[Emperor POV] Year 0, Day 25 (Three weeks after the hunt began)

  The Emperor looked better.

  Not healthy—he would never be healthy again, not after ten thousand years of clinging to life through increasingly desperate measures. But better than he had been three weeks ago.

  The news of the Isekai Protocol activation had energized him. Given him purpose. Hope. Something to focus on beyond the slow decline of his body and his empire.

  Even if that hope was currently frustrated.

  He sat in his private chamber, surrounded by his most trusted assistants. Three of them—Grand Augur Meridian, Intelligence Master Karath, and Strategic Advisor Venn. All loyal. All competent. All looking distinctly unhappy.

  "Report," the Emperor said, his voice stronger than it had been in months. "Where are we with the search?"

  Meridian stepped forward, holding a thick folder of documents. "Your Majesty. The expedition to Site 17 was... partially successful."

  "Partially?"

  "We confirmed someone was there. The obelisk's preservation enchantments recorded activity precisely when the Isekai Protocol activated. Dimensional energy signature, brief physical presence, then rapid departure."

  "Departure where?"

  "Into the desert, Your Majesty. The traces lead away from the oasis in multiple directions—likely the reincarnation moving, then backtracking, then choosing a direction. But the trail goes cold within a few hundred meters. Desert conditions, wind, time—all worked against us."

  The Emperor's fingers drummed on his chair. "So they were there. They left. But you don't know where they went."

  "Correct, Your Majesty."

  "What about the rescue operation? The airship fleet?"

  Intelligence Master Karath stepped forward. "Deployed immediately upon locating Site 17. We sent forty vessels—our fastest ships, equipped for desert operations. Covered thousands of kilometers in expanding search patterns. Looked for any sign of life, any distress signals, any indication of survivors."

  "And?"

  "Nothing, Your Majesty. The desert is... extremely empty. We detected some minor life signatures—small creatures, a few scattered monsters near the edges. But no humanoids. No one who could be the reincarnation."

  "They could be dead."

  "Possible, Your Majesty. The desert is lethal. Without proper preparation, without water, without protection from the heat... even a divinely blessed individual might not survive."

  The Emperor's expression darkened. Seven thousand years of waiting. Finally another reincarnation sent to this world. And they might have simply died of thirst in a desert before he could harvest them.

  Unacceptable.

  "What about soul tracking? The desert is empty—finding a single life signature should be simple."

  Karath's expression grew uncomfortable. "We attempted that, Your Majesty. Deployed specialized mages with soul-detection capabilities. And we did find something. A massive concentration of death energy. Lingering trauma. The psychic residue of violent deaths."

  "Where?"

  "A caravan, Your Majesty. Five hundred people. Lost in the desert. We didn't find bodies—the desert consumed them, or they're buried somewhere under the sand. But the death energy signature was overwhelming. Concentrated in a general area, though we couldn't pinpoint exact locations. The psychic residue of that many violent deaths all at once..."

  "How do you know it was a caravan if you found no remains?"

  "Process of elimination, Your Majesty. We cross-referenced all known traffic in the region during that time period. A caravan of five hundred departed the Kingdom, heading toward Imperial territories. They never arrived. No other large groups were unaccounted for in that timeframe. It had to be them."

  "We investigated their departure records. Poorly prepared—minimal water reserves, inadequate equipment, inexperienced guides. They were cutting costs, taking risks. The kind of negligence that gets people killed in the Desert of Nothing."

  The Emperor stared. "Five hundred people. And you found nothing but death energy?"

  "Correct, Your Majesty. The negative energy was so strong it interfered with our soul-tracking spells for days. Saturated the entire search area. We had to perform extensive purification rituals just to clear enough psychic space to continue our search operations. That took nearly a week. And by the time we finished clearing the interference, any other trails were completely cold."

  "A caravan dies at exactly the wrong time in exactly the wrong place to block our tracking."

  "Yes, Your Majesty."

  The Emperor's fury was immediate and volcanic. "Incompetent merchants! Cutting costs! Getting people killed! And blocking MY search in the process!"

