Star of Aspiration
Why?
No — if you thought about it, it wasn't so strange after all.
This was not a world drowning in convenient setups, the kind where stages lined up neatly like a game and weak enemies appeared first, one after another, in polite succession.
Their objective was to break through the Southern Front — a forest so treacherous even they found it punishing. To crack open a place so easy to defend, packed with so many veterans, they would send the worst enemy they could field, riding a massive wave.
In the dense fog of the forest, a pink current of air began to swirl. Cherry-blossom petals scattered on the wind, and cherry trees sprouted from the earth.
Don't stop thinking. The situation was grim, but nearly everyone here was a veteran. In other words, the number of idiots stupid enough to fall for the enemy's brainwashing was vanishingly small…
Wait. Wait, wait, wait.
Why?
Along with the feeling that she'd been asking why far too many times today, she managed to recall the soldier who had guided them earlier — the one who had looked like a new recruit.
New blood at the Southern Front was not a common sight. Only old hands and veterans held this line, enduring a climate so hostile it felt as if the entire environment had declared war on them. That was simply how it had to be.
But what did the presence of recruits mean?
No — what did it mean that the Emperor had sent them to this front in the first place?
The Emperor had been deeply reluctant to dispatch them south — unripe fruit, still green and unready. And in the north, where Lloyd stood, and at the center, where Akan held the line, Superhumans never moved from their posts. They were the pillars holding the fronts together.
So what kind of catastrophe was large enough to send the entire Hero's party to the Southern Front?
A shortage of manpower.
Yes. They had been recruiting green soldiers and shipping them south, and they had been desperate enough to fling unripe fruit into the Southern Front in a panic — because a hole had torn open so wide that the numbers left could no longer hold back the tide. It meant that before their deployment, so many veterans had died that the waves could no longer be weathered.
And if you followed the timeline — Spring and Summer.
Spring and Summer had fled the heart of the Empire amid the sound of something shattering. She hadn't thought there would be many such things, but if — just if — the place they had fled to was their own domain, the Demon Realm…
If they had come from the Demon Realm to the Southern Front and smashed the line to pieces…
If the burned ash and shattered palisades she had seen were the proof…
The dark thoughts chained themselves together, one after another, without end.
In the midst of that despair, the newly recruited soldiers fell under the pink current's thrall. They drifted closer, or swung their blades wildly at anything that moved. Formations collapsed. The great wall of shields that had protected them was riddled with holes, and through those gaps spears and swords came thrusting toward them.
Spring's authority — Daydream — was the power to show a person what they most longed to see, and what they most dreaded. It did not work on those with strong wills.
With their eyes wide open, they looked straight at the comrades who had stood beside them only moments before — as if committing every face to memory — and cut their throats.
Hell.
This was hell.
"Let's make it easy."
A sweet voice whispered against her ear.
She snapped back to herself and faced the situation she was in. Who had whispered into her ear?
She turned her head.
Ah, damn it.
It was Spring.
Spring was standing right beside her.
Being taken hostage was the last thing she wanted — would suicide be better? The thought crossed her mind, but she was not the Hero. She had been given only one chance.
And she did not want to die.
The Hero, cutting down the wave surging toward him, looked back.
Jerome, cutting down the wave surging toward him, looked back.
At the same moment, both of them saw Spring whispering into the Saintess's ear.
They moved as one — but one of them hesitated, and the other did not.
The Hero was afraid of watching the Saintess die again.
Jerome could not bear to watch the child he had cared for lose her life before his eyes.
Their voices rang out together.
Equivalent exchange accepted.
The world slowed to a crawl. In a monochrome realm where only the stars and themselves existed, they gazed upon a golden set of Scales.
What the Hero offered was starlight — the endless blessing of the stars drained from him, fortifying his body.
What Jerome offered was lifespan. A person's life was allotted by the heavens, and the heavens were the stars themselves — so his life burned away, and what remained was power for the sake of saving a life.
Once the Hero had grown accustomed to the stars' blessing, he had placed only starlight upon the Scales. It was the most efficient fuel, and so he had forgotten the other resources he possessed.
