"You have a use. I intend to put you to work — to fulfill my wish."
That was the first thing the man ever said to her, and it remained the defining symbol of their relationship until the very end — never once changing.
She spent several decades at his side.
Throughout that time, she was never given freedom. She was tantamount to a prisoner locked away in a basement, bound in chains.
A caretaker existed to keep her alive, but because the cautious man periodically silenced them and rotated in replacements, the only person she could truly say she had any connection with across those decades was the man himself.
— Leip Bariel.
A noble of the
The Bariel family had held the rank of viscount during the Demihuman War, but in the aftermath of the civil war, the blame for defeat was heaped upon them — their peerage was stripped, and the family was demoted to baron.
That humiliation and rage should have been the driving force behind Leip's actions, and if so, one had to wonder just how long human anger and hatred could sustain their heat.
Leip always chewed on the humiliation of those decades past as though it were yesterday.
"Someday, without fail, I will put you to use. You are kept alive by me — my very self. Do not ever forget that."
People in the realm of knowledge possessed something resembling sentiment.
Even with someone of a thoroughly disagreeable temperament and an adversarial relationship — spend ten or twenty years together and attitudes soften, and the thorns of interaction gradually thaw.
But Leip had none of that. From him, one always felt a fresh hostility.
Warm words had never once been directed her way.
She knew nothing of Leip's personal history, his family structure, or any affairs concerning the Bariel household.
Day after day, she passed long stretches of quiet, idle imprisonment, and on the rare occasions Leip visited, she would simply listen as he talked about the current state of the kingdom and the unchanging monotony of her buried existence.
Only once had she ever spoken about something different from what Leip brought up.
"You colluded with the demihumans and led the Demihuman War. What was your objective?"
More than twenty years had passed since the Demihuman War by that point. It was a topic far too belated.
By then, allies who had fought alongside them — Varga, Libre — were already dead, and nearly every key figure from the demihuman coalition of that era had likewise perished. It was under such circumstances that Leip posed that question.
She did not ask why he wanted to know.
She feared that pressing him would触 his fury, and the conversation itself would be cut short. So she held her tongue, and since she felt no particular need to conceal her objective, she answered honestly.
Her cooperation in the Demihuman War had been to fulfill the purpose of her creation.
"How pointless."
Learning that the Demihuman War had been merely one trial among many in a pursuit spanning centuries — the purpose of her creation — Leip dismissed it with striking indifference.
She felt no anger or sadness in response to his reaction. She had always been what she was, and Leip's response was, if anything, predictable.
To this repulsive schemer, every wish beyond his own must have seemed meaningless.
But then— "You were born as yourself, and yet you'd go to the trouble of becoming someone else? Pretending to be another person's name and way of life, only to let your own name die?"
What she had assumed would be a curt remark ending the conversation had a continuation.
As though the very thought were something to be spat out with disgust, Leip turned his murky eyes toward her with even greater irritation than before.
"Your objective has no value whatsoever. As I said — you should let yourself be used by me. Even if you achieved it, it would be a wish without a shred of worth. If you have nothing to do, hand yourself over to me."
"You are—"
"Purpose of creation? Meaningless. If you can't live without someone directing you, then be used for my sake."
In Leip's eyes as he spoke those words, there was not a trace of righteous indignation or compassion.
What dwelled in his murky gaze was an unquenchable fury at those who had given him his lasting humiliation, a resentment and hatred toward a world and era that refused to acknowledge his existence, and the dark, flame-like ambition that he would one day be thrust into a position worthy of himself.
That ambition struck at her existence with brutal, trampling force — like mire flung upon her — tearing her apart and drawing cold blood.
— To fulfill the purpose of her creation, granted by her creator.
That was the meaning of her life and the goal she had walked toward for so long.
But had she ever once held true passion for that purpose? She had not. Never once had she felt genuine fervor. It was the passionless inertia and compromise of believing she must see it through simply because she had been given it that governed her.
But isn't this what wishes and desires are truly supposed to be?
To want something fiercely — to strive to fulfill a wish you long for — isn't this how it should be?
