Wind was blowing through the fine gaps in the steel frame.
A fire tower was far removed from where Yuno's group sat, on the other side of the main road. Soujirou was able to scale its heights with just the strength of his own legs and look down at the five-story buildings.
"…I don't wanna let ya escape."
The shot pierced the ground. Atop the steel frame, with no room to escape, Soujirou parried the gunshot, grazing it with the tip of his hilt. From this range, he didn't even need to swing his sword.
One story above where Soujirou stood, a bright fire was burning. It was a sniper. They set themselves alight as they pulled the trigger.
"But if you escape to the world beyond, how the hell am I 'posed to chase after ya?"
Soujirou scratched his head. Killing was his forte, but he always had trouble letting people live. Whether it was his enemies or his allies.
"Hold up, are they even safe over there?"
The alleyway that Yuno and the others were hiding in was being protected by a group of goblins with shields. He had seen troops in the Beyond use a closed formation like it before. Their behavior suggested they were hostile, but Soujirou's gut intuition didn't tell him any more about the situation.
Turning back to the sniper's dead body, he tried searching it to see if anything was left behind after he burned up.
Something to identify them or who sent them, for example. "...Whoa."
His intuition alerted him to the danger. The shape. The smell. The atmosphere.
Then he immediately jumped down from where he was. "What the hell, c'mon!"
In the span of a single breath, an explosive fireball burst above Soujirou. These flames weren't just to cover up any evidence left behind. It was a delayed explosion, using gunpowder with a different rate of reaction.
A trap that saw through, and planned, for Soujirou's attempt to collect evidence.
"…Hyaaah!" Soujirou shouted. The flash of a blade ran through the air. On the tip of his sword, he snatched a high-speed projectile.
The weapon had a blade that encircled a metal ring and was known as a chakram.
This thing…
Soujirou's gut had told him.
…was the real trump card. They've been gunning for me this whole damn time.
Midair, with nowhere to escape. A totally different trajectory and stopping power from the previous gunshots. There was a sniper hiding somewhere on these streets that was on a completely different level from the mercenaries who had first ambushed them—even concealing their murderous intentions within the encirclement around Soujirou's group.
In the middle of his descent, he put his heels on the tower's steel frame, controlling his posture and center of gravity like a cat while he descended.
"…Some bastard's comin' out with the exciting stuff now."
Soujirou's intuition was not omnipotent by any means. It didn't show him the correct tactics to use, nor did it make all the facts detailed and clear to him.
In spite of this, there was one thing he was able to understand.
The objective of this unseen enemy…was not the envoy's assassination, nor did they wish to spark a war with Aureatia. Their goal was none other than Soujirou the Willow-Sword himself.
It took a day to gather information and testimony regarding the ambush.
Yuno was scared there'd be more ambushes, but there currently didn't seem to be any signs they would continue.
At the very least, their present location was safe—the office of Aureatia's Twenty-Seventh General, Haade the Flashpoint.
"Yuno. You've finished making the reports on the ambush, right? Can you make a clean copy of some other data for me? I want to make a list of everyone involved at all with the Sixways Exhibition."
"Y-yessir! Right away!"
In the midst of cleaning the carpet, Yuno immediately ran over at Haade's call.
Although his appearance looked aged, Haade seemed to brim with nigh limitless stamina and vitality. In the simple motion of handing over documents, he was far more forceful and spry than the still young Yuno.
"It's not totally impossible to read, but so much of the handwriting's messy, it's not easy on the eyes. Nagan people are great to have around. Can write clean and legibly."
"Th-th-thank you, sir…"
Even amid the Twenty-Nine Officials, the bearers of supreme power in Aureatia, there were some who saw Twenty-Seventh General Haade, and his control of the nation's greatest military faction, as the dominant figure.
People involved…in the Sixways Exhibition.
As she browsed the documents, Yuno thought back to the events of the previous day.
…Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge. At the time, she had been on guard against the Gray-Haired Child's rhetoric skills. Although she hadn't been able to ask him what he was trying to get across to her…
"…K—"
…when she saw the list of participants, she learned what Hiroto had been trying to say to her.
Someone involved with Mestelexil the Box of Desperate Knowledge. "Kiyazuna…the Axle!"
"Whoa there, what happened?" Haade asked, his suspicions raised by the concern in Yuno's voice.
"O-oh, no… It's nothing… Lord Haade." "Definitely didn't sound like nothing." Haade roared with laughter.
Nothing?
Yuno was shaking with rage.
It was rage at herself. If she wasn't right before Haade's eyes, she would punch herself bloody.
O-of course… Of course it's not nothing! How could it be?
Kiyazuna the Axle. Kiyazuna the Axle. A name she'd never forget.
A fearsome self-proclaimed demon king who made labyrinths and dungeons with her own hands. The creator of the Dungeon Golem who destroyed her homeland.
