CHAPTER 8

Queen and State: The People’s General Election
Union_Jack.

1

Acqua of the Back and the Knight Leader stood side by side.

Acqua gripping the Soul Arm Ascalon and the Knight Leader his lone longsword, the leftover core of his larger Soul Arm.

The Knight Leader spoke under his breath, low enough to be talking to himself but high enough to be addressing his old friend.

“…To think the time would ever come again when I entrust my back to you.”

“I see you cannot shift it into Hrunting. Try not to slow me down too much.”

“Bah.”

With only that, the Knight Leader waved his longsword and looked ahead.

There was no longer a need to admit superiority, nor to closely examine the other’s gaze. Like the times they had crushed many a strong enemy together, he offered some words hesitantly, as a bridge of trust.

“To battle. Let us each inspect what the other has gained in his decade of study.”

Bam!! The earth split.

When the two of them began to run at the same time, the ground could no longer hold itself up.

Acqua from the right and the Knight Leader from the left:

Closing in from either direction, at a blur, they darted toward Carissa, swords brandished.

“Ugh.”

In response, the princess reacted to Acqua first. As she twisted to avoid his three-and-a-half-meter longsword, she took advantage of the movement to wheel the Curtana Original around. The debris object it created shielded her from the Knight Leader’s longsword.

“Your head—it will fly,” she whispered into Acqua’s face.

Bam!!

Their slashes collided.

Carissa struck diagonally from the shoulder, while Acqua responded with Ascalon. Considering the Curtana Original’s power, he didn’t let the blades touch. Instead, he parried using his sword’s hilt against hers.

Ow…?!

Until now, Carissa had had a decisive upper hand, but the unexpected recoil shocked her.

The pure impact it created pushed their bodies backward. They hadn’t retreated, but rather their feet had scraped across the earth.

But they were both still within range. Another pair of killing techniques flashed.

“!!”

“?!”

Disregarding the size of his sword, they both unleashed an attack to deal a fatal blow. It was like a Wild West standoff—victory would surely be decided by the slimmest of margins.

However…

“…Don’t think…you two…are fighting alone!!”

“Wha—?”

From the side, the wound-covered Kaori Kanzaki had charged in—working her body to the bone after it had been slammed with the blast winds from the bunker clusters despite her having blocked some of them with a barrier. With the other Puritans still unable to move, she alone could stand up—probably due to her characteristics as a saint. What she’d unleashed was her Single Glint, which could slice through even angels. Carissa, driven to a corner and absolutely unable to ignore such an attack, twisted her sword’s trajectory to defend against it.

Which, of course, left her open to Acqua’s attack.

And to add insult to injury, the Knight Leader had moved in as well.

“W​h​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​o​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​a​!!”

Their shouts overlapped, creating a unique gale.

As its impact electrified the battlefield, several shadows passed the speed of sound.

Carissa kicked at Acqua’s leg to throw him off balance, slightly bending his sword’s course. Without waiting for Ascalon to just barely pass her by, she used the Curtana Original to deflect Kanzaki’s Seven Heavens Sword, after which she leaped back to avoid the knight’s follow-up attack.

Unlike before, she was dodging with everything she had.

But the three superhumans wouldn’t sit quietly and let her.

Gk-gk-gk-gk-zk-zk-zk-zk-zk-kik-kik-kik-kik-kik! A storm of sparks followed Carissa as she retreated in a straight line. As the attacks approached from various angles, Carissa kicked up rubble and debris objects on the ground, swung the Curtana Original, stopped one attack after another, twisted, parried. In response, Acqua and Kanzaki cut through the rubble and fired the debris objects back, trying to create an advantage.

There was a moment’s span before the Curtana Original could create a debris object from its slash. With speed that made the debris late to appear, the four combatants continued to slash.

A sharp intake of breath reached Kanzaki’s ears.

In this fight that wouldn’t allow discrete syllables, much less a conversation, it displayed Carissa’s intent.

The second princess kicked up two debris objects at her feet, then slammed them together like symbols, destroying them herself.

Ga-boooom!! The fragments scattered like fireworks.

“?!”

Everyone paused for an instant, pushed by the shock wave. Only Carissa moved, taking advantage of the momentum to gain fifteen meters’ worth of distance.

