“Nnnooooooooooo!”
“Oh boy…”
The next day came, and, well…I’m not sure where to begin. Maha watched, aghast. Ney, standing at her side and not having expected this turn of events, smiled wryly. They were at Al-kimiya’s training grounds trying to teach Ruri.
To test just how strong Ruri currently was, Maha had synthesized a massive humanoid golem from some loose boulders near the Base. Golems differed from homunculi in that they lacked a will of their own. They couldn’t make decisions, leaving them only good for carrying out pre-given orders.
As they were just testing the waters, Maha had made sure to keep the golem fairly weak, but Ruri had chickened out and ran away within seconds.
“Dammit, Ruri! Take this seriously!” Standing on the opposite side of Ney was Diriyah. She shouted, but Ruri was preoccupied with running away and didn’t seem to hear her.
“What should we do, Maha?”
“Good question. This is a bigger problem than anyone could have anticipated,” Maha said with a groan. She then sighed for, by her count, the sixth time that day.
With an annoyed look on her face, she dashed forward and stepped between the golem and Ruri. The golem swung its fist down at her without delay. She responded by pulling out a vial and breaking it. The distilled water inside scattered through the air.
“That which cuts, glistening blade of water. Slash apart my prey—Sword of Ice.”
The scattered water instantly solidified into a blade of ice. With it, Maha lopped off the golem’s approaching arm, then used the opening to cut its joints and render it immobile.
“I-I’m saved!” Ruri stammered pathetically, falling to her knees.
“Like hell you are…” Maha pressed against her own forehead like she had a headache. “Get up and face the golem.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ‘huh’ me. You’re going to do it properly this time.” Saying that, Maha used some nearby boulders to resynthesize the golem’s legs. Its body audibly creaked as it stood up once more.
“Nnnooooooooooo!”
Ruri ran in circles fleeing from the golem yet again.
“Maha…”
“Don’t say it. I know.” Maha grimaced, trying to hide her frustration. There was no point sending Ruri to battle as she was. Even the weakest of demons would make quick work of her.
Maha ordered the golem to stop. Ruri fell to her knees again, breathing heavily. With an icy glare, Maha asked, “Do you intend to fight at all or are you just here to mess around?”
This crucial point alone needed to be made clear. Ruri’s strength was of secondary importance, for if she didn’t even have the will to fight, she would never become a soldier.
“If you don’t want to fight, then just say so and stop wasting our time,” Maha said with finality. Her gaze was cold, likely because fighting was her whole identity. It was all others wanted from her, and although she had mixed feelings about that, she still took pride in her ability.
“Miss Maha… I’m sorry. I want to fight. But it’s scary…” Ruri hung her head like a child that had been scolded, making Maha look like an older girl unfairly hounding her much younger sister.
“…You mean it? You really do want to fight?”
“Yes. Really.” Ruri lifted her face and met Maha’s eyes.
Maha sized her up for a few moments. There was some fear in Ruri’s expression, but her eyes held an honest willingness to fight. She really was a homunculus, Maha thought. Dryly, she said, “…All right. Fine.”
She returned the golem to earth and instead made a target dummy out of stone.
“Working with moving, attacking targets is still too much for you. Let’s start by having you hit this.” Maha’s plan was to have Ruri at least grow accustomed to attacking.
Away from the girls, Ney voiced her skepticism. “Diriyah, will this homunculus of yours really be any use to us?” Her voice reached Maha’s sharp ears, but Ruri was too focused on wielding her wooden sword to hear.
“Without a doubt. Like I said at the meeting, her specs are high. She just lacks experience.” Full of confidence, Diriyah pointed at Ruri, as though to say, ‘Just watch.’ The girl was raising her sword to swing at the target dummy.
“H-haaiyah…” With something too weak to be called a battle cry, Ruri swung and cleanly sliced the target dummy in two.
“Wha…”
“Oh ho…”
“What’d I tell you?”
Maha doubted her eyes. All Ruri had was a wooden sword with a dull edge. Maha had hardened it slightly with her alchemy, but that hadn’t sharpened it any. And yet Ruri had cloven the stone target dummy clean in two. Her strength was to be feared.
“Ahhh! No! No! No! I broke it!”
Ruri herself didn’t seem to realize how incredible what she did was, even asking if she needed to pay to fix it. Maha watched her with ambivalence.
“She has some potential after all, huh?”
“…Seems like it.”
“You don’t seem all too happy about that. What’s wrong? Did you get rejected by a girl you like or something?”
“Just be quiet.”
Maha tried playing tough, but I could see right through her. I was sure she felt a kind of jealousy toward Ruri. Maha was the second-strongest in Al-kimiya, only losing out to the captain, Ney, but it took her a considerable amount of time and experience to reach where she was. Ruri was only born a day ago, but she had what Maha spent all her life struggling to obtain. Who could blame Maha for feeling the way she did?
Of course, there was more to her jealousy than just that.
“That wasn’t half-bad, Ruri.”
“Huh? Not in trouble?”
Maha watched with cold eyes as Diriyah walked over and roughly tousled Ruri’s hair. She brought her hand up and adjusted her glasses, then sighed for the seventh time that day.