Her breathing was rough. Her whole body shook. Her legs trembled like those of a newborn fawn.
But she remained standing.
She had been blasted with enough lightning to kill her one hundred times over. And yet she refused to submit. She was not backing down.
Why? The beast wondered, utterly perplexed.
How could she have survived the assault? The beast couldn’t believe such a powerless girl had held out against his power.
“…What have you done, Jupiter?”
The girl responded by raising the pouch into the air.
“There’s a bunch of accessories in here. All of them alter my abilities to improve my resistance.”
The beast understood. Those accessories were the very things weakening Keraunos’s manifestation in the real world. It was furious at the insects it should have been quashing for setting such a devious trap. But that was back in the real world.
The trappings of reality meant little in the realm of the heart, where their souls communicated.
Everything in this realm should be as Keraunos desired. So long as the beast envisioned itself as perfectly whole, so it would be. There was no way such paltry things as weakening accessories could…
“Hold on…”
The beast was surprised. Could what the girl said be true?
“Did you say they ‘alter’ your abilities…?”
They did not weaken—they altered.
For every point the girl’s stats were lowered, she gained that much resistance to certain types of damage. That meant Keraunos’s powers back in the real world were presently in a weakened state. Even a conservative estimate would easily put the beast at 40 percent of its usual power. Over half of the beast’s stats were being converted into type-based resistances.
But something bothered Keraunos. Was that all these accessories were for? To weaken his manifestation in the real world?
“Oh no…”
But before the beast could vocalize its realization, the silver-haired girl made everything clear.
“The accessories in this pouch all boost my resistance to miasma and lightning. In other words, they protect me from your attacks.”
It was exactly as the beast had feared.
Increased resistance to miasma and lightning—a combination tailor-made to protect her from Keraunos.
The beast finally understood why she’d stood tall through his barrage. But shouldn’t such resistances only apply to Jupiter in the real world?
“There is no way such trinkets should affect you here…!”
“You’re wrong. It’s because we’re in this world they work so well.” Her rosy lips moved as she voiced her own realization. “This is a world of the heart. The strength of one’s beliefs determines reality.”
Keraunos envisioned itself as perfectly whole in this realm, thus the beast was whole. However, what if, by that same logic, the girl envisioned her accessories as unfathomably powerful?
The answer was simple: That, too, would become real.
The gemstones inside the drawstring pouch had been granted power far surpassing their real-world effects. They were more than enough to protect her from the rain of a hundred black bolts.
“I was wrong from the very beginning. I thought you were in control of this world.”
The girl had thought she was unable to run, to defend herself, or even to die. This place seemed like an inescapable hell where she was forced to endure the beast’s torment. But that was only because she herself believed that.
“I’ve always been scared of you. I’ve always clung to you. I let you have complete control over me.”
She had spent her life cowering on the ground, allowing the beast to do as it pleased. Her position on the floor moments ago echoed her mental state.
“I’ll be your daughter. Just, please…I need you to protect me.”
The moment she had uttered those words, the girl had become Keraunos’s slave.
She thought back over her painful days of suffering. All the time she spent thinking everything was hopeless, that she had no choice but to be alone, that she needed to give up her humanity for the beast to protect her.
She had suppressed her emotions.
She had given up on ever feeling human warmth.
She had resigned herself to spending her life alone, hating herself.
“I didn’t know how to stop depending on you. And I couldn’t protect the people I cared about from your violence. But I wanted to live… That’s why I wished for you.”
She couldn’t run, couldn’t protect herself, couldn’t even die.
She saw herself as a foolish, weak coward. She hated herself more than anyone else in the world.
“…But I still found people who accepted me as I am.”
A light shone inside the girl’s heart. There, in the white world of snow, that light filled her with a ceaseless warmth.
“I look up to Haruka. She’s so strong and kind and warm. I want to be like her when I’m older.”
“Don’t worry, Jupi! I know you’ll be okay!”
Imagining the girl she admired most, whose smile was as bright as the sun, she took a step forward and began to walk.
It didn’t matter what Keraunos had to say anymore. So long as Jupiter had that girl to look up to, she could keep going.
“Fumika is like a mother to me. She makes me all kinds of yummy food. We take baths together. And when I’m lonely, she lets me sleep in her bed. She’s the kindest person I’ve ever met…and I made a promise to her.”
“Make it home safely, okay? I’ll have all your favorite foods ready when you come back.”
She took a second step. Determined to return home to the one waiting for her, she pressed on across the snowy landscape.
“No. Stop.”
A massive bolt of lightning fell onto the girl’s head. The blast was strong enough to rend the earth under her feet. But it didn’t leave a scratch on the girl.