The Wild Princess
"And where are you looking? That is merely my afterimage."
How long had it been since someone had so cleanly taken her from behind?
Emelin barely crushed the chill crawling up her spine.
"You've got the wrong idea. I never chased you, all right? An afterimage is all that's left. Why would I waste my time running after it late?"
A spatial leap? Could that be the true nature of the formless aura Lupin possessed? And if so, did it mean that this Lupin, toying with her even now, was bound to burn herself out and collapse if Emelin simply dragged things on?
Had the Maze Rat been standing behind a bookshelf in a spacesuit, he would surely have howled some word that began with S and ended in Y, then burst into tears. But that was precisely what everyone thought the first time they met Lupin. What else were they supposed to think? People who lived in a world ruled by aura had never once encountered a crazy bitch who could rampage at speeds impossible to track without using any aura at all.
Lupin let her brows fall and grumbled, plainly bored.
"So that's how you mean to play it."
Then—shhk.
In a single breath she swapped places and was at Emelin's back again.
"In that case... if I poke you here and there and tickle you a little, might you see your way to letting me off?"
A hand closed in on her back out of nowhere.
Every time Lupin moved, the readings from Emelin's domain registered not as a line, but as dots dropped one after another. It was like a cheap monitor failing to render every frame of a character in motion. That was how fast Lupin was.
Emelin's aura-laden hand swept the empty air with a whoosh. Another miss. By the time she recovered her twisted stance, the presence was on her right. She didn't bother turning her head; she used the domain to confirm Lupin's position alone. And then, for some reason, Lupin didn't move for a while.
What was she aiming for?
Unable to bear the curiosity, Emelin flicked her eyes sideways—and that was the moment.
"Hoo~."
"Kyaa!"
Hot breath tickled Emelin's ear. Worse, the scent of grapes and alcohol lingering at the tip of her nose made her dizzy. Alcohol. She was doing nothing but things an Aura User ought to be ashamed of. Thoroughly fired up, Emelin huffed.
"Hey—how about you knock off the games?!"
"Games? Where would you find anyone more sincere than I am?"
"And where, exactly, is that sincere?"
Lupin was only keeping, with iron faithfulness, Dmitri's request that she protect the palace. No further damage had been done inside the grand hall, and the invoice in Dmitri's heart had been paused for quite some time.
"But if you move, Emelin, the tiles crack. For me, you standing perfectly still is best."
Hearing that tangled Emelin's thoughts. She had fought a great many enemies, yet never anyone whose intentions she so utterly failed to read. No—who was it that had provoked her in the first place by calling her a Golden Gorilla? Grand Duke Ryurikovich asking her to guard his own palace was one thing. Accepting that offer with a cheerful yes, and then turning the situation into this?
She could not make out the purpose at all. Perhaps the scheme had been to paint Emelin as nothing more than a wrecker of the imperial palace. Why go to such lengths? A letter from the Emperor of the Blumang Empire and a sum of compensation would settle the matter cleanly enough. Was she a spy of the North Country? Or a Shrine Maiden of the cult?
...No. A Shrine Maiden was a stretch too far. The allure coming off Lupin in that dress did carry a faint whiff of the cult, but among the Shrine Maidens, those with outstanding combat power never disguised themselves. Something about how hiding a captivating body made it impossible to spread the greatness of the cult, or whatever it was they said.
"Fine. I'll grant that your speed is incredible. But you don't actually think being fast is enough to beat me, do you?"
"Mm. That's a death flag. Someone said the same thing once and vanished, leaving nothing but the loot..."
"Be quiet. You do realize I was going easy on you earlier, don't you? If I'd aimed for your heart or your gut instead of your shoulder, you might have taken a deep wound. From here on, I'm not going easy."
"That's a line third-rate villains are rather fond of."
"Can't you just be qui—"
Lupin moved again. Emelin spun after her afterimage. And somehow, Lupin's left hand now held a wine bottle, and her right two iron skewers threaded with meat.
"You... that's..."
"No, I just got hungry from all the moving. Shall I give you some? How about a drink? Call?"
With that she started tearing into one of the skewers, utterly at her ease. The message was something like, how about we leave the fight here. Inside the palace, at least, Lupin was putting her head to work so they wouldn't have to fight.
Did she just cross that distance?
The buffet table was by no means close. Even granting that Emelin had lost track of Lupin for a moment, was this actually possible? In that instant she became certain that Lupin's formless aura was tied to spatial leaping. Within the bounds of her common sense, only one person in the entire world could do such a thing: Yaoguang, the lowest seat of the Seven Stars of the North Country. A Grand Master had no need to scurry about, able to intercept a fly a hundred meters off while remaining planted in place—and Yaoguang, who could do even that, was regarded as stranger still.
So your power is at least that of the Seven Stars, or the lowest seat of the Rounds...
An irregular-aura user was difficult to measure in full. But if she could be set alongside the Seven Stars or the Rounds, that was easier said than done. Even so, it was well within reach. After all, Emelin had run the simulation of surpassing the lowest seat of the Rounds dozens of times in her head—hundreds.
Fighting spirit blazing anew, she tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"Sniff, sniff. It would taste even better if we ate together.... What a shame...."
Her opponent, however, was still busy feeding her appetite. Even the skewer meant for Emelin was already half gone. As if that weren't enough, Lupin snapped the neck of the wine bottle outright and poured it glugging straight down her throat in a bold little performance. The sight of a highborn young lady turning into a beast in an instant stirred Emelin's own past for no good reason. She, too, had suffered, forcing her body into the ill-fitting clothes of court etiquette.
...Her mind games are rather good.
