The weekend came.
After meeting Polaris, I thought someone would approach, whether Theodor or someone else, but that wasn't the case.
As expected, predicting the future is difficult.
Still, in the meantime.
I became certain that the people I know and the people living in this world are the same.
The Purple Twilight Association.
They didn't know where the support funds came from. So when the support funds were cut off, and as a result, the support for the people of the Purple Twilight Association doing charity work weakened, suspicions immediately crept up.
Suspicions like someone embezzled, or they're pretending not to know after already receiving everything they could get.
They suspect each other, and the people who managed the money at the center or those who were in command really got a lot of abuse.
You know how there are people who feel it's natural when goodwill continues?
That's it.
They didn't provide the supplies that should have been provided naturally, so the people above are bad!
Of course, the managers said the support was cut off, but some people didn't believe it. There are people who, while an extreme minority in overall proportion, have loud voices.
Among them are both well-educated people and uneducated people.
They greatly exaggerate the problem and say that those who worked in the office exploit the benefits without knowing the hard work of those in the field.
They seem to have forgotten that the Purple Twilight Association is a charity organization.
Hehe.
Not yet.
They haven't fought big enough to kill each other yet.
But that faction, mixed with harvesters and those who are not, is now planning to attack the office workers to extort something. Cowardly, they're making plans to incite people while ensuring they themselves don't get hurt.
People who try to profit while others fight after inciting them.
The truth is no longer important to them.
The only thing in their minds is that they didn't receive what they should have, and that the other side is bad.
Excellent.
If possible, I'd like to turn the person next to them into a harvester too. The Dormiens royal family has already taken care of the image of harvesters.
So I don't need to worry about becoming a public enemy like in the second world because the image has been tarnished.
I'll be able to obtain warmth in a few days.
The problem is that the numbers decrease when they fight...
No, wait a minute.
Now, I don't need to care about the image of harvesters, right?
I need to increase the harvesters. It's good to obtain warmth as harvesters and humans fight in a tangled mess like this. But there's a problem.
The experiment I'm conducting.
The Great Kraken and the Primordial Heavenly Lord. Which technology can send people up more easily.
Culture is kneaded with blood. As bricks of technology pile up, blood flows down, and the mortar of culture covering it prevents it from collapsing. But if technology rises faster than that, it rises in a tattered state.
And eventually, it becomes unreachable even when blood and flesh are scattered on the ground. Then the tower will eventually collapse from the flowing blood.
What collapses then is not technology. It's humanity.
After that, even if bricks of technology are piled up, the tower of humanity won't be built. It just lies scattered on the ground.
There were many in faded man's memories too.
Even if more than one worker dies every day in countless operating factories, nothing changes. They talk about it, but it easily becomes a non-event.
When a person's life is worth less than the inconvenience of countless people, the world begins to take for granted grinding up people. You only need to do it once.
Just once.
Then, it's over.
It never goes back to the way it was. Once you've crossed a hurdle, it's easier to cross it again. After that, no matter how many people die, it becomes a regular occurrence.
Now people say this:
Why are you pretending to be nice?
Broken morality is excellent.
It means a world where I can consistently obtain warmth.
That's exactly what I want.
A world that talks about people having value, but doesn't actually move for that value.
Because it doesn't run to extremes, it lasts long, and even internal people turn a blind eye to dying people due to moderate comfort. Such a world will stagger forward very far.
It means I can obtain warmth for a very long time. And that will increase as the population increases.
But if harvesters decrease too much from this fight, technological development becomes distant.
Therefore, thinking of the future, I need to replenish in advance.
I went out without hesitation. Anyway, if I didn't go out, I would have stayed in my room all weekend.
Interestingly, none of the workers ask me about my destination. When I say I'm going out, they change my clothes and send me right away.
So I left the house, went to the main road, and walked straight along the big road.
The location is the slums of the capital.
If this is a world that's just starting to develop, there will be plenty of what I want there.
People who are crushed and rotting, fervently wishing to become my harvesters.
People who will mindlessly rush towards even a small light.
People who will charge towards the bottom like lemmings, thoughtlessly following others because they're doing it.
Tap tap tap.
I move my steps diligently with short legs.
* * *
A faint but brain-penetrating rotten fragrance. A mixture of fishy smell, sewage, and intense chemical odors.
The ground is not neat stone pavement like the places I've walked so far, but has mostly cracked and worn down to become dirt.
And people in dirty clothes are coming and going on it.
A man staggering with a red face, perhaps from alcohol or drugs. A woman wearing thin clothes and coming out to sell herself. An old person crawling because they have legs but no feet.
Beggars and vagrants. A place where the dregs that have fallen from society gather.
I remember that such places were usually driven far away, not in the middle like this. Because I've been exploding deeply despairing humans.
They would have thrown away the exploited far away to avoid that.
