Countermeasures
Click.
That was the sound that came every time she sheathed her sharp blade back into its scabbard.
According to the craftsman who had forged the sword, the clearer the sound, the better the fit of the scabbard.
Click.
Holding the hilt settled her mind, and the soft clicking wasn't half bad either. Which was why, whenever her thoughts grew too heavy, she would often draw the blade just a little and slide it home again.
Click.
The sword, drawn about five centimeters, was pulled back into the scabbard with a bright, clean sound.
"…Hooo…."
With a mana cigarette between her lips, she exhaled a long stream of smoke as if she were expelling her feelings with it. Cloud-white smoke billowed up, then scattered and vanished without a trace.
Lately, Cecilia's mind had been occupied by a single person.
Elysia.
Of course, it wasn't that she liked Elysia so much she couldn't think of anything else. …Probably.
What truly weighed on her was the prophetic dream she had had a few days ago.
Cecilia had dreamed countless prophetic dreams over the years. She had run all sorts of experiments based on them, and she had learned that with enough effort, she could change whatever those dreams showed her.
The problem was….
"What the hell am I even supposed to do to change that future…."
Click. Click.
The sword in its scabbard was drawn and sheathed again and again, filling the air with sound. This dream was so different from every other prophetic dream she had ever had that her anxiety only grew with each passing day.
Until now, her dreams had always come with a rough instinctive sense of timing, and most of what she saw came true within a day or two. The contents themselves had been trivial—money lying somewhere, a lost item turning up in a particular place, or knowing ahead of time that the bread she wanted at the school store was already sold out. Petty, almost laughably minor abilities.
But this time… it was different.
First of all, she couldn't even pin down when the events in the dream would happen. Instinct told her it was something far in the future—but after a dream that grim, she couldn't simply trust instinct and rest easy.
Worse still, no clear way of changing that future came to mind.
If she knew the school store was out of bread, she could simply go to another one. If she knew where a lost item was, she could go retrieve it. This dream was nothing like that.
Why had it happened? Where had it taken place? Had Elysia simply gone mad and committed a massacre, or….
"Or the Great War broke out all over again…."
The horrific scene she had witnessed in the dream. Chunks of what had once been people rolling across the ground like garbage, a world dyed red with spilled blood.
Cecilia had seen that kind of landscape before.
The Great War the world had waged against Wolshik.
Cecilia herself had been one of the heroes who fought in that war—yet she could no longer remember even why she had enlisted. The only memories of the Great War that still remained were practical ones: how to cut down as many enemies as efficiently as possible, how to survive against stronger foes. The sensation, transmitted through the sword in her hand, of slicing flesh and shattering bone. The screams of people that still rang vividly in her ears, and the thick, nose-numbing stench of blood. The image of a Wolshik officer who had just torn a comrade apart, crawling across the ground with both legs severed below the knee, begging for his life.
That was all.
What she had gained from surviving that hellish war was cheap, worthless honor that paid no bills, the scars on her body, the trauma of those days—and, ironically, a version of herself that sometimes took pleasure in cutting people down.
These days the Association handed out villain-suppression requests, so it hadn't become a real problem….
"The Great War, huh…."
Cecilia leaned her head back against the wall behind her and let the thought turn over once more.
If a second Wolshik appeared and started another Great War—would she be able to join that fight again?
"…What did I even want, back when I signed up for the Great War?"
Had it been nothing more than a child's reckless impulse? Or had she been so righteous then that she couldn't stand injustice? Or had she simply wanted to die—had she lacked any will to live at all?
No matter how hard she thought, nothing came.
But… if she ever did remember, she would know.
"Whether I'd join another Great War or not."
Click.
The sword seated firmly in its scabbard showed no sign of being drawn again. At last, her brooding had come to an end.
"Hooo—."
She held the mana cigarette between the index and middle fingers of one hand and blew out the smoke she had been holding in her mouth. Then she tapped the damp end she had just been smoking with her thumb—and a recent memory surfaced unbidden.
During the Mudwell raid, right before they made their escape, she and Elysia had shared a single mana cigarette.
"…Well, no point grinding my brain over it now when there's nothing to figure out~."
Thinking that, she felt a little lighter inside.
Right. The information a prophetic dream could give was limited. No amount of thinking now would tell her how something like that came to pass. She had never been much of a thinker to begin with.
Shiiing—.
The sword slid fully free of its scabbard with a clear, ringing note.
When the time came, she would understand everything anyway. More importantly, her prophetic dreams had never once shown her a future with no way to prepare for it. The fact that this one had shown her something so dire meant….
"Since knowing ahead of time wouldn't give me a method anyway, just shut up, get stronger, and be ready to deal with it—is that it?"
A short laugh slipped out of her.
From ancient times, people had said that with overwhelming power, nothing was impossible. Now and then, people looked at her and claimed she had already pushed an Awakener's physical abilities to their absolute limit. Cecilia herself was fairly confident in her body alone—confident enough to beat someone with a half-baked physical-enhancement ability.
There was probably no one else in the world who had trained pure physical ability as hard as she had.
But… reached the limit of an Awakener?
"Bullshit."
Only Cecilia, the one they said it about, knew the truth.
This was not her limit yet. She was simply blocked by a wall for now. If she broke through that wall, she would grow stronger still—no, far stronger than she was now.
Of course, even leaping that wall wouldn't bring some dramatic transformation. She had always fought on a knife's edge. Being able to face slightly stronger enemies would be more than enough.
"So before that moment from the dream arrives, I've got two jobs."
Remember what she had felt when she joined the Great War all those years ago—and break through the wall to grow stronger.
"And while I'm at it, I should crank Elysia's training up a notch~."
Elysia had real talent; teaching her was satisfying. Watching her grow so fast, Cecilia sometimes wondered if the girl might one day surpass her.
The black crystals from the prophetic dream still bothered her… but Cecilia had already fought a life-or-death battle alongside Elysia once, and she knew. Elysia's power was abnormal—excessively so. She still couldn't use it properly, but once she learned better control, she would become far more dangerous.
Just from what Cecilia had seen so far, the nature of the ability shifted slightly with emotion, and mixed with blood it grew even more lethal.
"Even if there's something else on top of that, it wouldn't be strange."
Thinking about it this way, Elysia's power was full of unanswered questions.
"Since we're already here, I should add that to the training list too!"
Elysia herself didn't seem to fully understand her own ability either. Mapping it out carefully would make her stronger—and might even reveal the secret of those black crystals from the dream.
"Elysia will definitely like that~."
She whined about how hard it was every single day… but Cecilia knew the truth. Deep down, Elysia enjoyed the training too…!
"…Or not?"
Or not. Whatever.
"Speaking of which…."
Another girl rose in Cecilia's mind. The one she had met while standing blankly in the street after Elysia's sudden request that she just stand there—the person she had saved during the Great War.
"Yi Siyun…. So that's where I'd seen her before."
Of course Cecilia remembered saving her, and she had been glad to meet her again after so long. But the real reason she had been shocked at their reunion was something else entirely.
The women sealed inside the black crystal coffins in the prophetic dream. Tania, Adele, Luna, Rina—and two unnamed girls. One of them had been Yi Siyun.
"Haa…."
She clutched her throbbing head and ground the mana cigarette out in the ashtray. The rising smoke cooled and faded away.
"If I were Elysia, would I have actually enjoyed a situation like this…."
In a thin little voice, she tried imitating Elysia: "Fate really does come full circle! How romantic!"
"…What the hell am I doing…. I should just train."
The mood crash hit almost immediately, leaving her deflated. With a low groan, Cecilia stood and slowly raised the sword that was still free of its scabbard.