Raid
If you enjoyed manga, anime, or the like, you’d probably seen this kind of development at least once.
Someone brainwashed, or so broken in the mind that they finally came to themselves at the desperate cry of someone dear to them.
It was an old, worn-out trope, and yet people still loved it precisely because it was so striking.
Daeun asked herself a question.
Am I the most precious person to Kana?
…I don’t know. But—
As for whether she was important, she could answer without hesitation.
Not “not important,” at least.
She couldn’t call it arrogance when the difference between how Kana treated other people and how she treated her was so obvious.
If Daeun opened her mouth, Kana listened.
Even when she had no particular reason, she’d come over naturally and start talking.
She’d toss out casual jokes, and she was more than willing to play pranks that involved a bit of physical contact.
That was proof enough that Kana thought of Daeun as someone she was close to.
She hadn’t even treated Celine, whom she’d grown much closer to over the course of their weeks together, in quite that way.
So Daeun thought, Maybe if she sees me, Kana will come to her senses.
Right now she was wandering around, having lost her reason, but maybe when she saw Daeun, she’d snap back to normal as if nothing had happened.
Imagining such a dramatic ending, Daeun started walking toward where Kana was.
“...Kana?”
But the moment she stepped into the barrier and faced Kana, her expectations came crashing down in a heap.
She called Kana’s name, but Kana gave no response at all, only staring into empty space.
As if she didn’t even realize the sound coming from her mouth was her own name.
When Daeun took a few more steps forward with a growing knot of unease in her chest, those dazed pink eyes finally turned toward her.
“...Huh?”
And the next moment, what greeted Daeun was a ceiling both unfamiliar and yet somehow familiar.
For a long while, she lay there in a daze before trembling fingers fumbled to her chest.
Right there, where the sharp Magi had pierced her.
What left Daeun in confusion was not death.
Kana attacked me.
The instant she understood that, it felt as though she’d woken from a dream.
The wind was only wind.
She realized, far too late, that nothing changed just because you hoped hard enough.
To think that simply meeting and talking would make everything work out.
Wasn’t that naive beyond reason—pathetic, even?
“What do I do...?”
She’d come all this way without any concrete plan, only with the vague thought that she had to meet Kana, so of course she hadn’t imagined what would happen if she failed.
As she stood there wringing her hands, Daeun found her answer in the chat window, where the viewers were chattering away in a frenzy.
They said that if you wore her down first, then maybe conversation and the rest would become possible.
Daeun thought that made sense, so she acted on it immediately, and the result was the situation they had now.
“What on earth do you mean, a fight that doesn’t make your heart race...?”
Was a fight not a fight? Did there really have to be a distinction between battles that made your heart race and battles that didn’t?
For Daeun, whose pulse jumped like mad just from imagining herself raising a sword against an enemy, it was utterly incomprehensible.
But she wasn’t the only one who failed to understand the other side.
Why doesn’t she get this?
Yuki couldn’t understand Daeun either.
If Daeun had gone to the trouble of seeking her out and asking for help, then surely they had felt the same thing, even if their reasons differed.
Annoying.
If she’d spent that time swinging a sword instead, she could have done it dozens of times over.
And yet, even as she thought that, Yuki didn’t leave.
“Master’s swordsmanship is beautiful.”
Even by her own standards, Yuki knew she wasn’t good with words.
But if someone asked her to praise Kana’s swordsmanship, she was confident she could go on all day.
How sharp that straight line was when it was drawn true.
How graceful the curve was when the blade traced it through the air.
She couldn’t understand how such beautiful swordsmanship could come from that small body, which barely looked strong enough to even lift a sword, but Yuki didn’t care about such trivial things.
Rather than waste time on that, I should watch and learn one thing more.
So whenever she saw people in the chat arguing about authenticity and the like, Yuki found it almost laughable.
There was truth itself, standing right in front of them, and they still had the mental bandwidth to look away?
How on earth could they do that?
“So I watched every video I could find of Master. I kept up with your streams too, Mr. Journey.”
“...Ugh, I know Kana’s amazing too. Since you know that already, can we get to the point?”
If she wasn’t stopped, she’d really keep talking all day.
Unable to listen to any more of Yuki’s praise, Daeun cut her off with a tired expression.
“What does Kana’s beautiful swordsmanship have to do with the fact that you don’t feel your heart race?”
“...The swordsmanship Master is using right now isn’t beautiful.”
The power packed into the blade was beyond question, but there was no beauty in the sword Kana was swinging.
It felt like looking at her former self, back when she’d thought all there was to swordplay was to cut, stab, and slash hard.
The moment she realized that, Yuki’s enthusiasm withered away at once.