  He slammed his withered hand on the chair arm, the impact barely audible but his rage unmistakable.

  "Meridian. Draft an edict. All caravans using Imperial trade routes—minimum equipment standards. Water reserves, navigation tools, emergency supplies, trained guides. Violations result in fines and trade prohibition. Make it strict. Make it enforceable."

  "At once, Your Majesty. Such regulations have actually been requested by border settlements for years. This will be very popular in the frontier regions."

  "I don't care if it's popular! I care that incompetent merchants don't kill hundreds of people and ruin my operations again!" He paused, forcing himself to calm slightly.

  "Though... if it improves Imperial trade safety and our border residents actually want this... fine. Double benefits. At least one good thing comes from this disaster. Implement it immediately!"

  "Yes, Your Majesty. Consider it done."

  The Emperor took a breath, forcing himself to calm. His assistants waited patiently, used to his outbursts.

  "What about finding the reincarnation? Do we have any leads at all?"

  The three assistants exchanged glances.

  "We attempted oracle queries," Venn said carefully. "Multiple attempts. Multiple oracles."

  "And?"

  "We lost seven trying to get information, Your Majesty. The problem is scope. To use an oracle effectively, you need specific parameters. Who are we looking for? Where are they? What do they look like? Without those details, the query becomes too broad. The Divine System demands too much power to answer vague questions."

  "We tried using common themes from past reincarnations. Young. Confused. Displaced. Foreign. Nothing locked. The queries failed or killed the oracles without yielding useful information."

  The Emperor's expression grew dangerous. "How many oracles have we lost?"

  "Seven, Your Majesty."

  "Seven?!" The Emperor's voice cracked like a whip. "Oracles are irreplaceable! Each one is worth more than entire provinces! And you've burned through seven with nothing to show for it?!"

  "We attempted one final set of queries, Your Majesty," Venn continued, visibly nervous. "Inside the oasis itself. Using location as the anchor. We queried by sex—trying to determine if the reincarnation was male or female. Basic information to narrow future searches."

  "And?"

  "It... locked. The query connected. But the result was contradictory."

  "Contradictory how?"

  "Both, Your Majesty. The first oracle died screaming that the answer was both male AND female simultaneously. We couldn't determine if there were multiple reincarnations—which would be unprecedented—or if the individual's sex was somehow... complicated."

  "The second oracle, attempting to clarify, tried a different approach. Queried for sexless. Reasoning that if the signature showed both, perhaps it was actually neither. That the confusion indicated absence rather than duality."

  Venn's expression showed genuine disturbance. "That oracle also died screaming, Your Majesty. The query confirmed sexless as well. Male, female, AND sexless. All three states reading as simultaneously true. Impossible, contradictory data that killed both oracles trying to process it."

  Silence fell as they processed this.

  "We have documented cases like this before," Meridian said slowly, consulting the ancient records. "Not exactly this pattern, but similar complications. Approximately eight thousand years ago, we harvested a reincarnation who possessed both male and female sex organs simultaneously. Called themselves a 'futanari'—a term from their world we still don't fully understand. The Isekai System had apparently accommodated their request during transfer, modifying their body to match what they desired."

  "The System can't change race—that's fundamental, locked by divine law. But minor physical modifications? Body structure alterations? Apparently possible if the reincarnation has strong enough conviction about what they should be during the transfer process."

  The Emperor nodded slowly. "I remember that one. Difficult to harvest because their divine blessing was tied to their physical uniqueness. The Formation had complications. But we succeeded eventually."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. The records also mention other cases—reincarnations whose original world had different concepts of sex and gender entirely. Categories that don't exist here. Social structures we have no framework for understanding. Some reincarnations spent months trying to explain their world's gender systems to our scholars and never quite succeeded in making us understand."

  "So this could be another case," the Emperor said. "Someone whose original world had different rules. Different categories. Someone who doesn't fit our binary understanding because they come from a place where such things are... different."

