Lute was a girl who looked as though she'd been sculpted from snow.
Her hair, which just grazed her shoulders, her skin, her clothes — all of it white.
The only color on her was a pair of gemstone-blue eyes.
And the golden rosary hanging at her throat.
Yet for all the intensity of her presence, she was on the small side.
At a glance, you could mistake her for a middle schooler — that slight, compact frame.
Perhaps it was the expression that completed the effect: a face drained of all emotion.
Something about her carried the atmosphere of a finely crafted doll.
"Here. Coffee."
"Thank you."
I served coffee to Lute, who had settled herself on the guest sofa.
She was, strictly speaking, an uninvited guest I'd never asked over.
And yet she was someone who warranted exactly this kind of courteous treatment.
Because she was, of all things, an Inspector.
*The Valkyrie who is almost the only one capable of standing against humans, wasn't it.*
Valhalla — the military organization that fights the Erosion Species on humanity's behalf.
But unlike Valkyries, who obey human commands absolutely.
Commanders had a tendency to reach beyond their authority.
Especially in frontier cities like Lumia, that tendency ran deep.
After one Commander's greed had erased an entire city from the map.
Headquarters established the Eye of Odin to serve as an oversight body.
And the Valkyries who operated within it were called Inspectors.
That Lute was an Inspector was beyond question.
Not long after she'd kicked open the Commander's office door.
An official dispatch from headquarters had come through on the terminal.
Even so, the Commander fixed her with a look of undisguised displeasure and spoke.
"So. What exactly does an Inspector want here? I don't recall doing anything worth a visit."
"And yet here we are. Are you really going to play innocent?"
"Ha — play innocent? What are you even talking about?"
The Commander didn't flinch at her words. He stood his ground, utterly unruffled.
The posture of a man with nothing on his conscience.
Lute looked up at him and let out a long, slow sigh.
"Two days ago, an anonymous tip arrived at the Eye of Odin. It alleged that the Commander recently posted to Lumia had been making moves to access the central Core. Unauthorized access to a Core is a prohibited act — even the attempt alone carries severe disciplinary consequences. Were you unaware of that?"
"That's — that's complete nonsense. A fabrication. Someone is trying to frame me!"
"Is it? The anonymous tip also detailed a number of other illegal activities you've engaged in. When we looked into those, they turned out to be accurate. You've been here less than a week, and you're already this brazen?"
*Illegal activities — what on earth has he been doing behind my back.*
I looked at the Commander with an expression that asked exactly that.
But he didn't spare me so much as a glance.
He just turned toward Lute and fired off excuses in a rush.
"Th-that was — that was unavoidable, for the sake of running the city! But I never touched the Core! This is a setup!"
"…Whether that's true or not will become clear once we investigate."
Lute watched the Commander without so much as a twitch of her brow.
The detached composure of someone who had been through this exact scene more times than she could count.
She turned toward the door and called out for whoever was waiting to come in.
A flood of Valkyries in white uniforms poured through.
Not a single familiar face — none of them looked like they belonged to Lumia.
They moved toward the Commander and pinned both his arms.
"What do you think you're doing! Let go of me!"
"While we verify the Core access logs, I'll need you to stay put. We can't have evidence going missing. Once the investigation concludes and your innocence is established, you'll be released. Of course, if you're found guilty… your future will be rather difficult."
"Don't make me laugh! You're just Valkyries!"
The Commander thrashed, trying to shake them off.
But there was no world in which a human could overpower a Valkyrie by force.
His resistance was meaningless. He was dragged out the door.
I had been watching in silence. Now I moved.
I stepped forward and planted myself between Lute and the Commander.
"W-wait a moment!"
"Is there something you'd like to ask?"
"Isn't there some kind of misunderstanding? Unauthorized Core access — that's a crime that could level the entire city. The Commander wouldn't—"
"Wouldn't what?"
Twitch.
For the first time, Lute's brow moved — the brow that hadn't so much as shifted until now.
Like liquid emotion being poured into a vessel that had been empty.
She looked at me with eyes that carried a faint chill and spoke.
"Haah…. Leila. I know who you are. We're both from headquarters. I've heard the rumors — that you're an extraordinary hard worker who trains without a single day off."
"That's… why are you bringing that up…."
"Which is why I'm surprised you have this little grip on reality. Do you understand how serious it is to tamper with a Core without authorization? One wrong move, and tens of thousands of people in this city could have died overnight."
"Ugh…."
"So don't go sticking your neck in before the verdict is reached. If you're not careful… you could end up implicated as an accomplice."
Lute's words were genuinely angry, and yet somehow warm underneath.
Warm enough that I almost felt she was worried about me — one Valkyrie to another.
Because in this world, there was no such thing as leniency for Valkyries.
It might have been a warning: don't step into dangerous ground.
But in this moment, with the Commander watching from right in front of me.
There was only one thing I could say to her.