As Yuno's hands transcribed data, she dug the nails of her left hand into her upper right arm. Enough to draw blood. She broke the nib of her pen twice before fully transcribing the name Kiyazuna the Axle.
…I'll kill her. Kill her dead. I'll murder her, no matter what it takes. Kiyazuna the Axle—until I make you pay for everything you've done and kill you, I'll never find peace.
Up until that moment, how could she let herself be so languid and listless? Had she simply decided it would be impossible to search out Kiyazuna the
Axle and kill her, and thought instead she'd go from being a survivor of Nagan City to a secretary for one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, to grab peace and happiness for herself?
Disregarding the dead, disregarding Lucelles in the process. "You're looking pale, Yuno. Everything okay over there?" Haade asked in a slightly more serious tone than moments prior.
Did being one of the Twenty-Nine mean they possessed excellent skills of observation as well? No—it must have been that Yuno's demeanor in that moment was simply that perturbed and unusual.
"…Lord Haade."
Lifting her head, Yuno looked at Haade. The red tint to her vision was likely because of the tremendous amount of blood shooting through her eyes.
"I-is this… Is this really, right?" "…What?"
She was about make an irrevocably improper remark.
However, it was too late for regrets. Yuno had already begun to speak.
"Am I? Is this how—how things should be for me? With my homeland destroyed. Th-the demon king who caused it… Kiyazuna the Axle, still alive. Why—why was I able to pretend everything was fine? It's ridiculous. Not Soujirou, nor Dakai, but her. She was the one I should've killed first. Otherwise, everything about getting revenge would've all been a lie. I mean, Lucelles. Didn't I love her? Yet it was all useless. The entire time… Even if it cost me my life, even if it meant being slaughtered without a fight, I should've gone after Kiyazuna the Axle to kill her. I needed to prove myself, whether it took five years or a hundred. Dammit… Just what are my feelings supposed to be, then? Why—why wasn't it until I saw her name…until I had the possibility of making it happen thrust in front of me?! Why aren't my feelings making me feel that this is how I want it to be?! I want… I want vengeance! If I'm going to forget, then I'd rather be dead. I needed to fight! Me!"
"..."
"I—I, um…forgive me. I'm sorry…Master Haade."
Haade observed the girl without interrupting her, until she had spewed out all her emotions. With a raptorial glare, quiet yet keen.
"I get it now, Yuno."
Then he twisted his lips, enough to show his gums, into a smile.
"So you like war, too?"
"…..... Wh-what?"
For Yuno, in her stupor, it was a totally incomprehensible comment.
War… There shouldn't have been anyone in the world who could derive pleasure from such a terrible thing.
Perhaps, just maybe, that was the meaning contained in her spewed rambling.
Why was Haade smiling? Was it okay to even consider his expression as "smiling" in the first place?
Was it affirmation? Or denial? "What do you mean…?"
"Sheesh, and here I figured you were just a little girl along for the ride with Soujirou, but it seems I've made quite the find with you, Yuno the Distant
Talon."
Haade put his large palm on Yuno's right shoulder. "Want to try killing Kiyazuna the Axle?"
It was unreasonable.
An inconsequential young girl, who had only fallen into her secretary job by coincidence, ranted and raved, spitting out incoherent nonsense to none other than the most influential player in Aureatia.
It would've made perfect sense for her to be seen as deranged and fired immediately—if anything, that was the correct course of action.
"I—I… I don't understand…"
"Bwa-ha-ha-ha. You won't, in the beginning. You don't have to understand it at all."
"Will I understand eventually?"
"Oh yes. There'll be plenty of opportunities from here on out. First up, three days from now, I plan to kill Ozonezma the Capricious. Let's hope that'll be enough to stoke the fires of war."
Haade put on his overcoat, looking in high spirits, and opened the study door. "During the Sixways Exhibition, act however you want. You have my
permission." "..."
For a moment after the door closed, Yuno stared at both of her hands, dumbfounded.
There was still a small amount of blood left over on the nails of her left hand she had dug into her arm while working. However, they were just as much the fists of a plain young girl from the frontier.
Right now she was composed. She was fully aware she had lost her head and blurted out awful things to the General Haade. Yuno had returned to her senses.
Still, should she really think like that?
Perhaps instead, what she should have been returning to was the true Yuno— the Yuno that had definitely been there moments ago, pelting her feelings at the leader of the military without fear, present that time when she challenged Dakai the Magpie to combat amid the fall of Lithia, present at the beginning of it all when she had sworn her revenge against Soujirou in Nagan after losing everything.
She needed to get her hands on something—big enough to take on the apathy of the strong, that allowed Yuno to oppose them.
"You get to decide where you go, and what you're gonna do."
I'll be able to become them both. Fully embrace them… From now on.
She needed to decide…because now Yuno was free.