  "Possibly, Your Majesty. Or we could be detecting multiple entities traveling together and the oracles can't separate them properly. Or the reincarnation's soul structure is so foreign, so unlike anything from this world, that our divination methods simply can't parse it correctly. "

  "We've tried to narrow it through additional queries, but without more specific parameters, we're just killing oracles for information we can't interpret or use."

  The Emperor leaned back, frustration evident. "So we know someone arrived. We know their sex-based signature is strange or contradictory or impossible to read cleanly. And we've killed seven oracles learning essentially nothing useful."

  "That's... accurate, Your Majesty."

  "What a waste."

  The assistants said nothing.

  "So after three weeks, dozens of airships, seven dead oracles, and massive resource expenditure, what do we actually know?"

  The assistants were silent.

  "We know someone arrived at Site 17," Meridian finally said. "We know they left quickly into the desert. We know they're either dead somewhere under the sand or they somehow escaped to civilization. And we know their sex-based signature is unusual—either multiple individuals, or someone with a complicated relationship to gender, or our oracles simply can't read them properly. That's... all we have, Your Majesty."

  The Emperor processed this. Multiple reincarnations would be incredible. A windfall beyond his greatest hopes. But a sex-confused individual was more likely given historical precedent.

  Karath added quietly, "The caravan death energy blocking our tracking has been... problematic. The search teams have taken to calling it 'The Damned Caravan' internally. Because of all the issues it's caused us. The interference. The wasted time purifying the search area. It's become something of a bitter joke among those involved in the operation."

  The Emperor's lips twitched. Almost a smile. "The Damned Caravan. Fitting. Some incompetent merchant's negligence has managed to stymie the entire Imperial intelligence apparatus. There's a certain irony in that."

  "Indeed, Your Majesty. The name has stuck. It's what everyone calls it now."

  The Emperor leaned back, exhaustion showing despite his earlier energy. His brief surge of hope fading into familiar frustration.

  These assistants were loyal. Hard-working. Competent. Doing everything possible with impossible parameters.

  And he'd been driving them relentlessly for three weeks with nothing but dead ends and wasted resources to show for it.

  They deserved better than his anger.

  "Alright," he said, his tone softening. "Let's take a break from the immediate frustration. Review our options calmly. Think strategically rather than desperately."

  The assistants looked visibly relieved.

  "We have two possibilities," the Emperor continued, his analytical mind taking over from his desperate hope. "Either the reincarnation died in the desert—fled in panic from Site 17, succumbed to the environment, left remains somewhere under the sand that we'll likely never find. If that's true, even if we somehow located a corpse, the divine energy would have dissipated by now. Weeks old. Useless to us."

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  He paused, letting that grim possibility settle.

  "Or—and we must hope this is true—they somehow survived. Escaped the desert. Made it to civilization somewhere."

  "But how, Your Majesty?" Karath asked. "The Desert of Nothing is the most desolate region in the known world. No water. No food. Lethal heat during day, freezing cold at night. Sandstorms. Monsters. How would anyone, even a divinely blessed individual, cross it alive without any preparation?"

  "Reincarnations awaken powers under stress," the Emperor said. "We've seen it in past cases. Desperate situations trigger divine gifts. Extreme danger forces manifestation of abilities they didn't know they had. Perhaps the desert itself—the life-or-death struggle to survive—awakened whatever blessings they carried. It's happened before. The Divine Child himself awakened his full power while fleeing from us across hostile territory."

  "Then they could be anywhere now," Venn said. "Any settlement near the desert edges. Any city in any of the four states. We can't search everywhere. A manhunt that broad would expose our true purpose. Other nations are already watching our 'search for a lost Imperial dignitary' with interest and some amusement at our resource waste. If we expand too obviously or change our story, they'll know we're lying."

  "True." The Emperor drummed his fingers, thinking. "We can't conduct active searches. But we can observe. Passively. Monitor border regions near the desert for unusual activity."

  "What kind of activity, Your Majesty?"