Here, it's in the middle of the city.
Did they forget?
Or do they not realize that these people are in such a serious state?
Of course, I won't explode them wastefully now, but it does raise some questions.
Thinking such thoughts, I entered the middle of that street.
It's good that there's no smog at least. Such places are often places where all kinds of pollution accumulate, but there's none of that here.
Because they've used too much magical power, the city might run short of magical power and side effects like what happened in Bern City might occur, but at most it's just the smell of uncleaned filth or decaying organisms.
Unlike places like Whitechapel in faded man's memories, you can breathe here.
As soon as I enter, countless gazes stick to me as if welcoming me.
My attire is quite clean. You can kill me and strip it off, or capture and sell me.
I walk towards the inner part of the street.
Not only gazes, but there are also people following me.
I stopped walking and stood in the middle of the street. And I wait for someone to take the bait. If a young girl in expensive clothes stands blankly, people will approach.
And as expected, a man with a face black with grime walked in front of me. He grabs my shoulder as if trying to prevent me from escaping.
"Little girl. Are you lost?"
"Hello."
The person I wanted has come.
A man with his face full of desire. Then let's use memories to open the conversation.
"You're screaming."
"Hey, the girl is saying something?"
"Hehehe, it's not me who's screaming, it's you."
Skinny men approach from the side. I got caught once on the ship, and now here too. Is it because this is their territory that they don't kidnap me right away?
"People should do what they want to do."
When I say the words I always have on my lips, the surroundings become a sea of laughter.
"I'd like it if you could take off your clothes right now if possible!"
"Wow, look at that fair skin."
"Isn't it too white?"
I just look at the man who spoke to me first and continue speaking.
"There's something you want to do, but you've forgotten it. Because there's nothing to support you, survival has become the priority. But you once had dreams, right?"
Slap.
I got slapped on the cheek.
"Is your head a flower garden? Do you think the world is a fairy tale? You must have seen something strange somewhere."
There are also obscene words mixed in. But there's no one around sympathizing with me. A perfectly rotten place.
I say the contract words to create harvesters.
"I'll give myself to you. Instead, when you finish everything later, I'll take everything you have then. How about it?"
As soon as I finish speaking, the men surrounding me giggle and laugh.
"Wow, she says she'll give her body. A saint has appeared."
"Hehe, hey. This is really a different taste, isn't it? Let's take her quickly."
"Oh my, is that so? Good. Give it quickly. It's a kid without breasts. Huh?"
With this many, at least one person will agree.
Words promising to do anything penetrate the heart like magic. If it's from someone weaker than you, it would sound like submission.
One man's skin turned like porcelain. And then, plop. The skin starts falling off like broken pottery.
The men move away screaming.
"What did this bitch do!"
"What? Did you come to cast evil magic, witch!"
They glare at me startled and shout loudly. They shout even louder to hide their fear. But I pointed at the harvester with my finger.
"Huh? What? My hand. It's white. Strange. My body feels cool. It doesn't itch at all."
The man whose hair turned purple and skin turned snow-white looks down at himself with a dazed expression.
"Because you gave yourself to me. It's okay for you to dream now."
Gazes gather on me.
And along with murmuring sounds, someone who knows about me talks about me. The incident that happened in Bern City.
The royal family advertised in earnest.
With this many people, there's bound to be at least one person in this place who knows.
Questions soon become realizations, and realizations become desires again. Originally, the basic strategy here would be to incite people saying to believe in God and drag them to dens, but because it's apparent that the royal family dislikes religious colors, I changed it to dreams.
"Everyone has the right to dream. You should do what you want to do, get what you desire, and envision a wonderful future."
And I deliberately look around slowly, meeting the gazes of the people looking here one by one.
"Don't scream anymore. I'll change you."
I didn't say it would get better. It's more terrible than pushing them into a slaughterhouse, but they won't know its true nature until the moment they die.
So I finished by saying this:
"Everyone here."
I'll make you harvesters. Conveying that meaning, they look at each other. When you become weak, you tend to watch others' reactions.
But there are people in a hurry.
Because the slums are a place where such people inevitably exist, I came here.
If they were well-off people, they would see it as a scam and ignore it. Or they might escape by thinking a little more. But not here.
"You're saying you can heal this?"
See?
A big man whose half of the face is burned, perhaps from an accident, walks towards me.
I immediately recited the contract words, and the man accepted. He not only recovered cleanly but became even healthier. Seeing the man touching his face without a single scar, people soon rushed to me.
They crowd in urgently, worried they might miss their turn.
After that, it's easy.
I contracted with everyone regardless of age or gender.
I acquired 15,239 harvesters from this place alone.
Now I push memories into them. If the experiment succeeds, the lowest will have wonderful technology.
My goodness.
The socially weak have become valuable?
It's obvious without saying.
Now I just have to wait.