“Look, Tsushima! Isn’t that Elbar?”
“Nah, we wouldn’t be able to see it yet from this altitude. That’s a small island much closer to us.”
“Really? Awww, that’s no fun.”
Inside the plane cabin, filled with the roar of the propeller, Lupus was bouncing with excitement. Being crammed in such a narrow space had Tsushima in a bad mood, but Lupus’s vibrant smile lifted his spirits slightly.
Since early that morning, the old man had been flying calmly in a plane he normally kept stored in a detached building on his property. It was a small two-seater aircraft, but by squeezing Lupus and Tsushima into the rear seat of the cockpit, they had managed to make it fit three.
Obviously, this meant the rear seat was terribly cramped. Annoyingly, Lupus kept moving her head left and right under Tushima’s chin.
The princess had been awfully excited since waking up, a feeling likely inspired by her desire to flee Balga being on the verge of finally coming true.
“Hey, what kind of ship are we going to board once we reach the Middle Sea?” Lupus asked through her headset, raising her face.
Tsushima frowned in annoyance as he answered.
“If we’re boarding one, it’ll be a smuggling ship. It won’t be a passenger ship or high-speed ferry, so don’t expect much comfort.”
“Wowww… That sounds exciting! Actually, this will be my first time on a ship. Most of my travel has been by plane or car.” Lupus began gesturing as she spoke, her face darkening at recalling just a little of her past.
However, the sparkle quickly returned to her eyes.
“Traveling over the sea must feel amazing! Watching the fish swimming and listening to birds singing…”
“It’s not that elegant, but—well, you’ll find out once you board.”
Tsushima turned and looked outside as he recalled the unpleasantness of riding on smuggling ships, which he had done several times before.
The view from the cockpit was breathtakingly gorgeous. The sea was visible beyond the overlapping blue mountains, and the white clouds sparkled dazzlingly under the sunlight. The scene seemed to perfectly reflect Lupus’s heart, which was full to the brim with hope.
Tsushima’s heart, however, still held a little anxiety. Things had gotten bad enough that a member of the Six Imperial Swords had shown up. Anything could happen.
Taking little notice of Tsushima’s unease, Lupus looked up at him again, her small head bumping directly into his chin in the process. In response to the dull impact, Tsushima directed a stern glare at her, and she gave an apologetic, embarrassed smile.
“Sorry. Am I getting too excited?”
“You finally noticed?”
“Yeah, my bad. But I’m just happy about finally getting to leave this country.”
Lupus restlessly jiggled her knees and looked out the window. To her, the view was the embodiment of freedom itself. With the three of them soaring high above the harsh realities on the ground below, perhaps it was all right for her to momentarily lose her head a little.
Tsushima let out a slight sigh and tapped Lupus on the shoulder.
“So what do you want to do once we arrive in Elbar? I told you to make a list last night, didn’t I?”
“Huh? Well, there’s lots I want to do,” Lupus said with a suddenly serious expression. She started muttering as she counted on her slim fingers. “I want to buy confectionaries at a store, and I want to eat this pastry called a crepe. Also, I’ve heard there’s a pizza this big, so I want to eat that, too. And I want cute clothes, and I want to try going to the movie theater on my way home from school. And also—”
“Hang on, hang on. First, rank things in order of what you want to do the most. Doing everything at once will just be chaos,” Tsushima interrupted, unable to hold back.
Lupus stared at him curiously, then slowly widened her eyes. For some reason, it gave Tsushima a bad feeling.
“By any chance, are you trying to make my dreams come true, Tsushima?”
“…It depends. We’ll be living in the same city anyway. I guess we’ll still spend some time together.”
“Really? Yay! In that case, let’s start with having crepes together.”
“Please don’t make me do that.” Tsushima made a sour face at the image of devouring crepes with Lupus in the streets of Elbar.
“How come?!”
Seeing Tsushima’s reaction, Lupus slammed her head into his chin—intentionally this time. Reeling in pain from having his chin forced up, Tsushima retorted childishly.
“That hurts! Stop it!”
“It wouldn’t hurt for you to hang out with me a little, would it?! You only act like an adult when you want to get out of something!”
“I’m not ‘acting’ like an adult—I am an adult.”
“Hmm? I’m not so sure about that. You’ve got quite a tendency to get irritated, don’t you? I know you do.”
As the two began their strange squabble, the old man sitting in the front seat looked back at them with concern. Realizing their exchange was occurring just between the two of them, he awkwardly opened the communication channel.