For monsters like them, the distance was one they could close in the blink of an eye.

“…I see…”

A bead of red blood traveled down Carissa’s forehead.

It hadn’t been Kanzaki, or Acqua, or the Knight Leader who had hurt her. A fragment of the debris she herself had created—that was what had drawn blood from her royal personage.

“This is getting to be more than a trifle to deal with. No matter how much special power I’ve gotten, it’s still a pain in the ass fighting three saint-level monsters together.”

“You shouldn’t think that being a ‘special human’ allows you to do everything,” rebuked Kanzaki, recovering her stamina with a special breathing technique. “We can only use our full power because there are those who support us. With many sorcerers constantly targeting you from every direction, you will naturally always need to be conscious of attacks in blind spots, which will narrow down your vast array of options.”

“Maybe,” said Carissa, her eyes turning to glare at the other woman. “From a military perspective, some battles are fought and won by the number of allies you have.”

She set her stare on the sorcerers trying to fire long-range magic in between the saints’ and the Knight Leader’s attacks when they saw an opportunity.

“But didn’t you think that would give me an opportunity to beat you?”

Chill.

Something, something like a wave of sadism unlike anything before, began to emanate from the second princess.

A moment later:

With incredible leg strength, she kicked a block of rubble up in the air. Equipped with a limited portion of the angelic leader’s power, the object, heavier than metal, shot up five meters.

But she hadn’t aimed it at Kanzaki, Acqua, or the Knight Leader.

She had purposely sent it reeling toward the group of knights on the back lines giving aid to the fallen Puritans.

“Wha—?”

With a huge boom, several figures went flying.

In the instant Kanzaki’s gaze went to them, Carissa gave the Curtana Original another large swing. What appeared was a hundred-meter-class debris object. It was a rectangular plank, twisted in the center part, reminiscent of the blades of a wooden helicopter toy.

Carissa caused the edge of that blade to explode, then used the momentum to spin it like a giant propeller. At a forty-five-degree angle, the whirling blade ripped up everything in its path, approaching the crowd.

“Damn!!”

In response, the Knight Leader jumped out in front of the propeller at a supersonic speed and tried to knock away the whirling blade.

And then, with a thud, came an impact from directly behind him.

It wasn’t an attack from Carissa. He’d been paying the utmost attention to her killing intent.

The strike that hit him was from one of the Puritan sorcerers, supposedly an ally, having forced his wound-covered body to move and firing desperately.

“…Ah…”

He turned around and saw that he was making a flabbergasted face of his own.

He hadn’t done it out of malice. It had been a stray bullet.

However.

The Knight Leader had lost his balance, and the giant whirling blade was shooting right for him without mercy.

“?!”

He frantically tried to intercept it with his longsword, but with his balance gone, he didn’t have his normal strength. The heavy impact slammed him into the ground. The whirling blade, its trajectory altered, squirmed around like a living creature. And that caused the damage elsewhere to expand.

“No matter how many people you have in your group, it doesn’t change the fact that a group has connections among each and every person.”

Carissa waved the Curtana Original in a wide arc above her head. The giant debris object it produced changed into a huge suspended ceiling tilted diagonally, which tried to crush all the sorcerers from the skies.

“Which means that whatever the organization, there’s always a chance to split the individuals apart. That property never goes away—even if magical thoughts or scientific brain waves link them together.”

Kanzaki immediately attempted to slice it apart with her wires, but the second princess leaped on the action. Her leg whipped out and caught Kanzaki in the stomach, sending Kanzaki flying.

“Groups perfectly unified as a single unit, a single being, are naught but the product of fantasy.”

Dozens of ranged attacks stabbed into the hanging ceiling, just barely finishing it off before it crushed the sorcerers. In the meantime, Acqua jumped about, swiftly slipping between the land and the ceiling as it crashed, upheaving the earth. He charged toward Carissa, greatsword in hand.

“In fact, the more you have, the more strands of the web there are to cut.”

An ear-shattering boom!!

It was the sound of Ascalon and the Curtana Original clashing against each other at a spot close to each hilt.

However.

With this much of their cooperation ruined, the battle had devolved from a group fight to an individual one. And in terms of individual strength, Acqua had severe wounds from the battle in Academy City, so Carissa, who could use the angelic leader’s power fully within the United Kingdom, was his better.

