“Lady Alice, you cannot continue to do this. Please do not leave your seat on your own.” “Listen, listen, Lenlen!” Alice turned around abruptly and latched onto the adult she’d called Lenlen. They weren’t mother and daughter. Rather, the woman was her attendant. Alice was a princess of the Nebulis Sovereignty, the Paradise of Witches, and the woman was serving as her guard. “Lady Alice, I was worried about you.” As the girl hugged her, Lenlen stroked Alice’s hair. The woman was wearing glasses as part of her disguise, and she had on a thick winter coat to conceal the weapons in her clothes. “My, Lady Alice, you always wander off the moment I take my eyes off of you.” “Lenlen, listen! This is more important!” Alice herself seemed to pay no mind to Lenlen’s words. It seemed her great “discovery” was taking up all her attention. “There was a boy!” “Excuse me?” “He was the same age as me. He passed right by me!” “I see… So that is what you mean.” As Alice became worked up, the guard’s face softened, and her lips curled into a smile. Aliceliese Lou Nebulis IX had no boys her age around her. All of the other children she knew were girls. As she also had a private tutor and did not attend school, she had no opportunities to speak to boys like normal girls her age. Running into a boy her age was a special occasion for her. “Um, so, Lenlen, I was being really sneaky when I was looking at him. But then he turned around and looked back at me!” “That must be because you are so pretty, Lady Alice.” “…Maybe I should have said something to him.” “I am not sure I can approve of that. Now, Lady Alice, this way.” The guard motioned for Alice to follow her with her hand. All the seats around them were empty, but this was because Lenlen had bought them. “If by some chance, anyone learns of your identity, we will have quite the commotion on our hands,” Lenlen whispered. “We are currently on a trip because of a situation that came up, and I am your only guard, so we must avoid the danger of any Imperial forces finding us.” The train was headed to Vale Republic. Though the neutral country had no ties to the Empire, it was a fact that the forces had intelligence operations stationed all throughout the world. “You wouldn’t want to be chased through the streets as people call you a witch, now would you, Lady Alice?” “It’ll be fine, Lenlen. My astral power is amazing!” Alice cast Lenlen’s worries aside as she proudly puffed out her chest. “I could take care of the Imperial forces with one shot of my powers. Even Mother says they’re incredible.” “Yes. However, Her Majesty also said that you shouldn’t use your powers yet. At least not until you have full control over them.” “…She did say that.” “It is nothing to be embarrassed about. That only serves as greater evidence that your powers are strong, and you need time to learn how to control them.” Though it was true that Princess Alice had formidable astral power, she had trouble keeping it under control. If worst came to worst and she had to fight an Imperial soldier, there was a chance she would end up freezing not only the soldier with her powers, but also buildings and innocent bystanders. “Though it is not anywhere near how Imperials view us, there are some people in the neutral countries who fear astral mages. And if you hurt them with your powers…” “…They would be scared of me?” “Yes. And that would isolate us from the other countries in the world. We are forbidden from using our powers outside of the battlefield, especially within cities.” “…I understand.” Alice was deeply aware that her abilities were a double-edged sword. As soon as she first learned how to use them, she had innocently attempted to sneakily freeze a bit of the ground and ended up turning the palace’s vast inner courtyard into an ice sculpture. She’d even caught an entire van and motorcycle that had been parked in the garden. Luckily, no one had been hurt, but the fear Alice had felt that day taught her that astral powers weren’t simply a convenient skill to have. “…Should I read a book until the train arrives?” “I think that would be for the best.” “…Can I walk around the train every once in a while?” “Please refrain from doing that, if you would. I understand you’re curious about other kids your age after passing by that boy, but you should not.” After she chided Alice, Lenlen broke out into an abrupt smile. “Then again, you really should have some kids your age as playmates. A boy might be an issue, but I see nothing wrong with befriending a girl.” “…Like who?” “I have a niece who is just a year off from your age. Her name is Rin, and she’s dedicated herself to her studies since she was young to serve