⁂
“…I feel like something possessing me has fallen away. Thank you for saving my sister. For saving Sheryl.”
My lightning has always fixed most things. Blast it off and the problem generally sorts itself out, so I used it constantly, and my disciples took to calling me the real Thunder God Emperor Kaminari-sama behind my back. Anyway.
Brad had stopped at serious injury, so Perfect Heal got him back to the point of speech. Different training from Merlin’s, maybe, but this guy is softer than I expected.
His body ought to be more or less mended, and yet he still can’t sit up…
“Save your thanks for Isaac. Now, I want the details of when you met the goddess.”
“The goddess? Ah, that was—”
Brad’s head was wrapped in something black.
“Oh, come on… you’d go that far, Fire God Emperor?”
Black magic power came crawling out of Brad’s nose and ears like snakes, welling up out of his brain by the look of it, and vanished at once.
“…He got us.”
“Got us? Ah—what were we talking about?”
“The goddess.”
“The goddess? What about her?”
The Fire God Emperor’s got a hell of a personality on him. A second layer of insurance never occurred to me.
—Level 10: Curse of Pharaoh.
Brad has just had the relevant memories erased, for security. It was my first time seeing it. Even four hundred years ago, a timed trigger like this was attested only in the literature.
“Then do you still have any memory of the red-haired boy?”
Brad thought about it for a while and got as far as starting to say “I have no memory of it,” and then—
“Alcott… I am going now to the Alcott ducal domain. For some reason those words came into my head.”
So that’s how it joins up. I sighed.
Apparently sitting back and watching isn’t going to be allowed me after all.
—This is an invitation from the Fire God Emperor, beyond any doubt.
He anticipated exactly this situation from the start and left me a message. Which means he’s hinting at harm to Cecilia and Fraser. And to this life’s mother.
“Well. This is getting troublesome…”
A cure for magic aptitude first. And Sasha knows a lot more than that, near enough certainly. Nothing starts until I get his mouth open, whatever it takes.
I shrugged. Good grief.
And so—
On the way back I went and crushed the load-bearing points of the Soul Eater circle. As for the dark-arts formula enhancing our classmates, that was probably… no, that was certainly the Fire God Emperor as well.
The reason being that dark-arts enhancement requires the subject’s consent. It isn’t conceivable that four classmates, all four of them, were cornered enough to want an enhancement they’d wager their lifespans on. In which case you’re manipulating consciousness at the level of a person’s own memories, and nothing but Level 10-class brainwashing accounts for it. The Fire God Emperor seems to use brainwashing and memory manipulation constantly, and in any case the number of people in this era who could manage that trick is small, so it’s him.
As for why he did it, it was probably about drawing a crowd. The finals are held at the magic academy, and once a dark horse survives to the final, spectators from inside and outside the school increase. Gather people, then take every soul in one sweep. That would be the shape of it.
Brad, incidentally, seems to have forgotten even that he can use magic of Level 9 and above. I’ve got all sorts of thoughts about it, but… he’ll most likely walk a quiet, honest life from here.
And so, one way and another, I arrived at the venue for the final match, and—
“Ha. You’re in tatters, Maria.”
I called it out with a wry smile from the waiting tent set up just below the platform.
“I won, though.”
Hm? There were blast marks on the platform, and signs that oil had been spread around. And a glance at Maria’s luggage turned up the scent of a fast-acting sleeping drug. Her practice bow smelled of a numbing agent too. She really had worked in every trick going, I thought, and couldn’t help laughing.
“Well. Good work, at any rate.”
At which Anonymous Hope—Merlin, in the swallowtail-butterfly mask and the student-uniform cosplay—gave a great nod.
“I lost by forfeit, incidentally.”
“No, Ephthal, Merlin-sama was incredible. She blocked the whole of her opponent’s onslaught with finger-snap defensive magic, and the moment he despaired and went half in tears and tried to give up, she panicked, clapped a hand over his mouth, and forfeited herself. I have never in my life seen anyone lose like that.”
Oh, Merlin.
That is standing out in the worst possible way… is it going to be all right? Then again, we stand out quite enough already, so maybe that much doesn’t matter anymore… oh, dear.