Wasn't Leip Bariel's way of being the correct path to making one's wish come true?
"————"
Again, a long time passed. During that interval, her relationship with Leip remained unchanged.
They exchanged few words, and neither was she summoned to be "put to use," as she had always been told. Time slipped steadily onward.
And then, at last, a change came.
"It seems the time has finally come around."
Leip's eyes blazed with madness, his ambition undiminished even as his face and body had been consumed by an unstoppable aging, wasted to skin and bones.
Yet in his figure declaring that the time had come, there was a rapture — the joy of finally receiving the reward for having forbidden himself from even blinking, for he was certain he would seize the thread hanging before his eyes.
She learned that over these decades, Leip had gained entry into the Lugunica royal family and had been entrusted with managing the Dragon Tablet — the stone of prophecy gifted to the kingdom by the Divine Dragon.
Having crushed the truth of a calamity prophesied to befall the Kingdom of Lugunica — a disease spreading among the royal family — Leip now burned with ambition for the next royal succession battle that would follow.
"I will find a candidate before anyone else. I will take that person as my wife and send them into the selection… and I will seize the throne. I will put you to use as well."
Clenching a fist of nothing but bone and sinew, Leip declared this with fierce determination.
Being told to "be useful," and having that finally gain substance — even a creature bound for decades could feel something stir. She… expected.
The next time he came, Leip brought the candidate he had found and ordered her to prepare a technique to shatter that person's heart. He would turn the candidate into a puppet, and through her, rule the next generation of the kingdom with his own hands.
That scheming ambition — audaciously plotted, pursued with extraordinary tenacity, brought to the very threshold of realization — it was darkly radiant all the way to its core.
She wanted it fulfilled. She wanted it accomplished. With all that passion.
She wanted to see those grotesque ambitions realized, the kingdom exploited for his desires, even the
That was what she lacked, and she wanted
And so she waited. She waited and waited.
She looked forward to the day Leip would bring the candidate he had married to use — the woman offered up — and shatter her heart.
She waited, and waited, and waited, and Leip never came.
To learn why he hadn't appeared, she undid the bindings that had gone unreleased for decades and stepped outside.
And only after learning the reason for Leip's absence did she finally understand.
"—Ha."
So this was the "passion" of wanting to accomplish something.
△▼△▼△▼△ "The crux — countermeasure — no. Defend it if you can."
The trump card Sphinx had declared, her ace, her hidden trap, was overturned.
Reflected on the undulating surface of the water mirror was the desperate struggle of those who kept surmounting the schemes the Witch had prepared, pushing away the empire's imminent destruction.
"————"
Priscilla, bound in chains, narrowed her crimson eyes, glancing between the mirror's surface and Sphinx's white face.
Yearning, drowning — Sphinx had imposed the maximum strain upon herself to fulfill her wish. Its content would be loathsome to the world, to the empire, to Vincent, but for Priscilla, it was not something worth despising in the grandest sense.
She did not desire the destruction of the empire, nor the ruin of her brother Vincent's tireless efforts.
It was simply that those who pour their all into a pursuit they wish for are always beautiful.
Even if those ones harbored a hatred toward her bordering on spite.
Everything has its fitting measure.
Those who fail to recognize the size of their own vessel and desire more than it can hold will, in most cases, be destroyed. But Priscilla did not like the type of person who would wise-off about knowing one's place and console themselves by saying they were content with only what fit inside their vessel.
She wanted to love the way of living that reaches for something beyond one's vessel, walks a path that may lead to destruction, and burns one's wings in pursuit of the sun — regardless of whether the challenge succeeds or fails.
"How lovely."
Everyone fighting on this battlefield with their lives on the line would surely doubt their ears at Priscilla's words.
But it was her unvarnished truth. Priscilla, by nature, despised words and actions meant to scheme against or deceive others. She did not wish that way of living upon herself.
Therefore, it was praise from the heart.
She found endearing every soul on this battlefield who took up a weapon, lent a shoulder to another, and burned their soul while spilling blood — regardless of life or death.