the Lou family.” “Rin?” “Yes. She is hoping to finish her training early and is looking forward to serving you, Lady Alice—” But Lenlen’s voice was drowned out. A shrill siren had begun to go off within the entire train. “Huh? What’s going on?!” Lenlen stood up from her seat. She had her hand within her clothes, likely so she could produce her hidden weapons at any time. There was a commotion. The passengers sitting a way off from Alice and Lenlen had begun to feel uneasy about the sudden alarm and were beginning to stand up from their seats as well. “Lenlen, I’ve heard this sound in the palace, too.” “Yes, Lady Alice. But the ones you’ve heard there are for disaster drills in case the Imperial forces invade. This is certainly a real alarm.” “…Is it the Imperial forces?” “No. I doubt it.” Had the forces attacked in order to target Alice? That was unlikely. The continental railroad was a demilitarized zone through a worldwide arrangement. The forces were unlikely to break the agreement so easily. In which case, what had triggered this alarm? “To the Vale Republic-bound passengers of car number three, this is an emergency alert. This train is presently traveling due east through the Galato Plains—” The PA system had turned on. All the passengers, including Alice and Lenlen, had gone quiet. “A pack of large predators known as rexes are approaching us. We believe the pack traveled from the far south of the plains to the north.” “…Rexes?!” someone shouted. Large predators hailing from unexplored parts of the world were generally called wilderbeasts, and rexes were a classic example of such monsters. These beasts inhabited the vast continent and were both ferocious and belligerent. They tended to attack anything in front of their eyes that moved. And it seemed that they were after the train. “But please rest assured that some excellent hunters are riding on this train today. Everyone, please remain cal—” But a roar drowned out the announcement. The windowpanes audibly cracked. Alice felt a shock wave run through the train as though something rammed itself into them. Then, finally, she heard the war cry of a ferocious beast. 3 The windows had been smashed to pieces. And then the wall behind Iska had caved in with a muffled creaking sound. “Eep?!” “They’re here! Did they ram into us?!” Everyone was far from calm. After all, the train windows had been smashed to smithereens and the rexes’ savage claws were flickering in and out of view in the dark of night. They were surrounded. “The hunters! Where are the hunters?!” “Farther back! Let’s run to that train car!” The passengers began to scramble to save themselves. They all evacuated into the next car, not even stopping to collect their luggage. By the time he came to his senses, Iska realized he’d been left alone in the train car. “…Rexes?” Iska murmured, and at the same time, he heard the deafening sounds of gunshots ring out. That had to be the hunters’ machine guns. Beyond the shattered glass, he saw the sparks of light from the gunfire. However, the large beasts stood stark against the night, towering at five meters tall. It hadn’t worked. In fact, the barrage of gunfire and subsequent pain from their wounds seemed to have made them angrier. “That’s not gonna work…!” It was only a matter of time until they invaded the train cars. As Iska shuddered at the thought, his mind turned not to the hunters, but the Empire’s strongest swordsman, who should have been on the train. “Master, what are you doing right now…?!” His teacher hadn’t appeared even with this commotion. Or perhaps he was already fighting against the rexes? The only thing Iska knew for certain was that the swordsman was not here with him now. He was on his own. “You should hypothesize what would happen if the most unfortunate and inconvenient situations were to occur.” “At least a few of them will actually occur. Whether or not you are on the battlefield.” “Agh! He only gets it right at times like these!” Iska opened his travel bag. He unwrapped several layers of cloth from a sword made for self-defense. He doubted he could stand up against a rex with this, but it was the only thing he had on him that could be deemed a weapon. “…I need to keep it together.” He gripped the sword as he looked around. This wasn’t the type of scenario he could go into without a plan. He needed to protect himself while saving the passengers and driving away the rexes. In order to do all of that, Iska needed to put himself in a position where he’d be at an advantage. “Where can I go…?” Creak. The wall of the train car was dented in the shape of sharp claws. The rexes had likely sunk their teeth into the train cars and were