She smirked, then brought the radio in her other hand to her mouth.

As if to show off, she spoke mercilessly into it.

“Orders for the destroyer Wimbledon. Prepare to fire another bunker cluster.”

6

The first princess, Limeia, had taken off her trademark monocle. In its place, she was peering through an antique telescope, the kind a ship captain might have used during the Age of Exploration.

…Well, well. This nation’s sorcerers should at least know, as a matter of course, how terrifying the head of state is with the Curtana Original. Well, I suppose they’ve been shown in full color now, and the Puritans’ remaining forces seem to be on the verge of annihilation.

As she lay in hiding on a London rooftop, even while she looked at the distant battlefield, a smile came to her lips.

Then, a voice reached her ears from her communication Soul Arm.

She’d refrained from using it before, but with Carissa’s attention now focused on the Buckingham area, she’d decided the mana source wouldn’t be detected.

“Hey, young lady. I’m havin’ the young ones scour the Edinburgh region, and it looks like things’re exactly as you suspected.”

The words were like those of a good-natured father, lacking in due consideration for someone with royal blood. But Limeia’s face broke into a smile anyway. Indeed, for she was the type of person who became very honest toward people who didn’t know she was the first princess and who didn’t try to take advantage of her position because of that.

“It’s as I thought, then…Things are headed toward ‘the cemetery,’ I suppose?”

“It’s keepin’ itself small, but the sheer precision is nothin’ to shake a stick at. Don’t think there’s much doubt about it—it’s on par with a monarch-class ‘cemetery.’ Bet it’s like what you’d get if you squeezed King Khufu’s pyramid into a one-room apartment.”

After he said he’d send her the data, black ink-like dots began to appear on the parchment paper Limeia had out next to her. Like an invisible feather pen was writing, diagrams and smooth cursive handwriting continued to be written on it in a tightly packed manner.

Limeia put her monocle back on. As she looked over the concrete values, she nodded, satisfied.

“I see…Then we’ve essentially found the ringleader’s goal,” she said to herself, moving her gaze away from the parchment for a time as though thinking back. “I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense that that woman hasn’t killed them.”

“…Question for you, young lady. From where in the world are you gettin’ all this dangerous info? If I remember right, you claimed you were from an ancient sorcerer clan tasked with the preservation of Stonehenge, but are you really—?”

“Oh-ho-ho. If you want to learn a beautiful woman’s secrets, you should do it after you’re a little more well acquainted with her,” she scoffed offhandedly, and then ended the call.

Immediately after, Limeia changed its aim and booted up the communication Soul Arm again.

Thanks to her dependable friends she’d gained without revealing her identity, she had the necessary pieces.

Now, all she had to do was take action befitting the brilliant first princess.

Meanwhile.

All the knights who had been serving as the second princess’s guards at Buckingham Palace had fallen. The Knights faction had been prepared to flee after the Curtana Original went out of control, and so in order to bring them all back together, some received “punishment” as examples.

It was true, to be honest, that they’d nearly lost hope in Carissa after she failed to completely handle the Curtana.

But that had been naïve.

The Curtana Original may have gone berserk for a time, but Carissa, the one who wielded it, was so overwhelmingly powerful that the young knights were left without any options.

Among them, something stirred restlessly.

One person, in all the suits of armor covering the floor like refuse, had slowly stood up.

He wondered where he was.

He was no longer inside Buckingham Palace, its walls splattered with blood. It seemed to be a large building, though, with light flashing sporadically in the distance. From where he stood, he could hear the sounds of explosions and feel rumbling…Those phenomena arrived at different times, though, like distant thunder and lightning.

The young knight dragged his aching body, moving his head as though searching for something. Something had stimulated his mind from its previous unconscious state—a woman’s voice, which he could hear through his communication Soul Arm.

“Listen to me. I am the first princess of the British royal family, Limeia.”

Normally, someone breaking into their transmissions warranted a degree of businesslike caution. However, the young knight was in a daze from all the intense pain. He couldn’t even build that routine, businesslike process in his mind. He just waited idly, letting the words flow into his ears.