If only it were possible— "—Not very like me, this sentimentality."
A rare, wry smile graced her beautiful face as Priscilla closed one eye.
A habit from childhood, imitating her brother when he pondered. Vincent understood the weight of the duties placed upon him too well — so well that he did not close both eyes even when he slept.
It was admirable, but taken too far. — There were times when some people could only be met behind closed eyelids.
"I hope you, too, brother, will find someone beside whom you can close both eyes."
Vincent, who had once burned the Witch's designs — the one who wielded the Sun Sword and led the Great Calamity — Priscilla paid him her respects even as she said those words.
Then, within the water mirror, Priscilla's gaze fell upon those who stood out above the rest.
— Aldebaran and
Her own earnest clown, and that insufferable half-demon knight who had somehow earned his place among the royal selection candidates.
Just as Sphinx recognized them as a threat, Priscilla understood — their struggle was no ordinary thing. They were something that had twisted a destiny no lesser force could bend.
"What is it you're deceiving? …No. What thread of heaven are you deceiving?"
Sphinx, who commanded the Great Calamity, had laid schemes that were no half-measures.
The army of corpses created through the Undead King's Legacy, the exploitation of the Stone Mass
Not even the Wise Emperor Vincent Volakia, not his right hand the White Spider
The Volakia Empire's destruction should have been inescapable.
If not for those who shattered that dead-end fate with impossible power.
Therefore— "—One move more."
Priscilla's lips murmured as she gazed upon the scene floating in the mirror.
The enormous water mirror that had manifested above the imperial capital reflected the crisis of the distant Fortified City, aiming to break the fighting spirit of those within the capital. Starlight descended upon the Fortified City, poised to annihilate the struggling forces in mockery — and the fire of ruin that had once been swallowed by the void swept it away.
The starlight was negated by the empire's proud magic crystal cannons, and the water mirror shattered.
It appeared that, at last, every scheme the Witch had prepared had been broken.
However— "Not yet."
Even the starlight above the Fortified City had been swept aside, but the Witch's stratagems were far from exhausted.
Witnessing her own great calamity being thwarted, the Witch had used that very fact as a feint — and set a trap.
— The shattered sky-water mirror fell upon the entire capital as rain.
A passing shower soaked the city, its drops striking indiscriminately among the living and the dead.
And it was a blade of harmful water disguised as harmless.
Slowly, the droplets that struck flesh began to tremble and become blades. This was a crisis that bore down upon everyone except Transcendents who possessed instinctive foresight or remained indoors — equally, without exception.
It was, by then, an unavoidable lethal flash.
"————"
And so, Priscilla closed her eyes.
She did the same thing Vincent had done moments before. — Schult, Heinkel,
Among them were Vincent, Ramia,
All of them, lacking that one final move.
"—The world happens to work out conveniently for me."
As Priscilla murmured this, Sphinx's movement — about to flash the blades of rain — stopped.
Sphinx stared at Priscilla through the water mirror, her black eyes wide.
The next instant, the alternate dimension created to contain Priscilla collapsed — unable to withstand the blazing crimson flames the Sun Princess unleashed from within.
△▼△▼△▼△ The moment starlight glittered above the Fortified City, every soul who looked skyward lost their words.
"————"
It had come at precisely the moment when, having just defeated the evil dragon that had attacked moments before, every soldier's morale was at its peak after uniting to repel a powerful foe.
But before the fact of the enemy army's main force being destroyed could even spread, the beautiful annihilation descending from above made many forget the beating of their hearts.
Of course, even under those circumstances, there were those who tried to give everything they had.
The elven knights draped in aurora, the warrior women who knew nothing of losing their fighting spirit, the soldiers bearing insects within them alongside a golden-armored giant, and the warband that had gathered beneath their own star.
Even those wise ones who lacked the power to fight ran countless calculations through the slivers of time available, unwilling to waste a single second in the attempt to shatter their desperate plight.
But even so — just as a swarm of ants cannot halt the foot of a giant — everything was meant to be crushed, everything meant to be mowed down and brought to an end.