holding on with their claws. As he pictured it… “That’s right. From the rooftop…!” Iska shouted and leaped out of the train car with the force of a whirlwind. He headed to the couplings that joined them together. After climbing up a ladder, he jumped onto the roof. “Guh…” The evening winds whipped past him. He was on top of the speeding train—a dangerous position where if he slipped, he’d end up falling to the ground, but this was the ideal spot. “There!” He ran straight across the roof to the edge of the train car and swung his sword. “Hgh!” He heard a rex roar. As he ran, Iska had sliced through another rex’s claws. They’d been embedded in the train’s walls, and by cutting them off, the rex had lost its grip and tumbled off. One down. “…This could work!” Rexes were large predators. Because of that, they pounced on the train like it was their prey by instinct. All Iska had to do was cut off their claws and they’d fall right down. “C’mon! I can even deal with four of you!” As the wind rushed past him, he shouted so loudly, his throat went hoarse. He was doing that to encourage himself—he was scared. Because he’d practiced with his master, he was used to fighting humans more than he liked. He hadn’t fought a gigantic predator before. As a child at eleven years old, a bloodthirsty rex was a monster much too big for him. “Huh!” The strong wind carried the sound of a high-pitched scream, and Iska turned around. “…That car over there!” As he was buffeted by the wind, he ran across the roof and jumped onto the next train car. There it was. A rex was attempting to clamber onto the roof. When the beast saw Iska, it roared intimidatingly, but he rushed at it, pushing off from the floor to go even faster. He couldn’t be frightened. He had to protect the train. If the beasts successfully climbed on, they could get to the engine car and stop the train completely. If that happened, all the passengers would become prey to the beasts. “No way. I will not let you make it up here!” He devoted himself to brandishing his sword. He cut the beast’s claws with a single swing and the second rex fell. “…Tsk…haah…” He’d only been fighting for a few minutes, but he was panting unbelievably hard. It wasn’t simple fatigue either. The pressure from this life-or-death situation was making it difficult to breathe. “Where next?! The front?!” He had to rely on his ears rather than his eyes in the darkness. He started running in the direction he thought the rexes would be. “There!” He swung his sword at the faintly illuminated carnivore. However… “Ouch?!” Iska was the one to cry out. A dull pain ran through him like electricity as his wrist to his elbow went numb and stopped working. His sword had been sent flying. The rex had sensed Iska coming and kicked up its front leg at its prey—in other words, Iska. He had barely managed to defend himself with his sword. “Guh…” But now his right arm refused to move. “…Just fall!” He grabbed his sword with his left hand and once again sliced at the rex holding on to the train. That made three. Behind Iska, he heard the sweeping fire of a machine gun. “…There’s more at the last car!” He didn’t even have time to catch his breath as he leaped across the extremely unsteady train cars, heading farther down. Iska had yet to notice in the darkness that a small crack had formed in his sword. “It’s gotten through the window and is in the train!” “The tenth car is a lost cause! We need to disconnect it! Evacuate to the ninth car right now!” Bzzt… Lights violently flickered in the train car as the rexes that had caught up to the caboose snapped through the cables one after another. Alice hadn’t seen the disaster herself, but she knew exactly how dire the situation was based on the strained cries of the hunters. “…” She cowered in her seat. Just as the hunters had ordered, Alice and the other passengers nearby were sitting and keeping silent as they waited. The hunters had said that would be the safest. ………… …But is it really? Alice didn’t understand the adults’ plan. As she stayed perfectly still, she began to wonder whether she was doing the right thing. Emotions began to bubble up from within her. After all, Alice had a power that could save them from this situation—she had immense astral power. Her single worry was whether she would lose control of it since she knew the power was dangerous and even her mother had forbidden her from using it. But if she could control it, she’d be able to save the passengers. “…Lenlen! Um, Lenlen.” The moment she tried to talk to the guard next to her, she heard the crunch of metal. The windowpanes broke, and shards flew at them as a rex arm as thick as a log swung into