“That’s right! Despite all the talk of punishment, isn’t it ultimately ‘money is innocence, no money is guilt’! It’s like an evil law that’s only merciful to those who have and utterly ruthless to the have-nots!”

“People call the restaurants of Justitia arenas. When disputes arise while eating and drinking, fists and knives come out before words. Since they conclude ‘Whatever crime I commit, I can just pay money and be done with it,’ those with power and wealth don’t hesitate to use violence. Is this really the image of a righteous society?”

“Justitia is not a trash can! Why should we watch criminals from all over the continent swarm in here!?”

“Is the scale really that fair to begin with? Who guarantees that fairness?”

The citizens gathered in the square did not all rise up and respond to the prophet Sophia’s words, their passionate fervor and loud cheers did not overturn Justitia… Such a thing did not happen.

It couldn’t have been otherwise.

It wasn’t that other people didn’t know about the problems with the scale system.

There was no way the city’s citizens hadn’t realized the issues that Sophia, who had arrived in Justitia just a few days ago, could find.

But they remained silent despite knowing.

The authority known as the Kingdom of Heaven was that frightening.

“…”

Therefore, even though they knew Sophia’s words were right, the citizens did not respond to them.

They all kept their mouths shut or turned their gazes elsewhere, perhaps afraid of making eye contact with Sophia.

Those who had come from other continents and only had superficial knowledge about the Kingdom of Heaven nodded in agreement or showed interest with shining eyes, but their numbers were few.

Sophia didn’t care at all about that cold response.

She put down the megaphone she was holding and said to the Tin Knight, “Sir Tin, I think this is enough for today.”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ insists he wants to play more mini-games!]

“Isn’t it more exciting to move on to the next high-difficulty stage rather than continuing at the same difficulty?”

[The ‘Tin Knight’ honestly agrees, saying that’s true!]

The Tin Knight, who had been continuously avoiding the guards trying to catch him with acrobatic-like movements, lightly flicked his wrist.

And at the same time, Sophia’s body floated up into the sky.

“Uh, uhhh!?”

“T-that!”

What went up must come down.

People were shocked at the sight of Sophia, who looked like she would crash into the ground at any moment, but the Tin Knight caught her body nonchalantly.

As his seemingly careless yet extremely gentle movements deflected all impact, Sophia’s two feet landed naturally on the ground, as if they had been there all along.

Sophia, with a calm face that made it hard to believe she had just soared to the height of a two-story building, bowed her head to those around her.

“Thank you for indulging my foolish talk today. I’ll visit again tomorrow at the same time, same place. Well then, goodbye.”

With that, Sophia turned on her heel and left.

The guards who had been staring blankly at this scene soon came to their senses, and Porcher, the Justitia official, hurriedly stopped Sophia.

“W-wait a moment!”

“Hmm, yes. What is it?”

Porcher was at a loss for words at her extremely calm response.

While struggling to keep up with the sudden turn of events, Porcher regained his composure through the self-control befitting a third-year civil servant.

“What do you mean ‘What is it?’ What kind of outrageous behavior is this?”

“Hmm? I checked Justitia’s laws in advance, was there something in my actions that violated the law?”

“Of course there—“

Porcher, who was about to answer “—There was,” had to stop for a moment.

There wasn’t.

No matter how much he racked his brain, he couldn’t think of any appropriate law to punish Sophia’s actions.

But the scale, the foundation of Justitia. If he meekly sent away someone who had made statements ignoring that scale, Porcher himself would have to take enormous blame.

“…Ahem! Yes, didn’t you continue your actions at your own discretion, disregarding when the guards tried to stop you? This is clearly a crime!”

Porcher raised the scale at his waist.

The small ivory-colored scale was one of the terminals connected to the emerald scale in the city center.

He confessed Sophia’s crime to the scale, and the scale’s plate tilted slightly—very slightly.

Porcher checked the law book he carried with the scale, then said with a frown, “Your punishment is to write a statement and one hour of detention.”

“I’m curious about Justitia’s prison, but I have to go read some books after this. Can I substitute it with value?”

“…Five copper coins.”

“Yes, here you are.”

The coins Sophia handed over went onto the scale and then disappeared into light.

Towards Porcher, who had a strangely bug-bitten look on his face, Sophia left a parting greeting saying, “Thank you for your hard work,” and then left.

People around watched Sophia’s departure with strange looks.

“What was she trying to do in the end?”

“Well, maybe she just wanted to say some unpleasant things to the high-ups?”

“Huh, quite gutsy. Although the lord of Justitia is gentle to civilians, his authority is no less than that of a marquis or count.”

“But didn’t she say she’d come again tomorrow?”

“No way. She must have just said that.”

“Putting aside the content of her words, her attitude alone was refreshing to watch.”

“That’s true. When she was falling at the end, my heart skipped a beat for a moment.”

People gathered in small groups and chattered about the incident that had just occurred.

However, their voices were neither loud nor serious.

They were too wary of the frowning faces of the officials and soldiers to speak loudly, and Sophia and the Tin Knight’s appearance was too comical to discuss seriously.

However…

《Yes, everyone. Thank you for coming again today. I see some faces I’m seeing for the first time, and some I remember seeing before. Either way, I’m grateful.》

One day.

《Well then, let’s talk again today. But do you think the value of any given property is always the same? Can you buy grain during a good harvest year and during a famine year with the same amount of currency? Is salt near the sea and salt deep in the mountains the same price? The ‘value’ judged by the scale includes the property owned by individuals, and I’m curious how it judges this fluidity of value.》

Two days.

