by Yuu Kamiya
“It’s our neighbor; of course I know it. Home of Siren, aye.”
—Siren. Ixseed Rank Fifteen: the race one rank above Immanity and one below Werebeast. Building a metropolis at the depths of the sea, they could only live in water and thus had few concerns over territory. An insular race with a peculiar mode of life, they only conducted minimal trade with other countries. Just what issue could arise involving folks like that…? To the Shrine Maiden’s gaze that asked this, Sora nodded dramatically and spoke:
“Right, it has to do with them, so Shrine Maiden—”
He paused for breath.
“—Shrine Maiden, what is love?”
“Let me give you just one more chance to explain yourself. If it’s a fight you want, I’m surely game, though. ” With an unreserved smile, but ready to unleash her bloodbreak, the Shrine Maiden growled, her hair reddening.
—Going back a little to the previous night. Sora, having just dismissed it all without qualification, saying: Play out your porno game scenario somewhere else. Holding on to his legs, Plum wailed, looking near tears.
“P-p—please waiiit! Your Majesties, we have no one to turn to but youuu!”
“Shut up! I can’t get involved with a race whose very premise is R-18! You ever hear of zoning?”
The race fed by viscous white fluid in place of blood—Dhampir.
—One way or another, getting involved with them was an inexcusable trip straight to the adult corner.
“No! …Well, there are sooome girls who see it like that…”
“I knew it! You are straight from a porn game!”
“L-let me explaiiin! At this rate, we’ll be wiped ouuut!”
“—Rrm?”
“…Mm?”
Responding to a phrase they couldn’t ignore, Sora and Shiro stopped in their tracks. They looked at each other in confirmation.
—Of the fact they couldn’t let that happen.
“…Let’s hear your story, then. Just so you know, I’m gonna cut you off the moment this starts turning into porn.”
Reluctantly, Sora plopped down cross-legged, sighed, and opened his mouth. Shiro perched on his lap, and Jibril, following their lead, sat on her heels. Izuna—sleepy after all, it seemed—curled up into a ball beside Sora and nodded slowly.
“Th-thank youuu!” Tearfully, Plum bowed repeatedly. “Uh, uh…give me a momeeent…”
Some kind of irregular pattern rose up in her violet eyes—and that moment.
—Just when had they moved? In an instant, Jibril was right before Plum, and Izuna had taken her rear. The breeze created by their movement blew through the room, seeming a little late.
“…Muh?”
As Plum let out a silly sound, Jibril looked down at her keenly:
“I commend your achievement in approaching my master without my notice, but lest you think I am so foolish as to permit it a second time, allow me to give this advice—might it not be best that you mind your position, worm?”
“Grampy said, if you sense Dhampir magic, you’d better get the hell out of their eyes, please.” Izuna growled in an ice-cold voice, her suspicions raised.
Sora nervously tried to talk down the tense pair. “H-hey… Don’t the Ten Covenants prevent any damage from being done?”
“Damage or not, it is possible to disguise perceptions. For instance—” Jibril directed her profound hostility to a place beside Plum. “To make those voluminous suitcases invisible—and the like.”
With tears in her eyes, Plum waved her hands at Jibril as she stared at the empty space. “It’s—it’s a misunderstandiing! I just meant to disguise my own perceptiooon!”
—From nowhere, a number of bulky suitcases appeared…
“……Mm.”
Izuna, her suspicions allayed, sniffled and went back to Sora and Shiro.
“So, basically—she concealed the existence of her luggage to get rid of the weight?”
“No. All it will do is to prevent her from feeling the volume and weight of the luggage, not to get rid of it.”
“So when she first appeared, she was exhausted…”
“…because of, this?”
“I-I’m sorryyy… I mean, it—it was heavyyy…”
At Plum’s bowing and scraping, still Jibril said:
“Dhampir’s aptitude for magical stealth and illusion—the manipulation of perception—may surpass even that of Elf. Those suitcases were there all along…and we simply did not observe them.”
