…their voices harmonized as though they were singing a duet on a stage.
✦ ✦ ✦
The ice was swept away by an invisible wind borne from the atmosphere.
There was a power difference between them, plain and simple. Salinger could only ever steal half of another person’s astral power, so he could never match a purebred in force.
“Guh!”
Salinger leaped back.
He retreated several meters before the princess could land. Princess Mirabella jumped off the ground when she touched it to close the distance between them again.
“Guh.”
She twisted as she ran.
Though it may have looked like she had lost her balance, she hadn’t. Salinger felt something cold drip from his forehead.
“You dodged it?!”
“I saw through it.”
They were referring to a compressed pocket of air lying in wait like an invisible land mine. This hadn’t been the princess’s astral power, however.
Salinger had set up the trap ahead of time. He had assumed that, as a master of the Ballistic astral power, the princess would never guess a trap identical to her own powers would be lying in wait.
He had attempted to catch her off guard, but she had seen right through his ruse.
“That layer of the atmosphere was distorted, just like a heat haze.”
“Tch! How can you see that?!”
He understood now.
The princess wasn’t powerful because she was a purebred. She was strong as a person regardless.
……She’s getting closer.
……Soon we’ll be in point-blank range of each other. I’ll meet her with Lightning astral pow—
He heard the air snap.
As he felt a sharp pain race through his shoulder, Salinger’s train of thought came to a halt.
“Are you already done?”
The princess had swung the knife in her right hand.
Had she been a step closer, she would have likely severed Salinger’s entire left arm from his shoulder.
“I gave you four whole days. Is that all you can manage?”
“Hnngh!”
Are you a monster?
Salinger didn’t even have time to yell that as he balled his hands into fists.
This was his last resort.
After all the fights he had simulated in his head, this was the final bizarre strategy he had been left with.
“Swell.”
“Huh?”
Salinger snapped his fingers.
He did that right in front of her. Princess Mirabella unconsciously stopped as she was in the middle of bringing up her knife.
What did he mean?
She already had Salinger right in front of her. She could have simply thrust her knife at him. Instead of finishing him off, the princess turned around to look behind her.
Her instincts were screaming at her to do so.
“Huh!”
Her eyes widened.
It was the fireball that had burned like the sun.
The orb Salinger had thrown to provide light had grown tens of times larger than before.
“Did you think it was just a chandelier or something?” Salinger bellowed in triumph as he looked down at the princess.
For a first-rate stage, a chandelier couldn’t just give off light. No, it also had to provide the spectacle of dropping from the ceiling.
“This is the explosive Flame astral power, Red Emperor.”
This astral power had to be developed over time.
The fireball would swell according to the amount of time it hovered in midair, and once it fully matured, it would attain strength comparable to purebred astral powers.
“The fire…!”
“Have you put two and two together? You can’t protect yourself against it using the atmosphere!”
The heat from the flames would travel through the air.
Salinger had realized that if the astral power of Mirabella Lou Nebulis IIX controlled the atmosphere, then she wouldn’t be able to protect herself against the flames at such a close range.
“Burst!” he cried.
✦ ✦ ✦
A sun was born in the night.
✦ ✦ ✦
It singed the air, the fields, and the trees surrounding them, rendering everything into black charcoal in an instant.
The light swelled to cover the entire area.
The world went silent.
After the heat wave rescinded…
“………You monster.”
Salinger was lying face up on the singed ground. He had been pinned down.
“How…are you…unharmed…? Didn’t you have Atmosphere astral power…?”
“Yes, I do.”
The girl held Salinger’s neck in her left hand.
Though her arm was slender, it felt as heavy and firm as a vise as she pressed her fingers into Salinger’s neck.
“Think you can figure it out?”
“! You used a vacuum?!”
Heat couldn’t travel in a vacuum.
Salinger had made a mistake. He hadn’t realized Mirabella could manipulate the atmosphere to create a vacuum.
“You’re done resisting, aren’t you?”
As she used her left hand to hold Salinger’s neck in a viselike grip, she readied her knife again in her right.
She raised the blade in an underhanded grip. Her eyes were frighteningly unemotional and inhuman. As she spoke, it was as though she were addressing a straw dummy.
“This is it.”
She brought her raised hand down, aimed straight at Salinger’s neck.
…Splat.
A drop of blood splattered.
But it wasn’t Salinger’s.
“…”
The girl stopped.
She paused, her knife hovering over Salinger’s windpipe. She stared at the blood on Salinger’s cheek.
“…Is that mine?”
It had come from a cut on her cheek. While they had scuffled, Salinger had struggled for his life and grazed her with his hand.
“…”
“What’s wrong? Why did you stop?”
Salinger looked up at her.
She was straddling and strangling him with a grip like steel. Even as he gasped for breath, he searched for an opening to counter her.
“Would you feel humiliated if I stopped here?” she asked.
“What are you talking about?”
This was what he didn’t like about the girl.
Since her face was devoid of expression, he couldn’t figure out why she had blurted out that ridiculous question.
“You would be humiliated, wouldn’t you? It would be humiliating if I didn’t stab you now. So that’s what I’ll do.”
“……What did you say?”
“I’d like to use you as a toy.”
“How dare you?!”
Salinger opened wide his bloodshot eyes and gritted his teeth.
Was she trying to make a mockery of him?
“Don’t screw with me, little girl!”
“Please don’t struggle. I have my hand around your windpipe. If you squirm too much, you’ll break your neck.”
She tightened her grip even further.
She was telling him to shut up. It was as though she were training him through brute force.
“Salinger, you’re going to become a means for me to train.”
“Don’t be so arrogant. What happens if you let me live and I steal the astral powers of another royal family member?”
“Good. Steal as many as you can.”
“What?!”
“I am part of the Lou bloodline. We are in a battle for the throne with the Zoa and the Hydra. If you steal their astral powers, you’ll weaken them. That makes my prospects of becoming queen all the higher. Even if I am a terrible ruler, I want to make my mother’s and vassals’ wishes come true.”
“…”
He had miscalculated.
In Salinger’s mind, there was no distinction between the individual members of the royal family. To him, they were all simply powerful astral mages.
……Is that not true?
……Are the Founder’s descendants not united?
Even the young princess was saying that.
The family feud must have raged since her birth.
“That’s a hard truth to swallow. You dare call yourselves royalty?”
“You have no right to judge us. Especially since I, one of those terrible royals, am letting you live.”
“Don’t think you’ll be able to keep that haughty attitude forever.”
His lips were turning blue. Even as Salinger struggled to breathe while she strangled him, he spat out those words.
“…You damn doll…”
“Don’t bore me. I’ll let you live so I can use you.”
This was the greatest humiliation of his life.
He had simulated every possible outcome of this day in his head, yet he had still lost. Their skills were so unmatched that it would be no simple task for him to catch up. His wrath at his own weakness compelled him.
Salinger’s challenge had begun.