The Attack (2)

Katya Heinkel Craven’s reputation had spread fairly wide, even inside the military headquarters.

She did exactly as she pleased, as if she alone were worth honoring in all heaven and earth, and she went at everything with a frightening drive, headlong.

When she wanted something, she shut out everyone around her until it was done, and she never forgave anyone who got in her way.

Above all, she stuck her head into every last thing that touched the Lionhearted’s consort.

It wasn’t that she disliked people. She just didn’t pay them any mind, and her personality made that painfully clear.

And so.

It was fair to say that anyone who saw her now was going through something close to cosmic horror.

Katya was trotting pitter-patter down the corridor, beaming, sparkling, smiling as bright as a clear day, and the sight was alien enough to earn the description.

“Ah, good morning!”

One servant she greeted was even said to have stepped back without meaning to.

Normally she’d catch your eye and pry for every scrap of information about Aiden, butting in with ‘this ought to be like this, shouldn’t that be like that’. When that same person acted like this instead, anyone would have reacted the same way.

“—Hehehe.”

And when silly noises like that kept leaking out of her too, the fear was bound to double.

Her face didn’t wear the smile she always used to, the one that somehow made you uneasy to look at. It was the face of someone so genuinely happy she didn’t know what to do with herself.

Clutched tight in her arms as she spread this chaos through the military headquarters was the hip flask Aiden had given her not long before.

Friend!

The truth was, Katya couldn’t help it either.

What was she supposed to do, when every time that word popped into her head for no reason, this reaction came out of her all on its own?

“Hehehehe—”

Letting slip another sound that dealt someone a dose of metaphysical terror, Katya headed outside.

She didn’t really know what for. It was just that the energy brimming inside her made it hard to keep still for even a moment.

Probably.

So when ‘something’ came flying at her out of nowhere, her reaction was a touch slower than usual, most likely because her mind was elsewhere.

“—!”

It was an act violent enough to call terrorism, and it flew in and tore the peaceful scene apart in an instant.

Even gone off, a shad is still a shad, as they say. Even in that state she managed to wrench her head aside and dodge, but stopping the collateral damage was beyond her.

A huge steel rod came flying through and shattered the windows of the capital headquarters, and screams burst out on every side.

There were four in all, long steel rods, and what set them apart was the talismans of every kind plastered over them so thickly they seemed wrapped in them.

They came flying in one after another as though to smash the building apart, then buried themselves in a square around Katya.

A barrier?

Suppression Pillars.

They were made in the Far East: spirit artifacts into which sorcerers had poured their full power without sparing a drop, built to control violent mountain gods.

They’d been made for beasts said to overturn the face of a mountain with a single roar, so there could hardly be a more efficient way to ‘suppress’ a target.

Something like this? On me?

Even in a land you had to cross a whole continent just to reach the border of, they were precious, and inside the Empire you rarely even got to lay eyes on one.

Whoever had got hold of these was very, very, very likely someone with powerful authority or powerful means behind them.

And it was strange, too, that they’d used something like that to single out Katya so precisely.

From whom, and for what?

Before Katya had the room to finish sorting out those questions.

— THRUM!!

— THRRRUMMMMM!!!!!!

The four Suppression Pillars buried around her resonated with one another, and before long the talismans wrapped around the steel rods flew at her and clung to her body, swathing her from head to foot.

Her divinity was being shaved away. The things were built to drain an opponent’s strength, and she could feel her supernatural power weakening in real time.

Next, the talismans and the pillars resonated and ‘tore out’ the space around her whole.

In an instant the scenery changed. It had clearly sent Katya, barrier and all, somewhere else entirely.

She closed her eyes once and opened them, and the new scenery registered bit by bit.

It was a wide, empty lot. She couldn’t tell how far she’d been flung from the capital headquarters, but they’d clearly picked a deserted spot without a soul in sight.

So they didn’t want anyone else seeing what was about to happen here.

Sure enough, several armed men stood waiting around her, hemming her in.

“—Who are you guys?”

Katya tilted her head as she said it.

“Snatching someone out of nowhere in broad daylight? What, you planning a group lynching?”

“…”

“You sure you can handle that?”

Instead of answering, every one of them around her flared up with ki in every color.

The corners of Katya’s eyes twisted slightly.

Knights?

Their ki split into three or four colors at most, which meant they handled it at a density an ordinary person couldn’t begin to imagine.

Anyone who’d built a cultivation method up this far had to be a Knight, and a skilled one at that.

Set against Noelle, who drew out ki in a single pure white, there was a plain gap in class. But gathered in these numbers, they were a tremendous threat in themselves.

Before long, all those Knights threw themselves at her at once.

But, even so.

They’re picking a fight knowing that?

Katya tilted her head and twisted her fingers together.

It was a hand seal symbolizing Sier, the god of purification, and an enormous quantity of divinity came pouring out of her.

Even under the Suppression Pillars’ influence, with the suppression talismans plastered all over her body, she still had plenty of supernatural power left to use.

Picking a fight with someone like this was reckless. Far too reckless.

The flame she’d been born with, in such excess that she struggled even to ‘draw it down’ herself, burst out with a destructive air.

To be precise.

That was the instant before it did.

“…”

Katya, about to swing her divinity just as it was, faltered and pulled the motion back.

It was as if she’d only barely ‘remembered’ something at that very moment.

Meanwhile, a slash came flying in, cut through her body, and passed on.

“…She isn’t resisting?”

“…”

At the bewildered voice that came from nearby, Levant too frowned behind the visor.

It was bewildering, no question.

Given who the opponent was, they’d weakened her twice over, and not content with that, they’d brought several more ‘countermeasures’ besides.

Yet the opponent seemed to have next to no intention of resisting.

…That bastard said it would never go easily.

