Lunaria didn’t know what he was saying. How was she supposed to win when a fight was hopeless?
“You only have one life, after all. Of course you don’t want to suffer pain and agony. Dying is scary, right? You wanna live.”
“Yes! Yes, I do! You’re right!”
So don’t kill me!
“Then the first thing we gotta do is reduce how much you value your life.”
She still had no idea what he was talking about.
“Like…let’s say your doctor gives you a shot. At first, you stiffen up because it seems really scary, but after you have it done a few times, you get used to it. Once your body understands that it’s no big deal, just a little jab, you’re fine. You can even keep chatting with the doctor while she’s sticking you with the needle.”
Lunaria didn’t really know what a “shot” was, either. She heard it was a treatment method developed in this kingdom by a female doctor who had single-handedly advanced medical science by leaps and bounds in recent years. She’d never had one herself.
“All right,” she said. “If we apply that ‘shot’ analogy to this story…you’re saying that I could become able to keep up a normal conversation even while someone is killing me?”
“Right. Yeah. Exactly. So…”
“No! That’s impossible! That can’t happen! That’s not how death works! It’s not some casual event… It’s serious!”
“Okay, time for the next rep. First, I better warn you. This gets rough starting from the third go-around since you know what’s about to happen.”
“Wait! Listen to me! I told you I don’t want to die anymore—”
Before she could finish, her head was flying through the air. It was quite an unusual sight.
Lunaria was slaughtered again and again.
After a few more reps, she decided that if this was how it was gonna be, she might as well try killing the man instead. That delayed her death by about three seconds, but the result was the same. Even after admitting defeat and completely surrendering, she was killed.
By the time the death count had reached ten or so, she was begging him to stop. She abandoned all shame and pride, her eyes and nose running as she pleaded with him. But he just kept going, a breezy smile on his face.
He took a few different approaches. Sometimes he’d slash her vertically, sometimes he’d go with more of a V-shaped cut, and sometimes he’d just decapitate her. The horizontal slices were the most painful, she found—having to see the lower half of her own body spread out in front of her while she bled to death. The whole process that took much longer than she would have preferred.
This, as she now understood, was a pretty unpleasant way to die, although the “hamburger” attack was worse. That involved the man turning her to mincemeat from the ends of her limbs on down. Much to her surprise, her consciousness stuck around even after he’d created pounds and pounds’ worth of this ground beef, all the way up to her heart. She probably wouldn’t be eating a burger again any time soon.
By this point, she’d had enough of being killed. So, she fought. She was no longer afraid of dying, but she didn’t want to die, so she pulled out all the stops. She released all of her sword’s power. She became a scion. All to no avail. Even the Scion of Ice was slashed to death, repeatedly turned to small bits of flesh.
She tried harder. At last, she reached a breakthrough. She hadn’t known there was anything beyond scionification. She had never considered it. Something was happening to her body, and she had no idea what it was.
“Okay, good. You’ve done your best. You really made an effort, huh? Well, a little bit, anyway.”
He patted her on the head and praised her. Wow. She was so happy. Hee-hee! His arm wound up frozen solid up to the elbow, but he didn’t even grimace. This was the face of someone unafraid of death. He wasn’t looking to die—but he’d calmly step right up to the brink in order to live, to earn the right to life.
As she died and died and died again, Lunaria grew to understand death as an entity within her. Dying came with pain. A lot of pain. A whole boatload of pain. Enough pain to die from… But that was it. That was all death was. If you had something you wanted that outweighed that pain, you could overcome it. She did, and so did he. People who had a reason to fight were obliged to keep pushing forward even when they felt death at hand.
This man had just taught her something precious about the life a “warrior” must lead.
“You’re fine with dying now, right?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“Even if you think you’re about to die, you can fight at one hundred percent, right?”
“Yes.”
In fact, she could do even better. Now, when she felt death coming, she could probably bring out somewhere closer to 120 percent.
“Good, good. Now, that’s what I call effort. I’m sorry I said you weren’t trying earlier, but it was pretty much true… Today, however, for the first time in your life, you made an effort. Great job!”
His right hand had already been broken and shattered, so he patted her head with his left.
Hee-hee!
He’d praised her. She was able to put in a little effort today. She knew what “effort” meant now. It was a completely new concept to her. Anything that wasn’t enough to kill you didn’t really count as “effort.” That much was obvious. And that was what he’d taught her.
“Great. Now I bet this is gonna be a really good match.”
The match? What was that? All Lunaria wanted right now was for him to keep patting her on the head.
“We call what you just did ‘Scion of Ice II.’ You’re really gonna give Earnest a run for her money now!”
Earnest… Who was that again? Lunaria wasn’t sure, and it didn’t really matter to her. If the man was happy, then she was happy too.
“Right!” Lunaria replied obediently.