The Female Knight In My Memories Is Still Way Too Cute (2)

Once again, I found myself remembering a conversation I had with Karen-san during training.

It was from a different day than before.

“The most efficient way to make an opponent lose the will to fight?”

“Yeah. A battle continues until the opponent admits defeat, or until they’re completely annihilated. If you consider how much our side would be worn down, obviously the former is preferable, right?”

I agreed with her on that point. I didn’t want to win a battle only to end up in a situation where I was the only person left standing on the battlefield.

“Haru, what do you think? Let’s assume it’s a one-on-one fight this time.”

“Hmm… let me think.”

If the difference in ability was overwhelming, there wouldn’t be much difference in effort between the former and the latter, but against someone roughly equal in strength, it would probably be difficult to create a situation where they surrendered in the first place—

“If that’s difficult, why don’t we use someone as an example? Say you and I were having a serious fight, Haru. How would you get the other person to say, ‘I surrender,’ as quickly as possible?”

“Me and Karen-san… Ah, I see. In that case—”

An answer suddenly came to mind, and I clapped my hands together.

“If I think about a situation at night where I’m trying to get Karen-san to do something naughty with me—”

“Something n-naughty…!? What in the world are you thinking about first thing in the morning!?”

“I will not lose… to a man, to a man… to someone like him… I’ll win, I’ll win…”

I sensed the atmosphere around Lilia gradually changing as she stared downward and muttered something with an obsessed expression.

“Grrrrrr…!”

Perhaps it was because of the increasingly immense and ferocious fighting spirit surrounding her, but I could almost see her body transforming further and further into that of a beast.

“Berserk—Lilia-sama, what are you doing?! Going all-out against someone like him right from the start…!”

Fortunately, Ena had such a carrying voice that the information reached my ears as well—but apparently what Lilia was displaying now was their true strength, including Ena and Zena’s—their trump card.

“Keeping magic to a minimum… probably isn’t going to work here.”

From this point onward, the limits of my opponent’s potential were completely unknown to me. And if I tried to conserve my strength here, there was a very real chance that the axe, which had grown even stronger in response to her condition, would split me vertically in two.

“To destroy the opponent’s will to fight… and make them submit…!”

I was the one who moved first.

I channeled enough magic into my magic sword to withstand the power of her axe, while layering multiple enhancements to my own strength and reaction speed.

“—Hah!”

I struck while adding a feint to the trajectory of my sword. I used the blunt edge, but I had still put considerable force behind the blow. However—

“GRAAAAAH!!”

“—!?”

She fell for the feint perfectly, and just as I became certain I had caught her, Lilia forcibly corrected the trajectory of her axe with sheer physical strength and blocked my attack by the narrowest margin.

Metal collided with metal, while magic clashed with fighting spirit, and the resulting impact transformed into sound and wind that spread outward in every direction from the two of us.

“AAAAAAH!!”

“Guh…!”

Lilia didn’t miss the brief moment I staggered from the unexpectedly powerful recoil, and she swung her axe at me with full force in retaliation. I had anticipated a counterattack to some degree, so the blow itself didn’t catch me, but it tore straight through my defense and sent me flying all the way to the wall of the arena, where I slammed into it back-first.

“—Gah!”

Apparently seeing an opportunity, Lilia immediately rushed in to follow up. With a little distance between us, it became even clearer that her appearance was already far removed from anything human.

“Urgh… Yeah, this really isn’t something to joke about…”

Karen-san or Commander-General Gares might have been able to handle her, but there was absolutely no way I could beat her in a straightforward contest of strength. If I continued fighting her head-on like an idiot, eventually my magical enhancements would fail to keep up and I would lose.

“—But…”

“Guh…!?”

Lilia had entered the range where her axe could reach me and twisted her lips into a grin as though she had finally caught her prey, only to notice the abnormality affecting her—her strength suddenly vanished for no apparent reason, her legs tangled, and she fell to the ground in confusion.

“—Like I said before, I’m used to dealing with this kind of opponent for work.”

There was no way Lilia, currently in a berserk state, could possibly understand what had happened.

What had activated where she fell was a magic circle that inflicted stun and, to a lesser extent, paralysis. Naturally, it was a trap I had quickly placed when she sent me flying earlier.

“Trap them, make them unable to resist, and then finish them off for certain—that’s the golden rule when hunting wild beasts, you know?”

