Ishura - Volume 4 - Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Fire Tower Avenue

A day after the Old Kingdoms’ loyalist uprising. A major thoroughfare in Aureatia.

What am I doing?

Yuno the Distant Talon had this on her mind inside the carriage.

There were two people riding with her. One was a slightly elderly man, Twenty-Seventh General Haade’s envoy. The other was a short young man, wrapped in a unique dark-red outfit. His name was Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

The carriage was headed to the postwar negotiations. The war between Aureatia and Okafu had ended with Zigita Zogi the Thousandth—and the entire Free City of Okafu itself with him—submitting to Aureatia as a hero candidate, but in order to wrap up the war diplomatically, there were still other huge affairs that needed to be hammered out.

The scenery going by outside the window was the very same everyday landscape that Yuno was familiar with. And she couldn’t believe that she was on her way to sit in on such important negotiations.

“You don’t need get yourself so worked up there, lass.”

The envoy spoke up, showing consideration for Yuno, her body stiff with nerves.

“I’ll generally be doing all the talking. You can simply sit there and watch. This meeting will be for ironing out the finer conditions, one of many more negotiations to come… Ummm, you lass, the new secretary. What was your name again?”

“Y-Yuno. Yuno the Distant Talon.”

“Right, right, Yuno. Slipped my mind for a second there. I’m counting on you to ensure Soujirou here fulfills his duty as bodyguard.”

“Y-yes…sir…”

“What the hell’s that about…? I ain’t Yuno’s damn pet or anything…”

Lying down in his seat, Soujirou’s objection was mixed in with a yawn.

The details behind Yuno the Distant Talon, naught but an average young girl who once lived on the frontier, being employed as Haade the Flashpoint’s secretary was the result of a number of coincidental events.

Having lost the person he was originally going to sponsor, Kazuki the Black Tone, Haade the Flashpoint now needed to decide on a different hero candidate to participate in the Sixways Exhibition. The powerful fighter he picked out was a visitor who had already earned a certain amount of military achievements in the conquering of the New Principality of Lithia, Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

Yuno, as one of the few people involved with the visitor from a world separate from their own, as Soujirou’s accessory so to speak, mediated the dealings between him and the top echelons of Aureatia. Her status as a scholar of ruined Nagan, now an unfortunately rare breed, also aroused the interest of the Twenty-Nine Officials to some extent.

As a result, Yuno remained in her role as Soujirou’s manager of sorts, and together with Soujirou’s sponsorship, she had been made into a secretary in Haade’s care.

I’m sure that what the old me was striving for…

A path open for anyone to claim glory, no matter what sort of past they had—or their racial or social status.

She had even dreamed of such a future.

…was this sort of good fortune, wasn’t it?

For the current Yuno the Distant Talon, even this dream turned reality was hollow.

She only had one goal in involving herself with the Sixways Exhibition.

Revenge against the powerful fighter who destroyed her hometown of Nagan.

Whenever her thoughts turned to her revenge, she’d ask herself:

Just what am I doing…?

“Do you have any questions about your job this time, Yuno?”

“Um… For the time being, Soujirou’s being treated as a hero candidate, right? I feel like his fighting power’s a bit excessive to serve as a bodyguard for these negotiations.”

“I see. That is a very good question.”

The gentlemanly envoy answered with a composed look.

“But, my dear Yuno. They say that on Okafu’s side, there is a visitor called the Gray-Haired Child. In order to prepare ourselves in the unlikely event of an Okafu attack…we need a bodyguard who can handle the methods of the Beyond, yes? It is not about having more or less fighting strength, but that it is only another visitor who can match up with the standard tactics and ways of thinking used on the other side. Understand?”

“…I do. However, the need for such preparations means that Okafu and Aureatia’s relationship is in a strained enough position to warrant them, doesn’t it…?”

“Are you scared of battle, Yuno?”

The envoy flashed a toothy smile. A ferocious and brutal smile incongruent with his facial features.

