Noir, I'll Become a True Noble...?
Among otakus and their games, there is a term: jeonmu.
Ask an ordinary person what that means, and nine out of ten will tell you it is a corporate title—something like executive director. But put the same question to otakus, people whose lives have never brushed against a company org chart, and nine out of ten will answer without hesitation: exclusive weapon.
Exactly what it sounds like. A weapon made for one person alone—something that only reaches its true performance when that person wields it.
Exclusive weapons generally fall into two types.
The first treats them as actual weapons, with their own separate acquisition routes. In games built that way, you have to pull the weapon from a gacha of its own, and a great many players end up in tears. Now and then a title will hand one out through story or event, but that is rare. Still, if an exclusive weapon is strong enough that even characters other than its intended owner can get good mileage out of it, it becomes a solid general-purpose option—enough that some players will pull the weapon and skip the character entirely.
The second type treats the exclusive weapon as a form of enhancement. The same way you raise a character's level and star rank, you raise the exclusive weapon as part of a power-up system. Because it is framed as character enhancement, you cannot equip it the moment you get it; effort is required to unlock it. That usually means a character-specific quest, or grinding fragments after you have already maxed their rarity—time and labor, in other words. The payoff, though, is performance that borders on absurd. Even a bottom-rarity joke of a unit can become research-worthy with a good exclusive weapon. Conversely, a top-tier, meta-defining character can get dumped late-game if theirs is a disaster.
And the exclusive weapons in Destiny: Child of Fate belonged to the second type.
The details, however, were very different. Most games treat exclusive weapons as pure system machinery. Destiny treated them as a kind of ability.
In Destiny, an exclusive weapon awakens when a person's three elements—body, mind, and spirit—all reach a certain height, and a fierce desire causes their power to surge.
That was the lore, at least. It called to mind a certain manga about a death god who fights with a Japanese sword, or a game where historical figures get genderbent. Because of that setting, exclusive weapons also functioned, in the Destiny world, as a rough combat-power meter. Among the strong, only a fraction could ever handle one. In other fantasy terms, they sat somewhere near heart-swords or magic circles.
Of course that was only the lore. In actual gameplay they were just a balance lever. Characters written as world-class powerhouses tended to come with high rarity and strong kits; if only those characters could use exclusive weapons, the game would have collapsed. So the developers had to issue a clarification—or rather, an excuse:
Certain powerful figures refrain from using their exclusive weapons because they have not yet acknowledged the protagonist.
Players pushed back at once: Then why is that guy traveling with the protagonist? Which eventually produced a further bit of lore: exclusive weapons were trump cards, and had to be kept as secret as possible.
"M… I am afraid. This new power I have gained…! Hah… No. Pretend you did not hear that."
Looking at this guy, though, I had to wonder whether the secrecy rule was even real. All day long he had been bragging about getting his exclusive weapon. He was too embarrassed to say the words outright, sure—but at this point, what was the difference?
"What exactly are you so afraid of?"
"My new power makes me forget fear. And that is what frightens me. The thing a warrior must fear most is becoming a warrior who knows no fear at all…"
Even at the point the original story reached, Dante had already been a powerhouse who had mastered an exclusive weapon. So of course he would awaken one earlier than that. Still, I had assumed he would unlock it the way he did in canon—after he turned into that cool, dashing version of himself…
"Hah. This uncool look of mine. It really does not suit me…"
Watching Dante stare out the window with that faraway expression, I felt a sudden, violent urge to smack him on the back of the head. I held it in. I was going to be a perfect maid. I could not afford to act that frivolous.
"Yes. This, too, is a trial granted to me as I walk the path of the blade."
Hmm…
Then again, right now I was not a maid—I was an assassin. Maybe I should just hit him once after all.
When was this idiot finally going to grow into the dashing figure from the original? A horrible thought crossed my mind: maybe Dante would stay like this for the rest of his life.
Nah. Even he could not be that far gone.
…Right?
The Empire. Heart of its steel industry, the place from which every gold coin of the realm set out into the world—the city known as the Golden City: Preas.
The ducal house of Leonhart, which had ruled Preas for generations, had stood at the first emperor's side from the founding of the realm. A true pillar of the aristocracy.
"Did you sleep well, Grandfather?"
To live without shaming that name. To take pride in it, and to set the example for every noble. That was the family precept handed down through the house of Leonhart.
The granddaughter of that house, Noir von Leonhart, had carved the precept into her heart and was working with everything she had to become a proper noble.
"Yes. And you, Noir? Did you rest well?"
The current head of the family, Lucius von Leonhart, was proud of that granddaughter—and, at the same time, troubled by how little her life resembled a child's. The girl who had always dreamed of becoming a correct noble had, sometime around last year, stopped merely striving and started living under a compulsion.
As a grandfather, not as the duke, he had tried to counsel her. The advice only made the compulsion worse.
She is cutting her already insufficient sleep even further.
Noir already slept less than four hours a night. Lately she had been slashing that number to extremes. Children of great houses were raised on hard lessons and packed schedules, yes—but Noir had blown past every reasonable line long ago. She was still only twelve. Study mattered, but so did eating well and sleeping well. Lucius understood the feelings that drove her obsession, though, and he could not bring himself to order her to stop.
Noir's father had lost his wife in childbirth. Burdened by the need to raise her for two, he had demanded the bearing of a proper noble from her earliest years. Lucius had stepped in more than once when the punishments went too far—yet Noir had still grown up under that pressure.
Then, a year ago, while serving as acting head of a house famous not only for nobility but for knighthood, her father had been sent on a mission—and had not come back.
However close to abuse his methods had been, Noir had loved him. She had always wanted to become a true noble so she could live up to his expectations. When the news of his death reached her, she collapsed on the spot. After that, the compulsion began.
"That worthless fool. To die and leave a curse on his own daughter…"
If you were going to hang the weight of expectation around a child's neck, you at least had to stay alive. You were supposed to watch her meet those expectations, praise her for it, and give her a parent's love. How could a man lay a curse that cruel on his own little girl and then leave the world first?
"Worthless…"
He had gone before his father, and he had done what no father should. Lucius could only hate the son who had kept neither a child's duty nor a parent's.
"Finished."
Late at night. Noir, who had been reading deep into the evening again, closed the book she had just finished and slid it back onto the shelf. The material would have challenged even academy graduates—yet a twelve-year-old Noir had moved through it without the slightest difficulty. Gifted beyond measure and still refusing to rest, she already possessed ability that left her age far behind.
"Then maybe I will try this one next."
A History and Understanding of the Culture of the Ephios Empire. Advanced.
She had only just finished one volume, and already Noir was pulling another forbiddingly titled book from the shelf. Any other child would have been long asleep. Watching her reach for a book even at this hour, one would have thought she was a child gone mad for study.
Lucius and everyone else in the manor could only look on with pity. None of them knew the truth of the book in her hands—that the title on the cover and the title printed inside were not the same at all.
The Academy Classmates Who Betrayed Me for Being Incompetent Now Regret It. Volume 12
"Hehe… hehehe…"