The Princess Brave of a Lost Kingdom

-about a wildflower-

1. Lillia Asplay

Lillia Asplay knew emptiness.

Not as an abstract concept but through experience.

Back then—four years ago, when she was ten years old—that emptiness was inside her.

Lillia was an honest girl.

She listened to her elders and fulfilled her duties with a smile on her face.

She was the daughter of the king in Dione, Kingdom of Knights. She was fourteenth in line for the throne. Dione itself was a small, pastoral country anyway—it was a stranger to quarrels over throne succession.

As a symbol of such a peaceful country, everyone wanted her to be like a doll, one who smiled brightly, innocently, as if she was ignorant of everything. And since she had always been extraordinarily intelligent, she understood that well. Not only did she understand, but she accepted it.

If smiling meant the adults around her could find some measure of peace and salvation, then so be it. She thought that so long as the muscles in her cheeks held out, she would smile as much as she could.

But this should not be misunderstood—Lillia never thought of these days as miserable. Both her parents were busy, but they loved their daughter, and the high-ranking nobles and the strong knights from the Order were all generally kind people. Lillia’s smile was not entirely an act; it was perhaps more apt to say that she was shouldered with a task that made use of what came naturally to her.

But at age nine, her whole world changed.

There was a monstrous race called the elves. They looked like warped and twisted decaying trees and traveled together in nimble swarms, like some sort of sick joke. The elves were classified as spirit-type monsters, which meant they were supposed to be highly intelligent and possessing advanced technology. However, since they were unable to communicate with humans, there was no confirmation of such claims. The longevity of this race meant they had a storied history, and they still used technology from ancient times. Official military documents and the like often referred to the elves as “the elder spirits” or “the elder kind.” Although they rarely emerged from the “murk-wood” they called home, they would sometimes expand the territory of the murk-wood themselves, coming together in great swarms and attacking human domains.

A hundred or so gloom elves fell upon the Dione territory like a plague.

The attack came before dawn. Just before the kitchen smoke started rising from the chimneys of people’s homes, a completely different kind of flame engulfed every corner of the city. The guards and knights stationed around the city for an emergency were decimated; there was hardly anything they could do against a horde of absurdly strong monsters launching a surprise attack.

The country was wiped off the map.

The few who survived had escaped through a secret passageway with the help of a loyal retainer—and among them was the young Princess Lillia.

The story up until that point was rather well-known. Most of the people who heard the tale believed this was the moment when Lillia Asplay lost everything.

In one sense, they were correct. Lillia lost a great many things.

On the other hand, they were wrong. Lillia’s losses would come quite some time later.

Afterward, Lillia was treated like a tragic heroine everywhere she went.

From that day forward, people wanted this girl to play a part unlike any she’d had before.

Everything she loved had been lost, robbed from her by a horde of the wicked. She had watched it all disappear into the flames with her own eyes—things precious to her, things she didn’t particularly care for, things she wanted to hold on to forever, things she had hoped would vanish. Everything was reduced to ash all the same, no more, no less.

She should have been sad.

She should have been in pain.

She should have lost hope.

She should have been angry.

She should have hated them for it.

Everyone wanted this princess of a lost country to be the protagonist of a tragedy. They wanted her to be this poor, sad little girl. It was like looking out onto the snowy landscape from inside a warm house. To all those who believed they were not unhappy, looking upon the unfortunate was a kind of mild entertainment.

And Lillia was an obedient girl.

She listened to her elders and fulfilled her duties with a smile on her face.

She was sad for them. She was in pain for them. She lost hope for them. She was angry for them. She hated for them. She brought to life what all the adults around her had been hoping for, all while wearing a withered, lifeless smile plastered on her face.

One day, in the darkness, Lillia realized something.

Was she truly sad? Was she truly in pain? Had she lost hope? Was she angry? Did she hate anyone?

She certainly possessed those feelings inside her. But she didn’t know where they came from.

On that day when she stood there, what had nine-year-old Lillia Asplay thought as she watched everything burn away?

She couldn’t remember.

Everyone else’s expectations about how she was supposed to feel and think, repeated to her over and over, had overwritten her memories and feelings of that day.

Once she came to this realization, the girl who had always worked to be what was expected of her forgot who she originally was.

A year passed.

Lillia was ten.

“Wait here,” an old man said to her in a little hut. Then, along with another sturdy-looking old man, he left the shack.

She could have obeyed the command and waited there. It wasn’t like she had anything in particular she wanted to do. She was already used to sitting, well-behaved and pleasing everyone. Suppressing her own feelings to avoid boredom was her forte, after all. No matter how many hours…or how many days, even, she could have sat there, obediently waiting, the entire time.

However.

This one time, for some reason, she succumbed to temptation.

The girl stepped out into the remote, empty forest.

When people do something they normally try not to do, they wind up seeing things they normally try not to see.

In a small clearing in the woods, there was a boy, about ten years old, waving around a stick.

She probably wasn’t imagining the steam that she saw wafting from his body. Despite how cold it was outside, there were more signs that the boy must have been moving about furiously for a long time; he was drenched in sweat, and even the ground beneath his feet looked well-trodden.

In many ways, he was being much too enthusiastic for just playing pretend swordsman.

Lillia hid herself behind a tree and decided to watch him for a bit.

His grip was light, but in contrast, his steps were long and deep. The center of gravity in his basic stance was oddly high, yet his stance when he delivered the blow was rather low. As she watched the boy spin around like a badly made top, she slowly started to see why he moved so strangely.

He was probably trying to train in all sorts of weapons at one time.

From just a glance, it looked like play sword fighting that was a little on the advanced side. His movements essentially resembled fencing. But on closer inspection, certain things changed slightly in the intervals between weapons. He would alter his grip just a touch, replicating a multitude of weapons with just one stick—or rather, she could see through his movements that he was striving to reach a point where he could pull off such a feat.

But it was a pity that, after all was said and done, the boy was incompetent.

His training was probably focused on the way he held his fingers, which controlled the intervals between weapons. But the movements in the boy’s hands were clearly awkward. Same for the way he carried himself. Not only did he lack strength and weight in his physique, but in order to make a powerful attack, he would have to skillfully “drop” his heightened center of gravity onto his point of attack somehow. But what little power this boy did have was mostly escaping through the bottom of his shoes into the dirt. If he couldn’t move any lighter, like he was dancing above the clouds, then his training would never amount to anything more than just slightly advanced swordplay.

The more Lillia watched, the more frustrated she became.

The more her frustration mounted, the more irritated she became.

And yet, somehow, she couldn’t look away.

Her vision blurred. She realized that, for some reason, tears were pooling in her eyes. She didn’t understand why, but they would spill over if she left them alone. She didn’t want that to happen, so as she kept her eyes on the boy, she wiped away the moisture, one side at a time.

Suddenly, the boy slipped.

Oh, she thought.

Oh, was the expression she saw on the boy’s face.

He flipped over as his shoes drew a clean arc in the air. There was a loud thud when his back hit the earth. That must have hurt. The boy hadn’t just tripped and fallen—he’d practically thrown himself onto the ground. But given how soft the dirt was, it was unlikely he’d actually injured himself.

“—Owwwww!” the boy hollered.

With a cry, he disguised his frustration at his body for not moving the way he wanted it to.

Most likely, his exhausted limbs had already been begging for a respite. He lay on the ground with his arms and legs splayed out, gazing far up at the blue sky—

“…”

—and noticed her.

Their eyes met.

He probably hadn’t even imagined there would be someone watching. There was a momentary flash of surprise in his eyes before it slowly transformed into embarrassment.

“Who…who are you?!”

His cheeks were flushed, but that was pretty normal considering he’d just had an intense workout. Embarrassed and flustered, the boy leaped to his feet. He brushed off the dirt that clung to his clothes, picked up the stick that had fallen from his hands, and took a thunder focus stance, almost like he had not flipped over just now.

“W-were you watching me?!”

Yep, every second of it.

…The girl’s honest response almost left her mouth, but she quickly held her tongue.

She probably shouldn’t say that to him. That would be a terrible response, one that would hurt the pride of a boy who had (what appeared to be) very little to begin with. Her ten years of life experience, as a sheltered princess as well as a tragic heroine, told her not to say it.

But nevertheless, it didn’t seem like things would turn out well if she stayed quiet. The boy was shooting a reproachful look right in her direction. He wanted some kind of reaction.

She had to say something. Her panic was dulling her young sense of judgment.

The words that came to mind immediately slipped off the tip of her tongue.

“You—”

“…You?”

“You suck.”

In that moment, time froze.

The girl could hear the boy’s pride not only being hurt but shattering into a million pieces.

That was the little girl’s—Lillia Asplay’s—recollection of when she first met the boy who would become her fellow student of the sword.

And it was that precise moment that triggered the boy—Willem Kmetsch—who was always kind and generous to everyone he knew, to treat his fellow disciple Lillia as the sole exception.

2. The Never-Setting Sun

And then several more years passed.

“C’mon—what else could I say? He really did suck.”

Lillia trudged through the snow as she grumbled about this memory of hers.

“I mean, he got mad when I said so, which means I was right on the mark. And there’s no point in getting mad about something that’s just true. Instead, he should’ve kept his mouth shut, bowed his head low, and then said, ‘You are correct, Princess,’ before going back to his training.”

She was used to traveling alone.

Yet, at the same time, she had completely gotten into the habit of talking to herself.

“…But, I mean, still. I might be used to being alone, but I do think I oughtta stop talking out loud to myself. I’m more or less aware it’s an issue. It’s just plain embarrassing—pathetic, even. If someone heard me, they might think, Gee, Miss Legal Brave’s losing her mystique. I guess that’s the problem here, huh?”

As she kept talking to herself despite what she’d just said, she snapped her head up and looked around.

It was white. Everything was white—so white that it was practically no different from the dark of night.

And it was freezing. This was far beyond simple cold—it was freezing, and it stung.

A famous poet who once visited this land described it as follows: an unending stretch of wilderness, withered trees, and snow that never stopped. The ever-howling wind was the resentment of the dead, the manifestation of their curse to freeze any warm creature to its death. If any place should have been considered the world’s edge, then this had to be it.

As was often the case with poets like these, these words, of course, did not represent the exact truth. The stretch of wilderness did have an end, and the trees that looked withered were happy and healthy plants that were simply adapted to the cold climate, and there were several days throughout the year when it didn’t snow. Pioneering Adventurers later reported that they identified a continent even farther north than this place.

But, well…in reality, if she had to say anything about the wind, she tended to agree with the poet.

It blew high and low, sometimes fiercely but sometimes quietly; it would cling to her in one moment, yet kept its distance in the next—an eddy of sound with such rich expression. When she placed herself in the middle of it, it certainly felt like there was some sort of musician behind her. Whether it be the dead, the gods, the spirits, or the fae—well, it was probably the work of one of those kinds of beings beyond human comprehension—

“Ha-choo!”

Her massive, involuntary sneeze brought her train of thought back to the present.

“…’s cold,” she muttered to herself within her snug winter gear.

As she rubbed the tip of her nose with her finger, she looked down the road again. Beyond her white, hazy vision, on the other side of the flurried dance of the large snowflakes, she could vaguely make out several drab, mud-colored tents standing together.

“There it is.”

She gently shook herself, readjusted what she carried on her back, and began walking again.

To say that humanity’s history consisted merely of their warring with the monsters would be an outright lie. And yet, there was no mistaking these wars were an important element.

The monsters were all enemies of humans, and they were powerful.

Some attacked with their massive bodies, some trapped their victims using camouflage, while others tricked them with mysterious spells. There were monsters that preyed on humans, monsters that killed for the sake of killing, monsters that toyed with their victims just for fun. Ever since the dawn of civilization, all kinds of monstrous beings had been very close neighbors to humans.

However, humans were not powerful creatures by any means. Their arms were generally scrawny, and their gait was slow. A mere push could prove fatal; burn them, drown them, drop them, starve them, and it would all end in death.

Sure, there were a lot of them. But when it came to pure population numbers, they were a magnitude inferior compared to the likes of the fertile orcs. On top of that, the average citizen had no idea how to fight as a group, so even when they did have a numerical advantage, it did not translate into an increase in strength.

Humans could use weapons and tools of war. But in terms of technological prowess and production capacity, there were other races that were far better. More than half the practical weapons that humanity relied on were just imitations of what the morians had created, rearranged in a way to suit their own needs.

Yet, despite all that, humankind stubbornly thrived to this very day. They warded off danger, opened up the wilderness, and expanded their territory. And along the way, humans created plenty of technology that could allow the weak to fight back against the strong, then refined it and perfected it.

Take, for example, the Adventurers, who were using a unique method to get stronger to better themselves.

Or the soldiers in the military, who protected their homeland with their dauntless will.

Or the scholars in the Imperial Tower of Sages, who passed down ancient wisdom to the present.

Or the puppet soldiers and sorcerers who came with them, who protected tangible things with an intangible bond.

Or perhaps even those warriors chosen by the Church of Exalted Light—the ones called the Steel Saviors, Ancient Myths Reborn in the Present, the Victors of Predetermined Harmony—the most favorite among the favorite of guardians known as Braves…

They were all fighting to protect the human way of life. Rather, they were all fighting for their own selfish reasons, which as a result protected their way of life. And because of that, they had all survived until now.

Lately, there was a certain rumor making its rounds of the continent.

It essentially said that a Visitor had awoken from its slumber, which had lasted since the age of the ancients. The Visitors were a group of superior beings said to have once created everything on the planet. It was said that, in the distant past, all the Visitors left to travel—but there was apparently one outlier. And that one Visitor, of all things, decided it was the enemy of all humanity. It ordered the world’s custodians, the three Poteau, to attack human cultural centers.

Well now, that was a pickle. The continuation of their race was in danger.

The whole story was such a shock, and there was nothing more devastating. But all those who spread the rumor barely registered any sorrow on their faces.

Some all-powerful monsters had appeared—so what? There had always been terrifying creatures like that lurking nearby for as long as anyone could remember. But there were those who would stop them to protect humanity. It was the strong chosen few who would keep them safe.

Humankind would lose nothing. They never had, and they never would.

That was why there was nothing to worry about.

There was a heavy air within the field tent.

