The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#Chapter 313 Cat Pago (26) - Diary, Ninth Page --- [Special Exhibition Hall 2: Justice Viewing Guide] Dear visitors, we sincerely welcome you to the second exhibition of our museum. This is a space that artistically evaluates the 'weight of values and fair justice' that you have carried throughout your life. For your safe and comfortable viewing experience, please read this guide carefully. 1. This space is a hall of balance filled with statues holding massive law books and golden scales. 2. On one side of the statues' scales is a stamp, and this stamp can be balanced by placing human body parts on the opposite side of the scale. 3. If you succeed in balancing it, the statues will hand over the stamp. If you fail to balance it, do not worry. The statue will personally cut off part of your body to balance the scale and hand over the stamp. 4. If you try to touch the stamp without balancing it, this will be considered a theft attempt and the statue will slice you into pieces. [Manager's Postscript] Justice means the fairness of returning what one has taken to the world without a single error. Please use justice to enjoy a pleasant viewing experience. --- Compared to the Hall of Wisdom, it was extremely short and clear. That's precisely why it couldn't be anything but a more vicious rule. As shown in the Hall of Wisdom, the stamps here weigh as much as a decent kettlebell. When asked to offer body parts of that weight on the scale, would people really try to cut off their own limbs to match the weight, or would they try to offer someone other than themselves? A rule that induces fratricidal conflict among humans, despite having the concept of 'justice' as its theme. Even after selling one's conscience and ethics as a human being like that, it doesn't end there. Whether you offer too much or too little of your body parts, the statue will cut off some part of the visitor's body to forcibly balance it anyway. Even if you roughly estimate the weight by eye, you'd have to sacrifice at least a finger or two as if it were natural, even with good luck. It was truly unreasonable, but originally that unreasonableness was the essence of beings called anomalies. An existence that cannot be opposed, that ridicules human dignity, that consumes human lives as mere cheap disposable goods. So, that's how it had been until now. "─Well done. Blackie, smash them all to pieces." "I'm fighting for my life here and you're going to act all leisurely in the back!?" Crack! At Popuri's forcefully swung baseball bat, the massive marble statue's jaw cracked and fragments scattered in all directions. The statue staggered its massive body, revealing an ugly cross-section. But Popuri wasn't the kind person who would wait for it to fall. She gave a strong snap to both wrists gripping the bat and drove a full swing straight into the statue's empty facial area. Clang─!! With a spine-chillingly crisp metallic sound, the statue's head was torn off and flew like a cannonball. The neckless marble pillar collapsed, and gray stone dust rose like mist. Taking advantage of that gap, two statues flanking her raised their brutally massive law books and golden scales crosswise and struck down. Each page of the law book was sharp like a guillotine, and the golden scales were heavy enough to crush a person's frail body. There was no space to dodge. But instead of dodging, Popuri lowered her body toward the floor and slid. Crash-! Having lost their respective targets, the law book and scales collided in midair, making a terrible rupturing sound. In the middle of that dull shockwave, Popuri, who had been sliding across the floor, sprang up as if bouncing. Her waist curved like a tautly drawn bowstring, and the silver baseball bat traced a diagonal line while harboring extreme centrifugal force. Crack! Snap!! As the bat struck the statue's knee joint precisely, the thick marble leg snapped like a corn stalk. Using the falling, unbalanced creature's back as a stepping stone, Popuri lightly leaped into the air. As her skirt fluttered elegantly in midair, the bat spun once behind her back to add acceleration before driving down to pulverize another statue into what used to be a statue. "...Hah. What do you mean fighting for your life." A chuckle escaped from Pago's mouth. The statues weren't weak. Each statue moving there had mass, strength, and speed that could easily tear apart not just humans, but even wild beasts. No matter how excellent Popuri's motor skills and combat sense were, as long as she was human, these were monsters she shouldn't be able to defeat even a single one of. But not anymore. -Vroooom! The exorcism diary inside Popuri's bag emitted a massive aura. The baseball bat she swung resonated as if telling her to go wilder. Most importantly, Popuri's own movements were transcending the level of normal humans by far. You could tell just by watching how she now handled the solid duralumin metal bat like some corn stalk, when before she could barely use it by twisting her entire body and her wrists would strain after just a few swings. 