○ Scene I: The King and the Lady

It was a typical morning at Rosewood. The students greeted the king as they passed.

“Good morning, Your Majesty.”

“Ah, yes, good morning.”

“Good morning, Chancellor.”

“Right, good morning.”

Blade watched idly. This guy sure is popular for a king…

The students were all greeting him with a breezy familiarity. Blade, who had seen many rulers from other countries, knew this wasn’t the norm. It was much more common to greet a king with stiffness and formality.

“Nice day, isn’t it, Your Majesty?”

“That it is, Maria. You woke me up in the most perfect fashion today. Keep it up tomorrow, all right?”

“My. If you put it that way, I’ll have to go even harder, won’t I?”

“Ha-ha-ha… I should hope so.”

What could they be talking about? It was too difficult to tell. Maria, who was now Rosewood Academy’s very first student council president, was in charge of waking up the king, who tended to sleep in a lot. That much, Blade understood, but…

Sometimes…he had other thoughts. On very rare occasions—once in a blue moon, perhaps—he wondered if this man, Gilgamesh Soulmaker, was simply playing the role of the imbecile. It was an idea he couldn’t entirely dismiss. Could it be that, maybe, he was acting like a bad man on purpose so people would feel more at ease around him?

No. No way. Blade shook his head, dismissing the foolish notion.

“What’s up, Blade?” asked the king. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”

“Is that why you’ve been hanging around me, having everyone go out of their way to greet you?”

I was wrong, Blade thought. This guy was just a bad man after all—an example of the kind of person you never wanted to become. Yeah. That had to be it.

“Oh, there you are, Gil,” a woman called out to the king. “You really need to come to your office soon. You have a mountain of paperwork to do.”

It was Sirene, the prime minister. She walked over, her high heels clacking against the floor.

Sirene was the king’s closest aide, which meant she helped oversee virtually all of the country’s affairs. She also led the Legion of Ladies, a group composed of the king’s many mistresses.

Blade wasn’t entirely sure what a “mistress” was, however. He had been told the Overlord was his mistress, which gave him the vague, hazy understanding that a it was something like a friend.

“Ah, good morning, Sirene,” the king replied. “You’re looking prettier than ever.”

“Stop talking nonsense and get to wor—”

As Sirene approached him, the king slipped an arm around her waist, brought a finger to her jaw, lifted her face up…and brought his lips right up against hers. Sirene responded by flailing around, her hands whapping against the king’s thick chest muscles.

After a little while of this:

“Wh-what are you…doing? In front of…all these people! They’re…they’re all looking!”

Her voice sounded a bit weaker as she wiped her lips.

“Mmm, well, I thought you looked cute, so…I just went for it, you see.”

“‘Just went for it’…? This is, um…an after-dark activity…”

Suddenly, Sirene stopped. She looked up and glanced around them. The male and female students gawking quickly fled, shooed away by the woman’s stare. Only Blade remained.

“U-uh…?” he stammered.

“Hm? What is it, Blade?” asked the king.

“What was that?”

“What was what?” The king cocked an eyebrow.

“You know… That, just now.”

“Sirene, did I do anything that would strike this young man as a mystery?”

“You did just kiss me… Does he mean that?”

“Oh, that? Yes, that’s called a ‘kiss.’ Normally, this is how you kick off sexual relations with—”

There was a dull thud, the sound of Sirene delivering iron-willed justice with her fist.

“That hurt, Sirene.”

“I really will get angry, you know.”

Yes, that blow was fully serious. Her raging aura was visible to the naked eye, nearly as dense as solid matter.

“Hm, yes, well, think of it as a type of greeting,” the king said.

“Oh?”

That made sense to Blade. A type of greeting to use with someone you knew well. A useful bit of knowledge, no doubt.

○Scene II: The Good Morning Kiss

“Good morning.”

Blade caught sight of the other students as he headed to class. He tromped down the hallway and spoke to the person nearest to him.

“Good morning, Blade,” Sophie replied.

Then Blade came in close, gave her a smack on the lips, and pulled back.

Sophie stared at him, not even blinking. “What was that?”

“Just a morning greeting.”

“Oh,” she replied nonchalantly.

Okay. So it is all right. Just a type of greeting.

Now Blade was confident. He recalled how his heart raced when he was cheek to cheek with Sophie. He’d thought that touching lips might evoke a similar feeling…but no, it was simply a way of saying hello. An expression of platonic affection. A totally normal, unassuming greeting between friends. It’d be weird if it did make his heart race. The king was right all along.

“Honored fatherrrr! Good morning!”

“Oh, hey.”

Cú had latched on to him, so he hugged her back, lifting her upward. They had wished each other a good morning when they woke up, but they hadn’t fully completed the “greeting” yet, so he gave her a smooch.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! That tickles, honored Father!”

Cú’s lips felt a little different from Sophie’s. They were a bit smaller, for one. And warmer. Maybe her body temperature was higher.

“…Would you like someone else?” Sophie asked.

Blade looked at her quietly for a moment, then brought a finger to his chin. “Someone else?” he asked, not sure what to make of this. “Like who?”

“…Quatre, maybe?”

Five of Sophie’s sisters currently lived within her. Quatre, the fourth sister, wielded a scythe and was rather passionate.

“No, not now.”

Passion first thing in the morning didn’t seem quite right. It wasn’t “proper.” He didn’t really understand why, but if there was a right time for that stuff, it was probably at night. A nice, refreshing morning like this merited a healthier, breezier kind of “greeting.”

“Good morning, Master. Good morning. And…good morning. I think that is a truly splendid greeting. I would love for you to greet me as well.”

“I already did, didn’t I?”

Blade completely ignored Iona, who was now clinging to him, as he headed into the classroom. First period today was a lecture on battle tactics. It hadn’t started, but around half the students were already there.

Blade decided to start with those nearest to him.

“Morning, Maria.”

Maria was now the boss of this school—or rather, its first student council president. She had been “elected” in a “democratic process,” but for some reason, people preferred to call her “the boss” nowadays. What was so wrong with calling her “president”? Not that it mattered much at the moment, but still.

“Ah, Blade, good mor—”

Maria couldn’t finish her sentence because Blade locked her lips in place with his “greeting.” She flailed her arms and legs looking for a way out. Her eyes, hidden beneath the glasses that kept her evil side at bay, were like little dots. Blade was great at greetings. He was your everyday, regular, average Joe, which meant typical morning salutations posed no issue.

He tried to pull back, sensing it was time to wrap up the greeting, but Maria wrapped her arms around his neck. Technically, Maria’s braid had come undone, so this was now Ovie. Maria had two personalities—herself, the serious-minded president with her hair in braids and a keen understanding of other people’s pain, and Ovie, the proud, arrogant daughter of the Overlord, who kept her hair down.

“Hmph. So, Blade…you want to do it here? I don’t mind, but…”

She spoke once their lips parted, and then she pushed them back together in a passionate embrace. Now her tongue was staging an invasion…but Blade didn’t panic. He had seen how the king greeted Sirene earlier, and he had a grasp of what went on during these morning rituals. He knew that greeting someone might involve waggling your tongue inside their mouth. That was totally normal. The king had done it to Sirene. And now, using his incredible ex-Hero brain power, he was learning all about the opposite scenario.

“Hey, let go!” said Blade.

The Overlord’s legs were now wrapped around Blade’s waist, holding him in place.

“According to ancient manuscripts,” Iona explained, “this position is known as the ‘Lovey-Dovey Hold.’”

Blade really didn’t need that info.

“You’re one of those freaks who likes it in public, huh?”

The Overlord, meanwhile, was blushing and talking nonsense. In public? Blade looked around. Everyone was staring at him, mouths agape. Blade was used to these expressions. This was how people looked at him whenever he pulled some super-being blunder.

Whoa, whoa. What’s with them? Isn’t this just a normal greeting?

“It seems as though everyone believes you have pushed me down on this desk in order to mate.”

Oh, come on. That’s just silly. Ovie wasn’t Blade’s doctor.

“Well, yeah, you’re doing that whatever ‘hold’ on me like you’re that pervy lady doctor. Of course people are gonna misunderstand.”

He peeled off her captivating thighs. He wished she wouldn’t push her underwear right up against his body like that, skirt upturned and all.

Once he was free, he headed toward the other students.

“I see it is finally my turn, Master. You are always welcome. I am prepared to engage with you at any moment. With all of my high-spec features, I can predict which inner-mouth moves you will make and, after a single observation, fully recreate all of your tongue techniques with the greatest of ease. Get ready to enjoy my superior skills.”

Instinctively, Blade landed a speedy karate chop to the clingy robot’s head before closing in on the others.

“Eeep!”

They all gasped, faces taut. When Blade stepped forward, they all awkwardly took a step back. But Blade’s next target was already in range.

“Hey there, Claire. Good morning!”

He grabbed Claire by the wrist, pulling her close with a deft spin and embracing her. He was about to lay it on her, when…

“Ah… W-wait! Wait, wait, wait! Blade! I…I’m not mentally prepared!”

“Ha-ha-ha! What’re you talking about, Claire?”

Blade smiled. Why would you need preparation for a greeting?

“Ah, um, Blade… Do you think you could let Claire off the hook today?”

Yessica intervened, forcibly squeezing her body between the two of them. A break from what? I’m just wishing her a good morning…

“If you want, I could offer myself as a sacrifice instead—mmph!”

Oh. All right. Well, if Yessica wants to go first, then great. Blade had already covered her mouth with his lips. To be exact, this involved inserting his tongue and rotating it around a few times, performing a combo lasting almost a minute.

“Ah…mmph… You’re so good… ”

He pulled back for a moment, but Yessica grabbed him by his tie and yanked him right back in.

“Ohhh no you don’t… I want more… ”

She sat atop a desk, wrapping her legs around his back as she rubbed her crotch against him. This must’ve been another one of those “holds,” like what the Overlord used. What was it called again? The Lovey-Dovey Hold?

“Hey…! Yessica, stop! Get ahold of yourself! People! There’re people!”

“Oh! Right…”

Snapping out of it, Yessica released Blade. Now that he was free, he quickly moved on to Claire, giving her the greeting she had been denied moments ago.

“Mm… Mmm! Mmmph!”

She struggled at first, then gradually calmed down, her tension draining away in seconds.

Promptly tossing her aside, Blade set his sights upon his next friend. There were still plenty left to greet—108 people, one dragon, one android, and two birds. He was four people and one dragon in (he instantly removed the android from the list), which left 104 people and two birds.

Strangely, everyone was running away in a panic, shouting and screaming. Chairs and desks were overturned and sent flying, and some students were clamoring to make it out the classroom door. They were all trying to keep away from him like they were fleeing from some monster, shouting things like “Ahhh!” and “Nooo!” and “Get away!” and “Don’t violate me!”

Blade kept moving, his face placid. He had a special walking technique that allowed him to traverse up to fifteen feet toward a target in just 0.01 seconds. Once he’d closed in, the greetings began. A female student fell limp…and then he was off to his next friend.

○ Scene III: Earnest

“What’s all that noise?”

Earnest, who was walking to the classroom with their teacher, stopped in the hallway once she could hear the racket.

“Please wait here,” she said to the teacher. “I’ll see what’s going on.”

She motioned for him to stop and entered the classroom.

Screams. Wails. Roars of rage. It was like elementary school recess. Earnest could already feel the veins in her temple starting to pulse.

“Atten-shun!” she barked sharply.

Everyone instantly stopped.

“What is going on in here?!” she demanded. “Someone explain it to me now!”

She was legitimately angry. This was the honorable Rosewood Academy, and just look at how these students were acting. This was a special day, too. She had personally uncovered a great new talent, a professor she thought even she might learn a thing or two from; he had been teaching at a lesser school, and she’d used every trick in the book to pluck him out and set him up here at the academy. And this was how his first class was going to look?

Who? Who dares shame me, the Empress?!

She stood up straight before the mob, glaring at them.

“Empress! Run for it!!”

The crowd was shouting at her. Run? What for? What was she supposed to be running from— Ahhh!

Earnest took out her sword and crouched down. Blade had leaped at her, and she was ready to tap into Asmodeus to cut him in half when—

Huh…? You’re kidding!

She stared at the tip of her sword, dumbfounded. Asmodeus had been stopped by just two of Blade’s fingers.

“Hey, that’s pretty dangerous, Earnest,” he said, pinching the ultra-sharp cutting surface of her sword.

“B-but…y-you lunged at me… Out of nowhere, too!”

“Ruuun! Run, Empress!!”

They were still screaming at her. Ugh. They just won’t stop carrying on. What’s with them? Ugh. Earnest looked at the class as if to say, “What are you on about?” then turned back toward Blade.

“Blade, um, we’re about to have a new instructor teach his first class, all right? I’d appreciate it if you could keep things a little quieter around here. I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing with everyone, but…”

Once she knew that Blade was the cause of the uproar, she found it a lot harder to lecture him about it. Ugh. Was she always so soft? Why couldn’t she find it in herself to give Blade the chewing-out he so richly deserved? She had no idea.

“This isn’t a game,” Blade replied. “I’m serious about it.”

“You’ve gotta run! Run, Empress!!”

The screams were turning into panicked howling. Earnest turned toward the crowd once more.

Ugh. Seriously, what’s their problem? They keep going on and on. Shut up already. Like, why is everyone circling us like this? And some of the girls are crying like they’re about to be killed. And the boys, well… They’re screaming as well, but they seem oddly…expectant of something. But what?

As she pondered over this, Blade lunged at her again.

“Agh!”

“Milady, look out!”

Leonard flew in to protect Earnest. Blade caught him and brought his face close… So close…

Huh…? What is that? What’s he doing? What in the world…?

“Why…are you kissing him?” she asked.

Slurp, slurrrp sounds could be heard from their lips. Leonard’s cheeks kept puffing up, then hollowing out. Blade’s tongue was going to town in there—Earnest could tell that much. Did kissing really involve so much tongue? Why? And why two men? This made no sense at all.

Leonard’s handsome face gradually twisted up. At first, it looked like he was in pain, but the truth was, it was, well…the opposite. Earnest didn’t have any of that sort of knowledge at all. But even she could easily imagine that Leonard’s reddened face was, erm…the sort of face a person made when they were doing…that sort of thing.

Oh, wow. No way. This is the first time I’ve seen something like this!

And, you know, it wasn’t like Leonard was ugly or anything. Far from it. Earnest’s heartrate accelerated a bit as she watched Blade crush the other boy’s resistance.

The other girls were shouting and squealing as they watched. Leonard was popular enough to have a fan club of sorts, and the squealing girls had formed a veritable choir. Earnest nearly joined them, but she wasn’t part of his fan club, so she resisted the urge. Besides, squealing like that was far too feminine for her.

At last, Leonard’s body twitched, his eyes rolled behind his head, and he fell limp, drained of power. The others watched the whole thing, right up to when Blade tossed him aside like yesterday’s newspaper. Earnest was among them, entranced by the sight of such a passionate, heavy kiss. She snapped out of it, however, upon seeing Blade coming her way, breathing heavily.

“Huh? Whoa… Wait. Blade?”

His eyes were locked on to Earnest.

What? Wait… What…? Am I next?

“Master! Master, Master! There is a high probability and, indeed, a necessity that I go next. This inevitable outcome can no longer be postponed! Master, Master, Master! Master! Master! Master! Master, Master, Master, Master!!”

Iona was jumping up and down, but a single karate chop to the back of the neck knocked her offline.

Blade trudged forth slowly, shoulders swaying as he huffed and puffed.

“…!!”

Earnest held her breath. But instead of screaming for mercy…

“Company! Evasive action! Assume grade one battle positions!”

…she took control like the commander she was.

○Scene IV: Battle Against Blade

The entire school was now the site of a localized war, pitting ninety or so students (a few of them were already in no shape to fight) against one super-being.

Earnest and her allies fought like well-trained soldiers. But they were simply outclassed. The result, in fact, could barely even be called a battle. And most vexing of all was that these “well-trained soldiers” were being overwhelmed by an enemy who didn’t even think he was fighting. Instead, he was doing…well, that. Spouting nonsense like, “Time for the next greeting!” before grabbing his next victim and sucking their life force dry.

One by one, they were all caught and brought down. Every single one of them was defeated. And now Earnest was the only one left.

○Scene V: The Last One

“B-Blade! If… If you come any closer to me…! Y-you… Just don’t, okay?!”

Earnest used Asmodeus, bathed in searing flame, to draw a straight line on the floor. If Blade trod upon this line formed by the fused, melted rock… If he dared to cross it…!! Even if it was Blade, she’d slash him!

“You’re the last one left, Earnest.”

…Daaah! He just walked right over it!

“Master, Master, I still remain as well. Please address me before Earnest—”

Iona had come leaping in from the side, so Blade immediately tossed a Dragon Eater strike her way. How awful of him…

Earnest quickly found herself backed into a wall. There was nowhere left to run. With one step, then another, Blade walked toward her, muttering to himself about greetings.

She was in a bind, completely out of options. It was time for Earnest to steel her resolve.

Her only choice was to kill him.

Well, maybe not kill. But she had to do something.

“Asmodeus! Come to me…and set my body aflame!”

“At once!”

Blazing fire immediately enveloped Earnest’s form, burning her flesh away. Her skin, hypodermis, muscles, tendons, nerves, bones—everything was consumed, transforming her body into plasma. This was how she entered her Scion of Flame mode, making her invincible.

So! How d’you like this?

Earnest stood before him, now without a corporeal shape. He could no longer touch her, and that included her lips!

“Hm? Well, gee, Earnest. What’s all this about?”

“Hmph! I’ve prevented you from trying anything naughty with me!”

“Anything naughty? What’s that mean?”

“Heh… Master, with my high-spec healing abilities, I can repair this level of damage in 105.72 seconds flat. So please, allow me to experience your wondrous master-level ‘greeting’ for mysel—”

“Dragon Eater,” Blade said listlessly.

His attack swallowed Iona in a swirling rage once more, sending her off into the distance. Apparently, her connection to “Mother” had been restored as of late, because being torn to pieces no longer seemed to faze her. That meant he didn’t have to hold back.

“Don’t you think that was a little mean?”

“Oh. Is that what you meant by ‘naughty’…? Yeah. Maybe it was. I took out a wall, I guess. I’ll try not to do that next time. I’ll keep the destruction strictly to Iona.”

“That’s what you’re concerned about? I mean…there’s a lot I could say about all of this, but…why don’t you try not destroying her for a change? I feel bad for her. Like…at least ‘greet’ her a little. You can see how much she wants it.”

“Like I told you, you’re the only one left.”

Blade took a step forward.

“No! Listen to me! Do it to Iona first… Sacrifice her first!”

“Iona’s still in a million pieces.”

Why am I retreating? I’m living flame. Nothing can physically touch me. Even if Blade attempts to kiss me, he can’t touch something with no physical form. The super-hot flames will just burn him—

“H-hey! I’m flame itself! I’m…um, really hot!”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?!”

“That has nothing to do with whether I greet you or not, does it? And that’s all I’m trying to do. That’s what I decided.”

Earnest was getting nowhere. Blade just had too many screws loose. She cursed herself for ever thinking she could reason with a super-being.

Now her back was flush against the wall. Blade’s heavy hands slammed against it with a dull thud, leaving her with no way out—the classic “pin a girl against a wall” move.

“Y-you’re burning! You’re burning! I can hear the sizzling!!”

Blade’s body was already paying a heavy price. But this freak—this super-being—looked completely unfazed. Earnest had a naturally high resistance to pain and suffering… In fact, she could withstand the agony of having her entire body burnt up during her transformation without the slightest twitch. But…

“Mmm…”

Blade’s lips drew closer. He kept his eyes closed…

Earnest finally gave up. She undid Scion mode and regained her physical form, materializing fully naked in Blade’s arms.

“Oh? You’re back.”

Blade opened his eyes, smiling. Earnest rubbed the burns left on his face.

“You’re such an idiot… Did you want to kiss me that badly this whole time?”

“Huh?”

“Don’t act stupid. I’m talking about kisses. You kissed the whole student body, didn’t you? And you’ll do it to me too, right? You wanted to save me for last, huh?”

She was right. Except for Iona, every other student in the school had already fallen victim.

“No. I’m just trying to greet you,” Blade insisted.

“What does that mean?”

Come to think of it, Blade had kept repeating that word this whole time. Earnest had only just realized it.

“Greet me how?” she asked.

“I’m telling you, like this.” Blade leaned in.

“No!” Earnest thrust out her hands and pushed back his face. “That’s a kiss! It’s not a greeting! Are you that stupid?!”

“No, you’re wrong. The king told me himself.”

Blade sounded awfully proud of this, his eyes gleaming. She couldn’t help but be charmed by his childlike face.

“He said this was a greeting you give to people you’re close to. So I have to do it with all my friends—108 people and one dragon and two birds… I’ll get to Ein and Zwei later.”

“Um… Listen, Blade.”

Earnest wasn’t really sure what to say. She wanted to bury her face in her hands. But…how was she going to put this?

Then, suddenly, an idea came to her.

“Don’t you realize how dumb you are for actually believing His Majesty?”

“…Huh?!”

Blade’s face instantly changed. It took another moment for him to understand. Realization was written all over him.

“Oh, uh… Um… Err?” He turned around timidly. Everyone smiled back at him, but it was clear that they were not happy. A few had angry blue veins clearly visible on their foreheads. “S…sorry! Sorry, guys!”

Blade took one step back, then a second.

“I’m sorry!!”

Then he sprinted away at top speed, jumping out an open window and whistling for Ein to swoop down and catch him. A moment later, he was up in the sky. It took all of two seconds. As usual, Blade was quick to escape.

“Ugh… I know this is exactly the sort of thing Blade would do, but…”

Earnest, covering her naked body with the cloak Leonard had thoughtfully provided, observed the sorry situation inside the school building. The floors, the walls, the hallways… Signs of destruction were everywhere. Their homeroom was in shambles—the result of everyone devoting their all to combat.

“I swear, this is just… Oof. What will we do with him?”

Earnest smiled faintly. Then she brought a finger to her chin. She felt like she’d forgotten something important…

“My master is so mean. He never gave me a kiss.” Iona watched Blade through the open window he’d used to escape.

“Ahhh!” Earnest shouted. “I’m the only one who hasn’t kissed him, aren’t I?”

“Earnest, please don’t worry. I have not been kissed by my master either.”

“I’m the only one… I’m the only one he skipped! He totally skipped over me, didn’t he? …I’ve been skipped.”

“Again, Earnest, I was skipped as well.”

“He totally didn’t kiss me. He left me out.”

“What a coincidence, Earnest. The same is true for me.”

“He didn’t kiss me! Just me. Only me.”

“He didn’t kiss me either, Earnest. I’m the same. What a remarkable twist of fate.”

This exchange continued for what felt like forever.

○Scene I: Cú Chulainn

The gang was in the dining hall as always, having their usual lunch. Blade was eating with everyone else, having his favorite katsu curry with Cú on his lap.

Cú had grown more capable of feeding herself as of late, so there was no longer any need to use the “here comes the choo-choo train” technique. But she still liked it when he held out his own spoon to her mouth and said “Ahhh” every once in a while. When he fed her curry, Cú, who was never great with spicy food, would belch bits of fire, which was always amusing.

Not that Blade was using his child as a toy, of course. Proper parents don’t do things like that.

“What’s the matter, honored Father?”

“Hmm? What d’you mean?”

Cú had her head tilted upward to look at him. “Your lap feels weird.”

“Oh. It does?”

“You’re failing as a chair, honored Father.”

“Wow, I am?”

Maybe all that fidgeting wasn’t a great idea. He had just been awarded an F in chair sciences.

“Hee-hee!” Earnest was watching.

“What’re you smiling about?” Blade asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

“Weirdo.”

What was she laughing at him for? He didn’t understand. Oh well.

“Honored Father!” Cú said from his lap.

“What?”

“You’re being a bad chair. You’re too hard to sit on!”

“Well, I dunno what to tell you.”

Somehow, Cú felt a little different. Heavier. Blade’s legs were starting to go numb. He kept fidgeting, trying to shift into a more comfortable position, and that was apparently making Cú uncomfortable.

“You’re kind of heavy,” he said.

“Oh, wow,” said Earnest. “Trying to make an enemy out of every woman alive, are we, Blade?” He had no idea what she was talking about.

“You’re just a kid, Cú,” said Claire, patting her on the head. “It’s not that you’re getting heavier. You’re just growing.” Her gaze was incredibly gentle, and Cú closed her eyes blissfully and let her keep patting away.

This scene was only possible because not too long ago, everyone had worked together to show Cú just how powerful the human race could be. Dragons would only give you the time of day if you could prove your strength, and thanks to a 108-person group effort, the young dragon had been defeated handily. They had all grown a fair bit stronger since then as well; maybe they could even take on a full-grown Great Dragon now.

Then again, there were still Grand Dragons and Ancient Dragons, which were even stronger. There were always bigger fish, after all. Those were about the best any group of humans could hope to defeat, but for dragons, the scale went even higher, including Elder Dragons and the Chief Elder Dragon, too. Some were big enough to be mistaken for mountain ranges.

Regardless, Cú had become fast friends with everyone. Blade was a bit of a special case; she called him “honored Father” and never left his side for more than a few moments. She was quite friendly with everyone, though.

“I’m not a child. I’m a lady!” she insisted.

“Ha-ha-ha! That makes you sound even more like a kid.” Blade patted Cú’s head, but she shook it aggressively.

“I’m gonna be able to lay eggs real soon!”

The claim made some of the boys around Cú gasp, but the girls just gave her smiles and approving looks.

“That’s worthy of a gasp…?”