“Thanks to reports from spies in Edinburgh, we’ve grasped the true aim of this coup d’état’s leader, Carissa. My sister has most likely kept her real goal to herself and not told any of you knights of it.”

The young knight took a slow look around.

Heaps of corpses surrounded him in a tragic scene. He seemed to be the only one who had survived.

He wondered why.

Why he’d survived the damage he had endured to his muscles, his bones, his organs, and his mind at the hands of the tyrannical Carissa—and also who had brought him, while unconscious in Buckingham Palace, to this place.

However, he didn’t try to think too hard.

Whatever the reason, they’d put their lives on the line and done everything they could for the second princess’s “revolution,” but in the end, they’d been no more than disposable pawns in her game. They’d been betrayed, but he couldn’t even muster the energy to be mad like he should have. All he felt was an overwhelming sense of exhaustion that threatened to make the young knight collapse again.

“As a representative of this nation and steward over its military affairs, she felt more responsibility than any other to do something about the threat the people of the United Kingdom were facing from the forces of Rome and Russia. Others used the EU as a tool, stealing our nation’s military might with a disguised ban on cluster bombs and other weapons. They used the Eurotunnel explosion to provoke this very nation, driving her into a corner. And Carissa reached the following conclusion.”

The young knight, ready to drop, then heard something small.

…He wasn’t the only one here.

At the sound of scraping metal, the young knight turned around. There he saw his colleagues, trying to somehow get up, even in their dazes, just like him.

“That at this rate, the United Kingdom would have its value and dignity stolen. An age where simply being a citizen of this nation would be a source of ridicule and oppression by other nations. And so, Carissa thought this: The times would change drastically because of war, and in order to prevent the destruction of the British people, the only way to retain our value and dignity as a nation is through military force.”

At first, they hadn’t been listening too carefully to Limeia’s words.

The incredible pain shooting through their bodies didn’t allow it, and more importantly, they had just been tyrannized. Anything that defended Carissa seemed fraudulent.

“And at the same time, Carissa worried. Because she has such excellent capacity in military affairs, she understood more than anyone how strong and how terrifying the Curtana is…Without the Curtana in the head of state’s hands, without the absolute rule needed for it, then perhaps she would have bent her ear to the people and corrected this country’s course before the war with the Roman Orthodox Church grew any more severe.”

However.

The young knights were slowly realizing something.

Their joints, organs, and bones should have been damaged. That should have been Carissa’s goal when she’d enacted her “punishment.” She’d granted them a terrible pain worse than mere death, then held together by fear those watching…Supposedly, that was the only reason she’d crushed them inside and out.

But then why could they all stand up like normal?

They hadn’t been disabled via broken bones, nor had they sustained any lasting effects that would drag on for the rest of their lives…It was as though she’d been aiming away from any of a person’s vital spots.

And…

With that level of violence and cruelty, why, exactly, hadn’t a single one of them died?

“When Carissa resolved herself to wield the Curtana Original as her trump card against France and the Roman Orthodox Church, she did so meaning to completely seal away the ultimate weapon after the fighting had ended—in order to create a system where someone could stop our nation’s mistaken course. To do that, she couldn’t only completely destroy the Curtana.”

Only Limeia’s voice continued.

“Even if she murdered the entire royal family now, even if she destroyed both the Curtana Original and the Second, a new royal bloodline could emerge a century, a millennium from now. Someone might analyze the destroyed wreckage to develop a Curtana Third or another Soul Arm we can’t even imagine in this day and age—and in reality, after a very long time, the Curtana Original, which had supposedly disappeared from history, passed into Carissa’s hands. It not only gave her an advantage, it was the source of her suffering.”

Unable to answer his own questions, the young knight simply listened to the speech.

“Leeway was built into our monarch-knight system of government, constituting the Curtana and the all-British Continent, from the start. Extra space was intentionally left over for people to create a Second, so even if the Original was lost, the government would live on. Think of it as a safety, so that if someone had been able to analyze the Original to create a Second, then activated the Second while the Original was lost, the all-British Continent’s framework wouldn’t be thrown into chaos and conflict…Not only was Carissa trying to completely seal the current Original and Second, she was even trying to prevent the possibility that another Curtana would be created after a long time had passed.”

The young knight saw.

