—A shinobi must never give their heart to anything.
It was the absolute precept bestowed upon those in the shinobi villages of the Volachia Empire who were not permitted any way of life other than shinobi—a rule more fiercely guarded than the iron-blooded code rooted in the Empire's soil.
If one entrusted their heart to something, the blade honed into a shinobi would rust all too easily.
For that reason, without exception, shinobi had to carve this iron rule into their souls and abide by it.
And yet— "You know, you're just like me, girl. When you're halfway decent at everything, life just loses its spark, doesn't it? Maybe there's something in your heart already, huh?"
Yae remembered how infuriating it was when the village chief, who despite his age still kept most of his teeth, had grinned and said that—where had the shinobi's iron rule gone?
—Including how fiercely she had thought that such a way of life was impossible for her.
△▼△▼△▼△ —'Scarlet Blossom'
That was an unshakeable fact, and Yae herself, though reluctant, had to admit it.
Those around her praised her as the greatest talent since the founding of the shinobi village, loudly proclaiming that her potential could rival even the 'Admirer' of the
Honestly, Yae desperately wished they would stop comparing her to such an outrageous counterpart, but the people of the village were intoxicated by her natural gifts, paying no heed to her feelings.
In truth, if talent was something that arrogantly short-cut the manifold toils of any given field, then Yae undoubtedly possessed an innate gift for shinobi work.
Yet in stark contrast to the praise she received from those around her, Yae loathed being treated as 'special.' It was a visceral rejection, a resistance to the very concept of being 'special'—what one might call a 'special allergy.' When others were treated as special, it didn't bother her. But the moment she herself was singled out as 'special,' an unbearable sensation seized her, and she wanted to throw everything away. That was the magnitude of her rejection.
For Yae, who harbored this intense allergy toward being 'special,' the shinobi iron rule—directly denied by the village chief at the outset—was an extraordinarily compatible creed.
Giving one's heart to something meant creating a 'special' within oneself.
Since she was allergic to that 'special,' Yae could observe the shinobi's iron rule effortlessly. One might truly say she was born to be a shinobi.
Of course, the fact that this very quality was part of why those around her treated her as 'special' was a rather bittersweet irony.
—Now, the path of shinobi was harsh to begin with, and not something one could easily walk.
The bar was staggeringly high: one in a thousand apprentice shinobi became a lower shinobi, one in a thousand lower shinobi became a mid-ranking shinobi, and one in a thousand mid-ranking shinobi finally became an upper shinobi—such was the narrow gate they spoke of. Each time Yae heard this analogy, she couldn't help thinking: as if there were a billion aspiring shinobi in the first place.
Well, the fact that the senior shinobi were self-aware enough about how absurdly brutal the path was to want to use such exaggerated expressions was a good thing. When it came to any form of torture, the human heart would rather perform it with the conviction that "this has a specific purpose here" than go through it thinking "what meaning does this even have?"
And indeed, the process of creating a shinobi was brutal enough to be called torture.
Training began around the age when children first gained awareness—Yae considered this not merely torture but tantamount to child abuse. But the darkness of shinobi creation was bottomless, and if one stumbled at the entrance, the story couldn't move forward.
First, the candidates for apprentice shinobi were, for the most part, children abducted from elsewhere.
As mentioned earlier, shinobi training began in early childhood, but because the training was inhumane and unreasonable, people died left and right without mercy. So for the sake of efficiency, they abducted children of an appropriate age to begin training rather than infants. The fact that they bypassed the most troublesome infant stage was the very embodiment of shinobi inhumanity—thoroughly wretched.
The first thing the abducted children underwent was, above all else, memory processing.
The methods were said to involve drugs and suggestion, or techniques that directly affected memory, though the specifics remained unclear. Through this process, the abducted children forgot their families and hometowns completely. Yae herself did not remember her parents' faces, nor did she know her real name. The name 'Yae' had been given to her later; until then, she had been called 'Red Number Eight' along with her hair color.
Those lacking aptitude would stumble at this very memory processing stage. Either the memory erasure didn't take effect properly, or it worked too well and left them as useless husks—an utter disaster right from the start.
And Yae, who thought herself callous for it, had shed her past in one clean, effortless sweep.
The drop had been so sudden and effortless that even
Though even calling him a namesake was generous—the relationship was more like that of a obligatory, detached instructor and student rather than anything resembling a parent-child bond. To Yae, Fujirou was simply the person who had given her a name, and one she happened to cross paths with frequently within the village.
In any case, once the forced stripping away of emotional anchors was complete and the blank canvas—the past erased clean—was ready for the black paintbrush called 'shinobi' to smear freely, the true calling of the shinobi village, that institution for forging the inhuman, began: not bodily modification, but the transformation of the human body.
Destruction and correction of bones to master superhuman flexibility and acrobatics, poison resistance training that gradually escalated from small doses to lethal levels, learning the dangers of martial arts and shinobi tools through the body and through pain—broken bones, torn muscles, and blood loss came with mandatory quotas.
Peers who failed to see the next morning and grew cold were frequently found rolling around, but even they were not permitted burial, serving instead as training material for learning to cope with death, and those who lost their sanity from watching corpses decay day after day and breathing in the stench were legion.
Yae handled all of these supposedly terrifying trials with ease. —No, that was a lie. She did struggle, in her own way. But her struggle felt like it amounted to one ten-thousandth of what her peers endured.
If that was talent, then it was nothing less.
