“I said no, damn it.”

“...Why?”

The black-haired woman tilted her head.

“I saw your memories. I also saw the fear you carry.”

“...You’re awfully shameless about admitting you peeked inside someone else.”

It kept talking as if my objection meant nothing.

“But you know it too, do you not?”

“That if you are with me, the fear you carry will disappear.”

“...Well, sure. That part’s probably true.”

What exactly had happened to my body back in the real world—

right now, I didn’t know for certain.

But this thing was the Progenitor itself.

If it was speaking this confidently, there was a good chance it was not lying.

But.

“You said you needed a companion?”

Unfortunately.

Whether it was lying or not did not matter.

“Sorry. I have standards.”

I already knew what this thing had done to its own descendants.

Simply because it had no use for them.

It had created them, accepted their loyalty and love as they followed it, and then thrown them away without hesitation.

“Trash like you isn’t my type.”

I could never become companions with something like that.

***

“What picky tastes you have. My appearance should be considered attractive even by human standards.”

“Well, relationships aren’t all about looks.”

At my answer,

it let out a sigh and leaned back.

“So you truly don’t care for me. What a shame. I, on the other hand, like you quite a bit.”

“I heard the same thing from your first child.”

For the record,

that one wound up being absolutely horrified of me later.

“I can guess why you do not like me. In that case... may I ask just one thing?”

Then,

the lightness in its demeanor faded a little.

With both hands clasped together, it stared at me intently.

“As I told you, I saw your memories. I also saw that you chose not to run away to your homeland and instead decided to fight my youngest child.”

“So what about it?”

“This is the part I want to ask about. Why did you not flee to your homeland?”

At that question,

I shrugged.

“Because I’m not like you.”

“Ha! You really do know how to say hurtful things. In the entire universe, there is no being more similar to me than you are right now.”

“If I used that passage to the west like you said... then maybe I and the members of my unit could have escaped to Seoul. But if I had, not a single survivor on this land would have lived.”

A reason so simple and so clear.

But.

“...So what?”

Apparently,

it did not find that reason persuasive at all.

“What do you mean, so what—!”

“Are you not under some misunderstanding?”

I was about to snap at that irresponsible answer,

but it cut me off and kept speaking.

“No matter how much of a failure that child was, Valarak was still my youngest child. I find this rather surprising myself, but it was right on the verge of reaching the level I desired.”

“Yeah. It was dead set on achieving its goal too.”

“If that child had accomplished its goal, how great would the damage have been?”

A soft smile.

“That child held anger toward me. Even if it had fulfilled the conditions to meet me, it would still have hoarded as much strength as possible in order to throw itself at me. It had even gone so far as to swear an Oath to wipe out all humans, so of course it would have done exactly that.”

“...”

“It would not have stopped at the inhabitants of a single continent. Every living person in your world would have become that child’s food.”

That part was true.

But.

I had not rushed in without any plan.

“There was a way to win. If things went according to plan, there was more than enough of a path to victory.”

Not a straightforward fight.

Like when I had succeeded in bringing down Ariella.

A plan to force things into a blood duel.

...Except.

“So, was it going according to plan?”

...As it said,

things were not unfolding exactly as planned.

Changing the fight into a blood duel itself—

that was something I could do whenever I wanted, as long as I accepted the risk of my race changing.

‘The problem is what comes after.’

Even if Ariella drank the grand duke’s blood,

there was still the question of whether Ariella could withstand the grand duke’s attacks.

That was why I had intended

to make up that weakness

by persuading that human with the power to handle blood.

The [Blood Mage], Jinlei.

“According to your plan, you were supposed to spirit that one away from the capital and persuade him successfully. But now?”

Not only had I failed to get him out properly,

I had gone into battle without even attempting persuasion, afraid the power inside my body would explode.

“You are too busy suppressing your own instincts even to take part in that battle. Without your help, do you think the ones left behind can win?”

Even now, the battle raging outside was probably at its height.

...A brutal struggle so fierce that even the ones fighting it could not be certain which side would win.

“At best, the odds are fifty-fifty. There is a full half chance that you will lose. It is nothing more than a reckless gamble.”

“That...”

“By contrast, you had a method that would have guaranteed victory.”