“What are you muttering about, Blade?” asked Earnest.

“Nothing. I…I’m normal. I’m a normal guy. I gasp at stuff like this.”

“…Um, what?”

Earnest seemed lost. Blade felt the same. What about this conversation had made the boys gasp? Where was the “gasp” factor in this case? Still, Blade was an extremely normal young man, so even if he didn’t understand it, he did.

“Gasp. Um, gasp!”

“I mean it. What are you doing?” Earnest narrowed her eyes a bit and snickered.

“By the way, Cú…” Blade looked down at the girl on his lap.

“What is it, honored Father?”

He placed his hands on both sides of her and lifted her up in the air. “I really do think you’ve gotten a little heavier.” He kept holding her up as he mentally weighed her. “Hmm… Yeah, I guess you are heavier. Have you gotten fatter?”

“Honored Father, that is what you call ‘growing up.’ You really are the enemy of womankind!”

Cú was starting to sound a lot like a human woman, but Blade knew better. She was a dragon, and dragons first fatten up, then turn that fat into muscle to grow stronger. Thus, saying she was “fatter” was a perfectly benign observation.

“Huh? Um… Blade…”

“Hmm? What is it, Earnest?”

“Is Cú… Don’t you think she’s getting…uh, bigger up there?”

“Um, what?” He turned Cú around in the air so she faced him. “Hmmm?”

He reached for the things supposedly “getting bigger” and gave them a feel.

Boing, boing…

“These are breasts,” Blade said.

Once upon a time, these were little more than the suggestion of a fat deposit underneath her skin, bulging out just a tiny bit. But now…she had real ones. With, like…a decent bounce. Blade was pretty sure these things fully qualified as full-fledged “breasts” now.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha! That tickles, honored Father!”

“Hey, Sophie, can I borrow you for a moment?” asked Blade.

“Certainly,” she replied.

Sophie had been eating in silence, but now Blade was inspecting her body as well—comparing what was in his right hand with what was in his left.

“Whoa! Blade! What’re you doing?! Your…hands! Your hands!”

Earnest is so loud sometimes. But… Hmm. I guess they’re both about the same size now.

He looked at the dragon. “Cú…you really are growing, aren’t you?”

“That’s right! I’m a growing girl! Another helping, please!” She thrust her empty plate at him as she shouted.

Wow. She can eat katsu curry now? Seems like she’s gotten over her hang-ups about spicy food. What a good girl.

Blade let go of her breast and patted her head.

○Scene II: The Usual Lunch

The air was alive with conversation, as was typical for lunch in the dining hall. Blade, as usual, was munching away at some katsu curry. The harmony between the curry, the rice, and the pork was exquisite. The symphony they created—the harrrmony!

“Honored Father, are you only on your second helping?” asked Cú. “I’m already on my third.”

“What? Well, you’ll have to work harder than that to beat me. Ha-ha-ha!” He scarfed down his remaining curry like it was water, then moved on to the next plate.

○Scene III: The Usual Lunch II

They were in the usual dining hall at the regular lunch hour. Blade was enjoying it with his beloved daughter as always. They were both chowing down on their usual katsu curry…

Chatter, chatter, chatter.

Chatter, chatter.

Chatter.

A crowd had formed around Blade and Cú. It was buzzing.

Blade, no longer able to ignore them, turned around to address the rabble. “Shut up, you guys.”

“Okay, but…,” Clay attempted to defend himself and Kassim nodded.

For some reason, the crowd was mostly guys. Blade craned his neck to look at them… Actually, the crowd was all guys. “Seriously, why are you all here?”

Why were they looking at his daughter?

“Well, I mean, it’s weird, isn’t it, Blade?” replied Clay.

“What is?”

“I mean, just look.”

“At what?”

“Next to you. At Cú.”

Blade looked. “Okay, and…?”

“Look harder!”

“At what?”

“One more time! You have to notice!”

Blade looked again.

“What’s wrong, honored Father?” asked Cú.

“I’m not really sure,” Blade replied, “but these guys want me to look at you.”

“Look at me and do what?”

“I have no idea.”

“Figure it out! Please! I’m begging you!” the other guys shouted.

“Great, now they’re pleading…,” muttered Blade.

“You sure are popular, honored Father,” said Cú. “It’s a Hero’s job to answer the commoners’ call!”

“I’m not a Hero.”

Cú had just dropped a bomb, but everyone else seemed to take it as a joke; no one said anything.

“…I’m serious,” said Blade. “What is this all about?”

“I mean… Look!” shouted Clay. “Look at Cú’s body!”

Blade did just that. He closely observed his daughter for what felt like the millionth time. “Yep. She’s got a chest. So what? We all know she’s now the equivalent of a fourteen-year-old, right? So why are you all so—?”

“What about that is fourteen years old?! No matter how you look at her, she’s clearly way older! She’s, like, twenty-four by this point! Why can’t you see that?! Open your eyes! Please! I’m on my hands and knees here!”

Clay was losing his temper. Was it really worth getting this worked up? His friend was in tears, so Blade resigned himself to closely observing Cú yet again. He had lost count of how many times he’d done this, and he really couldn’t see anything different…

She still had two arms, for example, which meant eating curry was no problem. Once, back in his Hero era, one of Blade’s companions had lost an arm and he’d failed to notice. But Blade felt justified—the loss didn’t affect the guy’s combat ability at all. Sometimes he didn’t even notice when he’d lost an arm himself, and yet they wanted him to notice other people’s lost limbs? It seemed like a big ask.

But he had double-checked all of that. Cú had both of her arms. Both of her eyes, too. Her combat ability had actually gone up a bit…

…Oh? Compared to when everyone was saying she looked fourteen, her combat ability had definitely increased.

Hm? Hm? Hmm?

Hmmm?

Blade began to feel something was off.

“Whoa. Wait a sec, Clay,” said Kassim. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I believe your ‘twenty-four years old’ theory is a bit conservative. Judging by her maturity, I think we on the task force can conclude that, if anything, she’s much older than twenty-four now.”

Apparently, a task force had been set up. Kassim didn’t normally talk like that. He was getting too serious. It was like he was imitating Eliza or Iona. He sounded like some fancy scholar, and it didn’t suit him at all.

“I’ve consulted with some experts,” said Claire. “Eliza, the doctor, the professor of magic beast studies, and so on. They told me that with magical beasts, especially dragons, there’s a direct relationship between age and combat ability. To be specific, what they consume has a direct effect on their apparent age. You have been eating a whole bunch lately, Cú. Is that why you’ve grown so much?”

“All the food here is super yummy!”

Madam, the lunch lady, nodded her agreement. “Eat up and grow even bigger, you hear?”

“Yep! I’ve gotten really big already!”

“She’s getting too big, though!” shouted Earnest. “This is over the line, right, Blade? She’s way too grown up now! How did she get to twenty-four so short a time?!”

She was yelling at Blade again. Had she forgotten about how she ballooned out in no time just a little while ago? When Cú went from ten to twenty-four, she only increased her size by about 2.4 times. Was that really so big? Even compared to Earnest?

“Hey, um, does she really look twenty-four?” Blade asked.

“She does. I mean, she’s bigger than the doctor, isn’t she? Isn’t she? Iiisn’t she?”

Blade wasn’t sure why he was being asked for confirmation. He’d been the one to ask first.

“C’mere real quick, Cú,” he said.

“What is it, honored Father?”

He invited her to hop up on his lap and she did. She was now facing him.

“Um, I…I know what this is,” he said. “This is called a ‘lap dance,’ isn’t it?”

The guys in the crowd gasped yet again. Blade ignored them.

“Oh, wow, it’s true,” he continued. “They’re bigger now…”

He grasped the two bulges that were now right before his eyes.

“He’s groping her!” someone shouted.

“Let me check this way, too.” He dropped his hands for a moment so he could check with his face instead.

“He just buried his face in them!” someone else exclaimed.

When the doctor was “in heat” and came after Blade, she’d often press her huge breasts against him. Dione would bury his face in her breasts, too, although he didn’t think that was about “being in heat,” exactly. And those two women were around twenty-four years old, right?

“W…wow…I can’t believe he’s checking them like that…,” said one of the boys. “We couldn’t even imagine… And if we could, we sure wouldn’t do it… Wow… I can’t look away… What a guy…”

No matter what Blade did, it always seemed to make the boys surrounding them erupt. He sighed. What was he supposed to do?

○Scene IV: No Bed Stuff

“You just can’t, all right?”

When Blade tried to go back to his room with Cú that night, he found a large crowd of girls standing before the door, Earnest in front. They were all glaring at him, stern looks on their faces—all, that is, except for Sophie and Iona. And Yessica and the Overlord.

“Right? You think so too, right, Sophie?” Earnest asked, hoping to gain consensus from the ever-expressionless Sophie.

“If it makes Blade feel good…then I am happy for him.”

Sophie was always like that. Always ready to accept Blade as he was.

“There, you see…? What about you, Iona?” Earnest turned toward Iona next.

“Master, Master, please let me join in, too. It will give you ample opportunity to appreciate all my high-spec features.”

Iona was always like that, too. Blade never really understood what she was talking about—or rather, he didn’t want to.

“See?” said Earnest.

What exactly was Earnest trying to prove with this? Blade didn’t know, but Earnest put her hands on her well-defined waist and flashed a smug look at him.

“Okay, next up, Ovie,” she said.

“I was fine with being his concubine, but now this little dragonling… Well, perhaps ‘little’ is no longer applicable… She is a fine female of her species. Having her take him from me is, frankly, a tad annoying.”

“See? Are you hearing this, Blade?” Earnest sounded triumphant again.

That last comment had sounded a little disapproving. He had no idea what it was disapproving of, though. And despite what the Overlord had said, she’d been smiling the whole time.

“But don’t you think it’s about time Blade learned how this sort of thing works?” she asked. “That way, my turn will come sooner.”

“No, no, no! Absolutely not! Besides, Ovie, you’re the student council president! You can’t say things that might disrupt order in the dorm!”

“I’m not the president. Maria is.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Hey, uh, can I go to bed?” asked Blade.

“No! Never!” Earnest shouted.

“Honored Father, I’m sleepy! I wanna go to bed already.”

Cú let out a cheek-stretching yawn. But it seemed the girls still had more on the agenda.

“The only one left not glaring at Blade is…Yessica, huh?” said Earnest.

“Huh? What? Me?” Yessica pointed at herself. “Well, I dunno. If it helps Blade develop, then… He is a man, after all. I think it’s inevitable.”

“Maybe you’ll get your turn soon, as well.”

“Doubt it.”

Yessica landed a karate chop on the Overlord’s head.

What does she mean, “develop”? And what are all these girls waiting their turn for?

“See?” Earnest said with yet another smug grin. But Blade still wasn’t sure what this was supposed to prove.

“In summation, Blade, all of them, whether they’re glaring at you right now or not, are strictly against what you’re trying to do. Thus, you are hereby forbidden from doing it! Forbidden, forbidden, super forbidden!”

“Earnest, you already said that.” Blade sighed.

Blade had gone back to his room after dinner and was about to take a bath when Earnest had barged into his room. He’d planned to use his own bath tonight since visiting the thermae seemed like too much trouble, but Earnest was all, “Absolutely not, you idiot pervert! I can’t believe you! Go to the thermae right now!” and then threw a towel, a bucket, and some soap at him before chasing him and Cú out into the open-air bath.

What was she “forbidding,” anyway? Why was it perfectly fine to bathe outdoors but not in his own room?

“Well,” Earnest said confidently, “the thermae are mixed gender, so there’s nothing strange about it.”

Um…? Blade folded his arms and thought. He tried to look as serious as possible. Hmm… Hmm…

No dice. He just didn’t get it. When he glanced to his side, his child was striking the same pose, looking just as lost.

“Do you get any of this, Cú?” he asked.

“No, I don’t!”

“Right? Me neither.”

“Riiight?”

“It’s obvious, you stupid set of super-beings,” said Earnest.

“Oh, stop. Maybe dragons count as super-beings, but I’m totally normal,” Blade protested.

“You mean I am the same as my honored Father?” asked Cú. “That pleases me somewhat!”

“Only somewhat?” He patted Cú’s head. Well, if she was happy, he wouldn’t let it bother him.

“Anyway! I don’t want you creating hybrid children!” Earnest shouted. “That’s super forbidden! And no incest either! That’s mega forbidden!”

“All right,” said Blade. “If that’s all, then…”

He opened the door and headed inside with Cú. But just as he was about to close it behind them…

“Whoa! Whoa, whoa! Whoaaa! Didn’t you hear me? You heard me just now, right? I said no, didn’t I? Didn’t I?!” Earnest stuck her finger in the doorjamb, preventing Blade from shutting it. “Whoa! Whoaaa! Whoaaa! It’s stuck! My finger’s stuck!”

So take it out.

Blade tried to close the door a few more times, but…

“Arrrgh!!”

Now Earnest was turning into a monster. She pried the door open and stormed into the room.

“Why are you coming in?” asked Blade.

“Because I’m staying here! All right?! I’ve got this under control, so the rest of you can go back to your dorms!” Earnest shouted through the closed door.

“Again—what, exactly, do you have under control?” Blade sighed for the millionth time today.

“Look, I’m just worried, all right? Can’t you see that?”

“About what?”

“Honored Father, I think I might understand a little,” said Cú.

“Oh? You get it? Wow. Great job.” He patted Cú on the head. “…So?”

“Everyone is probably worried that you’ll do something ‘indecent’ to me. Right, honored Father?”

“Indecent? Why…? What are indecent things, anyway? What does that even mean?”

“I have never done anything indecent, so I’m afraid I don’t know either.”

“Right, yeah. I’m the same. My doctor always pounces on me, but she hasn’t succeeded yet, so…”

“She keeps seducing you?!” exclaimed Earnest. “Like, all the time?!”

“Can you pipe down a little?” Blade said. Earnest had barged into his room and now she was making a huge racket. It was really getting on his nerves.

“Ever since I gained this hot bod, everybody around me keeps worrying,” said Cú. “Earnest, especially!”

“N-no, i…it’s not that I’m worried.”

Now the two women in the room were arguing, so Blade decided to leave them alone and start getting ready for bed.

“Oh, what a lie!” shouted Cú. “I’ve got such a womanly body now, you’re just beside yourself with worry.”

“N-no, I’m not!” protested Earnest.

“Hee-hee! Then, how about this?”

Cú pushed up her hair, arched her body, and thrust her hips out in a classic fashion-mag pose. She twisted her slender waist almost to the breaking point, accentuating her full bust and sticking her assets out as suggestively as she could.

“Whoa…! Why are you doing that? Stop it! Stop, Cú! Cú?!”

“The Overlord taught me. Nightwalkers like her seduce and capture human males…and gobble them up!”

“That dirty slut…”

“Hey, hey! What do you think, huh? What do you think?”

Cú demonstrated a whole range of poses, the same sort that Yessica made when she did all that “Ee-hee, ah-hahn” stuff in front of all their friends.

“Look how well developed I am!” she exclaimed.

“Ngh…”

“Look how pendulous these are!”

“Hngh!”

“Boing, squeeze, boooing!”

“Arrgh…!”

Earnest finally fell to her knees, defeated. “I…I give up. You win.”

“Ha-ha-ha! My female allure is stronger than Earnest’s! Honored Father! Earnest just admitted defeat!”

“Oh? Really? That’s nice,” said Blade. He was already in bed, and he patted the open space next to him.

“I told you, that’s forbidden!” Earnest was lying on the ground, a defeated heap, but she was still whining.

“Can you knock that off? I’m trying to go to sleep. C’mon, Cú. Up here. Right next to me.”

“No, you can’t! You just can’t! No sleeping together! Never in a million years!!”

“Good night!”

Blade wasn’t going to listen to her anymore. Cú had already slipped under the covers, so he pulled the blanket over them both.

“What about me? Where am I supposed to sleep? On the floor? You want a girl to sleep on the floor?!”

“Can you shut up already?” Blade sat up. “Take the floor. Or maybe the corner.”

“Come over here, Earnest,” someone said.

“Eeep!”

Earnest screamed. She must not have noticed Iona until just now. She was always standing around like a statue.

“Let’s watch Master sleep together,” she said. “We can keep track of how many times he turns over, as well tracking his breathing and heartbeat… It’s very exciting.”

Earnest, sobbing, went over and kneeled on the floor beside Iona.

“Ugh…” Blade sat up again and pulled back the covers. “All right, Earnest… Come here.” He patted the bed.

“Waaah!”

Earnest let out a strange cry, jumping a few inches off the ground while still kneeling. It was honestly quite dexterous of her.

“N-no, I… No, no… It’s too sudden… I haven’t prepared myself! I’m the best student in our school… I need to set an example. The youngest generation of the Flaming family can’t be caught doing something so lewd. And… And Cú is here, too! And Iona’s watching!”

“What…?”

“Did you want a three-way, Master?” asked Iona.

“Huh?”

“I would like to request a four-way. Please consider it, Master. It’s a difference of only one participant. Well within the margin of error.”

“Look, just get over here, Earnest.”

“O-okay…”

Earnest went over to the bed, and Blade hopped out, giving her his place.

“Huh? Oh… You’re not going to…sleep with me?” she asked.

“The bed’s too small for three people, isn’t it? And Cú can’t sleep unless she’s spooning with someone, so if you don’t mind…”

“Huh? Huh? What? We’re not gonna do it?”

“Do what?”

Blade crawled under the bed. He found the small space between the bed and the floor pretty comfortable. As an ex-Hero, he was more used to hard wooden floors than soft, fluffy beds anyway, so getting a good night’s sleep down there was no problem for him. He hadn’t been able to use this crawlspace since Cú arrived. That was the whole reason he’d started using the bed in the first place. So if Earnest was willing to take his place as Cú’s organic body pillow, then…

Zzz…

“Um… Hey, Blade? You know, I…I don’t mind at all. I said I didn’t want to earlier, but that was…um, I just wasn’t ready. But…I’m fine now, I think, so…”

Earnest’s voice echoed across the room all by itself. From the darkness, she could hear two people—Blade and Cú—taking long, rhythmic breaths.

“Everyone is already asleep,” Iona informed her.

○Scene V: The Old Cú Returns

It was lunchtime once again in the usual dining hall. As always, the whole room was buzzing.

“What’s the commotion?” Blade said. “She’s already back to normal.”

He stroked the hair of his beloved daughter, who, as usual, was sitting on his lap.

For a while, Cú had been an adult woman with a hot bod, a lot of curves, a lot of jiggliness, a lot of yowza—the whole nine yards. But before anyone knew what had happened, she’d gone back to her original size. Blade saw fit to have his doctor check up on her, just in case, and she’d said, “It’s only natural for her to shrink back once she’s processed all those calories.”

Ah, okay. So it’s the same as with Earnest.

“Hey, were you looking at me just now?” asked a certain flame-haired girl.

“No, I wasn’t,” Blade said. He didn’t want to admit his gaze had been wandering around Earnest’s stomach. “Anyway, she’s gone back to normal now. Everything’s fine. So why’s everyone still in a tizzy?”

“It’s because she’s gone back that we’re upset…,” one of the boys said.

The reversion had a group of male students weeping. Blade wasn’t sure what they were crying about. Boys weren’t supposed to cry anyway. Not unless they’d just had a big birthday party, anyway. Someone had once told him that.

“By the way, she has lost all those pounds, right? She’s really back to normal?” Blade twirled Cú’s hair as he looked at the people around him.

“Do you still not get it…?” asked the boys.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I’m not stupid! Like…Cú’s comfortable on my lap again, and she’s not heavy. That means she’s back to normal in terms of weight. Even I know that much.”

“That’s the only thing you’re taking from all this…?”

The guys were taking serious damage once more. But why? Blade didn’t get it at all.

“I know what they’re talking about, honored Father!” exclaimed Cú.

“Oh, you do? Good job.” He patted his smart, beloved daughter’s head. “So why is everyone acting so disappointed?”

“Because I don’t have as much flesh!”

“Oh. Flesh, huh?”

“The amount of flesh is the problem, yeah!”

“I see, I see.”

“These males are disappointed because I no longer have as much flesh on my chest or my butt!”

“Well, that’s true…” The boys were on their hands and knees, heads hung in despair.

“Oh, was that it?” Blade kindly tousled Cú’s hair. She was correct. What a smart girl.

“Yes. Basically, these males wanted to mate with me!”

“Oh, did they?” asked Blade.

“N-no… I mean, it’s not like that,” they said. “But it kind of is, too… Ughhh…”

The boys were weeping again. Why? Who was making them cry?

“But, ooh, too bad! I have absolutely no intention of mating with someone weaker than me. Perhaps a group of humans could best me but not an individual. So sorry! ”

“All right! Time to start training!”

The male students got right back on their feet and started walking toward the Proving Ground.

“That’s pretty unfair, isn’t it?” Blade said, his curry spoon in his mouth as he kept playing with his daughter’s hair. “There’s no way you’ll find a man here stronger than you.”

“That’s not true, honored Father.”

“Hmm? You know one? Where?”

“He’s pretty close to me, honored Father.”

“Huh? Where?” Blade looked around. He didn’t see anybody like that nearby. “Earnest could do it, I bet, but…well, she’s a female, so…”

His eyes met Earnest’s.

“You are so stupid,” she said, smiling. Blade smiled back, even though he wasn’t sure what she meant.

○Scene I: A Pleasant Class

“Yes! I’ve got it!”

They were at the usual lecture hall, enjoying another pleasant class. Everyone’s eyes were on Earnest, who’d just stood up and shouted.

“Earnest, we’re in the middle of a lesson. If you wouldn’t mind sitting down…that would be…very helpful…”

The lecturer, who had been facing the blackboard, held a piece of chalk in his hand as he appealed to her, looking a little concerned. He spoke far more politely to his student than any teacher needed to.

“I finally got it! Why didn’t I think of this before? Hee-hee-hee… This could work! This could really work!”

She didn’t seem to be listening.

Yessica, sitting next to her, tugged on her sleeve. “Come on, Anna, you’re causing trouble for the teacher. You’re the one who brought him here, right? How about we listen to what he has to say?”

“Yessica! I’ve come up with the most brilliant idea! It’s just so amazing! Really amazing! At last, mankind might be able to defeat him!”

“Easy, Anna. Cool it, okay? Take a breather…”

Yessica had Earnest by the collar and was jerking her from side to side to calm her down.

Blade watched, head propped against one arm on the desk. It must suckto be her best friend sometimes. He was a little curious as to what Earnest’s devastating new idea was, but he figured it wasn’t anything that important. She was talking about defeating “someone,” so he figured it was probably about some fight or hunt she’d be taking part in. I wonder if the “he” she mentioned is someone pretty strong. Well, whatever.

“Right! I can’t just sit here! I’ve got to talk to His Majesty at once!” Earnest had no time for her best friend’s repeated attempts to stop her. “Okay, I’ll be back soon!”

With a firm, royal salute, she strode out of the classroom.

“Um… Well, let’s continue with the lesson. This magic spell for disarming an opponent, originally created by Emperor Greymore in AH 1727, has been widely adopted due to its success at depriving foes of their combat power on the battlefield…”

Whoa. Crazy. This “professor” guy actually knows stuff I don’t! Damn! Wow! Now I have to study, don’t I? I have to remember this stuff. I need to take notes.

Blade dove right into this new, fascinating topic.

○Scene II: Direct Appeal to the King

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty! You weren’t in your office! Why are you still in your room in the middle of the day? Anyway, I’m coming in!”

“Ah, Earnest,” the king replied placidly from his bed. “…Did you want to join us?”

He was being punished mercilessly by Sirene, who was lying next to him. But none of this fazed him at all. The king’s gaze was full of bold vitality as he stared straight at Earnest. Any ordinary human would be instantly paralyzed by this royal stare, but Earnest returned it, calmly sizing him up.

“Your Majesty, Your Majesty, I have a proposal for you.”

“Hmm. What is it? Sounds very promising.”

“It is, sir. From this day forward, Rosewood Academy will change its name to Rosewood Magic Academy!”

“That sounds more like a premade decision than a proposal, but… Hmm! Yes, a fine idea!”

“Right? Don’t you think so, Your Majesty? Totally!”

Earnest was literally jumping up and down, unable to settle her soaring heart.

“Yes. A truly wonderful idea. Just what I’d expect from Earnest Flaming, my academy’s top pupil. A very praiseworthy concept!”

“Give me more praise, please!”

“Will you be joining us, after all? I’ll be taking a reward of my own, of course.”

Sirene used all her strength to hit the king with a pillow.

“No!” replied Earnest. “If I have your permission, I’d like to begin preparations immediately!”

“Ah.”

Earnest bowed, but before she could leave, the king stopped her.

“One moment, Earnest.”

“Yes?”

“I will take full responsibility, so go ahead and do as you please… I trust you understand?”

“Yes, of course…Your Majesty.”

The king and Earnest flashed the same smile at each other—more of an ugly, gloating look, really.

Then, after the red-haired girl had gone, the king turned to Sirene. She was huddled in a ball, holding the sheets close to her.

“I keep telling you that I don’t want to do this sort of thing in the middle of the afternoon, Gil. But no, you still dragged me over here—”

“Mmm, well, I don’t see the problem. In fact, I don’t think Earnest even noticed you. She didn’t shriek once. What more proof do you need?”

“Yes, from start to finish, you were the only one in her eyes. Her straightforwardness is dazzling.”

“By the way, Sirene, I’ve still got something else nice and ‘straight’ for you.”

“Please make it quick. I’m behind on work.”

“I’ll do my best.”

With that, they dove back into the sea of sheets.

