The Pontiff

Aiden glared at her from under hard-set brows, and she held fast to her silence.

The maid blinked, wide-eyed and vacant, and glanced about her. Then she ventured a word in a dull-witted voice.

“—Erm, whatever do you mean by that? Have I done something wrong—”

The vein on Aiden’s forehead swelled thicker still, so he drew a deep breath.

“Dame Stella.”
“…Yes?”
“Would you mind stepping back for a moment?”

“…?”

The moment Dame Stella stepped back, he drew a revolver straight out of his coat. He always carried one on him, just in case.

“…Aiden? What are you—”

Before Stella could get a question out.

“Law, I swear it—”

The oath was sealed under his breath in an instant. First, the Consecration. Second, the vow. Third, the mantra. Three supernatural powers were conferred on the weapon at once.

“…Aiden?”

Dame Stella asked it in dismay, but before any answer could come to it.

The instant the three powers settled into the gun, Aiden fired it point-blank at the figure in front of him.

— KRA-BOOOOOOM!!!!!

The shot tore the whole area apart and blew the maid’s torso to pieces in an instant.

“…”

Beside him, Stella stared at Aiden as if her soul had been knocked clean out of her face. It had all come so suddenly that her brain seemed to have simply stopped taking it in before she could even think of responding.

“Aiden, what on earth…!”
“No, it’s fine.”

Aiden, the one who’d actually done it, cut her off with his face still screwed up.

“Something like this won’t kill her anyway.”

The attack’s force was horrific, true, but even Katya had come out of it no worse than briefly incapacitated.

And this human being.

was a being set ‘higher’ still than the humans who stood outside every standard.

“—Hey.”

The maid’s shattered body floated lightly up into the air.

“Now that’s just too much, honestly.”

And presently.

With a click of her tongue on the last word, the maid gave her wrist a single wave through the empty air. To anyone watching, it was a soft gesture, as if she were only stretching.

And in time with it.

The pieces of her shattered body clung back onto her like wet clay and regenerated in an instant.

Exactly like Katya.

“…Huh?”

Beside him, Stella let out an odd little noise.

Anyone who handled supernatural power would see it plainly. Katya’s immortality was something she’d been born with, but this woman was mimicking the same thing purely with an ‘ability’ of her own.

…Unbelievable.

It was, at that. She could reproduce immortality under her own power. It was an ability to work divinity that bordered on the divine. By this generation’s standard Katya would be counted second only to the Pontiff, yet even she couldn’t possibly stand level with this woman.

A monster. This human being.

He’d mentioned it a few times already: Noelle and Katya were both people nobody would look down on, wherever you set them. But think a little harder about that phrase, nobody would look down on them, and it meant something else too. A woman who could slice a building apart with a sword, and a woman who died and died and never showed the slightest intention of staying dead, still couldn’t quite be called ‘the strongest’.

Of course, if you asked how far those two would finally grow as the scenario went on, you could pin the title on them in advance. For now, though, the word was hard to use, and the human being in front of him was one of those ‘reasons’.

The strongest, the worst, the most fearsome wielder of divinity in all its history. Ruler of the Holy Kingdom of Craven, the current Pontiff, Abigail III. Every one of those was a word for the human being standing in front of him.

That human being snorted and took off the bonnet she’d been wearing. In the same moment she snapped her fingers, and flames with no heat to them scattered in every direction. A single pass of that fire washed away the plain outfit befitting a maid, and beneath it came vestments of pure black ebony: the garment that meant first place in the Holy Kingdom’s order of precedence, the symbol of the Pontiff.

At the same time, the being who’d been called Princess Layla until a moment ago scattered into flame and vanished as well.

“She was a pretty good stand-in, too. How’d you catch on?”

Aiden looked at the Pontiff now revealed and knitted his brows. She wasn’t someone he knew, yet the whole air about her was extremely familiar. Look at her properly and her features were the spitting image of Katya’s. White hair. Golden eyes. Even that air matched. Only her clothing stood in perfect contrast to Katya’s, which was rather fitting, considering just what tie bound her to that side.

Katya’s biological mother. And.

The Act 2 final boss.

She was the final opponent of the episode where Katya took the lead, after all. A wall that side had to get over, so to speak.

“Still, who opens by slamming an attack in with no warning, consort of the Lionhearted? Hm?”

The Pontiff smiled fiercely as she said it and thrust her head out toward Aiden.

…Even that expression was Katya’s to the life. A ferocity laced with mischief, and bound up with it a pugnacity that called a beast of prey to mind. One look at that face told you roughly where that woman had got the habit from.

But Aiden faced all of it and answered without so much as blinking.

“You did the very same thing without batting an eye, Your Holiness.”

