First Lessons on the Deserted Island
"Mmm~"
Stirring from sleep, she felt something different from the usual. A hard, uncomfortable floor, and a space with little left beyond the bare place to lie down.
"……?"
Staring blankly up at the unfamiliar ceiling—green rather than metal—she belatedly remembered her situation and pushed herself upright.
Wait. I fell asleep that fast? In a place this uncomfortable?
Beatrix began examining her own body as if she could not believe she had dropped off so quickly. She was wary that Jincheon might have pulled some trick. Fortunately, nothing seemed amiss.
Looking to the side, she saw that Jincheon was already gone—apparently up and about. Stepping outside, she found a campfire with just enough fresh branches added to keep the embers alive, and some distance away, Jincheon sitting cross-legged in a lotus position.
"What are you doing?"
"Martial arts training."
"Training? Like that?"
She had no real doubts about martial arts themselves—Jincheon had shown her before—but she tilted her head at the idea of training them this way. She had imagined something vigorous, the body moving hard and fierce.
"You're not really from the Bocondri Holy Kingdom, are you? Their priests do something similar."
"I'd rather take insults about my parents. Associate me with those cultist bastards and I will genuinely get pissed."
Jincheon issued the warning in advance, far more furious at being linked to a cult than at any slight against his parents.
"You're that certain the Holy Kingdom is a cult?"
"Religion ought to exist for an individual's peace of mind. Religion exists for people—not people for religion. If you sacrifice property, life, politics, or the self for the sake of religion, it stops being religion and becomes chaos that throws the world into disorder. The Bocondri Holy Kingdom violates everything a religion should uphold, so the odds it will poison the universe are high."
Having seen what happened when humans sacrificed themselves for religion, Jincheon was far more wary of it than the people of this world.
"But aren't you hot?"
Rising from the lotus position, Jincheon asked Beatrix, who still wore her pilot nano-suit. Pilot suits prioritized protection above all else, so their ventilation ranked among the worst of any nano-suit.
"W-well, I don't have a choice. No clothes to change into… No! More than that—why are you standing there so confidently in your underwear!"
She protested as if scolding him for his bare-chested boldness, but he took her words another way entirely.
"So you don't have clothes. Good. Then today we make tools and clothes."
"Ugh! That is not what I meant!"
"What? Then what?"
At Jincheon's furrowed brow as he asked again, Beatrix finally understood what it meant for one's fists to cry.
"I am a woman! A woman!"
"……. ……! Ah. Right."
"Grrr~~~~!!"
When he spoke as if only realizing it after a long pause, Beatrix desperately suppressed the urge to charge forward and drive a middle kick into him.
Heh heh. Teasing her like this is pretty fun.
Jincheon snickered inwardly every time her irritation flared at being treated as if he had forgotten she was a woman. It felt almost like having a girlfriend he could bicker with. Of course, the relationship would not last long.
In any case, Jincheon skillfully worked a long stick into a stand that could hold something aloft. He hung meat from it, set it over the campfire, and let the smoke begin curing it. Next he knocked together a simple leather drying rack and laid out the hides that had been drying on the rocks the day before.
"How long have you lived in the wild to make things this easily?"
Beatrix asked, watching him produce everything in moments.
"It's only been a few years since I got the Bio Device implanted."
"!!"
A life without a Bio Device was almost unimaginable. Naturally, the claim that he had lived that way delivered a solid cultural shock.
"That should do. Now follow me."
"Huh? Where are we going?"
"Exploration. We need to map the island's layout if we want to know where to find food."
Jincheon rose, spear and stone axe in hand.
"Me too?"
"Should I feed you instead? I don't have a hobby of hauling freeloaders around."
"Who's a freeloader! I can do it if I try!"
Unwilling to lose to him, Beatrix raised her voice first, then took the wooden spear he handed her and followed.
Thus the two began exploring the island in earnest. As they pushed through dense undergrowth and the muggy heat closed in, the inside of her pilot nano-suit grew soaked with sweat.
"Haa… haa……."
Even with bio-modification, the constant sweating wore her down; her steps gradually slowed. Come to think of it, she had not properly taken in drinking water since the day before. Jincheon, scouting ahead, saw her pride keeping her from admitting weakness and decided not to push her body any further. He looked up.
