She threw her charred raincoat to the ground. Under the light of the streetlamp, he saw a delicate girl whose golden hair was cut into a bob.
She was very young. She couldn’t have been older than thirteen or fourteen.
“In Saclaris Nebulica’s station plaza. You intentionally exposed yourself to the security cameras. They showed you heading east, as though you wanted us to see. There were no sightings of you in the city central, so I thought you would be somewhere in this direction.”
“…”
Salinger didn’t respond to the girl’s questioning.
He thought his display would lure someone from the royal family out soon enough. But he hadn’t expected someone so notable, even among the royal family, to come to him.
“Princess Mirabella of the House of Lou!”
His entire body quivered with excitement.
Mirabella Lou Nebulis IIX.
A purebred he would have killed for the chance to meet. And on top of that, she was a queen candidate.
“Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! I was waiting for a member of the royal family to take my stage!” Salinger shouted.
Meanwhile, the girl stared back at him without expression.
“I’d like to be certain of your crimes. I’ve heard you’ve stolen people’s astral powers,” she said.
“And what if I did?”
“I suppose I would be grateful.”
“Huh?”
“The thing is, your crimes gave me an excuse to skip a meeting. Everyone is anxious because you appeared in the central state, so they sent me out to apprehend you. You saved me from boredom.”
“…”
In the silence, Salinger furrowed his brows slightly.
……What’s with this girl?
……She confronted me alone and isn’t even nervous?
She was too calm.
He had thought it was just the characteristic arrogance of a purebred, but he sensed no haughtiness in her. They were in a beautiful part of the countryside. As far as he could tell, she hadn’t brought a retinue that was lying in wait, either.
“You act like this doesn’t concern you.”
“It doesn’t.” The girl’s lips moved, but she spoke like a doll whose mouth was being manipulated by a puppeteer. “The way I see it, everyone else is a weakling.”
“They’re—”
“And I include you in that group, of course.”
The ground burst.
The girl holding the knife had kicked the ground with a force anyone would find surprising.
She charged at Salinger to attack.
……She’s coming at me with two knives, without any concern about the difference in our physical strength?
……Is she trying to preserve her astral powers?
If she had Lightning astral power, he could see her needing to get into close proximity of him.
But Salinger instantly dismissed that possibility. The evidence didn’t support it.
……She smothered my flames, so it can’t be Lightning.
……It must be Wind, Ice, or a barrier-type power. I bet she’s getting close because she has a barrier that can’t be used offensively!
In that case, he would use Lightning.
In a close-combat situation, it made sense for him to use the astral power known for being the fastest of them all: Lightning. Just as Salinger came up with this idea, the girl was nearly on top of him.
She leaped right at him.
She was fast.
He saw the glint of her blade.
She thrust her knives at him. The moment he saw that, he was too late to defend himself with astral power.
“You cheeky little…!”
Salinger gritted his teeth as he filled with shame and held his arm out to protect his face.
The pain was intense. As he felt the sharp jab of his flesh being slashed open, he let out a cry.
“Now you’ve done it!”
She dashed, leaped at him, and brandished her knife.
Her movements were eerily fluid. She acted as though she were a doll that had been programmed to use those exact maneuvers.
However…
The next moment, Salinger was genuinely struck with terror.
“…”
The girl said nothing as she held out the palm of her hand.
Dauntlessly, she attempted to make contact with him. The instant Salinger saw her close in, he understood fear for the first time in his life.
……What’s wrong with her eyes?
……There’s nothing in them. They’re empty!
They were dull and robotic, as though lacking all life.
It was as though she had been given instructions on how to reap destruction and was following a manual to take apart a machine. And in this case, he was the object the princess was to disassemble.
“Guh…!”
He wrenched himself away. His ribs creaked with a sudden jerk, but that was better than allowing her to touch him.
The girl’s hand passed by his side and ended up cutting through the air.
Bang.
The air swelled and burst like a hand grenade had gone off. The diffusing wind swept over him like a tsunami and sent him flying into the fields.
“How dare you?!”
He wiped his mouth as he stood up.
His entire body was shooting with the pain of being caught up in the shock wave. If she had touched him directly, he knew he would have been torn apart, beginning from wherever her hand made contact with him.
“O Earth!”
The ground beneath Salinger began to writhe.