○Scene III: Rosewood Magic Academy

“Wow, I’m digging these new uniforms.”

“Right?”

Earnest nodded as she looked at the shiny new outfits.

“That one suits you, too,” said Blade.

Earnest was wearing the girls’ new uniform. Someone had told Blade long ago that if a woman suddenly changed to a new outfit, you had to compliment it, no matter what. It was a rule, like a law of physics, and breaking it would put you in mortal peril. Apparently, he just had to say she looked nice, and that was well within Blade’s capabilities. He knew how to be normal, after all.

“Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about buttering me up. I’ll make sure I get my real reward later.”

Earnest wasn’t making much sense to Blade.

“Atten-shun. C’mon, everyone, line up!”

She clapped, calling over the other students.

For some reason, Earnest seemed really relaxed today. In fact, she was in a great mood. Usually, her “Atten-shun!” came out as a terrifyingly loud shout; if you were elderly or not long for this world, it might very well take a few years off your life and send you straight to the beyond. This time, there wasn’t even an exclamation point at the end. It was almost soft.

“As I’ve already told everyone, starting today, our school will be known as the Rosewood Magic Academy.”

“Yeahhh!!”

For some reason, cheers erupted from the crowd. The other students seemed to be all for it. Blade, not really following, raised his voice and said, “Yaaay,” along with the rest. He was a normal, sensible man, so he knew to go along with everyone else. That much was a given.

“Heyyy!” Yessica raised her hand and Earnest nodded at her. “Does His Majesty the king know about this?”

“Yes, of course,” Earnest said, flashing her a motherly smile. “He gave me his absolute support. He said it was a truly wonderful, brilliant idea. One deserving of praise. And praise is exactly what he gave me.”

○Scene IV: Magic Combat

It wasn’t really what you would call a “battle.”

“Team Four, come in!”

Earnest was shouting. All that could be heard through the radio in her ear was angry yelling, shrieks, explosions, and static. Before the connection cut out entirely, she picked up a few fragments—“He’s a monster!” and “M…Mommy…!” Even without verbal confirmation, it was clear what had transpired.

“Team Five, Team Six! Engage in a pincer attack! Don’t fight one-on-one! Two or more teams need to engage at the same time!”

Earnest was quick with her instructions, but Team Four and Team Three had already gone dark.

A low rumbling could be heard in the distance. It was coming from the direction those two teams had been deployed to. A tower, which she could easily see even from this far away, was slowly moving down. Only after it disappeared from view did Earnest realize it had fallen, pancaking straight down upon itself.

The tower collapsed? What kind of magic did that?

She thought she had assigned some of their very best to Teams Five and Six. Had they already been “taken care of”?

“Ngh…! That damned super-being!” Earnest spat.

She had, of course, gone in fully intent on killing him.

But the teams that had already been rescued had only been knocked out of the fight. Their lives were in no danger. Some of them were high-level wizards, talented enough to constantly cover themselves in a magic barrier. They could set up multiple layers in their sleep, and yet, their foe was meticulously peeling each layer of their barriers away, then attacking them just enough to knock them out without further injury.

They were going at him ready to kill. It was like they were being dissed. Disrespected, of course, and dissuaded as well.

“Heh-heh-heh… Are you okay with this, Empress? I’m going to kill him for real, you know. I’ll really do it. I’m going to achieve the Super-Being Subjugation Committee’s long-held dream. Once upon a time, my stupid master told me that I was wasting my talent as an inventor—that I could conquer the world if I became a sorcerer. Well, today, I, Eliza Maxwell, will make my master proud!”

A dark smile spread across Eliza’s face. The darkness in her heart spread malediction across the land.

“I—I’ll try my best, too… B-but if I’m no good, I’ll let Ovie take over.”

Maria held her staff tightly, eyes pointed straight ahead. She was one of the school’s best casters, even without Ovie, her other personality, at the forefront. Ovie only boosted her capabilities that much further. She could even use both of her personalities to cast and wield multiple spells at once—an unfair trick, if you thought about it.

“I’m counting on you,” said Earnest. “Go kill him.”

“Yes, ma’am!” the two girls shouted back.

○Scene V: The Super-Fun Magic Fest

Blade was frozen.

“Okay. There, there, and there. One on the second floor, one on the third, and one on the roof. And also there, behind that building. It’s so obvious. Your magic’s leaking out.”

He correctly guessed the location of half the people hiding from him. Had he kept walking, Blade would’ve been right in the middle of them. He only stopped out of consideration for his opponents—the same reason he’d called out their positions.

This was probably meant to be an ambush, right? After a herculean effort, exercising all his powers of deduction, consideration, and various other skills, Blade was finally able to realize that this was likely an ambush. Great. He’d almost missed it entirely. Crap, crap, crap. He was about to walk straight past them without noticing despite all the magic they were going to throw at him. It’d certainly cause a lot of damage…to their self-esteem, anyway.

Now that he knew this was an ambush, however, everything would be fine. This would be a cinch to deal with.

“Ha-ha-haaa!” Blade gloated. “You guys think I would fall for an ambush like that?!”

Really, he was just hoping that someone would compliment him for spotting the trap. He knew this was the normal, correct thing to say in this situation. Blade knew what “normal” was. He was a very normal, very average person, and he was perfectly capable of acting in a normal way.

“Okay, there, there, there…and there and there, too. Also, sorry I didn’t say all this earlier. There, there, there, there, there, there, there, and there!”

He was using his magic detection skills and locking on at the same time, dividing his consciousness into thirteen parts so he could cast several spells simultaneously. Some of his foes had barriers up and some were beginners with no protection, so he had to choose just the right attribute makeup for each one. For barrier users, he had to use two or more different elements at once, applying a slight delay between the castings to prevent them from redeploying the barrier right after it was shattered.

“Take this!”

Blade raised his staff. From the knot of wood at the tip, more than ten magic arrows shot out at the same time. They didn’t all fly in straight lines, either—some curved, hitting targets hidden behind walls.

“Don’t get cocky just because you’ve got cover. I can bend the arrows’ trajectory, too.”

Blade warned his foes, though he wasn’t sure if anyone was listening. He wanted to pack just enough force into his strikes to keep his targets just barely conscious. He couldn’t teach his fellow students how to improve if no one was awake enough to listen to him. It’d just be a waste of effort.

Suddenly, the staff in his hand snapped. It was dead, no longer useful in battle.

“Oh, it broke?”

The large oaken staff—the conduit for his magic power—simply couldn’t take any more abuse. Blade wished he had a better one on hand…but then again, this was just a class. He couldn’t expect the academy to give him some legendary weapon.

So, Blade picked up another one lying nearby. There were lots of them strewn around; he was free to pick and choose. Even if one broke, he could replace it in an instant. Blade wanted to pat himself on the back. This strategy was so smart. He could cast without a staff…but having one did make things a little easier.

Blade leisurely strolled across the courtyard, searching for his next opponent. It was a warm, sunny day—the perfect weather for some ruthless killing.

“I wonder why everyone thought I was bad at this,” he muttered to himself.

Earnest had said that he was useless with magic, but he could cast spells just fine. In his Hero days, magic battles were just as important as sword fights.

Unlike the ordinary champions who fought as a team, Hero units like his were expected to tackle any obstacle in their way singlehandedly. A Hero was an individual powerful enough to turn an entire battle around on their own. If he was fighting a warrior, he could just hit them with a sword, spear, axe, or his fists. Pretty simple. Whoever was left standing at the end was the winner. It didn’t work that way with magic, though.

For example, take Dione, the centaur general who never did anything but charge, charge, and charge again. She was a pure, blockheaded warrior to her core. Pit her against fellow warriors or magic beasts, and she’d tackle them with the strength of a thousand, ready to take down anything in her path. But she was weak against magic-type foes—very weak. Of course, if you set a pit trap in the right place, maybe magic wouldn’t even be necessary. Something like that could stop her charging bull rush in a snap.

But anyway, even if a physical powerhouse wanted to get in a few punches, they’d be out of luck with a caster. Sorcerers never came close enough to their opponents to get knocked out in the first place. Some casters used a lot of ancient, forbidden spells that were downright disgusting. Take, for example, the “curses” some sorcerers threw around that reduced the target’s strength instead of dealing damage. It took a good grasp of magic to figure out how to deal with guys like that.

Blade hadn’t started out with any real talent in magic. Being a Hero from the age of three, however, quickly made him realize its necessity. If he remembered right, he’d began picking it up from age four or so.

He’d met this really great, awesome, superstrong sorcerer…although he was more of an enemy than an ally, technically speaking. Blade had asked this sorcerer to mentor him in magic until Blade could defeat him, and so he had. Well, he hadn’t done that exactly, but as Blade followed him around, he’d learned all of the man’s spells and techniques through observation. To be honest, he’d kind of stolen them.

They finally had a magic-only duel, and Blade had defeated him. The sorcerer wasn’t much of a talker, but the very last thing he’d said to Blade was “Well done.” Blade still remembered the exchange vividly.

If he hadn’t been Blade’s enemy—if they’d been on the same side—would he still be alive, and would Blade be able to call him his master? Probably not. Something else would’ve gotten him by now. Humanity had been pretty much on the defensive by then. If a sorcerer like him was looking for somewhere to die in battle, well, he wouldn’t have had to look for long.

At any rate, after his first “master,” Blade had learned—or rather, stolen—magic from several other talented casters.

If the people around Blade told him he wasn’t good at magic combat, he couldn’t help but think they might be right. But in a fight between a magic-only foe and someone like Blade, who had both magic and skill with a sword, the situation was a little different. He just had to break down his foe’s magic-based strategy, and he was good. Whether he struck the final blow with his sword or a spell, it didn’t change the fact that he’d won.

That was what the world asked of a Hero, after all—victory. They weren’t always expected to win fair and square, to overwhelm magic with even more powerful magic. Heroes didn’t have to adhere to silly restrictions like that.

“Todaaay is a good daaay to kill everyone in my waaay…”

Blade hummed the “Kill ’Em All Medley” to himself as he stalked Rosewood Magic Academy looking for his next target. Incidentally, he’d composed the music and lyrics all by himself.

○Scene VI: Iona and Cú’s Battle

“We cannot let you pass.”

“That’s right!”

Iona and Cú, standing side by side, called out to the empty courtyard.

“Optical camouflage magic,” Iona said into the emptiness, “is as good as worthless when faced with my high-spec feature set. It provides you with no benefit at all, so please show yourself.”

The space in front of them began to shimmer. When the magical static subsided, a small group of male students appeared, the hoods on their robes pulled over their faces.

“Heh. We would’ve let you go if you’d pretended not to notice.”

“I suppose the most suitable retort would be ‘We could say the same thing,’” said Iona. “I cannot allow you to escape. Anyone who dares cross my master is my enemy.”

“So be it.”

The group of students looked deeply troubled. Iona and Cú were among the strongest people in the academy. One was a dragon—albeit an immature one—and the other was an ancient superweapon—albeit in the form of a beautiful girl. In terms of simple battle force, they could rival the Empress herself. Their magical ability was still unknown, but it was easy to picture them casting high-level spells.

“Spread out!”

At the command of their leader, the young men dispersed, then they all began to chant spells at once. Each of them was casting Fire Arrow, a single-shot strike—but with all of them working at the same time, they could release a whole barrage.

These casters were average at best—a gang whose magic and martial arts skills were decidedly below average. Not only were they slow—skills like instant casting and using several spells or elements at once were completely beyond their grasp. But they could use magic, and with the right chant, they could all shoot off a single arrow with a single element.

It was strange, though. These boys were elite students when they were junior-school age. In fact, everyone at this school was supposed to be the best and brightest this land had to offer.

But for some reason, they were at the bottom of the academy. It made no sense. Back in junior school, they’d been so good at manipulating magic and spirit force that they’d been called geniuses…yet now they were at the very bottom of their class. They understood now that they were merely side characters…but even side characters have a sense of pride.

Now they were up against two super-beings. Today probably wasn’t going to be their day to shine, but even if they had to put their lives on the line… Well, beating them might be too much to ask for, but they could at least whittle down their energy a bit, right? …No, that might be tough, too. Still, maybe they could keep them pinned down here and buy some time for their side. That’d be nice at least, wouldn’t it?

They finished casting.

“Fire Arrow!”

Their magic missiles shot toward their target, one after the other. They were deflected and blocked, one by one, of course…or not?

“Oof! Ow! Urgh! Argh!”

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Hey, that hurts!”

One hit, then another, then another. Each strike hit home, as if magnetically attracted to their targets.

“…! Cú! Hurry up and fight back with magic! I may be a high-spec machine, but if I take this much concentrated fire without any protection, then my armor… My biological parts… Argh! Ooph! Ergh…! Fwah!”

“Iona! Iona! Fire back at them. Use your arm beam to fight back!”

“The positronium particle cannon is based on science, not magic. It’s use is therefore prohibited today. No matter how high-spec my features, there is no way for a robot to cast magic! Cú! You are the living creature among us. Start casting! Now!”

“Dragons can’t cast spells!”

“I thought Ancient Dragons could!”

“I’m still just a baby!”

Fire arrows kept hurtling toward them as they argued.

“Orgh! Oof! Ergh! Hmph! Oof! Hngh! Eegh!”

“Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow! That… Ow! That hurts!”

The young men kept firing. Their plan was working. They could push through after all. Would their magic run out first, or would the super-beings’ natural defenses crumble? It was a battle of attrition, and as far as the boys were concerned, the motto of the day was “Yes we can!”

“L-look at my perfect camouflage! Isn’t it cute?” Iona called out to the boys. “Look at my chest armor! Isn’t it so soft? Don’t you want to go easier on me? Please go easy on me! Pleeease!”

○Scene VII: Eliza and the Overlord’s Battle

“Overlord Thunder!”

“Wow, neato.”

Dozens of lightning bolts pierced heaven and earth, and Blade walked right through them.

Overlord Thunder normally involved unleashing a thousand bolts of lightning at once, each containing the power of dozens of ordinary sorcerers. This was tactical-level magic, capable of turning the tide of battle in a single shot… Normally, anyway. However, considering the Overlord’s current state—lacking full control of her own body, her power degraded—the number of bolts, their force, and everything else had taken a major hit. If you used earth-element magic to cover your body in a thin layer of soil, you could walk freely through the onslaught. Earth magic wasn’t usually considered very helpful, but if you mastered it, you could use it as a defense against opposing elements.

So, despite being struck by several lightning bolts on his way, Blade easily closed the distance.

“Listen, Overlord,” he began once he was in point-blank range. “You have a few weaknesses… First of all, you can only cast level-one magic.”

As he walked up, he kept his hands behind his back, conjuring a sphere darker than darkness itself. He then slammed it into the Overlord’s chest, right between her two ample breasts.

“Ngh! Gah! Arrrgh!”

The Overlord stayed upright, although her limbs shook violently. The dark sphere was a void that relentlessly sucked up all energy around it. It was completely emptying the Overlord’s store of magic.

“This energy absorption sphere is level-eight dark magic, or level-four warp magic. If you unleash a level-one spell at a thousand times the usual power, you can probably kick most enemies’ asses, but…there’s nothing you can do about this.”

The Overlord’s magic was quickly decreasing. Blade knew from past investigation it wasn’t infinite, and right now, it was in a severely degraded state, making the upper limit much lower than in her heyday.

“The second of your weaknesses, Overlord…is that your fighting style relies on overwhelming magic power, but you tend to lean on brute force. That’s why you can’t fight when your batteries run out like this. You gotta learn some more energy-efficient high-level spells.”

Even in a battle between two great sorcerers, you were only likely to have full MP in a handful of situations, and even then, only at the start of the fight. The only opponents you could beat with huge, eye-popping magical blasts were those below you in level. If your opponent was equal to or higher than you in power, you’d wind up in a tight spot with your MP close to zero. That was where the “energy-efficient” approach came in.

How could a sorcerer unleash high-level, high-powered magic using only the tiny amount of MP they could earn back through natural recovery? Or, in other words, how could they unleash magic at least as powerful as their opponent’s while using less magic? These were the questions that decided the outcome of a magic battle. And when the battle was between two extremely advanced casters, even a slight difference in energy-saving expertise could be the deciding factor.

That was another reason why Blade didn’t usually rely on magic. It was just boring.

“W-well done…”

He’d defeated the Overlord—or, technically, he’d brought her MP down to zero. She then fainted from shock. Ovie, at five years old, simply lacked the necessary spiritual training. To survive in magic battles between super-wizards, you had to start by learning not to faint when your MP ran out…

“Oh-ho. An energy-absorbing ball?”

Suddenly, Eliza popped up from the Overlord’s shadow. Then, conjuring the same sphere that Blade had just used, she smashed it into Blade’s hand.

Blade leaped back. One of his hands was no longer heeding his commands. What’s more, his foe’s aura had now completely disappeared back into the shadows. Shadow-element magic was rare, and Eliza could cast it at a very high level.

“…That’s the first time I’ve seen anyone besides me capable of wielding an absorption ball,” she said.

Blade’s left arm was now useless. He had instinctively cut off his magic from that limb before the sphere could suck all of it out of him, but the feeling in his hand had completely disappeared. His prana—his spirit and life energy—had also been sucked out, so that part of his body would likely be numb and uncooperative for about the next hour or so.

“I don’t normally use magic. It’s too much trouble. I want to be inventing things, not relying on spells. You see how easy it is for me? I don’t see the point in bothering to master it.”

Eliza Maxwell, the figurative punching bag of Rosewood Academy, was now smiling like a dungeon boss. Normally, when they did VR training, where killing was allowed, she was the first to get jumped and beaten up by her peers. Her average survival time was thirty-seven seconds. At Rosewood Magic Academy, however, she was invincible.

“You sure are a genius, aren’t you, Eliza?”

“I’m not particularly happy to hear that. There are things you can be, and there are things you want to be. I may be a magic prodigy, but I don’t care to become an arch-sorceress. What I want is to be a great inventor.”

Actually, thought Blade, “arch-sorceress” refers to people even more extraordinary. Casters born with a similar natural talent that keep traininglike crazy for decades, sometimes centuries, and finally reach a new stage of mastery.

“So…yeah. Let’s end this.”

Eliza raised one finger. The next moment, countless small explosions burst around Blade. There were dozens—no, hundreds of them, full of magic power and striking Blade without pause.

“I set this up while we were talking. Basically, you’re already doomed. Those small explosions are an original spell I developed for fun at age three. Fire, water, wind, earth, ice, thunder, light, and darkness—these magic bombs explode in a random selection of all the elements. None of them are very powerful on their own, but you’d need a compound shield capable of repelling every element to block them. Even a super-being can only control so many elements at once. In other words, you don’t stand a chance.”

“Yeah, I sure don’t,” Blade said amid the explosions. She had just taught him how to protect himself. Eliza was always kind like that.

Blade set up a vast number of barriers—a barrier of fire against the ice blasts, water against fire, earth against lightning, wind against earth. Light fended off darkness and vice versa. He knew elemental strengths and weaknesses well, and he harnessed that knowledge to stay safe.

The eight major elements were generally well known, of course—the four great elements of earth, water, fire, and wind, along with ice and thunder, and the so-called rare elements of light and dark. Each of these correlated with the others in rock-paper-scissors fashion. They functioned as follows: water > fire > wind > earth > lightning > ice > water. Light and dark were separate entities that only affected each other, and each was weak to its counterpart.

That was more or less what students learned in school. In the world of Heroes, however, these eight elements were called “basic” or “classic” elements. Anyone who called himself a sorcerer was expected to fully master all eight of these—that was the starting point. If you couldn’t do that, you’d never be able to serve as an apprentice to a real arch-sorcerer. You’d be turned away at the door.

On top of these classic eight, there were a number of others, called “secret” or “true rare” elements, and the number you could handle determined the full strategic range of your magic. Blade had encountered around eight secret elements, but there might well be more. Very few had mastered all eight classic and secret elements, but those with the right talents, along with the willingness to work themselves nearly to death, could generally master them all. In the Hero business, if you went around calling yourself an “arch-sorcerer” without having mastered all sixteen known elements, you’d be a laughingstock.

In addition to those eight or so secret elements, there were also elemental skills intrinsic to certain individuals, or special elements inherited via bloodline or race—things that no amount of effort or training could help you learn.

As for the Eliza’s magic bombs, Blade’s astral body had reflexively put up barriers to protect him from the blasts, so he’d have to deliberately count them to know, but it seemed to him that there were exactly eight—in other words, the classic elements.

Being able to wield multiple types of magic at the same time was considered a high-level skill. It required dividing your consciousness up and thinking about several different things at once. Blade could pull it off—he didn’t know whether he was good at magic or not, but he had learned that trick the hard way during his Hero days. Some Heroes were born with a knack for stuff like that from the start, so perhaps Blade really wasn’t too gifted with magic, comparatively speaking.

If Eliza had added all eight secret elements into her bombs as well, for a total of sixteen, it might have been too much for Blade to handle. And if she’d thrown in a special, intrinsic element of her own into the mix, he would’ve been helpless.

The bombing continued for a while…but no more elements appeared. All Blade had to do was launch eight different barriers at once to block them, as usual…and he never took a hit.

Eventually, the blitz stopped. And after seeing Blade dodge all those blasts and emerge mostly unharmed…

“…Is it fair to call you…a monster now?” asked Eliza, out of breath.

“Well, that’s not very nice.”

Like I said, in the Hero business, this is just the starting line. Of course, that meant Eliza was more than qualified to apprentice with an arch-sorcerer.

“Okay. A super-being, then.”

“That’s not too nice, either.”

Blade went to grab Eliza by her slender wrist. When he touched it, an electric shock shot out from his hand.

“Yowch!”

Had she put up a magical barrier to prevent contact-based electrocution, she probably would’ve been able to fight another round or two…but after letting her guard down, Eliza passed out with a nice smile on her face.

Sorry, Eliza. You probably have more of a talent for magic than I do…but there’s a big difference in experience. Try being a Hero for a decade or so. Anyone would wind up like me.

○Scene VIII: Earnest

“Yes… Yes, I understand. Good work. If you can recover your magic force, join up with the main team and move to rear support. If you don’t think you can, stay on the front line. I’ll send you in for a suicide attack when the time is right. You can serve as a shield, at least.”

Using her “radio” (a scientific item crafted by Eliza), Earnest kept in contact with the various teams under her command. She knew the battle was nearing its end. The “clan” of super-beings had met their match, facing defeat here and there across the battlefield. Beating Sophie, the ice-element super-being, had required taking the main members of the senior class—Leonard, Clay, Kassim, Claire, and Yessica—and having them stage a suicide strike. There were now six Sophies to deal with, so defeating them with such a small force had been quite a stroke of luck.

Even more fortunate news came from a group of boys in the junior class, who reported that they had beaten Iona and Cú by themselves. That meant just one super-being remained. They had lost contact with Eliza and the Overlord, the aces up their sleeve, but still, things were looking good.

It was time for the hunt to begin.

“I’m going out, too. Earnest Flaming…Empress of Rosewood Magic Academy…is heading into battle!”

With her beloved sword Asmodeus in hand, Earnest set off.

○Scene IX: Blade the High Wizard

“Hey, c’mon, that’s not fair! You can’t use Asmodeus here! That’s a sword, isn’t it? If you’re a magic user, you should have a staff or something!”

The school’s Empress brandished her sword, and Blade was unimpressed.

“What? No! This is a staff! Or, well, they’re basically the same thing!”

“Is it a staff or not? Make up your mind!”

“Okay, it’s a staff.”

“Oh. A staff, huh?”

That seemed to satisfy Blade. He couldn’t hear the sword’s voice, but he was sure Asmodeus was weeping. Then again, sword or not, if it was only being used to conduct, trigger, or emit magic force, it shouldn’t be a problem rules-wise, right?

“But I bet you’re planning to use Asmodeus’s magical flame force, too. Right, Earnest?”

“Of course,” she said, resting her hands on her curvy waist. “The magical power of a sword is the magical power of its owner. What’s the problem with that?”

“Oh, it’s a sword again?”

“The magical power of a staff…! Look, just shut up and let me beat you already!”

Blade was standing in the middle of the narrow courtyard, surrounded by four of the school’s buildings. Most of the student body was gathered inside these buildings, including those who had been knocked out early on. They must’ve healed up enough to come watch the fight.

If everyone in school attacked him at once, Blade wasn’t confident he could win. But they weren’t here to jump him—instead, they were keen to watch him fight one-on-one with Earnest. Blade, though, didn’t care either way. He wasn’t a Hero anymore, so it didn’t matter when or where or how he was defeated. His loss in battle no longer meant the end of humanity.

However, he’d have to be careful not to damage any of the buildings where the spectators were gathered, and that was kind of annoying. Before, he’d never had to worry about collateral damage—the king had always told him that he’d take full responsibility, after all.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Look! Look, Sirene! Blade’s already a complete mess! Ah, how amazing! It’s been far too long since I’ve seen him on the ropes like that! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

There was a drinking party well underway in a corner of one of the school buildings. Maybe he could “accidentally” let a stray bullet or fireball go off in that direction.

Still, the king’s assessment made Blade look himself over. Apart from his left hand, which was still numb and useless, there wasn’t any particular damage, was there? No loss of limbs or anything. They were all in great shape.

But… Oh, his clothing, huh? Yes, his clothes were a total mess. And… Oh, great, this was a brand-new outfit, wasn’t it? They had just passed these out today. He was normally very careful not to damage his clothes, but today, he hadn’t really had that luxury. Everyone was just so amazing. That’s Rosewood Magic Academy for you. So awesome.

As Blade reflected, Earnest began to cast a spell. She waved her hands as the chant escaped her lips. This was a full casting—something rarely seen in actual combat.