“Come now. Soujirou here is just our precaution against a worst-case scenario—and nothing more. Besides, if you’re going to be working under Lord Haade, you’ll need to grow accustomed to some degree of barbarity.”

“……”

Yuno lowered her head to avoid meeting the envoy’s eyes.

Not many days had passed since she was placed under Haade the Flashpoint’s command, but there was one thing she had come to learn.

The air that surrounded Haade and his subordinates was completely different from the followers of the other Twenty-Nine Officials. They seemed to intrinsically crave combat. Just like Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

“Sniper attack,” Soujirou suddenly murmured, still lying on his back.

Yuno couldn’t surmise the meaning of his comment. It happened in a brief second.

“Huh?”

There was a loud bang. Something had pierced the carriage wall. Still lying down, Soujirou had drawn his sword, and the diverted bullet had grazed Yuno’s hair before flying off somewhere.

“What?!”

Outside the window, the citizens were coming and going the same as always. A scene of everyday life.

“How—?”

“We’re taking sniper fire! Turn into the nearest alley!” the envoy shouted, and the carriage accelerated suddenly. Soujirou broke the window and jumped out of the carriage’s passenger car, blocking the bullet aimed at the driver at the last moment. He groaned, annoyed.

“Ugh, give me a break…! I gotta defend three people like this?!”

“No… There’s no way. Right?! We’re in the middle of town!”

“Yuno! Get your head down!”

“Yo, it’s coming from the fire tower! There’s two more shots on the damn way!”

Soujirou performed an acrobatic leap through the air, and flying backward against the carriage’s path, he cut off the roof on a diagonal. The arc of his katana blocked the shot aimed at the envoy, while a scattered fragment of the carriage roof blocked the shot aimed at the driver.

The carriage catapulted into the alleyway with enough force to roll the vehicle over.

Horse hooves crushed piled-up wooden boxes filled with fruit. The loud roar and tremors assailed Yuno inside the carriage.

“…Koff… Ah!”

Her brain was rattled. Her insides were thrown into chaos in the span of a second, to the point of nausea.

Her life was being targeted, too. In the middle of this everyday scenery, without any warning.

No one had noticed. Even the overturning of their carriage, in the eyes of the citizens, likely appeared to be a simple runaway carriage accident.

“Yo. Get out, Yuno. They’re gonna pick you off.”

The carriage door, warped from the impact, was instantly cleaved through. Soujirou was peering inside the carriage car.

“What about the envoy?”

“He jumped outta there a while ago. You’re the only one still dillydallying.”

“Seriously… Why is it always like this…?!”

Led by the hand, she guardedly looked over the narrow alleyway stretching out in front and behind her. But then, her senses couldn’t determine the snipers’ location, or if they still had their sights set on Yuno’s position.

It was sniper fire, but there weren’t any arrows piercing the carriage. Our enemy’s definitely using guns.

They were using the bustling city noise to cover their gunshots—and attacking them without revealing themselves.

If Soujirou’s intuition hadn’t sensed the sniper fire, then they all would’ve been assassinated right in the public eye. Yuno tried to get her breathing under control.

“Hah… Hah, koff. Soujirou. You knew about the attack…before they fired?”

“How many thousands of times do you think I was under sniper fire back in my other world? Just going off experience here.”

Whether she knew the tricks from the Beyond or not, Yuno understood one thing. Soujirou the Willow-Sword’s level was far beyond this attack. At the very least, for him, this didn’t even register as being in danger.

“Do you think we can hold out if we hide in this alleyway?”

“Nah. That big main road back there was one-way despite how many people were on it, yeah? If we suddenly come under fire, we don’t got a lot of options for side streets to escape, too, neither.”

“Th-then…they’ve dispatched enough fighting power to chase us down no matter which side street we escape down…”

Prompting Yuno’s group to then flee into the present alleyway. It meant the enemy had finished encircling them again—if the enemy truly intended on assassinating them.