Spread out on the coarsely made war table was a sketched map of the surrounding area. Wood-carved pawns, some painted red and some blue, sat on top of it, indicating where deployed troops were on either side.

There were three men sitting around the table, all wearing similar-looking scowls, staring hard at the table before them.

“…I don’t think we can win like this,” said one of the men, the strategist of the northern defense corps deployed in this area. “We have allowed the enemy’s lines to encroach too far. This has been a long battle, so the soldiers are exhausted, too. At this point, we won’t have enough time to request support from allied troops. Realistically, the only thing we can do is…to ask the Alliance to send reinforcements.”

“But that would besmirch the honor of our forces,” the general, the most important person in the tent, protested bitterly.

After all was said and done, the military was still an organization that wielded violence, and it was common sense that those who were left alone to wield violence unchecked would end up savage and wild. That was why many armies hammered into their troops the importance of having pride.

The northern defense corps, of course, was not an exception. It was incredibly important for them to save face here, and making an attempt to do so was even more precious… Therefore, the general’s response was considered correct for a soldier of the defense corps.

“Then should we perish along with our land to save face?”

But once he was asked that, he had no response.

The last man—the commander, who was not a part of the conversation—kept his arms folded and quietly groaned.

Practically speaking, their battle was progressing horrendously.

The enemy they were up against was a swarm of elves. And the curses emitted by the ancient elves quite literally controlled the land.

The earth that the elves controlled was called murk-wood—purple-streaked poisonous forests.

After hearing that much, just about everyone would interpret this as the elves contaminating the forests. Most were sure that they must give off some kind of venom that corrupted a forest that was there to begin with. How else could they annihilate all the lush green and all the animals that once lived there? Oh, what terrible creatures. What horrifying things.

They thought wrong.

Anyone who had seen them invade with their own eyes knew the truth—the curses the elves used were acts that reconstructed the world.

One theory held that the elves’ ancestors were subordinate spirits born as assistants to the gods when they created this world so long ago. That was why they were often described in documents as the “elder spirits”—because when that happened, it was said that they stole from the gods’ pockets a part of the secret art that could physically change the planet.

This meant there was no need for a forest to exist prior to their invasion.

Even if it was a field or a mountain range or even the wide-open ocean, they would change any place into one of their murk-woods. Earth would appear from nowhere, and thick clusters of warped trees would take root. Unusual insects gathered out of thin air and made their nests. They sat there arrogantly, almost as though they had already been there for millennia.

That was why challenging the murk-woods the elves controlled came with a different sort of danger than the mundane menace of nature. Charging into the deepest parts of these woods was essentially like throwing oneself into the bowels of a ravenous monster.

“—This is entirely different from ordinary human territorial squabbles. A loss here means that this entire land will sink into that swampy miasma. No matter what happens, we cannot lose.”

“But even if we ask for help from Adventurers, would there be any point in the end?”

“What do you mean?”

“Even if there was one elf by itself, it would still be strong. What we are fighting against up here is a swarm of them. Not only that, but it’s the elder kind who wield a curse that’s potent enough to swallow a land as vast as this one. And unlike us, those Adventurer fellows only fight for themselves. Would they leap into the jaws of death for us with nothing but glory to be gained?”

Everyone felt silent.

The commander groaned quietly again.

A slender hand reached beside him and plucked one of the baked sweets that sat on the corner of the war table.

“It goes further than that. There are very few experienced Adventurers who would prove useful in a battle against elves. Could we even expect one of them to conveniently be this far north?”

“Then are you asking us to sit here and wait to die?”

“That is not what I’m saying, but our survival hangs in the balance.”

Fluffy winter gear—someone inside the fluffy winter gear, rather—nibbled on the edge of a cookie while gazing at the war table.

“We have to do something, or nothing will change!”

“That is why I’m telling you that we have no time to be wasting on meaningless measures!”

Neither was going to budge.

Their voices grew louder, their words more violent.

The commander groaned.

Another cookie disappeared.

“…”

“…”

The men all turned to look at the same spot.

The focus of their attention—a fourth person, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere—stopped eating, then looked up at them.

“Who are you?” the strategist asked for all of them.

“Oh, I’m just helping myself to some of your cookies. Gosh, I’m just so hungry after pushing my way through such a cold place. Sooo hungry!”

It was a girl’s voice that spoke, and the stranger pulled back her hood.

Fiery red hair spilled from inside.

What appeared before them was, indeed, a girl.

From just the shape of her face and her physique, she seemed to be in her midteens or a little younger. But her expression, which was oddly somewhat relaxed, wasn’t that of a child. It almost reminded them of an old woman.

“Erm, I’m here to say hello. I’m from the Church of Exalted Light,” the girl said as she rubbed her cheeks, reddened from the cold.

“Excuse me?” The general sounded suspicious. “What, you want to start making arrangements for our funerals? Sorry, but no thanks—you don’t need to worry about us.”

“Well, that’s not exactly it.”

“This is the front line. We’re fighting a desperate battle against formidable enemies. This isn’t the place for children to make some pocket change. Go home, unless you want to lie in the same graves as us.”

The Church had a great variety of stations and staffers. They weren’t all priests who were rewarded with a high salary for simply whittling away their days in the temples performing rites. Some of the clergy who struggled to earn their keep walked across ill-fated battlefields, aggressively selling informal funeral services. That was essentially what the general was talking about.

“Come on, don’t be like that.”

The girl paid him no mind and went back to studying the war table.

“You—”

“Hmm?”

Before the enraged general could say anything, the commander raised his eyebrow slightly.

“Miss, would you mind if I asked about that heavy-looking package you have on your back?”

“It’s a sword,” the girl answered breezily.

“Isn’t that a little big for it to be a normal sword?”

“Yup.”

“Is it Seniorious, the Carillon?”

“Yup.”

The girl nodded lightly.

The general’s expression hardened. Color drained from the strategist’s face, as though in relief. An uncomfortable silence fell over the field tent.

It wasn’t impossible.

There were people in this world who were called Braves. They were not just any people, though. They did not belong to any nation; they fought for the continuation of all humanity and were the ultimate weapon in the endless wars against the monsters. These select few were living legends, all individuals who came with mountains of reasons to explain their impossible strength—be it the ultimate Carillon, an astounding secret art, unparalleled talent, being an ancient guardian, a heroic bloodline, or even a tragic birth.

And Seniorious was the greatest and strongest mystery that modern humans had. It stood at the pinnacle of the countless Carillon, one of five of what were considered the greatest and oldest blades. It had changed hands from chosen one to chosen one, striking down the enemies of humanity on countless battlefields. Its wielder was now the twentieth Legal Brave designated by the Church of Exalted Light—

“Lillia Asplay…?” The general murmured her name.

“Impossible.” The strategist shook his head weakly. “Princess Brave Lillia should have fiery red hair, with beauty like no other. She can’t be this…this smart-mouthed little girl!”

“I’m not responsible for rumors that take on a life of their own…”

“You were a graceful maiden in the portrait of what you might look like one day!”

“I’m not really sure how I should react when you bring up something like that.”

“It was expensive!”

“Uh… My condolences, I guess?”

Another uncomfortable silence fell over them.

The commander, who had refolded his arms, groaned quietly.

“Oh, and here’s proof of my identity,” the girl, Lillia, said as though it had just occurred to her. She pulled out a piece of brass work from her pocket and showed it to the three. It was a type of talisman that the Church issued to their highest-ranking traveling priests and was the single greatest proof that guaranteed who she was.

“…So, Lady Lillia Asplay, what on earth has brought you all the way out here? If you’re here to assist us, then go home.”

“Hmm.” As she swallowed her cookie, she peered down at the map again. “If there are elves here, then does that mean here and here are already forest?”

She pointed at the pawns on the map in turn.

“Yes, that’s exactly it.”

“Don’t humor her, Commander!”

“And that means the elder ones are here and maybe here, too… Man, this sure is a bother.” Lillia scratched at her head as she closed her eyes to think for a moment. “Um, General? I have a request.”

“I won’t give you any troops.”

“No, I want you to move the whole army. The snow is a little deep, so it’s probably going to be a rough trek, but you can move”—she slid a pawn across the map—“like this, right?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” The general snorted, then looked back down at the map. “…Really, how…ridiculous…”

His expression turned serious. “We would just be moving away from the enemy, no? Even if we withdraw to the town—No, that is also completely out of the question. We’d be going in the wrong direction.”

“Yeah,” Lillia replied with a nod. “Before I arrived, I heard that the battle over here…at Narvant, the City of Weirs, in old Dione territory, was going pretty badly.”

“Oh?”

“They’re mostly up against orcs. It’s not a particularly difficult battle, but the numbers they’re up against are so great that the front line is getting wider, and they’re having trouble maintaining their defenses. It would be a lot easier for you guys to be fighting there instead of going up against elves, right?”

“Well, see… No, that’s not the problem. We cannot surrender here.” Despite how taken aback the general seemed, he still argued.

“Hmm? Do you have something to do here, then?”

“No, what I’m saying is that it is our duty to sweep the elves from this land…”

“Oh yeah, don’t worry about that. I’ll do something about them,” Lillia declared, a hint of vexation in her voice, and she then started rolling her shoulders to loosen them up. “I think it’ll be over in three days or so.”

Three days passed.

The troops were en route to Narvant, City of Weirs, where they would join up with an allied army when they received a report.

It said that the elven territory—those hated purple forests, which had been spreading without pause until then—had started to wither with vicious speed.

Every soldier reeled from the news.

“It was Lillia Asplay.”

One soldier mentioned her name.

“It was Lillia Asplay! It was the Legal Brave; she did it!”

Their foes had been so powerful that it had seemed impossible for there to be a future where the battle ended. They were exhausted after much arduous fighting. There was a handful who, after watching their friends melt in acid and be eaten by elves, had lost all hope, wondering if they would be next.

A single girl who had leaped out from nowhere had put an end to that battle.

“—I don’t like it,” the general spat, his face twisted as though he’d swallowed something bitter. “We fruitlessly risked our lives for child’s play that a little girl took care of in her spare time. What was our fight—no, what were we for?”

As a person of his standing, he did have basic knowledge as to what kind of people the Braves were. Actually, he had done a little more research than that. According to what he knew, a Brave’s strength was supposedly supported by persuasive power. The more dramatic a past they shouldered or the greater their despair, the more they were suited to being a strong Brave.

And so what sort of person was that girl—the twentieth Legal Brave, Lillia Asplay?

She had lost her beloved family and home, and she stewed in anger and sadness. And all those emotions pushed the young princess into a life of battle.

The strength given only to those who shouldered sadness, power allowed only for those who went through unspeakable pain, strength admitted only to those who clawed their way out from a pit of despair, power that fed on anger, strength that could only rest on shoulders that overcame their hate—all that was stuffed into her tiny body, and what was born as a result was a Legal Brave, a weapon wielded by the Church of Exalted Light.

“—Yeah, I don’t like this.”

He checked to make sure no one was around before he pulled a pouch from his pocket. He took out a small, folded piece of paper and unfolded it. Drawn on it was a beautiful girl with burning red hair whose smile felt somewhat maternal.

He wanted to rip it to shreds.

He hesitated.

He neatly refolded it and placed it in his pouch, then returned the pouch to his pocket.

“Hmph.”

Then, in a gesture of defiance, he looked up to the sky.

There was no snow falling here. He saw a long-tailed bird cut across the blue sky.

3. The Imperial Capital

Everything was big in the Imperial Capital.

There were plenty of reasons for that. For one, the city was built relatively recently, meaning there were barely any traditional institutions that demanded preservation. And as the heart of the Empire, the symbol of its authority, the capital had to awe its visitors and leave them with the impression of how incredible the Empire was. Additionally, the previous emperor, who had built the foundations for the city as it was now, loved extravagance and allotted the budget and zoning under the peculiar ideology that nothing could go wrong if anything and everything was built on a massive scale.

At any rate, because of all the above reasons, the temple that sat right in the middle of the Imperial Capital’s first district was immensely huge and immensely lavish. Sunlight poured in through the many stained-glass windows set into the absurdly high ceiling. The marble altar gleamed brightly in the filtered light, the scenes of myths carved on the walls stood out in bold relief.

It was a magnificent sight, one that would surely bring in a whole lot of money if it was made into a tourist attraction. But this was a designated holy place where laymen were not allowed. The only ones who could enter and enjoy the view were clergy above a certain rank and Braves who had been designated as saints…which was Lillia, the Legal Brave, and the Quasi Braves, who had equivalent qualifications to her.

“You’ve made it back.”

The priests, wearing important-looking purple vestments with red decorative sashes, came out to greet her with beaming smiles.

“We have heard the results of the battle. Again, you have done well in living up to the name and glory of a Brave.”

There was no hint of artifice behind their smiles. She didn’t sense any lies or hidden agendas, either. Lillia had more or less gotten used to seeing through those sorts of things. This meant they were genuinely happy that the Legal Brave had accomplished her task of saving humankind.

Ugh.

With a feeling of disgust, Lillia reaffirmed how she felt.

I really hate this place.

There was no second-guessing for the priests. They were convinced of the “righteousness” of everything they thought, felt, and did. That was why they would never doubt themselves and there would never be any hesitation to their actions. That was pure happiness for them, and perhaps it was significant in a religious sense that they had made that happiness a reality.

Those who had perfected righteousness only within themselves knew there could be no conclusion more correct than their own, so they quickly stopped listening to others. Once they began unilaterally forcing their will onto others, they quickly grew used to it. They forgot what it meant to meaningfully interact with other people.

“Hmm? Is something the matter, Brave Lillia?”

“Nothiiing.” She secretly stuck out her tongue when they couldn’t see. “…Oh right. How did the battle of Narvant turn out in the end? I sent the soldiers I met there as reinforcements, for the record.”

“The scheduled transmission from last night only stated that the current situation is terribly strained. The third fort has already fallen, and the soldiers have almost reached their limit of exhaustion. This is yet unconfirmed, but it is possible that the enemy has demons among their ranks.”

Hold on a second.

“…Shouldn’t I have met up with the reinforcements, then?”

She made an effort to suppress the irritation that was starting to creep into her voice.

“That is unnecessary. Seniorious is a Carillon that can display its immense power only against an individual opponent; you would be wasting that potential in a battle against a horde.”