Out the window.

Carissa’s back as she fought in the ruined palace grounds.

They were kilometers away, but they were armed with a long-range sniper search spell, so the distance meant nothing to them. They could see the fierce battle unfolding at Buckingham Palace as though they were standing there.

Wielding the Curtana Original’s power without reserve, using even cruise missiles loaded with bunker clusters, it was like Carissa reigned over the center of a storm. And for some reason, she looked, to the young knight, to be strangely alone.

“Carissa’s goal is to murder the royal family for their ability to use the Curtana, then interfere with both the currently existing Original and Second to eliminate the possibility of someone analyzing them to make a Third. By doing so, she would perfectly avoid the worst scenario—that a new monarch and Curtana appear only to lead the United Kingdom astray. Destroying Buckingham Palace wasn’t merely an attack on the Puritan faction. It was to thoroughly destroy all the coded documents and artwork as yet undecodable by sorcerers, thought to be how the Curtana Second was produced, thus annihilating any possibility of a Curtana Third appearing later in history…After the war with France and the Roman Orthodox Church was over, Carissa was prepared to personally seal and destroy the Curtana Original and Second, then spend the rest of her remaining life deep in a cemetery.”

Someone slowly stood up.

It was mysterious that he was able to.

It wasn’t because of the knights’ power by itself. Carissa had made arrangements for it from the very start: to let the Knights faction survive after cooperating with the coup d’état, the second princess became a solitary tyrant, shouldering on her own the blame that should have rested on the knights.

The young knight had an honest thought. He wanted to fight for a person like that. But he also thought that didn’t mean obeying Carissa’s orders and making her coup succeed.

“This is the conclusion: Carissa has two goals. The first is to make herself an overwhelming tyrant to eliminate France and the Roman Orthodox Church, protecting the United Kingdom even if later generations would call Carissa a dark stain on the nation’s history. The second is to seal away the ultimate, most terrible weapon, the Curtana Original, and, by removing an incompetent monarchy, make it so the will of the people could halt the nation’s rampage…Even if, after it all, the stars aligned to create a new system of monarchy different from ours—if that monarch tried to make the wrong decision—she wanted to leave them a ‘weakness’ that would make the monarch bend their ear to the people. It is for those goals that Carissa, now a tyrant, tries to shoulder alone the sin of wielding the wicked weapon Curtana and massacring foreign enemies wholesale.”

If Carissa was still the kind of person who wouldn’t even kill the subordinates who looked at her with disappointment…

…then they couldn’t let her stray any farther from the path.

There had to be a way to overcome the crisis with the Roman Orthodox Church even without the Curtana Original’s power.

Yes.

If the queen of the British royal family and the three sisters, including Carissa, were able to all work together.

And.

The Knight Leader, standing on the building rooftop, had been listening to the words of the first princess, Limeia.

“I will not force you to act in a certain way,” she said. “I know you all have family, friends, and spouses you have to protect apart from the nation. I will not deny your right to flee to prevent their sadness.”

He was quiet, his eyes shut.

Ignoring him, Limeia wrapped things up. “However, if any of you have pity for my sister Carissa…If any knights wish to help one woman, regardless of her position as second princess…Will you not take up your swords once more? I am sure there is a woman for whom that thought alone will be her salvation. It matters not how much strength you wield. Someone would be fighting for her sake in the truest sense. There is a woman who only needs to know.”

For a while, there was silence.

The same silence had surely visited the rest of the United Kingdom.

They would think in silence, then come to a final decision.

As a knight, as a man, as a human…A decision made freely.

We no longer even need to give orders to the United Kingdom.

The Knight Leader nodded without a sound, then drew a sword from out of nowhere.

It was a silver longsword, which no longer drew power from the Curtana and the all-British Continent and now couldn’t even shift colors to red. But the naked steel looked more reassuring than it ever had.

Even without orders, we know what we must do.

It was a knight’s sword, its original purpose regained.

With it in his hand, the head of the knights began to swiftly jump from building to building.

Limeia smiled thinly.

The Knight Leader had been standing behind her for a while, but she never once turned around.

She trusted nobody who knew her status as the first princess.