I already knew what that was.

“Eliminate that human who handles blood, flee back to your homeland, spend a long time building up your strength, and then fight again.”

Because of the power I had planted inside the grand duke,

its body was accumulating more and more strain with every passing moment.

As time passed, the grand duke’s power would gradually diminish.

Whereas—

“Your power would only continue to grow with time... and you would have been able to fight not alongside foreign survivors you had only just met on this land, but at the head of your own army.”

The awakened of the Military Commission wielded powers effective against vampires.

And yes, the faction gathered from all the survivors on this continent—

a land that had boasted an enormous population even before the apocalypse—

was certainly impressive in sheer numbers.

But.

“Not those who can barely survive only by tearing away at their own life force... you would have been able to wield your true strength.”

I could say it without hesitation.

They were no match for the legionnaires under my command.

No matter how much larger their numbers were than the Legion’s.

No matter how much more lethal their powers were against vampires.

If I had been able to bring the full strength of the Legion onto this land,

I would never have needed to force the sun into the sky while escaping that island.

“And yet you did not choose that path. All for the sake of saving a mere few hundred thousand.”

“...They’re not ‘mere.’”

“No. Mere is exactly what they are. Everything is relative, after all.”

As if scolding me,

it fixed me with a sharp stare.

“If that child had succeeded in its plan, then every living being that might still be alive on this land would have ‘certainly’ died.”

“...”

“I do not know how many that would be, but even in your homeland there are at least tens of thousands who survived, are there not? And in this country as well, there are more than a hundred thousand survivors.”

In the early days of the fall,

the creatures that killed the most humans were probably not any monster other than zombies.

But.

The insects that served as the main bodies of those zombies could not survive above a certain altitude.

That was why zombies had never appeared in our unit.

And.

...There were countless cities in this world that stood at even higher altitudes than our own unit.

“Perhaps there are still tens of millions of survivors left all across the world.”

In places like that...

the chances were fairly high that far more people had survived than one might think.

“You wagered the lives of all the rest of humanity just to save a few hundred thousand more. And you bet on the side with the lower odds.”

If what it said was true,

then I had placed all humanity’s lives on a gambling table.

“No matter how you try to dress it up, the fact remains the same: because of your choice, all those people were placed in danger of death without ever even knowing it.”

Their lives...

were not so light that I had the right to throw them onto a gambling table at my own discretion.

“You seem to think what I did makes me absolute trash... but aren’t you just as bad?”

It let out a snorting laugh.

“But you’re fortunate. You’ve been given another chance.”

Then,

stopping its mocking laughter, it held a hand out to me.

“A method with far higher odds than fleeing back to your homeland. No—in fact, a method that is one hundred percent certain.”

Right.

Even if I fought a weakened Valarak together with the Legion,

that still would not make the odds one hundred percent.

But.

“Choose to join me.”

If I took that hand,

I would be able to win with absolute certainty.

***

“You think I did something terrible to my creations. I will not deny that. But I have no intention of doing the same to my companion. Whatever it is you want, I would of course respect it as much as possible.”

If I asked it to protect humanity,

then all humankind would come under its protection.

“Think about it. It is certainly a grave sin that you gambled with their lives... but if you return to them the peace they longed for so dearly, would that merit not more than outweigh the sin?”

“...”

“Surely... you are not going to throw away this chance as well?”

Then,

it frowned, wearing a surely not expression.

“If you do, then all humanity will be thrown back onto the gambling table once again. Good grief. Not even a gambling addict would do that. Unless, of course, you were some monster to whom other people’s wishes mean nothing at all...”

At that infuriating attitude,

I had no choice but to revise something I had once thought.

‘I thought the only thing it resembled Isabella in was its face.’

Apparently not.

There was one more thing they shared.

‘It’s clever.’

For all its frivolous-seeming manner,

it clearly had not clawed its way up from the bottom to that position for no reason.

It was extremely clever.

Clever enough to remind me that not merely my own gain or loss, but the fate of humanity itself, now hung on its proposal.

“Sorry, but...”

...Even so.

“For all your cleverness, I think you’re the one who has the wrong idea.”

“...Hm? What do you mean?”

There was just one thing

it had wrong.