“Geez, protecting weaklings is such a pain in the ass…”

Soujirou scratched his head while he followed through with his sword, gripping it upside down. There was the metallic sound of a bullet being repelled.

With the sound behind her, Yuno desperately dashed over to the shadows behind stacked wooden crates of fruit.

The envoy and driver were already hiding there. The envoy stroked his beard as he spoke.

“I’m glad you’re all right, Yuno.”

“Y-yes, barely.”

She turned around. Soujirou vaulted in a zigzag between both walls of the narrow alley and rushed up to the top of the buildings with tremendous momentum. These were abnormal physical abilities.

No gunshots came. Not yet.

“D-does Okafu…intend to oppose Aureatia? Sniper attacks. Well-trained gunmen. They knew we would be passing by here today, too. Mercenaries from Okafu are the only logical explanation.”

“Judging by the current situation, I see no other interpretation! Reluctant as we may be, there’s even the chance war will break out inside Aureatia’s borders! At the very least, subduing the hero candidate Zigita Zogi and the Free City of Okafu is all but unavoidable at this point, isn’t it?!”

“…Subduing?!”

In situations where it was evident a hero candidate participating in the Sixways Exhibition attacked another participant, the other hero candidates were obligated to put the attacker down.

Would the Free City of Okafu set up an attack like this knowing full well about this rule?

“But then what does Okafu’s side have to benefit from—? Eek!”

Yuno screamed. A mysterious burning mass had fallen from the rooftop. It was a mangled minian corpse.

Soujirou landed on the ground after it. He had been fighting the fallen man moments prior.

“The guy went and blew himself up,” Soujirou said with displeasure.

“I cut down four of ’em, but they’d all had some kinda explosive in their bodies. Weird.”

Yuno covered her mouth with both hands. The urge to vomit from the carriage’s rollover welled up inside her again. She still couldn’t come to grips with the terrible battlefield opening up before her eyes.

“Do you think it’s to cover up their association…their association with the Free City?”

“That really all there is to it…? Get the feeling that torching everything, body and all, is a little much.”

Soujirou kicked the corpse with the tip of his foot. The burned torso blocked the latest rifle bullet flying their way. Soujirou looked toward the main road.

“Those guys are a bit far away.”

Hearing Soujirou’s words, the envoy made a window with his fingers and measured the distance to the spot they believed the sniper attacks were coming from.

“…About three hundred meters, I would say. Can you capture them alive, Soujirou, my boy?”

“I mean, I tried. I ain’t some bloodthirsty killer or anything, okay? They all blew themselves up when I got close; it’s a real pain.”

“Just try to do what you can. I’d like to recover one of them.”

“No guarantees.”

Smacking his shoulder twice with his sword, Soujirou dashed off again. He was as fast as the wind.

No matter how imposing the target, Soujirou didn’t hesitate to cut them down. In the blink of an eye, he had traveled an impossible distance.

“The enemy—”

Yuno wiped cold sweat from her cheeks.

“—must have known that Soujirou was here escorting us, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t see their self-destruction prep work as anything but these snipers anticipating a counterattack. They’re the ones encircling us, yet…blowing themselves up the moment Soujirou gets close makes it seem like they knew they’d lose from the start, doesn’t it?”

“…Still, if the Okafu’s side knew about Soujirou the Willow-Sword’s presence, they would never have thought their ambush would succeed in the first place. Personally, I feel like that doesn’t mesh with meticulously setting up a sniper attack and cutting off our route to escape on the way to the meeting.”

“Yes, and that’s why it’s strange. Pardon me, envoy, but do you have a replacement?”

It was a truly rude question. Yuno herself felt as much even saying it.

“…Replacement?”

“If you were truly an irreplaceable member of Mr. Haade’s, someone worth assassinating, even when taking into account the sacrifices it would require…then maybe in that case, it might be possible that they’d risk the small chance of success to ambush us. But if that isn’t the case… Um, I don’t think there’s much benefit for Okafu’s side.”