It was their first meeting, yet from the way they spoke, neither had the faintest intention of standing on ceremony. The Pontiff’s manner was only to be expected, given the gap in their stations, but Aiden’s came as a surprise.

“Won’t give up a single word to me, huh? That’s mean.”
“Manners.”

The other party’s manner seemed to be pointing that very thing out, but.

Aiden glared evenly back at her and answered.

“I only return them to whoever shows them first.”

The blow she’d thrown in Princess Layla’s shape hadn’t been enough to kill him outright, but it had unquestionably carried force. Short of killing him, it would certainly have been enough to injure him badly.

And on top of that.

And she beat Katya without a second thought.

There was no reason to greet someone who’d done that sort of thing out of nowhere with a smile.

The corner of the Pontiff’s mouth twisted at the sight. It was the sort of twist that said, ‘Well, look at this one,’ and plainly the reaction of someone who had taken an interest in him first.

“…Fair point.”

The Pontiff cackled and conceded it.

“Katya’s been well and truly camped out over here, so I wondered what the deal was. Turns out there’s a born clown here.”
“Your Holiness.”

Aiden let out a sigh and cut her off.

“You didn’t come all this way to shoot the breeze, did you?”

“…”

“I’m a busy man.”

At the corner of his eye he could see Dame Stella, who had lost the thread entirely, drop her jaw wide open.

“…This bastard’s a total psycho, huh?”

Admittedly, his manner was violent enough to pull a line like that even out of the Pontiff.

But.

So what.

Aiden was holding a great deal back even now, and given what she was like, he had no particular reason to hold back at all.

“Before you take issue with my character, isn’t there something you ought to do first?”
“…What?”

In any sense of the word.

What had to be done was already decided. She was the one who’d sent Katya to drag him off to the Holy Kingdom with no warning, then tormented Katya right in front of his eyes, and kept trotting out tests for him right to the very last. There wasn’t one single reason to be nice about it, so he would wring the ‘things to be gotten out of this’ out of her for certain.

“If you’ve done wrong, paying the price is only human nature.”
“Hm?”
“You weren’t seriously planning to do that much wrong and call it even for nothing, were you?”
“Hmmm—?”
“Grant me just two favors. Then I’ll let it go.”

By now even the Pontiff let out a laugh that was close to blank disbelief.

“Let’s hear it, then. Let what go?”
“If I go around publicly telling everyone about the games the Holy Kingdom played on me and Katya, that doesn’t do you a bit of good either, does it, Your Holiness?”

“…”

“I’d think more than one or two of them would blow up into scandals.”

The fierce smile on the Pontiff’s face deepened further, and her eyes narrowed on a short, light breath. Hah.

“Hey. Aiden.”
“Yes.”
“You like breathing?”
“Generally, yes.”
“Yeah?”

And then.

His vision tore. Divinity burst out of her and stained everything around them ‘red’, wrenching his senses out of true. There was no heat to feel, and the Pontiff wasn’t even deploying a proper supernatural power. This was a phenomenon made of sheer presence and pressure alone, and just meeting her eyes felt like a formless hand clenching around his heart.

“Then let me ask you just one more thing.”

Even her voice came through as if noise had got into it.

“If you like breathing, you’d better pick your words a little more carefully. Was that a threat?”

Merely hearing the words felt like having his brains fried. That was the scale of the pressure. His skin felt as if it were festering, and a revolting sensation, like tar poured into every vein, ran prickling along his whole nervous system.

“…”

A merciless, overwhelming ability.

And while taking all of that with his whole body.

there was only one thought going through Aiden’s head.

…A big catch.

If he could copy a skill off a person like this, it’d be the jackpot of jackpots…!

“…”

Perhaps it was all the dying he’d been doing at Meyer’s hands lately, because even with a genuine threat to his life right in front of him, his head still seemed to be turning in strange directions. But the thought itself was unmistakably true, and what he did next was the finishing move aimed at exactly that.

With a click, a switch went on inside his head. Aiden raised his eyes to her, unruffled.

“Yes.”

“…”

“It was a threat, yes.”

“…”

…Out at the edge of his vision, Dame Stella, who had gone past losing the thread to giving up on understanding any of it, could be glimpsed dropping her jaw wide open once more.

“If you won’t grant them, I’ll sink my teeth in and hang on to the very end.”

“…”

“That I can promise you. I can’t beat you, Your Holiness, but I can doggedly stir up any number of genuinely, deathly annoying problems for you.”

By the time that line landed, he could see Dame Stella had all but reached the brink of fainting. But he wasn’t doing this because he’d let go of his sanity.

…With this person, this is the right way.

