After rescuing Cool and the others, it had been a mere five days since we began our leisurely observation of Her Highness.
Based on what I could observe from outside her room, Her Highness kept a remarkably regular schedule.
She rose at precisely six o'clock, did some light exercises to limber up, then ate the meals provided by the city system.
The walls turned transparent, letting her bask in plenty of sunlight. Even on rainy days outside, sunlight streamed into her room. What she studied during the mornings was unclear, but she seemed to use a terminal to do something resembling studying.
After lunch, a thirty-minute nap. Then more study time, followed by a three o'clock snack. From there until evening, she seemed to have a fair amount of freedom—exercising, reading books, projecting outdoor scenery onto the walls. When the sun set, she ate the meals the system provided, took her time with a bath, stretched to limber up, and retired to sleep at ten o'clock under a sky full of stars.
The fact that she balanced both study and exercise so well meant she was probably far healthier than me, what with my perpetually slovenly lifestyle.
Aside from being unable to go outside and having absolutely no privacy, it might have been an ideal life. Well, those two points were the problem, though...
This city was unbelievably convenient. There was nothing inconvenient about it for observing Her Highness.
With a terminal, you could summon almost everything needed for daily living right there—food, furniture like beds, and more. Cool and the others said those functions could only be used inside rooms, so this might be one of the privileges granted to Class 3.
At first, I lazed around lying down while watching Her Highness's activities, but by the second day, my own decadent lifestyle started to feel a little embarrassing, so I decided to align my habits with hers.
I woke up at the same time (often overslept quite a bit), pretended to do exercises (gave up on the third day because of muscle soreness), ate meals and snacks together (mine were my own chocolate bars), studied together (I played on my terminal), and went to sleep together (I probably fell asleep faster).
Basically, I only left the front of her room when bathing, and the window stayed transparent at all times unless Her Highness requested otherwise.
At first, Her Highness seemed puzzled by my figure that never left the front of her room no matter how much time passed, but she quickly got used to it.
In fact, the table arrangement during meals ended up positioned in front of the window, and she began doing both study and exercise in front of the door. Her Highness didn't seem to have any complaints about her current lifestyle, but perhaps she had been unknowingly starving for a bit of novelty. Even someone like me with no particular talents could serve as a spectacle of sorts.
As it turns out, maybe I really am being useful this time...
While I spent my days watching Her Highness, Cool and the others were operating on their own strategies.
They had apparently started with information gathering to rescue Kurahi. It was often said that a Hunter's success in a hunt was decided by preliminary intelligence gathering. They might have looked like oddballs, but they were real Hunters after all. They seemed pretty reliable.
I had told them they didn't need to bother, but they gave me a report on their investigation findings once a day, in the evening. They hadn't yet found a lead on rescuing Kurahi, but it had become a recent daily routine to hear the briefing in front of Her Highness.
Time flowed peacefully in this city where the Explorer's Guild was supposedly the enemy of the strongest city in the world.
There was no sign of Olivia or Jan coming by either. Maybe they were busy with other work. No contact from Kaiser and the others either, but no news was good news. Everything was probably going smoothly.
On the sixth day during snack time, as I watched Her Highness begin her preparations and thought about how quickly time passed—"Already snack time again?"—I was about to prepare my own snacks when I suddenly heard a sound behind me.
"Hm? What's wrong? That's unusual."
The one who had entered this floor where only Her Highness's room existed was Rusha.
Cool usually handled the daily reports. This was the first time Rusha had come here since the first day.
She always seemed to be out during the day, so what brought her here?
Rusha walked up to me, stared wide-eyed at my surprised expression, and then, as if steeling herself, spoke.
"The real deal... What does the real deal actually do every day?"
"...Huh?"
I couldn't help blinking.
What do I do—? Come to think of it, I don't really do anything.
On the first day, I had been deliberately observing Her Highness, but since every day was the same, I had stopped really paying attention. I was just... being there.