“As a descendant of the Flaming clan…Salamander of the Fiery Head… Phoenix of the Crimson Flame…Cthugha of the Burning Eyes…Hear my voice, grant me the power to burn my enemies. With fire, with heat, through a baptism of pure flame, destroy my enemies for all time…”

It was really, really long. And it wasn’t even over yet.

“Hey, hey, go easy! You want me to get destroyed? Me?”

Full castings were rarely performed in combat due to the duration of the chant opening you up to a swift ass-whooping. No enemy was going to wait for you to finish, which made no-cast magic the norm. If it didn’t have a no-cast version, a spell simply wasn’t viable. Only no-cast spells counted as part of your repertory—that was the conventional wisdom for a Hero.

Blade waited anyway. A chance like this didn’t come along every day, so he decided to see what would happen.

Come to think of it, when he’d fought the real Overlord, that guy had set off a spell with a six-hour chant, hadn’t he? Blade had tried to stop him, but he couldn’t. No matter what he did, the Overlord just kept on chanting—even when his body was cut in half. He had to appreciate the guts it took to keep going, even though said guts were strewn across the ground at one point.

So he stood there, wondering if Earnest would need six hours, too, and thinking about how boring today would be if so. The chant wrapped up quickly, however—in just about three minutes.

“Blade! You lost this fight because you let me chant my spell to the very end!”

Yeah. Maybe so. Bring it on.

“Here I go! The Flaming family’s ultimate secret…Firebird Attack!!”

She lunged straight at Blade, bringing with her an onslaught of superpowered fire that no regular barrier could ever stop.

Blade disappeared.

Earnest was already back in her normal form. She fell to her knees, breathing heavily, and looked back to where Blade had been standing. There was something resembling a pool of lava—a puddle of bubbling, boiling water—and that was it. Blade himself was nowhere to be seen.

“Um… What? Blade… Huh? Wait, no, did I…? Huh? Did I…kill him?”

“Oh, sorry. I’m over here.”

Blade stepped into the courtyard.

He had actually been waiting outside the whole time. The Blade inside the courtyard was a fake he had created before stepping in. Light-element magic was useful for a lot more than just attacks—it could create illusions, too. The result was just a trick of the light. No matter how much magic you pummeled it with, it wouldn’t hurt the caster one bit. Blade was a bit curious about the Flaming family’s ultimate magic, so he’d played along with the three-minute chant.

“Hey… That, uh… Can you do that again?”

Blade eyed the lava pool. It was glowing—not red but yellow. It must have been pretty hot.

“N-no… No, I… Wait! No, I can do it! I’ll do it! Who…who do you think I am?!”

That didn’t sound very promising.

“It…it’s not over yet! I haven’t lost! I can beat you with normal magic!”

Earnest got back on her feet, propping herself up with Asmodeus. Oh, look. She really is using it like a staff. Or maybe a cane.

“You look pretty worn out to me,” he said.

“Huh? So what! I always get worn out! What does that matter?!”

She had a point. Earnest always became a total mess in battle. Yet, no matter how exhausted she was, this girl just never gave up. She still hadn’t caught her breath, but there were five or six layers left on her magical barrier. Breaking her fighting spirit seemed like it’d take a lot of dedicated work.

Blade scratched the tip of his nose. Suddenly, he remembered a lecture from a few days ago. Right, right—it was about a new type of magic that not even an ex-Hero like him had heard of. He had yet to try it out, but on paper, at least, he knew the spell by heart.

Wouldn’t that be the perfect thing for this occasion?

Blade began to chant. It was a simple spell, just a few words mumbled softly, but…

“Wait. What? You’re casting?”

“…EX Guard Break!”

“A-aaah!”

Earnest shrieked. The magic barrier covering her, along with her clothes and her weapon—everything was blown away. Robbed of her offense and defense, Earnest was left standing there in the buff.

“Ah… Ah…? Ah…?”

She was motionless, unsure what had happened. Her clothing had been turned to dust, and her barrier had dissipated into thin air. Asmodeus, much more durable, was still lying on the ground.

“Whoa, it worked,” whispered Blade. He’d done as he was taught, and it had worked on the first try. Whoo-hoo!

The audience was now chattering loudly. “What was that? Was that magic?” some of them asked—mostly the girls. What do you want from me? We learned this in class. You were all listening, right?

One of the teachers was clapping. Oh, it’s the lecturer from that day. Blade nodded at him. The boys in the audience, meanwhile, were too busy staring at Earnest to think of anything else.

“Milady…please take this…”

Leonard walked over and handed her his cloak. Receiving this gift appeared to make her realize she was naked. Her face turned bright red as she snatched the garment.

“Oh… Ohhh!”

A cheer from the spectators, mostly the male ones.

“That…that’s so awful!!”

A lot of boos, too, mostly from the girls. “Blade just insulted her!” one of them shouted. “Do that to me too, Blade!” yelled another. Blade had no idea what was going on. Was he a hero or a villain? He wished they’d make up their minds. If the guys were cheering for him, did that mean they were on his side? He wasn’t certain of that, either.

Why all this fuss? That made the least sense of all. This was hardly the first time Earnest had been nude in front of everyone, right? It wasn’t anything new. If you wanted to see Earnest naked, you could just catch her at the thermae. Plus, she had been relying on her Scion of Flame form a lot lately, and every time she busted that out, things got X-rated. People had already nicknamed her the “Nude Avenger.”

“B-B-B…Blade!” Earnest, as the Nude Avenger, was pointing at Blade. “I—I—I…I’ll call it a draw for today!”

With that, Earnest quickly fled the scene.

Hang on. Didn’t I win? The rules of today’s practical training said that Ilost if I was killed. That didn’t happen, so I won, right? I’m walking around on my own two legs. I’m clearly alive right now. So, I win!

Did Earnest even understand the rules? What a silly goose.

Blade watched her plod away barefoot.

“Right! That concludes today’s training!” said a voice from above. The king, still partying, had leaned out a window to make the declaration. “I’ve seen truly wonderful things unfold today! All sorts of wonderful things! The naked body of a young girl is a sight to behold, after al—hrrph!”

That last bit was the sound of Sirene dishing out some punishment. It took a few seconds for the king to regain his composure.

“As of today, I am hereby closing Rosewood Magic Academy!” he continued at last. “I repeat, Rosewood Magic Academy is closed! Please return to Rosewood Academy at once! That is all!”

With that, everyone took hold of the robes they were wearing and threw them up into the air. A hundred and seven robes floated up into the sky. Some students were wearing their normal school uniforms underneath them, while others were now half-naked in their underwear.

“Oh? Oh? Oh…? Ohhh!”

Blade, a beat behind, threw his own tattered robe toward the sky. It was full of holes and tears, but it still functioned as an article of clothing—just barely—so he was able to join in the fun. What a stroke of luck.

Following Rosewood Magic Academy’s closure, Blade was beset with a new problem. Instead of “super-being,” people insisted on calling him “Blade the High Wizard.” Even though he was normal. Totally normal.

…I am normal, right?

○Scene I: The Serial Shaver

They were having a typical lunch in the usual dining hall, when…

“Hey, did you hear?”

“Yeah. That rash of unsolved crimes…”

“It’s so scary, huh?

“Yeah. Real scary.”

…Blade’s “Hero Ears” picked up a rather unusual lunchtime conversation.

“What’s all the hubbub?” he asked.

“Huh?”

Earnest, hungry as a horse, stopped shoveling food into her mouth long enough to give him a puzzled look.

Oh, right. She probably couldn’t hear that. I just used my Hero Ears. I guess most people can’t hear conversations from the opposite end of a crowded dining hall.

“You’ve got something on your cheek,” he said.

“Huh?”

Blade reached out, grabbed a piece of corn from Earnest’s cheek, and popped it into his mouth. It tasted a little sweet.

“Uh, hey… What’re you doing?” she asked.

In order to keep using her flame-based magic, Earnest needed to consume a disturbing number of calories on a daily basis. Considering how much she ate, comparing her to a horse might be a little rude…to horses. There was a real horse right next to him, in fact, munching away at a plate of vegetables, though not as heartily as Earnest was. Somehow, the horse looked more refined.

Said horse, an active general and the current special skills instructor of Rosewood Academy, turned to him and asked, “Hmm? What is it, Hero—koff, koff. I mean, Blade?”

This horse-brained general was always one step away from spilling the beans about his past as a Hero. It made Blade incredibly anxious.

“Dione,” he said to her.

“Yes! What is it?”

“Look, if you say it…”

Hmm. If she says it—if she reveals that I’m an ex-Hero—what would be the most painful punishment I could give her?

Trying to intimidate a general or Hero-class fighter with words like “I’ll kill you” wouldn’t work at all. To battle-crazy idiots like them, that just meant “Let’s duke it out right here, right now!” In their line of business, something like that was a treat, not a threat.

But Blade had just come up with something good.

“If you say it…I’ll never speak to you again.”

“…!!”

Dione’s reaction was nothing short of dramatic. Her face turned blue, then green. She had stopped breathing, a now-forgotten piece of carrot hanging from her mouth as she was rendered speechless for almost half a minute. Then, for some reason, she slowly held the carrot out to Blade… That was weird. What did she want him to do with her half-eaten carrot?

“…So, Earnest, back to what we were talking about…”

“Oh? Sure you and Dione don’t want to stare meaningfully at each other some more?! And what were we talking about, anyway?”

“I have no idea what you’re on about… And I meant the thing the girls were discussing. ‘Hey, did you hear? Yeah, that rash of unsolved crimes. It’s so scary, huh? Yeah. Real scary.’ …You know, that.”

“Oh, right. Theres one of those on the loose.”

“One of those?”

“A serial pervert.”

“Huh? A pervert? Not a murderer?”

“Well, he’s kind of like a murderer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh! I know, I know!” Claire dove into the conversation, her black hair swaying.

Kassim, a fan of that black hair, instantly stopped talking to Clay and whipped around, locking on to Claire’s beautiful mane.

“There’s this awful weirdo going around cutting girls’ hair, then running away,” she explained. “And if you can believe it, the guy gives them all buzz cuts!”

“…Huh? Their hair?” Blade had a little trouble following. Then they weren’t talking about a serial killer, right? “So how is he a murderer?”

“Well, it’s kind of like killing, isn’t it? A woman’s hair is her whole life. Don’t you know that?”

“Huh? Do women…die…if you cut their hair off?”

That was news to Blade. He couldn’t help glancing at the long-haired women around him. Claire with her black mane, then Earnest, Iona, Cú, Maria… The list included pretty much all of his close companions. Not Sophie and Yessica, though—they wore theirs short.

“What…? Of course not,” said Earnest.

“Whew. I didn’t think so,” said Blade. “You say the weirdest things sometimes.”

“You’re the one being weird!”

Blade got yelled at yet again. Why was Earnest always so angry?

“…I won’t stand for this,” she continued. “What is the Capital Defense Force even doing? How can they let a serial offender operate in the middle of the city…? Why haven’t they caught him?”

“Oh yeah, I looked into that too,” said Yessica. “Apparently he’s, like, super elusive.”

“By the time the CDF shows up to the crime scene, he’s already long gone,” explained Claire. “And he never appears while they’re on patrol, either… It’s making them look pretty incompetent, if you ask me.”

She brought a hand to her cheek to accentuate her distress. All the while, Kassim was still staring at her black hair.

“It’s shameful,” Earnest said. “They’re supposed to be protecting our nation. Aren’t they embarrassed? I mean, they serve His Majesty, King Gilgamesh!”

“You’re always talking trash about the king. I’m amazed they don’t haul you in for insulting him.”

“Shut up, Blade.”

She was mad at him again, so he decided to focus on his katsu curry.

“You know, Blade, you should really eat something besides katsu curry for a change. You need a balanced diet.”

Today she was even mad at him for eating katsu curry. And it wasn’t like he ate nothing but katsu curry. He only had it for two out of every three meals.

“But as for this haircutting freak,” said Earnest. “Frankly, I wish he’d die.”

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Claire agreed, holding her own black locks.

Yessica’s hair was shorter, but she still nodded deeply. It sounded like they were taking this pretty seriously, but it was all flying right over Blade’s head.

“Well, what’s the big deal?” he asked.

“Excuse me?!”

He’d only stated his honest opinion, and now Earnest was enraged all over again. That girl had a red-hot temper.

“Like, it’s not a serial killer. He’s just shaving people’s heads, right?”

“Um, yeah. And that’s a problem, isn’t it? It won’t just grow back.”

“Sure it will,” Blade said. “You could even bring it back with Claire’s restoration powers. I bet Eliza could make some kind of hair-growth tonic, too, if you asked her.”

“True, but…”

Earnest nodded reluctantly, unable to argue. See? I was right.

“Hair keeps growing even if you don’t want it to. It’s honestly more trouble when it’s all long and shaggy. I think you should be grateful that someone’s willing to cut it for you.”

“Bad dog. Back to your kennel.”

“Wh-what? Did I say something weird?”

Earnest refused to respond after that. Blade knew by now that he could cry, apologize, even beg for forgiveness, and she’d just ignore him completely.

Clearly, the girls were outraged at the work of this serial pervert or whatever. He was unforgivable, the enemy of all womankind. They were positively furious.

○Scene II: The Investigation Kicks Off

It was dusk when Earnest and the other girls went into the castle town.

“Let’s make sure we’re all on the same page, okay? This is completely voluntary, nothing to do with the academy at all, and I’m not gonna force any of you to join me.”

“Fine by me,” said Claire, fists clenched. “We have to take a stand.”

“I think it’ll be fun,” said Yessica.

“I’ll help,” the ever-stoic Sophie replied.

“I believe my high-spec functionality will prove effective, both during the investigation and when making the arrest.” Iona was just as stoic, with just a touch of her usual smugness.

“My honored Father said that he doesn’t get it at all, but I sure do! We can’t let this continue! I’m gonna make the bad guy pay!” Cú, the last to speak, raised her hands, using her whole body to express her anger.

“It’s fine. Don’t worry about Blade. He’s just insensitive to things like this. I could get a pixie cut, and it’d take him half a day to notice.”

“Ooh, I think it’d take him more than a day,” said Yessica.

“At least three,” amended Claire.

Iona chimed in, as well. “There is a substantial chance he would never notice the difference.”

“I…wouldn’t mind if Blade never noticed that my hair had changed,” said Sophie.

“My honored Father always puts my hair up in pigtails. I wanna try a different hairstyle sometimes, you know? I am a girl, after all!” Cú protested.

All the girls solemnly agreed. Their conclusion: Blade must be sentenced to ten thousand years in prison.

“Let’s just forget about Blade for now, all right?” said Earnest.

They all nodded so briskly their necks seemed about to snap off.

“Okay, shall we?”

Thus began Girls’ Mission, an all-girl deep dive into the seedy underbelly of the capital.

○Scene III: Like Oil and Water

“Yes, so that’s why I’m asking you to give me all the information you have.”

“Oh, yeah?! On whose authority?”

They were at a Capital Defense Force guardhouse, and Earnest was speaking with a burly man behind a desk. His arm was exactly as thick as Earnest’s lower torso…but power was about more than just muscle mass. Once you passed a certain point, you entered a dimension were power was determined less by brawn and more by the amount and refinement of one’s spirit. Claire might have thin arms, but she was incredibly strong. And of course there was Blade, their resident super-being…

“Aren’t you students? Why don’t you act like it and keep your little games in the schoolyard. Gallivanting around, pretending you’re detectives… I’m sure the kingdom’s royal charter gives you that freedom, but we grown-ups aren’t obligated to play along, all right? Give me a break.”

Earnest had dealt with a lot of adults like this. So many, in fact, that she had developed a tendency to tune them out and not listen too carefully. She didn’t really need to anyway. She could tell they were looking down on her, and that was all she needed to know. A lot of professors and instructors at the academy had been like this too, but she’d made sure they were purg—er, transferred—to a workplace more suited to their talents.

The commander in charge of this guardhouse was extremely muscular. He’d probably worked his way up the ladder from beat patrolman. He was just sitting around in his office, yet he was wearing plate armor that must have weighed a ton. That way, Earnest surmised, he’d be ready to head out whenever a case came along.

○Scene IV: A Dead End

A few days later, Earnest and her friends were having a bite to eat and discussing their progress.

“So, what’re we gonna do?”

“What are we going to do?”

“Y-yeah, what?”

Earnest, Yessica, and Claire were all looking at each other, mostly saying the same thing. As the three girls thought hard, there were three other girls not thinking at all. Earnest frowned at them.

“Sophie? Iona? Cú? You have to pitch in, too!”

“I’m not good at thinking,” complained Cú.

“Please give me instructions,” said Sophie. “If you grant me orders, I will carry them out.”

“Earnest, I recognize you as the highest-ranking system in this operation. I await your instructions as well. As a high-spec machine, I will execute your orders, no matter what they are, with utmost efficiency.”

“Iona, stop that,” Sophie said, expressionless. “Our personalities are overlapping again.”

“Personality overlap acknowledged. Perhaps I should change my tone of voice. Or I could add ‘robo’ to the end of my sentences, and you could add ‘meow’ to the end of yours.”

“A great idea, meow.”

“I thought so too, robo.”

“Please stop.”

They didn’t sound like they were joking, so Earnest felt it wise to intervene. Someone had to.

“Yippee, an order.”

“Command acknowledged. I will cease my use of novelty accents.”

“Ugh…” Earnest sighed.

This sort of thing was usually Blade’s problem, not hers. Sadly, Blade had been left out of this investigation, since he was too oblivious to understand a woman’s priorities. Earnest wasn’t about to let him join in, even if he asked nicely. Get lost, you blockhead. Go be jealous of us somewhere else.

“Hey.”

Speaking of the devil, Blade came in with a tray of katsu curry and sat down next to Earnest as usual.

“Wh-what do you want?” she asked. Earnest was startled, but she tried to act as nonchalant as possible.

“What do you mean ‘what’?” Blade replied.

“Why are you sitting next to me?”

“I always do, don’t I?”

Oh, right. That’s true. Keep calm… Keep calm… Okay.

“…So, looking at our investigation, I think we’re pretty much at a dead end. Does anyone have any ideas for how we can make some actual progress?”

She said this aloud hoping Blade would hear and understand their struggle. She glanced at him, but he wasn’t even looking. His eyes were on his katsu curry. She figured he was probably thinking something like, “Mmm, this katsu curry is so good! Whoever invented this is a genius!”

Earnest let out a heavy sigh and turned away, giving up on getting any useful ideas from Blade. The girls would have to go it alone.

“We might study battle tactics at school, but when it comes to criminal investigations, we’re all complete amateurs. Let’s start by admitting we have a lot to learn.”

“Agreed!”

“I told you that, didn’t I?” said Claire. “Like, right at the beginning… At least I think I did.” She was sounding less and less confident.

“Well, sorry, okay? You don’t have to rub it in my face. It’s not too late. It’s perfectly fine for us to start over and give this another try, isn’t it?”

“But there are new victims every day,” said Yessica.

“Ugh…”

Earnest groaned. Indeed, in the few days since they’d started their aimless pursuit, several more women had been shaved bald by the serial pervert.

“Let’s go over what we know so far,” she said.

“Yes, let’s.”

“First, the victims are all women with long hair. One man was attacked as well, but the suspect reportedly fled once he realized his victim wasn’t female. It seems fair to say that the attacks are aimed at women only.”

Everyone nodded.

“The weapon,” Earnest continued, “is a pair of large scissors. We know that thanks to witness testimony and the nature of the cuts.”

She meant the cuts made to the girls’ hair, of course. These crimes were traumatic, no doubt, but the perpetrator committed no further assault on his victims aside from cutting their hair.

Hair, of course, could always be regrown. Earnest’s team had visited all the victims and given them a medicine crafted by Eliza that restored their hair to its original length in just one day. However, some of the women were so traumatized that they couldn’t even bear to take the medicine. This haircutting maniac needed to be stopped.

“After that,” said Yessica, a finger against her chin as she looked at the ceiling, “there’s the hair itself. Not only did all the victims have long hair, but it was also particularly beautiful. And since there’s never any left at the scene, it seems the culprit is stealing it for his own nefarious reasons.”

“Hey, do you think maybe Kassim did it?” asked Earnest.

“Huh? Why Kassim?” Claire’s eyes shot wide open at the joke.

“Claire…haven’t you noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“Um…never mind. Forget it, forget it.”

Earnest had assumed everyone knew about Kassim always staring at Claire’s hair. Kassim’s little obsession should have been obvious to the whole school…but apparently not. Okay, maybe the whole school didn’t know, but it was common knowledge to 108 people, one dragon, and one android, at least.

“Mmm! This katsu curry is so good! Whoever invented this is a genius!”

Six pairs of eyes, mostly reproachful, turned in Blade’s direction.

“Look, it’s good, all right? What can I say?” He flashed them a childish look, spoon still in his mouth.

“Great. Just eat it quietly, okay?” said Earnest.

“But it’s all gone… Can I get some more?”

Earnest silently pointed to Madam, the lunch lady, indicating that he should go bother someone who cared. Once Blade got back in line, the girls’ conversation continued.

○Scene V: Blade’s Advice

Blade had finished his third helping and was deep in thought about whether to go for a fourth when he was interrupted.

“So, we still don’t really know the target’s objective. We need a motive, a guiding principle that drives him. Without that, it’ll be hard to optimize our profile.”

Earnest was using a lot of difficult words.

“I bet he’s just hungry!”

Blade could understand Cú just fine, though. Yep. Maybe I’m biased, but I think my kid is pretty amazing. She’s so smart!

“Could it be that he’s working under someone else’s orders?”

“Then who’s giving him those orders, and for what purpose? We’re just going around in circles now… Also, Sophie, you’re about the only one who’d think that.”

“I support Sophie’s idea,” said Iona. “I think it’s natural to assume that he is receiving commands from someone else. If I was the ‘target,’ I am certain that would be the case.”

“Can you two piles of junk can it for a second?”

“J-junk…? R-roger. This junk pile will be quiet, meow.”

“I am a high-spec machine, not a pile of junk, but I shall comply, robo.”

Sophie’s expressionless face held the tiniest hint of sadness. Iona, on the other hand, looked vaguely contented. Lately, it seemed she’d started to enjoy being mistreated.

“If we could just figure out where this serial shaver is hiding, we could do something about him…”

Earnest unfolded a map. Blade’s plate of katsu curry was pushed away to make space for it.

Aw… Well, whatever. I was just wondering whether I should order another one or not.

“Yeah… I’m not seeing any obvious patterns. At least not using our primitive methods.”

The map had a bunch of X’s marked on it, all evenly spaced. There was no point around which the crimes seemed to center.

“Hey, uh…” Blade started to speak.

He figured Earnest would probably say something like “Bad dog. Go to your kennel,” but he still wanted to share his thoughts.

“What, Blade?” Earnest said, turning toward him. Her eyes were sparkling, which wasn’t at all what he’d expected. It surprised him.

“Well, you know, there’s a method I used when I went hunting in the past…”

“Hunting…? Go on.”

Earnest seemed to be sincerely listening. Blade was a little glad for it.

From what he could tell, it seemed like Earnest and her friends were talking about a hunt. A while back, they’d been discussing some sort of criminal, but today the topic was definitely hunting. Considering the girls’ abilities, their target was likely a mid- to upper-level magical beast. Upper-level ones might still be too much for them, but with the right strategy, it shouldn’t be impossible.

“There are lots of hunting strategies,” he said, pleased his experience could be helpful to the others. “I liked to use the decoy method.”

“Decoy?”

“Yep. You pick the most delicious-looking bait, then use it to lure out your prey.”

“D-delicious…? Hey…”

Earnest made a face to indicate her distaste. Blade hurried to explain himself.

“No, no, no, don’t make that face. I know you don’t want to be the decoy, but you have to trust your friends, okay? And then, when your target latches on to the bait…you beat the crap out of ’em. See? It’s really simple.”

This was generally how he kept himself fed back in his Hero days. He would take whichever member of his party looked the most “delicious” and tie them to a stick in some highly visible spot. Soon, his prey would show up, and then everyone would spring out from their hiding spots and beat the crap out of the target. It was a great way to hunt and stay fed, too. Mmm. And with a full tummy, you would be able to fight another day.

“Hmm. A decoy, huh…?” mused Earnest. “I see. A decoy, a decoy…”

“Not a bad idea. Who would the decoy be, though?”

Yessica turned her gaze toward Claire. As did everyone else.

“Huh? Huh…huh? Huuuh? Why are you all looking at me?”

“Claire does seem delicious!” exclaimed Cú. “In fact, she is delicious!”

Cú ate Claire all the time in VR simulations. Apparently, she tasted just as good as she looked.

Having Earnest and the others listen to him properly gave Blade a deep sense of satisfaction. So, he told them a lot more about his experiences. He hadn’t thought that his time as a Hero would be of any use in his current position. None of the skills he’d learned then seemed all that helpful for anything apart from killing. But he’d been wrong, and that made him really happy, so he opened up as much as he could with his friends. He still didn’t know what they were “hunting,” but that didn’t really matter.

○Scene VI: The Hunt

“How are things over there? Any change?”

Earnest put a hand to her ear, communicating with her teammates as she walked along the deserted road at night. This “radio” Eliza had invented was super convenient. It made it easy to talk over long distances even without telekinesis. It was an amazing invention that could disrupt the balance of power in the world, but to Eliza, it was just “some junk” she’d cobbled together as a side hobby.

