The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#364 Ghost Sirius (4) - A Contrived Tragedy There are two ways to enjoy "good things" in this world. One. Enjoying it by monopolizing it alone. Two. Enjoying it by sharing it with the rest of the world. Of the two, the one Lucidra had mainly indulged in was the former. After all, she alone had been able to enjoy, from the best seat in the house, every story unfolding through the Crown Prince's Clones, from the position of an audience member. (E/N: Let her not find us readers...She will kill us!) It wasn't a bad thing. For a demon who fundamentally loved chaos and confusion, with a strongly hedonistic streak, being able to monopolize the mayhem the Clones stirred up was an immensely enjoyable thing. But. Sometimes, a thought like this crossed her mind. '...It feels like a waste for only me to know about this.' (E/N: Ah, we are safe) What would other people think, seeing the Crown Prince's life story, and how would they judge it? The way he, a mere commoner adventurer, possessed suspiciously refined knowledge; the sheer recklessness of a mere servant butting heads with the highest nobility in the land; and all sorts of other elements that left Lucidra dumbfounded and grumbling even as she watched, while the Crown Prince and his Clones themselves simply took it all in stride. If someone other than her were to watch and judge it, what impressions would they possibly come away with? However, there was a great obstacle standing in the way of this desire of Lucidra's. "That's a bit much. There is such a thing as privacy, you know." None other than the fact that the Crown Prince was against making the Clones' stories known. "If one's own personal experiences were made known to the world without permission, it would surely be unpleasant from the person's own perspective. And it's not as though I can go ask them for permission at this point, either. Just give up on the idea." "Oh, come on, you're probably the only person in the world who worries about something like that." When the stories of countless heroes, great figures, and politicians of the world spread, does anyone go check each and every one of their opinions first? People around them just spread and record it on their own. It was Lucidra's belief that the Crown Prince was the only being who bothered with such a weak(?) concept as privacy. The problem was that, however weak the concept might be, the Crown Prince himself was not weak at all, not even a little, not even the tiniest bit. Lucidra was certain that if she spread stories about him behind his back without permission, this human — no, this [Race: Crown Prince] — would without fail catch her and mete out punishment. Even if the gods of the Heavenly Realm publicly named her as an enemy, Lucidra was confident she could brazen it out and say "so what are you going to do about it?" — but being marked as a primary enemy by the Crown Prince was somewhat, no, very frightening. So ordinarily she suppressed the desire she secretly harbored and just let it be, but this time, a very good excuse had presented itself. "It's supposed to be a cultural activity, right? Then don't you need a suitable subject matter for it?" "As for subject matter, I have no shortage of it if I simply recall the works of my previous life." "Come on, you already did that with the librarian, Ernst. Don't you know that repeating the same material is called falling into a rut?" "Hmm…." The Crown Prince was a man who, if she tried to win through pure logic or scholarship, would rebuff every single point like an impenetrable wall — but in the realm of "entertainment" like this, he occasionally showed an opening. Lucidra kept driving the wedge deeper. "Besides, I helped you catch the Dreaming God last time! You have to repay that debt!" "Hmmmm…." "I'll replace all the specific names of people and places with fictional ones! I'll swap out the detailed setting too! And tweak the ending a little as well! Honestly, at that point, even the person themselves wouldn't recognize it if you told it to their face!" "Hah, I suppose there's no helping it." "Yes!!" In a sense, it was a landmark event: a Greater Demon sweet-talking the Crown Prince into agreement. If she'd shown her past self this scene right now, that past Lucidra would have raged, "If you have that kind of opportunity, you should be taking a soul fragment out of it — why waste it on something like this!?" But the present Lucidra was happy. Whatever else might be said, the saying that one is dyed by the ink one stays near was not wrong. *** Stella quietly analyzed the script. And she reached a conclusion. 'Adventurer B is far too abstract a person.' One day, a young, handsome, and capable adventurer showed up at the Adventurer's Guild. While everyone else spoke of reality and profit, he alone spoke of dreams and romance. His skill surpassed even those called the pinnacle of the profession, and yet he was so selfless that he would help even strangers he had no connection to, without any ulterior motive. The problem was that the script offered no explanation whatsoever as to why Adventurer B was such a being. What had B done before joining the Guild? Where had he learned swordsmanship? Why did he sing of dreams and insist that plain reality was boring? The script said nothing at all. Adventurer B simply appeared out of nowhere, swept through his surroundings like a storm, and departed like a gentle breeze. For a figure out of folklore, that wasn't so unusual. 'A village falls into hardship. A knight happening to pass by suddenly slays a wicked dragon or mage. The knight departs without asking for reward. The villagers praise the knight's deeds and commemorate them through oral tradition. In other words, B is, from the start, closer to a stage device with the role of savior already fixed in place. A supremely idealistic, selfless, and valiant outsider. He should be interpreted less as a person than as a phenomenon.' It was an analysis that, had the Greater Demon who had planned this whole affair heard it, would have thrown her into confusion: 'No, it's not really like that… huh? Is it, though? Well, it is true he's not quite human, at least.' Truly, one might call it the class of a great actress. 