Someone Special
Professor Elda... why are you standing there with the Grand Duke...?
The battlefield lay drowned in a dense fog of steam. Eustia's eyes trembled violently.
Elda stood shoulder to shoulder with the Grand Duke, stealing glance after glance at the side of his face. She was an Academy professor — and yet she was paying more attention to a man than to her own student's match. The words died in Eustia's throat.
Just what happened between those two?
The dignity Elda always wore at the Academy was nowhere to be found. In its place was the meek face of an ordinary woman. She was even trying to press her breasts — a bosom nearly the match of Eustia's own — against the Grand Duke.
Watching Elda reduced to little more than a female in heat, a feeling Eustia could not yet name slowly stretched itself awake in the depths of her heart.
"Your expression looks rather grim, Your Highness. I take it you're ready to throw in the towel."
"...Lord Robus. Did you climb to the Fifth Seat of the Magic Tower on the strength of your idle chatter?"
"W-what did you just say?"
The taunt was so sharp it hardly seemed possible it had come from Eustia's lips. Robus reeled in shock — and in that opening, she deployed her magic at once.
Ice Wave
A tide of ice-blades unfurled in an instant, spreading as if to swallow the enemy whole. White bloomed across the tournament stage, claiming more and more of its surface — until Robus, composure restored, answered with magic of his own.
Prominence Field
A land of flame roared into being and melted the wave of ice in a single breath. As the two mages locked in a taut contest of power, Eustia's expression hardened.
Focus on the match first. I can speak with the Grand Duke afterward... If this keeps up, I'm going to lose.
She had launched dozens of attacks already, and every last one had been turned aside. The cause, put simply, was output. Whenever she manifested an offensive spell, he answered with something stronger. There was nothing she could do. She possessed the greater store of mana — but she could not yet wield it perfectly, and that was how she had been driven into this corner.
She was still searching for a way to overturn the disadvantage when Behirith's voice sounded inside her mind.
Your Highness. Can you hear me?
Grand Duke!?
Stay calm. This is a technique called Sound Transmission. For the record, you have not yet learned to use it — so your voice cannot reach me.
That's...?
Sound Transmission. Eustia's eyes went round at the name. She had never heard of such a technique in her life. The closest thing she knew was a mage's telepathy. And it was not only this — the skill he had displayed in the previous match had been extraordinary as well. Every technique the Grand Duke employed was astonishing.
While she was still caught in that wonder, he went on.
I am a little late, I fear. I ought to have watched from the very start. Forgive me for failing to do so.
No — I'm the one who should apologize... You even introduced me to Countess Raphaela and helped me with special training, and this is what I have to show for it.
Ah. I see you are blaming yourself. That kind of weakness does not become you, Your Highness. I would rather see you overcome hardship with that bright spirit of yours, as you always do.
From behind his mask, Behirith watched her with warm eyes and offered his encouragement. Listening to the Sound Transmission, Eustia's face grew faintly wistful.
...Why are you always so kind to me?
He treated her with a tenderness that felt as if he had known her all along. Even in the middle of a match, her gaze kept drifting toward him. How was she supposed to hide a feeling like this? She was already in the grip of an emotion that had grown far beyond her power to contain.
Grand Duke. Meeting you has been the greatest fortune of my life.
In an imperial court clenched in the fists of her two older brothers, she had lived with her breath held, used as the Treasure of the Empire for nothing more than a pretty face. Palace life had been suffocating enough already — and after the mother she had leaned on passed away, it had only grown worse. She had enrolled at the Academy in part to build a faction of her own, and in part simply to flee the palace.
Was it the grace of Paleth, the Chief God? There, she had found someone precious.
Grand Duke Behirith. The man who had saved her from isolation in the imperial family. The man who had told her she was special. The man who had whispered that honeyed voice to her every night.
Looking at the red-eyed man cheering for her from the stands, Eustia put strength into her hands as if she had made up her mind.
This match. I have to win it.
She would admit it: her opponent was very strong. But he was not so strong that she could not defeat him. The reason she had been driven this far was almost certainly that she had failed to concentrate. Fortunately, he seemed intent on impressing her brother — rather than ending the match, he was content to torment her. She held the advantage in mana. If she could put every drop of it to use and manifest a spell of overwhelming output, victory would be hers.
Eustia's eyes cooled to a calm, and she swept the stage in a swift glance. Steam-fog hung thick in every direction. The situation could not have been more favorable. Judgment made, she wove her magic in a flash.
