Synthesis

“Give back the territory you took, you barbarian.”
“…It has been a long while, Your Majesty.”

The Emperor had hurled abuse in the chieftain’s face the instant the two of them came within sight of each other, yet Dunadan, chieftain of the Great Plains, answered with a courteous greeting and not a flicker of expression. The chieftain had the practiced air of someone who had been through this more times than could be counted.

A major diplomatic incident was unfolding in real time, and not one of the people around them moved to stop it. They just smiled wryly.

Never mind who took what; the Emperor himself had ceded that territory in the first place, handing it to the Tribal Confederation, which had proved a dependable ally all through the war.

“And how is the Empire’s warrior corps this time? As hale as ever?”
“A little thinner than before, yes. Toward the end of the war there was a bit of…”

The Emperor swallowed his words for a moment.

“…this and that happened, after all.”

“…”

Dunadan understood what the Emperor was bringing up, and smiled bitterly.

There had indeed been one truly dreadful incident.

The fall of the Empire’s greatest star.

“—Someone will be able to fill the Lord Protector’s seat, Your Majesty. And the Prince too will one day be as he once was—”
“Enough of that. How is your warrior corps?”

The Emperor’s voice cut in sharply, and Dunadan smiled bitterly again, inwardly this time. The chieftain knew perfectly well that a few words of comfort could not touch an incident like that; better to go along with the change of subject.

“I brought mainly young warriors, full of hot blood and spoiling for a fight.”
“That is a fine way to dress up a pack of greenhorns.”
“And knowing as much, what possessed you to send out something like that against them?”

Dunadan’s gaze went to the stage where the sparring would take place.

Several Tribal Confederation warriors were loosening up ahead of the fight, and against them the Empire’s side looked almost threadbare. A single woman sat motionless with her eyes closed, as if meditating. Her presence alone pressed down on the air around her in every direction. There was only one name for it: the sheer majesty of a predator.

“Are you not taking this rather too seriously? The Lionhearted, for what is at most an exchange event?”

Something close to awe had lodged in the question. The Emperor gave a short laugh and shifted the pipe between his teeth.

“She is still only one. It is not as though I do not know how well the Confederation’s warriors fight.”
“…You lay it on far too thick, Your Majesty.”

With that, Dunadan looked down at the stage. The match would start before long, and the Lionhearted could be seen drawing a deep breath and circulating her ki. White ki billowed up from her heart and soon formed a dome-shaped force field that wrapped the entire sparring ground, a safety measure so the aftershocks of the fight would not spread to anything nearby.

Even so.

The sight of a single human being raising a hemispherical force field that vast came close to majestic. Ki might have the highest raw output of the supernatural powers, but a feat like that should by rights have taken an entire corps trained for it.

…It is a joke, really.

Handing that job to the very person about to fight down there was, after all, an outrage against all reason. Yet no one present said a word of protest. If anything, the whole place treated it as a matter of course.

The reason was simple.

The human being called the Lionhearted was such a monster that even this was simply ‘quite all right’.

Pure-white ki.

Dunadan glanced over the ki forming the hemisphere. Pure white was the highest grade of ki any Knight of the Empire could handle, and its special property was the whole reason the Lionhearted could serve as a human-shaped ‘supernatural power plant’.

“She was called an army of one even on battlefields where warriors like these fell like straw. Is one of her not more than enough?”

A mischievous smile surfaced on the Emperor’s face.

“Strictly speaking, she is not alone.”
“Pardon?”
“He has not come up yet, but there is one more. A fellow I am curious about. I want to see what he will show us.”

Unmistakably.

The Emperor’s voice brimmed with anticipation.

…I got so nervous I went to the toilet.
How did it ever come to this?

His gaze was dragged to the front. Fierce-looking men filled his field of view, the ‘savage warrior’ made flesh, hopelessly out of step with an age in which concrete buildings, black-and-white televisions and telephones had become commonplace.

I’m supposed to trade blows with those things?

If there had been a negotiating table that could get him out of this, he would have gladly given a year of his life for it. He meant that sincerely…

“…I am sorry for dragging you into this, Aiden.”

Aiden was plainly not the only one who found the situation awkward; one look at Noelle, murmuring apologetically, was enough to show it. From where she stood, he might be a man hiding an inexplicable power and a strange past, but forcing him into something this dangerous was a separate matter, and she clearly felt guilty about it. The problem was that Noelle, for her part, had no grounds to refuse the request outright.

Only a short while ago, Aiden had crushed, with a single blow, an elite combatant one rank below a Knight, then just as easily flattened a royal of the Holy Kingdom who wielded divinity. If the Emperor had gone to the trouble of arranging even this, he had surely had all of that reported to him before going ahead.