“Sorry to interrupt your flirting session, but we’ll begin descending in ten minutes. Please get ready,” the old man said through his headset, shooting a look at Tsushima through a mirror aimed at the rear seat. Tsushima, who had been jostled about in the cramped seat, adjusted his hair with his hand as he tried to save face.
“All right, my body is secured. Proceed as planned.”
“Will do.”
The plane tilted its nose toward their planned landing site in sync with the movements of the old man’s hands on the control stick.
At that moment, Tsushima noticed something shining between the clouds. A dazzling flash of light, like an intense sunray, entered his field of vision just before the plane shook violently.
“What was that?!” the old man yelled.
A part of the aircraft broke into fragments and scattered across the sky. At the same time, the propeller began to give out. The plane started to behave erratically, and the old man hurriedly squeezed the control stick in a panic.
“What on earth is going on?!” Lupus screamed.
“Don’t speak! You’ll bite your tongue!” Tsushima held Lupus’s head down and looked out the canopy.
This wasn’t just some technical trouble—it was clearly an attack. However, there weren’t many ways someone could strike a small plane flying that high up.
It was undoubtedly the work of an Informationist, one who could produce Codes with a substantial amount of precision.
Tsushima shook off the chill running up his spine and shouted.
“Gramps! Eject the canopy!” His voice echoed around the cockpit.
As the old man handled the aircraft controls, he activated the emergency canopy release. While he was doing that, Tsushima prepared for battle by unbuckling his seat belt and standing up.
However, the enemy moved far faster than Tsushima had anticipated.
As soon as the canopy had ejected, a shadowy figure whose approach had been concealed by the sunlight landed on the plane’s nose. The aircraft shook violently, and Tsushima lost his balance, falling to his knees.
Tsushima looked up to find the assailant looming overhead. Standing there was a woman wearing a familiar navy blue military uniform with crimson embroidery.
The Informationist looked down, her skin inhumanly pale, her swaying locks so white it was as if they had absorbed the light. Her golden eyes were tinged with a blue glow—the sign of Code execution.
Lupus shuddered at the sight of the Informationist who had suddenly appeared.
“Finé…Primus? What are you doing up here?”
Hearing Lupus utter the Informationist’s name with despair, Tsushima canceled the Code he had been constructing in his brain.
Finé Primus was the most famous of the Six Imperial Swords. Known as “the Radiant Informationist,” she was a heroic level-eleven Informationist who had created mountains of corpses on countless battlefields. Even Canus, a fellow member of the Six Imperial Swords, was dwarfed by her presence. In both reputation and reality, she was the strongest of the group.
That monster of a woman was now right in front of them. The enemy had seized the initiative, and Tsushima’s client was well within killing range. Even he had no means of countering in this situation.
With no other choice, Tsushima silently raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “A smart choice,” Finé stated indifferently.
“If you intended to kill us, you could have done so with the first hit. What is your goal?” Tsushima asked, watching to see how she would respond. Finé answered with an emotionless expression.
“On my master’s orders, I will take you all with me. Resist, and I’ll kill you.”
“Understood. We’ll cooperate.”
Once she had confirmed the group wasn’t going to put up a fight, Finé executed some kind of Code without even raising an eyebrow.
A dazzling band of light formed in midair and began encircling the plane, as if squeezing it. The metal body of the aircraft creaked and groaned, and when the light completely surrounded it, the three of them were hit by a strange floating sensation.
What kind of Code would someone have to execute to create this type of phenomenon? It was beyond comprehension. And yet the plane, which had been plummeting a moment ago, was starting to fly again.
As they looked down at their destination and saw that it was tantalizingly close, the plane turned its nose eastward. It appeared they were now heading to Balga Capital City, the last place they wanted to be.
From his position in the plane, now like a rudderless ship, Tsushima noticed Lupus was trembling. She wasn’t just trembling from terror. She was staring at her feet without uttering a single word, her back hunched and her face pale.
For a moment, Lupus had found hope and was on the verge of reaching the world she had longed for, only for one of the Six Imperial Swords to show up and start dragging them back to the capital she feared most. This meant she had given in to despair.
Tsushima clicked his tongue, unable to stand it.
After being engulfed in a light that seemed to be the very embodiment of divine protection from the gods, Lupus and Tsushima were once again on the road to hell. The world, once dyed in the vibrant colors of hope, now appeared monochrome.