“That’s seriously not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how the losses might not be so bad if I went, even if I went empty-handed.”

“That is also unnecessary. After cutting away so much of the elves’ curse, Seniorious will need tuning, and you must prepare for the next great task that will soon arrive. In the near future, the Visitor Elq Hrqstn will be officially recognized as an enemy. When that happens, you are the only one who can act as the standard-bearer for the troops who will put the creature down.”

I wish I could punch this guy.

Though she held her smile, she also tightened her hand into a fist.

“Furthermore, we already have reinforcements heading to the battle even as we speak. Quasi Brave Avgran T. Lontis, wielding Carillon Purgatorio, left the capital last week.”

“—Oh…”

She settled into an odd mood as she unclenched her fist.

There was only ever one Brave recognized at a time. That would never change.

However, there were always a number of those in any era who had qualifications that put them infinitely close to being a Brave. The Church did not let these people—who had the capability and power to be like a Brave, even though they weren’t legally recognized as such—do as they pleased. They were given the title of Quasi Brave and were treated the same as saints.

At the moment, there were about thirty Quasi Braves, all of whom had been dispatched to every corner of the globe. Lillia didn’t know the exact number, and she had personally met only a little more than ten of them.

Avgran was one of those Quasi Braves.

“Ohhh, him…”

“Does that bring you unease?”

“No. I think he’s probably the best match for taking on an army, but…”

Purgatorio wasn’t exactly a high-level Carillon. The upper limit of its magical energization was fairly low, and the weapon itself wasn’t a good match for taking on monsters like dragons or the oldest elves.

But if he could make good use of the special ability it manifested, then it could be incredibly powerful.

Purgatorio’s user first surveys a single battlefield, and all the enemies they can visually identify are designated as sinners. Then, so long as Purgatorio’s user stays on the battlefield, continually kindling their venenum, no single designated sinner can ever hope to run from Purgatorio’s blade. As long as Avgran kept swinging the sword, he could cut down everyone he decided was an enemy at the beginning. In a chaotic battle, with countless friends and foes intermingling with one another, there was no other Carillon that could be as reliable.

On top of that, there was the Quasi Brave Avgran’s personality. He was incorruptible, eloquent, and bright, and he truly believed that it was his life’s mission to serve as a shield for the weak; he wasn’t a man who would be ashamed of the title of Brave. There was no need to worry about him getting carried away during battle. So long as someone who needed protection lay behind him, he would never give in.

“That is a relief. Now please, go and fulfill your duty.” With a bright smile, the priest cut their conversation short. “Rest your body and prepare for the next battle. That is your fight now.”

“…Okeydoke.”

Not like she wanted to stay there chatting forever anyway. She gave a light wave of her hand and turned away from the priests.

“Where are you going?”

“Into town.”

“You will not be retiring to the Parlor of Light?”

While it depended on the scale of the building, most of the Church of Exalted Light’s facilities had rooms for saints to stay in. Since it was assumed that the Legal Brave would be making her main base here, in the First Temple in the Imperial Capital, they had a very large, very expensive room just for that.

It was probably inconvenient for the priests how that room was always empty. She wasn’t totally unaware of this inconvenience, though.

“…In a bit.”

Yet, Lillia could never grow to like the place.

She had a nomadic lifestyle, one that tossed her from battle to battle across the continent. She should have been thankful to have a place where she could always return to sleep at night. But…

She never wanted to think of that room, with its dazzling colors on top of the white of the marble and the red of the wool, as a place she could always call home.

She left the temple.

“Hoooo! Freedom!”

She stretched as far as she could.

The temple stood on a man-made shoal in the middle of the Great Melchera River for the purpose of separating the earthly world and the sanctuary. People had to cross one of the three big bridges in order to get in and out.

I don’t like these bridges, either, Lillia thought as she stepped on the tiles and their beautiful geometric patterns. She definitely got the feeling that the priests were using their money wrong, like the awful sense of style of the newly rich. Couldn’t the bridge be simpler and daintier and more ordinary?

Well, whatever. She didn’t want to be an uncouth person who spoke badly of others’ tastes. Especially not after she had just come back to town after finishing a troublesome task. She wanted to be more open-minded.

“Maybe I’ll go and get a bite to eat…”

She wouldn’t call herself a regular, but there were some places that she frequented from time to time that came to mind.

None of these establishments was particularly the kind she could just blindly say was delicious across the board, but a number of her acquaintances frequented those places. If luck was on her side, she might be able to catch one of them right at this time of day.

A Legal Brave’s battles were too overwhelming. An ordinary person wouldn’t be any help; they’d just get in the way. That’s why she often fought as an isolated force.

Naturally, she was used to being alone.

But it was at times like these, when she was away from battle, that she wanted to see a familiar face.

She didn’t want to talk to herself; she wanted to have a real conversation.

And if she could make a request, she’d want it to be with—

“Yo.”

Someone tapped her on the shoulder from behind.

Her heart almost leaped out of her mouth.

“…Willem.”

It was only through her iron will and acting chops that Lillia managed to suppress her shock.

She produced her regular expression and regular voice and schooled herself before turning around.

“Sometimes the way you pop up from nowhere really creeps me out.”

“Why does just saying hi get me a reaction like that?”

Standing there was a boy.

He wasn’t particularly tall or particularly short.

There was nothing remarkable about his black hair or eyes.

That wasn’t to say he was ugly, but it didn’t mean he had an especially handsome face, either. There wasn’t any muscle definition that anyone could see underneath his clothes, but it wasn’t like he was bone thin, either.

If there was anything about him that left an impression, it was his impudent gaze and the glint in his eye, oddly like he had turned his back on the world. But at the same time, that could also be considered common for boys his age. Broadly speaking, he was a regular boy whose like could be found in any city by the dozen.

“I just finished a job, so I was reporting to them,” the boy, Willem Kmetsch, said as he pointed to the church behind him. “Then those baldies told me you were also back. So I rushed out after you.”

“What? You mean you wanted to see my face that badly? Did you miss me?”

“Obviously not.” He denied it right away. It hurt a little. “The timing’s good, so I figured we could go grab something to eat. Going together’s better than going alone, yeah? Even if I do have to eat with you.”

“Oh-ho.” Lillia narrowed her eyes, thinking to herself how good her upset voice sounded. “That sure is a brash way of asking a girl your age out on a date.”

“When I ask out a girl my age in the future, I’ll choose my words a little more carefully.”

“Wait. What am I, then?”

“You’re Lillia.”

For a moment, she thought about what that meant—

“What the heck does that mean, huh?”

There were plenty of girls his age out there in the world. But no matter how far one searched, there was only one person on the planet who had the right to receive Willem Kmetsch’s “Lillia treatment”—Lillia Asplay.

Well, I guess it’s not an awful special treatment—

Lillia was a little annoyed with herself for starting to think like that.

After a bit of a walk, they wound up near the Imperial Students’ Quarter. There were a lot of shops geared toward younger people in the area where they could get large helpings of food for a reasonable price…and at the same time, since they still didn’t look much older than actual children, they didn’t stand out too terribly—another good reason to eat in the neighborhood.

Both Legal and Quasi Braves got hungry after a job. Lillia and Willem occupied a round, five-person table by themselves, and once all the meat dishes they ordered were laid out across it, they started squaring away every single dish into their bellies.

And while they did so, they chatted lightly about what kind of jobs they had both just finished.

“—You what?” Willem’s eyes widened as he munched on the last bits of the sauté. “Which means, lemme guess: You cut down the entire swarm of elves, even the elder kind, alone? In three days?”

“Yep.”

Willem swallowed what he had in his mouth, downed his cup of water, then shrugged in exasperation.

“What’s with that reaction?”

“As a man, I wholly sympathize with the general guy.”

What in the world does that mean? Lillia thought.

“Should I not’ve helped, then?”

“Not that. I mean, if you were going to help him, you should’ve been gentler about it.”

“It wasn’t really a situation I had time to be gentle about. No matter how much of a genius I might be, you know I couldn’t let a bunch of dependents have a piece of the action while also killing the elves, right?”

“That’s not really what I’m asking you to do here…”

With a groan, Willem bit into the next piece of meat.

Willem Kmetsch was Lillia’s senior apprentice of the sword.

But he was also unworthy of it.

Both of them looked up to the same man, learning the same style of swordplay. It was an exuberant art, one developed specifically for Braves, said to be unmatched when perfected. But while Lillia had quickly mastered the art, Willem, despite how hard he worked, only ever reached the fringes.

Teach had said that Willem had a fatal lack of talent.

Aptitude for the sword? Sure, he had some, a little more than the average person. But Willem was sorely missing the gifts necessary to make him more than human.

He could only ever grow strong relative to the average person. He could only ever gain strength that made sense within the confines of humanity. No matter how much time passed, no matter how hard he worked, he would only ever be a plain old person.

For someone who was born as a human and would spend their life as one, that was generally something that should be celebrated. But only those who had stepped out of the limits of their human vessels could wield the arts that their master taught. That sole reason turned something that should be celebrated into a curse. It turned nature into a lack of talent.

“So why are you teaching him this?”

Lillia had once asked Teach that very question.

“Because that boy just won’t give up,” the man had grumbled in response.

Ahhh. I think I get it now. Back then, Lillia had nodded sagely at her master.

Willem certainly never gave up.

No matter how impossible or unreasonable the task, he never stopped.

It didn’t matter what the people around him wanted. It didn’t matter how cruel reality was to him. He pushed forward, never letting go of his own wishes.

He never betrayed how he felt. He never lost sight of the despair and regret. He fought only for himself and everything he thought was important.

It was the complete opposite of Lillia Asplay’s way of life.

“Ooooh, I’m stuffed! That filled me right up!”

They finished eating and went out onto the street.

“Stuffed is practically an understatement. You ate way too much. I think you almost scared the server.”

“Hey, I’m a growing girl. It’s totally normal for kids my age. I actually think you didn’t eat enough, Willem.”

“You need to apologize to every fourteen- and fifteen-year-old out there—right now.”

The sun was starting to set. The crowds in the capital, however, weren’t thinning out at all. Carriages and waves of people passed by without any signs of slacking. In this sort of urban hustle and bustle, letting one’s guard down would only send a person slamming into someone else’s back and, at worst, with a pickpocketed wallet.

“Hmm?”

There was a gust of wind.

A piece of paper blew toward them out of nowhere.

It almost collided with Lillia’s face, but she quickly snatched it out of the air.

“Geez, that was close. Throw your garbage in the trash where it belongs!”

She quickly glanced at what it said.

It was the Paper—mass-printed information sent out for the general public, which had exploded in volume ever since the spreading of the letter press. All the information of important events that had happened recently on the continent was crammed humorously into a single sheet of paper.

Lillia’s eyes were drawn to the big header, printed in the most noticeable location on the sheet.

BEAUTIFUL TRAGIC PRINCESS DEFEATS ELF ARMY ONCE AGAIN!

A familiar story.

She snorted.

“What’re you doing?”

“Hey, look! Get a load of this!” She grabbed Willem’s collar and thrust the paper out before him.

“…Same thing as always.”

“Oh, c’mon! The stories are getting even more over-the-top than before, see?”

They both leaned forward to read the article.

The basic gist was that an army of over ten thousand gloom elves was closing in on the Empire’s northern borderlands. The soldiers on the defensive line, unable to put up a fight against the elves’ magic, had all been turned into frogs.

“There were over ten thousand of them?” Willem asked with a note of boredom in his tone.

“Not even a hundred,” she answered nonchalantly.

“Were they gloom elves?”

“There were some elders in there but all normal elves.”

“Did they turn everyone into frogs?”

“You know they don’t have the charm to use fantastical spells like that.”

They kept reading.

Lillia Asplay herself appeared on the scene. The somber sigh that the beautiful princess breathed was carried off by the wind and cured all the curses cast on the soldiers, and everyone who had been turned into a frog changed back.

“And this part?”

“Even I can’t do something that incredible.”

The Brave then unsheathed her Carillon, Seniorious, from her hip and raised it up to the heavens.

This was the stance for the legendary holy technique, True Crimson Rending Pulse of Desperation.

It was the most forbidden of forbidden techniques, one that would tear the earth and burn the heavens if unleashed, declared off-limits by her master—

“Bah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Lillia grabbed her sides and nearly fell over laughing, practically tearing up in hysterics.

“Seriously?! With a tongue twister like that, I’d barely even get the words out! Besides, I can’t imagine Teach inventing a forbidden technique that’s too powerful!”

“Wait, so this is funny to you?” Willem was conversely looking sullen. “This whole nonsense is getting out of hand. But hey, maybe it helps keep morale up on the field.”

“It’s fiiine, then! As long as it’s helping somebody, I consider that a wonderfully good deed.”

“Don’t pretend like you’re a saint while you prattle nonsense like that. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Oh reeeally? You’re telling me that?”

The Church of Exalted Light recognized both Legal Braves and Quasi Braves as saints.

“It doesn’t actually bother you that much, right?” said Lillia. “Not like anyone’s being put on the spot ’cause of it.”

“But the real you’s not written anywhere in here.”

“Huh?”

“If everything they write about you is just a load of crap, then nothing you actually do is ever gonna show up in the Paper. They’re totally ignoring the Lillia Asplay who spent three whole days carefully taking down a little under a hundred elves.”

“…Yeah, true.” Lillia nodded, still smiling. “But that’s different. It doesn’t really matter what I did, does it? A Brave’s greatest desire is to dedicate themselves to the public peace.”

“But that’s not your job.”

“No, look, that’s why I’m telling you that’s part of a Brave’s—”

“Even so.” Willem’s tone was cross—not particularly loud but flatly displeased. “That’s still not your job.”

“…Don’t give me that cheek, Quasi Brave,” Lillia replied before bursting into a cackling fit.

As she laughed, she made sure to wipe away the tears pooling in the corners of her eyes in a way that he wouldn’t see.

They decided to get their fill of the Imperial Capital, a place they only occasionally visited.

The Empire had gotten bigger and bigger by absorbing individual neighboring monster territories as they fell apart. The capital was at its center. There was a whole mixture of people and goods from all different races, languages, and cultures here—it was often said that making a round through the capital’s market was like venturing to every land on the continent.

Districts two and four were geared toward shopping and sightseeing.