the car. The predator outside was groping for the humans in the train car. “Huh!” Alice felt a chill run down her spine. Her astral power had activated half unconsciously as the enemy closed in on her in front of her eyes. “You mustn’t, Lady Alice!” As she stood up, Lenlen gripped her arm, trying to tell her not to use her power. Alice could see in Lenlen’s eyes exactly what the guard wanted to say, even if it wasn’t put into words. She understood, but the screams from the passengers only continued to grow louder. “N-noooo?!” “Get back! Damn it! Are they trying to get into this car, too?!” Alice heard a mother with her kids scream from close by. The hunters who had come running over showered the rexes that were clinging to the walls with a barrage of bullets. “Lady Alice,” Lenlen was murmuring, though her voice was drowned out by the din of the gunfire. “Lady Alice, your intentions are noble, and I am painfully aware of exactly what you wish to do.” “…” “But please not right now. I do not mean to be insolent, but your astral powers have the potential to bring about more casualties than the rexes.” “……I know.” And how frustrating it was to the princess—to the astral mage. Even though she had the power to solve the problem they were in, because she was so inexperienced at controlling it, she was powerless to do anything. No, she wasn’t entirely powerless. She was frustrated because she had been told not to act and had no argument to justify helping. “Leave it up to the hunters.” “…But!” Alice pointed at the crushed window frame and didn’t hold back her howl. They were at their limit—the passengers, the hunters, and the train itself. “The window is broken! And there are more and more rexes leaping onto the train. They’re on the roof and are closing in… Wait…” She doubted her eyes. Beyond the window that Alice pointed to, a rex had fallen from the roof. Had it simply lost balance? But then another fell in front of Alice in the same way as she pondered over what was happening. Was it the hunters? No, the hunters already had their hands full protecting them inside of the train. They couldn’t have been outside. “…Is there someone on the roof?” She slowly approached the window. She placed a hand on the unbroken window glass and looked up outside the car. “Lady Alice! You must get away from the window!” “…” Lenlen’s shout never reached Alice’s ears. She was fully preoccupied by the scene outside the car she was witnessing playing out in front of her. From the top of the roof… …a boy with black hair and a small sword was striking down rexes one after another as Alice watched. “It’s the boy from before!” She was absolutely stunned. It was the same boy she had passed by in the afternoon. In the intense cold night, he was singlehandedly fighting off the pack of rexes attempting to scale the train. “…But that’s so dangerous!” It was entirely different from attempting to shoot them from afar. On the unsteady roof, the boy used a small sword to attack the rexes directly. Just imagining the feat sent a shiver through Alice. She was so scared; she could never do that. Even the adult hunters would have likely been paralyzed from fear. How could a boy like him put up such a fight on his own? No, it wasn’t a matter of how the boy could do it—the issue was why she wasn’t doing anything. That was what was central to her internal conflict—because she knew she should be able to do something. As a princess of astral mages, hadn’t this power been given to her for exactly a time like this? “…Huh!” When Alice saw the boy bend back slightly, she was instantly brought back to the present. His sword had broken. The blade had snapped in half when he failed to dodge a rampaging rex, and the boy fell over as his weapon was knocked out of his hands. And the rex that had clambered onto the roof was closing in on him, ready to attack… “No!” “Lady Alice?!” Alice jumped out of the train without thinking. She had pushed away Lenlen’s arm and passed by the gun-toting hunters, weaving through the other passengers. She headed to the couplings that held the train cars together. Alice, out of breath, reached outside and looked up right as two rexes hurled themselves at the boy who had lost his sword. She realized there was no time to hesitate. If she did, he would be dead. And so… “Please, astral power!” She was fully absorbed in commanding the astral power that dwelled within her. What she had pictured was an ice shield. She couldn’t allow her power to go out of control. She prayed that the boy wouldn’t be hurt by the cold. She begged the astral power. “Protect him!” As the chill spread, it glittered a bright blue. A wall of ice, clear as crystal