‘You think I gambled with humanity’s lives?’

A pretty logical argument.

Maybe under most circumstances, there would have been no good way to refute it.

‘What kind of bullshit is that?’

...But not now.

Because.

“It’s true there was a bit of an unexpected hiccup during the preparation process.”

For all that,

I was still a cook who had spent my life rolling around in nothing but harsh conditions.

When you serve as a mess sergeant, unexpected things happen all the time.

To begin with, that was a military specialty built around the assumption of cooking on a battlefield.

On a battlefield, the odds of proper supplies arriving are low.

Naturally, the odds of being thrown into an environment where proper cooking is impossible are extremely high.

That was why,

what was required of a military cook, unexpectedly enough, was not whether or not the food could be delicious.

...It was the ability to adapt to those kinds of situations.

The ability to put food in front of soldiers no matter the circumstances.

A grin spread across my face.

“My dish is already finished.”

The thing I was most confident in

was exactly that.

“...Finished, when one ingredient is blatantly missing?”

In the end,

the main ingredient of my plan was Ariella.

The part Jinlei occupied was no more than the final touch added at the very end.

Of course, that single difference would determine the outcome of the dish.

But.

“It isn’t missing.”

What mattered was this:

it was something that did not have to be there in the middle of the cooking.

Something that only needed to come in at the finishing stage.

“Even if it’s a little late, that one will ultimately stand on humanity’s side.”

Unlike what it thought—

that neither side could know which one would win—

I was certain.

“What I did wasn’t gambling.”

That plan

was no different from a dish whose recipe I had written and whose cooking I had personally overseen.

“It was cooking.”

Whose dish was it?

How could it possibly fail?

It would be a hard battle.

Even the Progenitor itself had judged that the odds of failure were high.

Outside, a brutally difficult battle was surely raging without end.

But.

I was certain.

“Ariella will defeat the grand duke.”

In the end.

The one who would win would be Ariella.

***

“So your proposal is refused.”

Right.

From the beginning, I had no worries at all about what was happening outside.

What worried me more was...

“...Refused.”

My side, rather.

“...Haah. Since we were going to be walking the same road together from now on, I had wanted to keep things pleasant.”

...As for bringing down the grand duke,

I was confident in that much, because I was the one who had drawn up the plan.

But.

Meeting the Progenitor in a place like this—

that had never been part of the plan.

Which meant,

‘...I’ve never once designed a dish that could get me safely out of a place like this.’

Whether I should call it good luck or bad luck, I wasn’t sure.

By now, I had encountered beings comparable to the Progenitor several times.

Ordinarily, that would be considered terrible luck.

But the reason I sometimes thought it might actually be fortunate was simple.

‘At least the ones I met before never posed any major threat to me.’

Morzan had looked like a corpse, but it had been friendly to me.

The demon had still been in the era when the system’s protection was active, so even though it was furious with me, it could not lay a hand on me.

The king of Belsnickel had not been interested in me at all.

Mirinae had helped me instead.

Even the Matron of Regretful Ones had tried to persuade me, but had not tried to harm me.

“If you mean to refuse, do you really think you can?”

But.

This thing was different.

“Did you think that merely because you have grown closer to me, your power has become my equal as well?”

Creeeak...

An overwhelming pressure bore down on my body.

This was on a completely different level from Isabella.

The gap was so absolute that I could not put up even the slightest resistance.

“You have only grown in talent and in the size of the vessel. The inside of you is still empty. The right to refuse me... how could you possibly have such a thing?”

The force that had seized me

dragged my body right up in front of its face.

“I will say this in advance: remember that I truly did try to get along with you. So this, too, is your fault.”

The power flowing out from within its body—

I could feel it boring its way into mine.

“Your fate, from now on... will be bound to mine.”

Instinctively, I knew.

This was not a mere threat, nor some form of hypnosis.

It was something on a higher level than that—

...a technique from an altogether different realm, used by beings that toyed with the “fate” of an entire world.

...There was no way for me to resist it.

‘...Ah, damn it.’

And so,

just as the “fate” of the being called me was about to be forcibly entangled with that thing—

Crackle!

“...?”

The hand reaching toward me was suddenly knocked aside by something.