With Lillia still grabbing Willem by the collar, they went up and down Griffon Street and Salamander Street, which straddled the two districts.

“Oh whoa, what is this?”

They’d stopped by a shop owned by a merchant who hailed from North Garmando. Lillia’s eyes went wide.

It was a piece of wholly exotic clothing—the fabric was so thin, anyone could see what was on the other side. She pinched a part of it.

“Sheesh, seriously, do people from Garmando actually wear this? They do, don’t they? It barely covers your legs at all! People would see everything!”

“Well, Garmando’s where Navrutri’s from.”

“Oh, now that you say that, it makes sense.”

Navrutri Teigozak was a Quasi Brave they were mutually acquainted with. He was a man from West Garmando, and he was loose when it came to women. Every time Lillia saw him, he was usually either chasing a girl or a girl was chasing him, and she saw much more of the former.

Filtering the whole Garmando region through their impression of Navrutri alone kind of felt like a super-rude thing to do, or a slight problem international relations–wise, but, well, she put that aside for the moment.

“Hmm, I think this might be a little too much for me to wear…”

She peeled back the silk, revealing the coquettish curves on the white legs of the stone statue currently donning the outfit.

She whirled around and asked, “How about this?”

“Fine, I guess? I suppose it’s like you to act grown-up,” Willem responded without a hint of panic on his face.

“…Willem, can’t you just take the bait like normal people?”

“Huh?”

“I was hoping you’d react by getting all red, or looking away, or acting all mad and saying, like, ‘How shameful!’ or something.”

Willem sighed. “What do you think I am?”

“A pure and simple boy inexperienced with girls.”

“I can’t really deny the second half, but get out of here with the first,” he responded with a groan. “And that’s a lot for you to say. Aren’t you ever shy about anything? You are biologically female, right?”

“I am a wonderful woman in the documents in city hall, too, but this isn’t too much. I’m just getting ready to lure in a good man one day. Just getting ready.”

“You want a man who’ll fall for that?”

“Well, I won’t know until that happens, will I? Don’t you think it’s important to be ready for any possibilities to ensure we have a bright future waiting for us?”

Willem’s expression twisted in disagreement.

Right, right. He probably got upset picturing Lillia Asplay showing some skin to a random guy in the future. Ba-ha-ha-ha, that felt extremely good.

“Hey.”

“Hmm?”

“All the gloom elves who attacked Dione are gone, right?”

The topic changed suddenly, but that didn’t surprise Lillia. This wasn’t the first time her handful of a senior apprentice brought up something like this.

Once the monsters occupying the land that used to be part of Dione, Kingdom of Knights, were wiped out, it became Empire territory. There was a bit of distance between it and the capital, but it wasn’t as far as certain corners of the country.

“Don’t you ever think that it’s time to go back?”

“I went and saw it last year. The area around the castle was in awful shape, all overgrown with weeds and stuff.”

“That’s not what I mean. You know that.”

She did.

What Willem Kmetsch was saying was this: “Build a city there. Bring people in. Take back the country where Lillia Asplay was born and grew up.”

Leave behind her days of battle, put down her sword, and reclaim her happy life as a princess.

It almost sounded absurd. But if Lillia truly, from the bottom of her heart, wanted that for herself, she could probably make it happen. Even though it wouldn’t be exactly how it used to be, she could very likely bring back the Dione kingdom she remembered.

“Hmm…”

In her pocket, she crumpled up the newspaper into a ball.

In a very poetic and roundabout way, it had been written about in this very paper: Lillia Asplay was fighting for her home. She wielded a sword to take back the land, the people, the prosperity, and everything else she loved that had been stripped away from her. She had laid bottomless grief into both her eyes…

“I don’t really feel like it.” She closed her eyes and gave her honest answer. “With the way things’ve worked out, my revenge is over, really. See, there’s a new city taking root there as part of the Empire. And they’re busy in the middle of fighting on the front lines against the orcs.” She scratched her cheek. “After all that, do I still want to go back to being a princess? After everything that’s happened?”

“That’s kinda heartless of you.”

“Probably.”

Heartless—yeah, that might be the most accurate descriptor here.

After all, Lillia Asplay as she was now had no confidence in her own feelings. She was not convinced that the anger and hatred and sadness and impatience and everything else she felt had truly come from her own heart.

She was sure that, as a person, she was lacking something very important.

“I am heartless, so that’s why I’m not really interested in the past,” she said, cackling.

And because she lacked that very important something, she could laugh herself off.

She thought about changing the subject.

“Oh. These clothes are pretty nice, huh? And they do have stuff made from actual fabric.”

She enthusiastically made her way through the forest of clothes.

“This is nice, too. I think I’d be comfortable wearing this. I could easily wear this in a more formal—Oh!” She remembered something. “Right, I was invited to the emperor’s Wintering Party. I need to start thinking about what I’m going to wear. I totally forgot.”

“Doesn’t the Imperial household have tailors for that? You can just ask them for what you want.”

“I did that last year, and when word leaked to the noble ladies, stuff with a similar design became super-popular. It got around like, ‘Dress like the Legal Brave!’”

“Fantasies sure are scary.”

“—Why are you making it sound like this has nothing to do with you? Weren’t you invited, too?”

Willem shrugged. “I turned ’em down. I already decided I’m gonna spend the night of the Wintering Party at home,” he said, like it was nothing.

“At home? You mean, with Allie and the others? You’re going back to Gomag?”

Willem’s home, the orphanage where he’d spent his childhood, was in a town on the outskirts of the Empire that wasn’t very easy to reach. It would take a long while to get there and back from the Imperial Capital.

“I already requested the time off. That’s why I’ve got a lot of days of work in a row starting tomorrow.”

“…Mm-hmm.”

Keeping Quasi Braves like Willem away from the Imperial Capital was probably a move the Church of Exalted Light wanted to avoid, especially in this day and age when the monster invasions were growing more relentless. Since they were pushing forward with it regardless, that meant the number of jobs this boy had been saddled with as bargaining chips had to be a lot.

“If the party’s too much of a bother for you, why don’t you come with?”

He asked so naturally that she almost didn’t respond properly right away.

“You want me to come, too?”

“Yeah. Al and the other little ones would be happy to see you.”

“Uhhh…”

She scratched her cheek.

What on earth is this guy tryin’ to say?

Not only would Quasi Brave Willem Kmetsch be leaving the capital, but so would Lillia Asplay at the same time. Something like that wouldn’t end with the Church fretting about it a little. If that actually happened, then a whole slew of priests would probably lose their jobs.

She didn’t think he was saying it as a joke, either.

He was genuinely inviting her into the happy circle of his family.

What made it so nasty was that this man understood very well the sort of weight his words had. He knew exactly what it meant for them to leave the capital shorthanded, how the Church would react to such a thing, and how difficult it would be to brush that aside and push forward with their own selfish wants. And he still brought it up to her in such a casual tone.

“No thanks,” Lillia replied. “I can’t go back to being a princess now. But it is nice taking part in a fancy party and getting a whiff of what it would be like every once in a while.”

It would be easy to nod and say yes.

But when she thought of the burden that Willem would have to shoulder if that happened, she just couldn’t bring herself to take him up on his kindness.

“Okay.”

Willem looked away, and from his profile, he seemed a tiny bit disappointed—though perhaps that was just her imagination, how she wanted him to feel.

It came back to her. Lillia remembered when she first saw Willem, back in that forest in the winter.

She had found herself irritated when she saw child Willem’s clunky training. She had even gotten angry. And despite knowing it was an improper remark, she hadn’t been able to keep her honest opinion to herself.

That was why she hadn’t noticed at the time.

Now, though, she could speculate.

Willem back then was trying his hardest to get stronger. He desperately wished for it. He had plenty of reasons. Even if he stumbled or fell, he had the fuel in his heart to keep climbing back on his feet. Even Lillia, who had just happened to get a peek at him practicing, could see that.

A thought had come to her at the time: Could she do the same?

If she wanted to copy his training, she could easily do so. If she wanted to get stronger, she could easily do so. That was why she didn’t understand.

Could she, Lillia Asplay, keep working hard at something while failing, like he was? Could she wish for something with all that strength?

Could she show others how unsightly it was when she stumbled, tripped, and fell, over and over, but still have a reason to stand despite all that?

There was no way.

Lillia—who had her country burned, lost her family, and was at the time brimming with sadness and hatred, just as everyone around her said she was—realized for the first time at that moment that she was empty.

That made her angry. Envy and jealousy swelled in her chest.

Such a young girl had no way of controlling such a vivid wave of emotion. And so—

“You suck.”

—it came out as that one utterance.

And ever since then, she had always had a delicate relationship with her senior apprentice, Willem.

4. That, Surely, Was a Tale of Love

The Church of Exalted Light was unforgiving and merciless.

Scoundrel Quasi Braves who asked for extended time off during busy periods, like Willem Kmetsch, were rewarded with a tremendous amount of tasks to carry out.

“Are you really that uncaring?!”

Willem had dashed out of the Imperial Capital yelling just that. Today, he would head east; tomorrow, west. He would venture from battlefield to battlefield, then to even more battlefields.

Under normal circumstances, the whole endeavor would be absurd. And under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even be finished with these tasks until after the main event: the night of the Wintering Party.

But even so, well…

Lillia idly thought about how if anyone could, it would be her idiot senior apprentice who could pull it off. He would use all the strength he had in his body to overcome his difficulties for the sole wish of spending a special day with his family at home.

That said, she knew there was no point in worrying about her fellow apprentice, so she set him aside for the time being.

Her current problem was Seniorious.

Chopping down those cursed elves had made the veins of enchantment in Carillon Seniorious a bit of a mess.

Of course, it wasn’t a Carillon fragile enough for its capabilities to drop or stop working entirely just because of that, but she still couldn’t take its toughness for granted and ignore its problems. And on top of that, Seniorious was the most respected blade of all the oldest and greatest Carillon. Unlike Mournen, which would always take more lives than hoped for, and Zermelfior, which quite literally ate away at its wielder, Seniorious was the trump card of trump cards, the last protector of all humankind. It needed to always be kept in top condition for when the time came.

And so she had to return Seniorious to the workshop for them to carry out a fine-tuned adjustment.

Lillia peeked into the workshop through a gap in the doorway.

Across the large, windowless room were complicated symbols drawn with a mixture of oil and steel powder. Above them, floating frozen in midair with nothing to support them, were dozens of familiar-looking metal pieces.

About twenty maintenance enchanters were muttering things to themselves as they hurriedly moved the talismans around. Whenever that happened, a faint line of light that seemed to hold the fragments together glinted briefly.

It looked like a creepy ritual.

It was a creepy ritual.

“Can’t you just, like, bang out a sword adjustment in one night?” she asked one of the enchanters she knew.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” answered a middle-aged enchanter with a magnificent beard as he wiped the sweat off his forehead with a straight face. “Do you know how delicately these works of art have been put together?”

Of course she did. A Carillon was made from a collection of dozens of unarranged talismans, bound together by veins of enchantment, stabilized after a bizarre and complex system of interactions and interference was established among them, then condensed into the shape of a weapon. Such a miraculous balance could obviously come together only as a result of a supernaturally precise structure. If something, like the placement of the talismans or the layout of the veins, was even slightly off, then the weapon would lose a considerable amount of power…or lose it entirely.

Lillia was factually aware of and could imagine how difficult a job it would be to make or adjust something like that, but…

“Willem does it, though. He takes the whole thing apart super-quick, then adjusts it all like bang-bang-bang, then puts it right back together.”

“That’s because he’s a weird exception.”

Yeah, I thought so. That’s the feeling I got.

“That’s not a stunt any person should pull.”

Got that feeling, too.

“And what he’s doing is nothing more than emergency maintenance. It won’t take care of the finer bits of damage, and a Carillon that is truly broken would be beyond his ability to fix.” The complaints kept on coming one after another from beneath that bushy beard of his. “And of course, you can’t just collect talismans on their own to make a new Carillon. It might be useful out there in the field, but to us, half-assed work will only give the swords unnecessary peculiarities—it’s all just street tricks that add to our work.”

“Huh.”

The man’s words were caustic, but the look in his eyes was somehow gentle.

Lillia had heard that when Willem was learning how to do those “street tricks,” he would spend a lot of time practicing here in the workshop. Since he was the type to push his own limits and get everyone around him involved in his goals, he surely had the maintenance enchanters here taking good care of him. He then learned all the skills he could, plagiarized all he could, then dashed off to battle without becoming a maintenance enchanter. In other words, he was their favorite incompetent pupil.

They recognized his excellence, and maybe they even adored him, but they couldn’t sincerely compliment what he did—that’s probably how it was for them. Sheesh, everyone was twisted in a way.

“So how much longer is it gonna take?” Lillia peeked into the workshop again and asked.

“At least another ten days.”

There was her answer.

The fact that Seniorious wasn’t with her wasn’t a huge problem. It wasn’t exactly a sword that was constantly called for in battle. If there were enemies popping up everywhere that demanded Seniorious to contend against, then humanity would have perished ages ago.

The problem was that while her sword was out for adjustment, she didn’t have any particular missions that sent her out on an expedition as the Legal Brave.

“…Man.”

Lillia didn’t have any hobbies in particular. She wasn’t sure how to use the free time she had suddenly been granted.

She walked along Griffon Street alone again.

There were a lot more shops open this time than the other day when she’d walked here with Willem. The store windows had many more products on display, too.

The first time she’d walked around, looking at all the stuff was a bit of fun in its own right, but…she quickly got bored of it. She stopped seeing the charm in the cute accessories, eccentric clothing, the bright and colorful wall ornaments.

She was used to fighting alone as the Legal Brave. But she wasn’t very comfortable walking around alone in a situation without her title. She couldn’t even pretend to have fun without an audience.

“…Sigh.”

At the corner of one street, she stopped under a roadside tree and vented her discontent into the sky.

“Hate to say it, but I’m a pretty boring girl…”

Maybe she should count the clouds and give them a hard number. Or maybe she should count the stones in the cobbled streets and compare it to the number recorded in city hall. Several ideas like that, ones she could confidently say were pointless, came to mind.

What were the people she knew doing right now?

Were they in battle? Were they at home?