But she would not be fooled. If someone behaved like that in the middle of a fight, the purpose was obvious. The more you let yourself be played, the more you proved the gap in skill with your own hands. Showing so pathetic a display in a fight she had picked while certain of victory was something her pride would not allow. No matter what happened, she had to force a conclusion. That was what Emelin's heart was telling her.
Soon she drew her spread domain inward and took several steps back. Dmitri, reading the intent, shouted.
"Lupin, Emelin means to fetch her weapon! After her, now!"
If Emelin came back inside with that halberd? The imperial palace explodes. The commission fails. The invoice in Dmitri's heart never stops—tiriririring. The Holy Ark will be as if it never was. Ack! On that day, Lupin's world collapses. O children of the apocalypse, sing of ruin......... or not.
Lupin hurled the sauce-smeared iron skewer in a straight line, trying somehow to snare the feet of Emelin as she made for the outside. Emelin slipped the incoming skewer with ease. It was entirely thanks to the aura domain spread around her, though Lupin still hadn't the faintest dream that such a thing existed. Fortunately, Emelin wasn't that fast. About on par with the Maze Rat, or a little quicker? Lupin shot forward like an arrow and matched her speed.
"Let's go together."
"...Already?!"
Whoosh. Emelin's hand shot toward the face of Lupin, running right beside her. And then Lupin was on her other side. She was so fast that an afterimage lingered for an instant.
"Slow."
And so the two of them passed through the entrance hall at the same moment. Tap-tap-tap-tap. A single set of footsteps over the grass receded into the distance.
Only then did Dmitri pass a hand over his chest in relief and survey the damage. Several works of art. Several floor tiles. The main door and the inner door, one each. A few lights. Aside from those, the rest was clean—clean enough that one could almost be glad it had ended here.
Soon the Prime Minister, who had been watching his chance from the direction of the dance hall, realized the situation was over and appeared with knights in tow.
"How did it turn out? And Emelin?"
Dmitri drew out a handkerchief and wiped away his cold sweat.
"Lupin is seeing to her."
"A tremendous relief. She is a true hero of the Republic."
"I am of the same mind, Your Excellency. Since the subject has arisen, might I ask whether, once this affair is settled, you would grant Lupin leave to enter the Holy Ark? She seemed exceedingly interested in it."
"Of course it is possible. In that case, we ought to smooth out the complicated procedures of entry in advance. What say you?"
"A most correct thought."
The Prime Minister stroked his well-groomed beard and murmured.
"All one does in there is wander a pitch-black space and come back out. I can't fathom why she shows such interest."
"Well, according to Lord Maksimov... opening the world's interesting treasure chests is her hobby, or so he says."
A treasure chest. Not wrong, if one limited the claim to Royal Blood. The Prime Minister laughed, heh heh.
"At any rate, I shall go and finish calming the guests. I leave the cleanup to you."
"Yes."
He had been so pleased to marry his younger sister off well. Dmitri had never imagined that boomerang would come flying back this hard, decades later. The Prime Minister soon returned to the dance hall, and Dmitri folded the used handkerchief neatly into his breast pocket as he made a wide circuit of the grand hall.
Aigoo, the frame made from kashner wood that grows only once in fifty years... The brass cup he had received before relations with the North Country soured... Supplementary notes were added to the invoice in Dmitri's head, two lines here and three lines there.
Then—thud.
"...Hm?"
A strange vibration rang through the quiet grand hall. Wondering if he had misheard, Dmitri held his breath and listened.
Thud. Thud.
He had not misheard. A definite vibration was shaking the whole building, if only slightly. Now he flattened himself to the floor and pressed his ear tight against the tile.
"...Underground?"
A regular, repeating vibration was coming from beneath the earth. Pit-pat, pit-pit-pat. In time with it, tiny bits of debris began to fall, one by one, from the ceiling of the grand hall.
Meanwhile, Lupin, who had made for the armory, was at a loss.
"Which... one... should... I... pick? Take a guess..."
It was because she hadn't marked the Lightning Sword separately. The scabbards all looked so alike she couldn't tell them apart. Scolding the knight order that had taken custody of the weapons for failing to put on labels would have been unfair to them as well, standing off at a distance and watching nervously. What were they supposed to do when Emelin suddenly came charging in like an enraged gorilla? In their startled flight there had been a crash—she had kicked over the cabinet where the swords were stored, and that was how this mess had come about.
"Haaap!"
And amid it all, killing intent closed in. Lupin retreated two steps in a moonwalk that would have moved Brother Jackson to tears. A big, beautiful aura blade slammed straight down into the ground. The earthen floor couldn't hold; it split left and right and bared a white stone underbelly. In the process, about ten poor swords snapped.
Emelin clicked her tongue in irritation.
"You dodge well, like a little rat."
The great weapon itself was already enormous, and with an aura blade added on top it was nothing short of an extra-extra-greatsword. And? So what? What was the weakness of greatswords, axes, and every other stupidly huge weapon? Whoom. Whoong. Vwoom. Bwoong. As loud as they sounded, they were slow!
There was a reason Lupin remembered the tutorial. She had wanted to skip it and go crack open chests, but the trial character they had handed her—Emelin—had been relatively frustrating compared to the others. Her advantage was strength. Brute strength that swung a massive lump of metal as if it were a bamboo practice sword. Whether that had been a game modifier or not, in reality she wasn't a complete sluggard either. If she kept swinging that colossal weapon like this, Lupin wouldn't have time to find the Lightning Sword. At this point, she had no choice but to grab whatever came to hand.
"Ding-dong, dang-dong!"
Lupin drew the sword her finger had landed on last and muttered.
"From now on, you're Gorilla-Catcher No. 1."
Roughly speaking, a sword for catching gorillas.
