Two days had passed since the day of his humiliation.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was his third attempt.
Salinger lay face up on the ground, a bloody mess.
“Are you an idiot, Salinger?”
The girl looked down on him.
Though he couldn’t see her face because the sun was at her back, he knew that no emotion was in her eyes.
“Your shoulder…”
“Ugh…”
Princess Mirabella stepped on his shoulder with her steel-soled shoes.
Salinger let out a cry of agony.
It was the same wound from two days prior. The injury had reopened, and his shoulder was rapidly turning red with blood.
“You should have waited to challenge me until your shoulder wound was healed up. You’ve underestimated me if you thought you could take me by surprise while you were still recovering…”
She sighed.
In the dark alleyway where sunlight hardly reached, the princess’s sigh echoed.
“Did you think you could catch me off guard? Oh, but I didn’t think you would attempt such a shortsighted strategy, so I did doubt my eyes despite myself. So in that sense, I suppose your attack did succeed at surprising me.”
“You…damn…doll… Guh!”
She pressed deeper into his shoulder.
“If you don’t do a better job next time, I’ll hunt you down. I’m only going to let you live as long as you’re powerful enough to satisfy me. Don’t forget that.”
Then she left.
In the alleyway, Salinger lay on the ground next to a spat-out piece of gum. Incensed, he balled his hands into fists.
“Next time…!”
When they next met, he would win.
He would have plenty of chances to fight her. The princess made at least one outing from the palace each week.
He wouldn’t suffer the same mistake.
He needed to analyze the situation. Why had he lost?
……It’s not because of the difference in our astral powers.
……The third time, it was her superhuman combat skills that overcame me.
The princess was well-versed in hand-to-hand combat, something astral mages ordinarily did not learn.
He had assumed every member of the royal family had been blessed from birth, but he had to admit the princess had flipped that idea upside its head. He had to admit it.
“I need to stop her from being able to use her combat skills… Would it make sense for me to fight her in the forest?”
The trees would add a level of complexity, and the ground would be uneven from the trees, which would hinder her.
In the woods, the princess would have less mobility. But she had always performed better than he could imagine in their fights. He needed to be certain.
“The rain!”
If she was wet, she would be heavier. If the ground in the forest was muddy, she would have a harder time finding her footing.
Princess Mirabella’s style was using physical force to overpower her opponents, so his style would be to diminish her strength in that regard.
“Just you wait. Next time, I’ll make you exit the stage for the finale!”
This was Salinger’s plan.
✦ ✦ ✦
The Divine Wind Barrier Mandala.
✦ ✦ ✦
Mirabella’s whirlwind sent him flying away.
Deep in the forest, the storm the golden-haired princess summoned twisted away the trees dozens of meters around her, breaking them in half.
“I’m starting to get bored of seeing this happen over and over.”
“Y-you brat…”
Salinger was lying on the ground.
There were red welts all over his body, as though he had been hit by a whip. A whirlwind had sucked him up, the gusts whipping him several hundred or thousand times until he felt like he was on the verge of being torn apart.
“You faked it…”
The forest was gone.
Princess Mirabella had let loose an astral attack on an order of magnitude more powerful than before.
“You were being evasive about your skills… You acted like you preferred hand-to-hand combat, but you were actually hiding the true might of your astral power…”
“Salinger.”
She bent down.
As Salinger raised his head from his facedown position, Mirabella stared at him insultingly.
“You’re not using your astral power. You’re letting it use you.”
What did that mean?
Her wording was so odd, he couldn’t follow. He only intuitively knew she was looking down on him.
“All you’re doing is collecting astral techniques. You think just using them willy-nilly makes you powerful.”
“But it does…”
“But they’re not your own.”
That was obvious.
All his Water Mirror astral power could do was copy the power of someone else at half strength. His every technique had been stolen from another astral mage.
“Salinger.” She said his name again. “You hate your astral power, don’t you?”
“Ngh?!”
His entire body quivered.
His eyes opened so wide, they seemed like they would split apart, and he glared at the girl despite the fact he couldn’t move.
“You wench!”
“You want to stand at the top of all astral mages. That’s why you want to transcend even the royal family. But despite your lofty ambitions, you use borrowed astral power. That’s where your problem is.”
“…”
No. But he couldn’t deny it.
Because deep down, he had never faced that fact.
“You need to face yourself. If you reconcile with your astral power, you might be able to come up with new techniques.”
“What do you know?!”
“Plenty.”
“Uh?”
“The technique I just used was something I came up with just a few days ago.”
“What…?”
She stared at him. Then she blinked a few times.
“I came up with this astral attack specifically for you.”
“Huh?!”
“I thought that you’d choose the woods as the site of our next battle. And that it would be raining. So I came up with a way of blowing away both the forest and the rain.”
She had made him dance on the palm of her hand.
But certain words prickled at Salinger’s heart more than those last ones.
……She came up with it for me?
……Just to beat me?
His mind went blank; he was at a loss for words.
So this hadn’t been a one-sided affair. Even the princess was pouring herself into these battles. That was…
Now that he really thought about it, wasn’t it absurd?
But just as that thought struck him…
“That’s it, Salinger.”
…she stroked his head. She was tender and affectionate, as though she were petting a dog.
“Challenge me again with that attitude, my little toy.”
“Hrngh!”
“You should get up before night falls. Wild dogs like to come by these parts.”
Then she left him as he was.
The Battle Automata, Mirabella, carefully chose her steps as she left the woods.