Were they working with fellow soldiers? Were they laughing with their families? Were they staring lovingly into their date’s eyes?

“Ha-choo!”

Her own massive sneeze caught her by surprise and dragged her consciousness back to reality.

“…Brrr.”

She had probably gotten careless because she was in the capital. It would’ve been wise if she’d worn another layer before going out.

Evening, at a café near the Imperial Students’ Quarter.

“I’ll be down in the Maze again for a while starting tomorrow,” Kaya Kaltran said, downing her mug full of beer.

She was a woman of about thirty with a large stature. Though she was generally slim, the swelling of her tempered muscles could be seen from beneath her clothes.

“What…? But didn’t you just come out from them yesterday?” Lillia asked, her hand frozen in place holding her tin cup of juice.

Kaya was an Adventurer. And Adventurers were responsible for taking care of any danger—which was synonymous with adventure—around town. For example, they were the ones who took care of monster-related threats not significant enough to warrant the Legal Brave or Quasi Braves to be dispatched.

For an Adventurer, however, it was hard to call this a stable source of income. It wasn’t like monsters were rearing their heads everywhere all the time, and the probability of each monster being just at the right skill level for each Adventurer was extremely low. And of course, once the monster was dealt with, that was it. Rarely did something so convenient as that same monster fetching the same reward appearing again in the same exact spot ever occur.

And that’s where an Adventurer’s second way of earning their keep came in: the Maze. This mysterious cluster of sprawling underground structures was filled with dangerous monsters and rare treasures. And the deeper into the Maze one went, the higher the number of these monsters and the quality of these treasures went up… However—

“Is it okay to go back in so soon after coming out? You’re going to the deepest floors, right? I heard it’s filled with nasty curses down there.”

—once one reached the depths, harmful curses spontaneously occurred in great number and lurked around every corner. Just staying in the Maze was enough to slowly eat away at a person’s body and make it rot.

People first needed talismans that cut the effectiveness of curses by 90 percent in order to prevent this from happening. On top of that, it was important to only go down in short trips, coming up to rest in between so that the curses could be expelled from the body…or, at least, that was how it normally was.

“I guess all I can really do is just buy up more warding talismans. They cost quite a bit of coin and they just make me feel sluggish afterward, so I don’t really want to, though.”

“But you’re still going?”

“Well, something came up and I need to save up money, fast. I don’t really have the time to take all the breaks that the guidelines call for.”

“This something surely can’t be more important than your health.”

“A fang-hare burrow popped up near my city.”

Lillia made a disgusted noise that wasn’t very proper of her.

Fang-hares were low-level monsters—small, dangerous creatures whose front teeth could rip even iron armor to shreds. In terms of the Adventurers’ level classification, level 11 was about the right skill level to take care of them. In short, a group of Adventurers with average experience could easily get rid of them.

But the true threat of the fang-hare was not in its outward strength.

“Their numbers will soar right back up if we don’t exterminate all of them, and their burrows have so many exits that it’s easy for at least a few of them to slip away. I need to hire some Adventurers as soon as I can to do something about them.”

“…Can’t you do it on your own?”

“That’s what I would’ve done if it was just one big monster. But I obviously can’t go rabbit hunting on my own. I need at least twenty Adventurers on the stronger side, and I need to keep them for a stretch of at least a month, otherwise the problem’ll just drag on. All that’s definitely gonna cost me…” Kaya touched the ends of her thumb and index finger together, making the shape of a coin.

It was easy to kill one fang-hare. It wasn’t all that hard to dispatch ten of them, either. But exterminating several hundred whose numbers kept on growing as they ran all over the place was a task that called for a considerable commitment of time and manpower.

In a way, they were foes that were much more of a nuisance than a swarm of elves. At the very least, elves could be driven away by simply striking at them with enough combat strength. That would be a cheap and easy way of solving the problem.

“I’m holing myself up underground all for the sake of one city at a time where everyone is getting more scared of the monster threat every day, so I feel like I’m making it worse for you guys.”

Kaya was level 39. Adventurers trusted the system of levels as a relatively reliable measure that converted an individual’s proficiency and experience in battle into a rough number. As a guideline, a general townsperson would be 2 or 3, a practiced soldier would be about 10, and someone who reached the normal limits of human potential would land at somewhere around 30.

In short, that meant the Alliance recognized Kaya as an expert who was abnormally at home in battle.

“…Do a lot of people say that?”

“I think there’s been more recently,” Kaya replied, smiling weakly. “If you guys just went wild on the front line, then a lot of people who didn’t have to die would still be around…and stuff.”

“Wait, what? Really?”

That sounds like what I’d expect, Lillia thought.

The world was full of all sorts of people. Among them were those who had to pin the blame on someone else, otherwise they couldn’t handle whatever tragedies they were enduring. And most of the time, the stronger someone felt that way, the louder their voice was; they acted as a sort of representative of the people, harassing the ones they wanted to blame.

“But that isn’t logical at all. So many of the talismans we use in the first place were created relying on the Gray you guys found underground. See? You are contributing to the front line.”

Curses were originally powerful “labels” meant to influence reality—like when a child who’s constantly called an idiot actually grows up to be an idiot or when a girl who’s constantly told she’s beautiful becomes even more gorgeous. Labels with fixed conditions could sometimes transform how things were in real life.

But the curses lurking in the depths of the Maze occurred naturally. They didn’t have an end change in mind that curses were originally supposed to come with. And so those who stayed for a long time at the bottom of the Maze, surrounded by this magic, would lose only their original state and “something that was nothing” would take root instead.

That was, so to speak, like a pure-white canvas that had been bleached of all corruption. One could easily add to something that was nothing. Those characteristics were extremely convenient for humankind when they created their talismans, the catalysts they used to control the logic of a curse—which meant this lost matter, nicknamed “the Gray,” was traded at high value up here on the surface.

“It’s a little relieving to hear that from a person standing on humanity’s front line,” Kaya replied with a weak smile, her face slightly red from drinking.

She looks exhausted.

Adventurers like Kaya, who spent most of their time underground, had very few opportunities to worry about what others thought of them. That’s why Kaya probably couldn’t help but dwell on even the slightest bit of gossip.

…Lillia didn’t consider that a bad thing, nor did she even want to think of it in that way.

She decided to ask a bit of a mean question. “Do you think you have to be the one to keep that city safe, Kaya?”

“Hmm?”

“The people could just do their own fighting or even hire people to do it, right? If they can’t, then…I hate to say it, but they’re not going to last long in this day and age, even if they do manage to fend off the fang-hares.”

“Yeah, I completely agree with you.”

“Then—”

“But at the end of the day, that’s where my family is,” Kaya said quietly, almost as though she was trying to convince herself. “That’s my husband’s hometown, my kid’s hometown, and I have a lot of memories there, too. I can’t just leave it alone.”

Lillia had thought that might be her answer.

It made her feel just a tad lonely hearing the answer she’d thought she would receive.

“And you, Lillia, you’ve got that city—Gomag, was it? Willem’s hometown? If things got dicey there, you’d feel obligated to help, wouldn’t you?”

“Ah-ha-ha. You sure are funny, Kaya.”

“Hmm? Am I off?”

“Way off. You were practically off the target at that point.”

“Awww, well, that’s too bad.”

At the same time, they both made similar-looking stilted smiles and gulped down their drinks.

Five minutes later:

“That’s it! We’re breaking up!”

Emissa Hodwin forcefully slammed the table with her open palm.

The plates and cups floated in midair for a second. Everyone in the room turned to look at her briefly.

“I really am fed up with him this time!”

Emissa was also an Adventurer, but she was an entirely different breed from a normal one. On the outside, she looked like a prim and proper young lady of good upbringing who was around twenty, but on the inside, she was a powerful huntress who specialized only in taking down monsters.

“Again? How many days will it take for you to go back to him this time?” Kaya asked, unimpressed.

“I mean it this time; I mean it! I’m not forgiving him this time, no matter what!” she yelled and downed her entire bottle of cider in a single swig.

“…Erm…”

“Oh, sorry. I guess this is all pretty shocking if you’re not used to it.”

Emissa had suddenly barged into the café and headed straight to their table before plopping herself down right next to Lillia. She hadn’t ordered any food, just a whole bottle of alcohol. And before she could even pull out the cork, much less get drunk, she had practically yelled all of that to them.

Lillia had been left speechless at the sudden development of events, and Kaya topped off her cup. From the looks of it, it was a distilled spirit that was a little on the strong side.

“This is a fairly regular event. Her boyfriend’s pretty cute and has a decent personality, so the ladies are usually all over him the moment he’s left on his own.”

“Oh…”

Lillia had heard a little bit about this before. Emissa was the daughter of a rich family in the countryside. Her natural abundance of venenum meant she would blast everything in sight when she got just a little worked up. As a matter of course, she was tossed into a pitch-black oubliette, effectively robbing her of her vision. Emissa spent her entire childhood and adolescence without being able to see or touch anything.

The one who broke her free was a young Adventurer who was in the area for an entirely different reason.

He was level 9 at the time—so considerably strong but not strong enough; he wasn’t allowed to take on most of the requests for monster extermination the Alliance collected, since they were “too dangerous” for him. This boy noticed a girl in the pitch-black dungeons and felt concerned for her, then subsequently approached the girl before taking her by the hand and pulling her out of the darkness.

Of course, that wasn’t enough to solve the underlying problem that had gotten her there in the first place. After that, they went through unimaginable endeavors and hardships until Emissa could get her powers under control. In the end, the two still held each other’s hand and overcame those trials together. They then swore their futures to each other and began their journey together as Adventurers…but—

“Too big of a level gap, those two. Mr. Boyfriend is 17, and Emissa’s 61.”

It wasn’t a low number by any means; 17 was actually a little higher than the average Adventurer. He could take on requests to dispatch the highest-level monsters, and if he wanted to go underground, he could easily get permission to go down to the fifth floor of the Maze. Considering he was only level 9 just a few years ago, one could even call that a staggering increase.

But with Emissa at level 61—the second-highest recorded number of all Adventurers registered with the Alliance—she could potentially take on an army by herself. The gap between them was so massive, it was almost stupid to even compare them.

Emissa couldn’t take her boyfriend along to her jobs. He would die in seconds.

Having said that, Emissa couldn’t tag along to her boyfriend’s work, either. She was terrible at wielding her power while paying attention to the collateral damage she could cause—whenever she defeated a “high-level monster” appropriate for someone at level 17, the entire landscape would end up looking completely different by the time the fight was over.

They couldn’t take on the same jobs together. They had to go to different places and work separately. And so, of course—

“He saved some girl I don’t know again! She was giving him bedroom eyes!”

—these kinds of incidents would obviously keep happening.

“Does it really matter?”

Lillia understood exactly why Kaya was so calm.

With a bit of a bitter, or rather annoyed, smile, Lillia said, “If that always bothers you, then that would mean he would have to keep his distance from half the population, right?”

“I wish he would!” Emissa yelled, and Kaya smiled with glee. “And listen! She was super-pretty, too!”

“That’s a bold claim for someone so blinded by jealousy…”

Lillia grabbed a piece of fried river fish from the plate and tossed it in her mouth. Delicious.

“By the way, I don’t think you should worry much about them,” Kaya whispered quietly to Lillia so that Emissa couldn’t hear. “See, she was alone in a dark place for such a long time that she’s practically like a newborn baby. She mostly just wants to be spoiled, and she’s going through a phase where she wishes she could keep this nice older guy she adores all to herself. That’s why she gets so upset when her protector isn’t right nearby.”

Now that Emissa was an adult, she was making up for the healthy childhood she’d been robbed of. Well, that made sense.

“…I see. I understand.” Lillia nodded as she munched on her food.

“Do you feel any affinity to her?”

“Hmm? What do you mean?”

There was a wicked look on Kaya’s face when she asked that, so Lillia pretended not to get it.

On an entirely unrelated note, even non-Adventurers who wanted to fight alongside the Alliance could get their experience measured and have their level calculated for them. So when Lillia had hers measured before, the number she got was 77. Her results shocked everyone; it was beyond what was considered in the realm of possibility, and it was thought that no one would ever be able to come close to it. And when Willem had his number measured after her, he got 69. Everyone then had been at a loss for words.

At any rate, Lillia felt no particular affinity to Emissa. She thought only about how rough it must be for her.

Another five minutes later:

“…And you, Lillia, sitting there like some sort of spectator—how’ve things been with you and Willem lately?” Emissa, eyes totally glazed over, decided to suddenly bring up this topic, of all things.

“Ooh, yes. I’ve been wondering, too!” Kaya, in high spirits, immediately jumped on the conversation.

“No need to ask, because there’s nothing going on,” Lillia nonchalantly replied. “He’s just my annoying senior. Always has been, always will be.”

“Awww, but why, though? It’s not like you hate him or anything, right?”

“Actually, if I had to pick, I think hate is pretty accurate.”

“Awww, why’d you have to say that? You guys act all fidgety and shy when you’re around each other. Just nab him and settle this already!”

They could say that all they wanted.

“But you’re confident you could get him if you wanted, right?”

“I mean, I’m not gonna say no.”

Putting aside the Lillia Asplay who was a product of society’s fantasies, Lillia didn’t think her looks and physique, which served as basis for the wild rumors about her, were all that terrible.

Even though she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, her appearance was at least average. Even though she was far from voluptuous, the parts of her body she wanted to stick out did, and the parts that she wanted to curve inward did as well. More importantly, she was still growing, so anything that was a little lacking now could be compensated for by the promise of the future.

And—this was the important part—Lillia was confident that her looks weren’t that far removed from Willem’s tastes.

Despite his absurdly strong self-control, Willem was still a boy going through puberty. He thought and felt things about girls his age. And time and time again, Lillia had sensed his bewilderment seeping into all the conversations they had together. If she threw out the relationship they had now, he would surely start seeing her as a girl, romantically.

She was confident about that.

But…

“It’s fine. He wouldn’t resist if you literally pinned him down.”

“I mean, I’m fairly sure I can confidently say he wouldn’t be able to resist me.”

In terms of a Legal Brave’s skills, she had a certain degree of mastery over incapacitating strikes. She knew of several special moves that could render a person’s entire body into a state of paralysis. She could hit her opponent in all the right spots to make sure they wouldn’t be able to move a muscle—even if that opponent was Willem, who was known for being particularly unyielding. Afterward, she could do whatever she wanted with him. Huh, that actually sounds kinda fun. Maybe I’ll give it a shot—

Wait.