“In exchange, you will not need to do a great deal yourself. I will ask only one simple thing of you.”

If there was a saving grace, it was that she herself had more than enough ability to settle a situation like this.

Before Aiden could ask what she meant, the sign at the dead center of the sparring ground changed from red to blue, the signal to ‘begin the match’.

And at the same moment.

“O Jewel, O Lotus, send forth your radiance!”

A fierce battle cry burst from the Confederation’s warriors, and the characters on their bodies lit up all at once. Bright haloes flared out and countless more spilled into the air around them, and among them rose several orbs, each gathered from that same light.

“Is this your first time seeing it?”

Aiden’s eyes had gone round, and Noelle tilted her head at him. Even with humans that fierce right in front of her, she looked perfectly calm.

“It is dharma power. The warriors of the Great Plains lay an interdiction on themselves and are granted strength in return for it.”

The authority came from the Tribal Confederation’s chief deity, <the God of the Supreme Vehicle> Urgan.¹ Those who served the god received strength by placing a kind of ‘prohibition’ upon themselves.

“As opponents for the ‘proof of worth’ His Majesty spoke of, they will not be found wanting.”

As she spoke, pure-white ki came billowing out from the center of her heart. Aiden knew the sight well. He had used it himself, so he knew just how much force it put out.

…Will this person be all right?

Even so, worry came first. The pressure rolling off the warriors in front of them was that far from ordinary, and being good with ki did not change the fact that taking on warriors of that caliber, one against many, was another matter entirely.

Yet in defiance of that worry, Noelle stepped briskly out in front of Aiden as if it were nothing and pushed him back. As though that were a signal, the Tribal Confederation’s warriors raised a roar that prickled across his skin and surged in all at once.

The charge was terrifying enough to buckle the knees just to watch. They were plainly people, and yet it felt like facing a huge vehicle bearing down at full speed.

And, despite all of that.

The human facing it down was still composed beyond compare.

“Shall I give you a little demonstration?”

The pure-white ki she had drawn out began to race fiercely through her whole body from the center of her heart.

“—Law.”

The word spilled reverently from Noelle’s lips.

“I swear it.”

This was a consecration made directly to a god, one of the ways of ‘communing’ with a deity to strengthen a supernatural power. It could fairly be called the principal prayer to Karva, the Empire’s chief deity.

“Victory, in battle.”

The majesty of heaven answered her oath, and pure-white ki settled into her arm with far fiercer force than before.

“A supernatural power becomes far more precise when you channel it into ‘matter’ that holds a shape, like this. You may hold it in the body as I am doing, but putting it into a weapon is more efficient.”
“…Ah, I see.”
“Of course.”

Having said it so placidly, Noelle threw a straight punch from a standing stance, the same one Aiden had thrown a few times before, only in a far more practiced form than his.

“If you can handle pure-white ki, you can do this much bare-handed.”

Her whole body became the launcher and the punch its shell. Planted foot, legs, then up along the axis of the waist into the back and on through the arm, everything gathered to a single point and loosed out through the end of the fist.

And then.

Pure-white ki was the purest of all ki, and its instantaneous ‘output’ carried an explosive force that no other supernatural power could match. Made far stronger still through the consecration, it produced this.

— BOOM!

— KA-BOOOOOM!!

Aiden’s mouth fell wide open.

Everything ahead of her had simply been ‘shoved away’.

The air tore. The force field spread around the stage shuddered and crackled, and screams burst out of the spectator seats. For an instant everything in view around the sparring ground streamed sideways at once, as though a storm had risen.

She had not even struck them with her fist. The wind pressure off its far end alone sent the Tribal Confederation warriors who had been charging so fiercely screaming away to the far side of the sparring ground. Every one of the superhumans barreling in with destructive force behind them, like eight-ton trucks with the brakes gone, had been driven back by nothing but the ‘aftershock’ of a punch thrown from a standing stance.

“…”

Aiden stared blankly at Noelle in front of him.

Hold on, is she even human…?

“Do you see how it works?”

“…”

Unfortunately.

After doing that, Noelle turned back to him without expression, and her question only left him more lost. She had the air of someone for whom this much genuinely amounted to nothing…

…No, I don’t?

What on earth was he supposed to have picked up from that? The one thing he could pick up, and in abundance, was that he and Noelle were a different breed altogether.

“If you would copy just this much, I expect the ‘proof of worth’ His Majesty speaks of would be more than covered.”
“…Pardon?”
“If you can use pure-white ki, this much is no great technique. You would know better than I how much potential that ‘color’ holds, but this time I would like you to show no more than a fragment of it.”

