The Imperial Princess, the Wilds
"Golden Gorilla?"
Yegor's heart lurched.
How did she manage to pluck out only the most catastrophic words, every single time? He wanted to crack Lupin's head open and check. He couldn't abandon her and run, though, so he was already scrambling for some way to put the fire out.
"Wow. You really are a golden gorilla."
And that, surely, was a second step clean over the line.
The blonde gorilla in front of them was already furious enough to start beating her chest at any moment, and Lupin had just driven the nail in again—
"There's no talking to you."
Emelin's eyes burned crimson. It was the visual language exclusive to aura Masters, the sign that she had manifested her aura to its absolute limit.
The instant Dmitri saw it, he broke into a dead sprint for the space behind Lupin. Stand still, and the pressure of that aura would drop him unconscious. That much was obvious. A swift read from a seasoned man who had once been an Aura User and was now nothing more than a middle-aged politician. And there was no telling when the palace itself might come down. Better to commit every detail to memory, if only so he'd have an excuse ready later. Once a situation had already gone bad, choosing the lesser evil was simply common sense.
Whether any of Dmitri's worries registered at all was anyone's guess. Lupin stood exactly where she was, perfectly calm.
"Lupin! What are you doing!"
She kept her stance low, still wary of her opponent, but she barely reacted to the aura Emelin had begun to press down over them. She only looked back and forth between Emelin and Dmitri.
"What's the matter, Your Grace?"
Aura Masters like Emelin, with reserves that vast, delighted in deploying aura this way. A domain woven of an invisible, fine-meshed net, used like a spider's web to seal off and crush anyone who stepped inside. By any ordinary measure, Lupin was in crisis. The basic contest between Aura Users was to push back by deploying one's own aura, or else to get out of the domain entirely. And yet Lupin stood meekly inside Emelin's domain, offering no answer at all.
Having seized the advantage, Emelin would wait, calm and patient. Whatever Lupin tried, she would shut it down completely, break her will to counter, and stamp her flat with an overwhelming gap.
What kind of creature was a gorilla, anyway? They were apes, and the intelligent ones were clever enough to use sign language. People only took them for aggressive, violent beasts because they beat their chests and threaten the moment their territory is invaded. In truth, they were remarkably shrewd animals. That was exactly why the North Country's operations units had named Emelin the Golden Gorilla. See her in the middle of an operation, and death followed as a certainty. Her domain, spread like a spider's web, was that absolute.
Emelin's aura grew denser. Before long, even the aura Yegor had laid down thinned as if someone were scraping it away with a knife. Just before the threads snapped, he sent one last line.
"Lupin. Don't move rashly."
"Hm? Why?"
The link went dead. She hadn't properly caught it.
"...Damn it."
In a situation like this, Yegor couldn't easily step in either. If he caught Emelin's eye, some part of this palace would collapse or cave in on the spot. That was the method she used every time she tried to catch him, and Yegor was not a man who could stand by while others suffered because of him.
"At this point..."
The one small mercy was that Lupin had once beaten the Maze Rat on pure physicality alone. So in a bare-handed fight like this, with no weapons in play, it wasn't entirely hopeless.
"I'll have to wait for an opening."
And so Yegor carefully shifted himself into Emelin's blind spot. Meanwhile she advanced on Lupin at a slow walk.
Crack. Crunch.
Tiles shattered under every footfall, and the repair bill in Dmitri's head kept updating itself. Soon Emelin and Lupin stood close enough that a fully extended leg would reach the other.
"As expected. A formless Aura User, and overflowing with confidence for it?"
"Not exactly. I only ever overflow with confidence against opponents I think I can beat."
A perfectly shameless admission that she was strong against the weak and weak against the strong, delivered without a speck of guilt before heaven. The words raked hard across Emelin's nerves.
"Ah. So you don't even need to trade blows to see my level at a glance?"
"Hm? Doesn't everyone? There's no point throwing yourself at someone you'd lose to and wasting the time."
For Lupin, running away meant something entirely different from what it meant to other people. She didn't flee because she was afraid of dying. She fled because she hated wasting time. Die? Why would she die? If she could see every attack coming and still failed to dodge, that would be the real problem.
"I think I can beat you, Your Highness. There are plenty of ways. Even just the ones that come to mind right now."
"Yap, yap. Noisy."
Boom.
The aura that had seized the space shuddered once and shook the room. Frames on the walls rattled and fell as if a gale had blown through.
"You don't even know your place. Your life isn't precious to you, I take it?"
"Uh... why are you getting worked up? I was only stating an objective fact..."
A rather fierce standoff. Watching it in breathless silence, Dmitri suddenly remembered something: the words of Kakavita, who had taught Lupin for two weeks.