It felt like her thoughts were headed off in an odd direction.

“What I can do and what I will do are totally different things. If I did say that, then I’d probably have to destroy the entire Imperial Capital right now.”

“Wow, that’s a pretty gruesome example. And you’re probably serious, too.”

“It’s like…,” Lillia began, sorting out all the jumbled-up feelings inside herself, “…if I had to compare it to something, then it’d probably be like a pretty flower blooming at the top of a really high mountain.”

“Uh-huh,” Emissa said with a nod.

“When you see it dancing in the wind from far away, you think, oh, that’s nice.”

“Okay.”

“It’s like you want it so badly for yourself, even if it means plucking it out.”

“What?” Emissa tilted her head. “…What does that mean? How does that relate to anything?”

She looked confused. And Lillia could see why. She personally felt that it wasn’t the perfect metaphor, either. But what could she do about that? Even she didn’t exactly understand her own feelings, after all.

“Hey, you’re trying to confuse me by making it difficult! At least let me get excited about people who aren’t me for once, okay?! I want to hear about the unapologetically bittersweet stuff!”

Well, you came to the wrong person for that.

“…Lillia, you’ll be fourteen this year, right?” Kaya asked, still topping off Lillia’s cup with alcohol.

“Huh? Yeah, I will.”

“And Willem’s fifteen.”

“Er, yes, that’s right.”

“Well, a lot of things are delicate at that age. Yeah. I get that. And I want to be an understanding adult in your life, yeah.”

“…Kaya?” With a sigh, Lillia asked, “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

“Whoops, you got me.”

Kaya grinned like a child.

Did Lillia Asplay love Willem Kmetsch?

She probably did. She couldn’t deny that.

Though she had decided she would never show it, she liked the boy the way he was. She found the strength of his heart dependable. She envied how deep his love was. All those feelings came together within Lillia to create certain affection for him.

Did Lillia Asplay hate Willem Kmetsch?

She probably did. She wouldn’t deny that.

Though she had no intentions of hiding it, she felt uneasy about this boy. She envied the strength of his heart. She felt bitter over how deep his love was. All those feelings came together within Lillia to create certain loathing of him.

They often said that love and hate were two sides of the same coin.

The coin inside Lillia was not being flipped or rolled around anywhere—it sat squarely with the “hate” side facing up.

5. Esteemed Blood

The sun rose and set seven times after that.

Nothing about Lillia’s situation had changed.

Seniorious was still in pieces over in the workshop, Willem was running around the continent from battlefield to battlefield, and, for better or for worse, the status of battles around the world she heard about from hearsay was all in a deadlock.

The weather was so mild, Lillia almost forgot that it was the middle of winter.

The warm sunlight tickled her eyes. The calm wind brushed gently over her skin. The scent of dried grasses drifted on the breeze.

“Is it, perhaps, my life you want?”

It was a sudden question.

A heavy stir, heavy enough that it almost felt physical, sped through the audience that surrounded them—a collection of knights who all wore stern looks.

“Ummm… I don’t quite get what you mean,” Lillia said as she scratched her head. “Once I take the life of a weary old man, it’s not like I can then put it up for show on my shelf or make a good meal out of it. Would there be any merit for me in slaying the emperor?”

Another stir shot through the onlookers.

“Well, let’s suppose there is one benefit that I’m not aware of. Depending on what that is, I might think about it.”

An especially old knight’s expression burst to life in shock. He was about to unconsciously take a half step forward, but his master’s gaze kept him in check.

“Hmph. How earnestly do you mean that?”

“I don’t really have a reason to lie right now,” Lillia responded breezily before drawing her sword—a long, narrow sword meant for competitive use. It was about as thick as her finger and it didn’t have a blade. The tip ballooned out like a ball and was incredibly funny-looking.

She swung it a bit to see what it was like. It was way too light to be used as a weapon, but it wasn’t so bad if she considered it nothing more than a toy.

“We have doubts about the end of your homeland, Dione. The way it was destroyed was much too unnatural—or so the rumors say.”

The emperor took a few steps forward and stood along the match starting line.

He raised his head.

“The kingdom of the Dione Order was founded by the pinnacle of valor, the first Legal Brave, Abel Melchera. It was a land that should not have been so easily destroyed, even by foes such as gloom elves.”

“And so someone’s plot must have been behind its downfall, then?”

“There are a handful who say as such. And if there is anyone who has benefitted the most from the destruction of Dione, that would naturally be the Empire, which has presently annexed the land as its own territory, and its leader. In essence…”

The middle-aged man then spread his arms out wide.

His great cloak fluttered in the wind.

“…Me.”

Lillia was unsure how she was supposed to respond to his theatrical declaration.

She sighed slightly as she scratched the back of her head.

“Isn’t that a little too simplistic?”

“Of course. The masses can only accept conclusions that everyone can understand. And so what is simplistic is the starting point of all rumors.”

“…Hmm, that sounded like the kind of one-sided explanation you’d expect of a ruler, but perhaps I was just imagining things. Okay, so you suspect that I might’ve hopped on board with that simplistic thinking, too, right?”

“I apologize if I made you upset…our current Legal Brave, Lillia Asplay.”

The emperor’s eyes narrowed slightly.

He received a sword from his attendant—one meant for competitions, just like Lillia’s, and held it before him.

Right, so he’s not denying his suspicions.

Encouraged by his gaze, Lillia also held her sword out before her. She leaned forward slightly and kept the tip low.

Another wave of tension passed among the knights around them. Some even had their hands on the hilts of their swords.

“And? So you hear that the Legal Brave, who may or may not want to kill the emperor, is bored out of her mind in the Imperial Capital, and so you invite her in to see how she really feels? Despite how close the Wintering Party is, you even have bait waiting for me, dressed up as swordplay?”

“Well, if you were to put it plainly, then I suppose that’s accurate.”

Both of their stances were one of the basic forms in a legitimate sword-fighting style. Their leading foot was directed slightly to the left while both the tip of the sword and upper half of the body faced forward. The name most knew it by was thunder focus—it wasn’t just a style that was suited for both attack and defense in a real battle but one that also held a formal meaning in friendly matches to show each other respect.

…What a piece of work.

“Begin!”

The referee lowered his raised hand.

At the same time, Lillia stepped forward.

It was a large step forward to match the adult man she was up against. She controlled her sword, which was several times lighter than what she usually wielded, with the flexibility of her wrist, aiming for his spleen with a whiplike movement—

…Aw, come on.

The emperor also stepped forward. The deliberate sweep of his sword, which was definitively not something of child’s play, went for Lillia’s neck. She briefly stepped to the left, dodging the attack simply by changing her position.

She internally clicked her tongue.

The emperor’s movements were suited to showing off in a sword-fighting match, but they were inadequate for use in battle against a real enemy. It was the optimal solution for carrying out attacks according to the rules of a match where no one had any intention of killing their opponent, and they were the incredibly foolish movements for anyone who wanted to stay alive.

If she felt up for it, Lillia could have ended the emperor’s life in that first strike.

Of course, if she truly intended on doing that, then it wouldn’t matter if or how the emperor resisted. He was skilled at swordplay but only within the confines of an ordinary person. If Lillia wanted to kill the emperor with her power of the Legal Brave, which surpassed the framework considered normal for most people, then she could cut him down in an instant.

And yet—no, perhaps it was because of that possibility—in front of an entire gallery of his loyal knights, the emperor put his life in Lillia’s hands.

That sure is a crooked way of testing me.

If Lillia really did want to kill him, then she wouldn’t let this perfect opportunity slip away. If the match started and ended simply as a match, then that would prove that Lillia had no intentions of murdering him.

To put it conversely, if she didn’t kill him right then and there, it would be proof that the massive power of the Legal Brave was not a threat to the Empire.

This is why I hate the trappings of being a ruler. It’s all such a pain.

The blade-less swords crossed with fierce noises.

Side strike and ring strike. Short pierce and right topple. Ceremonious brandish and reverse ceremonious brandish.

Almost as though they had agreed on the choreography beforehand, the two swords danced, growled, fluttered, leaped, and crashed against each other.

Honestly—this is absurd.

Left topple and heavy ring strike. Core strike and core strike. Thunder strike and rising strike.

The lithe Lillia danced this way and that as she continued to make perfect strike after perfect strike.

In all, there had been eighty-seven strikes. That was the last one.

The emperor, after blocking a heavy side strike, took a half step back, almost as though he had been overwhelmed. In turn, Lillia, who had her side strike blocked, put another half step of distance between them, almost as though she had been pushed back.

“—Impressive.”

The sweaty emperor grinned like a young boy and lowered his stance.

“You truly have quite the education. I almost want those of my own blood to learn from you.”

“Aw, thanks.”

Lillia, pretending to wipe sweat from her forehead, also dropped her guard.

The tension vanished from the faces of all the attending knights.

“No, those are not empty words of praise. I honestly believe you are much too good to be a Brave— Ah yes. Why don’t you let me adopt you, Lillia Asplay?”

This was what happened when she let down her guard. The knights around them leaned back, leaned forward, and some almost fell over. Lillia glanced at them from the corner of her eye before shaking her head.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll have to turn you down.”

“You know I am not joking.”

“I didn’t think so. If you could officially take me into your household, then you could completely stamp out that rumor that you usurped Dione land by some plot. That’s a juicy idea for the both of us. You have plenty of reason to ask, and I can tell that you’re saying it out of kindness as well.”

“Naturally.”

“But no thanks,” Lillia asserted and tossed away her sword. It swirled in the air as it glided in an arc and landed right in the leather holster standing in the corner of the room.

She turned away from the emperor.

Her business here was done. She would go back to the church. Even though that definitely wasn’t her home, it was still a place for her to stay. It wasn’t all that comfortable, but she could tolerate it.

“I’ll ignore the calculation behind it and just take home the sentiment… Oh, but—” She glanced over her shoulder, a faint smile appearing on her face. “—I think it did make me a little happy. So thanks for that, Gramps.”

Sword techniques used in actual battle and techniques used in competition were completely different.

The purpose of a sword in combat was to defeat opponents while staying unharmed, and to do those two things efficiently. On the other hand, the sword in sport was focused on displaying moves more outstanding than the competition’s. For that, it had a spiritual connotation that demanded pure elegance and beauty.

There was something called the Score of Arms.

Put simply, it was a record of sword-fighting matches. It noted in detail how the competitors held their stances, the way they stepped, how they swung their sword. It held the records for most face-offs in official matches over a certain scale, outdoor ones aside. One could pay any sensible bookstore two or three silver and obtain the numerous volumes of the Score that organized that all as easily digestible information.

“—Truly impressive,” the emperor murmured quietly, wiping away the sweat from his forehead.

Despite the rigorous activity he had just been through, his sweat was almost freezing cold.

“In what way, sire?” inquired one of his loyal retainers, to which he shook his head in response.

There was no use in explaining to someone who did not understand. That was what the head movement conveyed and what they sensed from each other.

He recalled the first strike, from when their swords crossed. From the start, he had gone for the left neck, then went for the right third side strike. When her response came, he then took a half step back and went for a deep knell strike, pulled back, then went for the lightning, topple, and ring.

That was a famous score left behind by the match between Giacomo Nielento and Mehmet Zeygan twenty-three years ago at the Alvarie Competition. Zeygan at the time was a knight who had just lost his territory, and Nielento was a noble who had ended up taking that land. In a way, those two were a reflection of the relationship between the emperor himself and Lillia just now.

Then, when she struck back with a ring in response, he only stepped away before striking three short pierces. He then changed which score he was borrowing from to that of Noman Romanin and Benvenuto Zacsoit’s match in trial. And then, after the twenty-first strike, he switched to a different record. And then after that, he chose another one.

Only those who could understand would understand.

The emperor had reached out to her at first only as a bit of fun. Lillia had responded to him in kind—and what’s more, she had shot back with a message of her own.

If one who was knowledgeable about the Score of Arms had seen the order in which it happened, they would have realized that there was an entire conversation in their exchange of blades. And perhaps they would have been able to hear what it was that Lillia wanted to say.

Essentially, she wanted to say: “I don’t think my homeland was lost because of the Empire.” “But I can’t say they were unrelated.” “I know.” “It was coincidence after coincidence that led the small tricks the Empire had set up to obtain Dione without bloodshed into total tragedy.” “I have no intentions of blaming you after all this time.” “I can’t take back the past.” “I think the way things are now is the most suitable for both of us. My only wish is that you are at least kind to the people who now live in that land—”

Oh, how ironic fate was.

She had the blood of a sovereign.

This girl, who had lost her country, lost her people, and lost everything she held on to, without a doubt, had a claim to rulership. She had been born to rule others.

He wanted her.

If he could make the girl a part of his bloodline, then the Empire’s future would become even more solid. And that would also make human history even more unshakable. They could be proud of their unwavering prosperity, even before the looming monster threat before them.

He would have gained new power in his household, and perhaps he could have protected the even-wider family that was the human race.

“I was so close.”

He shook his head bitterly.

“So thanks for that, Gramps.”

“…Gramps, eh?”

The corner of his mouth twisted upward, and he looked to the sky.

She refused his offer to become family. She would never call him Father.

But what she said right after that was brimming with an odd warmth that made it hard for him to compartmentalize it simply as words of parting.

“I suppose…it’s not all bad. And I’ll leave it at that,” he murmured quietly—quietly enough so that the knights around him couldn’t hear, so that only the warm winter sky was privy to his words.

She thought about going back to the church.

On the way, she considered buying something for those glum-looking priests.

After a bit of thinking, she stumbled upon an idea. Oh yeah, that oughtta be good. Yesterday, she’d seen herb-mustard sweet buns at a stall in the corner of the market. She decided to try one out of curiosity and deeply regretted it. This so-called “food” was super-bitter and spicy and—to top it off—reeked to high heaven. She even wondered if these bun things should actually be categorized as poison and be regulated by law.