But I couldn't honestly admit that. As I sat there unable to say anything, Rusha fidgeted and continued.
"Well, um... I know it's awkward to say this from the position of someone who was rescued, but, um, I was hoping you could rescue my brother quickly... If you do, I'll call you 'Big Brother,' okay?"
"...That offer's already expired, isn't it?"
You're a character. And besides, even if I did move, there wouldn't be anything I could do...
Since staying silent didn't seem like it would satisfy her, I reached into my Treasure Weapon bag and answered.
"If I had to say, I'm waiting for the right moment."
"Waiting for the... right moment!?"
The standard line when you can't think of an excuse. For the record, it didn't mean I'd move when a good opportunity arose—it meant that if enough time passed, someone else would probably handle things.
After all, my allies always compensated for my incompetence with their outstanding abilities.
Rusha's eyes welled up with tears as she pressed on.
"But—But, Princess Nora is trying to make my brother her personal guard practically every day! If he becomes her guard, there's no telling what she'll do to him... Ugh... He's my brother, you know..."
...No, he's not your brother, is he, girl?
Cool and the others had apparently gathered quite a bit of information in the past few days. They had expanded their inquiries to other areas as well.
Princess Nora. That was a name the prison staff had also briefly mentioned. Cool and the others had told me what they'd learned, so I had a general grasp of that information too.
She was the king's second child, Her Highness's elder sister, the First Princess—Nora Code.
She had taken one look at Kurahi during the attack on Code and had been frequently visiting the prison ever since his capture, trying to push through an application for his release—a princess whose position was rather hard to understand.
For starters, the royals were supposed to have their movements restricted by the nobles, yet she could visit the prison freely—made no sense. But then again, this was information Cool and the others had gathered from rumors, so it was hard to judge how much was true.
Incidentally, the reason the release application wasn't being approved was apparently unknown.
Some said it was because releasing Kurahi was too dangerous and the city system was blocking it, others said the First Prince or other factions were obstructing it... Seemed like quite the mess.
In any case, there was nothing we could do right now. I didn't even have the right to file a release application in the first place.
"Worrying won't help with some things. Besides, we can't submit a release application... Her Highness probably could, but she can't leave her room."
On top of not being able to open the door, Her Highness was completely cut off from the outside while imprisoned.
The city system did have functions like phone calls and email, similar to a smartphone, but Her Highness couldn't send anything (for the record, Kaiser and Saya couldn't either—no reason was given, but perhaps it only worked with people she had met face to face within the city).
There was also a function for sending items, but that was blocked too. Thanks to that, I couldn't even send her a chocolate bar.
Her Highness, having finished preparing for snack time, turned expectant eyes toward me. On the plate before her sat a clay-like snack the color of cream.
Her Highness's snacks were always these clay-like bars. As far as I could tell, there were no exceptions. Every meal of the day consisted of similar bar-shaped items—it seemed that the food the system prepared for Her Highness was always something like that.
Hunters carried similar things as emergency rations. Those bars probably had nutritional value, and Her Highness always ate them with apparent enjoyment, but for someone like me who had eaten all sorts of things in the outside world, it was a little sad.
"?? Wh-Why is Her Highness looking this way?"
"Oh. She's fascinated by the chocolate bar. Too bad I can't give it to her since she's imprisoned."
I pulled out the chocolate bars I always kept stocked in large quantities, and Her Highness's eyes sparkled, her gaze locked on my hands.
When I moved the chocolate bar left and right, her eyes swayed left and right along with it. This was the same scene I'd seen on the first day's snack time, when she first laid eyes on a chocolate bar.
Her Highness was fascinated by outside snacks.
I had checked, and it seemed the city's system had no chocolate bars among the snacks it could provide. In fact, chocolate itself didn't exist here. That was the moment Code's reputation dropped a notch in my estimation.
