After closing her eyes and offering a prayer to Ortesia, Leila wiped her tears and quietly rose to her feet.
She didn't know everything — not by a long shot — about what her mother, Ortesia, had been thinking throughout all her actions up until now. Their time talking together had simply been far too short to grasp it all.
But there was one thing she understood.
Her mother had been thrown into the heart of this country — a country that must have been even worse back then than it was now — right into the thick of its wretched nobility.
And yet, she had still sought something. She hadn't simply followed along meekly, nor had she resigned herself and accepted everything as it was.
She had kept fighting for something she couldn't attain as she was, never giving up the pursuit.
Whether or not it was something people would accept, whether it seemed like some grand scheme that had been destined to end this way all along — it didn't matter.
She had fought to make her feelings, her wishes, come true. She had fought on her own terms, to the very end.
If that was the case, then surely — as a daughter, at the very least — she should pay her respects to that resolve.
With those thoughts filling her heart, Leila stood up and headed toward the Royal Capital — toward the place where the battle still raged.
She had lost the mother she'd most wanted to see, but her dear youngest sister, the one she cherished above all others, was still fighting. Fighting to change the very country that had taken their mother from them.
If that was so, then there was only one thing Leila had to do.
And with that resolve, the second princess of the kingdom set out — walking forward for the sake of her country.
◆
One of the three supreme commanders of "The Organization," Ortesia, had fallen.
This would undoubtedly shift the battle's momentum in a significant way — in favor of Ermes and the Third Princess Faction.
The obvious advantage of having knocked out one of the enemy's top fighters went without saying, but more than anything else, the fact that "Rose was now free" was an enormous factor.
Rose was, needless to say, the strongest mage in the Third Princess Faction, and thanks to her Bloodline Magic, her mobility was second to none. She could rush to wherever on the battlefield was lacking in manpower, and her offensive capability made her the perfect vanguard.
The only problem was that even someone as formidable as Rose had taken a wound from Ortesia — an enemy who wielded magic that was her natural nemesis on top of that —
Magic Inscription Liberation —
had been forced upon her, leaving both her magic power and physical stamina depleted to an extraordinary degree. She couldn't immediately rejoin the fight.
But that was only temporary.
Once Rose returned as a completely free piece on the board, the tide of this decisive battle for the Royal Capital would tilt decisively in their favor. The moment the Third Princess Faction pulled within reach of victory was drawing closer with every passing second —
— which meant.
This was the most dangerous.
Window of time.
"I understand that you have no troops to spare."
Almost simultaneously, on the exact opposite side of the Royal Capital.
A man's calm, composed voice rang out.
"We must protect the citizens and nobles from the endless death spirits blanketing the Royal Capital while also defeating the enemy. That is the burden of the nobility — no, of *decent* nobility.
I know it well, since I've had to wrack my own head over it more times than I can count."
He spoke in an understated way, hinting that this was precisely why things had turned out as they had, his tone remaining detached.
"Therefore, no army can be dispatched to strike at me, the root of the problem. I anticipated it would be a small elite force of mages — or perhaps a single person, depending on the circumstances. In that sense, you are the one who knows me best, and also the one most fitting in terms of our shared entanglement. I understand that perfectly.
…Which leaves one question."
He spoke, gazing at the scene before him.
"— Why did you think you could beat me?"
Before him.
In a corner of the battlefield saturated with the stench of death — a place that, though still in the realm of the living, was so choked with swirling souls it might as well have been the underworld itself.
Vengeful spirits howled their hatred as they tore into the purified dead and turned their fangs upon their own master — in other words, at the end of a clash between the dead where the outcome was already abundantly clear — and at the girl who had collapsed powerless: Katia.
"One of the enemy's main pillars — the side that was already stretched thin and on the ropes — has crumbled. Now I'm free to act as well, and as for Rose, the one Ortesia weakened — I can handle her as she is now, no problem.
…It's checkmate, Third Princess Faction."
Yurugen von Trackia, one of the three commanders of "The Organization," made that declaration with razor-sharp insight and the cool analysis of someone who had once been an ally looking inward.