had formed out of nowhere, suddenly towering over the rexes and deflecting their attack. It was like a shield of ice. “……Huh?” Iska’s vision grew blurry from the blood weeping from his forehead, but he blinked in surprise. What in the world had happened? The sword he had gotten from his master had broken, and Iska himself had been injured by the rexes’ attacks. But just as he’d been cornered, this ice wall had appeared out of nowhere. “Get down!” “Huh!” A delicate voice that the wind nearly carried away shouted. Iska had no idea who the speaker was, but he knelt over as cold objects whizzed by him overhead one after another. They were bits of hail. As the pebbles hit the rexes almost like bullets, the beasts fell down. “Was that astral power?!” The roof of the train was deathly silent. By the time Iska turned around in a panic, the person had already disappeared from behind him. There was no way hail could have suddenly fallen from the sky right in that moment. He knew it must have been astral power. It seemed a rather powerful witch had happened to be on the same train as him. And that person had driven away the rexes. “…Was I saved…?” No longer driven by a desperate need to survive, Iska collapsed on the spot. He hadn’t simply broken his sword. He had used up all his stamina and his ability to pay attention to anything around him. He was in a dangerous state. “……It couldn’t be…” He couldn’t believe he’d been saved. But more importantly… He couldn’t believe a witch would protect an Imperial like him. It was a coincidence. The witch probably never would have imagined that a boy so far from home could be an Imperial. “…But.” Regardless, the fact still remained that he had been saved by a witch. The witches the Empire had taught him about were wicked and cruel—and he never would have believed one would use her powers to save the passengers or himself. “So, this is just as true as all the stories told in the Empire. Everything you’re taking in with your eyes right now is real.” “You’ll do well to keep both sides in mind.” “Master…is this…?” Iska turned around. He no longer heard the hunters’ guns and all signs of the rexes had disappeared as though they’d never been there. “Oh……” He saw the dark horizon. Iska finally realized the dim light ahead was the light of a city. They had arrived. They were at the Graf city ruins. 4 “You got on the train to the Vale Republic.” “No way!” He was on the platform at the station the train pulled into. Iska had shouted when he’d heard the first thing his master said—his teacher who had arrived earlier than him. “I had to follow you that entire distance on another train. But yours ended up slowing down so much, I made it here ahead of you.” His master sighed upon seeing the train Iska had been on. The windows were cracked in places, and the outer walls had graphic vestiges of the rexes’ claws. “Looks like you put on quite the race.” His master’s eyes landed on Iska’s broken blade, which the boy still clutched. “What happened to that?” “It broke.” “‘It broke’? You must have abused it, then.” He showed Iska no sympathy whatsoever—or so Iska thought until the greatest swordsman in the Empire said, quite loquaciously and uncharacteristically, “You bungled it, but you didn’t do the wrong thing.” “……Huh?” “A sword is tool to be used. It’s okay to break a national treasure or even a sword inscribed with the name of a blacksmith—as long as you’re doing it to save someone.” “Are you praising me right now?” “Yes, for what you’re currently capable of.” Iska felt relieved. It seemed that fighting off the rexes had balanced out any lecture he would have gotten about boarding the wrong train or breaking his sword. “Oh…but, Master, I didn’t actually fight off the rexes.” “It was the hunters, right?” “Actually, it wasn’t them either…” “Huh?” “Uh, I’m not sure how to explain this but…” I was saved by a witch. Reporting that was simple enough, but he felt frustrated that he hadn’t seen her face or known who she was. Just who had saved him? “…A lot of things happened.” “How was I supposed to know that, you fool?” While the two of them were talking, some distance away… “I wonder where that boy went?” “What is it, Lady Alice?” “Nothing…nothing at all.” The girl with the golden hair held on to her guard’s hand as they left the platform. That moment of their encounter had resulted in the Black Steel’s Successor, Iska, rethinking his view on witches. And it was also when the Ice Calamity Witch, Alice, had vowed to make her secret ability her ice flower—in other words, her shield. But little did the two of them know that it had also been the moment their fates were sealed.
Chapter 10
22 min read