But that wasn’t exactly the reason she hadn’t turned around. In fact, Limeia wasn’t the type to show her back to those she didn’t trust.

…Carissa has changed enough to execute a coup d’état for her love of the people, and Vilian has seen the people suffering for it and grown, she thought, checking on the battle situation through her telescope again. Perhaps I, too, have grown a little stronger after everything that has happened.

7

Without even wiping away the mud tangled in her hair, Vilian, currently fallen on the ground, directed her hazy gaze to a certain boy’s back.

To the one boy in the Puritans’ near-annihilated remnant forces who had continued to desperately oppose Carissa.

Vilian, who was unable to move and on the verge of death like many of the other Puritans, heard the transmission from her older sister, the first princess, Limeia.

Had the boy heard the same broadcast? He might have, from a Soul Arm fallen on the ruined battlefield. He also might not have.

And yet, he hadn’t wavered.

Only he had not hesitated, among all the Puritan remnants when they had learned of Carissa’s intentions.

“Well, now what?” Carissa goaded. “The second bunker cluster was already fired! Unlike before, the sorcerers don’t have the reserves to create a defensive barrier!!”

“!! Damn it! I’m not giving up!!”

“Ha-ha-ha!! Do you think if you break the Curtana Original, it’ll send the missile a self-destruct signal for lack of orders from me? It’s not a nuclear weapon! Unfortunately, that warhead doesn’t have that feature!!”

“It’s not over!! Not if we use the barrage from the Silkie Aquariums!!”

“I guess that’s somewhat more realistic. But if they could do that, they would have intercepted the last shot, too. French trash would be one thing—they were so stubborn about domestic development and production that they lost their versatility. But the cruise missiles I deal in won’t be brought down so easily!!”

The boy was a mercenary who, unlike William Orwell, had no doctrine or ideology. He wouldn’t be able to make the right decision every time. After all, he’d been tricked by Carissa and the knights and hadn’t been able to stop the coup d’état from happening.

But the boy didn’t dwell on it.

Even if he was wrong, he’d never give up. No matter how bad the situation got, he would always look at it and try to find the best plan he could to turn the tables.

Therefore.

This situation wouldn’t cause the boy to waver.

He might smile and accept things, but he’d never let surprise make him hesitate.

Someone who always tried to be completely correct from the start and someone who tried to make it so everyone could smile in the end. Which one was more precious?

“See? The bunker cluster is here.”

Even with her intentions exposed by Limeia, Carissa tried to continue her reign as tyrant, spreading her arms and looking up into the night sky.

A speck of light in the dark sky had appeared—not of another star but of a missile.

“I’ll blow you ignorant plebs away!! This is what my military expertise can do!!”

“!!”

As though betting on a slim possibility, the boy was looking around for a communication Soul Arm that connected to the Coven Compass or a Silkie Aquarium. But finding one on palace grounds—now a missile-racked mountain of debris—would prove difficult. And he barely knew anything about magic to begin with, so he might not have spotted one even if it was right nearby.

In the meantime, the cruise missile approached a spot directly over Buckingham Palace.

At this rate, its two hundred smaller bombs would scatter, and this time, the entire city in a three-kilometer radius from the palace would be blown to smithereens.

And then…

“Zero!!”

A new voice reached them from afar.

A moment later, before breaking into four and blasting apart into so many bombs, the cruise missile malfunctioned. Even after reaching the predetermined location, it didn’t open. Instead, the flames spurting out the rear suddenly vanished, and it fell like a wild pitch toward a road outside Buckingham Palace property. It was supposedly quite heavy, but rather than stab into the road, it bounced several times across it.

It was an unnatural phenomenon, like someone had stolen every bit of the weapon’s attack power.

As the third princess watched, dumbfounded, she heard the sharp sound of something slicing through the air.

A debris object created by the Curtana Original.

A sharp stake, about three meters long, one of the ones Carissa had kicked away during the battle. Boom!! It headed straight for Vilian’s face—but never penetrated it.

From just beside her:

The Knight Leader, who had suddenly jumped in, had punched away the three-meter stake with his right hand.

With an awful gwkk-keeee, dark-red blood spurted out from the gaps between his fist’s fingers.