The farmland around him swelled, and hundreds, then thousands of clumps of dirt and stone flew at the princess.
“Catch her! Restrain her limbs!” Salinger shouted.
“Is this a game to you?”
The pebbles and clods of dirt stopped midair.
It was as though an invisible wall had stopped his projectiles right before they hit Princess Mirabella. They lost momentum one after another and bounced away.
……I knew it.
……She has Wind astral power or a Wind subtype.
He saw a way through. In that case…
“You think having multiple astral powers puts you at an advantage?” the princess asked.
“……Huh?!”
“Using them one at a time is a mistake.”
She was right in front of him in a flash. Again. She was just too fast.
The princess didn’t hesitate. She flipped the knife in her left hand to hold it the other way around and swiped it at Salinger’s abdomen.
Zoosh…
He felt the heat of the knife slicing through him.
But the blade stopped before it could reach his internal organs.
“Uh?”
The princess’s eyes went wide.
She had been certain her knife would slice him up, but it had stopped. His muscles couldn’t have done that. She couldn’t even pull her knife out. This had to be…
“A Wave astral technique,” the princess remarked. “Did you activate it earlier?”
“I have you now…,” Salinger replied.
Sweating from the intense pain he was in, Salinger flashed her a gruesome smile.
He couldn’t hesitate for a moment against her.
“O Terra Burst astral power.”
A raging stream of heat burst up from deep within the earth. The most powerful naturally occurring energy on the planet split the ground as he summoned magma itself to the surface.
“Spout from below! Use your rage to scorch the earth!”
A shower of sparks seemed to burn through the air.
As the magma bathed the fields red, it consumed everything around it, but the golden-haired girl was nowhere to be found. Her animallike instincts and reflexes had urged her to abandon the knife in her hand and leap back.
“Impossible!”
She had avoided one of his deadliest moves.
Salinger watched the girl’s godlike evasive maneuver under the glow of the magma.
……Was I mistaken? Is the royal family not a group of children who are dependent on their astral powers?!
……What is this girl? How does she move like that?
It wasn’t just her astral power that was strong.
She was like an Automata that had been made for combat and combat alone. What could he do? Could he continue to fight with his arm and abdomen in this state?
“……Tsk.”
After what felt like an endless moment of hesitation, Salinger clutched his arm and turned away.
His arm and abdomen were bleeding too much. It also didn’t help that it was currently night. The darkness made the princess’s superhuman close-combat skills even more of a threat.
“Are you running away?” she asked.
“…”
“You’re surprisingly clever. But the next time I find you, I’ll kill you.”
On the other side of the magma and sparks, Salinger didn’t bother to respond to the girl’s mechanical voice, fleeing into the dark of night.
Internally, he gritted his teeth as he seethed with shame.
But at the same time…
“That’s exactly what I want.”
He cackled with glee.
Running down the lightless path, he tried to stanch his bleeding as he rushed forward like his life depended on it.
He arrived at an abandoned cabin on the outskirts of the city. He had bought a house here under a fake name a year and a half ago.
“That’s right…”
He opened the door with one arm and collapsed as soon as he got inside.
The rusted outer walls of the small structure belied the hygienic and organized room inside. There was a bed and a closet. It was perfect for a man to hide out in.
“She’s still got the Founder’s blood…”
He pulled out antiseptic and emptied the entire bottle over his wounds. Then he tossed several painkillers into his mouth, without heeding the dosage instructions, and began to chew on them.
“That girl…”
He thought back to the battle.
Princess Mirabella Lou Nebulis IIX—there was no mistaking it. That girl had the Ballistic subtype of Wind astral power.
Supposedly, people with this power could control the atmosphere directly, but so few mages of that type existed that its intricacies were unknown.
……She seemed confident she could defend herself.
……That’s why she uses close-combat techniques. But I still can’t believe she’s mastered it to that extent.
It wasn’t just her astral powers. She was also practically an expert in hand-to-hand combat.
She wasn’t anything like the weak-kneed royal he had imagined. He would at least acknowledge that, but…he had more tricks up his sleeves when it came to astral power.
No matter how mighty her ability was, he had more than enough cards to take her on.
“That’s right…”
He balled his hands into fists, not even caring that he was about to reopen his wounds.
He was certain.
“If I can just steal her astral powers…”
…then he would transcend even the queen.