That she was skilled had already been proven when she smashed every test subject hidden in the Republic, but exactly how strong she was had yet to be established. Kakavita, however, had said she commanded a mysterious flock of doves. That hidden trump card was why she could stand so confidently even now. Emelin, on the other hand, had left the great weapon that was her symbol outside the palace. Even the highest seat of the Sub-Rounds, regarded as the lowest of the Rounds, could not completely overwhelm Lupin in this state.
Dmitri recalled the conversation he'd had with Tasili some dozens of minutes ago.
"Your Grace. If the chance should arise, would it be all right to let Lupin have a look inside the Holy Ark?"
"The Holy Ark. That much, I can ask the Prime Minister."
Strictly speaking, the Prime Minister held the final say over access to the Holy Ark. But if Lupin kept the palace from collapsing, that changed the story. There would be noise, of course, about rough handling of Blumang's imperial princess, but it would die down quickly. Judging by the precedent of three prior rounds of destruction and compensation, the Blumang Empire had surely expected at least that much the moment they dispatched Emelin.
"Lupin!"
"Yes, Your Grace?"
"Subdue that hellion for me, and I will do everything in my power to see that you tour the Holy Ark."
"Gasp. Really?"
"The Prime Minister was meant to test your qualifications one last time, through conversation. To me, protecting this palace matters more than that."
As he said it, Dmitri glanced around. Frames fallen from the walls, brass ornaments, and tapestries were already rolling across the floor in a mess.
"So I'm asking you."
The Holy Ark. What a warm, heart-stirring resonance those words held. Lupin gathered both hands over her chest and bowed politely to Dmitri.
That tiny lapse of attention scraped at Emelin's insides all over again. Did she even realize she was standing inside an opponent's domain? Turning aside to offer a greeting, when she didn't have a second to spare looking away?
Insolent.
A halberd is ordinarily too large and too heavy for an ordinary woman to wield. But with a body tempered by aura, physical disadvantage loses most of its meaning. If anything, the halberd's length overcomes a relatively short reach, and since ascending to Master, Emelin had never truly known defeat. Moreover, she was an aura Master who could produce a similar effect without even holding a halberd in her hand. It was a trait well documented in one of academia's perennial papers, Aura Erases the Boundary Between Weapon and Body.
Formless aura? Wasn't that just using aura without a weapon? Emelin could not understand why people praised it and held it up so high. The lowest seat of the Rounds in the Blumang Empire was a formless aura Master, and Emelin had never once considered herself weaker than that woman. They were on the same side, so a fight to the death was impossible. Still, she was certain that if it came to a real battle, she would win. Unlike the Rounds, whose feet were tied and who could not be committed to proper operations, Emelin had already proven her worth through countless missions. She was that confident in actual combat.
So Lupin's attitude? It was the same as letting her guard down with an enemy right in front of her. A plain display of too little real combat experience. Riffraff like this, she could finish in a single blow.
One Point
Emelin's right foot traced an arc and landed half a step forward.
Boom!
The centrifugal force born of her spinning body traveled through shoulder, elbow, and wrist, transforming at her fingertips into a terrifying penetrating power. At the same time, the aura manifesting from her extended hand took the shape of a translucent halberd. A feat only those of the upper ranks of Master could perform. Its power would fall somewhat short of an aura blade wielded with an optimal weapon in hand. But how many people in the world could react to the point of a halberd that suddenly erupted from empty air?
—Whoosh!
The translucent solid passed cleanly through Lupin's shoulder.
"......?"
And yet there was no sensation at all of tearing through anything. Emelin blinked once, and the scene had shifted into an entirely different phase. Lupin was gone. And her voice—
"Boo! It's bad manners to attack someone mid-transformation or mid-conversation!"
—came from somewhere completely unexpected, from several places at once.
"Hm? Don't tell me you can't even follow me?"
Like a ghost drifting through the air, there were no footsteps. Only the soft rustle of dress hems brushing against each other. Follow the sound, and there was nothing to see. Only with the aid of the domain she'd spread could she finally make out an afterimage. It felt like she'd been caught in some vicious illusion art. She was beginning to doubt whether an attack she threw would even connect.
Emelin couldn't move rashly, and that puzzled Lupin too.
What? Am I too fast?
She kept slipping out of the direction her opponent's gaze moved, expecting the next attack, but there was no reaction at all. Her agility was the same as before, still Rank X. Could it be the wing-robe? The force of her steps was the same, but her body had grown so light that even a Master couldn't keep up? Even so, Lupin still found it hard to gauge the objective gap in skill. At this rate, she might even have a shot against Klein. That was about as far as the thought went.
Anyway, all she had to do now was subdue her? Then the Holy Ark was locked in?
Lupin's cheeks flushed. Just imagining what might be inside the Holy Ark made her body heat up of its own accord. Soon she circled behind Emelin and pressed close to her ear.
"Where are you looking? That's my afterimage."