Tropical regions usually have broad leaves—there ought to be something like palm trees. Wonder if this planet has them too.
The flora and fauna were different from Earth's yet similar enough that he expected palm trees of a sort. Something that looked the part caught his eye.
Looks the same from the outside… better check the taste.
"Hey. Wait a second."
"U-uh……?"
Jincheon spoke suddenly, but Beatrix answered weakly, as if she had not quite heard. He settled into a throwing stance and hurled the spear at the cluster of hanging fruit; the coconuts tumbled down in a heap. Then he drove one against a nearby pointed rock root, punching through the stem end. Just in case, he drank first.
Huh. Were coconuts always this sweet?
It tasted like the ion drinks he remembered from Earth, only sweeter.
"Drink."
"Th-thanks……."
Thirsty, she took the coconut he offered, tipped her head back, and gulped the flowing liquid.
"Haa! Fuhhaa!"
She shook the shell up and down until every last drop was gone, then panted hard. It was the coolest, most delicious drink she had ever tasted in her life.
"You set it up like this and drive it in hard right here. Try it."
"Got it."
Jincheon showed her how to open a coconut; thanks to her bio-modification, a few solid strikes produced a hole and the juice began to flow. With a body this strong, she was unlikely to die from simple lack of physical ability.
Having quenched her thirst with the juice from the coconut she had opened herself, Beatrix felt a strange embarrassment toward the man who had helped her.
His mouth is rough, but he's helping me for real. He doesn't hate me or look down on me—he treats me like a comrade. Have I been hating a guy like this all this time?
In the middle of this situation, watching him help her, Beatrix felt shame and decided she would trust him as well.
Ziiing—
"Huh?"
"I-it's because it's hot. Just hot."
She deactivated the nano-suit; it collapsed into a button-shaped module fixed at the nape of her neck. The figure the suit had hidden was fully revealed. Years of unrelenting soldier's training had given her a healthy, athletic body—attractive hips, long clean lines of leg. Sweat-soaked skin glittered under the sunlight, showing both healthy strength and feminine beauty at once.
As expected. She has the charm of a female, just as I thought.
One layer of clothing gone, and the allure of a woman rather than a soldier rose strongly. Of course, leaping on her with a whoop of delight was the sort of thing low-level men did. Jincheon wanted that prideful knight to open her legs of her own will. He would simply have to apply the right amount of oil along the way.
"Good thinking. If you'd kept wearing it, dehydration would have set in."
Saying so, he left the remaining coconuts near the tree and started moving again. Beatrix felt both relief and a faint disappointment that he treated her so casually even after seeing her in nothing but underwear.
Well… of course……. With my sister around, who would look twice at a tomboy like me…….
She was a woman too; she had even grown her hair out to cultivate a more feminine air. Yet whenever people praised the sisters, they gave Eirin beauty and command ability, and Beatrix only her skill as captain of the Imperial Guard.
"Beatrix."
"Huh?"
"I should apologize in advance."
"Apologize?"
"Honestly, even as sisters, I thought the Empress Dowager was far more beautiful. The way you move, the way you act—you felt more like a knight than a woman."
As the Lust Emperor, Jincheon could roughly sense a woman's emotions through the aura she gave off. So he reflexively gave her the words she wanted to hear.
"But… that… what was it……. You're pretty cute too."
"What……?"
"If you didn't hear it, fine. Ahem. Let's keep moving."
Jincheon cleared his throat and strode on.
Pretty……? Me……?
Thump— thump— thump—
Always compared to her sister's beauty, never once told she was beautiful, she felt her face heat and her heart begin to pound at Jincheon's embarrassed apology. Then the memory of him as a wild warrior the day before, and the sight of the back muscles that drew nothing but gasps of admiration, kept her heartbeat from settling.
What do I do! I keep wanting to smile!
Desperately covering the corners of her mouth and forcing the loosening muscles of her face back under control, she prayed he would not look back.
They made do with discovered fruit for lunch and continued exploring without rest. Jincheon congratulated himself for judging that a large island would offer plenty of resources—he had found a stand of bamboo that could be used for almost anything. The only problem was the color: deep blue rather than green, so he would have to split one open to be sure it was true bamboo.