Earnest’s footsteps echoed as she made her way down the street. She’d never been good at walking in high heels, and she was carrying a tiny shoulder bag that could barely hold anything. Frankly, she felt a little ridiculous. Plus, though she didn’t want to admit it, she felt terribly anxious without Asmodeus on her belt. There was a collapsible baton in her bag she could use in a pinch, but she felt basically unarmed.

Actually, she thought, it’s probably good Asmodeus isn’t here. If it heard my thoughts, it’d just get all smug.

Earnest was, of course, on decoy duty. Among the girls on this mission, four had long hair, and since Cú was too young to play the role, Earnest, Claire, and Iona had all agreed to serve as decoys. They had to pose as civilians, which meant leaving their weapons at home and wearing clothes that were as normal-looking as possible. But Earnest didn’t really know what “ordinary people” wore, so she’d asked Claire and Yessica to choose an outfit for her, and this is what she’d wound up with. The high heeled shoes pinched her feet and made walking a huge hassle, and the handbag kept getting in her way. Really, she just wanted to go home.

“This is Claire. Nothing to report.”

“This is Iona. Nothing to report here, either.”

The other two decoys radioed in. Earnest, who was half crying on the inside, pulled herself together. She kept her back straight and maintained a brisk pace, trying to show off her long hair as much as possible.

The serial shaver always struck his victims when they were alone, and most of the attacks had taken place on deserted streets at night. There were a couple of daytime incidents in empty back alleys, but over 80 percent of the attacks came after dark. The victims were mostly young women, and mostly civilians, of course. That was why they were pretending to be “ordinary.” The culprit’s motive remained a mystery—they’d have to interrogate him once they caught him. They’d be doing a lot of things banned by the royal charter, too. Hee-hee-hee. I hope he’s ready.

But…he still wasn’t biting. None of them had been attacked yet. In fact, she couldn’t even detect the girl tailing her. There was supposed to be one backup team member following all three decoys, but she had no idea where hers currently was. Earnest was never very good at being tailed or tailing others. She had a hard time concealing her presence or detecting others who were hiding.

“Hey, is…is anyone still following me?”

“Don’t worry, Earnest! I’m here for ya!”

Oh, right, Cú was covering her. She must be flying, then, flapping those cute little wings. The dragon blended in too well with the night sky for Earnest to see her. Perhaps Blade or Sophie could, though. Maybe even Yessica, too.

Earnest was keenly aware that her skill set wasn’t suited for scout duty. She was a warrior best suited for the front lines—a high-powered, high-performance attacker. She had some leadership skills, too, though she always wound up second-in-command to Blade when push came to shove.

Blade, though… He was just too much of a super-being. A top-class warrior, a top-class scout…and as she’d found out when they’d transferred to Rosewood Magic Academy for a day, he was a top-class sorcerer, too. All that, and a top-class commander? Just how much of a super-being could one person be?

What’s more, he was the same age as Earnest. (Actually, he’s a year younger. I’m the older one. Hee-hee.) What kind of training could he have undergone? What sort of incredible effort had it taken? Earnest thought she was a pretty hard worker, but Blade’s history was tough for her to imagine. Natural talent alone couldn’t produce abilities like his. Though she didn’t want to dwell on the topic, the truth was, she knew someone else of his caliber…

Ahhh! Why am I thinking about Blade? Thank goodness I don’t have Asmodeus with me…

Back to the task at hand. That scissors maniac, the serial shaver, was sure taking his time. Maybe he was staying home tonight. They should probably give up and head home soon.

But just as that thought crossed Earnest’s mind, Yessica’s voice came through the radio.

“Claire’s under attack! District E-1, behind the eastern church!”

○Scene VII: To the Death

Earnest rushed to the scene.

It was likely just a coincidence, but the serial shaver had targeted Claire, the weakest of the three decoys. All Earnest knew was that they were engaged in combat—no details. No one was sending updates or answering any questions. Perhaps things were going badly, and there was no time to respond.

Still, this was a group of women who could take down semi-champion-level targets if they worked together. Who in the world were they up against?

Earnest hurried off, assuming the worst. She didn’t run along the road, opting to leap across rooftops instead—a tactic Blade and Sophie had developed. She proceeded to Claire’s location via the shortest possible route. Taking Ein or Zwei would have been even quicker, but as bird-type magic beasts, they had poor night vision, so that was off the table.

Right! One more building! Once I’m past that apartment over there, the site should be just around the corner. Earnest put all her strength into her legs to make one final jump.

This is so weird! So weird! It’s just strange! Impossible!

Claire was on the defensive. She knew all too well that she wasn’t particularly great at martial arts or magic. She’d only barely clawed her way into the senior class. There wasn’t some glorious military career waiting for her upon graduation; she was fundamentally different from people like Anna and Clay, who had a clear path to becoming champions. Even so, she’d thought she could handle the sort of lowbrow criminals causing this sort of trouble. Maybe she couldn’t beat them, but she could at least buy time until everyone else arrived…and if that was impossible, she could at least warn her allies to stay away.

But right now, she couldn’t even raise her voice. She lacked the strength to tap the radio in her ear. If it weren’t for her VR training, she would’ve been knocked out in a matter of seconds. By this point, everyone in the academy knew how to toe the line between life and death. Even the kids who’d just moved up from the junior class were aware of how, and when, they might die and had repeatedly “enjoyed” the experience of being savagely killed in the VR space. They knew what death was like, and how to fight on the brink of it, anticipating its arrival and pushing their bodies to the max to avoid it. All of them had trained to be at that level.

Thanks to that training, Claire was just barely avoiding defeat.

“Keh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! Your hair! Give me your hair! I need women’s hair!”

Claire’s opponent was a bizarre-looking man wrapped up in bandages like a mummy. He was tall and quite thin, and he wore a dirty lab coat over the bandages covering his hands, feet, and torso. His face was bandaged too, but his eyes, peeking out from between the strips of cloth, shone with a morbid, dazzling brilliance. They were transfixed by Claire’s hair and seemed to see nothing else.

“Yah! Yah! Ha… Tah! Yah!”

She swung her mace, attempting as best she could to bludgeon her assailant to death—but she kept getting repelled, deflected, and beat back by the giant pair of scissors in his hands. His appearance and choice of weapon were bizarre, but in close-quarters combat, he was a natural fighter, sticking to the basics and combining them with overwhelming force. Claire’s combat instructor had told her long ago to “master your technique; technique will never betray you,” and he was right. Well-honed technique proved a loyal servant even for a freak like her opponent.

To Claire, fighting the bandaged man felt almost like taking on General Dione, or maybe even Blade. He had to be at least at the semi-champion level, maybe higher.

“Claire! I’m here!”

Yessica was in sight. But Claire didn’t have the chance to shout at her to stay away.

Whoa! Holy crap! What’s the deal with this guy?

Yessica had gone to help Claire and was stunned by the enemy’s strength.

“I don’t have any use for a woman with no hair!” shouted the bandaged assailant. How rude. His voice was remarkably hoarse, and his appearance made him look deranged. And his strength… Champion class, maybe? She had no idea why a monster like this was lurking around the city.

Yessica whined in the privacy of her mind as she used her divine metal fan to fend off his giant scissors. It was a miracle that Claire had managed to hold out for the thirty seconds or so until she arrived. But how long could she survive? Could she make it to one minute? Yessica had already sent out an emergency rescue request to Earnest and the others, but judging from their positions, they’d need at least a minute or two to reach her, no matter how quickly they rushed. She and Claire would have to keep this up until then, otherwise…

After blocking several attacks from the enemy’s scissors, the edges of Yessica’s fan were tearing apart. Yessica finally managed to channel a bit of elemental power into the fan, starting with earth to strengthen it. Next, she planned to refine her wind and fire elements to use as a distraction, but she was too busy defending to manage it on the fly. She had no time to breathe, and if you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t refine your spirit, much less your elemental power.

“Yah!”

While Yessica drew the assailant’s attention, Claire attacked from behind with her spiked mace. The strike had enough force to blow his skull to smithereens. Her partner likely planned to “restore” that damage later, so there was no need to restrain herself.

Their opponent, however, didn’t even turn around. It was like he had eyes in the back of his head as he caught the mace with the other side of his scissors.

Internally, Yessica was sweating buckets. Even two-on-one, she didn’t like their odds. She knew of a few people at the semi-champion level, the Royal Guard and the Legion of Ladies among them, and she had seen Blade take on a dozen of them at once. If she and Claire worked together, she’d figured they could hold their own against just one.

But it just wasn’t working. Victory was out of the question, and it wasn’t even a close match. She wasn’t confident they could hold out until Earnest and the others showed up. In fact, she didn’t even have the energy to tell everyone on the radio to keep away. They’d have to ask Eliza to refine her design so they didn’t need to press a button—add a way to activate it with their thoughts instead or something. Assuming they survived this, of course.

Such were Yessica’s thoughts.

Iona was rushing to the scene.

As it happened, whether a user pressed a button or not, the radios kept communicating with each other. The original 32-bit, 48-kHz feed was still being delivered as a series of data packets. Iona was listening to the raw sound data via protocol analysis, giving her a good grasp of the situation.

Their suspect had appeared and attacked Claire, who was acting as a decoy. Yessica, backing up her partner, had now joined the fray, making it a two-on-one battle. Their strategy—setting up decoys to lure out the serial shaver—had been a success. There was just one miscalculation. Their opponent was simply too strong.

They’d formulated their strategy on the assumption they’d be dealing with some run-of-the-mill street thug. No matter which of the six he struck, he should have been an easy takedown. They were all part of the senior class, and they’d taken pains to ensure nobody was left to fend for themselves. Pervert or not, this guy was probably only as strong as an ordinary person. That was the premise they’d been working with…and it seemed they’d made a mistake.

The assailant wasn’t just stronger than a member of the junior class, he was even stronger than an instructor or a member of the senior class. The formation they’d used for this operation wasn’t intended to handle foes on the order of semi-champions, champions/generals, or super-beings.

Iona kept going, all of her devices working at full capacity. She was still listening to those packets of sound data.

Thud. Thud.

She heard two thumps, a mixture of solid and soft matter—two human bodies— falling on hard ground.

If their opponent had meant to kill them, they would have died. But his only objective was to take all their hair, leaving a scant few millimeters behind. There was a high chance that Claire’s and Yessica’s vitals were safe. That was good, because if not…Iona had no confidence she could stop herself from entering “berserker” mode.

She was nearing her destination. She could see the end of the alley in question, so she stopped on the roof of a nearby tall building and thrust her right hand forward. She rested her left hand on her right, bracing herself and increasing her accuracy by double digits. Then she began to generate the necessary positrons. Only a few seconds until launch…

“Target confirmed. Entering firing position. You’re in the line of fire, Sophie. Please dodge.”

“Roger.”

Sophie, who had gone on ahead, was blocking her shot. She had acknowledged this over the radio, but the center of Iona’s targeting reticule was right on her back. If she wanted to strike the target, it’d mean shooting through Sophie.

Yet Iona didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Sophie said she’d stay out of the way, so she would. Iona trusted her.

Sophie didn’t dodge the shot. That wasn’t what she’d meant by “Roger.” Iona, an artificial intelligence, wasn’t easily surprised, and yet…

…Holy crap!

“Artificial Hero force…length: one second.”

Sophie had used that one second to concentrate all the artificial Hero force she had in the palm of her hand, and she’d caught the energy from Iona’s positron particle cannon. It flowed in, forming a long tail behind it, and Sophie compressed it with her fist.

As she fell through the air, she posed as though she were throwing a javelin, then sent it flying. It split apart, dozens of energy balls raining down from the sky in pellets. They streamed down across the area, avoiding the collapsed Yessica and Claire, who was being pulled up by her hair. The warmly colored balls of light pierced through the stone pavement, scattering fragments as they exploded. At least a dozen of them came down right on the bandaged man.

But just before they could touch the man’s body, they were stopped. They floated in the air, still retaining their energy.

“Even if they were antimatter particles,” the bandaged man said, “magnetic force can block charged plasma. It’s not a skill or a technique—just a simple law of physics. It was foolish of you to shoot an energy weapon without tracking or target recognition without considering countermeasures in the event of reflection.”

Sophie reached the ground. Immediately, she kicked her legs and zoomed forward.

“By the laws of physics, I command this plasma…to reflect.”

The cluster of plasma balls hovering in the air flew away, leaving trails as they accelerated to super speed in an instant. They hit Sophie in the face, head, chest, and stomach, peeling off several layers of her defensive barrier. Meanwhile, her fist was closing in on the man’s face—but just before it hit him, it was stopped.

The bandages covering the man’s body began to unravel and move, as if they had a will of their own.

“Independent mobile cloth-type defensive armor—First Form. No one shall lay a finger on my body.”

More bandages came undone, stretching and tangling themselves around Sophie’s limbs. With her arms and legs bound, she could no longer move, fixed in place with her feet off the ground.

“Artificial Hero…,” she muttered. She’d only used one second earlier, and she had learned from Blade how to split up her ten seconds for multiple actions. Now she could pull it off on her own.

The man made his move. Taking one hand, he formed a sharp line with his fingertips and thrust them through the center of Sophie’s chest. Her body began to twitch and spasm. The power she’d been about to activate rampaged inside her body.

He had struck Sophie in a vital spot. The Heronium, a mysterious metal implanted in her chest cavity to make her an artificial Hero, had not yet fully fused with the rest of her body. If it took a direct blow, it’d cause pain intense enough to drive an ordinary person insane and make Sophie lose control of her Hero powers.

“I don’t know this move,” the man said frankly, “but I can analyze it. I see that it requires advanced concentration and various conditions for activation.”

Sophie was now hanging limply from his bandages, and he quickly moved on. Her short hair didn’t pique his interest.

“You, with the long hair. Ready to fight? Or you could abandon your friend and walk away.” The man was looking up.

“I’m coming. Approval signal from Mother received. Berserker mode activated. Time limit: sixty seconds.”

Emerald-green patterns began to appear all across Iona’s body. Light poured out from her external mechanical parts…or perhaps it was coming from her organic, living internals.

“Anti-personnel humanoid final weapon 10NA…deploying.”

Iona had now regained her former self—her ancient self, from when she was nothing but a pure weapon.

When Earnest reached the scene, the bandaged man was playing around with Iona, who was now nothing but a decapitated head.

“I’ve mastered the scientific arts. There’s no way some mechanical doll like you could ever win against me.”

Grabbing Iona by the hair, he lifted her head up to eye level. With her face now frozen in place, she really did look like a doll. It was an ominous, eerie sight.

“But this…isn’t hair. Heat-dissipation cabling? …It sure looked like hair, though.”

The man tossed Iona’s head aside like yesterday’s trash. The move was enough to make Earnest’s rage boil over.

“You bastaaard!”

Iona, now that she had regained the trust of “Mother,” was in effect immortal. Blade had dismembered her lots of times without ever considering her feelings. This man, however, had torn her to shreds and tossed around her head. How could anyone remain calm in the face of such a sordid scene?

“Earnest! Use your Scion of Flame mode!” shouted Cú from the sky.

Asmodeus hurtled down from above, and Earnest extended one hand and caught it without even looking up.

“Asmodeus! Scion of Flame! Let’s go!”

“At once!”

Flames erupted across Earnest’s entire body, starting at the tips of her limbs and spreading toward her torso, charring her physical form as they went. Her physical body died in agony, only for her to be reborn as the Scion of Flame. She wasn’t scared of pain—it had always been with her. The Flame Empress would never bow to such trifles. No, she would overcome it and become a truly invincible force.

However…

“I’ve never seen that technique before, but I can analyze it and deduce what you’re doing. I believe it’s some kind of applied technique making secondary use of the fire spirits’ world. If fire is the medium, extinguishment should, in theory, be possible. There are several ways to put out a fire. For one, you can expose it to an explosive force, cut off its oxygen, and cool it down. No flame can last long against that.”

“Ahhh!”

Something exploded inside Earnest’s body. The man had left a single ball of light from Iona’s earlier attack to use as needed, and he had just thrown it at Earnest.

“Now to cut off the oxygen.”

A gas spouted out from inside the man’s white lab coat, accompanied by a white mist. It was pure carbon dioxide. The few flames that hadn’t been snuffed out by the blast disappeared.

“This… Damn it!” Earnest reignited her body, but…

“I have liquid nitrogen here, too.”

All sorts of things began to pop out from the man’s lab coat. A colorless, transparent liquid poured down Earnest’s burning body, completely extinguishing her. Her fire went out—or rather, it froze.

“Ah… Ow… Huh? What…? Weh…?”

Now she was a half-burnt corpse crawling on the ground. She had been stopped in the middle of burning herself up, so all of her extremities were now missing—there were no fingers on her hands, and her legs ended just above the ankle. But she still tried to get up, slipping many times, losing her balance, and finally falling in a heap on her back. Her breathing was ragged, and now she couldn’t move. All she could do was raise and lower her ample breast to keep breathing. She never thought being extinguished in the middle of a transformation would cause so much damage.

“Asmo…deus, come to me…!”

She stretched out her fingerless hand, calling to the sword. It had been lying on the ground, but now it shuddered, moving on its own, and began heading toward Earnest…until the man’s foot stopped it.

“What a pain this is. Let me seal this up.”

Six thin knives were driven into the ground around Asmodeus. They were made from the mystical metal Heronium, and now they were transmitting magical force to create a spherical barrier. It prevented Asmodeus from moving, exerting magical force, or anything else; Earnest’s sword was completely cut off from her.

“And over there, too.”

Two more sets of six knives were thrown a short distance away—at Cú, who had been watching the battle.

“…!! …!! …!!”

Now trapped in a sphere of her own, Cú pounded on the walls of her prison. No one knew what she was shouting. Her voice couldn’t be heard.

After disabling all his opponents, the man stood for a moment, gauging his handiwork.

“I believe solely in the laws of physics. No good fortune or favor ever comes my way. All of my decisions are made on the premise that an equal, opposite reaction will occur. The world at large is pushing its misfortune upon me…and I am prepared for it.”

Earnest didn’t know what the man was talking about. She could tell he was unusually strong, though.

Actually…it was a little different from pure strength—it was as though he had anticipated everything and prepared for it. He could analyze a technique he had never seen before and come up with the perfect response. He was treating this entire battle like an intriguing chess puzzle.

Even if his every move went awry and all kinds of bad luck befell him, he still had a firm grasp on the fundamentals needed to win. What kind of grandiose life did one have to live to gain such masterful control over everything?

“You are all too reliant on good fortune. No matter how much Lady Luck may be on your side, you cannot defeat me with your current abilities and techniques.”

It was tremendously frustrating…but he seemed to be correct.

“Now, your hair, please.”

The man’s eyes turned toward Earnest. She wanted to scream, but her pride as the Empress wouldn’t allow it. No one in the Flaming family ever flinched. They never cowered, never retreated—and even if they faced defeat, they were never to scream or beg for their lives.

She mustn’t debase herself, but…

“S-stop…”

She had never cut her hair before. She was so proud of this inheritance from her mother, even after it turned red following her pact with Asmodeus, that the idea of cutting it…

“I’m not trying to take your life. That stuff will grow back, you know.”

Having her hair taken by someone who dismissed it as “that stuff”… She couldn’t accept it. But with her limbs maimed and her body half-burnt and half-frozen, there was nothing more Earnest he could do. Nothing except pray, that is.

The man grabbed her hair and used it to lift her up, forcing her into a sitting position. Then the sharp tips of his gigantic scissors were placed at the base of her bunched-up mane. All that was left was for him to make the first snip.

It was so frustrating. So frustrating. So frustrating to have this freak of nature shave her like this…

Blade appeared in Earnest’s mind, and she prayed.

Help me… Blade, help me. Blade, please…

“Heyyy, Earnest?”

She heard Blade’s voice. She was imagining it. She must have been.

“Oh, there you are!”

She could see Blade waving at her. Now she was seeing things, too.

“Who are you?” asked the man with the scissors. Even under the bandages, his confusion was palpable.

“Oh, sorry, I need to talk to her.” Blade placed his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“I was here first. Stay back, unless you want to be hurt.”

The man had his scissors in his hands. They were headed straight for Blade, moving in from his blind spot…

“Blade, look out!” Earnest shouted.

“Huh? What?”

Blade turned toward her. He now had his back to the man with his scissors out and ready—and Blade was still facing her, a carefree look on his face. His arm moved, as if on autopilot, and his fist swung backward, striking the man’s bandaged face. He was sent flying, spinning through the air.

Huh?

…What?

Earnest couldn’t believe her eyes. Um… What? That guy… That freak… He had to be at least a semi-champion, right? He might even be a full champion. And a single backhanded blow had knocked him out?

Um…

Blade, could it be that…you don’t even realize what you just did? Was that completely unconscious?

“Hey, Earnest?” he said in his usual carefree tone. Earnest looked up at him, blinking repeatedly.

Um… I’m a half-burnt, half-frozen corpse, and my hands and feet are gone…but Blade probably can’t even see any of that. Or if he can, it doesn’t faze him.

“Wh…what?”

“You were talking about hunting, weren’t you? Like, hunting some kind of high-level magic beast?”

○Scene VIII: The Freak’s Motives

There was a lot of cleanup to do after the fight.

First, they contacted the Capital Defense Force to report the criminal they’d captured. When the commander showed up, his face was a sight to behold. He was probably ready to die of frustration now that Rosewood Academy’s students had captured the culprit.

After that, they treated the injured. Yessica and Claire were discharged relatively quickly under the care of the academy’s doctor, and in two more days, they were back in class. Sophie was physically unhurt, but the mental damage she’d suffered required hospitalization. She was back attending lectures about the same time as Yessica and the rest.

Earnest had lost her extremities, and she’d assumed some of that damage was going to be permanent… But after attempting a return to her normal form, she found that everything grew back! Her friends all looked at her like she was some sort of lizard, but she didn’t care. She had her hands and feet again, and that was all that really mattered. Hee-hee!

Iona also repaired herself autonomously. Normally, returning to full strength after being torn apart required half a day of self-repair, but the recoil from berserker mode added two and a half more days to that timeline. Cú and Asmodeus had merely been sealed away, however, and ten minutes after the battle, when the spheres faded, they were both freed.

That brought them to today, when the suspect was to be interrogated.

“So, this is your so-called ‘laboratory’?”

The man was using a little abandoned space in the warehouse district as his hideout. Earnest and the others had obtained a release order allowing them to escort him from jail to the place he called home for questioning. As usual, the Capital Defense Force guards looked like they wanted to kill the students, but they had an order with a royal seal on it, so none of their officials could say no. The man had to wear restraints, of course, which blocked him from using spirit or magic, and some chains made of divine metal were clapped onto him as well. Still, after the painful experience everyone had gone through, Earnest and the others remained on guard around him.

Holding the other end of his chains was General Dione. “Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?” she said, as though she was enjoying every moment. Something about the easygoing attitude all champions seemed to share was, at times, hard for Earnest to accept.

It turned out the man’s name was James. Judging from all the bandages, everyone had assumed he’d be horribly disfigured underneath—you know, blood oozing, skin peeled off, the works. Instead, he turned out to be quite good looking. Some of the girls even squealed, but Earnest knew better. If looks were all that mattered, well, Leonard was a hottie, too.

Both the bandages and that white lab coat were items he’d invented himself. Like Eliza, he seemed to have been exposed early on to the lost art of “science.” That semi-champion-level strength was something he naturally possessed, and he’d added to it his own philosophy of “never counting on luck”—a credo probably based off his personal experiences. His fighting style relied on fierce, fact-based reality, and between that and his “scientific” inventions, he truly was a powerhouse.

“Oh-ho. Oh-ho-ho. My, you’ve got some pretty good equipment. I see you have a Kartzman Type III cultivation tank over there. And is that an inorganic amplification-type refining unit?” Eliza was freely commenting as she looked over the hideout’s machinery.

“Oh… You can tell?” asked James, a new tone to his voice. He seemed pleased to discover a kindred spirit. “But that’s already been made obsolete by the Type IV. We’ve given up on inorganic refining, too. The dry vacuum version is definitely a step ahead in terms of purity and precision.”

“Type IV? Dry vacuum? I’ve never heard of that.”

“As expected. I’ve yet to announce either officially.”

As the suspect seemed like something of a mad scientist, it had felt only natural to bring Eliza along. Already, they were talking about things impossible for regular people to comprehend.

“So, what kind of evil research were you doing in here?” asked Earnest. “What were you gonna do with all that hair?”

“My research is not evil. In fact, it’s sacred.”

“That’s what evil people usually say. Now answer the question. Or would you prefer I stretch the bounds of the royal charter’s provisions regarding inhumane torture?”

The man shook his head and pointed toward a corner of his lab, at a bookshelf. “Third row from the bottom, seventh book from the right.”

Claire took out the book in question.

“Um… The Care and Manufacture of Homunculi?”

“That magic tome contains a method for manufacturing advanced synthetic life-forms to one’s ideal specifications in terms of personality and appearance. Out of the raw materials it requires, the most important…is female hair. You need enough to match the weight of the finished homunculus…in other words, I required at least one hundred and ten pounds of it. That was my only motive.”

“Homunculus? Synthetic life-forms? Ideal specifications? Um… What does all that mean?” Earnest looked around at everyone else, seeking some guidance.

“Essentially,” said Eliza, “he wanted to create an imaginary wife.”

“Huh? Imaginary? Like a pretend bride? What…?”

“In other words,” added Yessica, “this man had trouble getting attention from the opposite sex, so he tried to use forbidden science to create an ideal mate.”

“Huh? A mate? What? Why?”

Earnest looked at James. He really was attractive. Couldn’t he have found a girl the normal way, without all this forbidden science?

“I’m not proud of it, but I’ve never had anyone take much of a liking to me. Especially women.”

“Oh. So you are a freak.”