  "Reincarnations are shit magnets," the Emperor said bluntly, his ten thousand years of experience speaking. "Every single one we've encountered—and we encountered dozens over three millennia—attracted trouble constantly. They cause incidents. Start fights. Try to play hero because their original world's stories conditioned them to think they're protagonists. They can't help themselves. It's in their nature."

  "So we look for unexplained events. Unusual individuals appearing from nowhere. Heroic acts that don't fit normal patterns. Someone powerful showing up suddenly with no clear background. Strange occurrences that draw attention."

  "That could describe many things, Your Majesty. Adventurers, criminals, exiled nobles..."

  "I know. But we look anyway. Have our border intelligence networks compile reports on anything odd. We analyze. Look for patterns. Maybe we get lucky and something connects."

  The assistants nodded, making notes.

  The Emperor was about to continue when he noticed Venn's expression. Uncertain. Hesitant. Like he was holding something back.

  "Venn. You have something else. I can see it. What is it?"

  "I... Your Majesty, there was one incident. In a Republic border village. Shortly after the Isekai Protocol activation. I investigated it initially but dismissed it as completely unrelated. But given our current discussion about reincarnations being attracted to unusual heroic situations..."

  The Emperor leaned forward, interest kindling despite himself. "Tell me."

  "Are you familiar with Phantom Blooms, Your Majesty? The desert flowers that generate false monster signatures?"

  "Vaguely. Border plant. Some kind of local traditions around them. What about it?"

  "In some frontier regions, giving a Phantom Bloom to someone is a request for protection. Asking them to be a champion. A guardian. Old tradition from Empire days, rarely taken seriously in modern times but still practiced in remote areas."

  The Emperor's attention sharpened. This was starting to sound familiar. Like the kind of thing that would happen. "Continue."

  "There was an orphanage in a Republic border village—Borderwatch, specifically. Located at the desert's eastern edge. The orphans there were scheduled to be sold at auction. The unwanted ones, the ones no organizations had claimed for training or service. Standard frontier procedure for communities that can't sustain large orphan populations indefinitely."

  "The children, knowing their time was limited, knowing they'd be sold to unknown buyers for unknown purposes, started giving flowers to strangers. Anyone who looked powerful. Anyone who might help them. A desperate gambit to find someone who'd protect them, even if that someone didn't volunteer."

  The Emperor felt something click in his mind. "And they found someone."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. An elf and his battlemaid. Not locals. Foreigners, clearly unfamiliar with the tradition or its implications. The battlemaid accepted the flower instead of killing the children for the presumption of approaching her."

  The Emperor leaned forward further, fully engaged now. "An elf. With a battlemaid. Not familiar with local customs. Newly arrived, then. Foreigners."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. The timing... it was approximately one week after the Isekai Protocol activation. I noticed the temporal correlation but dismissed the incident. An elf doesn't fit the reincarnation profile—all past cases were human. And a battlemaid is just a conditioned weapon. Neither seemed relevant to our search for a divinely blessed hero."

  "But it's exactly the kind of situation reincarnations fall into!" The Emperor's voice carried excitement now. "Children in desperate need. A plea for help. Someone accepting without understanding the consequences. Getting pulled into local heroics and politics. That's textbook reincarnation behavior. We've seen it a dozen times!"

  "But Your Majesty," Meridian interjected carefully, "an elf? All documented past reincarnations were human. Their original world apparently doesn't have other races. And battlemaids can only be conditioned from human or weak beastkin females—the psychology doesn't work on elves. They're too strong-willed, too long-lived. If this elf is the reincarnation, why would they have a battlemaid at all? How would they acquire one? The conditioning process takes years, sometimes decades. They've only been in this world for weeks."

  The Emperor waved dismissively. "Maybe the elf found an ownerless battlemaid. Acquired her from a dead master somehow—they were in a desert where that caravan died. Or perhaps the reincarnation IS the battlemaid and the elf is just a local they encountered. Or maybe neither is the reincarnation and this is pure coincidence. But the pattern is there. The timing is there. The behavior fits. What happened next?"

  "The local adventurer guild removed the orphans from that auction cycle," Venn continued. "Didn't want complications with unknown foreigners who'd symbolically accepted guardianship. Planned to sell the children later, after the elf and battlemaid moved on."

