Rod Bauer’s POV
“Damn…” With feelings of shame, I watched the fierce battle unfold amidst the rubble of the throne room.
“For the last time, Master Rod, you have to stop moving!”
“You won’t heal if you don’t sit still!”
“Yeah, yeah, my bad.”
May and Aleah sharply told me off, but I wasn’t in any mind to really care. Damn it… We’ll lose at this rate.
Thanks to my foolhardy carelessness, our ace in the hole, the Focalizer, had been destroyed. What was more, the Demon Queen’s magic barrier was stronger than before. Claire and Rae appeared to be trying something, but it wasn’t working out. Things were looking bad for us.
“There has to be something I can do…” I mumbled under my breath. I considered myself fairly bright, but no matter how hard I thought, no half-decent ideas came to mind. My best idea was to try and use the cannon of the Focalizer to scatter the Demon Queen’s magic like I had with Socrat, but that had only worked against him because I’d taken him by surprise. Having watched our fight, the Demon Queen wasn’t likely to fall victim to it. “So what the hell can I do?”
The only other time in my life I’d felt this tormented by my own powerlessness was after the eruption of Mt. Sassal.
The eruption had left me heavily wounded. I’d been in the middle of trying to get a village at the foot of the mountain to evacuate when it blew and I ended up crushed. Up until then, I had lived thinking I could do anything. But as I lay there with my arm smashed off and my magic depleted, I realized just how incapable I really was.
Thankfully, the evacuation was mostly over before the eruption, so none of the villagers were harmed. But the small village lacked a proper medical facility, and I lingered on the edge of death for quite some time. The only reason I survived at all was because the villagers put my own well-being before their own.
The villagers were safe, but they had lost most of their homes and were without food. I was a burden to them. By all rights, they should have let me die and focused on their own survival. But they chose not to abandon me…simply because I was a prince of Bauer.
The village had strong traditional values, the same values I had looked down on as archaic. If I were just some traveler, they’d have definitely let me die, but because I was royalty, they went out of their way to save me. I was saved by the very values I disdained, and that made me conflicted, for it dawned on me that I had lived a life defined by conceit.
I had let myself think I was all-capable when in reality I was nothing without the people of Bauer—people who I soon realized didn’t even necessarily see the world as I did and who had values as numerous as the stars.
When I thought about it some more, I realized Thane must have come to this truth long before me. He had a slight inferiority complex and was perceptive to the differences between him and others because of it. As for Yu… She was always something of a genius, so she probably knew too.
Only I was ignorant to the world around me. I was the foolish emperor parading about in his imaginary new clothes.
So, I left the royal family. Partly, that was due to the political mood wanting Thane to be king, but mainly was because I realized I wasn’t worthy of being royalty.
Wanting to find something I could do for my country, I joined the army, as I figured that kind of place would suit me best. The training was tough; I couldn’t count how many times I kissed the dirt sparring without magic. But that was fine by me, as it just meant I had found the limits of what I was actually capable of.
Think, damn it. You can’t give up yet, not when they haven’t given up. Rae, Claire, Manaria, Lilly—these four who I’d once had the arrogance to see as my damsels in distress were now fighting for humanity’s tomorrow. How could I call myself a man if I gave up here?
But as much as it hurts to admit, I can’t fight anymore. Then what about these two…? No, don’t be stupid, I thought as I watched the twins carefully tend to my wounds. Children like them shouldn’t even have been standing on a battlefield like this. It wasn’t right. But it was also true that they were more useful than I was at present.
“Your thinking might have merit, Rod Bauer.” A voice, flat and monotone, suddenly spoke in my head.
“I’m guessing that’s you, TAIM?”
“Yes. I can’t borrow Lilly Lilium’s body currently, so I’m contacting you directly.”
“Get to the point. What do you want?” I asked hurriedly.
“Let the twins act as a substitute for the Focalizer.”
“What?”
“The gathered magical energy is still stored within its magic stone; you only need something to convert and focus it.”
I looked at the remnants of the Focalizer and saw the magic stone was still intact. It lay buried under some wreckage, but it retained its brilliant shine. It was as though the people of Bauer were with me now, saying: “We’re just getting started. What’re you waiting for? Let’s do this.”
“Sure, we only need to convert and focus the energy, but that’s the hardest part,” I said. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to—”
“Those two can do it.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I’d had to rack the brains of countless magic scholars to finish my Focalizer, and TAIM was saying these kids could replicate it themselves?
“Explain it to them. They’ll know what to do if you tell them to use their Spell Sword.” TAIM explained no further. Like before, she said what she wanted and left.