“…”

Copy what she had just done? Aiden himself?

“—!”
“—!!”

Before his swimming head could properly register it, the Tribal Confederation warriors in front of him were springing back to their feet one after another. They had only been blown away, so of course they had taken no real injury, and getting back up followed naturally enough. The trouble was that they plainly took it as a humiliation. Thick veins stood out on every forehead, as though their blood had boiled over. They probably thought Noelle was toying with them.

And this time Noelle made no move to stand in their way as they charged in again.

…Just my luck.

Aiden grabbed hold of his reeling wits and barely managed that much of a thought.

Still, I have to do what I have to do…

From the moment he was tied to this woman by a sham marriage, he had steeled himself for getting tangled in dangerous business of one kind or another. That was why he had told the Emperor himself that he would take part. He had no confidence he could copy exactly what Noelle had just done, but there was one thing he could rely on.

He quickly called the status window up before his eyes. What he meant to use was the one skill he had copied from Noelle and kept in reserve.

The same method of handling ki that Noelle had just put to use.

The moment he learned the skill, the ‘how to use it’ settled naturally into his head, as though someone were typing the words into his mind, letter by letter.

“…Law. I swear it.”

As the warriors charged fiercely at him, ki leaked out all at once around Aiden’s body.

Noelle, watching from beside him, gave a slight nod, and he caught it. She looked as if she had known all along that he would manage. All that remained was to swing that ki as it was and copy exactly what she had done, and nothing could go wrong. Noelle, at least, seemed to think so.

Aiden himself was thinking something a little different, though.

“…”

He turned his head and looked around. He looked at Noelle, and he took in the Emperor and the chieftain, who would be watching from up in the spectator seats. If things went well, a direct reaction would come from the people up there too.

And if they did not?

…Then I’ll figure something out when I get there.

In any case, this was the only thing he had to lean on right now.

He moved his lips to finish the consecration. That alone sent pure-white ki spreading out in an instant from the center of his heart, and with it came a heavy pressure that bound his whole body. Although the message only went one way, from here up to the heavens, he felt at once that the being on the other end of the line was truly a holy one.

Name what you long for. Offer your oath. The whisper kept coming, unbroken.

But instead of carrying the words on from there.

Aiden was preparing to do something a little different.

Please, work…!

With that inner voice, close to a prayer, ‘divinity’ rose up out of his body: a colorless flame, the supernatural power he had taken from the Holy Kingdom’s princess, whose face he had never once seen.

He saw Noelle’s face go pale beside him.

“That, divinity…? No, how on earth could you—”

But before that reaction could carry any further.

He pushed it into the pure-white ki pouring out of his heart.

The colorless flame rising from under his feet crashed, burning, against the ki. The two energies probed at each other as though each meant to devour the other, then mixed, melting into one another.

“…Aiden…?”

And from beside him.

Noelle’s voice reached him, slipping out as she watched.

She seemed unable to believe what she was looking at, and her bloodless face and trembling eyes showed how unreal the phenomenon before her was.

A god’s ‘authority’.

Had mixed.

Two domains that should never have mixed had fused.

And over that phenomenon, messages ran on one after another before Aiden’s eyes.

…Drawing a deep breath, he ran his eyes down them. Since these had come up, what he had been aiming at had apparently worked, at least for now.

…This was the one.

Ever since he had seen it last time, he had resolved to make use of this ability without fail. The question was how much force the thing that had popped out this way actually carried.

…Fortunately.

On that score, he apparently need not worry so much.

The divinity the Holy Kingdom’s royals wielded took the form of a colorless flame. Fitting for a power sent down by Sier, the god of purification, it was the purest form there was, stained by nothing.

And, here and now.

As though the pure-white ki and that flame had mixed, a ‘white divinity’ spread out around Aiden. A flame born of divinity had taken on a ‘color’ from another supernatural power. It burned so intensely that a vacuum opened around it, and the view buckled as though someone had cut the scenery out and crumpled it in a fist.

“…”

“…”

Aiden blinked blankly.

…This.

It looked, somehow, more dangerous than he had imagined.

The sparring match was in full swing, yet plainly nobody cared about carrying it on: not Noelle, not the Tribal Confederation’s warriors, not even Dunadan, who was serving as referee. The moment that flame rose up, not one person moved.

— …!

And the next moment.

— KRRRRRRA-BOOOOOOOOM!!!

A colossal pillar of fire shot up with Aiden at its center and slammed into the hemisphere spread wide around the stage. It smashed Noelle’s defensive force field to pieces, and cleanly at that.