  "Sensible risk management on the guild's part."

  "However, during the auction itself, a complication arose. A Blood Cult council member appeared—one of their Republic regional leaders. He'd traveled to Borderwatch specifically to purchase the orphans. Wanted them for blood magic rituals."

  The Emperor's expression soured. "Blood Cult. Parasites. Continue."

  "When the cult leader discovered the orphans weren't for sale, he made a public scene. Demanded to know why. Made accusations about interference, about his wasted time."

  "Cult arrogance. Typical."

  "Someone in the crowd revealed it was because of the flower. Because the elf and his battlemaid had accepted the Phantom Bloom from the children. The cult leader confronted them directly about it."

  Venn paused, then added, "The elf was identified as 'earless,' Your Majesty. Former slave. The cult leader recognized it immediately—saw through the magical ear restoration. Made several... disparaging comments about the elf's status and the orphans' worthlessness."

  The Emperor nodded. Earless. Ex-slave. That definitely didn't fit reincarnation profile. Reincarnations were usually free-born in their worlds, idealistic, unused to slavery or servitude.

  Still, the story was entertaining. And his assistants had been working so hard, dealing with nothing but frustration and dead ends. Let them tell their tale.

  "The cult leader made offers," Venn continued. "Monetary compensation. Just gold to smooth over the incident and forget the orphan issue. Small amounts at first, then increasingly reasonable sums. Trying to resolve things peacefully and move on."

  "But?"

  "The elf lost control of his battlemaid, Your Majesty."

  The Emperor's expression shifted to disgust. "Of course he did. This is why I despise battlemaids. What use is a servant who doesn't obey commands when it actually matters? When control is most needed?"

  "Precisely, Your Majesty. The cult leader's comments about the elf's former slave status, about the orphans—they apparently triggered something in the battlemaid. Protective instinct, perhaps. Or just instability. The elf clearly couldn't calm her or order her to stand down."

  "Useless master, then."

  "The situation escalated rapidly. The local guild master intervened before violence could erupt in the auction hall. Managed to move everyone to the training grounds—proper dueling arena, warded and contained. Tried to establish combat rules to at least make it formal and legal."

  "Let me guess," the Emperor said dryly. "The battlemaid demanded death match."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. Single word spoken aloud, actually. 'Death.' First time anyone had heard her speak, apparently. Strange accent, beautiful voice, but the meaning was unmistakable."

  "And the elf couldn't override her decision."

  "Couldn't or wouldn't, Your Majesty. He said nothing. Just stood there while his battlemaid committed them to a death match. The cult leader had no choice at that point—backing down publicly would have destroyed his reputation. So he accepted."

  "How did it end?"

  "Very quickly, Your Majesty. The fight was... anticlimactic, by most accounts. The battlemaid completely overpowered the cult leader. Two moves—a parry that cracked his legendary weapon, then a punch that sent him flying into the arena barrier hard enough to fracture it. He was unconscious within seconds."

  The Emperor raised an eyebrow. "A battlemaid strong enough to crack legendary equipment and break reinforced barriers. That's... unusual. High quality. Very expensive training."

  "Yes, Your Majesty. But what came after was worse."

  "Worse?"

  "She tortured him, Your Majesty. The cult leader. For five to fifteen minutes, reports vary on exact duration. Methodically pulled out his fingers. Broke his ribs one by one. Dismantled him piece by piece while he screamed. In front of two hundred witnesses."

  Venn's expression showed distaste. "Even experienced adventurers who've seen extensive combat reported nightmares afterward. One elderly veteran said it was the most systematic, cold-blooded torture he'd witnessed in two centuries of adventuring. The battlemaid showed no emotion. No rage. Just... mechanical precision. Like she was following a checklist."

  The Emperor felt his own distaste rising. "Battlemaids. This is exactly the problem. Unstable. Excessive. Unable to simply kill efficiently when that's all that's required. I would ban them entirely if the political cost weren't prohibitive. Too many nobles rely on them, invested too much in their creation, can't admit they're problems."