Now the man’s words made sense. Earnest nodded, but her reaction seemed to come as a blow to James. He slumped to the ground in a daze.

“Get it now?” said the others.

They all huddled together, discussing their findings in secret.

“Oh, I know his type. He’s a guy with a major case of , and he’s like, ‘Oh, I won’t go out with anyone unless they have and ’”

“Um, Yessica? I’m really not sure what and and mean,” said Earnest. “Could you censor yourself a little less, please?”

“Well, good looks don’t necessarily mean you’re gonna be popular, right? Look at Clay, for example. He’s a hottie, and he’s never had a single girlfriend!”

“Actually, um, I think he’s never had a girlfriend because…um…”

Maybe it hadn’t dawned on Yessica yet. To the outside observer, it was extremely obvious that Clay didn’t have a girl because he was saving himself for Yessica… But that wasn’t really something you could say out loud, so Earnest changed the subject.

“Um, so what’s an imaginary wife?” she asked.

“It’s like having an ideal girlfriend in your head,” Eliza said. “According to ancient records, unmarried men over the age of twenty who have never had a girlfriend in their life were said to have an average of two-point-seven-five ‘two-dimensional imaginary wives’ living in their brains. That’s from a report by the National Institute for the Study of Declining Birthrates.”

“Two-dimensional…? Great, another word I’ve never heard before! So basically, we’re talking about a guy who’s strong and good-looking but doesn’t have the right personality to be popular, so he holes up in some dark room and does a bunch of shady science experiments to create the perfect girl?”

“Anna, I said the exact same thing just now, though I worded it a little more nicely…,” said Yessica.

“But…that much hair? One hundred and ten pounds’ worth?”

Earnest put her hands on her curvy waist. The hair of dozens of his victims was stored in boxes all around the room. She wondered how much it all weighed. She eyed James’s stash. It sure didn’t seem like 110 pounds. He’d have to work at this for years to get that much. It was a good thing they’d stopped his crime spree, though—Earnest sure didn’t want any more girls to suffer such a cruel, hairless fate.

“Um…do you mind if I ask a question?” Claire timidly raised a finger, and Earnest nodded. “So…about the hair… If you needed that much, why didn’t you just buy it?”

“Huh?” James replied, dumbfounded. He looked at Claire.

“I mean, a few years back, before my hair got this long, I cut it off and sold it to pay for junior school.”

“You can sell hair?” asked Earnest.

Yessica nodded. “Oh, sure. They use it for wigs and dolls and brushes and stuff, I think.”

Really? Wow. That’s pretty neat. Earnest had learned something new today.

“That, or you could have just collected it from a barbershop. They usually just put the hair they’ve cut in the garbage.”

“Huh?” James looked astounded yet again. His awe was short-lived, however, soon replaced by his usual stoicism. “Heh…heh. I almost fell for that. There’s no point trying to shake me with your lies.”

“No, it’s true,” Claire insisted.

“It really is,” agreed Yessica.

“It sounds like they know what they’re talking about,” said Earnest.

“W-well, even if it is true! All my life, I’ve never been able to achieve anything I wanted! Never allowed to have anything I asked for! Not even once! So those methods have nothing to do with me! Ha-ha-ha! Too bad for you!”

“I think it’s too bad for you, really… But yeah, like you said, they probably would’ve said no anyway.”

“Right, so the only way for me to reach my goal was to cut the hair and take it myself! I failed, and now I’m probably going to prison for a long time, but I have no regrets!”

“Oh, so no remorse, then? Jotting that down…”

Earnest honestly didn’t know what to do. This guy was a total freak, yes, but under the laws of the kingdom’s charter, the biggest crime he’d committed was aggravated barbering. She was no expert in criminal law, so she couldn’t be sure, but there was a chance he might get off with only a fine.

Cutting a girl’s hair like that was an unforgivable sin… But if he went to each of his victims’ houses, offered some proper apologies, and swore never to do it again, maybe it’d be okay to let him off the hook. But if he wasn’t going to show any remorse, they couldn’t just let him walk free. He’d probably pick up right where he left off.

“Hey, Eliza? Any ideas?” she asked.

“Regarding?”

Eliza, who was working her way through the magic tomes in James’s bookshelves, turned to face her. Already, she had built a stack of thirty books to examine later. No wonder she was such a genius in the new field of “science.”

“Like, a way to keep this guy from committing any more crimes. Can you think of some way to make him into a good person, or an honest one, or maybe fix his weird personality and make him friendly? If we did that, he could find a girl, couldn’t he? Like, instead of an imaginary wife, maybe he could just get a real one.”

“Curse you! How dare you make fun of my Honoka!”

“Huh? Like I care. Who’s Honoka?”

“I’m sure he won’t do it again.”

“Well, I’m sure he will.”

Earnest waved at Eliza, who was about to return to her magic tomes.

“I mean, he seems pretty smart. If he realizes he’s wasting his time, I think he’ll just stop.”

“Wasting my time?” James piped up. “What’s so wasteful about this? I have the recipe for a homunculus right there in that book, and it requires hair. Women’s hair. At least one hundred and ten pounds for the ideal proportions. I could even compromise a bit and make do with around eighty-five pounds. In that case, I could just craft Madoka instead of Honoka.”

Oh, wow. Screw this guy. Doesn’t Cúweigh about that much? That definitely sounds like a crime.

“No, what I’m telling you is that magic tome is a bunch of quackery.”

“…What?” James froze at Eliza’s revelation.

“Yeah, this tome’s complete nonsense. All lies. A bunch of random lies, conjured up to sound plausible. The recipe’s absolutely impossible to recreate in real life. Mad scientists have tested this time and again, and none have succeeded. There are tons of reports on the topic. This book’s, like, notorious in the community.”

“Huh? What…?”

“You call yourself a mad scientist, and you didn’t even know that? Pfft. Ha-ha-ha!”

“Eh…? So I can’t do it? It’s impossible? I’ll never have her?”

“No. It’s impossible. You can’t.”

“Um…so…my Honoka is…?”

“Never gonna happen.”

“And Madoka?”

“Not her either.”

“Wh…wha…whaaat?”

“Oh, that reminds me… I was just thinking that I really need to hire an assistant soon. Looking at the equipment and research material you’ve gathered, I think you’d be decently useful… So, does anyone mind if I take him as my assistant?”

“Well, I don’t see why not,” Earnest said. “It sounds like you managed to dissuade him from this nonsense, so…”

And just like that, Eliza gained a new apprentice.

○Scene I: Rumors about the Competition

The gang was having a typical lunch at the usual dining hall.

“Ahhh…”

Blade opened his mouth wide, building a harmony of pork cutlet, curry, and rice on his spoon before attempting to ferry it all into his mouth.

“Ugh, this is the worst. So awful. I’m, like, beyond depressed.”

Earnest was sitting next to him, talking to the other girls. It was a bit unusual that she wasn’t yelling at him, saying something along the lines of “You’re always eating that damn katsu curry!” So Blade decided to join in the conversation.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Listen to this. Apparently, we’re going to stage a match against another school soon.”

“Sounds like it, yeah,” Blade said, still focusing around 98 percent of his attention on shoveling food into his mouth.

Out of the remaining 2 percent, one half was devoted to his conversation with Earnest, while the other was focused on the master-apprentice duo of Eliza and James, who were sitting opposite him and eating together.

Their synergy was a fascinating sight. James, who had only recently joined the academy, seemed like quite a capable apprentice—though he was being treated as a teacher at their school. Whenever he got too big for his britches, Eliza would mutter something about how maybe she wouldn’t mind devising a system for creating homunculi after all, placing a finger to her chin and gazing off into the distance. Whenever she did that, it was like a switch flipped inside James. He became servile, nodding and bowing like a bobblehead. The difference between this behavior and his usual awkward demeanor was quite amusing to see in action.

“About this interschool match,” continued Earnest. “There’s this real prick who’s gonna be participating.”

“I thought they hadn’t decided any teams yet. It’s against Chestnut Academy, right?” Blade returned his attention to their conversation. If this was about that competition, he had already heard about it.

There were several other champion training schools along the lines of Rosewood Academy scattered throughout the surrounding countries. It was customary to name such schools after a type of wood, since they were trying to raise the talent that would build a strong future for their respective nations. That was why this school was called Rosewood, and why the one they were competing against was called Chestnut.

Chestnut Academy was located in a neighboring country, and it had been decided that the two schools would stage a friendly competition. Blade was actually looking forward to it. Ever since he was young, he’d wished for a rival.

Coincidentally, Chestnut Academy’s educational motto used to be “nurturing the next generation of champions,” but it had recently been changed to “nurturing the next generation of Heroes.” Champions appeared even if you didn’t consciously create them—in fact, sometimes a whole bunch of them would pop up at once—but with the right bit of “education,” you could mold anyone into a champion in a surprisingly short time. Heroes, on the other hand, were quite difficult to raise from scratch. It wasn’t something you could half-ass. Blade was an ex-Hero with over a decade of experience, so he knew that for a fact.

If they were going to fight a school powerful enough to boast about “nurturing the next generation of Heroes,” maybe it would be okay for Blade to go all-out against their best students. In his current state, of course—limited to 18 percent of his original power. Could this be his chance to find a rival? He couldn’t wait.

“Hey, are you listening to me?” asked Earnest.

“Honored Father, I can’t breathe.”

“Hmm?” Blade snapped back to his senses. He had apparently been hugging Cú in his lap a little too tightly. “What were we talking about?”

“The other school’s team,” said Earnest.

“Chestnut Academy hasn’t decided on its team members yet, right?”

No announcement along those lines had been made. Rosewood hadn’t picked its team yet, either.

“Well, I’m sure she’s going to be part of it. It’s a given that I’ll be part of our team, so it’s a given she’ll be part of theirs.”

“What about me? Huh?”

“Oh, you want to join?”

“Of course,” Blade said, his breathing a little accelerated.

“Uh…”

Earnest’s expression clearly conveyed her distaste. Her face seemed to say, “You want to enter a super-being into a competition between regular humans?”

“Please? Please? C’mon, please? I won’t do anything crazy, all right? I’ll try to be as normal as possible! …Okay? Okay?”

Oh, no. I sound like James, don’t I?

Blade didn’t know what James wanted from Eliza, but it was now clear he was asking for something.

“Well, at least you’re aware that you’re usually abnormal. All right. You’re on the team.”

“Yesss!”

Earnest was being a hundred times kinder than Eliza usually was. She didn’t string him along one bit before saying yes.

“But you’re gonna be the last one in our team to go up, all right? I’ll go before you, and I’ll make sure I finish up the match before you even get a chance to fight.”

“Aww…”

“Don’t ‘aww’ me. If you went first and took out the entire opposing team by yourself, it would destroy our nations’ balance of power.”

“What, am I a tactical weapon now?”

Well, yes, that was the role the military unit known as a Hero usually played. It was something only Gilgamesh Soulmaker, the ruler of an entire continent, possessed. That was all right during wartime because the other side had an Overlord equivalent to the Hero, but right now, that Overlord was either dead, or he’d be in rehab for a long time to come.

As a result—as far as the public was concerned, anyway—this country presently had no Hero. The Hero from before had disappeared like a gust of wind after defeating the Overlord—that was the story the king’s PR team had spread.

And really, that was true. Blade had lost his Hero force, rendering him an ex-Hero. He was just a grunt who’d die if he used even 18 percent of his full power from back in the day.

“Ugh… This is so depressing. So depressing. Sooo depressing…” Earnest ran her fingers through her hair, so distraught she seemed ready to scratch off her entire scalp.

“I can do this, all right?” Blade insisted. “I’ll do it the proper way and everything. Or…if it’ll make you feel better, I can always sit it out.”

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean that. This isn’t about you. It’s just…thinking about having to deal with that prick… It’s so depressing.”

Earnest brightened up a bit as she tried to reassure Blade, only to fall back into distress a second later. Now Blade was wondering what kind of opponent had her so upset. What sort of amazing, awe-inspiring figure could they be? If they made Earnest this despondent, they must really be something. What were they like? Stronger than Blade, maybe? Man, this was exciting!

○Scene II: Lunaria

It was a clear day, and the blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see. The members of the other school’s team had arrived. A crowd had gathered at the school entrance to greet them, and Blade and his friends were right in the middle.

Chestnut Academy had sent five students. They were joined by a few other assistants, servants, and the like, creating a delegation of over ten people, but only five would be participating in the competition. One was a girl, the other four were male.

“Hey, you see her? Cute, huh? That one there.” Kassim nudged Blade.

“Which girl?” he asked.

“What do you mean? They’ve only got one. The one at the front.”

Blade didn’t understand the concept of “cute” very well. It seemed a bit like what Kassim meant when he said “I so wanna do her” from time to time, but when Blade asked whether they were the same thing, Kassim had said, “They’re totally different, dude,” without offering any further explanation.

Hmm. Still a mystery.

“We wish to express to His Majesty Gilgamesh Soulmaker that we are greatly honored to be invited here today. I, Lunaria Steinberg, leader of the team representing Chestnut Academy, hereby promise you a battle that will not disappoint.”

The “cute girl” Kassim had pointed out picked up the hem of her skirt and gave an incredibly graceful curtsy. Ah, yes. That’s a move princesses from a lot of different nations like. In fact, every princess Blade had ever met did that exact same pseudo bow.

Hmm. Makes sense. So, that’s what “cute” is. Blade wasted no time cementing this new knowledge in his brain.

“Yes, I expect great things from you,” replied the king. “I also hear that you and our top student, Earnest, have been rivals for many years now. I look forward to seeing who will enjoy the sweet taste of victory and who will wallow in the agony of defeat. Any wallowers in the house? Ha-ha-ha!”

“Oh, dear. You jest, Your Majesty!”

The “cute girl” Kassim had pointed out flashed a refined smile and put one hand to her mouth. Blade’s “Hero Ears” could just barely pick up her muttering “stupid old man” very quietly.

Hmm. Makes sense. So, that’s what “cute” is. Blade wasted no time cementing this new knowledge in his brain.

“Doesn’t she just make you want to scream?” asked Earnest. She’d come up next to him and spoke just loudly enough to ensure he heard her.

“Hmm? Isn’t she supposed to be cute?”

“What? What’s cute about her? Her personality is awful.”

“Does being cute mean having an awful personality?”

“Huh? What, do you like that sort of thing? You’ve got the worst taste in women.”

Earnest wasted no time berating him. It seemed like they were on totally different pages, and Blade was completely lost.

“Oh, perfect,” said the king. “Hey, Earnest, Lunaria’s here.”

“Yes, I am aware, Your Majesty,” said Earnest, stepping out in front of the crowd.

“Hey, don’t those guys behind her look pretty strong? What do you think?”

Blade was now talking to Sophie, who had taken Earnest’s place.

“The large man right behind her is well-balanced and has no obvious faults to exploit. Une tells me he would be the toughest to beat.”

“Une, huh?”

Sophie currently had the personalities of her five sisters living within her, each named after numbers in some ancient language, from “Une” to “Cinq.” Each had their own separate consciousness, and they all lived together like roommates in her body. It wasn’t going to stay like that forever, though. Eliza was currently beavering away on a solution. Once preparations were complete, they would all be separated and put into their very own bodies via a process called “consciousness downloading.” With help from James, the excellent assistant (or slave, depending on your viewpoint) whom Eliza had recently procured, the research was progressing like never before.

“As Cinq puts it, from left to right, the opposing team members are killable, killable, unkillable, killable, and liable to kill you.”

“We can’t go killing these guys, okay? And I don’t think it’s a good idea to categorize people by whether you can kill them or not. Tell Cinq that for me… Wait, Cinq thinks that one could kill her? Which one? That girl? The cute girl?”

Sophie shot Blade a hard glare.

Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Why am I being glared at?

“If you’re happy, Blade, then all is well.”

Hmm? Hmm? Hmm? Why are we talking about my happiness all of a sudden?

“Regardless, we now have two of the Four Royal Swords in the same place. This competition’s gonna be a lot of fun. Ha-ha-ha! I can’t wait.”

The king was enjoying himself, at least. The Rosewood Academy students, who knew what a happy king meant for their futures, were feeling quite discouraged.

“Hey, hey. Is he talking about that?”

Blade tugged at the sleeve of the nearest person, which happened to be Leonard. He pulled hard.

“Ah, milady is as dignified and beautiful as ever,” Leonard whispered, lost in his own little world. “I would die for her…”

It took a while to bring him back to reality, but eventually, he explained.

“Mmm, yes, that is Brynhildr, an ice-element magic sword. It’s said to be just as powerful as Asmodeus in the possession of milady. Its reputation has spread far and wide across this continent.”

The sword in question was hanging from the waist of the “cute” girl. Using his Hero Eyes to get a closer look, Blade saw it was enshrouded in an unusually thick aura. Clearly, it was no ordinary weapon.

“She’s not from this country, right? So why’s she carrying one of this kingdom’s royal swords? Did she steal it or something?”

“Blade, don’t you listen to any of our history lectures?”

“Well…I guess I missed that one. Can you explain?”

He always listened intently to their lessons on strategy and tactics, but whenever a class came along that didn’t seem applicable to fighting… Yeah, he mostly slept through those.

“Long ago, there was a single vast country known simply as ‘the kingdom.’ It has since been divided into several different nations. Our kingdom can trace its lineage directly back to the original one, and that makes some of the neighboring countries like our extended family, and we’re all allies. Three of the Four Royal Swords are in the possession of those allied nations.”

“Oh-ho. So that’s how it works?”

Back when he was a Hero, Blade had worked under the generous support of an outfit called the Eight Nations Alliance…but he had no idea about its backstory. He was too busy fighting to notice, really. It was all the fault of that prick on the throne and the way he forced people, or Heroes, to work themselves to the bone.

“Those countries are the backbone of the Eight Nations Alliance…and Lunaria comes from one of them.”

“Ah, what a great event this is. Now I really can’t wait. It’s going to be a blast. I can’t wait to see you all go at it!”

The king was delighted with himself, though his subjects looked rather haggard. Earnest felt the need to address him. Despite her reluctance, it was kind of her job.

“Your Majesty, this is meant to be a friendly match, not a martial arts tournament. The goal is to improve ourselves through competition with those of a similar age, comparing our achievements not just in battle, but in academia, character, and manners. The match you’re referring to is but one part of this event. I hope you understand.”

“Heavens, Earnest. You could very well become just like Sirene in the future!”

“Pardon me, sire? Her post as prime minister, you mean? Oh, no, I hardly have that in me…” Earnest fidgeted. Being told she might have Sirene’s job someday seemed to…excite her, maybe? “If I can serve His Majesty with my combat skill, that would be enough—”

“Yes, no doubt,” said Lunaria, agreeing with Earnest’s modest protestation.

Earnest responded with a powerful glare, strong enough to send most people hurtling through the air. But it only made a single strand of Lunaria’s hair flutter. She accepted all that invisible pressure with a cool expression.

“I have always thought it the duty of nobility to prove their superiority in all fields, not just swordplay.” She paused, glancing at Earnest before continuing. “Academia, for one. Not to mention etiquette. And I think spiritual training is the most important of all. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Lunaria returned Earnest’s glare. A gust of wind blew past, making a bit of Earnest’s hair dance.

Wow. Lunaria can do that trick too, huh? It didn’t work that time, but I bet she could blow someone right through a wall with that look.

“If, by any chance, you might prove yourself useful in some way…I suppose it’s most likely to be in battle.”

“Could you repeat that, please, Lunaria?” Earnest was smiling, but a blue vein was clearly visible on her temple.

“Besides, Earnest, your spiritual training is severely lacking. You’re always griping about that demonic sword controlling you… It’s quite annoying.”

“What…?!” Earnest’s smile disappeared. The “rich girl from a good family” mask had crumbled, exposing her true self—the one her classmates already knew well.

“Really, what we have here is a girl whose only talent is waving a sword around. Don’t you think your ancestors would be rolling in their graves?”

“Wha… Wha… Wha…?!”

“If I were you, I’d be so ashamed, I wouldn’t even reveal that I possessed a magic sword at all. In fact, the sheer embarrassment might drive me to suicide. In fact, I’m sure it would. Positive. Really, I can’t understand how someone could go on living while displaying their shame for all to see.”

“I! Hate! Her! I can hate her, right? That’s okay, right?!” Earnest pointed at Lunaria, appealing to the crowd with tears in her eyes.

Not even Blade could misunderstand her behavior as “cute” any longer. This was definitely more along the lines of “unpleasant.”

Lunaria, seeing Earnest attract sympathetic looks from the audience, scowled. She probably only knew Earnest as the terrifying Empress who ruled over Rosewood with an iron fist. They had been familiar with each other for some time, it seemed, but Lunaria couldn’t have known about the dramatic changes Earnest had gone through over the past few months. She was now friends with 108 people, one dragon, one android, and two birds. She was still scary, of course, but now everyone knew that she was scary in a goofy, messed-up sort of way, with lots of cute little quirks. She was their flawed, yet lovable empress.

She was allowed to tear up and let snot run down her face. Not that she was doing that. Of course she wasn’t.

“Oh? …What’s wrong?” Lunaria seemed to sense something was off. She scrutinized Earnest. “ You seem…different…”

Her eyes turned toward the magic sword at Earnest’s waist.

“Oh… Oh. I see. So you’ve finally succeeded in gaining control over that sword.”

Blade was gazing intently at Lunaria’s face. She wore a look of contempt as usual, with an air of superiority mixed in…but she also looked a bit happy, if he wasn’t mistaken. Blade didn’t really trust his own sensitivities when it came to judging this sort of thing. He’d have to check with someone else later to be certain. But even so…he was sure Lunaria was happy to see Earnest’s growth.

“Good grief. So you’re only just now catching up to the point I reached at the age of ten? It must be so grueling, possessing such average talent.”

Was that a compliment?!

Blade had just learned that telling someone they had “average talent” was an acceptable compliment.

“Heh… Just so you know, I’ve changed,” replied Earnest, puffing out her chest.

One could almost feel the sparks flying between them. They’d be invisible to the regular eye, but Blade could see them clearly. His Hero Eyes were telling him all about the vast, limitless, malicious back-and-forth between the two of them. Neither was moving an inch, but they were feinting, parrying, dodging, and slashing using their spirits alone—a good twenty or so moves in just a few seconds. The atmosphere was so thick, so deadly, they seemed likely to draw their swords the moment they got the chance.

“Lunaria,” suggested a man by her side, “if you continue to toy with such uncouth, uncultured, barbaric country nobility, you risk damaging the good name of the Steinberg family.”

This was no ordinary guy. He was handsome and covered in muscles. Blade wasn’t a very good judge of men’s looks, so he relied on the reactions of the women around him. This was a very rational, intelligent way of going about it, he thought.

“Milady,” Leonard advised Earnest, “the only way to see which one of you is more qualified to bear a magic sword is to stage a battle, no holds barred. I don’t think the Flaming clan is much for verbal sparring anyway. What do you think?”

Both competitors had a faithful man on their side assisting them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Earnest shot back. “You think I’d lose in an argument?”

Earnest was loudly grumbling at Leonard—a far cry from Lunaria, who simply turned to her adviser and said, “Thank you, Claude.”

“Besides, Leonard, you may be more handsome than Claude, but you’re much less muscular. You need to work out more.”

This did little to improve Leonard’s spirits. Claude, on the other hand, was being thanked and praised. Leonard looked pitiful by comparison.

“Regardless, we had best go look at our lodgings,” said Lunaria. “Good day to you, Your Majesty, and to all of you as well.”

Lunaria headed off in a dignified manner, the four men following behind.

“This is so aggravating. Sooo aggravating… Leonard? What’s the matter with you? Why did you stop me? Why can’t we kill them?!”

“I am sorry, milady. I thought if things continued like that, a swordfight might break out.”

“You just got scared because that other guy had more muscles than you. I lost the argument, and I lost for having a weaker second-in-command. Not one thing went right, did it? It’s all your fault, Leonard!”

“I’ll try to do better, milady.”

“Actually, I think it’d look pretty creepy if you turned into some big macho man, Leonard.” Yessica was trying to comfort him, but it didn’t really work.

Oh, so that’s what it means to lose an argument. I’ve learned another new thing today. I’m so smart.

“You too, Blade. Say something to them.”

Now Yessica was turning to him for advice for some reason.

“…What should I say? What do you want from me?”

“Anything you can think of. Just whatever will make Anna feel better. You know, cheer her up.”

“Anything…? That’s asking a lot…” Blade looked up at the sky and thought for a bit. “You know…it’s just like what Leonard said earlier.”

“What? What did he say?”

Leonard was on his knees, knocked down by Earnest’s harsh words.

“Even if you lost the verbal battle, as long as you win the actual competition, it’s all good, right?”

“I want to do that, okay?! But I lose to her every time. I don’t know if I can beat her this time, either…”

“Sure you will.”

“Huh?”

“I said sure you will,” Blade replied, as if this was a given.

“Huh? R-really?”

“If you fight like normal, it’s gonna be a close match, sure, but… You’ve got that thing, don’t you?”

“The Scion of Flame?”

“Yeah. You got your second form and all that, right? Bust that out, and it’ll be over in a flash, won’t it?”

He said this as an ex-Hero. You couldn’t survive as a Hero unless you could gauge the abilities of those around you. That was a lot harder here at the academy, though, especially among the students in the junior class. It was a bit like trying to measure something less than a millimeter wide with a standard ruler. But once people got to the semi-champion level, Blade was confident he could read their skill levels pretty accurately.

“Really?” asked Earnest. “You really think so? You’re basing that on your assessment of our abilities?”

“What, you don’t trust my eyes?”

