Still, We Press On (11)

“Wait, what do you mean they were created...? No, hold on... If they’re being collected like that now, does that mean the other races were originally created by someone, too—and that someone’s periodically checking on them and encouraging them to evolve?”

There was no other way to make sense of it. The other races were supposed to have never existed in the distant past. At the very least, there had once been a peaceful world where only humanity prospered. Yet now, this world was crawling with beings that shouldn’t have been here in the first place.

Surprisingly, though, Kagami—who seemed to know everything—answered, “I don’t know.”

“I told you, it’s only speculation. All I know is that someone’s collecting the other races like that, evolving them, and then releasing them back into the world.”

“How do you know they’re releasing them after collecting them?”

Kururu asked the simple question. Kagami seemed to have been waiting for it, because he held up his fist for them to see.

“I tried something. There are monsters in this world, too, right? In Earthclear, monsters are generated by Spawn Blocks that absorb the Demonkin’s magic, but... there are no Spawn Blocks or Demonkin in this world. I started wondering where they came from. The other races and the Resistance kill them every day, but somehow they never disappear. So I spent an entire month hunting monsters and nothing else. I went at it like I was trying to wipe them out.”

“What happened?”

“Their numbers didn’t decrease at all.”

Alice asked, breathless. Kagami answered with a serious expression that showed no sign of lying...