Chương 253: A New Objective?

My enhanced size made climbing up the ladder leading out of the sewers a bit more complicated, but I managed to get all the way back up, emerging back inside the tower. I had left a set of clothing nearby, but they no longer fitted on me very well. I'll have to get new ones made… The first thing I did was go to Mari's workshop, Xlown was there as well, watching Mari work whilst kicking her feet in the air.

"Guess who-who's back!"

"Mommy!" My daughter leapt at me, wrapping her limbs around my body as if they were boneless snakes, which was a more than apt description for them… I patted her back and head until she retracted her limbs, allowing me to carry her normally. It might seem a little odd to carry her in this manner since she looked like a young woman, but I don't think there were any restrictions or limits when it came to doting on my cutiepie.

Just like how my ghostly little sisters wouldn't be getting away from my cuddles, no matter how much their form changed to make them older.

"Miss Maya… Did everything go… Go well?" Mari was looking me up and down with her face flushed. It seemed like the physical changes to my 'Base Form' were making her feel some kind of way. I know we women like to be towered over by the ones we like, but that reaction seemed a little excessive… Well, excessive for a normal person, but for Mari? I suppose this was actually quite a restrained reaction instead. Huh… Mari was wearing glasses now as well. She put them on after lifting her goggles from her face.

Those small, round glasses do look quite nice on her. I do wonder if she decided to do this herself, or if someone told her to wear some… I could see a few people inside this building who might be willing to give her fashion advice… Big Sis. Why don't you compliment her? … If you insist, Nara.

"Mari, nice glasses. They make you loo–look quite cute" Mari's brain experienced a critical failure, and she shut down instantly. This girl has some issues. I don't mean to trample on your dreams, Nara, but it seems likely that Mari would die instantly if I were to ever attempt to upgrade her status from Personal Mechanist to girlfriend. She might genuinely explode into a red haze on the spot, maybe even explode so hard that the shards of her skeleton would be like shrapnel.

She's just not used to it, and she probably doesn't have much hope of earning your affection, but if you were to continue giving her compliments like this, she would certainly get used to it and not overreact! Well, overreact less excessively, I suppose"Mari? Youhou? Are you still with us? You can't be my mama if you can't handle compliments from mommy, you know?" Mari suddenly rose back into consciousness, inhaling as if she had almost just drowned.

"You're right, Xlown!"

"Thank you for the compliment, Miss Maya!"

"Just c–call me Maya. Also, let me see your abdominals" Mari fell right back down. That was on purpose, wasn't it? Mostly, yes. But I am a bit curious. All her work as a mechanist has made her build some muscles, didn't you notice? I am an expert in female musculature. Did I ever mention that after I was expelled from knight training, I helped a girl begin to train to be a knightess? That's the first I've heard of it. Was it Elowen?

I did give Elowen some tips back in the day–She was very promising after all, with a strong build and constitution on top of a real strong will… But no, it wasn't Elowen that I mentored for a bit. It was a girl called Jinine. I only taught her a little while because she was only in Tolten in transit, but she was quite the cute gal. She was a demoness so dark that she just vanished at the slightest bit of shade. I remember that she wanted to be a strong knightess despite being quite delicate.

She never elaborated on the details, but she was apparently from a demon species supposed to be absurdly good at energy manipulation and the like, and she was also from a noble clan in Malkazert… But she had no talent in magic whatsoever. Hence, she travelled away in an attempt to find another way to get strong. You know, it was the classic stuff about wanting to make her parents proud. She was quite good despite never building up any amount of muscle.

I am pretty certain that she could get so strong for the same reason that she couldn't practice magic. I wonder what she's up to these days. She's probably back in Malkazert. Mmh… Just for information, was she younger or older than you? She was the same age as me, but I don't really know how demon species develop in relation to humans. I see… So a potential third one to keep in mind… … Seriously, Nara? Let me check your memories for a moment… Yep, definitely a potential third one.

It looks like she was embarrassed just a bit too much from physical closeness when you showed her the proper stances The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. I would have liked to sigh. For Nara to be so confident, it meant that it was probably true. I didn't notice back then, but that was when I was scrambling all over the place to find myself a man. I wasn't really paying attention to how another woman would have perceived me.

In any case, I placed the thoroughly unconscious Mari in a more comfortable position and gave a good ruffle to Xlown's hair. The black and white clown girl was clearly getting into the same habit as Nara, but I suppose that she did like the company of Mari and Leou, so wanting them to be her 'mama' wasn't too crazy. The only odd thing was that her first thought was that her mommy should get a girlfriend instead of a boyfriend. Is it because she's only surrounded by women? Food for thought…

I walked all the way up the tower to Leou's office. The snow leopard must have felt my heavy steps through the ground, as she opened the door before I could even get within knocking distance.

"Come in, Maya!" She settled behind her desk, her fluffy tail swinging around more erratically than usual, accompanied by ear twitches and a seemingly unconscious release of her retractable claws. My lovely ball of fluff was a bit nervous, it seemed.