“No! I do! I trust you all the way! But… Wow…”

Earnest broke into a big smile. In an instant, she was in bright spirits once again. Blade looked at Yessica. She was giving him an “if you say so” look.

Um, was that the wrong thing to say? Oh, well.

○Scene III: Yet More Verbal Sparring

The delegation from Chestnut Academy would be staying at Rosewood for a few days. The main event, the martial arts tournament (or the “friendly match,” as Earnest insisted upon calling it), would take place on the final day.

Earnest and Lunaria seemed to be avoiding each other as much as possible in the meantime, but they’d occasionally bump heads in the middle of some corridor. Every time they did, another verbal battle would kick off.

Claude and Leonard, their long-suffering assistants, attempted to stop them at first, but after a while, they gave up. Instead, they’d just look at each other and sigh. Perhaps their shared plight had sown the seeds of friendship.

“Oh, look, Claude. I think that wild ape is trying to say something. Would you mind translating for me? I can speak around seventeen languages, but the tongue of savage primates is, sadly, beyond me.”

Macho Leonard—sorry, Claude—looked troubled as he was suddenly pulled into the line of fire.

“Go ahead! Go right ahead! Say whatever you want to me! I’m gonna beat you to a pulp in the competition!”

“Hmm? How odd. Is she saying in her ape language that she’s going to win this time? Even though she’s never done so once in her whole life?”

“I fought you to a draw several times!”

“Yes, and I always won by decision.”

“There’s no such thing as judge’s scorecards in actual combat! You’ve never even been in real battle!”

“And you’re still just a student. Surely, you haven’t seen real combat, either.”

Earnest turned to Blade.

What did this have to do with him? he wondered, startled. Shouldn’t she be looking at Leonard?

It was true that the king had been coming up with all kinds of ideas for “practical training” and “real combat simulation,” putting every wacky new concept into practice the moment he came up with them… But was that truly real combat? As an ex-Hero, he’d have to say no. Real battle, after all, was an impossible game that placed you in a hopeless situation from the very beginning. When they were training, there was always a path to a solution. As long as you did well enough, you could succeed.

He met her gaze and shook his head.

“But…but the great war is over! There’s nothing I can do! It’s not like I can just stumble upon a real battle in the street! Still…we’re doing our best to think up new training methods that are as close to actual combat as possible! His Majesty’s providing all his support! We’re all doing our very best here, keh?! B-but we’re just kids who don’t know anything about war, keh?! We can’t help it, keh?!”

There it is! Earnest’s classic “but, but, but” cavalcade of excuses! And she threw in some “keh”s, too! The king was helping with their efforts, yes—in fact, he was kind of a nuisance. But even so…

“Sure, say whatever you want,” said Lunaria. “To me, it just sounds like you’re far more confident than your abilities warrant. Regardless, that will all be settled in our match. No matter how barbarically low your intelligence is, I’m going to spell it out quite clearly in our fight.”

“She’s speaking to me again! She’s trying to make me angry again! Someone fire back at her! Fire back!”

Lunaria’s goading was clearly having an adverse effect on Earnest’s intelligence.

“Heh… I’m looking forward to our match. Truly, I am. Because I’ve now reached a stage I could never have attained through mere effort alone.”

With a triumphant smile, Lunaria tried to walk past the other girl.

Earnest’s scrunched-up face suddenly slackened. “We’ll see about that.”

Then she drew her beloved sword and attacked without hesitation. The clang of metal against metal rang out. Her opponent was no slouch, drawing her blade and defending herself in a single fluid motion, no movement wasted. The clashing of their two magical swords echoed through the corridor. The sound was unique, unlike standard metal. The pure magic in their blades was resonating.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked Lunaria.

“Oh, I didn’t do this! Asmodeus just wanted to test you out a little. As the owner, I have to listen to it now and then.”

“I see that we agree for once. Brynhildr is telling me the same thing.”

Lunaria smiled back. Brynhildr was the name of her sword, a magical blade of ice imbued with the power of the north’s frozen glaciers. Its rank among magic swords was exactly the same as Asmodeus. It was a fearsome weapon that had earned its reputation as one of the four handed down from the age of the original kingdom.

The two of them just barely avoided the tips of their opponents’ blades. But this was merely a confirmation. Once an agreement was reached, Lunaria’s expression changed. Earnest was smiling. And that was when the fight truly began.

“Ah! Tah! Sh…! Gah! If you thought I’d be stuck in the same place forever…you were so…! So…! Wrong! Huh?!”

Earnest made giant, sweeping movements as she swung, putting enough strength in each one to chop her foe in half. Usually, such attacks would leave a person exposed, but at this scale, she was actually quite difficult to fend off. If her opponent failed to avoid one of her strikes, they’d be sliced clean through, either vertically or horizontally.

Should I get Claire in here? She can still restore someone who’s been cut in half, right?

Blade feared the worst, but Earnest was still gleefully swinging away, wild and reckless as she pushed Lunaria farther and farther back.

I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Earnest…

Blade was coldly analyzing the fight. Earnest was undeniably the more powerful fighter. But thanks to all those joyful windmill swings, she was getting sloppy. She was relying too much on Asmodeus—on the performance of her weapon, and as a result, she was already exhibiting some really bad habits. Lunaria, on the other hand, was precisely countering all of Earnest’s strikes. She’d quickly realized that she was no match in terms of power, and she had immediately changed fighting styles.

If Earnest wasn’t carrying Asmodeus—if it was just an ordinary magic sword—Lunaria could’ve easily knocked it out of her hand by now, instantly turning the tables.

Still Earnest pushed, and Lunaria kept letting her do it.

“Haaah!”

Sensing victory at hand, Earnest raised her sword high and swung down with every fiber of her being.

Ka-tiiing!

An unpleasant sound roared down the corridor. The swords bit into each other. Lunaria had just barely managed to block her rival’s big attack.

Maybe I oughtta stop this…

Blade walked up to the two girls.

“Now! Prepare to face the real show!” Earnest shouted. “You said effort alone wasn’t enough to reach your level, didn’t you? Well, lemme show you my level!”

She obviously intended to go into Scion of Flame mode.

Blade raised his fists. Then he swung them down—first the right, then the left—each one aimed at a different target.

Thooom!

Right into the crowns of the girls’ heads.

There was a little point on the skull where a few different bones intersected. Hitting it would open up all the cracks already there, making it the easiest way to destroy the brain, if that was what you wanted. But Blade was no longer a Hero, so he didn’t need that skill. He held back just enough to elicit an “owww!” from his victims.

“Owww…!”

Earnest crouched down. Lunaria was doing the same, holding her head as tears welled up in the corners of her eyes. It must’ve been incredibly painful for both of them, but judging by the volume of tears, Earnest had a much higher pain threshold. They had both dropped their swords. Asmodeus and Brynhildr were now lying side by side on the ground.

○Scene IV: Lunaria’s Special Training

In one corner of the deserted garden under the blue sky, a young woman was swinging away with her sword, her mind blank. It was late at night, and all that could be heard was her breathing, her sword cutting through the air, and her footsteps.

There was a hint of desperation to her swinging. People called her a genius, and she took pride in that designation. Whether in her studies or in martial arts, she was able to master most things after just one attempt. Even if she couldn’t, she could always tell how many more attempts it would take. She was almost never wrong.

It was only once she matured that she’d realized other people weren’t like that. That was the moment she became aware she was a genius.

And now, that genius was putting in real effort, swinging her sword with all her might.

The match was tomorrow, and despite her talents, she couldn’t be sure of her victory. Would she be able to improve enough in just one night?

She’d reunited with her childhood friend after six months and seen her incredible progress, and she’d been stunned. The two of them had met twice a year for much of their lives, and Earnest had always taken big leaps in the meantime—but this was something else. Lunaria had thought her eyes would pop right out of her skull. The other girl had transformed into a monster with more power than Lunaria could perceive. What kind of harsh, cruel training could cause such a change in just half a year?

Lunaria never knew how to act around Earnest. She was always just about to catch up to her—even though Lunaria was supposed to be a genius! No matter how much Lunaria pushed her away or boasted about the difference in their abilities, Earnest never gave up and never lost heart. She would put in a superhuman amount of work, and in six months, she would close the gap yet again. If Lunaria hadn’t progressed in her own right, Earnest would have easily defeated her.

Lunaria hated this. She hated it so much, it made her want to die.

Why should a genius like her be chased around by Earnest—a completely ordinary girl with no talent beyond her relentless drive? When you realized someone else was leagues ahead of you—so much better you’d never catch up—that was your cue to throw in the towel. She’d been besting Earnest like that ever since they were children. And yet, every time, Earnest would manage to close the gap.

○Scene V: VR

Slap, slap, slap…

Lunaria regained consciousness after being smacked on the cheek a few times. She had intended to cut the man’s arms off from the elbows with one flash of Brynhildr, but instead she felt only the sensation of the sword swishing through air.

“Oh, you can slash okay, huh? You don’t hesitate at all. Good, good.”

“No, it’s not good! What is this place? Where am I?”

Leaping to her feet, Lunaria saw that she was in a domed, hemispherical space with little to nothing in the way of decor. No entrance or exit was visible. There wasn’t any clear light source, either, though she could still dimly make out her surroundings. The walls and floor were made of a strange, slightly rubbery material—not stone, not wood, and not metal, either.

“This stage was picked automatically for us. People call it ‘virtual reality’ or something. I don’t know if I can explain all the details.”

Was it that he couldn’t explain, or that he didn’t need to? One thing was clear to Lunaria, though—she was currently being held captive.

“You said something about how she trained in here. Was that just an excuse to drag me inside? Did you plan to lock me in here…so I would miss tomorrow’s match?”

“I wouldn’t do something like that. I brought you here to win. In fact, I plan to help you win.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“I had them set the number of reps to infinite, the sensory level to ‘real,’ and the pain level to ‘one hundred percent realism.” You shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between this space and reality. In other words, um…”

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that? I didn’t quite understand.”

“Oh, the details don’t really matter. Basically, if you get slashed, it’s gonna hurt, and dying will be really scary. That’s what I meant.”

“Well, isn’t that a given? Why go out of your way to inform me about something so obvious?”

The man held up a sword. What is he going to do? she thought—and then the sword came thundering down.

“Heyyy! Wakey-wakey! You’ve revived already.”

Slap, slap, slap…

The sensation brought her back. She’d intended to cut the man’s arms off from the elbows with one flash of Brynhildr the moment she opened her eyes, but she felt only the sensation of her sword swishing through air.

Just like before, she thought. The next moment, Lunaria leaped to her feet.

“Huh?! Wh-what…?! I… Did I die?! Was…was I dreaming?!”

“No, not dreaming. I definitely killed you. See? With this sword right here.”

He showed her the weapon. It looked brand new, like it had just been taken out of the forge. Lunaria was pretty sure he’d used it to kill her a moment ago…

“Oh, maybe I’d better keep the blood visible… Change settings: Continue body repair, but keep any scattered blood, flesh, and bone in place. Right, ready to start again?”

“Huh? A-again? What?”

He came at her, sword raised—and before she knew what was happening, Lunaria had been cut down once again.

“Hellooo! Wake up, already.”

Slap, slap, slap…

The sensation brought her back. She blinked a couple of times, and instead of slashing away with Brynhildr, she leaped back, keeping a prudent distance between herself and the man.

“You…you killed me just now! You killed me! With that sword in your hand!”

The pain still lingered. That was no dream. She really had been killed! Cut in half, even!

“Yeah, I sure did,” he said, like it was no big deal. He showed her his sword. It was dripping with a hefty dose of fresh blood. Her blood. He gave the sword a big swing, sending all the gunk flying. It splattered on the floor.

There was something strange about the whole motion. He seemed almost too used to this. The way he shook the blood off was far too natural…like he had slashed people down hundreds of times before. Or maybe even more—thousands or tens of thousands.

“Um…”

“Okay, wanna try dying again?”

“Whoa! Please wait just a minute!”

Sword in hand, he smiled brightly at Lunaria as he approached. She held out her hands, desperately trying to stop him.

“What’s wrong?”

He stopped, much to her surprise. He understood speech after all! He wasn’t a brutish orc incapable of language!

“Please stop killing me! I don’t want to be killed! Why are you doing this?!”

She attempted to appeal to his kinder side, holding out faint hope that he could be persuaded. If he could comprehend human language, surely there was room for negotiation here!

“Why? Well, I mean…”

He took a moment to think, tapping his shoulder with his sword.

Yes! Keep thinking! Think about how it’s not good to keep killing people!

“…You said you wanted to get stronger, didn’t you? Like…am I wrong?”

He was wrong. Completely wrong. Killing people over and over again in the most gruesome of ways… Of course that was wrong.

“Where is this place, anyway?!” she demanded. “Why do I keep getting resurrected even though I’m supposed to be dead? And why do I keep getting killed in the first place?!”

“Ohhh, okay. Right, I haven’t explained all that yet.”

“You’ve been massacring people without even explaining why? Have you lost your mind?!”

“Well, dying’s pretty scary, isn’t it?”

“Listen! Listen to me! Please! …Yes, it is scary, okay?”

“And that fear slows down your movements. You’ve got only one life, after all, and you don’t want to lose it, right? When you’re fighting someone you know you’d never lose to, you do great…but as soon as the possibility of defeat enters your mind, you can’t give it one hundred percent anymore, can you?”

He was right. It hurt. He had her dead to rights, and it hurt. Though the only opponent in Lunaria’s life that had a nonzero chance of defeating her was Earnest.

“Because of that, when you fight an equal opponent, you wind up weaker. You can’t even use half of your actual force. If you’re evenly matched, you should have a fifty percent chance of winning—but with you, that winds up closer to zero. At that rate, you’ll never beat anyone stronger. I bet you’d lose every time if you thought a fight was hopeless. Am I right?”

Lunaria didn’t know what he was saying. How was she supposed to win when a fight was hopeless?

“You only have one life, after all. Of course you don’t want to suffer pain and agony. Dying is scary, right? You wanna live.”

“Yes! Yes, I do! You’re right!”

So don’t kill me!

“Then the first thing we gotta do is reduce how much you value your life.”

She still had no idea what he was talking about.

“Like…let’s say your doctor gives you a shot. At first, you stiffen up because it seems really scary, but after you have it done a few times, you get used to it. Once your body understands that it’s no big deal, just a little jab, you’re fine. You can even keep chatting with the doctor while she’s sticking you with the needle.”

Lunaria didn’t really know what a “shot” was, either. She heard it was a treatment method developed in this kingdom by a female doctor who had single-handedly advanced medical science by leaps and bounds in recent years. She’d never had one herself.

“All right,” she said. “If we apply that ‘shot’ analogy to this story…you’re saying that I could become able to keep up a normal conversation even while someone is killing me?”

“Right. Yeah. Exactly. So…”

“No! That’s impossible! That can’t happen! That’s not how death works! It’s not some casual event… It’s serious!”

“Okay, time for the next rep. First, I better warn you. This gets rough starting from the third go-around since you know what’s about to happen.”

“Wait! Listen to me! I told you I don’t want to die anymore—”

Before she could finish, her head was flying through the air. It was quite an unusual sight.

Lunaria was slaughtered again and again.

After a few more reps, she decided that if this was how it was gonna be, she might as well try killing the man instead. That delayed her death by about three seconds, but the result was the same. Even after admitting defeat and completely surrendering, she was killed.

By the time the death count had reached ten or so, she was begging him to stop. She abandoned all shame and pride, her eyes and nose running as she pleaded with him. But he just kept going, a breezy smile on his face.

He took a few different approaches. Sometimes he’d slash her vertically, sometimes he’d go with more of a V-shaped cut, and sometimes he’d just decapitate her. The horizontal slices were the most painful, she found—having to see the lower half of her own body spread out in front of her while she bled to death. The whole process that took much longer than she would have preferred.

This, as she now understood, was a pretty unpleasant way to die, although the “hamburger” attack was worse. That involved the man turning her to mincemeat from the ends of her limbs on down. Much to her surprise, her consciousness stuck around even after he’d created pounds and pounds’ worth of this ground beef, all the way up to her heart. She probably wouldn’t be eating a burger again any time soon.

By this point, she’d had enough of being killed. So, she fought. She was no longer afraid of dying, but she didn’t want to die, so she pulled out all the stops. She released all of her sword’s power. She became a scion. All to no avail. Even the Scion of Ice was slashed to death, repeatedly turned to small bits of flesh.

She tried harder. At last, she reached a breakthrough. She hadn’t known there was anything beyond scionification. She had never considered it. Something was happening to her body, and she had no idea what it was.

“Okay, good. You’ve done your best. You really made an effort, huh? Well, a little bit, anyway.”

He patted her on the head and praised her. Wow. She was so happy. Hee-hee! His arm wound up frozen solid up to the elbow, but he didn’t even grimace. This was the face of someone unafraid of death. He wasn’t looking to die—but he’d calmly step right up to the brink in order to live, to earn the right to life.

As she died and died and died again, Lunaria grew to understand death as an entity within her. Dying came with pain. A lot of pain. A whole boatload of pain. Enough pain to die from… But that was it. That was all death was. If you had something you wanted that outweighed that pain, you could overcome it. She did, and so did he. People who had a reason to fight were obliged to keep pushing forward even when they felt death at hand.

This man had just taught her something precious about the life a “warrior” must lead.

“You’re fine with dying now, right?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“Even if you think you’re about to die, you can fight at one hundred percent, right?”

“Yes.”

In fact, she could do even better. Now, when she felt death coming, she could probably bring out somewhere closer to 120 percent.

“Good, good. Now, that’s what I call effort. I’m sorry I said you weren’t trying earlier, but it was pretty much true… Today, however, for the first time in your life, you made an effort. Great job!”

His right hand had already been broken and shattered, so he patted her head with his left.

Hee-hee!

He’d praised her. She was able to put in a little effort today. She knew what “effort” meant now. It was a completely new concept to her. Anything that wasn’t enough to kill you didn’t really count as “effort.” That much was obvious. And that was what he’d taught her.

“Great. Now I bet this is gonna be a really good match.”

The match? What was that? All Lunaria wanted right now was for him to keep patting her on the head.

“We call what you just did ‘Scion of Ice II.’ You’re really gonna give Earnest a run for her money now!”

Earnest… Who was that again? Lunaria wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter to her. If the man was happy, then she was happy too.

“Right!” Lunaria replied obediently.

○Scene VI: The Competition Begins

“All right!” Earnest fired herself up, slapping herself in the face with both hands. “Let’s do this!”

The five fighters left the locker room, the Empress of the academy leading the way. Blade followed behind sluggishly.

Clay, Leonard, Sophie, Earnest, and Blade (in that order) had made the final cut. Clay had recently lost in a two-on-two duel against Yessica and Claire, but he had made some very impressive growth since then. He wasn’t about to go challenging girls to fights again, but if they ever had a rematch, that pair most likely wouldn’t be able to take him down. They had considered adding people like Ovie, Iona, and Cú to the team…but decided that would probably be a bad idea. Busting out spells that reminded the crowd of the Overlord…or beam cannons that resembled siege weapons…or any sort of dragon, no matter how young…just didn’t seem right. This was a friendly interschool competition, not an all-out monster battle. They weren’t out to change the world’s balance of power.

Just before they entered the Second Proving Ground’s main entrance, Earnest turned to face her team.

“Leonard! Clay! I’m counting on you two.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!”

Good response. The quintet marched into the arena, shoulders thrust forward as they walked into the wind.

“The winner is Allyde Lohengramm!”

Rotten mutts… Useless, every single one of them…

Earnest was biting her nails. Clay had said, “Leave it to me! With Dragon Smasher by my side, I’m a whole new fighter! Feast your eyes on Clay Mark II!”, only to get whooped in the first round. He didn’t even have a chance to bust out that Dragon Smasher move he was so proud of. Yeesh. Mark II needed to get sent back to the manufacturer. Talk about defective goods. Besides, anyone could learn Dragon Smasher, really. Okay, not anyone, but a decent handful of people.

Then Leonard strode out, mumbling, “I dedicate this victory to you, milady,” and other nonsense… He did win one match, but he had to use every single secret move, (alleged) finisher, and divine strike he knew to eke out that victory. In his second match, he went down like a sack of potatoes without even damaging his foe. After all that big talk, he’d fulfilled the bare minimum of defeating one opponent and promptly bowed out. What was all that “I dedicate this victory to you” crap? It had moved her just a tiny bit, and now she regretted it.

It was two to one, Chestnut in the lead. This was a knockout tournament. Each player had five members that fought in order, starting with the first member, then the second, followed by the third, the vice captain, and finally the captain. Whichever side had all its members defeated first was the loser, so it was possible for the first fighter of one team to beat all five opponents, ending the match before their remaining four teammates even got off the bench.

That was why Blade was assigned the captain’s spot. That way, Rosewood wouldn’t have to come out a total loser… But, Blade wondered, wouldn’t it be more efficient for me to fight first? He was such so awesome, most people watching probably wouldn’t even realize how good he really was. It wouldn’t be the same as sending out some monster like the Overlord or Iona or Cú—he didn’t have that kind of flashy, explosive awesomeness.

“We will now begin match number four! Fighting for Chestnut Academy, Allyde Lohengramm! Fighting for Rosewood Academy, Sophitia Femto!”

“Give it your A game, okay?” said Earnest.

“Mmm.” Sophie, the third member of their team, stood up and replied indifferently. Was she really gonna be all right?

“Would you be happy if I won?” she asked, turning toward Blade.

“Hmm? Oh, of course! I’d love to see you strut your stuff, Sophie.”

“Then I will try my best. Une and the others say they will, too.”

“Great.”

Sophie sounded really motivated today. That much was obvious from her expression. Earnest wasn’t sure she appreciated that very much…but whatever.

Sophie, much to her credit, took down two competitors. She was now engaged in battle with her third, Chestnut’s vice captain. Her foes were all so handsome, and so shredded, that Earnest wondered if their team was picked based on hunkiness instead of strength. Regardless, Sophie was knocking them down one by one.

She didn’t use her weird special move—that “artificial” something or other that she was always mumbling about during battle. Instead, she opted to use the five weapons she had planted across the field. There was a great sword, a divine spear, a large scythe, a golden club, and a pair of gauntlets, giving Sophie access to a variety of fancy, crowd-pleasing fighting styles. The Second Proving Ground had spectator seating, and in addition to VIPs from both countries, there was also general seating available by lottery, giving civilians in the capital a chance to check out the competition.

Earnest couldn’t help thinking that Sophie’s ability to swap in and out with her sisters was cheating…but, well, nobody would know about that if they didn’t spill the beans. All they’d see here was a girl with a really diverse skill set.

“Down…! The winner is Sophitia Femto!”

It wasn’t a hard call for the referee—Sophie’s opponent was encased in a solid block of ice. She was both a fighter and a caster, and ice magic was her forte.

The ice block was right in the middle of the arena, several yards long on all sides. Chestnut Academy’s vice captain was a formidable foe, but it looked like he’d underestimated Sophie’s abilities as a caster. Her blast of cold air, released with all her power, had far more freezing range than he had initially thought; he’d thought he’d managed to dodge, but the next moment, he was entombed in ice, helpless. A team of sorcerers trotted out to rescue this handsome, statuesque stud from the chunk of ice, carefully casting heat spells to slowly thaw him.

It looked like there’d be an extended break until the next match while they extracted him, so Sophie walked back to rejoin her team.

“Keep up the good work, Sophie,” said Blade.

“As you wish.”

Sophie was a wreck. She was staggering around, completely exhausted. Earnest thought she should just drop out so they could send her to the doctor…but instead of offering her sympathy or concern or even basic kindness, he just said, “Keep it up.”

Well, Earnest thought, I’m gonna fight hard, too. If that’s what Blade asks of me, I’ll… Well, what will I do, actually?

Finally, all the ice was melted.

“I’m very sorry!”

That handsome hunk was bowing to Lunaria, nearly kissing his own boots. Earnest wondered how she’d managed to train all these men so well.

“You worked hard,” Lunaria said. “Please rest. I’ll take over.”

It was surprisingly kind of her. Claude, her vice captain, stepped back to the arena’s fence and stood there, unmoving. The medics tried to take him away, but he refused to budge, even with several people working together to move him. He was like some loyal dog from a myth, standing by his master until he became nothing but a skeleton. Earnest wondered how she could bring Leonard up to that level. If she asked Lunaria for some tips, would the girl oblige?

“Round seven! Sophitia Femto…versus Lunaria Steinberg!”

Cheers erupted from the audience. At long last, Sophie had dragged the opposing captain into the arena. But this would be her fourth straight match, and in the last three, she had already revealed almost her entire arsenal.

Lunaria drew her ice sword, holding it gracefully. From Rosewood’s perspective, they were ahead 4–2. One more loss from Chestnut would end the match…but Lunaria’s stance showed no sign of nerves. It was almost like she wasn’t concerned at all—like she had been through far deadlier battlefields than this and lived to tell the tale. Seeing her brush away all the cheers like a passing breeze—Earnest thought it might be the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

“Begin!”

Sophie made her move. She was relying on her gauntlets at the moment, hoping to make this a close-quarters battle where she could drill her magic into her foe.

However, it didn’t work out that way. Once Sophie made it within a few yards of her opponent, Lunaria released a huge burst of magic. Immediately, Sophie—herself an ice-magic caster—was encased in an icy prison. The fight ended right away—too quickly for most of the audience to realize what had happened.

Sophie had been imprisoned by a skill called “Cocytus,” a sort of freezing hell cast with the support of Brynhildr, much like how Earnest tapped into Asmodeus to summon her giant balls of fire. Unlike regular ice, this cube wouldn’t melt so easily…and so it was hauled atop a large, flat pedestal and removed from the arena.