Jerome was not accustomed to the stars' blessing. The starlight granted to him was meager, and it was only because of the Scales that he had become a Holy Knight at all. He knew perfectly well what fuel he held in greatest supply.
That was the difference.
The transaction was accepted.
A girl's voice permitted the exchange.
The Hero wanted the Saintess rescued. The Holy Knight wanted the Saintess saved.
They leapt at the same instant and arrived at the same instant.
Identical motion, identical path — and yet, not quite the same.
For the Hero's sword was aimed at the enemy, while the Holy Knight's armor was turned toward his own side, to shield the Saintess.
A single moment. A single chance.
Only an instant — but the Holy Knight's body, having burned every last scrap of his lifespan, reached the realm of a Superhuman.
Beyond the wall, the view was of a place so high that every living thing looked like ants. The Holy Knight's eyes held starlight.
The tip of the Hero's blade drove straight for Spring's throat — but Spring abandoned the Saintess and simply stepped back.
A small girl tinted in pink, her face twisted with open irritation, muttered under her breath.
"Annoying."
The hardening of her expression was unmistakable, and both the Hero and Jerome tensed as one.
Like a slaughterhouse, countless people — ally and enemy alike — twisted and tangled together, swept away by a black tide. Bodies fell in pieces, soaking the mud red before they were buried and vanished.
And yet around that small girl, the architect of this catastrophe, there was only a crushing silence, radiating an atmosphere so eerie it set the teeth on edge.
As if she had decided the games were over, she used her specialty for the first time — magic.
The childish figure who had always done as she pleased, who had lived for mischief and for toying with people, was gone. What remained was a Disaster.
A spring wind gathered petals into a whirlwind. Several pink spheres of pure blossom and air began to glow behind her.
She shrugged off the outer garment wrapped around her, rose into the sky, and settled herself in empty air.
Those were the eyes of someone looking down on humanity.
She closed her mouth as if she would speak no further, and simply watched — and that made her all the more terrifying.
The Hero and Jerome looked at each other, taut with tension.
The Saintess, shielded by Jerome, could read his condition. A golden aura coiled around his body, thrashing so violently it seemed ready to explode and tear him apart from within.
That meant only one thing.
A self-destruction bought with every year of a Holy Knight's life.
Yes. He's already dead, isn't he.
The Saintess thought.
Where had it all gone wrong?
Was it because she had never been a real Saintess, and yet had been forced into this damned role, forced to keep performing it again and again, with no truth left in any of it?
Or maybe it was because she had never been honest.
Saintess, Saintess, Saintess — what in the world was a Saintess?
She was always the one being saved, and the people standing right in front of her eyes were the ones she could never save. The dead were simply dead, and the living behaved as if they had no tears left to shed for them.
How many times had she watched compassion dry up — people laughing and talking with each other one day, then staring at a comrade's corpse the next morning with empty eyes, grinding through the day, and then repeating the same routine all over again?
For the first time, she was angry.
It had not been long since she had started seeing this world as a real place. It had not been long since she had stopped looking at other people as pieces on a board.
So why?
She asked the question, and received no answer.
Take off the mask. Show the feeling. Get angry.
She should have done this from the start.
A sense of liberation washed through her as she looked at Jerome standing before her.
Jerome must have seen the tears welling in her eyes, because he spoke to her.
"I want you to live."
Yes. I know.
I want you to live, too.
I want the Hero to live.
I want everyone to make it out of this alive.
But Jerome was going to die.
The end of a man who burned his lifespan was that obvious.
And still he set himself alight without a moment's hesitation.
He was a knight.
She cast off her hesitation.
Bloom.
White fire blossomed at her back.
It looked like a flower — a lily.
The white flame that burned all things impure and wrong was ruthlessly subjective: it scorched only the enemy.
And the Saintess could not be sure she would still be able to look at this world with any kindness once Jerome was dead.
So she made her decision, here and now.
In this place, she would catch Spring.
Jerome and the Hero looked at each other.
"How long do you have?"
Jerome answered as if it were nothing at all.
"About ten minutes, I believe."
The value the stars had assigned him — this is what your life is worth — bought by burning every year he had left, was far too cheap a price for a human life.