“You, my girl…”

The envoy raised his eyebrows slightly and looked Yuno in the eye.

“…have very good combat intuition, don’t you? Indeed, military provocation is the only result one could anticipate from this attack. There aren’t many young girls who could calmly come to such a conclusion in this situation.”

“…I’ve had something far more terrifying than any armed force standing beside me for a long time.”

Regardless of the motive, that only means any hope Yuno and the others had of making it out of this situation lay in Soujirou the Willow-Sword.

Until he returned and told them he had secured their safety, they couldn’t go anywhere.

“However, the fact remains that there are a limited number of individuals who knew about the postwar negotiations being held today—and who could obtain our route to the meeting. Taking that into consideration, I don’t think our attackers could be anyone but the Free City of Okafu, but—”

“Ah!”

Yuno let a small cry slip out. Another carriage tried to enter the alleyway they were hiding in and was showered with sniper fire before rolling over. It was likely a civilian carriage, wholly unrelated to the situation.

For a brief second, she was able to see the small child inside the carriage.

“……Mn!”

Right as she instinctively went to dash over, the envoy grabbed her shoulder.

“You’ll die if you go out there, Yuno, my girl. Wait for Soujirou.”

“B-but… Soujirou won’t save them!”

Soujirou the Willow-Sword wasn’t a fiend, only capable of killing others. Yuno knew that. He carried what resembled his own form of duty and obligation, which was why he was trying to carry out his job as bodyguard for Yuno and Haade’s envoy.

However, he didn’t show any compassion for those who lost their lives.

Uninvolved bystanders, people who jumped into the jaws of death on their own, along with the worthy strong who battled against him.

For all these people, he thought if they ended up dying, there was nothing he could about it.

I’m different!

Yuno flew out from the shadow of the wooden crates. She hadn’t summoned her courage. It was the reckless willpower that had continued since the fall of Nagan, and she had simply found herself wanting to resist.

Depending on the model, reloading a musket can take longer than a bow! If their target’s the envoy for the negotiations, then they won’t prioritize shooting a simple tagalong like me! Soujirou’s closing in on the snipers, too; they might not have a moment to ready their next shot!

A number of rationalizations passed through Yuno’s mind. All of them completely unfounded.

Clinging to the rolled-over carriage, she kicked in the glass on the door with the heel of her shoe. A desperate move, indifferent to how it may have made her look.

“Hurry and get out of there!”

A small hand took her own outstretched hand.

“Yuno the Distant Talon, yes?”

“……!”

The child inside the carriage was dressed in high-quality black clothing. His hair, an almost gray-white.

Looking up at Yuno from inside the overturned carriage, the young boy spoke to her unfazed.

“Thank you. My name is Hiroto the Paradox.”

“The Gray-Haired…Child…!”

“Since you didn’t appear on time for our scheduled meeting, we came to you. Please forgive me for not noticing your crisis sooner.”

Hiroto the Paradox was here, right now. The mastermind leading the Free City of Okafu.

Without a moment to think about what its development meant, the sound of a bullet impacting rang out behind her.

Sending her hair fluttering into the air as she whipped around, she saw the goblin driver holding up a shield made of what appeared to be resin. A twisted fiber-like structure peeked out from the cross section opened up by the enemy’s gunfire.

“First, I shall get straight to the point. We would like to protect you from this attack.”

“Wh-why…? Isn’t this attack something the mercenaries in the Free City planned out?”

“It’s extremely difficult to explain the details properly.”

Hiroto held up his hand. At this signal, a goblin force began gathering in the alleyway.

With their shields up in a close formation, they began assembling a wall that would protect everyone there from the sniper fire. The movements were efficient and extremely well disciplined.

“You are correct to assume that the ones fighting us right now are mercenaries from the Free City of Okafu. However, their actions are neither under orders from myself nor the arbitrary whims of Okafu’s leader, Morio the Sentinel.”