The destruction and correction of bones were managed by flipping a switch on her own pain threshold; the agony of poison melting her insides was borne with minimal blood in her urine and stool; she mastered shinobi tools on first touch as though she had used them for ten years; once she experienced a martial technique, she used it ever after against larger opponents and never fell for it again. The stench of corpses was the only thing she found truly unpleasant, but even that she grew accustomed to in time.
Thus, young Yae became one in a thousand at an unusual pace.
"—From this day forward, you shall call yourself Yae Tenzen."
That was the day Fujirou gave her her name, marking her recognition as a lower shinobi.
She felt no particular emotion about it. After all, even as 'Red Number Eight,' she had been treated differently from her peers, and having a name did little to affect her self-awareness. She simply found being treated as 'special' itchy and irksome.
—Why Fujirou had named her Yae, she still didn't know.
She had missed her chance to ask. By now, she was rather fond of it, and 'Tenzen' had a nice ring to it. Far better than ending up as 'Yae Dünkerken' by some mistake.
Even Yae's sardonic thoughts about that were laughed off by the village chief with a "Ka ka ka ka! What a cheeky one!" Come to think of it, there wasn't a single shinobi in the village with the same family name as the village chief—was that because the chief was a poor teacher, or because he had abandoned that duty? The former seemed more likely, Yae surmised.
In any case, whether she was called 'Red Number Eight' or Yae Tenzen, the texture of the world around Yae and her way of walking as a shinobi didn't change. —What changed wasn't Yae, but the environment around her.
—That was the very reason Yae had come to loathe being 'special.' △▼△▼△▼△ —Now, as previously stated, Yae had a 'special allergy,' and an incident erupted that accelerated that allergy in the youngest-ever, record-breaking newly promoted lower shinobi.
Ultimately, everyone in the village would come to recognize Yae's talent and ability, but the moment she was granted the status of lower shinobi, there was someone captivated by her brilliant future: Fujirou Tenzen.
Her namesake and the senior who oversaw her training, Fujirou was thoroughly entranced by Yae's talent—the way she absorbed one lesson and turned it not into ten but into a hundred or a thousand.
That, in turn, was an act that violated the shinobi iron rule of never giving one's heart to anything.
The extraordinary shinobi Yae Tenzen had to be forged into something supernatural by his own hands. —Fujirou had fallen under the thrall of that fanatical sense of mission.
"You have that much talent! How can you not see it!"
Fujirou's bloodshot eyes as he spat those words out—he was a fanatic who believed in Yae's talent with religious fervor.
She had felt his gaze upon her growing hotter by the day, but the damage wrought by his explosion far exceeded anything Yae had imagined.
Burned to the core by Yae's 'special' nature, what Fujirou prepared was the 'Insect Poison'—a ritual with the same mechanism as the 'Rite of Imperial Selection' that determined the Emperor of the Volachia Empire. It involved thirty lower shinobi of the same rank as Yae at the time, a reckless catastrophe that threatened the very survival of the village.
The lower shinobi, taken to a forest away from the village and ordered to fight to the last survivor, obeyed the directives from their superior without question, throwing their lives away like disposable tools.
True to Fujirou's expectations, the last one standing was Yae Tenzen alone.
However, she had never once initiated an attack herself—instead, she turned back every opponent who came at her. And she had let the last surviving peer, who begged for his life, go free. This outcome infuriated him.
—No, more precisely, not him, but them.
It wasn't just Fujirou who had been captivated by Yae Tenzen's talent and lost his way.
Many others had been swayed by his words, or had witnessed Yae's growth firsthand, and attempted to burden Yae with a warped expectation by carrying out the 'Insect Poison' ritual.
Yet Yae, who had betrayed the expectations of those who blindly believed in her, far from causing their passion to cool, only made it burn fiercer.
If they had been willing to dispose of Yae for betraying their expectations and then take their own lives, there would have been something almost endearing about it.
But they had made the misguided resolve to repeat the 'Insect Poison' as many times as it took until Yae established the shinobi ideal they desired, and for those people, there was no remedy left.
"You are... an existence that overturns what a shinobi should be...!"
Those were the last words he spoke before falling—right to the end, Fujirou died believing in Yae's potential.
The throat that had spouted those grating assertions was slashed open, and delicate white cherry blossom petals, as if in cruel irony, fluttered down onto the pool of blood where her namesake and his foolish comrades lay.
Yae remembered the image of those blood-stained petals with an indescribable sense of futility.
"Well, well, now that's something. A greenhorn brat barely out of diapers, and she took out everyone all the way up to upper shinobi?"
The village chief, arriving late at the scene, surveyed the young bodies and the girl surrounded by them, and offered that casual remark. It seemed Fujirou and his associates' scheming had been detected by the village's senior leadership—they wouldn't have survived regardless of whether the 'Insect Poison' succeeded or not.
That they had moved so slowly despite knowing all this made one wonder, though Yae preferred not to speculate, whether they had intentionally dumped the task of eliminating the village's malcontents onto her.
"So everyone really kicked it, huh?"
Though that speculation wasn't the reason, Yae lied in response to the village chief's question.
She concealed the fact that the peer she had let go—the root of Fujirou's displeasure—not only escaped the 'Insect Poison' but had left the shinobi village entirely.
The peer had offered, "Well, if that's the case, why don't you leave with me?" but Yae had flatly refused. Not because she wanted to stay in the village, but because she didn't want to stand beside him.
Her skill and talent far surpassed his. And yet her instincts told her—if Yae were to meet her death, it would be standing beside him.