“Hmm. But you noticed them, right?”
“To my chagrin, they threatened to escape me had I not paid close attention. However, this will not happen again.”
Jibril clenched her fists and drooped her head. Sora, shifting his gaze to his side, asked:
“…Izuna, what made you relax?”
“Huh? Bitch doesn’t smell like she’s lying, please,” the curled-up Izuna answered with a yawn, as if she’d become quite tired from her abrupt movement.
—Hmm—Sora and Shiro narrowed their eyes. Before them, Plum was digging through her suitcases, looking for something. Then she cried, “Oh, here it iiis,” pulling out a document—
“Ahem, um…I have heard that Your Majesties intend to conquer all the races.”
“…Uh, yeah.”
That was how it was presented. The fact that they were working on a Commonwealth with the Eastern Union—well, it was probably out of the bag, but anyway, the movement of pieces still ought to have been a secret between Team Sora and Team Shrine Maiden. Feeling no particular need to explain, Sora agreed.
“Let me speak frankly—” As if satisfied by his answer, Plum went on. “Right now, we—Dhampir and Siren—our two races are on the brink of extinction. We have tried everything we could, but…there’s no more we can do, so we would like to request your suppooort.”
…—Hmm.
“Jibril, you tell me, okay? What sort of relationship do Dhampir and Siren have?”
At Sora’s question, Jibril quietly lowered her head and began:
“After the Ten Covenants, Dhampir was no longer able to ingest blood without permission, meaning that their very survival came to depend upon the permission of others—and Siren was in a similar situation.”
“…Meaning?”
“…Siren…Rank Fifteen, a race that can only live in the…ocean.”
Shiro elaborated. Ixseed Rank Fifteen, Siren—to put it bluntly—was a race of mermaids. They lived on the relatively shallow ocean floor, possessing the upper bodies of people and the tails of fish from the thighs down. They had an extremely peculiar mode of life, as first and foremost exemplified by the fact they couldn’t remain out of the sea for long. As such, they’d built the ocean-floor metropolis Oceand, claiming a vast marine swath as their territory. Their second peculiarity was existing as a solely female race. Which meant their method of reproduction—
“…Requires, a man…of another race…”
At Shiro’s explanation, Sora squinted toward Jibril.
“Yo, these Dhampirs and Sirens, aren’t they kind of ridiculously bad as organisms?”
“Originally—that is, before the Ten Covenants—there was no problem.” Jibril continued, “All Sirens had to do was claim and devour a man of another race. And Dhampirs could very simply suck blood willy-nilly. It is the Ten Covenants that have inconvenienced them—well, races that they have not inconvenienced are in the minority, I should say—but the two races that the Covenants have most inconvenienced must be these.”
To Jibril and her smiling, savage tale of long ago, Sora said:
“…Wha, claim and devour? You mean, like, literally?”
For a moment, the scene of a woman, a fish the waist down, displaying a loathsome visage as she messily devoured other races—a scene that looked to be R-18 for a different reason—crossed Sora’s mind, and he shivered.
But Jibril shook her head in reply. “No, I kept it vague since you mentioned being wholesome. But I meant it sexually.”
“What??
I want in on this paradise! Jibril, let’s go, right now!!”
As Sora stood, yelping in delight, still Jibril looked back vacantly.
“You will be sucked dry and die. Is that quite all right?”
“What?? I want out of this infernooo… I’m not going there everrr.”
…Mermaids who couldn’t reproduce without sucking a man of another race dry? Just how far did this world have to go betraying one’s hopes and tropes? Sora, his energy level flung to max then drained to empty in the blink of an eye, sighed and sat down. Disregarding Sora, Jibril continued, “In any case…
“Dhampir and Siren are two races that cannot survive without harming another, and so the Ten Covenants threatened their very existence. Thus, Dhampir turned their attention to Siren.”
Hmm, Sora nodded.
“Yeah, guess they would. Since Siren’s Rank Fifteen, between Immanity and Werebeast, that means they can’t use magic, right? Dhampir’s got their stealth and illusion magic skills. They’d eat Siren for breakfast.”