But there was no change in the Knight Leader’s face. He simply glanced at his fist, then watched the result.

“…As I thought, it won’t work against the Curtana Original or any of the phenomena that derive from it.”

“Knight Leader…?” called the mud-covered princess in a shaking voice.

But he didn’t turn around. The head of the knights, who had appeared with a large number of men from the Knights faction, said to Vilian, his back to her:

“I will accept any punishment. When this coup d’état is ended, you may sever my head from my body if you wish.”

His words had no hesitation.

The Knight Leader, for the first time, had called what he’d been doing all along not a “revolution” but a “coup d’état.”

“However, allow us to at least make the preparations for my punishment. And if I may be so bold…I pray that the whole British royal family once again comes together to face France and the Roman Orthodox Church the correct way.”

As the Knight Leader spoke, his bloody hand reaffirmed its grip on his sword.

Cut off from the power of the Curtana Original, it was merely a knight’s longsword, no longer able to wield its original abilities.

“…Princess Carissa is the type of person who is able to do everything by herself. If she can use that power justly and cooperate with the others in the Royal Family faction, she will no doubt drive away the Roman Orthodox Church.”

When Vilian saw the Knight Leader about to head off for a deadly battlefield at a clear disadvantage, her lips moved in spite of herself. As she dragged her aching body up, she called out.

“You will wait.”

The words had spirit in them, so much that they barely seemed to belong to the third princess, and the Knight Leader unconsciously stopped. Vilian already held within her the strength to force the head of the Knight faction to stop and turn around.

“A selfish demand for death is nothing but a nuisance. If you truly wish to atone, then I will have you do something worth being happy about. I want each of you to think for himself about what he should do. Do not do it reluctantly, because you were forced—because there is meaning in acting for yourself first.”

The Knight Leader mulled over those words for a few minutes.

Then, without hesitation, he stepped in between Kamijou and Carissa, who were still fighting.

“Split into two teams. One to recover and restore the wounded Puritans in the area and the other to attack Princess Carissa to stop her directly.”

At the Knight Leader’s short orders, the wound-covered, armor-clad men moved swiftly. They weren’t obeying a set of orders numbered one to ten. All of them, from their leader down to their lowest rung, were acting on their own volition.

“…We promise victory. We cannot leave Princess Carissa alone any longer.”

As Kamijou dodged the giant white structures, trying to nullify Carissa’s omnidimensional slashes when given the chance, the Knight Leader stepped up next to him.

“My apologies. I’ve left the fate of my nation and the princess in your hands.”

Kamijou’s answer was simple.

He didn’t look at the Knight Leader—he just commanded:

“Right, then. You’re gonna help me stop her.”

They moved at the same time.

Kamijou would nullify the omnidimensional slice. The Knight Leader would plunge directly in and bar the Curtana Original itself from moving.

The Knight Leader was gripping a longsword with an eighty-centimeter-or-so blade meant for fighting on horseback. He glanced at the weapon he wielded and muttered bitterly, “…As I thought, its expansion has been sealed. I can’t use the pattern-type sorcery that combines chivalrous spells from around the world. Only natural, with its power supply from the Curtana cut off…So what I’ve got left are Thororm’s Spell, since I created it myself, and the fast-movement support spell. But Thororm’s Spell won’t work on the Curtana or any phenomena derived from it. Even my swordsmanship is looking at large decreases in power without the Curtana’s power supply…”

His clearly disadvantageous situation came to mind, but the Knight Leader smiled a little.

A slightly offended smile, as though he’d regained his usual manner.

“…At most I’ll have half the speed. But I want to stop her without killing her—so I’m thankful!!”

“I see. I hadn’t expected the charismatic, virtuous Vilian to be followed by my sister the intellectual!!” shouted Carissa, as sword clashed against sword.

Yes—the Knight Leader’s longsword had repelled the Curtana Original. He’d accurately struck the flat of the blade, which wasn’t generating the omnidimensional slicing field.

“She waited for the perfect time to make that speech! The knights and the Puritans were both just about to give in to the Curtana Original’s power! That’s why it worked so freaking well! Just like having a sweet drink after eating something bitter!!”