"Well then, guess I'll be heading back. —'Scarlet Blossom.'"
The village chief turned his back and addressed her by the epithet he had never used before.
She never learned why Fujirou had named her Yae. But she understood, without being told, why the village chief called her that.
—Because it was the night a shinobi died, and the white cherry blossoms in full bloom had been painted crimson with blood.
△▼△▼△▼△ —'Scarlet Blossom' Yae Tenzen was an extraordinary genius shinobi.
By the time she was promoted to upper shinobi at the youngest age on record, and this fact had been firmly established in the public consciousness, Yae's exacerbated 'special allergy' had become something beyond remedy.
Being treated as 'special' by others was, for Yae, a curse, a threat, and an unwelcome interference that could only bring negative effects to her life.
Expectations and hope carried a strongly positive impression, which was precisely why so many in this world wielded them recklessly, oblivious to the fact that they could become blades that deeply pierced others. And unconscious blades were especially vicious, making it hard for both the wielder and the target to notice the wound.
Being jerked around by such things to such a degree, Yae had grown thoroughly exhausted.
"You know, you're just like me, girl. When you're halfway decent at everything, life just loses its spark, doesn't it? Maybe there's something in your heart already, huh?"
Yae found it galling that the village chief, of all people—someone self-aware about the existence of that blade—would say such a thing.
The village chief was personally trying to get Yae to break the shinobi's iron rule. She couldn't believe he was in his right mind. She wasn't even seeking 'spark' in life. Such things were unnecessary.
To have spark meant to have expectations about one's own abilities, to harbor hope for the future—to believe in one's own 'special.' That was nothing other than Yae's landmine.
Therefore, Yae deliberately distanced herself from the image of a shinobi that everyone expected and hoped for.
It was the polar opposite of the shinobi ideal that Fujirou Tenzen and his kind had tried to forge with their lives on the line: a frivolous attitude, elusive words and actions, a warm but never overly familiar demeanor.
Yae Tenzen's personality had been forged as that of a flighty, superficial person.
She wanted to make one thing clear to avoid misunderstanding: this was the natural conclusion for Yae, who detested being 'special,' and was by no means modeled on the village chief's personality.
Never delving deeply into anyone's life, never confronting anyone directly, never being cherished by anyone.
That was the philosophy of life and social strategy that 'Scarlet Blossom' Yae Tenzen had arrived at— "Surely you don't regard such an unsightly existence as your natural gift?"
When she heard those words, spoken to her when they were alone, Yae caught her breath behind her crimson beauty.
Yae, who had grown hypersensitive from her 'special allergy,' not only despised being treated as 'special' by others, but was also keenly perceptive to the 'special' in other people. On that front, the woman Yae had recently been in close contact with was, from the inside out, a being that seemed to be made entirely of 'special.' As for her particular brand of specialness, one didn't even need a keen nose to perceive it—it was glaringly obvious to anyone.
—'Bloody Bride'
The days spent with her—whom her subjects also called and revered as the 'Sun Princess'—had been vivid and deeply memorable even for Yae, who had carried out various missions as a shinobi.
Originally, Yae had infiltrated the Barielle household as a maid on the orders of
Obeying orders without asking too many questions was the creed of a shinobi, and Yae was fine with that. Only someone like the village chief would openly defy such a thing, and Yae was different—she was obedient.
That said, the mission was illogical and baffling.
The basics were surveillance and reporting on the target's movements—she received no instructions for sabotage or interference, nor was she told to quickly assassinate her. In any case, being personally assigned this mission meant they had judged her to possess commensurate skill and the ability to return alive. But after infiltrating the mansion, the days passed as nothing more than those of an ordinary maid. —For lack of a better way to put it, it was nothing short of a waste of the genius shinobi 'Scarlet Blossom.' In truth, Yae's natural gifts were not limited to shinobi work—she could handle most other things with ease. So for Yae, who could perform maid duties without a hitch, the infiltration mission at the Barielle mansion was, like all her previous missions, an easy job.
The one exception was the moments she interacted with Priscilla—those required extreme vigilance.
Given her line of work, Yae had opportunities to observe various important figures.
The 'White Spider' who had assigned Yae this mission was one such person. The village chief, the 'Wicked Old Man,' was also, in his own way, a notable of the Empire. She had even glimpsed His Imperial Majesty from afar—though that time, she had locked eyes with the 'Blue Lightning' standing beside the Emperor and been waved at, which had left her trembling with a sense that there was always someone above.
Even compared to such titans, Priscilla's powers of insight were bottomless—Yae could not predict at all what the woman might see through.
Despite this being impossible, she had suspected on multiple occasions that her identity as an assassin from the Empire had been seen through.
But if that suspicion were true, there would have been no reason for Yae to be left alive, so logically she shouldn't have been discovered. —Or had she? There was a quality about Priscilla that made one think she might notice everything and still let things slide.
One could attribute this to her nature of enjoying danger even at the cost of her own life, or perhaps—as she herself often declared without hesitation—it was the delusion that the world would bend to her will, and one could dismiss it as such.
In any case—Yae pitied this 'special' Priscilla, thinking it a misfortune.
Her rare beauty, her manner of bearing herself, her words, even the way she breathed—all of it carried a bewitching quality that ensnared others. Priscilla, whether she wished it or not, would have her 'special' nature touch the eyes, the lives, the emotions of every person she encountered.
Countless numbers would place their expectations and hopes in her, and be consumed by unhealthy desires and emotions. —Even this very pity Yae harbored was a product of Priscilla's 'special' nature.