"Alright, I won't dance around the subject… You are the actual originator of the Nightmare Plague, aren't you? You aren't actually just a Sapient Golem who's interested in mimicking it, right?" I suppose I should have seen this coming. I lifted my hands slightly.

"You got me. Did my–y business down here rouse some unrest?"

"You could say that… Quite a lot of countries detected your evolution thanks to seers and… Most of those seers ended up getting cursed and being infested with nightmares. So you can imagine that a lot of people are losing their minds, and now that you have finished evolving and that the seers will probably not be able to sense you at all anymore… Well… They are going to lose it even more" Leou cleared her throat.

"Most of all, Aesther decided to summon Unwanted Presences""Are they stupid?"

"Obviously, they are extremely stupid–All of Aesther's neighbours are already thinking about razing them to the ground. As you know, intentionally summoning Unwanted Presences is a very taboo subject. It is extremely costly, often summons individuals who are just the same as the average for people from our world, the summons who are very strong tend to be destructive maniacs who need to be put down, and most of all…

Intentional summoning of them degrades our relationship with the world""They summoned three of them this time around, thus increasing the chances of something bad happening, as the world will be displeased for a while… While it is a good opportunity for the organisation to pillage Aesther and create instability on the continent… We feel that it would be a good idea to rectify the mistake made and do something to make the world happy" Leou scratched her face for a moment.

As far as I am aware, this whole thing about displeasing and pleasing the world isn't actually provably factual. That's just a manner of speech used to describe the phenomenon caused by the intentional bringing of Unwanted Presences into our world. Whenever they show up, things tend to just turn for the worse, and with the issues already plaguing the continent… It is to be expected that the other nations would absolutely lose their shit about this.

"Do you know how to remedy the issue, Maya?"

"Since the cat's out of the bag, you can–can just call me Mara, Leou""M-Mara… Do you… Do you know how to solve the problem of Unwanted Presences?"

"Kill them, no?"

"That is one way to do it, but at the organisation, we ended up agreeing on a bolder plan""Another way to 'make the world happy' is to ensure that the Unwanted Presences properly acclimate to our world. It is more difficult, but at the organisation, we found out that this batch of Unwanted Presences was actually quite promising, and we would like to get at least one for ourselves. The rest can be killed if necessary""I see, but ho–ow will it be done?

I have heard that Aesther was in a bad–bad spot, but it still shouldn't be an easy task to infiltrate their most secure places""Actually, as long as we play our cards right, it could be incredibly easy""How so?" Leou brought three pictures out of a drawer. Images manifested via magic instead of mechanistry. She pointed to each of them one by one.

"Kevin Baker, Rose Miller, and Daniel Williams–These three are the Unwanteds""Weird na–names""Ganiel Kalersky, the current Leader of the Republic, is betting absolutely everything on those three. He truly believes that if he can groom them into 'heroes', he will be able to keep himself in power and prevent Aesther from having a blood regime change…

As such, he is looking for the best possible teachers for them""Unfortunately, not many people are willing to work with Aesther precisely because of the summoning, amongst a whole plethora of other reasons, so there is a really big chance that we could get someone from our side as their teacher" I see… That's quite a good plan the organisation has come up with. Simple, but effective. Just get one of their guys as a teacher, and have them lead at least one Unwanted down the path of allyship with the organisation.

Unwanted Presences are generally known to be oddly gullible, so it doesn't even have to be a master manipulator who does the job.

"Were you thinking–ing that I could do it?"

"You've shown yourself incredibly competent–Oh, and speaking of which… Here is a container of Ghostly Essence. I got it from Ergonip" I had actually sensed it well before she brought it out, that things were filled with an incredible amount of the stuff. I tapped the surface of the container as she gave it to me, deep in thought for a moment. Nara, I need a second opinion. How much do you think Leou loves me? While not as obviously obsessed as Mari, she is definitely very strongly in love with you.

She hides it well, but she would absolutely be willing to look past a lot of things for the sake of making things work with you Alright, then.

"I can probably do it, Leou" As I said this, I shifted into my 'Plush Form', and after a little, into my knightly form. Leou blinked a few times in rapid succession.

"Whoa… You can do this?! Is that why the sunken mountains were left such a mess?" I motioned to where my mouth would be if I were a human instead of a suit of armour and made an X with my arms.

"Oh… You can't talk in this form, I see–Wait a minute, a mute knightess? You are the Silent Knightess? I looked her up after you mentioned it when you gave me a name back then. You're telling me that you pretended to use the name of someone else, when that someone else is you? That's… That's pretty smart now that I think about it. This is so convoluted and unexpected, I never would have guessed it…"

"And you… You are so… You look so… I mean, in this form you… Huh… I'll go tell the others from the organisation… I'll talk to you later!" Leou ran off, and for a moment, I almost thought she was going to rush away on all four. I think she likes your knightly form By all means, my 'Base Form' is glorious, but it isn't exactly pretty in the typical sense. It surely came as a surprise when she saw this one. I am much more… Womanly, as a knightess. In any case, I'll be going back to Xlown.

I didn't take the time to check on Coco.