"You really caused quite a commotion."
The moment Shiomi returned to his room, his master greeted him with an amused smile.
The incident in Touko Aozaki's workshop had already spread through the entire Storm Border and the Wandering Sea. Skadi and the others had simply been closest, arriving first to confirm it wasn't an external attack, which allowed the alarm to be lifted.
"You start laughing at me the second I walk in? Could you be any harsher, Master?" Shiomi tossed his dust-stained clothes into the laundry basket.
Morgan shook her head. "With a tremor of that magnitude, if it truly had been an attack, I would have had to reunite with my husband immediately."
"If something serious had happened, would you two really be sitting here playing chess?" Shiomi shot back.
At the moment, Morgan had nothing urgent to deal with, so she was in Shiomi's room playing chess with Scáthach while waiting for him to return.
"Fair point," Scáthach said, sliding a piece forward. "Your move."
"So you went with that, hm." Morgan glanced at Shiomi. "What does my husband think I should do next?"
Shiomi pulled over a chair and sat down, blinking. "It's your match. Don't ask me."
"Afraid that if you help me, your master will lose?" Morgan asked with a smile.
"Hard to say," Shiomi snorted. "My chess is awful. You'd be better off asking me to advise Master and drag her down with me."
Scáthach kicked him under the table. "I'm still sitting here. If you're going to conspire, do it under the covers."
"Alright, alright. You two play. I'll just watch." Shiomi leaned his arms on the table, while under it his foot tangled with his master's, brushing and nudging lazily. "It's rare you both feel like this sort of refined pastime. A little relaxation isn't bad."
"The one who truly needs to relax is my husband." Morgan kept her eyes on the board. "Ever since that meeting, you've been running to the archives every day. You even asked Sion for Atlas Institute materials."
"When you're preparing for war, you prepare thoroughly," Shiomi replied. "My wife, don't forget. There were several times you almost lost Camelot to me along with everything else."
He was referring to the endless wars during the Queen's Era. Camelot had fallen more than once, not because Morgan didn't resist, but precisely because she did. She simply failed to outmaneuver Shiomi and suffered defeat.
"That wasn't a matter of insufficient preparation." Morgan chuckled lightly, her hand slipping beneath the table to rest against Shiomi's thigh. "My husband was simply too cunning. Those fairies had neither brains nor memory."
Scáthach smiled faintly. "In the end, it was still a defeat. That was true in past wars, and it's true now as we advance into the Lostbelts. Even with reliable allies, we must account for the gap in strength between ourselves and our enemies."
After all, Chaldea's combat power was concentrated in just a handful of people like Shiomi.
Especially Shiomi. Now he stood far ahead of the rest. Even Morgan becoming the dominant will within the Unity God form could only be considered a benefit of standing at his side.
"Master has a point." Shiomi looked down at the board, then suddenly picked up the king and queen. "That's what Morgan and I are now."
Morgan's eyes curved into a smile, her silver lashes catching the light like crescent moons. "But in terms of actual combat strength, I'm the king, and my husband is the queen."
"Close enough as an analogy." Shiomi let his hand slip, and the pieces dropped back onto the board. "But the real issue is that we can't afford any losses…"
His fingers tightened without him noticing. Scáthach reached over and covered his hand. "That way of thinking isn't wrong, but if you push yourself too hard because of it, you'll end up getting the opposite of what you want."
"Sorry. I'm getting tense again." Shiomi shook his head. "It's kind of ridiculous. I'm this strong now, and there's still no such thing as a perfect, foolproof plan."
"There will be a way." Morgan understood the knot in Shiomi's chest better than anyone.
The shadow left by the Rain Clan's destruction weighed on him far more heavily than it did on her. When you have power but not enough, the result is always the same: after the war is over, only you are still standing on the battlefield.
Because the Rain Clan hadn't been close to him, he could accept that ending.
But he was terrified of seeing that ending repeat itself with New Chaldea.
After all, the old Chaldea's hundreds of staff had been reduced to what they were now: barely more than a dozen.
It wasn't about how deep the bonds were.
They had fought together this far, and those people had supported the frontliners in countless ways. That alone made them comrades worth trusting, and worth protecting.
"You've been digging through ORT files these past few days. Found anything new?" Scáthach shifted the topic as if it were nothing.
Compared to endlessly trying to soothe him, talking about something concrete was more useful.
"Nothing." Shiomi answered without hesitation. "It's the same things over and over. Ever since that investigation in the sixteenth century ended in heavy losses, the Clock Tower hasn't organized anything like it again. They can only study the environment from outside the forbidden zone."
He continued, "And I've read all of that already. The Atlas Institute's information is basically the same."
"Hmm…" Morgan fell into thought, but she couldn't pull out any new angle either.
"By the way," Scáthach said, bringing up the part that bothered her, "didn't that Clock Tower headmaster say ORT would never wake up unless it answered the planet's call? Don't you find that phrasing hard to ignore?"
"The planet's call…" Shiomi sighed. "Of course I do. If you look at it that way, it suggests ORT, even as an overwhelmingly powerful being that descended from the outer universe, is tied to the planet itself, or rather, the planet's suppression force."
Unlike the suppression force of primates, the planet's suppression force comes from the planet's own unconscious survival instinct, concerned only with the planet continuing to exist.
That was why the planet's suppression force did nothing in the face of both the Incineration of Humanity and the Bleaching of Humanity.
The reason was simple. For the planet, it doesn't matter how the fabric draped over its surface changes.
Whether it was the Demon King Goetia or the unknown Alien God, either plan might have led the planet toward a more prosperous future. In that case, the planet had no need to interfere. It could simply wait and see the outcome.
"So, like it was called here by the planet?" Morgan said.
Shiomi tilted his head. "Hard to say, but it might be. Maybe, to the planet, humans… no, primates have become a kind of threat without even realizing it. Something that needs to be removed."
"But that doesn't add up," Scáthach pointed out. "Don't forget Fou. That thing has the qualifications to become a primate killer. It's only because it doesn't want that that it's stayed at its current level."
"That's true," Shiomi admitted.
A primate killer meant absolute authority to slaughter primates. That was a power the planet had granted to the Fourth Beast, a privilege in all but name.
If humanity were really meant to be purged, then the primate killer should be the one to move first.