A Complicated Game of Wits
The battlefield was coming apart without a sound, ground down beneath the clash of heroes.
Black Wolf had been watching them through a sunken gaze. At last, he spoke.
"Valkan Gardner. Asha Mirabell. If you don't stop fighting this instant, I'll kill Hestia."
The words were let out under Nahan's meticulous calculations. This isn't the planning stage anymore. It's the real thing, so the variables are everywhere—but some facts don't change. The surest of them was only one. Those two took the news that Hestia is alive and accepted it as truth.
That was why they had collided. Valkan had planted himself in front of Black Wolf, desperate for anything tied to Hestia. Asha, by contrast, had thrown herself at wiping out Black Wolf, meaning to save Hestia even a moment sooner. Which meant, in short, both of them are treating Hestia's safety as the one thing that matters most.
Whether because that prediction had landed dead on, the two of them stopped.
Fear like a skin of ice settled over Valkan's face, which had been flushing red as a berserker's, and Asha—still perfectly flat—opened her mouth.
"So she was alive after all."
The instant the words left her, Valkan's head whipped around.
"Asha, you knew?"
"......To some extent."
Just as the last of his suspicion toward Ian Red was clearing, Valkan exploded.
"You knew...!! And you still attacked first—what were you going to do if Hestia was in danger!!"
"The odds she was alive were high. I meant to kill them first, then take her back safely."
"And you call that an answer now!!"
Valkan was drawing breath to shout again when Nahan sighed and closed his hand on empty air.
"I'll say it once more. If this battle starts again, I will kill Lady Hestia."
Click.
He caught the air and turned it like a doorknob. Space split, and a crack ran through it.
Activating.
"A space for you alone."
Somewhere in the midst of stirring the air, an old doorknob had come to rest in Nahan's hand. Beyond the open door lay the inside of a worn cottage—and, before its fireplace, a girl asleep with her arms and legs bound.
"Hestia!!!"
Valkan's eyes went wild, and he lunged for the cottage.
Asha, who had not moved, shot out a hand and seized him by the shoulder.
"Let go, Asha!!! Hestia's in there!!!"
"Calm down. Look wider."
At that cold voice, the eyes fixed only on Hestia swept the room—and found it. Another of Black Wolf, quietly tending the fireplace as it burned around the poker.
Nahan turned to Dalan, returned at precisely the right moment, and gave the order in an even voice.
"Old General. When I give the signal, kill the woman."
"Yes, Leader."
...Crackle. Crackle. The answer was small and faint as the fire itself, and yet it held heat. That alone was enough. Valkan and Asha understood. A true power. This was no one hovering around A-rank. This was something that had already stepped past being human—something of the same make as they were. If Black Wolf so much as crooks a finger, Hestia dies on the spot. Drawing on everything they had lived through, the two heroes reached nearly the same conclusion at once, and they stopped.
Once again, the first to speak was Valkan, whose own family had been taken hostage. Despair and rage had given way to a face full of worry and wariness.
"Tell me what you want."
"What I want?"
"Yes...!! You took a hostage because there's something you want...!! ......There's something you want from us. That's why you took a hostage. Isn't it."
He was reining himself in, as if the image of Dalan seated in that room had come back to him. Watching it, Nahan thought, And we're deadlocked again. But how do I split the two of them apart? I have to find the best move—the one that's safest for me and for Luna both.
He went on thinking, tapping his thigh the way Black Wolf did. Valkan's an idiot. If Asha hadn't been here, he'd have lost his head already and charged Black Wolf. So what I need right now is...
...to take Asha off the field.
The tapping stopped.
The voice settled cold over everything around them, and it did not sound like a joke.
Valkan drove the broken edge of his shield into the earth without a heartbeat of hesitation.
"Then you'll let Hestia go?"
"I promise."
"See that you keep it."
The words were barely finished before that thick neck tipped toward the shield's edge. He meant to cut his own throat on the blade he had planted in the ground. I'm sorry, Hestia. He had wanted, someday, to apologize to her properly. He was sorry he never would. That was his last thought as the heavy line of his neck came down toward the steel.
"And her?"
Black Wolf's voice, edged like a sneer, stopped him cold.
Valkan lifted his head without even noticing the edge had begun to bite, and looked at Black Wolf.
"......And her? What does that mean?"
"What else."
The cold gaze slid off Valkan and onto Asha.
"The suicide. You'll be doing it together."
This, too, was Nahan's aim. Please, just react the way you were written in the original. Inside, he was shaking. Outside, he went on playing the high-handed Black Wolf.
Asha, expression unchanged, took up the holy sword she had lowered and answered.
"The negotiation is over."
Sky-blue hair, bound up, stirred with the wind. Killing intent seized the whole rooftop in an instant. Nahan drew a little more on the effect of Mastermind and shrugged at her.
"Throwing away your comrade's little sister just to save your own skin. Lord Valkan will be sorely disappointed."
"You brought this about."
"And you made the choice."
"Be quiet. Die, then talk."
Her grip tightened on the holy sword. Power gathered in the feet planted on the roof. She was ready to spring, a finger laid on the trigger of a loaded gun—and Nahan, with the fear of death close enough to touch, thought, It worked.
Asha Mirabell, as the original had written her. A woman who cursed the fate and the mission laid on her, and became a hero anyway. A woman who could feel, but could not show it, and who had gone dull for never showing it. She kept her composure at all times, drew the best possible result out of any situation, and moved on without stopping. Even she, though, had moments when the feeling showed plain and her judgment went soft.