At this point, Rusha noticed Her Highness gazing intently at the chocolate bar and made a puzzled expression.
"Come to think of it... I was wondering... Who exactly is keeping Her Highness locked up?"
"Hm?"
"Well, she's royalty, so that means she's the second most important person after the King, right? This city runs on absolute hierarchy, doesn't it? Could it be that a noble is locking up royalty? That seems possible, doesn't it?"
...Now that she mentioned it calmly, she had a point.
I had assumed Her Highness was being held by nobles because I'd received that information from the client, but this was no ordinary city.
If Olivia's explanation was true, the city's functions prioritized higher-ranking individuals. So even if a noble locked the door, Her Highness's authority should allow her to open it easily.
By that logic, the only ones who could keep Her Highness imprisoned would be those of even higher rank. Well, I wasn't sure what happened when someone of the same rank locked the door.
If that was the case... then King Code was the one who had Her Highness imprisoned. The entire premise of the commission brought to us—protecting a royal being held captive by nobles—would collapse.
No, I had vaguely suspected something was off with the story. Maybe if we had met up with the client, there would have been an explanation, but there was no helping it now.
All I could do was hope Kaiser and the others pulled through.
I sighed as I watched Her Highness, who was still looking at the chocolate bar with envy.
"Her Highness must not know anything about it, huh..."
"No... She's been locked up since the day she was born, after all..."
"I'd like to at least send her a chocolate bar, though."
"Chocolate bar..."
Rusha made an indescribable expression as I activated a part of the city system—the matter transfer system. I dropped the chocolate bar into a hole that opened in the floor, focusing my intent on having it delivered to Rusha, and a pedestal bearing a case with the chocolate bar materialized before her eyes.
Rusha's eyes went wide. Outside the city, it would have been an unbelievable sight.
"There is a system for delivering items, you know. Her Highness can't use it, though..."
Her Highness's eyes widened as she watched. I looked at her and shook my head regretfully.
Since she was imprisoned, even the delivery of goods must have been blocked. Well, it went without saying, but... whoever was responsible for this was truly cruel.
Rusha tore open the wrapper, took a bite of the chocolate bar, and spoke.
"Somehow... I think the opponent we're facing this time might be far more powerful than I imagined..."
"Yeah... It'd be nice if they'd just played nice."
Her Highness trembled in shock as she watched Rusha eat the chocolate bar.
Once the chocolate bar was gone, Her Highness finally began nibbling at her own snack—the clay-like substance the city system dispensed.
"Basically, those things don't taste good. They've got nutritional value, I'm sure, but... We had them every day in the prison too. Don't want to see them for a while."
"Ah, so they don't taste good... I was curious about that."
Setting aside the snacks, it was remarkable how Her Highness ate roughly the same thing for every meal. I had watched her cut it apart with fork and knife, dissolve it in water, and consume it in various ways. There was apparently some variation, but I probably wouldn't last.
My own meals were also prepared by the system, but I could specify the menu to some degree, so food wasn't a concern.
...If the operation succeeded and we managed to protect Her Highness, I'd take her on a tour of the outside world. She'd surely be overjoyed.
"Want another chocolate bar?"
"...I'll have one, then. These are really good. How many do you have?"
"A lot. Actually, this here is a Space-Time Bag. It only holds chocolate, though."
"!? W-What's the point of that!?"
To be precise, anything related to chocolate could go in together—wrappers, bars with nuts inside, no problem. It might be a Treasure Weapon filled with a child's dreams.
I pulled out five chocolate bars and handed them to Rusha. Her Highness, having finished her snack, pressed her cheek against the window and watched the chocolate bars with sparkling eyes.
Today's snack time would be a three-person affair.
I summoned a chair and table flush against the door and resumed snack time.
Oh right, I also had chocolate drinks. Not as much of those, but I'd splurge.
§ § § "—So the real deal said it's not time to move yet."