And as if she had seen straight through Yae's heart, those were the words spoken to her at the beginning.
Priscilla sat reading a book in her private room, not even glancing at Yae preparing tea, when she suddenly made that remark without any warning or prelude.
That said, as noted earlier, Yae was always on guard during interactions with Priscilla. So even then, while she registered a slight surprise, she was able to respond with her usual light, playful manner.
She acted with effortless ease, a touch of mischief, as though she wasn't taking anything seriously, and offered a smile.
At Yae's unchanged attitude, Priscilla closed one eye and— "—The day will come when you too must devote everything you have to my cause. Make certain to engrave my words upon your heart. Be prepared—'perfectly.'"
Yae could not grasp the true meaning behind those words.
Her shinobi instinct warned that asking for clarification might arouse suspicion. But more than that, Yae simply didn't want to hear it.
She didn't want inconvenient words from the 'special' Priscilla directed at her.
And so Yae never learned the true meaning of Priscilla's words.
She never learned why Fujirou had named her Yae, never learned the village chief's intentions in spending so long trying to get her to break the shinobi's iron rule. Nothing.
To avoid being treated as 'special' by others, she shut her ears and turned her eyes away.
—Because that was Yae Tenzen's philosophy of life: never desiring 'special,' and never allowing herself to be desired as 'special.' △▼△▼△▼△ In the end, Yae's thinking had been correct.
Priscilla, who had shone so brightly, who had captivated so many with her flame-like 'special' existence, had fallen on the cruel, merciless soil of the Empire and scattered her life.
And those who had been scorched by her lost 'special'—their rages left without direction, their souls burning—still sought to repay that 'special,' devoting their very lives to the cause.
Yae Tenzen did not want a life where one was jerked around by such 'special.' That was why. That was exactly why.
She needed to eliminate from this world the 'special' that might take root in her heart as an unhealthy attachment.
That was the only reason Yae would stake her life to assist the man who had been abandoned by the 'special' he yearned for— "—!"
The ice disc rotated at breakneck speed in every direction—up, down, left, right—yet Yae used it as foothold to construct her battlefield, and moved to intercept the oni girl charging at her:
The steel wire from her right hand shot vertically, while the steel wire from her left carried a captured sword in a horizontal sweep—a double slash of gleaming light, impossible to dodge, closing in from Rem's front and back.
—Through the opponent's coordination, Yae had lost
With ice wings unfurling behind her, Emilia caught the momentum and wind of the spinning ice disc and soared into the distant sky, pursuing the fleeing Al with mounting speed. Her retreating figure, growing ever more distant, finally slipped beyond the range of Yae's steel wire.
She could still throw objects—rock fragments, blades—using wire-assisted long-range projection, but— "No looking away!"
Rem, who had dodged the dual attack by cutting the chain with her sword and bending to avoid the wire, disrupted even that opportunity.
Gritting her teeth at the blunder, Yae grabbed the wire she had launched and swung in a wide arc to escape the approaching Rem, circling around to the far side of the ice disc— "Suddenly getting tough—how unfair is that? What's the reason for—"
"—Love!"
"...I didn't ask!"
Rem pursued Yae around the ice disc, smashing through the ice by brute force. With her horn blazing, the oni girl's vitality surged—a savage charge from which she aimed to close into her preferred mid-range. Yae dodged the swinging arm and iron ball with her footwork, clinging to the spinning platform, and circled behind Rem.
The speed was tremendous, but the rotation of the ice disc around its central axis maintained a constant rhythm, even as its movement across the vertical and horizontal axes was random. As long as she locked into that rhythm, there was no risk of losing her footing—Yae danced and bounded freely across the ice.
In contrast to Yae's graceful navigation of the ice disc, Rem's movement was blunt and straightforward— "I won't let you...!"
Rem drove her fingertips, her clawed toes, her shortened iron ball into the ice as she pursued Yae with feral movements, leaving anchors in her wake.
It was a hunting style utterly devoid of refinement or elegance—raw, ferocious, like a carnivorous predator—and yet, impossibly fast. The distance between her and the fleeing, dancing Yae closed in the blink of an eye.
"Being that unconcerned with appearances isn't very maid-like, is it?"
"Unfortunately, there is only one quality our mistress demands of her maids—giving it your all!"
Rem, propping three of her four limbs against the ice, twisted her body and launched a single iron ball strike using the momentum of the disc's rotation—minimal movement, maximum effect. Yae parried it by deploying her steel wire, flicking it to her immediate side, and clicked her tongue inwardly.
A showdown for the title of best maid between two camps —she had no luxury for such quips.
She insisted her skill and power were not just a step but three steps above Rem's, but Yae and Rem simply had a terrible matchup. Rem's morning star was a mass-based weapon, and its devastating single-strike power was precisely the type of armament Yae's steel wire struggled most to counter.
Bundled and twisted together, the steel wire could block any attack—but doing so required the proper distance and sufficient strands. To block even one of Rem's hits, Yae needed to employ all seven fingers on both hands.
If she didn't like that, she could dodge—but— "Her accuracy is too precise...!"
Despite the treacherous footing, the iron ball Rem hurled coiled toward Yae like a great serpent.
The trajectories were too straightforward, aiming dead center every time—defending was impossible to mess up even with eyes closed, but each time, Yae's own attack rhythm was disrupted.
And on top of that came the terrifying combat performance of the oni race.
"AAAAAAAAAA!"
Rem dug all four limbs into the ice disc and let out a roar as red steam erupted across her entire body.