'Her narrative as an anomaly exterminator has completely settled. Physical strength aside, she's even bulldozing through mental attacks and rule-based coercion with brute force.' Even if they brought someone stronger than Popuri from the world where his main body existed, rampaging like that would have been impossible. The very laws of the world, the discipline that anomalies impose on humans, would have made it so. Physical abilities would be suppressed to the level of ordinary civilians here, sword aura would be unusable, and they'd just die off like extras. Even Pago himself wasn't exempt from this. Why else would he have manifested here not as a human, but as a cat, and one that fit the framework of an anomaly at that? If he had clumsily tried to break the rules using the 'power' of a clone like before, he would have been immediately branded as a foreign object and annihilated. Since the world itself is the enemy. But Popuri is a native of this place. In other words, from the world's perspective, she's like part of itself, so whether it's the immune system or surveillance system, the reaction is slow. The spectacle before his eyes was the result of using that 'slight gap' to let her devour experience points voraciously. After pulverizing all the statues down to the last one, Popuri told people to come and get their stamps, then proceeded straight to the next hall. Fortitude, which frightens people with various illusions and hallucinations, but the moment one actually feels fear, immediately materializes and tears people apart. Temperance, which regardless of an individual's patience or self-control, forcibly induces greed through mental manipulation, then turns people into gold if they touch the treasure. All kinds of trials that originally could never be broken through with mere physical strength were equally suppressed before Popuri's bat. Watching that scene, Pago suddenly lifted his head upward. His two eyes, dyed blue and yellow, pierced through to the second floor of the museum. Its innermost depths. "Gasp...!" A space filled with all sorts of bizarre tools, what could be called a workshop. Someone was writhing on the floor there. A pure white suit. An appearance that seemed to be in his late forties. The man who had invited Hinosaka here and thrown countless people as sacrifices to the museum - the museum director. He was dying miserably, spewing blood from every hole in his head. The museum director couldn't even speak properly, let alone heal his wounds, but there was one question on his face. Why? "When you curse someone, dig two graves. When tools used to harm others are destroyed, isn't it natural for the backlash to return to the owner? Hm?" Pago answered that question with a sneer. Did he hear those words? Or was it simply part of a bodily reaction? The museum director, whose fingertips had been trembling, collapsed limply onto the ground. Up to this point it would have been a fairly ordinary death, but the scene that followed was even more bizarre. Drip. The museum director's body melted away. Like ice cream. Or like paint touched by water. His two eyes flowed down, his nose crumpled, and his lips dripped and fell to the ground. What remained was not human bones and muscles, but something like a plain mannequin with its facial features thoroughly erased. It was the end of a being that perhaps had once been human, but had fallen into being an anomaly. Confirming that ending, Pago shouted to Popuri. "Get out quickly! The building is collapsing!!" Instead of retorting about what nonsense that was, Popuri secured the stamp that had been stuffed between piles of gold as if telling her to go to hell during the extraction process, then kicked open the door blocking between the hall of temperance and the lobby and came out. As had been the case until now, the visitors who had been preparing to go in and stamp once Popuri came out, stepped back in confusion at the suddenly wide-open door. "What, why is that, student? What happened inside?" Popuri ignored the questions directed at her and looked around at the building's ceiling and edges. Creeeeak! With ominous creaking, the museum itself let out a scream that echoed throughout. "Quickly! Quickly! Hold out your tickets!! Get your stamps and get out!! Hinosaka! Help organize!!" "Ah, yes!! Everyone! Please calmly keep order! If you all try to go first and struggle with each other, everyone will be late!!" Under Hinosaka's leadership, having successfully rallied the people in that brief moment, the guests held out their tickets in order, and Popuri stamped the final sections on the back of each ticket in sequence. As people who had collected all their stamps escaped one by one, and finally only Hinosaka and Popuri remained. Suddenly, the weight of the stamp increased to a level that even Popuri couldn't handle, and it left her hands and crashed to the ground. Thoom! Looking at the stamp that had embedded itself while shattering the marble floor like a spider web, Popuri spoke as if incredulous. "...Wow, they're really being petty to the very end." Popuri had dealt with quite a few anomalies until now, but this museum seemed to be the worst when it came to being petty and pathetic. Wasn't it absolutely full of malice, saying that since it had come to this, it would take her along as a companion? Popuri gritted her teeth and pulled at the stamp's handle, but the stamp didn't budge at all. Looking closely, the stamp had gone beyond being buried in the ground and was tangled with the ground as if it had been welded. "Hinosaka, take the ticket and get out." "No way! What about you!!" It was an immediate answer without even 0.1 seconds of hesitation. Chuckling that she had made one good