Gk-gk gree-gree-gree!! After several slashing attacks crossed, Acqua’s body skidded backward. He didn’t fall, but dark red began to ooze from a spot on his side.

“Bring a thousand, bring ten thousand. I still won’t waver,” declared Carissa, resting her sword on her shoulder.

This was no quarrel between children.

One wasn’t always at an advantage. But if there was a chance she’d lose hers, Carissa would immediately prevent it. By stopping everything before the tide changed, her advantage would never be overturned.

“And I’m quite used to fighting groups, so. Did you forget how talented I am, even among the royal family, when it comes to military affairs?”

Those words signaled the restarting of the nightmare.

2

People were watching their fight.

Those people were not so-called sorcerers. But neither could one declare them completely unrelated civilians. They were the retainers, the servants, the cooks, the gardeners who had been working in Buckingham Palace for the royal family.

The only ones who could really get the closest to the members of the royal family were mainly expert interceptors polished in a magical sense as well, like the Guards Maids and armed attendants, but those here were different. Most of them were truly of common birth, people whom the third princess, Vilian, had invited in.

They’d been able to step all the way into London, but they couldn’t charge into the central battlefield, Buckingham Palace. Their hesitation now exposed them as amateurs; after all, this place where they thought they were safe was just one more position that Carissa could blow away on a whim.

Without realizing that, they gazed at the battle.

Their days up until now had been filled with more happiness as a United Kingdom citizen than they deserved. They wanted to protect Vilian for giving that to them, and they purely wished to fight if it was for the British royal family.

However.

With this overwhelming sight before their eyes, what were they to do?

Whether they looked at the coup itself or the large-scale magical battles, the servants’ hearts and minds were already long past maximum capacity. They’d wanted to fight in the subway tunnel, too, but in the end, their legs trembled and they couldn’t act at the most important time. It was the same now. Shame, reputation—none of it mattered. They were, to be honest, tiny normal people, and they were scared of the battle unfolding before them. This feeling wasn’t something to be spoken of in the same dimension as courage or a sense of justice. This was, perhaps, the proper way of thinking as the humans they were.

Carissa’s tyranny was a true symbol of hopelessness.

Even now that the true reasons for her actions were out in the open, the regular servants felt so hopeless they could only tremble.

On the destroyed Buckingham Palace grounds, monsters like Acqua of the Back and Kaori Kanzaki were fighting at the same time. And despite the greater part of the Knights faction having left her, the second princess’s sadism showed no signs of abating. In fact, most of the sorcerers they called “professionals” had already fallen to the ground.

This battle would not be easy to jump into.

Most likely, if they joined in, what they would find is instant death. Because they’d dragged their feet, the professional sorcerers had been the ones to fall, and that could lead to a major change in the fight’s outcome.

When they started to think about it like that, standing and watching was all they could do, unable to break out of the civilian realm.

“What else can we even do?” someone mourned.

They were all simple people. Once nonsensical magic started appearing, there was no room for them. And even among the civilians, there was a boy, squeezing his right hand into a fist and fighting. But that was because he had a special power, wasn’t it? He had the strength from the beginning to oppose sorcery. If they were the kinds of people who could fight terrorists hijacking the Skybus 365, they’d run in here without hesitation, too. But they didn’t have any special powers to call their own.

So what else could they even do?

“Do you truly believe that?”

That was when they heard a voice. Hastily, the servants turned around and saw a familiar face there.

“Do you seriously think that boy’s right hand is the only difference separating you from him?”

“…”

With someone else asking the question again, the servants fell silent.

In truth, they knew: That boy wasn’t fighting on this crazy front line because he had special powers. In fact, it seemed more logical to them that he only happened to have anything at all. That, in other words, was their answer: The ability to take part in this civil war was decided by courage and nerve.

“Do you have that?” the woman asked again. “It doesn’t matter what your personal feelings are. It doesn’t matter what objective reasons you have. Do you have that measly bit of courage to stand up to overwhelming terror and save our nation from this crisis?”

At the question, someone looked up.

They decided they didn’t need to hang their head, so they looked up.

They knew their answer.

At the very least, the servants didn’t want to lose to that boy in strength of will. They understood they were scared enough to quake in their shoes, but that wish to be in there, fighting, had managed to keep them in place, keep them from running away. That had been linked to why they were watching the battle.