It was the combined result of the low temperatures from their altitude of several thousand meters, the oni racial trait of activating the mana flooding her body, and the rapid healing of the lacerations Yae's wire had inflicted.
Up to this point, Yae had been dodging Rem's potentially fatal strikes while carving wound after wound into her—wounds meant to incapacitate. But none of them outpaced the oni's regeneration.
And above all— "Tch—"
She pressed her lips to a ring, and once more the steel wire was engulfed in flame.
In that instant, Yae shrouded Rem's vision in fire, then aimed for the enemy's throat beyond the wall of heat, drew back her arm, and in a single flash—launched the wire at a speed approaching that of sound for a decapitation strike.
It was an original technique not found in any secret manual, the fastest slash among all the steel wire techniques at Yae's disposal. In Al's terms, it would be called a 'finishing move.' The invisible wire, fired at an unknown range, was a killing flash that would, she was confident, slay any opponent. —And yet, Rem dodged it.
Not once, but twice.
"—!"
The first time, she had been greedy—aiming to take out both Rem and Emilia with a single blow.
This time, she had retracted her neck to ensure she couldn't miss, aiming not for the throat but the chest. The cutting sound of the air was unmistakable—she was certain no lucky dodge was possible. —Therefore, Rem's evasion was neither miracle nor coincidence. It was inevitable.
Rem had seen through Yae's steel wire technique.
The ice mist was gone, and this was different from how Emilia had sensed the wire through the way ice particles were being sliced. Yae couldn't be certain of the principle, but— "I won't let you."
Yae dropped the pretense of composure she no longer had any reason to maintain, and muttered through clenched teeth.
She wouldn't let her. She wouldn't allow it. She wouldn't be stopped. —She would stop both Rem and Emilia.
"—"
Spreading stone wings, Al fled into the sky without waiting for the battle's conclusion.
Yae did not think of it as being left behind or abandoned. There was a possibility she had been written off, but Al was stingy by nature—he couldn't easily discard his cards or pawns.
Therefore, Yae interpreted Al's departure as being entrusted to her. He had ordered her to stop the two who were pursuing him, no matter what it took.
Thus, Yae had been entrusted by Al.—With a license to kill.
"—I'll stop you, even if I have to kill you."
Stop them. Stop them. She would stop them at any cost.
She would see Al's objective through. She would eliminate every obstacle in its path. She would make Al, who was struggling after losing Priscilla—his 'special'—vanish from the world as quickly as possible.
If she didn't, Yae Tenzen would never be able to return to the self who followed the shinobi's iron rule, who gave her heart to nothing, who detested and avoided all 'special.' △▼△▼△▼△ "—The stars were against me."
The monster that had terrified Yae Tenzen repeated those same words over and over and over.
The days spent infiltrating the Barielle mansion on orders had ended abruptly.
The daily maid duties, teasing the cute apprentice butler, trading jokes with the clownish knight who refused to be treated as one—it hadn't been bad, serving the terrifying yet radiant 'Sun Princess.' But once orders were given, Yae's feelings were irrelevant. She would fulfill her mission and vanish without a trace.
And so, carrying out a sudden assassination order, as Yae crept toward Priscilla's bedroom, the man stopped her in the dark corridor of the mansion.
An impediment that brooked no excuses—he clearly already knew what was coming. Yae fought a death struggle with the man—Al.
A death struggle, though the gap in ability was stark. Despite being a knight of a Royal Selection candidate, Al's strength was far inferior to Yae's, and the outcome should have been decided in an instant— "—The stars were against me."
The man she was certain she had struck dead center in the heart kept repeating those same words. Even against such an abnormal situation, Yae's body moved without hesitation, driving in the next killing blow.
She killed him, and he didn't die. It wasn't her first encounter with such a freak. The world was full of bizarre oddities—she had once fought a man with not two but three hearts. When she crushed the third one, he died properly. The key was simply to keep killing until they stayed dead.
She severed his head. Cut him in half at the torso. Burned his entire body. Tore off his limbs. Split his throat. Cracked his skull open. Gouged out his eyes. Skinned his entire back. Shattered every bone. Crushed his insides. Fed him poison. Buried him in earth. Drowned him underwater. Strangled him. Strangled everything that wasn't his neck. She tried every shinobi technique in her arsenal, taking his life again and again, killing as thoroughly as she could.
"—The stars were against me."
But no matter how many times she killed him, Al stood up and repeated those same words.
She used every shinobi technique she knew, tried every method she could conceive of, and eventually abandoned rational thought to act on pure instinct—but she couldn't kill him. She couldn't finish him off.
"—The stars were against me."
She tried torture that would make one regret being born. Useless. She tried to abandon the mission and flee. Useless. She tried to involve others. Useless.
Finally, with nothing left, she tried to end it by stringing a wire around her own neck.
"—The stars were against me."
Even that was useless.
"—The stars were against me."
The same exchange repeated endlessly, an endless spiral between death and death, the same thing fed to her over and over, and Yae Tenzen—for the first time—knew fear.
"—The stars were against me."
She wanted to do anything—anything at all—if it meant salvation. She swore she would do anything.
She wanted to do anything—anything at all—if it meant ending it. She swore she would do anything.
"—The stars were against me."
Knowing fear did not earn her mercy. The man, the monster, Al, did not forgive her.
"—The stars were against me."
Even after her mind had been shattered beyond repair, the monster showed no end. There was no respite from its relentless nature.
