Killing the Bandits
The season had settled into the full height of summer.
Key figures from all six nations had gathered in the round-table hall halfway up the Elysium Mountains.
It was the opening of the Golden Conference, the assembly that would set the course of the entire Imperial Alliance.
The hall burned as hot as the glaring sun overhead.
Few of those present seemed to mind. Land blessed by the stars never grew truly humid, so even the heat stayed pleasant. And because this was a hall of real importance, its aerodynamic design had been carefully considered; a cool breeze moved through it with ease.
Pleasant or not, summer was still summer.
In weather like this, the Rounds—marching about in full uniform beneath capes that trailed and billowed—could not help but stand out. But strip away an emblem that was as good as their very symbol, and all over a little heat? Their pride would never allow it. Lupin had plenty to say about the shrine maidens grinding through on nothing but grit and stubbornness, yet when it came to sheer obstinacy over honor and symbolism, the Rounds were no ordinary lot themselves.
Even in that heated atmosphere, the conference moved at a brisk pace—and before long the Golden Conference had reached the day's final item.
The wider world had treated Rostov's demotion to a kingdom as a foregone conclusion. Less because of the blame for losing the Holy Ark, and more because a barren land where Aura Users could no longer grow was regarded with extraordinary contempt. Rostov Academy was already being treated as a hollow shell of an academy, even though the Rounds had issued no particular statement to that effect.
…And yet, overturning everyone's expectations, Rostov remained an empire.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The vote itself was short, and dull.
One vote, generously dressed up as Rostov having given the Rounds a proper occasion to step forward. One vote, on the pretext that Rostov was the land that had discovered the adventurer called Lupin. One vote, on the grounds that with Klein subdued, the cult would be in no position to run wild for some time. Three votes in all—and in an instant, a majority of the five nations besides Rostov had agreed to preserve its imperial status.
The moment the conference ended, Kain sought out Rostov's prime minister and offered his congratulations first.
"Congratulations, Prime Minister."
The prime minister's expression was distinctly sour. Not even the stars could have guessed the problem would be settled in such a slapdash rush—and it was absolutely not because the speech he had prepared day and night, terrified he might struggle to persuade the Golden Conference, had just been reduced to kindling.
"…I am not entirely certain this is a matter for congratulations."
Kain, however, knew perfectly well that Rostov's survival had been decided by one truly exquisite move. And that move was Ekaterina.
"I wouldn't say it isn't worth congratulating. In any case, you can hardly have made this judgment out of faith in Ekaterina… Was there some other reason?"
The day before the conference opened, the prime minister had sent Kain a dispatch opposing Ekaterina's expulsion. Kain himself had still been weighing the matter, and withdrawing an expulsion at someone's request meant the responsibility would be shared, so he had accepted readily enough. Even so, it was bound to seem strange that Rostov—of all places, with so much piled up against Ekaterina—would make a decision like that.
The prime minister, still trying to forget the speech that had become kindling, let out a short laugh.
"I did my best, squeezed in among the whales. The result is good, so I count myself fortunate."
The future, had Lupin taken the Twelfth Seat? The three great powers would have tried to carve Rostov up like a wheel of cheese. Even among members of the same alliance, that was simply how a nation stripped of the Holy Ark's power was treated. A glittering jewel left sitting in a poor environment—what reason was there to leave it there?
But with Ekaterina preserving the Twelfth Seat, and Lupin locking down the joker position of the Thirteenth, the situation had changed. The Thirteenth Seat could belong anywhere, and anyone could approach her. And so the other empires had chosen to avoid a decision that would weaken the alliance's cohesion.
It was a truly exquisite move. Thinking back on the process that had led him to it, though, the prime minister felt a chill crawl up his spine for no good reason.
I find myself grateful to Lord Maksimov all over again.
Lupin had to be treated as a child who did not understand responsibility. What she needed now was a place as comfortable as home. Prepare the environment, and she would come back on her own without anyone grabbing her and talking her into it. And so on.
Had it not been for Tasili's heated persuasion—carrying on like he was Lupin's own grandfather—the prime minister would have lost his post long ago. So he could only be grateful. And then grateful again.
Without ever realizing it, Lupin had become the idol of the Golden Conference.
She, meanwhile, was already on the road south, throwing herself into learning the Shadowless Sword Style with everything she had.
Thwack!
The dull crack of sword meeting staff rang out through the forest. Deciding this was hopeless, Lupin flopped straight down onto the ground.
"Wait, wait—break!"
"No. We agreed you wouldn't rest until you could follow the form perfectly."
"Damn it, past me. Why in the world did you make a promise like that…"
"Let's try once more. It hasn't even been two hours yet. Yegor, is lunch nearly ready?"
"Yes. Almost done."
"Uuugh. If it's for the sake of lunch… Just once…"
Calling it training was generous. All she was really doing was copying the movements and sword paths Tasili showed her, repeating them until they stuck. Not that the method was wrong. Why else did the sword cultivators at the academies of the continent's three great powers put themselves through such ordeals? Because they could not do as their masters taught. This was a world where a Master saying do it like this and an Expert answering I can't, though was the normal order of things.
An ordinary Aura User reached the truth only by clutching their head and agonizing day and night over how to move like their master. Basic growth had to come along with it, so there were no days off from aura training either. And because the body had to be kept healthy at all times to support that training, a wholesome diet—which, as wholesome food so often is, tasted absolutely foul—regular habits, and a strict ban on drink and tobacco were all essential. Like the muscle craftsmen of Earth giving everything they had for a eleven-hundred-pound total on the big three and a physique shoot, Aura Users poured themselves into grueling effort.