So in the end, they decided:

They wanted to fight alongside the rest, too.

“Very good,” acknowledged the woman.

Elizard, queen of England, gave a reassuring, captain-like grin that reached across her whole face.

“Then come with me. I will make up for everything you lack.”

Everything she needed was now in place.

This was where their comeback story would begin.

3

A tremendous kaboom!! rattled through the Buckingham Palace grounds.

“…!!”

Quickly, she readied her Curtana Original to respond, but she still felt her hands tingling. Carissa looked at her assailant, who had charged in from a distance, faster than the speed of sound, and gave her loudest shout of the night.

“So you finally showed up—the cause of everything, my mother!!”

What had slammed into her was the Curtana Second, with the exact same shape as her sword.

As Acqua and the Knight Leader were on the back foot, the true head of state had stepped in, wielding the other kingmaker of a sword.

The two Curtanas clashed against each other, each royal owner glaring into the other’s eyes.

“I don’t mind you doing what you want,” Elizard began, “but if you’re going to do it, do it one hundred percent—and make a better plan than mine. It seemed like this was turning out worse than mine, so I came here to stop you.”

“Stop your prattling!” Carissa barked. “Does the root cause of all this want her throne that badly?!”

Then came an unpleasant zzzk sound.

Between the Curtana Original and the Second, the Original of course had more power in it. They wouldn’t even have a good clash of blades—the Original’s blade was sinking slowly into its little sister’s.

When it had gotten about a centimeter in, both swordswomen moved.

Ka-shing, ka-shing, ka-shing!! They traded just three quick, short blows.

Each time, sparks flew from the Curtana Original’s blade. It seemed as though they weren’t even the same material hitting against each other; it was like Carissa was whittling away at soft gold, like she was carving it.

“…Despite all the setup, despite all the groups fighting each other, in the end it comes down to a clash between Curtanas. I feel like an idiot for thinking so hard about everything, so,” said Carissa with a self-deprecating grin, the unscathed Curtana Original in her hand.

Both women’s strength was manifest.

“But a fight between Curtanas is a fight I cannot possibly lose. My Original has over eighty percent of the power, and your Curtana has less than twenty. If we’re using the same type of power, the pure quantity will decide the outcome. Don’t you understand that?”

In response, Elizard gave a little smile. Not a purposeful act—but one that honestly seemed to have slipped out by accident.

“…You are a more small-minded woman than I thought, my daughter.”

“What?”

“All to take responsibility for a foolish monarchical system and protect the British people…You’d become a tyrant, crush all hostile nations in Europe, and then hand over the government’s reins to the people. Your plan seems to be quite large-scale, but have you caught, around its edges, the glimpses of your small-mindedness?”

Carissa didn’t answer with words.

Instead, she swung the Curtana Original with a massive boom. Elizard parried with her own sword, but this time it left the Second with a bigger gash in the blade than before.

Elizard’s expression was unmoving. “Do you really want to change this country? Do you want to protect the people, even if it means breaking the great pillars forming our government? Then don’t rely on systems that are already in place. If you’re going to do something—then at least do this much,” she said.

The queen gave a great swing of her Curtana Second, then let it go, flinging it hard and straight at Carissa. Carissa hastily knocked it out of the way—only to realize a moment later what it all meant.

The Curtana Second, its trajectory altered, bounced off in a different direction and vanished into the dark.

Queen Elizard had purposely let go of the magical sword that supported her power.

“What…are you thinking?”

The sheer recklessness, the defenselessness, actually made Carissa tense and ready herself.

With the Curtana factored into her tactics, that option would, thinking normally, be absolutely impossible.

Yet the queen had willingly chosen it. And then, with absolute confidence, she answered:

“A revolution.”

At that moment, Elizard stood more grandly in that spot than her daughter.

“A revolution is what you need before you realize something that has yet to be realized. Abandon all delicacy. People who try to overturn stagnant theory don’t cling to that same theory. If you see something happen for the first time in history and you’re surprised, then you’re still tied to the thick pillar of this nation’s idea of exceptionalism.”

Is she trying to say she has more nerve than I do?

Carissa decided that instead, it was part of a plan to rile up the hesitating masses. And she had to give it to her—it was effective. It wouldn’t be strange if stupid people mistook Elizard for being braver.