She hadn't kept count. No one in this world had killed each other with this monster more times than Yae.
Countless times, she killed him. Countless times, he killed her.
"—The stars were against me."
There was no other opponent like this. None were needed. None were wanted.
Even now—freed from that endless loop by the monster's caprice, sworn to obedience, serving his purpose with all her being—those words were carved into the deepest part of her soul.
"—The stars were against me."
She had to make the monster disappear. Make the man disappear. Make Al disappear—as soon as possible.
No matter what the trigger, no matter what the reason, no matter what the connection, Yae Tenzen's heart must never be held by anything.
"—The stars were against me."
—Her heart must never be held by anything.
△▼△▼△▼△ "—The stars were against me."
Those words fell from Yae's lips as an invisible slash of light erupted toward Rem's slender neck.
Rem sensed it with a skin-crawling premonition and reflexively swung the arm holding her morning star, splitting the chain in the midst of the arc to bat the strike aside.
She was standing on the razor's edge of death—unmistakably, undeniably.
In the Volachia Empire, where she had lost her memory and her power to fight, she had never faced such a crucible. Before losing her memories, she had never reached this state of being even against the Archbishop of Gluttony or the
"—Subaru-kun."
Amid the sensation of organs trembling and blood boiling, the hottest point was the horn on her forehead—the power, emotions, and the world's very pulse pouring in through it, vivid and overwhelming. Rem called out the name of the beloved boy to steel her soul.
The advice she had received from the radiant 'Sun Princess' and the swelling of her feelings for the one she loved worked in synergy, and the oni blood flowing through Rem's veins was finally demonstrating its true specifications.
Even so, the gap between Rem and Yae remained vast. Among all the powerful fighters Rem had encountered, that Yae—one of the most formidable among them—was being pushed this hard was thanks not to Rem's strength alone.
It was the culmination of the many forces that had relentlessly pursued Yae—and Al and the others.
Starting from the
The temporary closing of the power gap between Rem and Yae was owed to the weight of those chains. And on top of that, an ironic turn of fortune was at Rem's back.
It was— "—!"
Yae's fingers danced with gritted teeth, and the steel wire she unleashed tore through the air toward Rem.
Rem, her horn sensitively detecting the countless slashes of light raining down, evaded, evaded, achieved total evasion, and clung to the battlefield, preserving the life that should have been severed.
The secret to her godlike—no, onlike—evasion was one thing: "—Killing intent."
She could see it. She could feel it. It was transmitted to her. —The oni race's, through the horn, the intent of their opponent.
Dodging those death-lines—colored so she could see them—tracing them, deflecting them, Rem closed in on Yae.
From the moment just before Yae sent Emilia away, just after Al left the battlefield, killing intent had begun to mix clearly into Yae's attacks. The unrestrained killing intent, willing to behead her and sever her limbs without hesitation,刺激ring the oni's instincts fiercely, and ironically producing Rem's heightened reflexes.
If Yae had adhered to her original policy and confronted Rem while holding back from killing, Rem would likely have been neutralized much sooner. —By unleashing her true abilities as a shinobi, Yae's attacks had paradoxically stopped reaching Rem.
If that wasn't an ironic tailwind, what would you call it?
"—"
Yae's fingers sprang into motion with a bite of her teeth, and the steel wire she unleashed tore through the sky to assault Rem.
The steel wire drove into the ice, and through her horn Rem sensitively tracked, dodged, dodged, achieved total evasion, and clung to the battlefield, holding onto a life that should have been severed.
The secret to her godlike—no, onlike—evasion was one thing: "—Killing intent."
She could see it. She could feel it. It was being transmitted. —The oni's, through the horn, the opponent's will.
Dodging those color-coded death lines, tracing them, deflecting them, Rem closed the distance to Yae.
From the moment just before Yae dispatched Emilia, just after Al withdrew from the battlefield, killing intent had begun to seep clearly into Yae's attacks. The unrestrained murderous violence, willing to behead and sever limbs without hesitation,刺激ring the oni's instincts fiercely, and ironically producing Rem's super-reflexes.
If Yae had stuck to her original policy—non-lethal—when facing Rem, she likely would have neutralized Rem much sooner. —By truly unleashing her shinobi abilities, Yae's attacks had paradoxically ceased to reach Rem.
If that wasn't an ironic tailwind, what else could one call it?
"—"
Digging her claws into the rotating ice disc, Rem steadied herself and locked eyes with Yae through a vision sparkling with ice shards—Yae's face stripped of all playfulness, gazing at her with razor-sharp eyes and a heart held in perfect discipline. The sight was breathtakingly beautiful, and Rem could see with perfect clarity what sustained that lean, sculpted body.
What filled Yae's slender frame was a sense of mission.
A wish that must be fulfilled and a prayer she was determined to see through granted Yae extraordinary strength and the resolve to face the entire world as her enemy.
And Rem knew what that sense of mission drew from.
"—Because I... Rem, am the same."
With a horn on her forehead, her body battered with wounds, plunging five thousand meters straight down—and yet Rem stood here, now. The reason was also a sense of mission.
A wish that must be fulfilled and a prayer she was determined to see through granted Rem extraordinary strength and the resolve to sacrifice everything for the sake of saving one person.
And Rem had no reason to hide what this sense of mission drew from.
It was— "—Love!"
"One-trick pony!"
Rem's cry was met by Yae's voice, laced with irritation.
The shinobi's expression—that had frozen or disguised emotion, never once showing true feeling—fractured. Rem did not take it as immaturity, arrogance, or carelessness.
