammered, "Madwoman! You're completely insane! Do you have any idea how many people will die if you do this? Sky City... the Sword of Damocles you're talking about can't be controlled at all! Everyone will die! All of us..."
"So what?" Lolita cut him off mockingly.
"Even if the Sword of Damocles really falls and kills ninety-five percent of the world's population, won't there still be five percent left? Humanity won't go extinct. Those survivors will rebuild civilization from the ruins. In the end, nothing has really changed. Since that's the case, whether the sword falls or not is meaningless to me, and to all life on Earth, isn't it?"
"I know that in your eyes I'm a devil. Whether it's sacrificing ninety-five percent of the world for a new and unknown future, or sacrificing Sky City, magical France, and magical Britain to buy peace for everyone else, it's all terribly evil."
"After all, according to our common understanding, every human life is precious, and its value can't be measured by quantity or quality."
"But I don't agree."
"That argument exists only as a rule designed to give weak people a sense of security."
"If you look at it from a purely rational perspective, life has both value and numerical worth. In fact, throughout much of history, a person's life wasn't even worth as much as a dog's."
"From that point of view, I don't think there's anything wrong with what I'm doing."
"Take the Goblin Rebellions, for example."
"How many wizards died in those wars? And how many high-ranking wizard officials hid safely inside their fortresses?"
"Look at that. That's the difference in their value. Because the soldiers weren't worth as much as the officials, the soldiers had to die on the battlefield while the officials enjoyed wine and bread in peace."
"So tell me, how is that any different from what I'm doing now?"
Lolita stopped speaking.
She leaned close to the French Minister of Magic.
Judging by the reflection in her one remaining pupil, the minister had completely lost his mind.
"How foolish."
With a sigh, Lolita turned and walked toward the office door.
As she passed the pile of Aurors stitched together into one mass, she casually reached out with a hand that had already rotted down to the joints and lightly tapped them.
The people immediately melted together like piles of rotten mud before solidifying again, ultimately forming a ball of flesh that glowed with magical light.
Holding up the flesh ball, she continued walking.
The office doors opened by themselves.
At once, the noise outside, along with a thick wave of blood in the air, rushed inside.
The French Minister of Magic's vision shook again.
Through his memories, Link and the others could clearly see that the logistics office outside had become hell itself.
Countless people were fighting each other like mad.
No one was using magic.
It was nothing but brutal hand-to-hand combat.
People died every moment.
Yet the next instant, those who had just died twisted themselves back to their feet, rejoined the battle, and became even more savage.
Link and the others immediately understood.
These people had been cursed.
They were being turned into Inferi.
Inferi created by refining living humans were much stronger than ordinary Inferi. And if the raw material was a wizard whose magical core had been preserved, they could even produce the explosive Inferi they had encountered before.
Yet even among Dark Wizards, this method of creating Inferi was considered taboo.
It was simply too cruel.
Aside from the most utterly deranged individuals, no one was willing to use it.
The strange thing was that although those people had already been driven into indiscriminate attacks by the magic transforming them into living Inferi, none of them attacked Lolita.
She strolled across the battlefield like a young girl out for a spring outing.
Whenever she came across a corpse that couldn't get back up because it had lost too many limbs after dying, she would even lend it a helping hand.
The bizarre scene continued until she threw the flesh ball in her hand.
The moment it left her grasp, the ball seemed to come alive, darting all over the office hall.
Wherever it passed, every living thing, dead or alive, was absorbed into it, becoming another lump of flesh on its surface.
As it devoured more and more lives, the enormous body of the Stitching Butcher gradually appeared before everyone.
The instant the Stitching Butcher took shape, Lolita stood smiling at the far end of the hall and waved at the French Minister of Magic.
Then the office doors slammed shut with a heavy bang, completely sealing off the hellish scene outside.
What happened after that was rather uneventful.
After suffering such a blow, the French Minister of Magic went insane, just as anyone would have expected.