The problem was that an Aura User's actual profession was the training itself. Eat nothing but chicken breast three meals a day and do nothing but backbreaking practice, and it was a wonder anyone managed not to lose their mind. The one small mercy was that at the academies, if you did go mad, they kindly beat you like a dog until your reason came back!
And while everyone else was picking their way across a field of sharp stones, what about Lupin?
She climbed aboard a first-class cabin on a bullet train, cracked open a packed lunch, and admired her master's forms the way one might watch Nutube—then stepped off the train and immediately reproduced about eighty percent of them. Fill in the remaining twenty percent with a bit of effort, and a single form was finished in a matter of days, neat as anything.
An ordinary Aura User, hearing that, would quit the academy on the spot. The overwhelming despair born of a gap in talent becomes a monster in the heart just that easily, and swallows a person whole.
Thanks to this absurd method of training, Lupin had already succeeded in reproducing two new forms of the Shadowless Sword Style, and now stood on the verge of completing a third. It was only the sixth day since training had begun.
She drew the breath out long—hoo—then sucked it in. The instant she held it, Lupin dropped her stance, ready to unleash the fourth form, Swift Advance.
Her foot drove hard off the earth, and her body shot forward like a cannon shell. It looked exactly like Swift Advance, as if she meant to drive the sword in and cut between the first step and the second—but that was a feint, meant to fix the eye on what was coming straight ahead. She was drilling a form closer to a phantom blade than a swift sword: slip past the opponent, then strike while avoiding the heavily guarded front.
Still driving forward, Lupin skimmed past Tasili by a hair and spun on a narrow angle, like a top. All of that kinetic energy converted, intact, into rotational force—
—Clang!
"Ngh!"
And yet Tasili, once again, turned her sword aside with a light touch of his staff. She had deliberately twisted half a step early and thrown a wide variation onto the point she was aiming for, and he had stopped her anyway.
Master, as expected. So strong it wasn't even fun!
Lupin toppled backward onto the ground, sword still in hand.
"Ugh. This isn't working. I'll eat, and then I'll finish it!"
"The attempt was good. I never even taught you to save that half-step. Remarkable."
"But if I don't, you just block all of it, Master…"
A difficulty on an entirely different level from the third form, Red Flash, or the fifth, Swift Advance Flurry, both of which she had already cleared. That was the sixth form she was burning herself out on now—the flower of the Shadowless Sword Style, Shadowless Flash.
The track of Shadowless Flash looked like a thread tied into a loop. Rotating a body that had been launched straight ahead inevitably bled speed, and if that gap could not be closed, the opponent could follow and defend. An ordinary Aura User, of course, would already be a headless corpse and then some at her current speed. But what Lupin meant to face was Master-class, so she had simply judged that if she could not land the blow on Tasili, the form was unfit for real combat. Unlike Red Flash or Swift Advance Flurry, which could still shift into a defense even when blocked, Shadowless Flash required the rotation in order to strike at all. Fail, and your back was exposed at once. It felt like something one could not afford to use carelessly.
"This one's going to take a while, I think. Give it a generous estimate, and I'm looking at about a week."
She had been drilling Shadowless Flash for all of two hours.
Set against the year—or, for the slow ones, the decade—others invested just to learn a single form well enough to use, it was an absurdly short time. Realizing her own flaw within two hours, then varying her own footwork to get past it, was as good as announcing that she possessed an adaptability that should not have been possible. Lupin herself might regret the pace, slower than when she had learned the other forms, but airing that regret in front of anyone else was a fine way to earn dirty looks. To borrow her own phrasing, it would be flexing and then rubbing it in.
Tasili rapped her on the head with his staff.
"Throwing yourself at something with genuine intent to master it is good. But you are already growing more than fast enough. At times like this, what matters is not rushing."
"But the treasure chests are waiting…"
Every tiresome thing Lupin did, she did for treasure chests. And so the longer it dragged on, the more anxious she grew, thinking of them. Even back when she had been studying etiquette for the sake of obtaining the Holy Ark, she had gone out every evening to crack Secret Chests—and still failed to last into the second week, startling Kakavita and walking away with an injured ankle.
Tasili knew that heart of hers, and so he offered a word of comfort.
"As it happens, the imperial border is close. Cross it, and you'll find quite a few bands of bandits."
He meant that clearing them out would earn her treasure chests. Lupin, for some reason, fixed on something else entirely. The continent's level of civilization was on the verge of fighting wars with guns and cannon, and there were still bandits?
"They're not bandits carrying guns and firing cannons, are they?"
Tasili blinked. For once, Lupin had hit the answer dead on.
Reading the reply in his face, Lupin let out a groan. It was a combination she could not bring herself to accept no matter how she tried. Bandits, with guns? So Elysium really was a completely unhinged, zero-foundation game?
Even thinking that, she could not quite suppress a human being's inborn curiosity. …You did have to see a gun-toting bandit with your own eyes at least once in your life. She had never run into one even while cracking Abandoned Chests, which only made her more curious.
"Maaaster. I'll be Fire Punch."
In truth, Lupin had met bandits before. They had simply been civilized, nothing like the image of a bandit she carried, and so she had never noticed.