Nevertheless, Carissa’s fierce attack didn’t stop.

Against the monsters, the Knight Leader, and the Knights faction, she continued her skirmish, freely controlling it.

“Plus, that wasn’t even aimed at the entire Knights faction! She just made it look that way—she delivered that message with you individually in mind! I mean, obviously. You’re their leader, their pillar of support!! Your individual decisions can greatly influence the Knights faction’s outlook. Instead of telling each of them to choose freely, she knew swaying your opinion would make the entire organization’s movements easy to predict. Her speech was as shrewd as she is!!”

“I do not care.”

In response, the Knight Leader, while avoiding Carissa’s attacks, kept his face steady.

His determination was already unbreakable.

“It does not matter how calculated it was, as long as it gave me the motivation to save you, Princess. Being made to dance by the intellectual princess, Limeia, is entertaining in itself!!”

“Is it your pride as the Knight Leader? But with your power supply from the Curtana Original cut off, you can’t bring your true abilities fully into play. Or did you think you could keep up with me with only the weak trickle from the Second?!”

“My personal power is a triviality! It will not cause me to waver!!”

“Ugh. You disgust me!!”

Even as she shouted, Carissa could feel the knights’ will to fight had recovered—no, even expanded beyond what it was originally, as they attacked more fiercely than they had before. Even the fallen Puritans, their physical states aside, had probably undergone a complete mental recovery. They were a more close-knit group, and on top of that, with additional knights from all over the United Kingdom gathering, fooling around any further seemed like it would cause even her trouble.

I hate to say it, but I can’t spare any cruise missiles!!

After swinging the Curtana Original around in a wide arc to ward off attacks, Carissa took a giant leap backward to gain distance.

When she created that slight temporal “space,” Kamijou and the knights moved to gauge the distance again. Carissa watched them, resting the Curtana Original on her shoulder.

“I wanted to save some to attack France with, but it looks like I’ll have to use up all my bunker clusters here and now, so.”

Carissa’s hand held the small radio.

Kamijou was shocked, but the Knight Leader took a challenging step forward.

“The Thororm’s Spell I use isn’t advanced enough to seal your Curtana Original or the phenomena caused by it, but it can zero the attack power of something like bunker clusters. Will you still insist on wasting them?”

“Yes, I believe you told me that the defensive spell you use can nullify the attack power of any one chosen weapon target that the caster perceives.” Carissa sneered, almost like she was asking an employee to tell her what their job was.

As she did, she brought the radio to her mouth.

“Then I’ll send this order—prepare the cruise missiles loaded with bunker cluster warheads. Of the destroyers on standby in the Dover Strait, the Wimbledon will fire twenty-four, the King Henry VII will fire twenty-six, the Sherwood will fire twenty, the Hastings will fire fifteen, and the Shakespeare will fire fifteen. To all whom it may concern, aim at Buckingham Palace and fire a total of eighty bunker clusters on my command. Now then—out of those, which do you think I will hide with an illusion spell?”

“…!!” The Knight Leader froze.

Carissa responded with a wicked smile. “It might just be a bluff, but if it slips past, that’s it. And I can guarantee it by pressing the issue and attacking with the Curtana Original at the same time. With everyone dead if you let even one through, I will test the essence of the United Kingdom’s knights and judge whether they can repel my blade.”

“Gah! We have to stop her!!” insisted Kamijou to the head of the knights, trying to charge in at Carissa with his own fist clenched, too.

But the second princess’s fingertip moved, pressing the Call button faster.

Before Kamijou’s fist could reach her, Carissa gave the order for destruction through the small radio.

“All five named destroyers, I order you to fire the cruise missi—”

Kamijou clenched his teeth, but in response, Carissa suddenly frowned for some reason.

Then her head came up in surprise and she jumped straight backward a moment later.

And then…

Dpshhhh!!

The giant antenna tower used for military communications plunged right into the spot where Carissa had been standing a moment ago.

Kamijou had been about to head for Carissa, but the blast wind forced him backward, knocking him to the ground. As the dust billowed around the giant antenna tower stuck in the center of the debris, he saw someone standing on its wreckage. The large figure looked down at the second princess, Carissa, and spoke.