As another race on the brink of extinction, their wager couldn’t have been too tough, either. It was savage as ever, but when your survival depended on it—. But Jibril continued with a smile.
“Sadly, the story escalates straight up… It has become a tale famous throughout the world.”
—It didn’t even escalate gradually? Jibril continued her narration amusedly.
“I mentioned that being bitten by a Dhampir…brings illness.”
“Yeah…”
“Put simply, it is an illness that causes one to die if exposed to direct sunlight. Thus, it is an illness that poses no special threat to Siren, who live at the bottom of the sea and rarely venture onto land.”
“—Mm? Hey, so…”
Plum answered with a fleeting smile. “…Yeeesss, we Dhampirs—proposed symbiosiiis…”
Jibril took over. “Their strategy was that Siren should grant them blood, while Dhampir returned the favor with magic and would help them catch other races on which to feast. Dhampir and Siren quickly formed a common front.”
“That’s—how do I put it…?”
“…A—mazing…”
Sora and Shiro together let out an expression of awe from their hearts. Even given that they were stuck in a situation in which they couldn’t worry about appearances, these two races had proposed a plan based perfectly in their mutual interests, accurately, and annoyingly—
“Yes, indeed. They are a race most worthy of astoundment—Siren are, I mean.”
—What? But Jibril continued, smiling pityingly at Plum.
“For Dhampir, having brought the offer of symbiosis—against all odds, was crushed!”
……Huh?
“In the end—Dhampir was beaten silly by Siren, and a mysterious contract was concluded whereby the Dhampir males would assist Siren in reproduction, while being forbidden to suck the blood of non-Sirens.”
……Excuse me? This information perhaps not even having been known to Shiro, she gave Jibril a surprised look, seeming to doubt her own ears.
“…Ha-ha…it’s really a funny story, isn’t iiit.” Plum, meanwhile, looked resigned to her fate.
“I imagine our ancestors hadn’t thought…the Sirens could fail to understand the Ten Covenants and not even realize that they were on the brink of ruin…ha-ha.”
—Her troubled face was augmented by her weariness as a dim smile emerged.
“…Uumm…? Brother…what…is?”
Shiro tilted her head in atypical confusion at Sora.
“—Ohh…so, could it be…? It couldn’t be…” He couldn’t believe it, but—. Sora went on. “Dhampir brought them a game where they didn’t use magic, and they were more or less setting it up for a draw as a step toward a proposal for a symbiotic relationship—but Siren didn’t understand what that meant and kicked Dhampir’s asses, and there was much rejoicing—like that?”
Jibril’s smile and Plum’s weary version of the same told him: Bull’s-eye.
“…Hey, are the Sirens stupid, or—?”
“They are stupid enough to resound through heaven and earth in three thousand worlds. ”
“I have to say, they’ve really reached the very pinnacle of stupidityyy…ha-ha.”
“Grampy said they’re not even up to the level of hairless monkeys, please.”
Jibril, Plum, and even Izuna, who was supposed to have been sleeping, all jumped on Sora’s question.
“…Whoa, there’s a race that’s looked down on even more than Immanity… It’s kinda moving, somehow.”
Jibril carried on with her tale, still in peak form.
“So, this has several interesting implications!”
Number one—she raised a finger.
“First of all, Dhampir is capable of surviving even on fluids other than blood.”
Two—she raised another.
“However, their growth depends on blood—without mixing of souls, they will stay children forever.”
Three—she raised another still.
“The prohibition on sucking other races’ blood only applies to males. However, Dhampirs are not capable of reproducing among themselves while they are still children. To receive blood, the males are forced to obey Siren, and to bear children, almost all the females are effectively forced to obey Siren as well.”
And four—she produced a finger yet again.
“Even if one were to flee from the city of Siren, one would be a carrier of disease—and you must know what that means?”
And with a smile, five—Jibril had her entire hand aloft.