I’m gonna buy a whole mountain of those buns and make the priests take ’em. I’ll say they should have one each. And of course they won’t refuse a handout from the Legal Brave, pinnacle of saints. I’ll have a special front-row seat to watch the internal calm they gained through tons of training shatter to pieces right in front of my eyes, heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

Lillia walked through the castle with a strange (and, of course, internal) cackle.

“……………Hmm?”

As she passed through a wide, high-ceilinged hallway that looked out over the courtyard, she stopped.

The word courtyard might have been too modest a description. It was a grand, expansive garden. There was a spring, a river flowing through it; it was thick with trees, and the seasonal flowers bloomed profusely, and…

A man and a woman who looked like a nice match were looking at each other meaningfully.

“Hmm?”

Deep crevices formed on Lillia’s forehead.

She recognized their faces.

“Hmmmm?”

She reflexively hid her presence, then dashed behind a nearby pillar.

The heck is he even doing here? I thought the Church gave him work to do that ought to have him running around the Empire by now! If he’s already back, then he should’ve said something or at least shown his face!

She strained her ears. She couldn’t really hear what they were saying. All she could hear was the sound of leaves rustling gently in the wind.

Regular invisibility techniques didn’t work on that man, Willem Kmetsch. As a result of running around battlefields a good-for-nothing like him was unsuited for, his ability to detect threats had gotten so sensitive that even professional assassins went home frustrated with him.

Among the transcendent arts that only the Legal Brave could use was one that could dilute not only her presence but her very existence, all by steeping her mind and body into the very fabric of nature itself. It really tired her out, and if she made a mess of trying to control it, she risked spreading her existence so thin that she would just vanish entirely. It was a technique she wanted to avoid if possible, but she had no other choice at this moment. She inhaled deeply and quietly, then held her breath.

“This may perhaps be a shameless question.” The woman’s voice genuinely sounded like a ringing bell. “Sir Willem, is there a special someone in your life?” she asked, lowering both her face and her eyes, her white cheeks flushing slightly.

The woman looked as though the very words trim, pure, and pretty had been painted directly onto a canvas. Her face suggested a good upbringing, and the air about her was fragile. And…yes, the parts of her body that were supposed to stick out and the parts that were supposed to tuck in did just that. In a word, yes, she looked like a man’s ideal type.

This woman was the emperor’s niece. She was nineteen years old.

She was a beautiful, gentle girl of the Imperial family. She had an openhearted side to her, and she sometimes went down to wander around the castle town, so she was extremely popular with the common folk.

Her name was Princess—well, that obviously wasn’t her real name, but anyone using that name within the Empire would be understood. The emperor didn’t have a daughter, and among all his relatives, she was the only unmarried woman. The name Princess perfectly suited her looks and behavior. And there weren’t any other ladies within the entirety of the Empire with a high-enough position to be called princesses anyway.

“…Come on, don’t ask me that.”

On the other hand, Willem was his usual self. If one took the words normal and plain and meager and threw them all in a pot, the resulting stew would look like his face. One could say he was no match for her, and there truly was no one else who was a worse match than him.

“Every person I know’s been asking me that lately. I’m busy with training and missions; I don’t have any time to be bothered with stuff like that.”

“Everyone you know… Like whom?”

“The Brugatte family over at the bookstore. Emissa and Kaya. The Migisiron guys. The trio at the Alliance desk. That fat priest in the church. And Navrutri and the emperor, too.”

They sure have a lot of free time, Lillia thought.

“My, even the emperor?” The woman smiled. “You are quite popular.”

“No, I’m just everyone’s little plaything. Sheesh.”

The man himself, of course, knew that well.

“Perhaps the reason why so many people want to know is because you have many eyes on you. Everyone knows that.”

“They’re just playing with me,” Willem sullenly responded.

“Of course not. Young Brave, Sir Willem Kmetsch, you may not have been front and center for very long, but you are on equal footing with the valiant Legal Brave, Lady Lillia. You are much more highly thought of than you think.”

She laid it out so plainly and clearly.

Well, maybe that was a given, considering she was a part of the Imperial family.

“What was the answer you gave to those who asked the question I posed earlier?”

“…I don’t have one, obviously.”

His voice was quivering slightly.

It wasn’t unthinkable. Willem was a growing boy at the end of the day, and Lillia knew well that he loved pretty older girls.

So of course he would be bashful in front of the very pinnacle of pretty older girls. This wasn’t something she should find fault with. She’d be fine with letting him go with a good punch to the face the next time they saw each other.

“In that case… That is, I mean, hypothetically speaking”—Princess lightly balled a fist and placed it to her chest before continuing delightedly—“if you find yourself with the free time to once again choose the best woman of all…surely you will think of me then, won’t you?”

Lillia’s eyes went wide. What the heck is she saying?

“…The best?”

There was a hint of agitation in Willem’s voice.

“Yes. I will be waiting until then.”

“Wait, come on. What kind of joke is this?”

“My, do you think I would say such a thing in jest?”

“Uh… Er, I dunno. Shoot.”

Willem ruffled his own hair, perplexed, and looked away.

She couldn’t see his face directly, but Lillia knew that his cheeks would be bright red.

And there was another thing she was absolutely sure of.

Willem would not accept this woman’s words of affection.

“It’s not just a question of free time. I mean—I’m sorry. You could wait forever, and I’d probably never come. I don’t think I can return your feelings.”

See?

Lillia gloated in victory quietly within herself.

“…Am I not good enough?”

“That’s not it. But it’s like… I’m just—I’m sorry.”

Willem bowed his head deeply.

Yeah, I thought that might happen.

Lillia nodded vigorously, still keeping herself out of sight.

The bait Princess was laying out for him was serious. The way her voice trembled, the way she looked up at him with wide eyes, how her cheeks flushed, how she delicately closed the distance between them—it was all perfect.

There were very few reasonable guys in this world who would refuse the temptation. But this time, she’d picked the wrong guy.

Willem left, and Princess was now alone in the courtyard.

“It never goes well.”

When the boy vanished from sight, she changed her tone of voice completely, stopped acting so elegant, and muttered to herself in frustration.

Sitting in a chair made of plain, unvarnished wood, her shoulders drooped.

“I thought I could manage something with at least one young man.”

“He’s not the type to so easily fall for such intentions.”

“—Oh my.” Princess slowly turned around. “Lady Lillia, how indecent of you to be spying on me.”

Leaning against a tree, Lillia made herself known again, and she waved her hand.

“Some response that was. Aren’t you surprised?”

“Of course I am. I am simply doing my best not to overreact.”

“Oh, okay, I get that.”

A princess had to be graceful at all times. At the very least, she could not destroy the fantasy the general public had of her. Even if someone suddenly spoke to her from behind, she couldn’t scream or yell out. She had to constantly and strictly govern herself.

As someone who was once in a similar position, Lillia understood the logic behind it.

“Why are you here in the castle, Lady Lillia?”

“Um, your uncle invited me over to hang out. That’s over now, so I was on my way home.”

“…I see. He did say he had invited over an interesting guest, but to think he brought in such a wicked spy,” Princess complained sullenly.

Her choice of words was spiteful, unbecoming of such a prim and pure and pretty girl—essentially inappropriate for someone who looked like a princess.

“Good one!” Lillia’s body shook when she laughed. “By the way, could you tell me something? What do you want with that idiot?”

“Oh? I am not familiar with any idiots.”

“Don’t act dumb,” Lillia retorted, raising her voice slightly. “What I’m asking is what you wanted with my dumb, single-minded, awkward, talentless, oblivious, mythic-tier idiot of a senior apprentice. Were you planning on honey trapping him to make him your own so you could use him as some kind of sacrificial pawn?”

“How rude. I would never use him as a pawn.”

But she wasn’t denying she was trying to honey trap him.

“He has a very valuable talent. If I was to make him mine, I would have to treat him very carefully, otherwise I might be punished.”

She wasn’t denying she wanted him for herself, either.

“—Most of those born with talent are born under stars that bring that potential to life. The emperor and I, for example, were born to rule. And you, Lady Lillia, were born to fight.”

“What, is that your pet theory?”

“Yes. I suppose you could also say that I know this from experience.” Princess paused for a breath. “People can only live as dictated by the stars. And those born under different stars cannot live together. Their lifestyles will always force them to drift apart.”

“Is that also from experience?”

“I shall leave that to your imagination,” Princess replied with a vague smile.

It was a beautiful fake smile, the kind Lillia would expect a princess to make. One that kept her true intentions hidden.

“That is why I want him. It is not talent or fate that gives him strength. It is his own will and nature. And it is deep love that supports that.”

Wow. She’s surprisingly observant.

Lillia was slightly impressed.

“It is precisely because he is not being led by fate that he chooses the battlefield of his own will. He can also choose who it is he wishes to stay close with. He would be the greatest collaborator…no, the greatest companion in my life. I would pay anything to have someone like that. I would not mind giving myself to someone who does not act on position or assets.”

“Wow. That’s pretty passionate of you.”

“That is why I will become the most important thing in his life. Even if any of his close relations, like you, oppose.”

“Nah, I’m not going to oppose or resist or anything. You guys can do what you want,” she said offhandedly before adding, “I guess you’re also the type to pick the flower on the mountain to keep for yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If there’s something you can do, you do it.”

Lillia whirled around on her heel.

“A country brat tying the knot with a real-life princess, supporting her while standing beside her. What a nice story. I’ll give you my genuine blessing if you can pull it off, so invite me to the ceremony, okay?” she said, hiding her mean-spirited smile.

6. The Flower Swaying Atop the Peak

It was just before the day of the Wintering Party.

Word came that the northern defense corps had been completely wiped out.

Narvant, City of Weirs, was now falling to the hands of the orcs.

That fight should have been won with energy to spare.

Quasi Brave Avgran and his Carillon Purgatorio should have been strong enough to accomplish that. But—

“How could one who cannot save a single village save an entire country?”

One phrase warped destiny on its own.

Along the road to the battlefield, Avgran found a village. It had been overrun by a detached force of orcs and was on the verge of destruction. A young survivor girl pleaded with Avgran as she wept—“Help us. Help us.”

Avgran was straightforward, pure, brave, and quick to lose his temper.

That was when he uttered the fateful phrase. He stopped his march to the battle that would save the country and threw himself into a fight to save a small village he had just happened upon. And indeed, he scattered the orcs and saved a village of thirty lives.

He used Purgatorio’s power in that fight.

The power of this sword, which essentially controlled the tide of battle, remained inoperable for almost a month after it was used. In essence, when he prioritized giving help to those before him without thinking of the consequences, he of course wasn’t able to summon his full power in the battle where he was originally supposed to give his all.

Not even a day passed after arriving at the front lines before Avgran lost his life in combat.

They say in death, he wore a peaceful smile on his face.

Of course he did. He had never been able to ignore anyone who came to him and asked for help. He had always maintained his dignity as “the Brave who fought for the people.” His smile was because he had managed to hold on to what he held dearest, his righteous sense of justice, up until the very last moments of his life.

The news came with unnecessary addendum.

Numbers.

The number of residences in the village he had saved was about thirty. He had abandoned an entire city and the soldiers who protected it—over two thousand lives—all in order to save those thirty souls.

Orcs were not terribly fiendish monsters as individuals. Their average level was around 5. A properly trained soldier with the appropriate gear could easily take one down in a one-on-one situation.

But when orcs came together in a horde, they were completely different. Races that were exceptionally homogeneous were extremely suited for working together in groups.

Angering one meant angering the entire horde, and one rejoicing meant the entire horde rejoicing. It was almost as though they had little concept of individual identity; they expressed their feelings as a whole…and whatever they felt as a group was amplified by one another and swelled explosively.

They did not strongly fear death, perhaps because they viewed life and death differently than humanity did. They never fell out of step with one another because of disparities in morale. They were a powerful army, almost to the point where their lack of proficiency didn’t matter.

She never thought that this would be the reason why she would return home.

It took about two days to get there by taking transfers on a regularly scheduled carriage that left the Imperial Capital. The path there led her over the currents of the Great Mahne River, through the wilderness left over from the Legend of the Singing Princess, and a little beyond.

Narvant, City of Weirs, was a new city established on the plains of what was once the territory of Dione, Kingdom of Knights. The gloom elves were expelled, people were invited in, the ruined land was cultivated, and little by little, it started to become a place suitable for human habitation again. Its main industries were tourism and perfume. Flowers in the nearby highlands bloomed a brilliant orange in the spring, and plenty of nobles from the Imperial Capital intent on catching some fresh air certainly visited to get their fill of its beauty.

But that was all gone now.

When Lillia heard the situation in Narvant was dire, she rushed right over. She snatched up Seniorious, which had just come back from the workshop; forced her way onto a military carriage leaving the capital; and raced there as fast as she could.

She didn’t make it in time.

It was clearly no longer a battlefield suited for the Legal Brave. There was no splendor or glory or honor to be found; there was nothing here to win back or protect.

Lillia surveyed the scene in despair.

Where Narvant, City of Weirs had been just a few days ago was now charred ruins. Because of how fresh these ruins were, all the different stenches of burned things—stone, leather, wood, flesh—bore deep into her nostrils.

There were barely any orcs. The soldiers had fought well. It seemed the battle ended with both sides being practically wiped out. Because of that, once they were done ravaging Narvant and its outskirts, the majority of the orcs had retreated to their own territory. The only ones left were ones who hadn’t gotten their fill of ransacking what little was left.

“—I really hate this.”

Fwoom.

With just a half step, she crossed the distance of seventeen steps. Just as she arrived at the orcs’ backs, she slightly flexed the hand that held on to Seniorious’s handle.

Six necks tore at the same time.

A fatal spray of blood erupted forth.

They did not scream. They did not suffer long. They probably had not even grasped beforehand what was happening. One had its eyes wide open; one was hunched over; one was about to check around. Each of the orcs were in various poses that made their confusion obvious; then they all fell to their knees and collapsed onto the ground.

All she could do here was cut down the orcs who emerged from behind walls every so often as she went. That was essentially the job she had left to the army that she should have come along with in the beginning. There was no need for the Legal Brave to do such work.

How would the next Paper describe her?

The careless thought crossed her mind as she gave in to something that was not anger or sadness or frustration—an emotion she did not know the name of—drowning the orcs in fountains of blood as she found them.

Her field of view shuddered.

“—Oh…”

Lillia realized she had made a mistake.