“Are you trying to say someone else made these mercenaries betray you?”

“Indeed. There are a countless number of spies infiltrating any of the forces involved with the Sixways Exhibition, not just Okafu. We have taken to calling this group the invisible army and are trying to tackle the issue.”

“……”

Spies that Aureatia wasn’t aware of, who had infiltrated Okafu and were capable of highly disciplined strategic maneuvers.

It was a terribly outlandish story. It would be more realistic to explain it away as a select group of Okafu mercenaries going out of control. Yet his words coincided with Yuno’s analysis.

…They used Okafu mercenaries to attack us because they’re trying to cause a rift in Aureatia and Okafu’s relations and ensure their mutual destruction… If true, it would be consistent with this inexplicable ambush. But…

“It appears we will need to prepare our negotiations with His Excellency Haade anew. This is likely an extremely big problem for Aureatia.”

“……”

There were no new gunshots. Either they saw the goblins’ shield wall and determined they were meaningless or Soujirou had reached them and put the snipers to the sword.

Sitting on the edge of the overturned carriage, Hiroto turned back to Yuno.

“It seems we can relax for the time being. Yuno the Distant Talon, to shift the conversation to the future for a moment… Can I ask you for your testimony regarding this ambush?”

“…All right. If that will possibly prevent war. But there’s one thing I want to know.”

Hiroto the Paradox. He called Yuno by name from the very start. Her second name and all.

“How did you know my name?”

“I investigate anyone I have the possibility of forming a collaborative relationship with.”

As far as Yuno could see, he was just a child. She didn’t sense that he was a powerful individual.

However, he, too, was a visitor, deviant to the point of abnormality, in a way that differed from Soujirou.

“Yuno the Distant Talon. You’re a survivor from the ruined Nagan Labyrinth City, yes?”

A supernatural power of fate, bringing him to opportunity and forming cooperative relationships.

“……That’s right.”

“Do you know anything about the hero candidate Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge?”

Wind was blowing through the fine gaps in the steel frame.

A fire tower was far removed from where Yuno’s group sat, on the other side of the main road. Soujirou was able to scale its heights with just the strength of his own legs and look down at the five-story buildings.

“…I don’t wanna let ya escape.”

The shot pierced the ground. Atop the steel frame, with no room to escape, Soujirou parried the gunshot, grazing it with the tip of his hilt. From this range, he didn’t even need to swing his sword.

One story above where Soujirou stood, a bright fire was burning. It was a sniper. They set themselves alight as they pulled the trigger.

“But if you escape to the world beyond, how the hell am I ’posed to chase after ya?”

Soujirou scratched his head. Killing was his forte, but he always had trouble letting people live. Whether it was his enemies or his allies.

“Hold up, are they even safe over there?”

The alleyway that Yuno and the others were hiding in was being protected by a group of goblins with shields. He had seen troops in the Beyond use a closed formation like it before. Their behavior suggested they were hostile, but Soujirou’s gut intuition didn’t tell him any more about the situation.

Turning back to the sniper’s dead body, he tried searching it to see if anything was left behind after he burned up.

Something to identify them or who sent them, for example.

“……Whoa.”

His intuition alerted him to the danger. The shape. The smell. The atmosphere.

Then he immediately jumped down from where he was.

“What the hell, c’mon!”

In the span of a single breath, an explosive fireball burst above Soujirou. These flames weren’t just to cover up any evidence left behind. It was a delayed explosion, using gunpowder with a different rate of reaction.

A trap that saw through, and planned, for Soujirou’s attempt to collect evidence.

“…Hyaaah!” Soujirou shouted. The flash of a blade ran through the air.

On the tip of his sword, he snatched a high-speed projectile.

The weapon had a blade that encircled a metal ring and was known as a chakram.

This thing…

Soujirou’s gut had told him.

…was the real trump card. They’ve been gunning for me this whole damn time.

