The surface of the water was calm, but the slight movement of a limb sent faint ripples across it.
A slender arm, pale and smooth as lotus root, emerged from beneath the water and made a motion as if to scoop some up.
Only when her hands hovered about four inches above the surface, and the water cupped in her delicate palms had settled, did Lacus faintly see a reflected face in the nearer water.
It was her own face.
It still seemed a little flushed.
Now she could move slightly. After another half hour or so, she should be able to move freely again.
When she remembered her loss of composure, she could not help sinking lower, trying to cool the heat on her face, which felt as though it was even hotter than the warm water in the bathtub.
After that embarrassing incident, she had requested further help. Her clothes had been removed, and now she was soaking in the bathtub.
In other words, he had seen her body clearly.
But when she thought about how calm and unmoved Mr. Kain had been throughout the entire process, Lacus felt somewhat dejected.
For the first time, she became uncertain about her own looks.
Or was he truly that guarded against the abilities she possessed as an Accord?
She bit her lip lightly, her fine brows drawing together.
Just as her lips were about to move, as if she intended to speak, she thought of something and directly sent her psychic perception outward again. At the same time, she reached for a tablet nearby and brought it in front of her.
She would speak to Mr. Kain through psychic perception, while Mr. Kain would respond to her through the communication device in text.
That way, she could have a private conversation with Mr. Kain, just the two of them, without disturbing anyone else.
After receiving his reply, Lacus immediately began talking.
She did not immediately ask why his attitude toward her was like that of a purely hired contractor, nor why he could not treat her like A2, Saeko Busujima, or Tessa, less distantly, more like a friend.
Instead, Lacus first told him everything that had happened after she fell unconscious. She told him how she had sensed everyone's condition, and also how she had "followed" him and seen him go to comfort Stellar.
She also spoke about the fragmented memories she had seen after touching the Knight suit, and asked him about the specific circumstances of those wars.
First was the Tyranid invasion she had seen in that fragment. Mr. Kain answered that it was probably the war from the Tyranids' third great invasion of the galaxy.
Where those insects passed, it was not simply a matter of nothing growing again. The atmosphere, oceans, and even magma would be sucked dry, turning the world into a dead planet.
As for why Mr. Kain judged the memory she saw to be from the third great invasion, it was because Lacus described seeing another scene: in the distant starry sky, several hundred stars had suddenly grown brighter.
[When those hundreds of stars lit up, was that because something had actually happened to the stars themselves?]
[Lacus, suppose a forest or a prairie caught fire. At a time like that, distant water can't put out a nearby blaze, and manpower plus the equipment already on hand can't extinguish the flames either. What should be done?]
He did not directly explain the reason. Instead, he raised a seemingly unrelated question.
As for that question, if the fire could not be extinguished, then it still could not be allowed to burn unchecked. They would need to find a way to limit its spread.
The method would be to create a firebreak ahead of the area where the flames were about to spread.
Since the scene Mr. Kain described did not seem to allow for something like sand to form a firebreak, then what method could make one without requiring much external material?
One way was to set another fire and burn out a strip of land.
That fire would be a controlled burn, used in advance to create a firebreak with almost nothing combustible left in it.
That way, when the flames spread there, they would be stopped.
After Lacus thought that far, she understood the meaning of this seemingly unrelated question, and her eyes widened.
[Those hundreds of planets were the firebreak, weren't they?]
[Yes.]
That made Lacus fall silent.
Those hundreds of planets were definitely not meaningless worlds. The Tyranids she had seen in the description did not seem like they would devour planets with little value.
Those hundreds of planets must have been inhabited by humans. And if the situation had been urgent, there probably would not have been any time to evacuate them.
In that case, the problem became a question of sacrificing the few to preserve the many.
The lives of hundreds of worlds were sacrificed in order to protect the Imperium of Man's million worlds.
Next came the war against the Orks. It seemed to have reached the Solar System itself.
Mr. Kain told her that this war had also been one of the greatest crises in the history of the Imperium. It was the largest war ever launched by the Orks.
Hundreds of Attack Moons had been committed to that war.
Then came the third fragmented memory. That one was a civil war. According to Mr. Kain, it was a rebellion that had interrupted the Imperium's rise.
After humanity's Golden Age was destroyed, mankind had fallen into the Age of Strife. Its dominion across the galaxy had shattered into pieces, and most of its territories had lost contact with one another.
Then one figure appeared and founded the Imperium. He launched the Great Crusade across the galaxy, stitching humanity's broken realms back together.
But just as the Great Crusade was nearing its end, the eldest of the Emperor's twenty children was seduced by the Ruinous Powers and began a rebellion, cutting short the Imperium's grand plan to unify the galaxy.
Led by the eldest son, several of them commanded their Legions in a sudden attack against their own side, leaving the Imperium on the brink of collapse.
Although the rebellion was ultimately suppressed, the Imperium's rise never recovered. From then on, it began its decline.
Its ruler was also grievously wounded. Worse still, because another of his grand plans had been destroyed, he had no choice but to sit forever upon the Golden Throne and personally suppress the entrance to hell there.
The Golden Throne?
Could that be the thing Lacus had seen?
So she described the scene from the fourth fragmented memory. As it turned out, what she had seen was indeed the Imperium's Golden Throne, and the one seated upon it was the Emperor.
And that war had begun for no apparent reason.
The Webway was originally a special passageway the Emperor intended to use so the Imperium could travel safely and quickly. In that case, humanity would no longer need to directly jump into the Warp, that dangerous realm, for long-distance interstellar travel.
The Warp was the realm of daemons. It was the realm of the Ruinous Powers. Those who entered it could easily be tempted into madness and corruption, becoming the claws and fangs of the Ruinous Powers.
The Webway had existed since the distant past. It had been repaired to a critical stage when, because of a mistake made by one of the Emperor's sons, a breach was torn open in it, allowing daemons from the Warp to pour out in a frenzy.
So the army Lacus saw rushing into the Webway had gone there to fight the daemons.
The Golden Throne the Emperor sat upon was itself a special device, a device connected to the Webway.
He needed to sit upon it and use his own power to sustain the Throne, preventing the Webway from collapsing and the breach from widening further.
Otherwise, a second Eye of Terror might appear there.
As for the Eye of Terror, simply put, it was a vastly magnified hole connecting the Warp and the real universe.
The emergence of another similar rift had torn the galaxy apart, splitting it in two. That description alone was enough to prove just how terrifying such a gateway to hell could be.
So in order to suppress that infernal breach, the Emperor had sat upon a device that continuously drained his life, becoming its battery. And he had remained there for ten thousand years.
Moreover, that device was gradually breaking down. By now, it had already reached the point where it could no longer be repaired. It might fail at any moment.
[Then the "Golden Toilet" you mentioned... Isn't that a bit...]
[It's purely my resentment toward the boss.]
[Boss?]
[Some countries carry out secret plans. To keep the enemy from learning about them, the people they "hire" are individuals who even their own national institutions don't know exist. That way, the enemy won't know such people exist either.]
As that short line of text appeared, Lacus understood the relationship between Mr. Kain and the Emperor.
That meant the forces obstructing Mr. Kain's actions, and even the forces that might endanger him, might not only be humanity's enemies. They could also be the Imperium of Man itself.
She truly had not expected him to be such a special operative.
Then came the final question.
[Mr. Kain, why do you treat me differently from Miss Tessa, Miss A2, and Miss Saeko Busujima?]
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]