— Until the fire of ruin flew in from the distant sky and collided with the starlight, and the world flashed white.
"————"
No one understood at first glance what had happened.
But the retinas of those who had refused to look away were scorched white, and the doom that would have been entirely expected to descend before their sight returned did not.
And then— "—!"
The white of starlight and the red of flame merged together, and a shockwave blanketed the Fortified City's sky.
A heartbeat later, the ensuing gale scattered in all directions, shaking even the city's sturdy walls and sending both living and dead flying indiscriminately in the wind.
Furthermore, the fierce wind cracked the great mountain upon the city's back — rock faces sheared away, and boulders came crashing down with a thunderous roar that swallowed one corner of the great fortress.
And that spot, by misfortune, was the location designated as the relief station where the wounded were being taken.
"—Rem! Hey, Rem!"
Called out in a desperate voice, Rem blinked several times.
For an instant, her thoughts had been flung to a white distance, and it took her time to grasp what had happened.
But she quickly recognized Katua's voice calling to her urgently, and remembered that the relief station had been caught in a collapse caused by falling rocks.
Seeing the cracks in the walls and ceiling, Rem instinctively shoved Katua away as the ceiling came down.
And yet— "I'm… alive?"
"Of course you're alive! God, I wish you'd stop! If you died protecting me, this time my heart would really, truly die…"
Buried in rubble, Rem confirmed her own survival as Katua's tearful voice was hurled at her. That torrent of grief was interrupted when Katua saw Rem — who had pushed the rubble off her body and risen.
She must have been surprised. The debris atop Rem had been enormously heavy — even with the strength befitting a oni like Rem, it should not have been easily moved.
And yet Rem had managed it.
"R-Rem, your—! Your eye!"
Katua pointed at Rem's face, her voice cracking into something like a shriek.
Rem realized that Katua was pointing at her left eye, where a flame must have been flickering. After all, the same flame burned in Katua's eyes as well.
— No. It was not only Rem and Katua.
Everyone else in the relief station who had been caught in the collapse — every last person besides Rem and Katua — had risen to their feet with nothing more than scratches.
In one eye of every one of them, a flickering flame burned.
That flame — that surging power — was giving Rem strength.
And that meant— "—Lady Priscilla?"
Rem murmured, feeling the heat of a painless flame kindled within her own eyes.
She had no certainty, no reasoning. She only knew, following the conviction of her own heart, whose flame this was.
"Katua."
"W-What!? Water… it's water, right!? Quickly — we need to douse it with water!"
"No. I don't think this is a fire that should be extinguished. And besides—"
"Besides?"
To the flustered, bewildered Katua, Rem rose and located an overturned wheelchair. She lifted Katua onto the one that was barely intact and sat her down.
Then she looked around at the others rising to their feet in the ruined relief station and gave a nod.
"I feel as though I'm being told — one more push should do it."
△▼△▼△▼△ — The water mirror shattered, and from the sky where droplets scattered, a woman in crimson fell.
Everyone's consciousness was seized by her overwhelming presence, their eyes drawn upward to the sky set ablaze by the setting sun.
And naturally, the Witch was no different.
"—Priscilla Bariel!"
In this instant, the Witch Sphinx — manifested through the partial absorption of vast mana via an incomplete magic circle disassembling magic stones — numbered forty-four.
Every one of them raised their palms toward the sky, and light coalesced around the falling Priscilla.
But— "Keep your eyes to yourself, dancer girl! No touching allowed!"
"Shoddy work, that. Bad move, truly."
Transcendents who would not miss this moment intervened, reducing the forty-four to thirty-six in a single stroke.
Even so, enough remained to send a lethal orb of light hurtling toward Priscilla from every direction — a killing strike converging on the sun that had broken free of its cage— "I won't let you!!"
A cry saturated with the color of lovingkindness rang out, and the writhing streets of the capital launched themselves like javelins into the air.
They intercepted the spheres of light hurtling toward Priscilla in midair, and the successive explosions and blasts that blossomed across the sky served as her shield.
"Match my timing,
"As if you need to tell me, I suppose!"