'Girl B, by contrast, is much easier to understand. If we're aiming to draw the audience's sympathy, she's the one who has to be the lead.' Stella read the script. She read it, and read it again. Imagining herself as having become Girl B, she analyzed and empathized with her psychology. 'The young girl lived alone with her mother. To her, that mother must have been practically the whole world.' But that mother was cruelly taken from the girl. An attack by a wicked mage. Murder. And the theft of the remains. For a child, the mere fact of her mother being murdered was, quite literally, a shock enough to bring her world crashing down. And if, on top of that, even the corpse was stolen away, denying her mother rest even in death — how great would that shock be? How great would the hatred be? Girl B strove desperately for revenge, and to grant her mother peace. But a young girl is powerless. The adventurers she turned to for help pitied B, yet turned away without fulfilling her wish, and the girl grew angry and disillusioned at that. But even so, the girl had no other way. The girl threw herself into the very world of adventurers she had come to despise, and became an adventurer herself. 'And yet, even after that, happiness never comes.' The girl kept striving, again and again. She built up her mana, accumulated achievements, earned money to equip herself, and tried everything within her power. Yet it wasn't enough. Her skill's rate of growth kept slowing, her debts kept growing, and far from advancing, even holding her ground grew difficult, so she gradually sank. It wasn't a dramatic, intense despair. Small despairs and difficulties, each one easy enough to dismiss on its own. But precisely because of that, they surely wore away at the girl's will and emotions. 'The girl must have been afraid.' The fear that she would never achieve her revenge like this, forever. The fear that she could never grant her mother peace. But the greatest fear surely wasn't that. The thought that she herself might simply give up — that, exhausted again and again, she might settle for an ending where she told herself 'I did all I could' — that must have been the worst horror of all for Girl B. 'And into that situation appeared the rookie adventurer, B.' He gave Girl B the strength she had so desperately wanted, affirmed a goal she herself thought unrealistic, and, like a bright torch, illuminated and guided Girl B forward. Toward such a being, what feelings would Girl B come to hold? And if that very being died while trying to save her, what on earth would Girl B feel then? "Whew." Stella quietly looked over the script. The script had nothing written after the scene where the adventurer took a fatal wound in battle in the girl's place. If she thought only in terms of connecting scenes, what ought to follow would be the adventurer's recovery, a fierce battle, the girl's encouragement, and the like. But Stella judged that, done that way, Girl B's emotions could never properly explode. So she set her pen to work. 'Adventurer B has to die here. Though, just dying alone would be too weak an impact.' Dragging his wounded body along to buy time so the girl can flee? Not bad, but it's merely a repeat of what the mother did for the girl at the start. Confessing his love to the girl? The scene's poignancy would deepen, but for an adventurer who had been portrayed as so consistently good-hearted to declare his love while knowing full well how the girl's feelings would be afterward, once he was gone, would be far too selfish and inconsistent. Then, what? 『It's all right. I am, in fact, a being who does not die. Even if this life ends now, I'll simply be reborn again somewhere far away, without a care.』 The adventurer had to be considerate of the girl. He had to reduce his own death to something utterly trivial, light, something one could simply laugh off. So as to lead the girl not to carry the weight of his death, but to go on living proudly on her own. ─Without any awareness that this very consideration would become the surest, most absolute wedge driven into the girl's heart. Having written that much, Stella let out a wry, hollow laugh. "This is the first time I've ever felt sorry for a character in my own work." The play's poignancy. The girl's anguish. She was certain that this development was the right one for portraying that explosive emotion. And yet, when she considered the pain Girl B would suffer because of it, it was also true that, as a fellow woman, she felt a slight pang of guilt over this development. But that didn't mean Stella went and revised the story's development. "Well, that's just what creative work is, isn't it." If this were actually happening in reality, she would have to stop driving such a wedge into someone's heart at once, for the sake of Girl B's mind, body, and soul — but this was fiction anyway, and neither Girl B nor Adventurer B were real people, were they. Even conceding, as a hundred-step compromise, that the story might be motivated to some degree by a true event, there was no way a development this deliberately calculated to drive a spike into the heroine's heart had ever actually happened in reality. (E/N: There is no way, right...But...Demon King Alondre...! Huh?) Stella continued the story without hesitation. * * * "...Lucidra?" "Wait! No! That's not it!! I made sure to hide every single detail so it couldn't be recognized!!" That, later on, upon checking Stella's new script through a Clone, the Crown Prince would come to suspect the Greater Demon — this was something Stella would never come to know.