Discipline
I sent Terre a text and hurried to our meeting place.
Reader, is what Terre said the truth?
"It's not a lie, I'm sure. She's not the kind of kid to joke around with something like this."
She had the personality of a rugby ball — impossible to guess which way she'd bounce next. Terre loved to fluster her readers with her mischievous antics, but even she had a serious side.
Everything concerning Yupi.
She'd endured it all under a single vow: to destroy the traitor who murdered her family and seized power, with her own two hands. That one burning desire for vengeance had driven her, and anything involving Yupi sent her into a frenzy of obsession.
The Divine Relic was part of that too.
The woman called Royal, said to be the strongest of all Guardians. She believed the only way to defeat a monster beyond all known parameters was with a Divine Relic.
A game-breaking cheat item that could leap over even the wall of talent itself. Master it perfectly, and she'd secure not only the skill but also the legitimate standing to strip Yupi of her position within the family.
Which was exactly what I hadn't wanted.
I'll find out once I get there, I suppose.
"Oh my, you came?"
Stepping into the coastal cave, I found Terre leaning against the wall, eyes glued to her phone. The moment she registered my arrival, she shut off the screen, rose to her feet, and brushed the dust from her clothes.
"I got the message that you'd advanced to the next stage. Congratulations."
"Oho, congratulations~? Because your face certainly isn't saying it."
Poke, poke. She jabbed at my cheek with her finger, taunting me with all the subtlety of a slap.
"If I keep getting better, it's bad news for Yupi. You know that."
"So?"
"Are you going to keep pretending you don't care? Or does it not matter to you at all if she falls straight into the abyss?"
This girl's nose was reaching for the heavens. In kid terms, she'd just barely learned to walk — and there she was, puffing her shoulders out like she was the best thing since sliced bread. It was so adorable I could hardly stand it.
"Anyway, enough of that. Take out your Divine Relic. Then we can see about your next lesson."
"Fine, fine, stop nagging and wait."
At my words, Terre gathered her mana. A rippling surge of blue, like the great open sea, transformed into crackling electricity — and a single pistol etched with lightning patterns materialized in her outstretched hand.
"Well? What do you think?"
Reader, this is...
"It's identical."
I swallowed involuntarily.
The new Divine Relic Terre would one day come to possess. Endless Waves. And what she held now was chillingly, uncannily close to that Relic's true form.
Lightning chose Terre as its master? That can't be right.
Impossible. Because the rightful owner of that Relic had already been decided — it was Yupi. The only reason Terre could own one at all was that Yupi had permitted it, without her sister ever knowing. Normally, she shouldn't have been able to give it form at all.
"Is this because of me?"
I have no other explanation to offer.
That was what the Writer had told me, time and time again. That unless I intervened, the world followed the laws of cause and effect, repeating its predetermined history.
But I had intervened in Terre's story. I'd promised to teach her how to wield a Divine Relic — and I'd taught her. She'd taken the small thread I'd dangled before her, absorbed it, twisted causality itself, and reshaped the Relic's form.
And against all the odds, she'd completed it.
"Good work. Getting this far couldn't have been easy."
"Hmph, this much is child's play for me."
Terre spoke with total confidence — but beneath that bravado, the weariness clinging to the fingertips gripping the Relic and the corners of her eyes betrayed her. She was pushing herself too hard. The color of the mana she'd drawn out had grown noticeably paler than before, too.
"Don't overdo it. You'll make yourself sick."
"Oh, please. My body is my own business — now hurry up and teach me what comes next."
Reader, what will you do?
"What can I do? A promise is a promise."
She'd completed an impossible task and come to find me. Send her back now on account of her condition, and she'd curse my name until the end of days. I had no intention of shattering the trust between us here.
"Alright, let's move to the next stage. But I'll be watching from your side — the moment I think you're straining yourself, we stop. Understood?"
"Hehe, don't you worry. I know how to pace myself."
"Good. Because if you push too hard and die here, you're the only one who loses. Yupi takes the seat of family head, and your little revenge play ends half-finished."
"..."
Terre's eyes flashed with a vicious, concentrated killing intent, glaring at me as if to say, Like I'd ever let that happen.
She's extremely on guard now.
"That was the point. She needs that edge to understand her own life is precious."
This kind of provocation was the only way to keep her from doing something reckless. For Terre, who couldn't stomach seeing Yupi succeed, it was a direct hit, every time.
"You've given the Relic its form. First stage, complete. So — what comes next?"
"Why are you suddenly asking me that? Weren't you supposed to be teaching me?"