Recalling the Administrative Minister and that thoroughly unpleasant face of his, Levant sighed inwardly.

“…All to the good.”

But rather than guess at the cause, Levant set the sword upright again and settled on what to do.

In any case.

“You’ve all been briefed already, I take it.”

A slightly dirty job was a chance to come under the Prince’s protection and put one over on the insufferable people around the Lionhearted.

“She doesn’t die easily, so don’t go holding back. We brought her here with sorcery, so the pursuit team will be slow getting here.”

Whatever state the opponent was in.

They would simply do what they’d come to do.

Needless to say, the military headquarters was blanketed in unprecedented chaos.

How could it be otherwise, when an act no different from terrorism had been carried out in broad daylight?

But what made the chaos worse than anything was the question of where on earth Katya had been ‘transported’ to.

When someone was transported by sorcery, no human could trace where they’d gone, because no human had ever handled that kind of power.

Exactly one person.

Except for the one who’d bolted out of the headquarters saying, ‘I’ll find her somehow.’

“Aiden, have you found her?”
“Somehow, yes!”
“—How on earth did you manage that?!”

Dame Noelle’s voice was full of shock.

It was only natural. He’d gone and done, alone and just like that, what the capital headquarters, packed with elites, hadn’t even dared to try.

Admittedly, even Aiden hadn’t been sure it would work.

—Come to think of it!

When Katya first met him, hadn’t she seemed to come ‘knowing’ he was there?

She’d even seen straight through the disguise Aiden had been wearing at the time.

So he’d dug through the skill window on the chance there was some ability tied to that, and it turned out to be a big catch.

Luckily, he happened to be holding two whole skill-copy rights from Katya, which was a mercy.

At a time this urgent, spending one on the spot was no waste at all!

“I’ll tell you the location, so send reinforcements right away! I’m going on ahead!”
“Wait, Aiden! On your own it’s too dangerous—”

Before he’d even heard her out, Aiden was already running toward where he could feel the divinity.

It wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for.

The roar of blasts. Air being swept away. Afterimages of ki filling every direction.

Several Knights were pouring attacks without a moment’s rest onto the one person at their center.

“—The pursuit team? This fast—”

He caught sight of someone saying that and leveling a sword his way, ki condensing at its point.

Then he saw someone else hurriedly grab that wrist and hold it back.

“—That’s the Lionhearted’s consort. Hit him directly and we’ll never clean up the mess!”
“…Tch!”

In the moment they all hesitated at that, Aiden pushed straight past them without slowing and ran to Katya.

“…”

They’d pulled their attacks mid-swing, but this many Knights were still showing open hostility.

Yet from Aiden’s whole air, they weren’t even in his field of view.

“Katya, are you all—”

The sentence snapped off.

Katya was in utter ruin.

She was curled up as though clutching something between her knees. Her clothes were in tatters, horrific cuts were carved all over her body, and there were bruises everywhere.

Just how long had she been standing here, being beaten? She couldn’t even regenerate properly, so the wounds stayed carved into her as they were.

“—Why.”

Aiden shrugged off his coat and wrapped it around her, clenching his teeth.

“Why did you just stand there and take it until you ended up like this? You’re more than capable of protecting yourself, at least.”

“It’s no big deal. You know me. It doesn’t even hurt.”

The answer came back as quiet as a whisper, as though laid flat along the ground.

“That’s not the problem—!”
“Because you told me not to fight.”

…Aiden froze.

Katya certainly wasn’t the sort to stand there blankly and take it until she was in this state.

“Don’t go around picking fights with people for no reason. And if you can help it, don’t do anything that hurts anyone either.”

…If she hadn’t remembered someone asking her that not long ago, that was exactly what she’d have done.

The thought kept running through Aiden’s head.

If they are Knights.

Knights of a knight order were all figureheads of the Imperial military, each with a standing of their own, treated as top-grade manpower both politically and militarily.

If ‘something bad’ happened to this many of them at her hands, it could turn into a difficult matter for Aiden.

And so.

This woman, though she could easily enough have put them down,

had stood still and simply taken it until she ended up like this.

“…”

He still couldn’t find anything to say. As he draped the coat over her, his hand touched Katya’s body, and she flinched as though a current had run through her.

Then she curled in on herself even further, as though the part of her she was hunching over was the one thing she absolutely didn’t want seen.

“Are you hurt? Let me see.”
“W-wait, th-this—”

Katya sounded flustered in a way that wasn’t like her at all, but Aiden paid it no mind and pulled her arms open.

And there, inside.

The thing she’d kept clutched tight even while she was being beaten caught his eye.

The hip flask.

The one he’d handed her not long before, calling it ‘a token of friendship’.

For all that she’d hidden it away so tightly, she’d evidently failed to protect it in the end. It was battered ragged and broken in two.

“…”

While Aiden was still at a loss for words, Katya spoke in a faintly trembling voice.

“—Us.”

It was around then that he looked at her face for the first time.

She was straining to wear the very same smile as always.

But at its edge hung a tremor even Aiden could read at a glance.

An anxiety so condensed that even he could read it at a glance.

“Are we still… friends?”

“—”

“I, th-this— I couldn’t keep it any safer than this, so—”

Because of that.

So that was why she hadn’t even run, and had stood here quietly taking the beating until she was in this state.

For fear it would get even more ruined.

Afraid that if the ‘token’ broke, she wouldn’t be his friend anymore.

“—”

Aiden closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.

Only after a little while could he bring the words out calmly.

“Yes. Of course we are.”
“…Really?”
“So, would you wait just a moment for me?”

He turned his gaze to the Knights around them, who still held their swords upright.

“—As your friend, I’ll have to go collect some damages from these bastards.”

And then supernatural power burst out all at once around his body.