Those moments came when her own life was in danger. I don't know the exact reason. What he did know was that she guarded herself against death—and that the plan built to aim at exactly that had gone in clean. So all that's left is the last step.
Nahan lifted a hand with an ease he was only performing.
"You want me to send the signal, I take it."
"You'll be dead before that."
"Terrifying."
He left it sounding like a joke. He was, in fact, terrified. Asha Mirabell, paying him no further mind, thought.
She ran the numbers on what she had just said—the odds of killing him before he could give the signal. That chilling presence. And the leisure in him. Even this doesn't look like his full strength. My equal. Or under me, or over. Looking at his people's capabilities, the chance his rank is lower than mine is small.
The pressure, and the word suicide, had already stirred the Goddess's Constraint. Worse, she had spent Judgment—usable once a day—the moment she broke in, and both her aura and her stamina had fallen by about half. One beside Hestia. One on the mercenaries' side. One behind the roof. One I missed. And on this side? Valkan, alone...... No. Just Valkan.
She laid enemy numbers and her own condition over the moment and calculated. The odds of putting Black Wolf down before he signals...... under two percent. Far short of what she had expected. A position in which she could lose Hestia—and, with the initiative already gone, her own life as well.
......
"The price of ■■ is ■■, you see."
A far-off dizziness shoved at her, and before she knew it Asha was picturing the other possibility.
What if.
Truly, what if she...
...abandoned Hestia?
If she aimed at Black Wolf alone, and made wiping out Black Wolf the first priority instead? The number climbed at once. Even under the worst premise—that Black Wolf was a little stronger than she was—her odds of winning that fight were sixty-seven percent. Abandon Hestia, and she could bring Black Wolf down no matter what it took...
Her teeth ground. As if something were chasing her, she caught the thought that had been racing after the result and nothing else. Get a hold of yourself. Abandon Hestia? Hero or not—set all of that aside. A person couldn't do that.
A vicious self-hatred ate at her. Perhaps because of it, the vision that had been narrowing opened wide again, and the subspace came into it. Her thoughts turned fast. ......Wait. Do I actually need to kill Black Wolf first? Rather than Black Wolf, her equal—perhaps even above her—couldn't I break into the subspace and keep Hestia safe from the one he called Old General? The subspace likely had conditions on entry. Even so, it was only a legendary-grade item. I can force my way in.
Composure returned. Asha looked at Black Wolf and dropped her stance. Charge him as a feint. Then cut aside, and go in.
The moment she finished the thought, the power spraying out in every direction drew inward and compressed to a single point beneath her feet.
A flinch. Now.
At that cue, Black Wolf's hand twitched—and Asha did not miss the gap. She vanished. Feinting an attack on him, she drove her body through the subspace entrance, left just slightly open. Done. Hestia's life was secured. She had won the contest of moves.
Even so, she did not relax. She lifted her head to read Black Wolf's reaction. She could not show what she felt, but feeling it, to a point, was possible. Got him. She turned her head with that thought—
"Done."
"...?"
What met her was not alarm. Past the mask, his eyes had bent into a black smile. ......What? She was a breath away from taking back the hostage, Hestia. Why was he smiling?
Black Wolf noticed her confusion, let out a short breath of a laugh, and waved.
"Let's not see each other often."
The flustered Asha went in. Dalan slipped out in a hurry. And in the next instant—click. The door shut, and the space was cut apart.
Asha threw herself forward and hit the ground in a tumble. A severed space. The Old General, gone. A room that held no one but Hestia and herself.
"...!!"
She scrambled up and flung open the cottage door. Beyond it lay the Verdant Forest. In the middle of that dark wood, the Emotionless Empress murmured, as if in lament.
"You never meant to kill her. Not from the start...?"
......Then why?
...What was the point?
......What? What was this, really?
The more she thought, the worse the confusion became—and it was a story of a late night, a brown-haired woman drawing a lap blanket up over her knees.
"......Nngh. It's cold. Would someone shut the door..."
Meanwhile, on the roof of Count Gardner's manor, where Asha was no longer present, Nahan murmured with a glad heart.
"Hero down."
All that remained was—
"......Give Asha back, too."
—this one idiot.
Nahan set to worrying again. How do I fool him? What do I say this time, what do I use, to make him fight Luna? Think. Think deeper. He was still searching for a reason fit to set Valkan and Luna against each other when Valkan himself burst out, radiant with discovery.
"I'll kill myself twice, then...... Oh. I've only got one life. Is there a way to split it in two? Then I kill myself twice in total and save both of them. ......Wait. Split it into three, and I save both of them and still live! This—this is infinite pow!!"
"Ah, would you please just be quiet."
"Sure."
The moment he scolded Valkan without quite meaning to, a question bloomed in Nahan's head—and Valkan was already talking again.
"But listen. Until when, and how quiet do I have to be? Am I allowed to breathe? More than that, Hestia is...... Ah. Right. You said quiet."
This one really doesn't seem like I need to think that hard to fool him. The thought finished, and Nahan didn't hesitate.
"Fight, and I'll let her go."
At once Valkan yanked the shield out of the ground, buckled it on, and his eyes lit.
"Who am I fighting?"
"......I'll choose them for you."
Nahan felt just a little bit wronged.