“Well,” Earnest said, “I’m up.” Everyone else was at (or on their way to) the infirmary, so only she and Blade were left on the bench. There was no one else to hear Earnest speak.

“Yeah. Do your best.”

Do your best? Did he just tell me to “do my best”? Well, I’m gonna! I’m gonna do my very, very best!

“Well…to be honest, I’m starting to lose confidence.”

She was hoping that Blade would give her some more encouragement. She wanted some reassuring words to calm her nerves. She knew it was extremely naive to expect such kindness from this inscrutable super-being, but she was asking for it anyway.

“You know, Blade… Didn’t you say a little while ago that this would be an easy win for me?”

“I sure did, yeah.”

“Looking at her now…I’m not so sure I can beat her.”

“C’mon, that’s not true.”

Oh, so he’s just trying to console me now…? No way.

“Sure it is. I’ve never misjudged my own skills. I’m not conceited.”

“No, I’m saying it’s a coin toss. You’ve got a fifty percent chance. Not fifty-one, not forty-nine—fifty. You’re fine.”

“Why so precise? What’s your basis?”

“Well, because I trained her. I trained her so you’d be exactly matched.”

“Huh?”

“I said I trained her.”

“Huh?”

“Are you gonna make me say it three times? This is kinda getting old.”

“Um, I’m sorry… One more time, please?”

“Again, I said that I trained her. Last night. She was practicing by herself, so I went over and gave her a special training session. I think it’s gonna be a pretty good match, y’know? Go enjoy it.”

“Uh… Blade, I, um… Unless I’m hearing you wrong, you’re saying that you trained Lunaria for a match that I otherwise would’ve won, all so you could make the outcome unpredictable, right? That’s what it sounded like to me, anyway.”

“Uh-huh. That’s not what it sounded like, that’s exactly what I said. Are your ears all right?”

“Wha…?!” Earnest lost her temper. “You idiot! You total idiot! How could you be so stupid? Why would you do something like that? This was my big chance to overwhelm her! I was finally gonna whoop her ass and make her cry like a baby! I was going to take that disgusting smile and wipe it right off her face!”

“She’s your rival, isn’t she?”

“Yes! Yes, she is! I don’t know how she sees it, but yes! That’s what I think, at least!”

“Well, a rival’s not a rival unless you’re evenly matched, right? If you’re guaranteed to win, you can’t be rivals anymore.”

“No, look… Like… I’m trying to show you how insane you are for training my sworn enemy, all right?!”

“Earnest Flaming, to the arena, please!”

“You’re up.”

Earnest gritted her teeth as she stalked off. “You’re gonna pay for this once I get back. I mean it!”

“Well, come back a winner, okay?”

“Of course I will!”

She stomped out into the field with so much force, it was a wonder she didn’t crush the flagstones beneath her feet.

○Scene VII: Earnest vs. Lunaria

Once Earnest was close enough to cross swords with Lunaria, she realized her rival was emitting a completely different aura from before. A genius like her was usually free of cares, never revealing her true self—just one of her many galling traits.

Now, though, she had transcended that. Lunaria had this light, thin smile, like some sort of goddess statue—in fact, her whole aura had a divine feel to it.

“Ah, hello, Earnest. How are you?”

She picked up the hem of her skirt and gave an elegant curtsy. Earnest ignored her. The signal to begin had already been given. She could have cut Lunaria’s greeting short. Earnest wasn’t about to give her the same opening.

Lunaria didn’t seem entirely tuned in to this battle. Her eyes were looking straight at her opponent, but Earnest couldn’t tell if she was really watching her or not.

“I’ve finally reached it.”

…Earnest didn’t ask what she meant. In a strange way, she understood exactly what Lunaria was talking about. After Blade’s special training session, she had made a breakthrough. Things like that didn’t come from spending countless hours in combat—all you needed was the right trigger. The sort of trigger that had let Earnest become the Scion of Flame.

“Well,” Earnest said with a menacing smile, “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to waste any time breaking out my very best. I’m not about to hold back against the likes of you…! Asmodeus! In the name of Earnest Flaming, I command you to consume my body and make it your power!”

“At once.”

Flames leaped out from her fingers and toes. They burned away her clothes, her skin, her muscles, nerves, and bones as they made their way toward her torso. It was far from her first time, but she never got used to the excruciating pain. Some things, however, were more important than pain. Earnest could endure it. She needed to if she wanted to become a superhuman scion.

It was time to do just that. She wanted to beat Lunaria… No, she wanted to be even with her. She wanted to be recognized by her. She wanted Lunaria to leverage all her strength against her. She wanted Lunaria to see her as an equal.

I’m gonna wipe that smile right off her smug little face!

“Trans…form!”

Earnest turned into the Scion of Flame.

“You… You can’t do this, can you? Did you even know that the owner of a royal sword was capable of such a feat?”

Earnest tried to provoke her, even though she might be wrong. She had read a description of her current state in some old documents written by some member of her clan long ago. She thought, at first, that it was a metaphor. The idea of a sword burning you to death but also keeping you alive while dramatically boosting your power… It all sounded like a tall tale. Maybe Lunaria’s clan had similar tales, but Earnest was sure she thought it was nothing more than a fairy story. There’s no way she could have tried it for herself. There was a good chance Lunaria knew nothing of scionification.

However, “a good chance” didn’t imply certainty, as Lunaria’s next move demonstrated.

“Ah, yes, you mean this?”

Ice covered her entire body. She became a frozen statue, then shattered into pieces. She was destroyed once…then reassembled from the tiny shards. Standing before Earnest was the Scion of Ice.

“Thought you’d won? I reached this point months ago,” Lunaria boasted. “You’re beyond pathetic… How sad.”

She said it. She actually said it. Dripping with sarcasm, as always. See? She could do it! She could become a scion. And she’d learned it months ago?

This is exactly why I hate geniuses! Do you have any idea how much effort I put into learning this? How much effort I put into losing over two hundred pounds?

“Oh? I must admit I’m a little disappointed. If this was enough to surprise you, the results of my training won’t mean anything.”

“Training?”

Something snapped inside Earnest. Last night, this woman… She was doing something with Blade.

“Yes, there’s a ‘Scion of Ice II,’ you see.”

Her magic sprang up like a gust of wind and her icy body grew…and grew again, up to twice its original size, before it shrank back down again. A new Scion of Ice was born, slimmer and more elegant.

“This is it.”

“Huh? Whoa, whoa… Whoa! Wait, wait, wait!”

Earnest had never expected her to get this far. Earnest was still using Scion of Flame I. She had barely begun the next stage herself.

“No, I will not wait,” Lunaria said, looking pleased with herself.

And with that, the battle began.

○Scene VIII: Battle Between Scions

Swords swung through the air again and again and again. The two girls dodged and dodged—and when they failed, they got hit, hard. Lunaria, the Scion of Ice, and Earnest, the Scion of Flame, were locked in a fierce sword fight.

The two scions were usually invincible. Their bodies were no longer flesh and blood; instead, they were built up from the very flames and ice crystals they usually wielded. This prevented any normal gear from touching them. Only magic, and magical weapons like their swords, could inflict damage. And since you couldn’t “attack” flames to beat them, Lunaria’s strategy against Earnest involved severing the magical connection between her and the flames or weakening the flames themselves.

The Scions of Ice and Flame were natural enemies. In their hands were Brynhildr and Asmodeus—they normally disappeared while their masters were in scion mode, but this time they had manifested anyway, driven by the wills of their owners to slash and destroy.

Even in the midst of battle, the two continued to evolve. Lunaria, the Scion of Ice, slashed and slashed and slashed. Earnest, the Scion of Flame, took it and took it and took it. She had to focus everything on defending herself. It was impossible to fight against Scion II with Scion I. Earnest could achieve Scion II, but doing that first required generating a massive fireball above her head, consuming her body and increasing the force of her flames. When under continuous attack, without a chance to catch her breath, there was no way she could break it out.

“Whoa… Whoa! Wait a minute! Stop it!”

“No… I will not listen to you! I’m going to defeat you while I still can!”

“Ah… Whoa! I can do it, okay! I can do Scion II! You wanna see it, don’t you?!”

“I won’t lower my guard. I’ll never show you any mercy. I’m throwing everything I have into defeating you. I’ll stake my life on it. He taught me how to truly put my life on the line.”

Lunaria’s attacks never let up. Before, she would have relaxed once she had the upper hand, shifting her attention toward winning in some spectacular or beautiful way. That, or she’d try to make Earnest surrender—which would never happen, of course. That extraneous thinking would lead to an opening her foe could take advantage of. Normally, Earnest would have good reason to keep hanging on. But now, there was no opening to be found. None at all. Lunaria’s fighting style was cold, unflinching, like she had seen hell and viewed this as nothing more than a surgical operation.

“You cold-blooded bastard!”

“Hurry up and go down, you hot-blooded idiot.”

“You first. I’m gonna beat you. If you don’t go down on your own, I’ll put you down myself.”

“Ugh… Over and over and over again! You’re always just plodding down the road right behind me! I hate it! It’s so annoying!”

“I could say the same! You’re always, always, always walking just ahead of me! Going on about being a great genius! If you’re such a genius, why haven’tyou left me in the dust? No, you’re just aimlessly waddling around so that any normal person could reach you if they tried hard enough! I’m about to overtake you! You’re too slow!”

“How dare you!”

“What’re you gonna do about it?!”

Earnest went on the counterattack. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash, slash, slash, slash. She slammed her sword home with all her strength, letting her anger take over as she swung.

“You’re not supposed to use your sword like that! You’re making it cry!”

“Shut up!”

As always, every strike was caught and stopped by Brynhildr. Yet Lunaria’s usual grace was fading, the sound of each sword clash growing louder and louder. Earnest threw yet more strength into the mix, swinging with all her might as she tried to break through. She was swinging her weapon around like a club.

Ka-twiiing!

An even louder noise. The blades clashed head-on.

…Huh?

Earnest was surprised by the strange feeling the impact produced. It had been more than a decade since she came into ownership of Asmodeus at the tender age of six, and she had never sensed anything like this before. Blade broke the swords the academy gave him on a regular basis; any normal legendary sword would be useless after a single training session, and even a normal-class magic sword (the kind that was mass-produced and infused with magic after the fact) would need replacing after a week, no matter how careful he was. A bigger move like Dragon Eater would destroy even one of those in a single shot.

Because of that, Earnest was familiar with this sound. It was usually made by whatever sword Asmodeus was clashing with…but that was Brynhildr right now. They were using two genuine, ancient magic swords of equal rank. Which meant…

“Ngh…?!”

Earnest changed how she used her weapon. Instead of slamming it down with brute force, she copied Lunaria’s soft, supple movements, clashing at the correct angle to retain her position and expend as little force as possible. She was capable of refined swordsmanship like this, but she didn’t resort to it much because it didn’t match her style.

“Come on, Asmodeus! Hold out!”

There was no reply to her shouting. She was starting to run short on firepower. The flames that formed the body of the Scion of Flame I were beginning to die down.

“Huh? Huh? Whoa…!”

Now Earnest had to divide her attention between Lunaria’s swordplay and the changes happening to her own body.

“Asmodeus! Asmodeus! Hey! Answer me! Hey! What’s wrong?!”

This did nothing to boost her flames. They kept shrinking and shrinking without end…and then they finally disappeared. All that remained on the battlefield was a single sword and a single naked woman.

“Asmodeus…! Asmodeus! Answer me! Answer me!” Earnest shouted, holding the sword to her bare chest. “In the name of Earnest Flaming, I command you to answer me! If you don’t… If you don’t, I’d hate it!”

“…”

This got a response, but it was too weak to be understood. She couldn’t tell what it was saying.

“Uh… Yeah, ever since that crack showed up…”

Blade spoke up, and Earnest turned toward him.

“When?! When was that?!”

“When you made that really loud ka-twiiing. When you guys were fighting for the zillionth time and I stopped the fight with my fists.”

“Back then…? Wait, that long ago?! I never noticed!”

“Yeah, uh, sorry. If I knew you hadn’t noticed, I woulda pointed it out, but…”

Blade was apologizing. But Earnest knew. It wasn’t his fault. It was all her. She was this sword’s master, the one always wielding it. How could she have missed it? Or really, this was all happening because she had been reckless. She was relying completely on the magic strength of her sword, brute-forcing her way through every battle.

She could’ve fought the right way if she wanted, but she never did. For a while now, she had been risking her life to study Lunaria’s techniques, fully copying them so she could catch up and defeat her someday. If she’d used what she’d learned, she could have done it. But she hadn’t. She hadn’t done it because it was easier and more fun for her to resort to brute force.

And now she had hurt Asmodeus.

“Earnest.”

A cold blade of ice slowly pressed against her neck. It was Lunaria. She hadn’t undone her transformation, never letting her guard down as she put her blade to Earnest’s jugular. The referee, snapping back to reality, looked like he was deciding whether to stop the fight. Earnest gave him glare that said “do it and I’ll kill you”. It sent him flying out of the arena, corkscrewing through the air. Oh well.

“Earnest Flaming… Take my advice, all right? Throw in the towel.” There was a hint of mercy in Lunaria’s voice. “Surrender, and you can still fix that sword. I know a craftsman who’s gifted at repairing such items. I’m sure he’d accept the job if it came from the Steinberg family. I’d even go with you and beg him. So, please…give up.”

“Lunaria…”

Earnest looked up at her, utter disbelief in her eyes as she beheld her greatest enemy…her rival…her friend.

“…No.”

“Asmodeus?!”

A voice came from the sword. It was weak and pained, but it belonged to Asmodeus.

“My…my master knows no fear…!”

It was clearly audible now. Earnest straightened up.

“No matter what, she never shrinks back. She never gives in…for she has a heart of flame! I have sworn my allegiance to a woman who burns more fiercely and passionately than even I, the divine demon of fire.”

Its thoughts came across loud and clear despite how much pain it was in. It was recognizing Earnest as its master.

“And that woman…is Earnest Flaming!”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Earnest stood. She readied her sword, unwavering determination in her eyes. She wasn’t backing down. She couldn’t be afraid. She couldn’t transform any longer. She couldn’t become a scion. And so, as a mere mortal… As a woman of fire… As the Empress… She held out her sword.

“Come to me,” she said, as if ordering around a member of the junior class. There was no one left who could stop this fight now, especially now that the referee was sprawled out, unconscious. So Earnest’s fight with the Scion of Ice resumed.

Lunaria’s blows were merciless. Each one packed every bit of her remaining scion power. She was waging a brute force attack of her own—all so she could break her foe. Earnest parried it all with her brilliant swordplay.

Now their styles were completely reversed. It was as if they had switched places. Lunaria usually relied on grace and beauty, but now she was wildly flailing away with Brynhildr. Earnest was blocking it all, demonstrating techniques straight from Lunaria’s playbook. As Earnest shrugged off her opponent’s strikes, she began to move forward. Lunaria responded with all her might, but now she was being pushed back.

A white line was drawn on the ground, indicating the out-of-bounds area. Lunaria didn’t hesitate as she crossed it. This battle would not be decided by the rules but by the will of these two fighters. She wouldn’t allow anything else to determine the winner.

With a clean twiiing, Asmodeus’s blade broke from its hilt. It fell, striking the stone floor and sticking right out from it. The base and hilt remained in Earnest’s hands. She embraced it against her bare chest, hugging it between her ample breasts as if offering a prayer.

“Asmodeus,” she whispered, “thank you.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek.

The referee picked this moment to suddenly jump up from the ground. He was about to shout, “Out of bounds!” but the crowd around him knocked him unconscious once more. Everyone was offering a silent prayer, watching as the sentient sword and loyal servant parted ways with its master. Even Blade the ex-Hero, who had seen the parting of sword and master up close many times before, offered them a few seconds of respectful silence.

○Scene: Epilogue

A few days after the competition, things had largely settled down. Blade was walking across the dining hall, a tray of katsu curry in hand, when he caught sight of Earnest.

Sophie, Yessica, and the others were at their usual table. Everything seemed nice and peaceful.

“What, nothing but soup?” he asked.

Earnest, her entire body bandaged, smiled a little at Blade. “The doctor finally gave me permission to eat regular food again…but this is all I can have today.”

It was a simple cup of pumpkin soup.

“Did she say anything about what percent you can break out or anything like that?” asked Blade, sitting down opposite her.

“What? I’m not you. My output isn’t going to go down.”

“Well, my percentage keeps getting reduced all the time whenever stuff like this happens. Usually by half.”

“That’s because you go and die all the time. I haven’t died yet, so there’s no way. In fact, it’s going up. She told me my basic abilities had increased by about thirty percent.”

“You’re even more of a monster now, huh?”

“Like you’re one to criticize me, super-being.”

They both fell silent, Blade eating his katsu curry and Earnest slurping her pumpkin soup. Everyone was smiling and giggling.

“Hey, you want me to give you a massage?” asked Blade.

“Huh? Wha—? What…? Huh? Like something naughty?”

“What? Just a massage. The same kind you always give me. I know how hard you worked, so I thought I’d give you one instead… If you don’t want it, then fine.”

“I-it’s not that, but…keep it normal, if you could…”

Blade didn’t really know the difference between a “normal” massage and an abnormal one.

“All right. See you later at the thermae.”

“Okay. Later.”

They continued to eat their katsu curry and slurp their soup for a bit.

“By the way…if you’ve been discharged from the infirmary, does that mean she has, too?”

“Hee-hee-hee… She never shut up, you know. They just had to assign her the bed next to mine.”

“Sounds like you enjoyed it.”

“It was a huge pain,” Earnest said with a laugh. Her reply was cold, but Blade knew from her expression how she really felt. That much was easy with the supernatural powers of normalcy an ex-Hero like him possessed.

“So, what’s happening with Lunaria?” he asked.

“She’s getting sent back home. She’s got a lot to answer for. Unauthorized use of the Scion of Ice and property damage to the Second Proving Ground. That and losing the competition, among other things. I bet that genius is gonna wish she was anywhere but home.”

“The damage to the Proving Ground was half on you, wasn’t it? And who said she lost? You fought to a draw, didn’t you?”

“She’s expected to win, so even a draw is basically defeat for her.”

“Oh.”

“After this, I’m sure she’ll be kicked out of the elite class back at her academy. Maybe we won’t run into each other again. It’d be such a rush if that happened. I’d feel so great.”

Nope. Blade definitely couldn’t trust what was coming out of her mouth. He opted to believe the face she was making instead.

“There’s no need to worry, though,” Earnest continued. “The Steinberg family will be taken over by her little sister either way.”

“Oh, she has a sister?”

“Yeah, and they’re nothing alike. None of that stuck-up nonsense, and… Oh?”

Earnest froze, her eyes staring at some faraway point. Blade followed her gaze.

“Hey,” he said, lifting his spoon up to greet Lunaria as she walked toward them.

“My good Blade, would you like to enjoy a meal with me? I am sure you would prove a more entertaining table partner than that rough-and-tumble barbarian girl over there.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Bap. Bap. Bap.

Earnest kicked Blade in the shin a few times. What was that for? That kinda hurt.

Lunaria sat down next to Blade like she belonged there. Then, just as naturally, she locked arms with him.

“It’s hard to eat like this,” said Blade.

“It is the responsibility of a gentleman to focus on matters besides food in this sort of situation.”

“It is?”

“Oh, of course it’s not,” said Earnest. “Get your arm off him. Weren’t you supposed to be sent back home? Why’re you wandering around the dining hall?”

“Simple. I expended a great deal of money, political power, and certain other assets to hush up the whole affair.”

“Stupid bourgeois nobility,” spat Earnest.

“Oh? Well, excuse me.” Lunaria looked nonplussed. “It must be hard for poor, barbarian nobility like you to only have assault as an option. If you were in my shoes, Earnest, you’d be in some dungeon, I assume.”

Blade marveled at the sight. These two women must have really loved each other.

“Hey, what ‘other assets’ are you talking about, huh?”

“Hee-hee! Methods I’m afraid I can’t speak of aloud. I wouldn’t want you to dislike me, Blade.”

“No?”

Things that can’t be said out loud… Okay. Well, no wonder she doesn’t want to tell me.

“Here, Blade! I have some fruit for you. It’s been my lifelong dream to offer fruit to a fine gentleman and have him say ‘ahhh,’ and so forth. I’m a very devoted woman, you know… But sadly, I have yet to find a gentleman truly worthy of my attentions.”

“Oh, uh, I can eat by myself…”

A fork with a piece of fruit was being pushed toward him. It wasn’t really time for dessert yet, either. Blade still had two plates of katsu curry he wanted to finish off.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Lunaria! Aren’t you being a little too chummy with him?! And why are you sitting next to Blade and acting like it’s totally normal?”

“Enough from you, Earnest. Shouldn’t you be off by yourself doing your morning jungle run like the ape you are?”

“What did you say?! Huh? You sure you’re not gonna regret saying that?!”

That’s all Earnest could come up with? Wow. She’s never gonna win an argument with Lunaria like that.

“Sophie! Say something for me! Say something!”

“If Blade is happy and/or aroused, then all is well.”

“I don’t want him aroused! That’s going too far…! All right, Yessica, then! Help!”

“You sure are happy right now, huh, Anna?”

“Um…if you like, I could call you ‘Anna’ as well…” Lunaria blushed.

“No! Absolutely not! I will not stand for it!”

“And in exchange, you could call me René, perhaps?”

“No! I’m not gonna stand for all this haughty nonsense!”

“Hi, um, my name is Claire. Nice to meet you.”

“And the same to you, Claire.”

“Hey! Don’t treat her like a new friend!”

“I do not particularly mind if Blade has two official wives instead of one, you know.”

“Ovie! Stop it!”

“The relationship I have with my master is permanent and unchanging. If I were to use metaphor, it is c, the speed of light—eternal and unwavering. Even if he gained one or two more mistresses, sidepieces, or actual wives, I would not bat an eye, much less voice any complaint. I only have eyes for my master, you see.”

“What kind of passionate declaration of love is that?!”

“Anyone strong is more than welcome in my book!” Cú chimed in. “We can be friends and everything! I bet that ‘Scion III’ thing is even stronger than I am!”

“Hee-hee! Feel free to call me your big sister, if you like.”

“Okay, big sis!”

“Oh no, Cú’s already taken a liking to her!”

Exasperated with this welcoming atmosphere, Earnest turned toward Lunaria.

“Look, what do you want? I know you’re covering everything up, but does that give you the right to come in here and eat breakfast with us?”

“Ah, yes, I have an announcement. As of today, I, Lunaria Steinberg, am a student of Rosewood Academy.”

“Eeep?!” Earnest’s eyes bulged.

“I have already received permission from His Majesty, Chancellor Gilgamesh. He was quite pleased with the interschool match the other day. ‘Just as I thought,’ he told me, ‘the naked body of a young girl is such a delight.’ I do hope such a freakish king will soon perish.”

“Yeah, that makes two of us.”

Earnest could agree there, at least. Everyone nodded.

“…So, I’ve been brought on as a special exchange student, and I do hope I can find my niche at this school among all of you.”

Lunaria curtsied, looking very refined and noble. Most of the others bowed in response.

Blade was admiring what seemed to him like a very feminine gesture when suddenly, Lunaria drew her soft body close to him once more. Her arms were now wrapped tightly around him, her supple breasts pressing against his side.

“I have a special request for you, Blade…”

“Blade! Say no!” Earnest shouted.

“What is it?”

He didn’t mind, as long as it was doable.

“I, Lunaria, wish for you to become my companion!”

“Wha…?! Wha…?! Whaaa…?!”

Earnest shot to her feet, kicking her chair away. She had a trembling finger pointed at Lunaria, but for some reason, no words came out.

“Wow,” exclaimed Yessica, “that was direct!”

Direct to what? Blade wondered.

“Wha—?!” Earnest was still struggling. “What’re you talking about? What are you saying?!”

“As I stated earlier, Blade is going to have another legitimate wife now.”

“Indeed, the wavelengths of Lunaria’s body correlate with those of a woman radiating romantic feelings.”

Ovie and Iona were being awfully frank about this.

What do “legitimate wife” and “romantic” even mean? Nobody had ever explained those terms to Blade before.

“Hey, uh, hey…,” he began, deciding to ask the others.

“Look! Listen to me…! Listen! Don’t play with our super-being! Blade’s not ready for that stuff! Not for, like, at least another ten years! He’s got the brain of a five-year-old!”

Earnest was being awfully rude.

“What I mean to say, Blade, is that I wish to marry you,” said Lunaria. “This is a proposal of marriage.”

“No one asked! Don’t you ever give up? What’s with you? This is why I hate geniuses!”

Boy, Earnest was really loud this morning.

“Um…what’s marriage?” asked Blade.

Earnest slumped over onto the ground, a broken heap. “We…we have to start there?”

“What? Nobody ever tells me these things. Like when Madam was going to get married a little while ago, nobody explained it to me then, either. So, what’s marriage?”

“Hee-hee-hee! Well, Blade…if you marry me, I’ll spend the rest of my life teaching you,” said Lunaria.

“Oh, cool, thanks! Let’s get married, then!”

“Lovely!”

“No! No, no! Nooo! Never! Never, never, no!”

Earnest’s cries echoed throughout the dining hall.

Shin Araki

A character-oriented novelist making it in the light-novel biz. Also publishes on Shousetsuka ni Narou. Member #0001 of the More Light Novels That Make Your Heart Soar Society.

Illustrator: Haruyuki Morisawa

I was dealing with a lot of shoulder pain, but some stretches I tried have finally done the trick. You really do need to take care of your body, huh?