But…

Then I’ll respond with a tyrant’s methods. If I kill her in front of everyone, it’s over!! With her mangled corpse on full display, they’ll crumple into despair for real, so!!

Her conclusion reached, Carissa raised the Curtana Original to slice her in half vertically, to create the kind of corpse that would be most effective at inducing terror.

But then she noticed it.

And she was so late she had to wonder how it had slipped by her.

“Wait…This…No…”

The Curtana Original was acting strangely.

When she turned her glare on the one who knew the cause, Queen Elizard answered:

“Didn’t I say it already? This is a revolution.”

Flap went the sound of cloth hitting the air. Elizard held a large cloth in her hands—a flag. On the front of it was the national flag of the UK, and on the back was a flag in white and green—once used as the national flag of Wales.

“The United Kingdom’s flag adopts designs from those of England, Ireland, and Scotland. As for Wales, at the time this flag became established, it had been absorbed by England. This flag respects their culture by placing it on the reverse side…Of course, the trick was getting to the British Museum to pick it up.”

England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Symbols of the four cultures comprising the United Kingdom.

And the basis of the Curtana Original’s power.

“Of course, not everyone could actually pull it off…but you made a mistake not prioritizing my assassination. This thing is one of the national-level sorceries designated for exclusive use by the British royal family.”

Elizard flapped the flag out and spread it wide across the night sky.

Union Jack.

After speaking the spell’s name, the queen took just one deep breath.

“By my name.”

And then she raised her voice high, loud enough so that it would resound everywhere.

“I hereby command the power gathered within the Curtana, that used for the all-British Continent, constructed from four cultures: Release your power and redistribute it evenly among all the British people!!”

4

With Elizard’s words, the Curtana Original lost its power.

Well, not exactly.

The power accumulated inside it began to flow out from the tip to other places.

“Together with this power, I, Queen Regnant Elizard, proclaim this to every citizen.”

The Curtana’s power gave strength to a pyramid of power centered on the ruler and the knights. But what, exactly, gave a monarch the right to the throne?

If you investigated that question’s deepest implications, you would come to see the true form of the spell Elizard demonstrated.

“Because of this coup d’état, much has happened this day. The army mobilized, cities were taken over, destroyers were let loose in the Dover Strait, knights engaged in combat, and then bunker clusters bombed our capital. Many of you have no idea what is truly happening, but you probably have incurred strange damages.”

Yes: At the beginning, any British citizen would have had the right.

“But now you all have the power to resist.”

The British royal family was formed long ago after many battles. If the events of history had played out even slightly differently, someone else who also lived in Britain might have started the royal bloodline. And considering emigration and political marriages, the potential for a completely different outcome simply become greater.

Which meant only one thing was important: whether or not you were a person of the United Kingdom. It wasn’t an issue of bloodline or citizenship. It was whether you loved Britain, and whether you wished to make it your homeland.

“I cannot explain the details as to why, but for tonight and tonight alone, you all have an equal chance to become heroes. You are now able to fight against the strange events you’ve seen but don’t understand the reasons for why it is happening! You are now able to do anything!! And I want you all to choose. Think for yourself and decide who you want to fight for, and who you want to fight alongside!!”

On top of that, the queen gave that right to them—

To those people who might have become kings and queens.

To the ones who might have been sitting on the throne, if only history had been slightly different.

“I will gratefully accept all who wish to help me! You are even free to side with the usurpers! If you can show us a completely different alternative path, feel free to do so!! And you don’t need to force yourself to fight simply because you have the power!! If you don’t want it, you can will it to return. If you decide you trust someone else more than yourself, you can will it to transfer and it will!! In every sense, in this moment alone, this great power is yours. If you want to fight, or even if you want to flee, you can decide for yourselves!!”

She told them that the fragments of power they could have had were there for them.

That the power needed to change a nation was there for them.

“Don’t let yourselves cater to the whims of others telling you what to do or that something is right! Reject even your own words!! Think about everything with all the information at your disposal, without any objective priorities, and after you’ve finished considering it all, stay true to the justice and courage and nerve you have left at the end!!”

Perhaps what Queen Elizard had surrendered was something very simple. One could interpret it as the most important thing, the most crucial element for a democracy.