He thought back over what he knew of the person called the Pontiff. If nothing else, she liked someone who stood up to her better than someone who bent. It was a thoroughly nasty character: she’d push another person that hard and still want them to keep coming back at her. The way she’d pressed Aiden from the very start was all of a piece with that, and the intent came across keenly. She desperately wanted to see where his bottom lay. Where his limit was. How far she had to push before he bent.

And testing somebody…

She didn’t start this sort of thing at all unless she expected something of the person, which was the same as saying she had some standard she wanted him to meet. With an intent like that in play, ramming straight into her out in the open beat bending here. If anything, it was the surer way to win her favor.

And in fact, as she listened, the smile on the Pontiff’s face deepened further, so Aiden was still meeting the standard she wanted. Before, it had been the look of someone intrigued, but this time it felt like genuine liking.

And the thing to clinch it here.

“In exchange, well, I’m not a man without a conscience. I’ll balance things out for you.”
“What?”
“I get the feeling there’s something you’d like me to help you with, Your Holiness.”

“…”

“Which is why you keep pushing me this hard, isn’t it.”

He was getting in first, making a show of having seen clean through her every intent.

And one step further from there.

Why she kept shoving test after test at him, and what she wanted his capability measured for: he only had to work out that intent. It took no calculation at all, because he already knew the biggest headache the Pontiff was carrying right now.

“Looks like the succession’s giving you a headache.”

A power struggle among the successors who’d become Pontiff after her. Scene 2 of the scenario. The content of ‘Blasphemy’ itself was a story about exactly that.

“Help me, and I’ll be sure to lend you my strength later.”

When Aiden piled that on top as well, the Pontiff, silent for a long moment, let out a wry laugh and scattered her divinity. The weight crushing Aiden’s whole body vanished with it in an instant.

“…You’re seriously a weird one. Can’t tell if you’re a prodigy or a madman.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Sure, madman.”

“…”

Her tone was blunt, but there was no mistaking that her reaction wasn’t a negative one.

The window rising in front of him right then was proof of exactly that.

While Aiden cheered inwardly, the Pontiff sighed and crossed her legs.

“…Let’s hear it, then. So what’s this favor?”

Saying that much was, in effect, accepting what he’d said. Aiden smiled broadly.

The margins on this are fantastic.

…In truth.

He was yoked to the quests anyway, so it was work he’d have had to do regardless. Whether the Pontiff asked for help or not, he was slated to get dragged into that side’s troubles. By rights it was a situation that made him dizzy just to think about, but right now it was all right. If he could take at least this much credit for it now, that was good enough for now…!

Of course, that aside.

What the first favor would be was clear.

“I said this earlier, but.”
“…Hm?”
“Apologize to Katya.”

“…”

“I won’t let you treat my friend however you please, Your Holiness.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then you and I are enemies, I suppose.”

The Pontiff held her silence a moment and looked straight back at Aiden as he said it.

There was no emotion packed into his tone. If anything, it was closer to a calm demand.

But the sentence that came to mind the instant she saw it.

The dog that really bites doesn’t even bark.

That calm only underlined it. If she really didn’t apologize to Katya, this one meant to blow the negotiation and everything else to pieces and come at her in deadly earnest. At the head of the Holy Kingdom. At one of the rulers of a continental superpower.

A madman.

But that was exactly why she liked him.

The Pontiff snorted and answered.

“Fine. I’ll do it, properly. Next time I see the girl I’ll tell her straight. That I was wrong.”

“…”

“Don’t believe me? I could swear it on the true name of the god of purification, if you like.”
“…No. That’s enough.”

Hm.

He had not expected her to own up to it as cleanly as this.

Given how foul this person’s character was, he’d been sure she would tear into him again, demanding who he was to order her to do that.

Well…

When she conceded this readily, it was only human nature for Aiden to take a step back too. The second favor was still left, of course, but surely he could loosen the mood a little before that.

“—Let me start with a greeting. As a peace offering.”
“A greeting?”
“I hope we get along, from here on.”

It had been a rough start, but he did hope they’d get along from here on. He meant it.

When he offered the words in that spirit, Abigail III, who’d been listening with a sullen expression, tilted her head slightly. She seemed to deliberate over something in what he’d said, then tilted her head the other way.

“…”

What was this person doing?

What was this? Why was it going up again all of a sudden?

While he was still thinking it, the Pontiff opened her mouth across from him, looking none too pleased.

“…Hey.”
“…Yes?”
“Was that you hitting on me just now?”

“…”

What nonsense was this person talking? Where in anything he’d just said had she picked that up…

“…No.”

Aiden barely managed the answer, and the Pontiff went on bluntly.

“I’ve been single my whole life, you know?”

“…”

“Talk straight so nobody gets the wrong idea. Guy with a half-decent face and nothing but a slick mouth…”

“…”

…I don’t think that one’s my problem, though.

Aiden pressed the words down and swallowed them.