Of course she gritted her teeth.—If you were going to give everything for someone.
"—"
At the edge of her vision, amid the fierce battle, Rem's awareness caught the line carved into the rock wall.
Augsud Canyon, five thousand meters, final stretch, the surface still a ways away— "—Ten seconds!"
"—!"
Facing the tidal wave of wire strikes bearing down on her, Rem shouted that deliberately.
She was feeding information. Increasing the material for judgment. Disrupting her opponent's thinking, trying to make even one or two of her twenty fingers hesitate. She would provoke her, strip bare her emotions, make her hate her. She would overflow with malice, hostility, killing intent, and then slip past it—slip past it—slip past it— And then— "Here!"
Exactly as Rem and Emilia had aimed—on the final ten seconds, at the five-second mark beyond that, an impact from directly below smashed through the ice disc without mercy.
△▼△▼△▼△ "—The stars were against me."
The monster lodged in Yae's heart murmured that often.
Yae still dreamed of that man's voice—thousands, tens of thousands of times she felt she had heard it.
She had initially found Al's habit of saying that hateful. After all, who wouldn't want to protest that the stars shouldn't be blamed for everything?
It was the monster, not the stars, that had cracked and shattered her heart, and yet here he was shifting the blame— But gradually, she realized this was different. This wasn't the man shifting blame.
"—The stars were against me."
When he said it, Al never gloated.
There was no contempt or mockery there—probably something like compassion or sympathy.
As proof, the monster, the man, Al, never said it.
He never said the stars were against him regarding Priscilla Barielle's death.
He never said the stars were against him for being too weak to save her.
"—The stars were against me."
The monster, the man, Al said it whenever his own irrational power crushed someone's wishes or purposes. Spoken with compassion, sympathy, and guilt, those words always conveyed the same thing to their listener: —It's not your fault.
Oh, how she hated that.
She hated it. She truly, truly hated it.
She hadn't wanted to notice that.
She hadn't wanted to notice it in Al's words, in that man's gaze, in the monster's heart.
Yae didn't want to find any reason other than fear in Al. She didn't want to feel it. She didn't want to remember it.
That was why she wanted to end it—quickly.
—She didn't want to give this 'special' any name other than fear.
△▼△▼△▼△ "—It's all the stars' fault..."
Hearing those words slip from her own lips, Yae pulled her consciousness back from the instant it had scattered.
In the next moment, she realized her body had been blasted into the air and her vision was spinning.
An impact—yes, an impact.
The ice disc had been struck from directly below, and the shock of the shattering ice had pierced through Yae as well.
Glancing to the periphery of her awareness, she saw what had broken the ice disc: the peak of a massive ice mountain that had risen from the canyon floor thousands of meters below—a terrifyingly colossal mass of ice formed when the great river flowing through the depths of the earth had been flash-frozen, waiting to intercept the falling disc.
Judging from the momentum of the fall, the wind, and the seconds elapsed, the drop was approximately five thousand meters—the Augsud Canyon, the world's greatest gorge, came to mind, and Yae grasped the extraordinary scale of Emilia's magic that had frozen the great river beneath it.
But what struck her most— "...You're a tough one, aren't you."
Amid her spinning vision, the shattered fragments of the ice disc were creating a breathtaking scene of diamond dust glittering everywhere. Through that spectacle, Yae caught sight of Rem—her horn blazing with light.
At the moment of impact, Rem had fled skyward to escape the shock, then used the scattered ice chunks as footholds to accelerate, launching herself at Yae who was still airborne.
Five seconds before the predicted collision, she had been misled by the call of ten seconds.
Losing her composure—that was the kind of blunder no shinobi should make. Falling behind—such idiocy was unbecoming of a maid. Betraying the role entrusted to her—that was something 'Scarlet Blossom' would never— "—The stars were against me."
Not to the oni girl bearing down on her, not to the undignified spectacle she herself was cutting, but to the absent monster who had flown far, far away—Yae spoke.
With the same nuance as when the monster himself said those words to others—she directed them back at the monster.
"—Ah."
The impact sent her entire body creaking, and Yae couldn't even tell if her limbs were still connected. But so what if she was numb? She had overcome numbness in poison resistance training. So what if she had lost feeling in her limbs? She had endured having every bone in her body broken during torture training. So what if her consciousness was fading? She had survived training where she fought while drained of most of her blood, hovering near death. None of it would help her now, and yet she could almost hear the village chief's wily laughter, which only made her angrier.
Angry—but— "—Ah."
Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of times—the same motion, repeated.
A steel wire that hadn't been used for centuries, requiring the delicate skill to move her fingertips in millimeter increments—numb, bleeding, consciousness fading, Yae controlled it.
Even if seventy percent of her blood had leaked from this body, the fingers that threaded the wire did not falter.
"—AAAAH!"
She extended all four limbs, drawing them taut, and in an instant, the ice chunk bound by the wire shot violently across the sky.
The fragments of ice shattered by the impact were seized by the wire and, in rhythm with Yae's entire body, swung through the sky in a sweeping arc and slammed sideways into the incoming Rem.
"—"
A thunderous roar echoed as Rem was blasted away by the ice chunk.
Like a follow-up blow, Yae's wire-caught ice chunks were hurled one after another after another after another, raining devastating strikes on Rem who had already landed atop the ice mountain.
White snow billowed upward. The rising mist of ice was tinged with blood, making the ice mountain a gravestone for an oni. —In the next instant, the gravestone was pierced through, and an iron ball hurtling straight at Yae emerged.