《Hello, Official Porcher. You’re working hard today as well. Oh, you received a complaint about noise pollution? I understand. I’ll pay the fine and start. But where is the person who made that complaint? Yes, retaliation? No, it’s not like that. I was wondering if compensation might be needed since they suffered damage. After all, even if I pay a fine to the scale, it doesn’t go to the victim. Oh, you’re asking how you can believe my words are true? Of course you can believe it. We can just declare it to the scale. Your face color doesn’t look good, are you feeling alright? Overworking yourself is bad, you know. You say the scale isn’t a convenient lie detector for private use? I understand.》

When this kind of thing repeated for more than three days, people could no longer ignore Sophia’s words.

They didn’t dismiss her words as mere bravado or jokes.

It wasn’t because her words were tremendously new.

It wasn’t because her words contained clear truths that would amaze everyone.

They just realized one thing.

“What? Was it okay to talk so openly like that?”

Like cotton soaking up dew, slowly, little by little.

The invisible ceiling pressing down on people’s heads began to crumble.

***

“Who on earth are you guys?”

To the young necromancer’s incredulous question, Dorothea replied curtly, “What do you mean who? We’re just travelers.”

“I didn’t know the word ‘just’ was used like this.”

The young man was dumbfounded.

It had been several days since he had been reduced to this bizarre state with only his head remaining.

All he could do without hands or feet was to see and hear, and he had his skeleton rat friends to deliver various news to him.

And the actions of Sophia and the Tin Knight that he had been watching for the past few days were hard to call sane, even as a joke.

“Aren’t you afraid of the Kingdom of Heaven?”

“Is that something to be said by a person who was trying to throw a curse bomb at a Kingdom of Heaven priest?”

“It’s natural for a cornered rat to bite a cat, but if there’s a mouse that approaches a calm cat and dances on its hind legs, that’s insane.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

At that attitude that seemed genuinely uninterested, the young man lost his bearings again.

“More importantly, tell me this part again. I understand putting bones inside an inverted animal heart, but the trick to shrinking it after that—“

“For that, you do it like this—“

In fact, it wasn’t just Sophia who was strange.

This fellow practitioner named Dorothea was also an infinitely bizarre existence in the young man’s eyes.

In terms of ability to control mana or sense for learning and using magic, she would be evaluated as a prodigy.

Of course, evaluation was relative, and considering that necromancy itself was a field that people without money or talent rushed into trying to use magic somehow, Dorothea was certainly talented enough to be called a genius. To the extent that she probably would have been in the upper-middle ranks even if she had learned other schools.

However, one thing.

When it came to her mana reserves, she was less of a “heavenly talent” and more of a “heavenly calamity”.

At least among all the opponents the young man had met so far, there wasn’t a single being that could compare to Dorothea in terms of mana quantity.

No, there is one. One of the four magic towers I saw in the Magic State gave off this kind of feeling.

After recalling the incomparably majestic building he had seen just once in the past, the young man couldn’t help but smile wryly.

A magic tower was in itself a huge mana generation facility, a refinery absorbing nature’s mana, and a collection of countless magic tools.

To express it physically, it meant that a single warrior could engage in a tug-of-war with a ship using hundreds of rowers and the power of wind, managing to compete instead of being dragged away. Moreover, even the speed of recovery after using such power was fast.

“Have you ever experienced running out of mana?”

“What does that matter?”

“It’s simply an expression of envy. You can ignore it if you want.”

“…It’s not that I haven’t. I’ve deliberately depleted it to the bottom to test my limits, and I once went to near depletion when reactivating a tin can that was stuck in storage.”

“That’s nonsense. There’s no way that much mana would be needed just to activate one magic doll.”

Dorothea just shrugged without answering.

The young man didn’t probe further either. He hadn’t been seriously curious, anyway.

As Dorothea received the final knowledge from the young man and was about to fully master it, the skeleton rats the young man had released brought him strange news.

Dorothea seemed to have spread a similar surveillance network, as she approached the window and looked outside.

Someone with a winged monkey emblem on their shoulder was approaching the inn, leading a horse.

The horse’s build was enormously huge.

Its height alone reached 2.2 meters from top to bottom, and due to its thick build rather than sleek, the pressure it exuded around it was tremendous.

Even just walking slowly, people around were sneaking glances and avoiding it.

However, unlike its body built to perfect golden proportions, its eyes showed not a hint of vitality.

“Looks like what I ordered has finally arrived. Now we can leave anytime.”

“Is that the horse-shaped golem you said you ordered from the Alchemists’ Association? It’s something they don’t give out unless you’re quite a noble, how did you manage to get it?”

“Well, if the introduction letter hadn’t been useful, I was going to make a fuss about it.”

“…?”

“Anyway, I’ve received the spell, paid the money, so the deal is done. I’m going to head outside the city now, what about you? If needed, I can give you a final consideration as a courtesy. I think it’s better than being caught by nasty guys and becoming a spectacle.”

It was a truly indifferent tone for content about ending a life.

The young man smiled wryly, thinking it was indeed befitting of the apprentice of a legend in the field.

“No need. Thanks to you, I’ve resolved my lingering attachments and left what I needed to leave. Now I can focus on my personal vendetta.”

After briefly acknowledging with a “I see,” the witch left without hesitation.

The young man left behind quietly burned with resolve, surrounded by skeleton rats.

***

https://ko-fi.com/genesisforsaken