“Merlin? I’m sure you know this, but see to those kids on the other side. Their lifespans will have been shortened… as far as you possibly can, all right?”
“Already investigated. Some years shortened, most likely, but no effect on the broad picture. Put a stop to the eating and drinking excesses young people go in for, hold them to a properly healthy life, and their average lifespan will actually go up.”
“Good. That’s a relief.”
“And their violence has already been treated, incidentally. Last time the procedure used on the subjects was unknown, but the investigation gave me a reasonable idea…”
“You used state-recovery magic?”
“I undid the mental contamination alone, before the match. So there shouldn’t be any of that going-too-far this time.”
“Then all I have to do is watch my disciples grow.”
How these two fight against an opponent above them is something I want to see. Matches they’re bound to win aren’t experience worth having. And at that moment a cheer went up through the venue.
Anastasia and the bespectacled student were standing on the platform. It looked like I’d get to watch in full from this match onward.
At the referee’s signal, Anastasia called out to him, nervously.
“U-U-Um, ah, er… please listen to what I have to shay! I have a request! I… am a girl!”
“Yes, you are certainly a girl.”
“If my face gets damaged… I won’t be able to marry, and that would be a problem…”
“Hmm.” The man put a hand to his chin.
“I understand what you are saying, but this is a place of battle. There is no method by which nobody gets hurt. What is it you want?”
Anastasia gave a small nod.
“I want to make a rule.”
“A rule?”
The man tilted his head and let out a startled sound.
“That’s right. I want a no-face rule.”
“No… face?”
“What nonsense—” the man began, and Anastasia looked up at him through her lashes, eyes brimming.
“Please. Not the face. Anything but the face.”
She fell silent. Then she trembled like a newborn fawn and, in the most pitiable voice she could manage, said it.
“…My dream is to become a lovely bride.”
The man looked at her, colored slightly, and cleared his throat.
“H-Hypothetically. Even if such a rule could be made for physical attacks, it would be impossible for magic, would it not?”
Area attacks are more or less the default for magic, so the man’s point is entirely reasonable.
“Area bombardment can’t be helped with magic, so… just the practice swords is fine.”
“Ah. Very well.”
The man gave a small nod, and cleared his throat once more.
“Your name?”
“Anastasia.”
“Yes. Anastasia… a l-lovely name. Then sometime soon, when the moment is right, I, as a third year, shall give you a magic lesson. Private instruction.”
Anastasia’s face lit up like a flower opening.
“Really?”
Seeing her look so pleased, the man closed his fist tight. “Right!”
“In that case I’ll fight seriously, so let’s both give it everything.”
“Yes. I think nothing ill of you, but that’s one thing and this is another.”
And so the match began.
First the man, a magic swordsman, loosed a Level 4 wind spell, a horizontal sweep of wind blades. The no-face rule shouldn’t have applied to magic, but he seemed to be showing Anastasia consideration and aimed at her feet. And Anastasia—
“Level 2: Air Step.”
—used a foothold of air to jump the blade as it came crawling along the ground.
“Yes! She dodged it!”
Anastasia ran flat out across the platform. Wind blades came at her without number, and she took them sometimes with defensive magic and sometimes by building footholds and going acrobatic, closing the distance in fine style with a beautiful piece of movement.
With the opponent able to use Level 5, a magical exchange at range goes badly for her. So her strategy was to get inside his guard and force it through with the sword.
“She’s good!”
Just as Maria said. She closed that distance nicely.
“No, this is bad.”
The man’s swordsmanship had reached a considerable level too. He was skilled. Countless sword flashes crossed in the air, and a genuinely high-level exchange of swordplay unfolded.
“Eh? Doesn’t Anastasia look like she’s pushing him? Looks like she could force it through as is.”
“With real blades, Anastasia would have taken that student’s life three times over… though.”