"He really is a hard guy to read, Cool. Keeping your opponent off guard is part of the game, I guess, but if I hadn't heard about his track record and reputation, I'd have thought he was useless."
At Rusha's report and Kuturi's words, Cool pushed his glasses up with a nervous twitch and racked his brain desperately.
Several days since their rescue, the Wailing Evil Spirits still hadn't found a lead on rescuing Kurahi, but they were steadily gathering information on Code.
Cool and the others were Class 1—the bare minimum for recognized citizens. Their access to the city system's functions was limited, but there were still things they could investigate.
This city had people. Those granted Class 1 and above were citizens, while those below that were the lower class. Kurahi was sharp and quick-thinking, but he was only one person, so information gathering for the Wailing Evil Spirits was mainly handled by Cool and the others.
Gathering information on foot was something they were good at. Near this building—in the area under Princess Alisha's jurisdiction—there were almost exclusively lower-class residents, with hardly any citizens living there. But in areas controlled by other royals, there were plenty of people.
People who had lived in this city for a long time, and newcomers who had recently flowed in from outside, like the Red Hunter wannabes.
In this city, every aspect of living—food, clothing, shelter—was managed by the system. Buildings were constructed by the city system, food was supplied by the system. There was essentially no need for labor.
Perhaps because of this, most citizens had nothing to do, making it relatively easy to hear what they had to say.
Code was divided into seven areas, each managed by a faction led by King Code and the royals descended from his bloodline—Class 8 individuals at the top.
Recently, each faction had been actively recruiting people for fighting strength. The sudden influx of people from outside was part of that effort.
Most citizens were aware of Princess Alisha's imprisonment, and as a result, the very narrow zone granted to her was almost devoid of citizens. Instead, a large number of lower-class residents had settled there. An unmanaged area was a paradise for the lower class.
They had also gathered information about the prison, but almost nothing useful came of it.
All they learned was that the prison had never been broken into in all of history. Law enforcement in Code was already maintained by the city system, and on top of that, the prison was equipped with numerous weapons.
The most troublesome of these were the sensors. Sensors that detected dangerous contraband, sensors that read mental states and thoughts to preemptively eliminate dangerous individuals—there was no way to deceive them, and the moment they triggered, security forces would be dispatched without question.
Furthermore, Kurahi was apparently receiving considerable attention from the nobility.
A brave yet reckless man who had challenged Code's impenetrable fortress after leveling the surrounding area and twice repelling the powerful Explorer's Guild. The most powerful Mage to have ever pierced, even for an instant, Code's outer wall barrier that no one had broken before.
Magic was almost unusable in Code. The current King Code had decreed it.
Kurahi should have been equally unable to use magic in this city, but the nobility apparently didn't care about that.
The royal most obsessed with Kurahi was Princess Nora. She kept numerous handsome young men as attendants and boasted the second-largest faction among the royals.
Her personality was energetic and free-spirited. She was intelligent but had strong likes and dislikes, and had thrown people she disliked into prison using methods that didn't violate the city system's rules. She had publicly declared she would show no mercy to those targeting Kurahi, making her the biggest enemy for Cool and the others who were trying to rescue him.
If they couldn't break the prison, their only option was to pursue a legitimate release.
As for the release itself, they could wait for Princess Nora's release application to be accepted—but there were reasons they couldn't do that.
Princess Nora likely had a method prepared to control Kurahi however she wished.
There were various speculations about why Princess Nora's release applications were never accepted, but no accurate information.
What was known was that Princess Nora had grown quite frustrated by her repeated failures to obtain Kurahi.
As a royal, she had the authority to change the prison's rules themselves. She hadn't yet gone that far, but it was rumored to be only a matter of time.
Zuri was working hard gathering information in Princess Nora's area. If the situation changed, she would notify them immediately. That was the time limit placed on Cool and the others.
But there was nothing they could do. Cool couldn't figure out at all what the "right moment" was that Thousand Transformations was waiting for.
