The Hero Is a Woman? What Nonsense Is This?
"Your Majesty."
"General."
Aisha's eyes snapped open. In front of this monster, letting her guard down for even a moment meant getting bled dry down to her last organ.
"It's been a while."
Unexpectedly, the Emperor's voice carried a note of ease. It meant she was willing to let Aisha's earlier slip pass.
"It is an honor to behold your countenance."
"Spare me. I've no desire to listen to stiff formality until you've rested."
Then what am I supposed to do? Talk casually or don't?
Even after all these years of knowing her, Aisha had never once been able to read this woman.
"You worked hard on the expedition."
The Emperor settled herself with impeccable grace into the seat across from Aisha and offered her praise.
"The honor is mine."
"Now, then."
There it is. Of course she wouldn't just let it go. I wonder how creatively she's going to screw with me this time.
Aisha sighed inwardly.
"Why did you come to the Academy?"
Why are you here?
Aisha swallowed the urge to fire back.
"It was an urgent situation."
"More urgent than my orders?"
"...Yes."
"How amusing."
The Emperor began to glare at Aisha with frost-bitten eyes.
"Hero Lucas arrived here as well, I take it."
"That is—"
"I saw everything. She walked right into the heart of your aura storm."
"Your eyesight is excellent, as ever."
"The culprits, you see, have knothole eyes. Which is why they've never once discovered true beauty. Pitiful creatures, all of them."
The Emperor's face twisted into an expression of contempt. Watching it, Aisha thought: yep, this woman's brand of insanity still hasn't been cured.
From the very first time Aisha had met the Emperor, she had been a human being obsessed — maniacally, pathologically — with "beauty." Her senses, her abilities, everything about her existed in a realm beyond the human.
'Why do you seek to unify the human realm, Your Majesty?'
To a question Aisha had once dared to ask, the Emperor had given this answer:
'Look at the map. See how the lines sit there, crooked and wandering.'
She had spread out a map of the continent and said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
'It isn't beautiful.'
What kind of nonsense is that? Some profound metaphor, maybe? That was what Aisha had thought at first.
But no. It wasn't.
The real reason the Emperor built up her empire and waged her wars was, quite literally, that the map displeased her eye.
'That woman should have been left to die on the streets as a beggar.'
The problem was that Sandra von Condenburg, Emperor of Dengliwood, possessed talent so obscenely outstanding that she'd wielded both serpentine politics and hellfire magic with ruthless efficiency in service of her purpose.
Worse still, even her standards of beauty obeyed no logic but her own. As far as Aisha was concerned, it simply defied comprehension.
"The other two who were there that day must be heroes as well. The wolf-ears and the beast. The children who came with young Lucas, no?"
"That's correct."
"All three of them had their nametags change, I hear. Was that the reason they came to the Academy?"
Aisha wracked her brain with everything she had.
'Was it a mission granted by the Goddess? All three of them would refuse to leave the Academy until they graduate, I'd wager.'
There was nothing for it but to push forward. Aisha made her decision.
"The Goddess has bestowed a new task upon the heroes. It is a highly classified mission."
"What of the Holy State and the Magic State?"
"They remain unaware."
"Fortunate, then. The rest matters little."
The corner of the Emperor's mouth curved up ever so slightly.
"Hero Lucas. Just as you reported — she's grown into such a fine, splendid figure. Her hair is lovely, too. Mm, she was very beautiful."
"Er, right."
"I always knew Hero Lucas would blossom into something beautiful. I'd hoped to savor it back home, not at this rat-infested Academy. But since you haven't yet had your official reunion, the opportunity remains."
"Yes..."
"Having tasted a mere fragment, I am content. Finish that so-called mission of hers in the blink of an eye and bring Hero Lucas home to the Empire. I shall prepare the most exquisite reunion imaginable. Heh heh. One glimpse of my majesty, and she'll swear her loyalty on the spot."
"Uh... pardon?"
Watching the Emperor giggle to herself with her eyes closed, Aisha tilted her head.
"By the way, Aisha."
"Yes."
"Why was Hero Lucas dressed as a boy?"
"I beg your pardon?"
Aisha furrowed her brow.
There is truly no predicting what garbage comes out of this woman's mouth.
The sighs bubbled up from deep inside her.
"Dressed as a boy. I'll grant that the hair might have grown out during training or the expedition — but why on earth did she puff up her chest?"
Unable to follow the thread of the conversation, Aisha deliberated for a long moment before answering.
"Lucas is a woman."
Silence fell.
As if the very air had been sucked out of the reception chamber, every sound evaporated and vanished.
How long did that last?
Then, as if realizing something, the Emperor's frozen facial muscles sprang back into lively motion.
"Ah, I see. A curse from the demonkin, was it? Some rather high-order hex, I'd wager? If she requires treatment, I shall have my mages prepare one at once."
"Lucas has been a woman from the very beginning."
"What nonsense is this?"
The Emperor's eyes went wide.
Something about that reaction made Aisha suspect she'd misspoken somehow, but she sensed no real menace in it.
No killing intent, no dangerous mana radiating outward — so Aisha judged that this pleasant conversation could continue.
"She was a boy when you first saw her, was she not?"
"She was a girl."
"Her name is Lucas, is it not?"