The man was running a strong passive Level 5 physical defense spell. A practice sword is a wooden sword in the end. Anastasia was landing clean hits over and over, and he was taking very little damage from them. And Anastasia is specialized for speed. Even with physical enhancement, her raw strength is low, so a wooden sword as a blunt instrument suits her badly. The man’s sword, meanwhile, was being swung with enormous muscle behind it. She had dodged every one so far, but take a single hit and she’s finished.
“Limiting attacks to below the neck may have been a bad move on Anastasia’s part. Against the head, the damage might have gone through.”
“True… thinking of it as a blunt instrument, not being able to aim at the head really hurts.”
“The torso wouldn’t be no damage at all. But it’s a long way from putting him out of the fight.”
There the man put on a triumphant expression.
“Now, surrender, Anastasia-san! I do not have the poor taste to injure a lovely young woman!”
Supremely confident in his defense, apparently, he opened both arms and threw out his chest toward her. As if to say hit me. Which is presumably exactly what he was saying. Take everything she had, then win a surrender out of a collapse in her will to fight—that would be the plan. His advantage at range is obvious, and at close quarters she has no move left either. Which is, in its way, gentlemanly.
“I won’t surrender!”
Anastasia set herself into a thrust with the practice sword, aimed at his chest.
“Then, since your strength cannot injure me—What!?”
Anastasia turned out of the thrust and swung the practice sword up overhead.
And toward the completely undefended face of her opponent—wait. An overhead strike down onto his head?
Maria and I and the opponent all stood there dumbfounded, and—SMACK!—she brought it down on his head with everything she had.
“There’s no such thing as a serious duel with the face off the table!”
Th-Th-That’s… dirty!
—This is dirty!
Maria and I gaped, mouths opening and shutting, over and over.
And Anastasia, facing an opponent whose expression had gone to agony, dropped the sword into a low stance, and then… swept it upward.
Her target was between his legs. A single clean strike, landed as though it had taken dead aim at the greatest weak point a man has.
Ugh. That hurts. That definitely hurts.
Watching it sent gooseflesh crawling up my own back.
“Kah… hah…!”
In accordance with the laws of nature, the opponent went down.
“Medic! Call a medic!”
“That girl—no mercy at all! At this rate Alfred’s future could be in serious trouble! Hurry! Hurry!”
The opposing team was in outright pandemonium.
Anastasia herself, meanwhile, was bouncing on the spot, delighted.
“I did iiit! I won! I’m so happy! I did it! I did it! I really did iiit!”
A full-face smile. A bottomless grin. Innocent, childlike, delighted capering.
And Maria and I, standing dumbfounded in front of a girl bouncing up and down and expressing joy with everything she had.
At this point it goes past being good at a fight. This isn’t skill in a scrap. This is—
—nothing on this earth but a fiend.
And still bouncing, still wearing that bottomless smile, Anastasia shouted across to me at the top of her voice.
“Maaaster! I don’t feel good about you and Maria-san getting along, you knooow!”
Eh? Why say a thing like that at this particular moment?
Was it my imagination, or were her eyes not smiling at all…?
Maria took that in and nodded, white-faced.
“Hey, Ephthal? Something I’ve thought for a while, and this has turned it into near certainty. Anastasia… the usual soft and fluffy thing is an act, and what she is in a fight is her actual nature. That’s what I think.”
“…You mean she’s black-hearted?”
“…Near certainty, I said. Not confirmed.”
Honestly, I’d been half feeling it myself. There are a great many calculated little moments, and the way her head suddenly starts working the instant a fight begins is odd. She was a girl who walked the back roads and stole artifacts by deceiving people, when it comes to that. Thinking about it that way, the bottomless smile has started to frighten me.
But no. I want to believe in Anastasia. Cursed as a useless mongrel by Merlin, trips over her own tongue the moment she panics… that soft and fluffy girl is the one I want to believe in.
Right. Let’s pray Maria is worrying over nothing.
And with that, I decided not to think too hard about the Black-Hearted Anastasia Theory, and gave a small nod.
So. Only the final bout is left.
Here’s where the results stand so far.
· Vanguard: Merlin (an unprecedented, overwhelming defeat, in Maria’s words)
· Second: Maria (won by getting inventive about it, apparently)
· Middle: Anastasia (victory by fiendishness)