Purple radiance blossomed around Priscilla even as she pierced through the concussive light and continued her descent. A disc-shaped crystal — the supreme collaboration between spirit and mage — deflected the incoming orbs of light, becoming a great shield that protected Priscilla, protected her, and protected her still.
However— "Not yet!"
The Witch screamed, her voice raw with emotion, as though coughing blood.
An instant later, the battered disc groaned, its cracks widened, and it shattered all at once.
The white-haired Witch rose into the sky and aimed the light that would tear life apart at the now-defenseless Priscilla— "Uw—auu!!"
"I won't let you!!"
From the ground, a golden-haired girl teleported into the Witch's torso while simultaneously, a deer-girl kicked off the Crystal Palace with enough force to propel herself upward — both landing their strikes at the same moment.
The Witch was crushed flat, and the beam she had released went wide.
"That is merely… the bait."
Even as the flattened Witch was shattered into fragments of earth, she declared that even this was part of the plan.
In the next instant, multiple Witches on the ground joined hands, and through complete synchronization — possible only because they were all the same being — shortened the casting time, and a massive storm was born.
It became raging water, wind, and light, swallowing Priscilla whole in the sky.
The next moment would have shown Priscilla's wretched form, torn to ribbons— "Icicle Line—!"
The storm of destruction burst from within, and what appeared next was not a torn Priscilla but an ice flower that had bloomed across the heavens — as if to shield her, or perhaps to adorn her.
Magnificent petals of a great bloom trapped the light, denying it passage to Priscilla.
And hurtling upward from the ground toward Priscilla — who had turned aside every death, every destruction, every annihilation — was a shadow closing in with ferocious speed.
It was— "—My Princess!!"
Aldebaran, raising the ground beneath his feet into a twisted, ungainly pillar of stone and earth that reached toward the sky — and toward Priscilla.
The pillar surged upward relentlessly, closing the distance between the falling Priscilla and the ascending Aldebaran. Closer. Closer. Closer still. Until finally—zero.
"—!"
On the unsteady pillar, his outstretched right arm caught the falling Priscilla by force. They were about to plummet together when Aldebaran locked both feet firmly onto the pillar's summit, bracing himself with everything he had to save Priscilla from the fall.
At Aldebaran's desperate act, Priscilla narrowed her sharp eyes.
"You have done well."
As Priscilla spoke those few words, Aldebaran bowed his head, overcome with emotion. Then he raised his face, his voice trembling.
"Princess, Princess, my Princess…! At last, again— Oww!!"
"Fool. Who belongs to whom?"
Priscilla rapped Aldebaran's head lightly with the hilt of her Sun Sword — hard enough to dent his iron helmet. Aldebaran involuntarily crouched, but with one hand still supporting Priscilla, he could not so much as touch the spot where he had been struck.
At the sight of the pathetic Aldebaran, Priscilla gave a small "hmph" through her nose.
"Still, you did well for one of your caliber. I shall grant you my praise."
"I-I'm grateful and honored… But what about you, Princess? Are you hurt? Did they hurt you anywhere? Actually — you look too pretty for someone who was captive…"
"Cease your foolish prattle. My beauty is not so fragile as to be marred by a mere stay in captivity. Watch your tongue, Al."
"————"
Held in his arms and addressed with that exasperated air, Aldebaran — Al — held his breath.
Then, confirming once more the reality of Priscilla before him, he nodded deeply. Cradling her, he gazed out at the surroundings.
"Look — the star of the show has arrived. You should all make a rousing welcome."
In Priscilla's field of vision, from atop the stone pillar, she could see the figures of many who had staked everything on this battle — and in every one of their eyes, a flame burned.
In the eyes of those Priscilla Bariel could bring herself to love, the fire of the soul was lit.
And of course— "Princess?"
Beside her, Al lifted the cheek-guard of his helmet with a finger and peered inside. — In his right eye — his true face, shown to none but Priscilla — the same flame burned.
Seeing it, Priscilla smiled with radiant delight, and spoke.
"It's quite simple. — This world happens to work out conveniently for me."