To release Kurahi through legitimate means, they first needed to file a release application.
Only those of Class 6 and above—nobles—could submit one. But all Class 6 and above members were already part of another royal's faction.
In this city, where even sensors that read your thoughts existed, betrayal and espionage were extremely difficult. The higher your rank in this city, the more you could do—viewing footage from cameras throughout the city, listening to audio, checking other citizens' emails...
Cool and the others' activities could be exposed at any moment.
Cool grimaced at the unfavorable situation and clutched his chest, when Kuturi let out a sly chuckle.
"Heh heh heh... I've got good news. I made contact with some lower-class residents. They were wary, but with Kuturi handling it, dealing with kids is a breeze. After all, they're at the very bottom."
The lower class in Code were, in a sense, even lower than criminals.
Criminals had all their rights stripped under the city's rules, but the lower class had no rights to begin with.
The city system did not treat the lower class as human.
Criminals weren't killed. This was because Code's rules did not include the death penalty.
The automaton soldiers operated with consideration for human life. They were fundamentally defensive and, when forced to take suppressive action, made every effort to minimize casualties.
Powerful lethal weapons, including incineration cannons, were basically impossible to activate against people within the city. There were also various other rules in place to protect citizens' rights.
But none of those rules applied to non-citizens.
Therefore, the lower class, unprotected by the city system, lived hidden from citizens—out of sight. Even if they were captured and treated like slaves, no one would protect them.
Contact with the lower class, who harbored deep resentment toward citizens, was among the more dangerous types of intelligence gathering. That was why it became the job of Kuturi, who had experienced the most battle-hardened situations among them.
Kuturi took a puff of the city-system-generated cigar, exhaled the smoke, and sighed.
"When they found out we came from outside, they really opened up. Apparently, the boss had already made contact first, though. Heh... Don't know what he was thinking, but they tried to recruit him as a personal guard."
"Oh my... How bold."
An incredibly audacious move—trying to recruit lower-class residents, who despised citizens, as personal guards.
Appointing someone without citizenship as a personal guard should have been impossible. Granting rights to non-citizens in this city was extremely difficult. What Cool and the others had received was an exception.
Or was there some plan in motion that they didn't know about?
"That boss of ours is really hated. Apparently, for the lower class, the royalty are the target of years of grudges. Oh, I'm getting off track... They told me some interesting stuff."
Interesting stuff?
Cool adjusted his glasses as Kuturi continued with a fearless grin.
"The king of this place is apparently going to die soon. That's why all those royal types are gathering fighting strength from outside—each one gunning for the next throne. Totally different from what the boss told us, huh?"
The king's death. Competing for the throne. Words so ominous that Cool couldn't help but catch his breath—things you'd never hear in a normal life.
"The moment the throne becomes vacant, supposedly the city system's basic functions get severely restricted. They didn't spell it out explicitly, but the lower-class folks I talked to seemed to be planning something too. They've got weapons ready, and there's quite a lot of them. Heh heh heh... Things are getting interesting."
The king's impending death. Royals gunning for the throne and steadily building their forces. Armed lower-class citizens.
If that information was true, then the stated purpose of Thousand Transformations—"protecting the royals"—sounded entirely different.
Forcibly protecting the royals who were seizing power and building forces in this city would obviously be far more difficult than rescuing those who had been imprisoned. Considering the automaton soldiers and the city system's support, their military power would far surpass that of an entire nation.
Even Kurahi, who had improved since the Martial Emperor's Festival, had been defeated. He had incapacitated dozens of Code's soldiers, but had been overwhelmed by their seemingly endless numbers.
Cool and the others being dead weight was certainly a factor, but even without them, defeat would have been a matter of time.
This time, Thousand Transformations reportedly had two companions, but this was no mission that three people could handle.
But it wasn't as though Thousand Transformations failed to understand what Cool could comprehend.