I slowly stood up and brushed the dust from myself, then layered a binding spell over Lilia while she remained on all fours, unable to understand why she couldn’t move. Her arms, legs, and waist were restrained by invisible chains rising from the ground, leaving her unable even to resist properly.

“Lilia-sama…! You—stop relying on magic all the time and fight fair and square!”

“Fair and square? This is how I’ve always specialized in fighting. And let me ask you one thing—do you seriously think something like that matters on a battlefield?”

“Guh…”

That one sentence silenced Ena, who had shouted at me from the side.

I still had no experience with it myself, but if a war ever broke out between nations, there would surely be countless methods far more cruel and underhanded than anything I was doing now. Going into something like that with such naïve ideas would only shorten your own life.

“I’m glad magic worked better than I expected… Maybe because their physical abilities are so strong, their resistance to magic is significantly lower.”

“R-release me… Let me go…!”

While restrained by magic, Lilia seemed to regain at least some of her composure. Apparently there was also a limit to how long she could remain berserk.

“Then will you admit defeat? Say, ‘I’m sorry for acting so insolently until now. From now on, I recognize you as my commander.’”

“No…! I cannot lose to a man… That must never happen! It must not…!”

As expected, she wasn’t going to simply say, ‘I surrender.’ Then again, if she were the kind of girl who could easily admit defeat here, things probably never would have become this twisted in the first place.

“I see. Then—”

With that, I straddled Lilia’s stomach as she lay on her back, gripped my sword with both hands, and pressed its tip against her throat.

The instant I did, a murmur resembling screams spread through the surrounding female warriors. They had probably imagined what I was about to do.

“!? What are you planning to do to Lilia-sama—”

【Don’t move!】

“—!!??”

Just as Ena and several others who appeared to be close aides lost patience and tried to leap in to stop me, I used a certain skill to freeze them in place.

At that moment, they must have been intimidated by me—a man wielding unknown magic, with an eerie magical glow spilling from my eyes.

Yes, what I was using now was the 【Mystic Eyes】, the almost supernatural ability possessed by Henri-san, the mage responsible for the recent incident in which Karen-san had been taken hostage. Ever since I had been subjected to her Mystic Eyes, I had thought, Maybe I can use this somehow—and I had experimented with it while on solo missions. I was glad it worked.

That said, mine was nowhere near as powerful as hers.

‘Magic is most useful when you’re bluffing’—that was another of Karen-san’s teachings. The point was to reveal it as one of your available cards so your opponent would think, ‘He can do this too?’ and hesitate over their next move.

“Now you can’t expect anyone to come save you. If you still insist on resisting, then—”

After confirming that Ena and the others wouldn’t interfere, I turned my gaze back to Lilia.

“Uu… hic… I’m sorry…”

That was when I noticed something was wrong. She shook her head from side to side in refusal, while large tears streamed from her eyes.

“I’ll apologize… so please, don’t… don’t hurt me anymore… don’t hurt Mama…!”

“—This is bad.”

I had only intended to make her surrender and had never planned to actually do anything to her, but apparently I had triggered some kind of psychological trauma.

I immediately released every spell and took her into my arms.

I held her with delicate care, as though soothing an infant.

“I’m sorry. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m not going to do anything else to you. I never imagined it would affect you this badly.”

“…Really? Father… will you forgive me?”

“Yeah, I forgive you. I’m not angry with you anymore. So calm down.”

“…Thank goodness, thank goodness… Mama.”

After saying that, Lilia’s breathing gradually settled, and she lost consciousness as though falling asleep.

Hopefully nothing else would happen now—

“Zena, you can move, right? If possible, I’d like you to take Lilia-sama somewhere else.”

“…Mm.”

I handed Lilia over to Zena, who immediately responded to my instructions, and she quickly picked Lilia up and disappeared deeper into the arena.

For now, I figured someone who had known her for a long time would be able to handle the rest.

“Ena, you should go stay with the princess too. She’ll probably feel safer with more people she trusts nearby.”

“…I was going to do that even without you telling me!”

After shooting me a resentful glare, Ena followed after Zena and left the area as well. Judging from that reaction, it looked like I still had a long way to go before she acknowledged me.

“Hmm… I thought that if I showed them my strength like this, everything would somehow work out, but…”

I might have to dig into a much deeper-rooted problem if I wanted this mission to succeed—judging from Lilia’s behavior so far, that was the conclusion I quietly reached.