"It is. Ah — though now that you mention it, the other heroes and Lucas herself do call her Luca. Perhaps the church priest misregistered her at the start? It confuses me, so I simply go by the nametag."
"No, she was quite clearly a boy."
"Please. I don't care how young a child is — who on earth misjudges a child's sex? It's not as if we're all knothole-eyed here."
At Aisha's words, the Emperor's eyebrows twitched. But only for a moment. Then she closed her long-lashed eyes and began to laugh, softly, hohoho.
'I don't know why, but did that put her in a good mood? Good. Now's my chance.'
Aisha drew an envelope from inside her coat — one inscribed with the words Letter of Resignation.
The documents inside contained an exhaustive record of every achievement she had earned in the Imperial Army, right down to the exact figures of the territory and stipend she was rightfully owed in settlement.
"Your Majesty, there is something I would like you to approve—"
Aisha never finished the sentence. At some point the Emperor had risen from her seat and seized her by the shoulders.
"Let us take a little stroll."
"Pardon?"
"High Transfer."
Blue mana wrapped around them, and in the next instant a vast snowfield spread out before Aisha's eyes.
'Dammit, it's cold. Where are we?'
Aisha hunched her shoulders and scanned her surroundings. A mountain range lashed by blizzard.
'The north? The shape of these mountains doesn't match Imperial territory. She wouldn't be insane enough to cross into the Duchy's lands. Don't tell me this is the Intermediate Realm?'
The wild land between the Human Realm and the Demon Realm was called the Intermediate Realm — a demilitarized zone left empty because humans and demons alike kept each other in check.
The Emperor left Aisha standing behind and walked a few steps toward the enormous mountain range before her.
Then, without warning, she howled like a monstrous beast.
"AAAAAAARGH—!!!"
KWAKWAKWAKOOM—!!
Countless magic circles seemed to assemble around the Emperor, and then the earth split apart as the massive mountain range came collapsing down.
And that wasn't the end of it. From between the fissured ground, jagged, colossal masses of ice surged upward.
The land quaked and the heavens trembled. The atmosphere buckled under the pulse of overwhelming mana, and the distorted space only barely found its way back into place.
It was only then that Aisha realized: this land had already been used by the Emperor several times before — terrain that had been torn down and rebuilt over and over again.
'...Yeah. Fuck.'
She didn't know why, but something had clearly gone wrong. Very, very wrong. And the thought of having to absorb another one of the Emperor's tantrums made Aisha want to cry.
But the explosion came only once.
When her rampage of mana was spent and she turned back to face Aisha, the Emperor was her usual self again. If anything, she seemed remarkably serene.
"General Aisha. You said the Holy State and the Magic State don't yet know the heroes' whereabouts."
"...Correct."
"Then it must be kept under the strictest of seals from here on. We can buy time — as long as a year, perhaps. In the meantime, the Empire will maneuver to its advantage on every front."
"Was recovering the heroes not your objective?"
"That need has passed. Look — the only humans alive who know the face and name of the Empire's hero are the two of us now."
"Then—"
"Even without actually holding her, she serves as leverage. We even know the locations of the other heroes. With their pretext gone, no nation can move the heroes freely anymore. They place the Goddess's command above their own kings, after all."
"That is true."
Probably?
Aisha reasoned that Luca, Tia, and Yuri had been acting for the continent's sake thus far, and agreed for the moment.
But something told her that the command those three prioritized above all else lay somewhere else entirely.
"Balance between war and politics is everything. Even if you crush everything and win yourself a heap of broken rubble — would that be beautiful?"
"That is rather beyond me, Your Majesty."
"And that is why I'm fond of you, General Aisha."
We're barely a few years apart in age, and she still has to lord it over me. Aisha grumbled to herself.
"Now then — what is that envelope?"
The Emperor, having returned perfectly to her usual state, caught sight of the writing on the envelope in Aisha's hand.
Aisha hastily stuffed it back inside her coat.
"Good thinking."
"Yes... No, wait, but—"
"Have you some grievance? Have I not given you power, honor, and wealth in ample measure? You did decline the peerage."
"Nobility is nothing but bad luck. All those laws and obligations — a headache."
"Then what is it you desire?"
"A man. I can't get one."
Aisha answered with brutal directness.
The Emperor was struck speechless for a long moment.
Here was Aisha, whining about men — to a woman who had just experienced the first heartbreak of her life, a thirteen-year one at that.
Was it cluelessness, or innocence? It made her want to blow that brainstem of hers to pieces, and yet at the same time a whole tangle of emotions washed over her, like watching a kitten abandoned on the street.
"Continue your mission monitoring the heroes at the Academy."
"Ugh. I don't want to."
"Have you not noticed? Do you know how many young male students there are at the Academy? For a woman who maintains her youth with aura, they'd suit you perfectly well, would they not?"
"Huh? ...You know what, they would."
Plus I'm the Sword Saint, aren't I?
Ask to be an instructor and they'll roll out the red carpet, no?
Teaching students the sword while touching their arms, grabbing their thighs... heeheehee.
Aisha began picturing herself strolling the Academy grounds with men ten years her junior, and a giddy giggle started leaking out of her.
"Honestly."
Someone so astonishingly blank-slate pure — Aisha truly was a one of a kind.
The Emperor marveled at her once more, then conjured the transfer circle that would take them back to the Academy.