"Figuring it out yourself is more efficient. Take a guess."
A surprise pop quiz! Can Terre answer correctly? The answer is — drumroll, please —
Revealed right now!
"I have to... use it?"
"Say it with confidence. Nobody's going to yell at you."
"Was I wrong?"
"No, you got it. Correct answer."
Once you've got a tool in hand, the next step is learning to use it as it was meant to be used. A shovel digs the earth; a kitchen knife prepares food. So what's the purpose of a gun?
Aim. Fire.
And kill.
A tool born for destruction searches for a target at its master's command, waiting for the trigger to be pulled.
"Focus on whatever target you desire and fire. Repeat it tens, hundreds, thousands of times, honing it to the absolute limit — that's your next assignment."
"Oho, I see."
Terre turned the Relic over in her hands, examining it from every angle. Like a curious child, she picked apart the tool called a gun, unraveling its every mechanism — until, at last—
Clack!
"Like this?"
She pressed the muzzle against my forehead.
BANG!
The trigger came down without a shred of hesitation. Not the faintest doubt in her shot. A mana bullet laced with lightning spun as it tore through the air—
CRACK!
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
I'd caught the bullet in my palm, middle finger crossed over my index, thumb braced beneath it. Suppressing the electricity thrashing between my fingers with my own mana, I crushed the magic bullet's force to nothing.
"I was test-firing. I barely put any mana into it, and the power was still insane!"
"That's because the bullet carries a Divine Relic's power."
An object that had helped shape the creation of the world. A weapon of war the God King himself had wielded to exterminate the invaders known as monsters. It was not something you pointed at a human being.
"What were you thinking, if not counting on me to block it?"
"But you blocked it just fine? So what's the problem?"
Not a care in the world on that face of hers. Maybe it was blind faith that I'd obviously stop it, or maybe she truly hadn't thought at all and just acted on impulse — either way, pointing a gun at another person was a problem all its own.
This calls for a proper education.
She had no idea what it meant to hold a weapon in her hand. Sure, this was a world crawling with superhumans who could catch bullets barehanded — but a Divine Relic played by different rules entirely. Depending on the wielder, one could unleash the power of a national strategic warhead, or something far beyond it.
Our little treasure needed to be taught how to handle a weapon from the ground up. Through discipline, as they say.
"Now the real training begins. This part is all about feel — I could explain it until I'm blue in the face and you wouldn't get it."
"Then how am I supposed to learn?"
"With your body. There's no other way."
Tell a non-swimmer that relaxing their body makes them float, and they'll sink like a stone anyway, nine times out of ten. In the end, learning through live experience is the only way that sticks.
"So starting now, we spar. Use that weapon and come at me like you're trying to kill me."
"You're serious? No whining and changing your mind later?"
"For the record, I won't be using a Divine Relic. I'll fight you barehanded."
This was how the balance evened out. I'd grown stronger since getting comfortable with my own Relic, so it was only fair I took the handicap. Not that my opponent seemed to see it that way.
"Hah! Then don't come crying and begging when you lose."
"If I use my Relic, you won't be able to handle it."
"Oh, spare me. I know exactly what you're doing — getting swept away by my spectacular growth and scrambling for excuses."
Relic in hand and confidence rocketing into the stratosphere, she flashed her trademark sly grin and taunted me. One more word out of her — 'weakling,' 'small fry' — and she'd be a full-fledged brat.
"Fine, let's make it a bet. I'll use my Relic. If I win, then as payment for pointing that gun at my forehead, you'll owe me an apology — one satisfying enough that I decide what counts."
"A bet, then. And what are you putting up?"
"This."
I showed her the bracelet wrapped around my wrist.
The Solar Halo.
A Divine Relic, same as the Wrathful Heavenly Thunder she held. If she got her hands on this, her standing within her family would rise to the point of eclipsing Yupi entirely — a self-evident truth.
"Let's start right now!"
Before the words had even left my mouth, Terre jumped the gun — literally — aiming the muzzle straight at me. Blue mana flooded into the Relic, and the instant a blinding flash burst from the barrel and filled the cave—
Whoosh!
"And that's that."
"!?"
Just before the lightning could erupt, I dove into her guard and drove my fist down onto the crown of her head. Light flickered around my blood-crusted knuckles — the halo of the sun itself, hovering in the air.
WHAM!
Amid the billowing dust, I looked down at Terre, sprawled face-first on the cave floor, and spoke.
"Sorry about that. I guess I was just a little faster."