  "Many privately agree with you, Your Majesty. But publicly, no one wants to acknowledge their battlemaids are liabilities."

  "Of course not. Admitting failure is weakness." The Emperor shook his head. "The cult leader died, then what? Other cultists sought revenge?"

  "They attempted to intervene during the torture, Your Majesty. Six additional cult members tried to stop the battlemaid or rescue their leader. She killed them all. Efficiently. Seven cultists total dead within minutes."

  The Emperor was quiet for a moment. Then: "I'm seriously considering implementing new Imperial laws regarding battlemaid ownership. Mandatory reviews. Competency requirements. Something to prevent this kind of excessive nonsense."

  The assistants said nothing, but their expressions suggested they'd support such measures.

  "But that's a discussion for another time," the Emperor continued. "This incident—tragic and excessive as it was—doesn't seem relevant to our search. Earless elf who can't control his weapon. Psychotic battlemaid. Blood Cult getting what they probably deserved. Nothing to do with reincarnations."

  "If that's where the story ended, Your Majesty, I'd agree completely," Venn said. "But there's more. Significant developments that created ripples across the entire Republic."

  "More?"

  "The cult members who attempted to intervene—they had a shield breaker with them."

  The Emperor went very still. "They had what?"

  "A shield breaker, Your Majesty. A device containing security codes for magical barriers. The local adventurer guild's frequency, plus fourteen other major organizations across the Republic. Banks, guild halls, government buildings. Codes that had apparently been collected over more than a century."

  "The guild seized it immediately. When word spread about what it contained..." Venn smiled slightly. "The Blood Cult is effectively finished in the Republic. Outlawed entirely. Assets seized. Members arrested or executed. The Republic even granted Church State inquisitors free access to hunt them down—unprecedented cooperation between those powers."

  "The cult had crossed too many lines. Threatened too many important organizations. Collected evidence that could destroy multiple power structures. They were made an example of. A demonstration that there are limits even the Republic won't tolerate."

  The Emperor stared, genuinely shocked. "What were they thinking? Collecting shield breaker codes for that many organizations? Who would even buy something so dangerous? That's not just criminal—that's suicidal. The kind of evidence that guarantees your destruction if it's ever discovered."

  "We don't know, Your Majesty. It defies logical explanation. Perhaps they thought it was protection—mutually assured destruction if anyone moved against them. Perhaps they planned to sell it to the Kingdom or another power for destabilizing the Republic. Perhaps they were simply arrogant and stupid."

  "Whatever their reasoning, they paid for it."

  "Completely, Your Majesty. The Republic Blood Cult branch no longer exists as a functional organization."

  "What about our own branch? The Empire's Blood Cult? Are they involved in this madness?"

  Karath stepped forward. "We investigated immediately upon hearing the news, Your Majesty. Full review of our Empire branch operations. Complete document audits, member interrogations, financial analysis. They were as shocked as we were by the Republic council's actions."

  "The Republic branch apparently operated with significant independence. Collected those codes over a century without informing other branches or seeking approval from any central authority. Our people knew absolutely nothing about it."

  "They're clean?"

  "As far as we can determine, yes, Your Majesty. We granted them access to conduct their own internal review. They found no comparable activities, no similar security breaches, no evidence of collecting sensitive information they shouldn't have."

  "The only irregularity we discovered was minor—they'd accidentally overpaid their Imperial taxes by a small amount over the past decade. When we pointed it out and offered to return the excess, they declined the refund and formalized it as a donation to the Empire instead."

  The Emperor considered that. Then nodded approval. "Acceptable. At least some reason persists in the world. Some sense of propriety and loyalty."

  "Indeed, Your Majesty."

  "Is there anything else?" the Emperor asked, expecting the story to be finished.

  "Actually, yes, Your Majesty. An afterstory of sorts." Venn consulted his notes. "The cult leader who died in that duel—he was apparently quite wealthy. Carried multiple Legend-class items on his person. Ancient artifacts, rare equipment, accumulated treasures from decades of blood magic profiteering."