Midair, with nowhere to escape. A totally different trajectory and stopping power from the previous gunshots. There was a sniper hiding somewhere on these streets that was on a completely different level from the mercenaries who had first ambushed them—even concealing their murderous intentions within the encirclement around Soujirou’s group.

In the middle of his descent, he put his heels on the tower’s steel frame, controlling his posture and center of gravity like a cat while he descended.

“…Some bastard’s comin’ out with the exciting stuff now.”

Soujirou’s intuition was not omnipotent by any means. It didn’t show him the correct tactics to use, nor did it make all the facts detailed and clear to him.

In spite of this, there was one thing he was able to understand.

The objective of this unseen enemy…was not the envoy’s assassination, nor did they wish to spark a war with Aureatia. Their goal was none other than Soujirou the Willow-Sword himself.

It took a day to gather information and testimony regarding the ambush.

Yuno was scared there’d be more ambushes, but there currently didn’t seem to be any signs they would continue.

At the very least, their present location was safe—the office of Aureatia’s Twenty-Seventh General, Haade the Flashpoint.

“Yuno. You’ve finished making the reports on the ambush, right? Can you make a clean copy of some other data for me? I want to make a list of everyone involved at all with the Sixways Exhibition.”

“Y-yessir! Right away!”

In the midst of cleaning the carpet, Yuno immediately ran over at Haade’s call.

Although his appearance looked aged, Haade seemed to brim with nigh limitless stamina and vitality. In the simple motion of handing over documents, he was far more forceful and spry than the still young Yuno.

“It’s not totally impossible to read, but so much of the handwriting’s messy, it’s not easy on the eyes. Nagan people are great to have around. Can write clean and legibly.”

“Th-th-thank you, sir…”

Even amid the Twenty-Nine Officials, the bearers of supreme power in Aureatia, there were some who saw Twenty-Seventh General Haade, and his control of the nation’s greatest military faction, as the dominant figure.

People involved…in the Sixways Exhibition.

As she browsed the documents, Yuno thought back to the events of the previous day.

…Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge. At the time, she had been on guard against the Gray-Haired Child’s rhetoric skills. Although she hadn’t been able to ask him what he was trying to get across to her…

“…K—”

…when she saw the list of participants, she learned what Hiroto had been trying to say to her.

Someone involved with Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge.

“Kiyazuna…the Axle!”

“Whoa there, what happened?” Haade asked, his suspicions raised by the concern in Yuno’s voice.

“O-oh, no… It’s nothing… Lord Haade.”

“Definitely didn’t sound like nothing.”

Haade roared with laughter.

Nothing?

Yuno was shaking with rage.

It was rage at herself. If she wasn’t right before Haade’s eyes, she would punch herself bloody.

O-of course… Of course it’s not nothing! How could it be?

Kiyazuna the Axle. Kiyazuna the Axle. A name she’d never forget.

A fearsome self-proclaimed demon king who made labyrinths and dungeons with her own hands. The creator of the Dungeon Golem who destroyed her homeland.

As Yuno’s hands transcribed data, she dug the nails of her left hand into her upper right arm. Enough to draw blood. She broke the nib of her pen twice before fully transcribing the name Kiyazuna the Axle.

…I’ll kill her. Kill her dead. I’ll murder her, no matter what it takes. Kiyazuna the Axle—until I make you pay for everything you’ve done and kill you, I’ll never find peace.

Up until that moment, how could she let herself be so languid and listless?

Had she simply decided it would be impossible to search out Kiyazuna the Axle and kill her, and thought instead she’d go from being a survivor of Nagan City to a secretary for one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, to grab peace and happiness for herself?

Disregarding the dead, disregarding Lucelles in the process.

“You’re looking pale, Yuno. Everything okay over there?”

Haade asked in a slightly more serious tone than moments prior.

Did being one of the Twenty-Nine mean they possessed excellent skills of observation as well? No—it must have been that Yuno’s demeanor in that moment was simply that perturbed and unusual.

“…Lord Haade.”