Just a moment afterward, she felt slightly dizzy. In a scant few moments, her consciousness itself went blank. There was a tiny feeling of unease, one she would’ve missed if she was not on top of her game even as she concentrated in the midst of a battle.

But that was enough for the enemy’s attack to be successful.

She stopped.

She scanned her surroundings. The ruins of Narvant, the City of Weirs—

No.

What was there was no longer a ruin. All the black-burned bricks, the discarded corpses of townsfolk, the broken spears, and the orcs who Lillia had just cut down herself were all gone.

A grassy plain spread out before her.

By the time she realized…no, the moment she noticed that, the bitter smell that had filled the air had vanished. What took its place was the scent of fresh grass in early spring, suiting the scene before her.

“This…”

She calmed her heart and “touched” time.

This was a scrying technique only those who had the natural capacity could call upon. It was a skill she had learned on her own after she stopped studying with Willem under their master. It wasn’t a pure martial skill; most of it was apparently halfway in the territory of shady, useless magic—but perhaps that was why, now that she wasn’t directly face-to-face with any enemies, she could easily use it to see the future.

The impression of the future she could feel was a calm water’s surface.

This basically meant that for a while, she would not be in any danger of dying.

“…Which means…”

Though the scenery around her had changed, it was hard to imagine that her physical location itself had changed at all. In the moment it had happened, she hadn’t felt the wind or a jolt at all. It was hard to think this was some kind of teleportation magic. If it was, then she would be grasping her head in a terrible, splitting headache right about now; it was odd that she wasn’t.

In that case, the possibility that came to mind was—

An illusory attack.

Lillia dropped her guard and ruffled her bangs.

“I walked right into this one…”

After thinking for a moment, she touched Seniorious’s tip to the ground. She dragged it along to scratch out a simple thaumaturgic seal.

Nothing happened.

Thaumaturgy was supposedly a type of skill that could overwrite the world. They were imitations of the residual fragments of the countless miracles wrought by the gods when they’d created the world in primeval times, re-created by people trying to somehow emulate those transcendent beings in their mortal bodies. As a result, their effects could be seen only in a normal world. Much like how a waterwheel would not spin in a world where water did not flow, or how lead did not melt in a world where there was no flame, thaumaturgy was nothing but gnarled scribbles in a world without the right framework for it to latch onto.

This meant that the place she was in now was in a completely different world from where she just had been.

And Lillia had had a similar experience twice before.

“A demon’s illusory zone,” she murmured, as though confirming it.

This was a “dream” created to attack her.

It was a fake hallucinatory world, made and designed by reading the surface of the ensnared target’s spirit. In here, one’s spirit was weakened, and when the target completely lost the will to escape, they would be trapped inside forever—and their physical body in the real world would fall into a deep sleep they would never wake up from.

“The orcs probably brought it out here and left it behind as a trap. If they did, then that means I really screwed up…”

No matter what sort of supreme power a warrior had or how close to immortal someone might be, it didn’t matter once their spirit was broken. Demons were spiritual entities, skilled at making people fall into depravity, and they were especially skilled at handling these illusory worlds. In a way, they were a Brave’s greatest enemy.

Perhaps it was this demon’s handiwork that really did Avgran in.

“…The structure of this world is pretty rough. Guess whatever demon made this isn’t very high-level.”

She knew a way out of this. The coping methods for dealing with these kinds of spiritual attacks, as well as all of demon kind, were already established theories within the long history of human fighting doctrine.

Somewhere within this fake world should be a core that was keeping the whole thing together. If she could destroy it before her spirit was broken, then that would be enough to let her escape without any problems.

“Hmm.”

She blinked. There was another brief gap in her consciousness, and the scenery changed again.

Before her was a drab gravel path. There was a hut with several colorful wooden boards plastered over the stucco. The dream world was re-creating a place from deep in her memory.

It wasn’t Narvant, nor was it a grassy field.

Lillia widened her stance slightly and looked around the area warily. The enemy was starting their attack. She didn’t know exactly what sort of attack it was going to be. There were all sorts of demons, and they each had a different way of breaking the target’s spirit.

There was the bufas, which forced the victim to endure abuse and attacks from illusions of their loved ones. Conversely, there was the aeshma, which made the target watch everyone close to them die, one after the other. There was the immemoratio, the kind of demon that subjected its victims to the endless pain of being ignored and forgotten by their loved ones no matter how hard they tried to reach out. As for other approaches, there was the mammon, which gave the target so much position and wealth that their attachment to the real world waned, and—

“Lillia.”

Her heart leaped out of her chest for a brief moment when she heard the voice behind her.

A chilling realization washed away all of her emotions once she understood what was unfolding.

Of course, it was a voice she knew well.

It was a voice she had heard so much, she should have been sick of it, but she wasn’t, of course—a very familiar, annoying, and precious voice.

“…Willem.”

She slowly turned around as she said his name.

Standing there was Willem Kmetsch, of course—or, at least, someone who just looked like him. There was no one else around. The boy and girl stood facing each other, alone, in the phantasm of the city of Dione.

Lillia calmly assessed the situation. This Willem had just called her name now. That meant that, at least, the one who had created this world was not an immemoratio. And since there was only one other person here, she could remove an aeshma from the list of possibilities; those kinds of demons tended to use a large number of attackers.

“There’s something I want to tell you.”

“Hmm?” Lillia gave a vague response, still eyeing Willem warily. “Sure, I’ll hear you out. What is it?”

“Ahhh…”

Willem stopped speaking and approached her. Lillia maintained her position, only dropping her center of gravity; her opponent could be a bufas… She prepared herself for the possibility of this Willem suddenly attacking her.

It was unclear if this Willem was aware of how cautious she was, but he stopped an arm’s length away from her—

“I want you.”

……………Hmm?

This wasn’t how she had been expecting things to turn out. Her mind went blank.

“…Huh?”

Every speck of caution vanished in an instant.

Then, as time slowly ticked away, she understood what was going on.

This is a succubus’s illusory field?!

A succubus was a kind of demon that severed its victims’ attachments to the real world by fulfilling their sexual desires; despite its intent to corrupt their victims, these demons often took a very direct approach. Basically, this succubus gave Lillia’s desire for Willem shape and form. With that in mind, she realized his face seemed a little more dignified than normal, but looking at it directly made her feel weird, and now her thoughts were really just starting to go all over the place, and—

…This might be bad.

She knew she had to resist.

She understood that once she accepted him, it was all over.

But she couldn’t help thinking about holding out for just a little bit more.

As long as the target could keep their spirit from breaking—as long as they kept their attachment to the real world—then they wouldn’t lose in a fight against a demon. They would be fine so long as they didn’t give in to the temptation, even if they did accept it. She still had the chance to see what moves this demon would make.

Braves were still people. Lillia, at least, had no intentions of giving up every last bit of humanity in her heart. She might’ve had some rough life experiences so far, but that was all. She might’ve layered some thick skin around her heart by now, but at the same time, it was still covered in scars.

That’s why she couldn’t help it.

There were words she so badly wished to hear.

“…Don’t say stuff that doesn’t suit you.” Her response was weak. “It’s not like you at all.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Heh. You don’t even have to ask. Honestly…”

She thought for a moment, then decided to test something.

“If I told you I didn’t hate you, what would you do?”

“Let’s see.”

It was an impressive feat of agility. Like lightning, Willem’s arm wrapped around Lillia’s waist, and just as that registered in her head, he forcefully pulled her closer to him.

“Eep?!”

It took her by surprise. Her bewilderment kept her from moving for just a few moments.

But even during just that short period of time, the situation progressed.

He lifted her chin up.

Their gazes met.

“Hyah…”

A noise that Lillia had never heard herself make spilled from her throat.

How’d things end up like this? And why’s this Willem so forceful? Her perplexity halted her thoughts in their tracks. Demons drew out their prey’s deepest desires…which basically meant this was what Lillia Asplay truly wished for. Seriously? What am I, some kind of lovesick maiden? A damsel in distress?

“…Jerk… Watch where you’re touching…!”

Even her objection had no strength behind it.

Willem’s face neared hers. His lips drew close.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, what on earth?! I’ve never seen this guy’s face so close before, and there’s no way something I haven’t seen could show up in my spirit world, so I guess I’ve imagined this before? I fantasized about this and I just never realized? And how far does this hallucination go, because I don’t ever remember experiencing anything beyond this so, like, if that happens, how will it feel—?

The chaos in Lillia’s mind brought her face to a bright-red boil.

Like he was dealing the final blow, Willem spoke with a voice oh so sweet:

“You’re the most important person to me.”

An instant passed—

Lillia’s heart froze, the heat draining from it, and her body moved on its own at the same time.

Her drawn sword, Seniorious, plunged into the flesh of his left hip, ripping apart all his organs in its path before it flew out, exiting through his right shoulder.

Hah. Guh.

The air pushed out from Willem’s severed lungs exited his mouth as a faint noise.

He would not speak anymore. It was physically impossible.

“…A demon pulls out its victim’s hidden wishes from deep within their heart, huh? Impressive work, but I guess this means you were the greatest flaw in your own plan.”

Her disappointment clear, she turned her back on the illusion of Willem.

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want him to treat Allie and his family as the most important people in his life, and I want him to never compromise on that.”

She felt it was a waste.

But that was that, and this was this. Lillia had lines she would never cross.

“A Willem who would change his priorities so easily just because I want it is worthless to me.”

The world shattered like a thin sheet of ice.

The temporary scenery of her hometown melted and vanished.

That one attack seemed to have meant she had destroyed what was equivalent to the core of this world. The succubus’s barrier field collapsed as she watched.

“But I guess…”

She stood in the center of it all, a faint feeling of loss tugging at the edges of her lips, murmuring quietly:

“…it was a nice dream while it lasted.”

7. What Is Most Important

As a result, the Legal Brave added another successful battle under her belt.

As she returned to the Imperial Capital, she wondered, almost as though she was idly thinking about someone else, how they would write about it in the Paper.

Willem lay dead, facedown at a table in a café.

Actually, upon a closer look, he was barely still alive. He was worn to the bone, almost to the point of being mistaken for a corpse, with no signs of life about him.

“On his way back from Gomag, along the shores of the hot springs of Fistirus, a baby rust dragon that had been sealed away woke up and went on a rampage.” A boy wearing a white cape shut the book he was reading and informed Lillia: “He said that it would cause significant damage if he waited until reinforcements arrived, so he defeated it by himself. He didn’t have a Carillon with him, since he was on vacation, so he did it with his bare hands.”

He’d defeated a rust dragon. With his bare hands.

It was difficult to describe—it was either absolutely absurd or extremely idiotic. Rather, it was the very definition of idiotic. The Legal Brave wouldn’t even do that—or even think about doing that.

She thought about how hard he must have pushed himself.

She thought about how recklessly he must have acted.

Like he always did. With that straight face.

“He got a letter of thanks from the mayor, telling him that because of his efforts, the beautiful views of the Boiling Lakes would be preserved.”

“…Willem sure is leading a heroic life, isn’t he?”

The life of a Legal Brave naturally came with its share of hopeless battles. Regardless of whether she wanted that or not, that’s how it was. That was why, well, there were a lot of things that Lillia had already given up on in her life. Working as the representative of humankind got her wrapped up in all sorts of awful conflicts, ones that might someday lead to her death in a battle.

On the other hand, Willem wasn’t a Legal Brave. His title of Quasi Brave didn’t have anything to do with anything as bothersome as destiny. But despite that, or maybe because of that, he had the tendency to find dangerous fights on his own and throw himself headfirst into them. It was almost like he wouldn’t be able to maintain whatever it was in his heart if he wasn’t constantly fighting, constantly wringing his power dry.

Willem’s finger twitched.

Like a worn hinge, he slowly raised his head.

“Oh hey, you’re alive.”

“Don’t go deciding I’m dead on your own.”

With a faltering hand, Willem pulled out a small leather pouch from his knapsack. He then handed it directly to Lillia.

“What’s this?”

“Your Wintering present.”

Silence.

“Why are you giving this to me?”

“Why not? I made too many, so there were extra.”

He held it out, with no sign of him taking it back. Lilla…with a quiet but pounding heart…accepted it earnestly.

She looked inside. There was a charm in it. It was in the shape of an ugly animal, some kind of dog or something.

“…It has a weird face.”

“It was really popular with Wendel and Horace, though.”

She remembered those names. They belonged to two of the small children at the orphanage that had served as Willem’s house. They were naughty little boys.

“You mean this is the same as the ones you gave out to the kids?”

“Yeah.”

“You made this?”

“Is that bad?”

“Mm, not exactly. But if I had to say anything…”

Oh no, Lillia thought. She could feel her face softening.

A grin spread across her face that she somehow managed to mask—

“…it sucks.”

Thud. With a loud, obnoxious noise, Willem’s head slammed back down onto the table.

That day, when Lillia returned to the Parlor of Light—the private room given to the Legal Brave—inside the church, she shamelessly rolled around in agony on her bed.

“Ha-ha… Ah-ha-ha-ha!”

Willem had given her the same present he’d given his family.

He was treating her like family.

That Princess probably had no idea how big a deal that was, how valuable an act it was. That succubus could never replicate something like this. Take that!

This was the best that could happen. This was the very best.

She rolled to the left, then to the right. No matter how far she rolled, she wouldn’t fall from this massive, luxurious bed. In her excitement, Lillia rolled back and forth even farther.

Lillia Asplay knew emptiness.

Not as an abstract concept but through experience.

Back then—four years ago, when she was ten years old—that emptiness had been inside her.

Was she truly sad? Was she truly in pain? Had she lost hope? Was she angry? Did she hate anyone?

Everyone else’s expectations about how she was supposed to feel and think and do, repeated to her over and over, had overwritten her memories and feelings of that day. When the girl, who had always worked to be what was expected of her, had realized that, she had forgotten who she originally was.

But—

Thunk.

“Gah!”

She rolled off the bed, but she still couldn’t stop grinning.

She had her own feelings, ones that no one asked for, ones that no one even knew about.

Lillia was smiling.

She savored the happiness that welled up from within her own heart.

The flames on the candles mounted on the walls flickered gently, as though making merry.

Leaning against the wall was Seniorious, gleaming softly as it reflected the candlelight, like it, too, was smiling.