  "All of his possessions are being auctioned. In that same border village, Borderwatch. The event should be happening in one or two days, I believe. People are traveling from across the entire continent for it. Legend-class items almost never reach public auction—this is a once-in-a-decade opportunity."

  "The Republic is also using the same auction to sell confiscated Blood Cult property from their raids and seizures. It's become a massive event."

  The Emperor's mind clicked into sharp focus. "A major auction. Drawing powerful people from everywhere. Concentrating wealth and opportunity in one location."

  He looked at his assistants, energy returning to his voice.

  "Reincarnations like spectacle. Like grand events. Like places where important things happen and powerful people gather. They're drawn to it. Can't resist inserting themselves."

  "Send a team to that auction."

  "Your Majesty?"

  "Fastest airship. Best people. Someone with soul-sight capability. Divine detection specialists. Master-level appraisers. Have them attend the auction and examine everyone there. Everyone. Nobles, adventurers, merchants, servants, battlemaids. Everyone who attends."

  "Reincarnations are usually detectable if you know what to look for. Strange souls that don't quite fit this world's patterns. Unusual energy signatures. Divine blessings that feel foreign. Behaviors that don't match local culture. If the reincarnation is alive, if they've reached civilization, if they're anywhere near that region... they might be drawn to an event like this."

  Venn bowed. "I'll organize the team immediately, Your Majesty. If we depart within the hour on our fastest vessel, they should arrive in time for the auction."

  "Do it. Spare no expense. This is our best lead in three weeks."

  "Yes, Your Majesty."

  "And Venn? Have them investigate that elf and battlemaid while they're there. Discreetly. It's probably nothing—just coincidental timing and behavior. But the pattern bothers me. Foreigners appearing shortly after the activation. Accepting heroic responsibilities. Getting into fights. It's too neat. Too familiar."

  "Even if the elf is just an ex-slave and the battlemaid is just a weapon, maybe they saw something. Encountered someone. Heard rumors. They were in the right area at the right time. There might be information there."

  "Understood, Your Majesty. We'll investigate thoroughly but carefully."

  The assistants prepared to leave, but the Emperor held up one hand.

  "One more thing. Phase Two of our search. I want it implemented starting tomorrow."

  "Your Majesty?"

  "Passive observation of all regions bordering the Desert of Nothing. All four states—Republic, Kingdom, Church, and our own territories. Intelligence networks watching for anything unusual. Heroic incidents. Powerful individuals appearing suddenly. Unexplained events. Anything that doesn't fit normal patterns."

  "We maintain our cover story—searching for a lost dignitary. But we expand the search gradually. Naturally. As if we're being thorough. No sudden shifts that would expose our real purpose."

  "Compile everything. Bring me weekly reports. We analyze. We look for the reincarnation's fingerprints in the chaos they inevitably create."

  "It will be done, Your Majesty."

  "Good. And be discreet. Other nations are watching us with amusement right now—the mighty Empire wasting massive resources searching for one lost person in a desert. They think we're fools. Let them think that. Better they underestimate us than suspect the truth."

  "We understand, Your Majesty."

  The Emperor dismissed them with a wave. The three assistants bowed and left, already organizing their tasks.

  Alone again, the Emperor stared at the reports on his desk. Three weeks of searching. Forty airships. Seven dead oracles. Massive expenditure.

  And all he had was: maybe they're alive, maybe they're at this auction, maybe the elf knows something.

  Not the triumphant recovery he'd envisioned when the protocol activated.

  But not complete failure either. Not yet.

  The reincarnation was out there. Somewhere. Alive or dead. Human or elf or something else entirely.

  And he would find them.

  Eventually.

  He had time. Resources. Patience built over ten millennia.

  And now, he had a team heading directly toward a place where unusual foreigners had appeared at exactly the right time doing exactly the kinds of things reincarnations did.

  Maybe—just maybe—his luck was finally turning.

  Or maybe it was another dead end. Another Damned Caravan blocking his path.

  Only time would tell.