“It means Dhampir unwittingly found themselves trapped by these idiots!”
……At this story, too stupid to even react to, Shiro had already lost interest and moved on to picking at her nails. Sora, too, gazed at the ceiling in a stupor—but then. Through the back of his mind, Plum’s words flitted:
—No—well, there are sooome girls who see it like that—
…Let’s collect and review the information here. First of all, female Dhampirs have no obligation to obey Siren and are capable of leaving. However, if they don’t suck blood, they’ll stay children. Yet they can survive as long as they have the bodily fluids of another race. On top of that, the second-best body fluid for them after blood is that? And—there are some girls who see it like that…?
—Wait. Wait just a moment, if you would.
……Solegal lol
“B-but stilll? For a…while, we still manaaged…”
“Whuh, a-ha, uh, yeah?”
Sora had been completely distracted but was brought back in a fluster by Plum’s objection.
“I just described the state immediately after the Ten Covenants. Dhampir did, in fact, succeed in symbiosis, from that point.”
Jibril, nodding, continued.
“Siren reproduces by despoiling the males of other races of their essence, their soul. However, there were individuals capable of leaving enough to keep the male alive while still reproducing, albeit just one such individual in a generation—and so.
“Dhampir would fulfill their binding obligation to assist in reproduction only with that one—she was set up as the queen, the agent plenipotentiary of Siren, from generation to generation, and the only one who might reproduce.”
“—Huhhh!”
“…A—mazing…”
Sora clapped his hands in admiration, and Shiro likewise applauded.
“Dhampir just has to assist Siren in reproduction, so it doesn’t violate the Covenant. They still can refuse the other Sirens who would suck out their essence till they died, and at the same time, Dhampir can suck blood—GG, perfect, right?”
Well, well—they might have screwed up spectacularly, but that was some turnabout. They’d found a system that would reliably guarantee the continued existence of both races. So in other words, they’d succeeded at achieving harmony across races before Sora and Shiro.
“—Dhampir’s got it together after all. Ain’t Rank Twelve for noth
ing, huh.”
“Sadly, Master, this system, too, broke down under the current queen.”
—Just how many punch lines did this story have?
“Okay, so what did this current queen friggin’ do?”
At Sora’s query, Jibril answered her with eyes half-closed but still bearing a smile, opening the fingers on both her hands. “—Nothing. At. All. ” At this Plum, as if her face wasn’t full enough of troubles, laughed to herself as if ready to cough up her soul as she muttered:
“She said, ‘I won’t get up until my prince comes to awaken meee’…and went into crybernation.”
Huh? Beaming so brightly one might have asked just what the hell was so amusing, Jibril said, “In other words—”
“The current queen, who holds the power for Siren to reproduce without Dhampir dying—it seems she was influenced by one of her mother’s fairy tales while she was still the queen, and so she made this pronouncement by the Covenants and nodded off.”
…Hey, wait a minute, you gotta be joking.
“Until the prince who will win her love appears—that is, until someone beats the game she’s set by the Covenants—she will not wake. And you see, crybernation is a special power of Siren—like the bloodbreak of Werebeast. She is capable of sleeping for over a thousand years—but, as luck would have it—”
With these words, Jibril sat on her knees and made as if to gesture with a fan.
“And now, ladies and gent, we’re about to get to the climax of the silliest bit of true history the world has ever knowwwn!”
…Was she trying to be some old-school Japanese comedian? Jibril jovially continued her routine with her idiosyncratic manner of speaking.
“So now!! The queen has set this game—but!
“How in the world is she to fall in love while yet asleep?!”
—…There were no words. Plum only looked off into the distance with her tenuous smile. Sora seemed to be holding back a headache, and Shiro by now was stifling a yawn, with Izuna well off into dreamland. The only one still in fine form, Jibril went on.
“The Dhampir men, who until then had only worked with the queen, who could reproduce without killing her partners, and used her as their excuse to refuse reproduction with the ordinary Siren individuals—oh, now! When the queen’s asleep, what will happen?!”