Perhaps... we've taken on an enormous debt to a truly terrifying opponent.
A mission far beyond their capabilities. One that probably couldn't be handled even if Kurahi, their leader, were present.
Compared to that, rescuing Kurahi seemed almost easy.
What kind of terrifying strategy would Thousand Transformations use to overcome this crisis?
Cool cut off his thoughts as a chill welled up from the core of his being.
He wiped the cold sweat from his brow and adjusted his glasses.
He couldn't afford to think any deeper. Right now, he needed to focus only on what he could do—rescuing Kurahi.
§ § § Alisha Code's days were filled with light.
The room, perfectly managed by the city system, was to Alisha a cradle, a castle, and the entire world itself. There were no worries, no fears, no constraints. Those negative emotions existed for Alisha only within the materials the city system presented during study time.
From the moment she could remember, Alisha had been in this small yet vast room. This room and the extremely rare visitors who occasionally came to it were everything to Alisha, and she was content with that.
Her curiosity about the outside never waned, but she had never felt the desire to go outside.
This room had everything. If she wanted to see nature, she simply commanded the city system. Everything she needed was provided.
The schedule arranged by the city system was never forced upon her. Alisha followed it because doing so was in her own best interest.
Alisha's work consisted solely of appointing the rare individuals brought before her as her personal attendants.
Or rather, the only authorities Alisha possessed were control over this room and the appointment of subordinates. She knew from her city-system education that she should have had other authorities as well, but they were all frozen.
She could refuse the appointments, but that would be pointless and meaningless. If Alisha didn't appoint them, someone with authority above hers—the King who had decided to place Alisha in this room—would simply appoint them instead.
She couldn't trouble the great King of Code.
She couldn't hear the sounds from outside, but the system told her what to do.
Appointments were very simple work. Moreover, there were hardly any opportunities for it. The butler and attendants changed occasionally, but the personal guards were handled by automaton soldiers. Recently they had switched from automaton soldiers to human guards, but even that wasn't a particularly meaningful change for Alisha inside her room.
Perhaps because it was unusual, the time spent being observed from outside the door had increased, but that didn't bother her either. The only thing was that the door was the one thing in the room Alisha couldn't control, so the times when its window turned transparent were precious.
The situation surrounding Alisha changed about a month after the time when the door's window—which had previously been almost never transparent—became so more frequently.
About five guards who had tried to break down the door had disappeared. And then, the chief attendant had brought a young man to serve as a new guard.
Klye Andrich.
From their very first meeting, he was an unusual young man.
Unlike the first guards brought before her, he had far less of an oppressive presence, and unlike Olivia and Jan, who had no interest in Alisha whatsoever, his eyes looked directly at her.
Beyond that, when she waved, he actually turned back. It was such an unprecedented reaction that Alisha's eyes went wide in surprise.
And from the very next day, that young man had taken up residence in front of Alisha's room.
There had been many guards who came to see Alisha. But unlike those guards, this young man simply wouldn't leave. The door's window stayed transparent the entire time.
Apparently, the young man hadn't come for any particular reason related to Alisha.
At first she was puzzled, but Alisha quickly adapted.
Opportunities like this were rare. Alisha had almost no real authority, and there was nothing she needed guards for. There was nothing strange about this young man disappearing at any moment.
She showed him everything she could show in this room. Her favorite landscapes, the wonderful functions this room possessed, the pictures she had drawn—all of it. The young man watched everything with a cheerful smile.
The moment she had shown him everything she had to show, Alisha felt a deep sense of satisfaction. For the first time, she was glad to have a guard. She wished he would stay a little longer. And she wished he would keep coming back.
Then came snack time. She moved the table and chairs to the front of the door, ready to enjoy their first tea time together for two, when Alisha saw it.
The dark, mysterious snack the young man produced.
—It was a snack Alisha had never seen before.