“I don’t want to fight a sword swung without any technique or enlightenment behind it.”
“...You didn’t, by any chance, travel to another world or something? Or maybe you have memories of a past life?”
“I think you’ve been reading too many novels.”
“Sounds like that applies to you too, Mr. Journey... I’m sure of it. If you’d been born a few hundred years ago, you would’ve gone down in history.”
In any case...
Only then did Daeun finally begin to understand what Yuki meant.
She had felt it too. Kana’s behavior wasn’t normal.
Even after appearing on the Ardina Continent, that kid had wandered around just fine, so how could she become completely passive the moment she was trapped inside a barrier?
Even if she’d lost her reason and was left only with instinct, wasn’t that still strange?
As though someone were controlling her.
“Acting according to a script isn’t fun.”
If it had been before she met Kana and gained her own insight, Yuki might have agreed readily enough.
But after finding that insight and raising her threshold, Yuki felt very little interest in Daeun’s plea.
“You really won’t help?”
“No.”
Daeun couldn’t let go of her last shred of hope and asked again, but the answer was a firm refusal.
If Daeun hadn’t been there, what would have happened?
Players wouldn’t have split into factions and fought each other, and perhaps the Imperial knights wouldn’t have marched in either.
There would have been all sorts of other big and small changes too.
Me too.
Even Yuki herself might never have found enlightenment the way she had now.
She might have gone to see Kana out of curiosity, muttering, There’s a boss like that? but she wouldn’t have kindly crossed swords with her like last time.
All of it had happened because Daeun met Kana and led her into the world.
Because of that, Yuki did feel something like a debt to Daeun, though not quite a debt.
“It really is impossible.”
But the moment she imagined fighting something that wore her master’s face yet wasn’t her master, all her enthusiasm died.
Daeun tried several more times to persuade her, but Yuki’s resolve was ironclad.
Her heart didn’t budge.
As Daeun, exhausted from trying to convince her, wondered if she should give up, a good idea suddenly flashed through her mind.
“If you’re that firm in your decision, then no matter what I say, it won’t matter. Sorry for bothering you.”
“It wasn’t a bother.”
“Sure, sure. That’s a lie. Anyway, I’m going to go ask someone else for help.”
As Daeun turned as if to leave, her steps came to an abrupt halt.
With her body still angled forward, she glanced back and asked the hand-waving Yuki, “But are you really going to be okay?”
“Huh?”
“This raid only lasts for a week. After that, the barrier won’t be able to contain the Magi Kana has, or something like that. That’s the reason, anyway... Oh, a day’s already passed, so there are six days left now.”
“I know.”
Yuki had seen the notices too.
They were plastered everywhere, so it would have been harder not to see them.
“Do you know what happens if they fail to subjugate her within a week?”
“...What happens?”
“The Empire goes in person to handle the subjugation.”
Looks like she still isn’t very interested.
Reading Yuki’s expression, Daeun went on.
“As you know, Yuki, Kana and the Empire have had a bad blood feud going back ages. They’re the sort of enemies who can’t wait to tear each other apart.”
“So what? If you’re asking me to help because you feel sorry for her—”
“It’s not that, so just listen. If she’s leaking Magi all over the place and the Empire sees that, what do you think they’ll assume? Won’t they decide they have to kill her?”
They absolutely would.
Persuasion only works if the other side can listen; no one would be dumb enough to try reasoning with a bomb that went off every time it so much as breathed.
It wasn’t written in the subjugation notice, but it was an easy future to infer.
“Kana is strong, sure... but still. Do you really think she could stop the full might of the Empire charging at her alone?”
“It’d be hard. No, impossible.”
“Exactly. She might be able to deal them a fair amount of damage, but in the end she’d be crushed. And as I just said, being crushed means dying.”
“...”
It felt unpleasant to speak of the death of someone precious.
But if this could save her...
Daeun hardened her resolve.
Did her effort pay off?
“...So what’s your point?”
The fish had taken the bait.
With the situation now completely reversed from a moment ago, Daeun flashed a triumphant smile where Yuki couldn’t see it.
“This is a big enough incident that the Empire would move personally, so it’ll definitely go down in history. And if that happens, you’ll never get to see Kana’s swordsmanship again, the one you said was beautiful. Would that be okay?”
“...!”
“Well, if you plan to keep rewatching her old videos dozens or even hundreds of times, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”
If something wouldn’t move her heart, then all you had to do was give her a reason for it to move.
Having seen through the fact that Yuki wasn’t the sort to act out of pity or sympathy, Daeun brought up the very swordsmanship she loved so much.
Without waiting for Yuki’s answer, she started to walk away.
“Then, I’ll be off—”
“...I’ll help you.”
Just as planned.