They had also found a rocky stretch of coastline good for shellfish, and now the bamboo grove. All that remained was gathering materials and making baskets or other containers.
The two of them returned with both shoulders loaded with bamboo.
"Auuugh! Bugs!"
Beatrix shook her head in irritation at the insects buzzing around their faces and hair. An uninhabited island this far from the mainland had fewer bugs than the continents, but "fewer" still meant enough to be a nuisance. While cutting bamboo they had even been attacked by a swarm of centipede-like creatures and had to fight them off.
Fortunately, once split, the bamboo proved almost identical to Earth's. Jincheon fashioned cups and water vessels from some of the stalks, ground others against rock into sharp bamboo spears—far more durable than ordinary wooden ones, and therefore better weapons—and used the longer hollow sections to collect stream water, which they then boiled over the campfire for drinking.
"Haaa~ I never knew just drinking water could be this much work."
"Well, in the world we come from you don't have to make this much fuss just to get a drink."
On a deserted island, maintaining moisture was the absolute priority, so the two of them rested inside the hut, sipping water and sheltering from the fierce midday sun.
So this is how hard it is for a person to live with nothing but bare hands.
She thought that only her noble birth and bio-enhancement kept her from whining; an ordinary woman would already have been complaining.
"Once the temperature drops we'll head for that coastline we found earlier."
"What's there?"
"Rocks mean shellfish, and we should be able to catch fish too."
They had spotted the rocky shore while exploring, so they planned to go once the heat eased.
"Jincheon."
"Hm?"
"I'm sorry. For everything until now."
"Heh. Geniuses grow by feeding on other people's envy."
"Heh."
With the old hostility gone, the same words now sounded half like a joke.
"But there really weren't any Calsorn Empire relics or anything?"
"None. The martial arts I showed you earlier let me control the blood flow inside my body so that sudden high-G moves don't cause blackouts or redouts. As a bonus it hardens the body so it can withstand gravity better."
"Then can you teach me too!?"
The thought that learning martial arts might let her fight like him made Beatrix speak without thinking.
"Ah… s-sorry……. I got too excited……."
"Fine. I'll teach you."
"Eh?"
She had demanded someone else's secret, and he agreed without fuss.
"But there's a condition."
"A c-condition……?"
When Jincheon fixed her with a serious look, she swallowed dryly, half-expecting the worst.
"Don't tell anyone else."
"…Why?"
Her voice carried a strange mix of disappointment and relief.
"From a nation's point of view, making me train their pilots would look like pure profit, right? I have no interest in living that kind of life."
"Why not? It's a technique only you have—anyone would try to claim you."
"Because it's boring. I'm living at full power for a life I enjoy."
Beatrix began to understand the man called Jincheon. He was a hedonist of sorts, and at the same time a battle maniac who thrived on combat.
"All right. I will never say I learned martial arts from you."
A man like Jincheon, if forced down a path he hated, would inevitably cause trouble. Better to approach only as far as she could usefully take, and enjoy what she gained there.
"Good. First I'll let you feel what Inner Qi actually is. Turn around and sit."
"Like this?"
Jincheon placed both hands against the wing bones of Beatrix's back as she sat facing away. Then he began pushing Inner Qi into her meridians, circulating it the way one would perform the Great Heavenly Cycle.
He had already thoroughly examined a Giranlek human body while enjoying Eirin's, so there should be no major problems.
"Nngh… uuungh……!"
Wh-what is this……? My body's… getting hot…….
Feeling a sensation she had never known in her life, Beatrix let out a soft moan and started to fold forward.
"Don't lean. Keep holding. If you slip, something inside will break."
"Ah… got… it……."
"This is Inner Qi. Brand the feeling of this energy into your memory."
"Yes……!"
Having tasted the power of Inner Qi, Beatrix resolved to devote herself to learning martial arts while they lived on the island.
In that moment a fragment of Jincheon's energy settled inside her body, but because she did not yet understand Inner Qi she failed to notice it clearly. Never imagining what that energy would one day cause, Beatrix desperately imprinted the sensation of Inner Qi into her flesh so she could claim the power of martial arts for herself.