friend, Popuri said again. "I can only get out if Hinosaka opens it and leaves first. Hurry!" Before they knew it, the lobby's walls and ceiling were melting down stickily like paint. At the visual that clearly showed it would be dangerous to come into contact with that, Hinosaka hesitated briefly before soon opening the door leading outside the lobby. "Come this way!!" She was probably keeping the door open while blocking it with her body, but to Popuri, Hinosaka's body only appeared to be half-buried in a concrete wall. After all, if they could get out with such a trick, there would have been no need to collect stamps from all the guests - they could have just collected from one person and opened it up. Normally at this point it would have ended with a 'hero left alone to sacrifice herself ending', but unfortunately, Popuri, who had many days left to live, declined such an ending. "Pago!! Do something!! I'll buy you catnip or whatever!" "Absolutely not, so make it something else. Damn it. Shove ma-, no, spiritual power into your eyes!!" "What's spiritual power!?" "Just put strength in your eyes and think about seeing better! There's no time to explain the theory in detail!" It was a messy explanation, but unfortunately, that was the only thing Popuri could rely on. Thinking "whatever happens, happens" as she put strength in her eyes and stared intently at the wall where Hinosaka appeared to be buried for a moment. Soon, Popuri's eyes began to see simultaneously, like translucent images, both the sight of Hinosaka blocking the properly opened door with her body and the sight of a wall blocked without gaps as if it wouldn't let anyone pass. "I can see it!!" "Run toward the door!! Erase the wall's existence from your mind!!" Popuri didn't voice the question of how to do such a thing. Because the melted building ceiling had already come too close for that. She put her backpack over her head like an umbrella and sprinted straight toward the door where Hinosaka was. But as expected, it was too much. Because while Popuri's eyes could see the door that Hinosaka was keeping open, she could also clearly see the concrete wall in exactly the same position. How could she erase something visible from her mind! Therefore, the solution Popuri reached was different. She put all her running momentum and body weight into swinging her bat straight at the wall. Crack!! Instead of the intense impact she had expected, it felt like tearing apart a large sheet of paper. Immediately after, Hinosaka and Popuri's bodies became entangled as they tumbled outward. After rolling about three times, they caught their breath and looked back. And soon let out hollow laughter. There was no collapsing massive marble building there. There was just an old easel and canvas placed in the middle of a desolate vacant lot. In the middle of that canvas, where paint had dripped down stickily as if water had been poured over the still-wet painting, there was a small hole punched through as if someone had forcibly poked it with their finger. And it looked like it had been pushed from the back to the front. Those who had escaped earlier seemed equally bewildered, as they all stared blankly at the painting with dazed expressions. Popuri twitched her lips for a moment, then spoke with a light joke. "Could we make some money selling this as avant-garde art?" "......" "Sorry." At the indescribable looks from the people around her, Popuri immediately shrank down. Indeed, dealing with people was harder for her than dealing with anomalies. *** --- --- --- 『The Rule-Based Art Museum』 A mysterious museum that suddenly appears in an ordinary vacant lot in the city center. The interior is divided into a large lobby and four halls, and after physically trapping people who enter the lobby, it informs them that they can only exit by stamping four "seals" on the back of their tickets. Each hall themed on wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance forces visitors to follow specific "virtues" and "rules," but in reality, they are nothing more than slaughter facilities that torment and massacre people with malicious wordplay and unreasonable rules. The canvas and easel that appear to be the anomaly's main body were thoroughly destroyed and burned, so the anomaly itself is presumed to have been eliminated, but since similar anomalies might reoccur in the future, precautions that ordinary people can reference are noted below. First, don't be swayed by their manuals. Manuals are meaningful because survivors write them; manuals written by those anomaly bastards are just bait thrown out to watch people worry and suffer in the first place. Second, if guys claiming to be museum owners or staff offer to hand you tickets, you must never accept them. Once you take them, there's a high possibility of problems arising even if you throw them away. Third, the second point applies even if the other party is originally an acquaintance or someone you can be certain is human. In fact, this anomaly also had ordinary humans as employees, so if the many victims hadn't joined forces to take "appropriate" action, it would have surely continued with a suffocating development. Fourth, contact the following number. Normal calls probably won't work, but this number might. It's currently a modest team with only three members, but by the time you read this, there's a possibility it might have grown. Probably. --- --- ---