During the first two days, his mind was almost entirely consumed by fear. The thing he did most every day was repeatedly order the old cat-like woman to gather all the Matagot cats and guard the doorway against intruders.
Starting from the third day, however, he gradually began decorating the once plain office.
From his muttering to himself, Link and the others learned that every piece of furniture and decoration had been collected by him in secret, all so that after his "ascension" to Sky City, he could become one of those "noble upper-world people" like old Harris.
From time to time, he would also stare blankly at the portraits of the previous Ministers of Magic on the wall for long stretches of time.
In the end, he successfully transformed both the office and himself into exactly what Link and the others had found when they first entered the minister's office.
———
Hummm...
As the mist rippled, everyone returned to reality.
After reliving that nightmare-like catastrophe once more, the French Minister of Magic's sanity, which had taken nearly half a month to barely piece back together, collapsed completely again.
He lay sprawled on the floor like a lump of dead flesh, drool, tears, and snot covering his face without him caring in the slightest.
Only the occasional twitch of his fingers proved he was still alive.
Link, Krell, and the others also remained silent.
None of them paid him any attention.
The memories of the French Minister of Magic had shaken them too deeply.
They all needed time to process what they had seen.
Only after Cedric came in from outside to report that the entire French Ministry of Magic had been thoroughly searched and was now completely occupied and under the control of the joint British Ministry forces did Krell and the others finally snap out of it.
He cast a strange look at the French Minister of Magic lying on the floor before turning to Link.
"Link, something about this feels very wrong."
"I feel the same way." Link narrowed his eyes. "That secretary named Lolita from the minister's memories should be the first Inferius we encountered after entering the French Ministry of Magic. Judging by how she behaved in those memories, she was possessed and controlled by some kind of force."
"The biggest problem," Newland said seriously, "is that she talked far too much. The minister had already lost all ability to resist. It was strange enough that she didn't kill him immediately. But then she went on to tell him all of that. It doesn't make any sense."
Link glanced at Newland and said calmly, "No. It makes perfect sense. Because those words were never meant for the French Minister of Magic. They were meant for us."
"The minister was merely a letter. The one who took over Secretary Lolita's body simply wanted to use him to tell us that they had already seized Sky City and turned it into a deterrent."
As soon as Link finished speaking, everyone's eyes turned toward Skofen, who had remained silent the entire time.
What Lolita had described in the minister's memories sounded far too unbelievable.
Krell and the others instinctively doubted it.
After all, it was only a single Sky City.
How could one city create spatial rifts across more than half the Earth?
It was absurd.
But under everyone's gaze, Skofen's expression grew exceptionally grave.
He clenched his fists, his body trembling slightly as he said,
"I can confirm that everything she described is true. The spatial engine inside Sky City was originally built so that Sky City could leave this world and travel into the unknown."
"What it can do isn't limited to tearing open space and transporting the entire city elsewhere. It also has to generate a spatial barrier to protect everyone aboard against the tremendous spatial impact caused by traveling across dimensions."
"Technically speaking, both of those requirements had already been met centuries ago. The only thing lacking was sufficient energy."
"Earth's supernatural resources had already been consumed too heavily by wizards and simply couldn't meet the energy needed to activate the spatial engine. So after discussion, the Sky City Council of Elders established a rule that wizards themselves would serve as the fuel."
"Every adult wizard living in Sky City had to pour some of their own magic into a container issued to them each day."
"The Council of Elders collected and stored all of that magic."
"This project has continued for several centuries. By now, the amount of magic stored in Sky City has reached an astronomical level."
"With such an enormous reserve of magical power, even without using the spatial engine, Sky City could destroy nearly half the life on Earth simply by self-destructing!"
[🎉 Shoutout to Someone's_Nobody, MahSty and Shinto for joining p@treon. Your support will help me bring better stories to you. Thank you very much.🤗]