Lifting her head, Yuno looked at Haade. The red tint to her vision was likely because of the tremendous amount of blood shooting through her eyes.

“I-is this… Is this really, right?”

“…What?”

She was about make an irrevocably improper remark.

However, it was too late for regrets. Yuno had already begun to speak.

“Am I? Is this how—how things should be for me? With my homeland destroyed. Th-the demon king who caused it… Kiyazuna the Axle, still alive. Why—why was I able to pretend everything was fine? It’s ridiculous. Not Soujirou, nor Dakai, but her. She was the one I should’ve killed first. Otherwise, everything about getting revenge would’ve all been a lie. I mean, Lucelles. Didn’t I love her? Yet it was all useless. The entire time… Even if it cost me my life, even if it meant being slaughtered without a fight, I should’ve gone after Kiyazuna the Axle to kill her. I needed to prove myself, whether it took five years or a hundred. Dammit… Just what are my feelings supposed to be, then? Why—why wasn’t it until I saw her name…until I had the possibility of making it happen thrust in front of me?! Why aren’t my feelings making me feel that this is how I want it to be?! I want… I want vengeance! If I’m going to forget, then I’d rather be dead. I needed to fight! Me!”

“…………”

“I—I, um…forgive me. I’m sorry…Master Haade.”

Haade observed the girl without interrupting her, until she had spewed out all her emotions. With a raptorial glare, quiet yet keen.

“I get it now, Yuno.”

Then he twisted his lips, enough to show his gums, into a smile.

“So you like war, too?”

“…………Wh-what?”

For Yuno, in her stupor, it was a totally incomprehensible comment.

War… There shouldn’t have been anyone in the world who could derive pleasure from such a terrible thing.

Perhaps, just maybe, that was the meaning contained in her spewed rambling.

Why was Haade smiling? Was it okay to even consider his expression as “smiling” in the first place?

Was it affirmation? Or denial?

“What do you mean…?”

“Sheesh, and here I figured you were just a little girl along for the ride with Soujirou, but it seems I’ve made quite the find with you, Yuno the Distant Talon.”

Haade put his large palm on Yuno’s right shoulder.

“Want to try killing Kiyazuna the Axle?”

It was unreasonable.

An inconsequential young girl, who had only fallen into her secretary job by coincidence, ranted and raved, spitting out incoherent nonsense to none other than the most influential player in Aureatia.

It would’ve made perfect sense for her to be seen as deranged and fired immediately—if anything, that was the correct course of action.

“I—I… I don’t understand…”

“Bwa-ha-ha-ha. You won’t, in the beginning. You don’t have to understand it at all.”

“Will I understand eventually?”

“Oh yes. There’ll be plenty of opportunities from here on out. First up, three days from now, I plan to kill Ozonezma the Capricious. Let’s hope that’ll be enough to stoke the fires of war.”

Haade put on his overcoat, looking in high spirits, and opened the study door.

“During the Sixways Exhibition, act however you want. You have my permission.”

“……”

For a moment after the door closed, Yuno stared at both of her hands, dumbfounded.

There was still a small amount of blood left over on the nails of her left hand she had dug into her arm while working. However, they were just as much the fists of a plain young girl from the frontier.

Right now she was composed. She was fully aware she had lost her head and blurted out awful things to the General Haade. Yuno had returned to her senses.

Still, should she really think like that?

Perhaps instead, what she should have been returning to was the true Yuno—the Yuno that had definitely been there moments ago, pelting her feelings at the leader of the military without fear, present that time when she challenged Dakai the Magpie to combat amid the fall of Lithia, present at the beginning of it all when she had sworn her revenge against Soujirou in Nagan after losing everything.

She needed to get her hands on something—big enough to take on the apathy of the strong, that allowed Yuno to oppose them.

“You get to decide where you go, and what you’re gonna do.”

I’ll be able to become them both. Fully embrace them… From now on.

She needed to decide…because now Yuno was free.