66. The Infuriating Little Brat

The Infuriating Little Brat

“If I had told you, would you really have gone?”

The map changed.

A lone figure was holding a street against a tide of monsters, slowly being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Lia tapped a nearby building. A few seconds later, stray shots from several monsters struck key explosives inside it. The building shook, then collapsed.

That opened a gap into another street, where the enemy had already gathered.

I leapt up, wanting to do something, anything, but another surge of monsters poured in from the side and reached the lone defender’s position. I did not even know where the place was.

Just before that position fell, the defender’s figure sank through the ground and disappeared into a tunnel. A moment later, the wreck of a nearby car turned into a fireball, swallowing that corner of the map and the enemies inside it.

“No.” I looked at the map, then Lia, then back at the map. “If you had told me Coach was there, I probably would not have gone. Or I would have evacuated the survivors while avoiding a fight.”

“Which would have failed to remove one of the enemy’s best pieces…”

The map shifted again, this time showing a small squad of people who looked like soldiers moving through a ruined district.

“…and would also have cost you an important personal resolution.”

A smaller but still larger group of monsters was heading in their direction.

Lia tapped the other side of the map.

Then a section of unstable ruins collapsed there.

The soldiers stopped and hid.

The monsters went to investigate the collapse and were spotted by the squad. Warned in time, the soldiers slipped around the distracted patrol in relative safety.

“Sometimes a small, seemingly irrelevant action can create enormous gains somewhere else.”

“I see…” In some ways, I still thought sending me into that situation blind was insane.

But I could also understand where the little menace was coming from.

“…Can you really manipulate the battlefield through a magic map?” Blame me if you like, but it seemed like a pretty relevant question.

“No.”

“But…” I pointed at the map, which had returned to showing the whole city. “Were those scenes fake?”

“No.” She smiled, showing far more teeth than a normal person should have, and sharper ones too. “Now you are pretending to be confused on purpose.”

“That does tend to be how facts work, yes.”

At that moment, despite our recent little breakthrough in understanding, I wanted very badly to strangle her.

Then she stopped playing coy.

I liked what she said next even less.

“In truth, I do not need the map to see the city, nor do I need the map to influence how events unfold.” She shrugged. “It is a prop. People are more willing to trust a map made of illusions, no matter how accurate it actually is, than they are to simply believe someone telling them what is happening. Especially when that someone looks like a little brat.”

I did not set the entire room on fire on my way out.

It was close.

Talking with Lia was as frustrating as ever.

But it was also… not exactly comforting, but at least… settling?

Nobody likes being manipulated or ordered around, but having to deal with things and people you dislike is, unfortunately, part of life. Humanity put that one in the brochure and then lost the brochure in a burning office somewhere.

So the question became: if I were the one making the decisions, could I do better?

The instinctive answer was yes. Almost everyone would answer that way without thinking and without examining the question.

But given a little time, most of us would realize that making life-or-death decisions for other people is terrifying, and that we want absolutely no part of it.

The truly arrogant would proudly insist they could handle the job anyway, or they simply would not care about the people who died because of every mistake, every hesitation, every lack of skill or information.

The existence of people like that is one of the strongest arguments against trying to seize…