"Ice Wave."
With the incantation, a furious tide of ice-blades roared toward Robus. But it was an attack he had already stopped once. His crimson cloak billowed as he nullified her magic with ease.
"My, my. Ice magic of that output will never reach me."
"...Hydro Wave."
Hydro Wave
Eustia pressed on through his taunt, and a wave of water larger than any she had yet produced crashed down over him. He evaporated it with flame and laughed, arrogant as ever.
"Haha. Ice or water, it makes no difference. A meaningless effort. Besides — my master seems satisfied now, so I believe I shall put an end to this."
He was already sneering as if the victory were his. Eustia answered him without flinching.
"Is that so? I rather think I've already won this match."
"I beg your pardon? Do you mean to deny reality all of a sudden?"
"Not at all. Look around you."
At her words, Robus rolled his eyes and took in his surroundings. The ease on his face began, little by little, to crack.
"Don't tell me — you mean to pour this enormous quantity of steam into a single ice spell?"
"Exactly."
"But you can't possibly have enough mana left to produce that kind of output."
He cocked his head as if he had just heard something absurd. And he was right. Manifesting magic on that scale was no easy thing.
But.
I have no choice but to try.
Right now, there was no path forward except to believe in herself and push. This was her last chance to turn the match around. At once, Eustia began to weave a mana formula of the highest order.
A faint sound rose as a vast quantity of mana stirred. Robus's face twisted, and he scrambled to prepare a counter. In the instant the two mages gathered their final blows—
At the decisive moment, the Grand Duke called her by name. There was not a hair's breadth of doubt in his voice. His unshakable certainty that she would win sent strength surging through her.
This man would surely remain at her side until she triumphed in the struggle for the imperial throne as well.
And yet.
Grand Duke... the one who should sit as master of the Empire is not me.
It was a decision she had reached alone, in her heart, through the talks they shared every night. And today, that decision had only grown more certain. The one who truly belonged in that place was a single person: the Grand Duke. Stronger than anyone. Just. And kind. He, more than anyone alive, was the man who belonged at the Empire's peak.
When she one day took the emperor's throne, she would offer him the Empire itself — a treasure more beautiful than any other.
And so, with eyes clearer than they had ever been, in an arena drowned in steam, Eustia called down the age of frost.
"Ice Age."
⟨ ICE AGE ⟩
The incantation left her lips in a single breath. In the same instant, the arena was swallowed in a blaze of white, and an ice age colder than winter itself swept across the stage.
Inferno
"I-Inferno! Gaaaaah!"
Robus cried the spell in a panic, but it was useless. Massive glaciers formed one after another, greedily devouring the flames, and the body of the man stumbling backward was sheathed in an instant in ice as hard as steel.
A heavy slam rang out as the prison of ice sealed shut, and Robus's movement ceased. The entire stage — even the boundary with the spectator seats — had become a land of ice.
Protective Artifact activated.
The match is over.
A thin electronic tone cut the air. Silence followed. The spectators, having witnessed high-tier magic of a kind one would expect only on a battlefield, sat with their mouths open and not a sound among them. The imperial princess so long called the Treasure of the Empire had unveiled a magical prowess that inspired nothing short of awe.
While the crowd lost itself in the spectacle — at once beautiful and destructive — that now filled the arena, Eustia stood at the heart of the glacier-covered earth and let out a breath of ice.
"Hah... hah..."
She had done it. She had won. She had spent every last drop of her mana, and remaining on her feet was almost more than she could manage — but she had defeated a powerhouse of the Magic Tower.
Did the Grand Duke see it properly?
Before she left the stage, Eustia searched for Behirith the way a puppy searches for its master, aching to be praised.
And in that instant—
That low voice, calling her name just as it had a moment before. At its honeyed timbre, a tremor ran through Eustia's womb.
Ah... of course.
She had no choice now but to admit it fully. That she loved him. And that she wanted, in the days to come, to be his wife.
And yet — once he became master of the Empire, he would take many wives, herself among them. Just like Professor Elda, standing at his side even now with the face of a female in heat.
I have no intention of standing in the way of that... I haven't the right to dare.
But there was one thing she wished for.
That he would tell her she was the only one who was special to him. As he had until now.
And that someday, in a future not far from this one, he would whisper kindly against her ear — and teach her the joy of being a woman.