"Even so. I believe in the Commander."
"…What admirable loyalty."
*I have nothing more to say to you.*
Lute led the Commander away and disappeared.
Judging by the direction, probably toward his quarters.
It seemed she intended to keep him confined until the facts were confirmed.
Naturally, news of the Commander spread through the branch in an instant.
He already had a poor image and a worse reputation.
Yubina in particular shot him a look of pure hatred, as if to say she'd known all along.
Needless to say, not a single person took his side.
The Commander's office, emptied of its occupant, utterly devoid of any human presence.
I sat down in his chair and tapped the desk with my fingertips.
"He touches the Core and brings an Inspector down on the city? There's reckless, and then there's this…."
The central Core he was alleged to have tampered with.
Its importance and danger were comparable to a nuclear reactor.
It was the device supplying the enormous energy needed to power an entire city.
One wrong move and it wouldn't be strange for the whole city to be obliterated.
That's why an Inspector had come running within mere days.
A newly posted Commander had apparently gone and poked at the reactor out of nowhere.
Even for a frontier city, how could anyone not be alarmed?
*He probably did it on purpose.*
Reading the situation wasn't particularly difficult.
A Commander who had been deliberately playing the villain all along.
An Inspector who appeared in Lumia overnight, summoned by an anonymous tip.
No matter how I looked at it, this was the Commander's own doing.
The anonymous tip was almost certainly something he'd sent himself.
In which case, his purpose was….
"He must have decided the current forces aren't enough."
An unidentified black Erosion Species that leapt across space.
And on its heels, a legion of hundreds of Erosion Species poised to descend on the city.
The Commander had apparently concluded that Lumia's forces alone couldn't hold against that.
In the original story, of course, Leila's life had bought the time needed.
But he didn't seem to have any knowledge of the original work.
And his ultimate goal was presumably for no one to die.
Which meant he needed to bring in reinforcements from outside, by any means necessary.
Luring the Inspector to Lumia was for exactly that purpose.
Lute hadn't come to the city to help him, strictly speaking.
But once the city was caught up in the crisis, she'd have no choice but to act.
*Still — did it really have to be this complicated?*
But here a question arose.
Why had he gone to such a convoluted method?
If he needed help, there were other ways.
I turned it over in my mind, and a small, humorless laugh escaped me.
"…It's my fault, isn't it?"
When I thought about it, the reason was simple.
The seed I'd planted to keep him from revealing that he was a regressor.
The unidentified mastermind that even B-rank Leila couldn't stand against.
He had factored in the possibility that that threat would come.
The Commander needed to bring meaningful reinforcements to Lumia within the tight window of a single week — without letting the mastermind identify him.
Even by my estimation, those were conditions with no good answer.
And yet the Commander had turned that slim possibility into reality.
There was nothing to say but that it was genuinely impressive.
*Does he have a chance of winning?*
I calculated Lute's strength from our brief encounter.
Going by the volume of aura I'd sensed — probably B-rank.
Her subordinates looked like they'd be at the upper end of C-rank, at least.
In practical terms, it was as if Leila and the Rabbit Hole Squad had doubled in size.
Even by my own reckoning, with the current forces, the math worked out: we could get through that day without losing anyone.
"Pfhh… you want it that badly? Throwing away your reputation, your future, everything…. Just to survive the week?"
But this method carried far too much risk.
Whether he'd actually touched the Core or not, he'd apparently committed real illegal acts that could stick.
Once the investigation concluded, the Commander wouldn't be able to keep his position.
Did he not know that? He almost certainly did.
The Commander had resolved to sacrifice everything he had.
And made it his purpose to keep Lumia's Valkyries alive.
"Haah…. Is that really how you do things? That's an absurd amount of resolve."
When I thought about it carefully, it wasn't strange.
From the very first moment we met, the Commander had staked his life for the Valkyries.
He'd been that kind of man even before the Regressions began.
By any means necessary, more desperately than anyone.
Even if it meant wearing infamy and being looked down upon.
He simply didn't want the people he'd once been close to to die.
Oh, what a noble soul this man possessed.
To me, it was a degree of self-sacrifice that was frankly nauseating.
"I don't like this…."
Of course, for me, this was a completely mood-killing development.
Even if we defeated Midir and moved past this.
The Commander was fated to no longer be the Commander afterward.
That's no fun at all.
The Commander owed me a far greater variety of entertainment.
Did he really think I'd just sit back and watch him get thrown in prison for nothing?
But a simple failure would only repeat the same cycle.
Even if I secretly stopped his heart right now and forced a Regression.
He would just repeat the same process endlessly until he succeeded.
*So is there no other way?*
No — there was a way.
Exactly one thing that was possible precisely because I held the informational advantage.
Somehow I'd known it would come to this. What an impossible Commander.
What would he even do without me….
"Running off on your own is unforgivable."
Now then. It was time to lovingly trample the flowers the Commander had so carefully tended.