"—Ugh."
The vicious iron mass, and the barbs attached to it, gored through Yae's torso, penetrating deep into her side.
But she had twisted her vital organs out of the way. Through the shinobi's inhumane body modification, Yae could shift the positions of her internal organs. The barbs pierced through empty space, spraying blood from her back.
But this was intentional.
Tensing her muscles, she trapped the barbed iron ball within her body.
Then, bursting through the white snow cloud, the figure that emerged was a blood-drenched oni who, following the chain attached to the iron ball embedded in Yae, launched straight upward.
The trajectory was dead straight—no twist, no trick, pure unadulterated force—and in that flight path, a net of steel wires waited.
"—"
Rem flew of her own volition into the wire cage that would shred her body, and countless lacerations opened across her pale skin as the wires attempted to divide her into hundreds of pieces.
But just before they closed, Rem's lips whispered a faint incantation: "Huma."
In this battle, she had seen it plenty—magic that produced ice.
Where would Rem create ice at the last moment? Yae's entire body tensed in vigilance, nerves spread in three hundred sixty degrees, bracing against any possible surprise attack.
But it was unnecessary. There was no surprise. The ice was born right in front of Yae's eyes.
The steel wire biting into Rem's flesh—flesh it was supposed to carve to pieces—went still. Looking closer, the wire embedded in her body had been stopped by red ice—frozen blood.
The instant she understood, Yae pressed her lips to the ring, igniting flame along the wire. The searing heat melted the frozen blood and sought to resume the lethal slash—but it was too late.
"YAAAAAH—!!"
Rem, roaring, seized the briefest give in the wire and hurled her fist at Yae.
It was a blow imbued with the will to end this battle and every ounce of strength Rem possessed, and Yae read its devastating power from the blood-soaked white fist bearing down on her.
She could not take it. She must not take it. Emilia was still out there.
To reach that point, she played her last card.
"—"
All twenty fingers on both hands and feet deployed the steel wire in full, but the enemy slipped through.
But there was more. There was still more. Yae Tenzen's trump card in steel wire combat was the red tongue that extended from her mouth in a provocative gesture— "Lick."
From the ring on the tip of her tongue, the final slash of light was released.
It found its mark without error, wrapping around the slender neck of the rapidly approaching Rem, and severed her life in a single flash.
△▼△▼△▼△ —'Scarlet Blossom' Yae Tenzen was an extraordinary genius shinobi.
Her talent and power were evaluated at the highest level by the 'Wicked Old Man' Orbalt Dünkerken.
She greatly despised being praised so highly, but that very reaction amused his sadistic sensibilities, so Orbalt never stopped.
In terms of raw experience, he was still superior. But her talent was far beyond his—with enough years, she would become an unrivaled, unbeatable shinobi. So he could understand the desire to dream that potential.
But he was himself, and others were others.
There was no point in making others fulfill one's own dreams. So what Orbalt could do—as someone who refused to stop dreaming—was offer his heartfelt advice—no, warning—to the genius girl.
"You know what? I've been through it too. Folks like us, extraordinary types, tend to outlive regular shinobi and see all sorts of things. And sometimes, y'know, there comes a time when you can't keep to the shinobi's iron rule anymore."
"Hm? You mean something like, 'those without something precious are weak'? No no, that's not what I'm saying. What I mean is—y'know how you can't deal with a poison you've never been exposed to?"
"We poison kids from a young age not to kill them with poison, right? So the advice about maybe having something in your heart—that's also meant to keep you alive."
"After all, if you've never loved or been loved, you get real weak. —A shinobi who experiences caring about someone for the first time. Ka ka ka ka!"
△▼△▼△▼△ The trump card's flash—the steel wire extending from the ring hooked on her tongue surged forth, and it found its mark, slicing through the slender neck of the oni girl lunging at her, severing the connection between head and torso.
She had lifted the non-lethal restriction and accomplished the elimination of the obstacle standing in Al's way.
Thinking of that fact, and of Al's reaction upon learning it, Yae felt a grinding sensation deep in her chest— "—Huh?"
Just before she could savor it bittersweetly, Yae's eyes went wide, and she doubted what she saw before her.
Without question, Yae's steel wire had severed Rem's slender neck. She had felt the sensation of cutting through a life—the sound of parting blood, flesh, and bone, the whistle of death.
And yet— "—I cheated too."
Yae's crimson eyes and Rem's pale blue eyes met. Those eyes had not lost their light.
And the red line of death that had undeniably entered her neck was slowly fading. —Not blocked, not dodged, but the blow that should have stolen her life had been canceled.
It was a miracle that could not be explained by oni regeneration alone—a feat that should have been impossible. To wield healing magic of that magnitude, one would need to search the breadth of this world— "—Al-sama."
The monster who, even against the entire world, would never lose—she had wanted his support.
She had wanted to use that to erase the 'special' that had taken root in her heart.
And yet— '—The stars were against me.' Closing her eyes, those terrifying words—the ones that made her entire body bristle with dread—came again.
And in this moment alone, inexplicably, what those words brought Yae was not fear but— "The cause of my defeat—"
"—Is love!"
Along with her answer, Rem's powerful arm brought the iron ball embedded in Yae's torso crashing down.
More fatal than the five-thousand-meter fall, the oni's killing blow detonated—atop the ice mountain of the Augsud Canyon, cherry blossoms scattered.
—'Scarlet Blossom' Yae Tenzen was broken, violently and fleeting, before the blue oni.