She hadn't even known that such a substance existed in this world. She couldn't imagine its taste at all.
Mesmerized, Alisha watched as the young man ate it, narrowing his eyes with evident pleasure.
Alisha had never harbored any dissatisfaction with her circumstances.
The system-provided items were perfect. The snacks always offered were delicious in their own way, and she knew they were selected with consideration for her physical condition and nutritional needs.
Still, compared to the unknown snack the young man was eating, the snack provided to her seemed undeniably lacking in charm.
The proof was that Alisha was completely captivated by the young man's snack, while the young man barely glanced at hers.
The taste of hers might actually be superior. No, it certainly was—but to think that something like that existed outside...
She finished her snack with a sense of being utterly defeated. But the slight gloom quickly faded.
Thinking calmly, there was no need to feel down. By learning about that snack, Alisha's knowledge had grown ever so slightly. When she thought about it that way, this experience was actually a net positive for Alisha.
She could even think optimistically—perhaps someday the system would provide that snack too.
—But that was merely the beginning of the restless days to come.
From the second day onward, the young man continued eating that snack in front of Alisha's room, day after day, with unmistakable enjoyment. Apparently, the bag the young man carried contained a massive supply of the dark snack.
Sometimes he seemed to show it off, sometimes he seemed to enjoy Alisha's reactions—waving it right in front of her eyes.
No, she knew. There was no malicious intent behind those actions.
The young man wanted to give Alisha that snack. He just had no way to do it—but that was no different from tormenting her.
What he ate during meal times also differed from Alisha's food, but that was still bearable.
Because it was provided by the system. If the system could provide it, it might someday appear on Alisha's plate.
But that dark snack was different. Once the young man was gone, it would likely never appear before Alisha's eyes again. That snack possessed a kind of... finality.
Honestly, she was extremely curious. The fact that it was inaccessible to Alisha meant there was no need to obtain it. She understood that, but there was still a possibility that the city system simply didn't know of its existence.
But Alisha's room was almost completely cut off from the outside world. No matter how much the young man tried to give it to her, there was no way to receive it.
Today, as she stared at the snack, still unable to resign herself, another new guard—a girl—approached the young man. They exchanged words for a while, and then the young man, as if it were nothing at all, began handing over the dark snack.
Alisha could only watch in a daze as the girl ate the precious snack with a troubled expression.
The snack was only a few dozen centimeters away from Alisha, separated by a single door—and yet it remained beyond her reach.
But there was nothing to be done. There was no way. The isolation from the outside existed to protect Alisha, after all.
At the very least, the young man should stop eating that snack. He should stop eating his own things and eat what the system provided instead.
As Alisha pressed her body and cheek against the door, desperately trying to express her discontent, the young man seemed to think of something, reached into his bag, and pulled out a paper box.
Apparently, that small bag contained all sorts of things besides the dark snack.
What was it this time? As Alisha recovered some of her composure through curiosity, the young man drew a teacup toward himself and tilted the paper box over it.
The dark, viscous liquid poured in, and this time, Alisha truly lost her composure.
The authority granted to Alisha was limited. She couldn't open the door, and no voices, emails, or items from outside could reach her room. Even the room's functions were restricted to a predetermined set.
But when Alisha desired something from the outside, there was exactly one means at her disposal.
It was only a possibility, but it was the one and only option.
She had never used it before. The authority was too disproportionate to her station.
Her room was isolated. But Alisha Code knew that exactly one connection to the outside remained.
The King. Alisha could communicate with only one person—the city's ruler, the great King Code.
This was proof that Alisha carried the King's genes.
It was a little embarrassing to make such a request, but if she didn't, the young man would continue eating his dark snack before her eyes tomorrow and the day after. If today was any indication, he might even introduce new varieties going forward.
If she implored the King with complete sincerity, it might work out. Even if rejected, she could accept that.
Having steeled her resolve, Alisha summoned a virtual terminal to make contact.