Nearly three big months had passed since Kia had begun studying at Iznock Royal High School.
She still experienced strange looks from people, as a girl born and hailing from the untrodden and secluded land of mystery, Eta Sylvan Province.
Iznock Royal High School had originally been constructed for the children of the royal family and nobility. Even in Aureatia, gradually opening the doors of education to the masses, a majority of the students who studied there were from respectable minia families.
The elf Kia attended the elementary section of the school, for children a full ten years younger than herself, and even then her grades were abysmal.
Adding to things, her crabby, arrogant disposition hadn't changed in the slightest.
However.
"Kia! Let's eat lunch together."
"It was amazing how you solved that problem all by yourself, Kia."
It was the hour of their noontime break. Yet again today, a number of the female students gathered around Kia's desk.
The rude elf girl from the frontier had been so warmly welcomed into this new world that it was mysterious. At the very least, on the surface, the girls were all friendly.
Kia's eyes stopped on one of the girls within the group. "..."
Velvet hair glistening silver white. Large eyes filled with enigmatic depth.
Kia was indifferent to minia standards of beauty, but even then, she could tell her presence was completely and radically different from the other girls.
Her name was Sephite.
The Queen ruling over the minian races. The very person who lived in the beautiful palace she witnessed on her first day in Aureatia.
"Hey," Kia said with irritation. For the past several days, she had constantly been in a sour mood.
"Aren't you making things hard for the Queen? I mean, she certainly doesn't seem like she wants to talk with me."
Sephite was not the type of Queen she had envisioned.
Sephite was far wiser than Kia, despite being three years younger, and excelled the most out of everyone in her class, but to Kia, her gloominess betrayed all of Kia's ideals of a Queen, her facial expressions were lacking, and she was little more than a brooding young girl.
There was always a shadow of despair inside Sephite's large eyes.
Kia couldn't help thinking that a country that had a girl like her sitting at the top was destined for ruin.
Kia had the expectation that if she was the master of the dreamlike scenery she saw on her first day in Aureatia, then surely she must have been so brilliant and blessed the people with so much happiness.
"That's not true, right, Queen Sephite?"
"Queen Sephite wouldn't discriminate against her elven schoolmate." "Kia. Her Majesty is quiet, but she truly wished to be your friend."
The way Sephite's cronies insisted on pulling Kia into their circle of friends also felt a bit eerie and weird to Kia.
She might have felt better if she was isolated from the girls or bullied, instead. Since no matter how many enemies she may have faced, Kia was confident that, if it came to blows, she was invincible.
Sephite spoke in a dull monotone.
"…Sorry, Kia. If it pleases you, would you like to join us for lunch?" "…Sure. But Her Majesty shouldn't be using words like sorry."
Kia also sometimes thought that maybe her home tutor, Elea, was giving unneeded attention to the situation behind the scenes.
She had only recently learned for the first time that Elea stood in a high- ranking position as one of Aureatia's Twenty-Nine Officials.
Kia didn't know any specific details about what sort of work she did. If it was true, though, she wondered why Elea was content with the sort of life she was living.
If she's such an important figure, she needs to have more fun in her life. Isn't that what being a bigwig's all about?
Trying to keep some distance from the crowd surrounding Sephite, Kia headed toward the same lunchroom as they did. She tried not to think about the house she would go home to. It would only sour her mood even further.
There were still all sorts of fun things waiting within the streets of Aureatia.
New friends who weren't one of the Queen's cronies, too. On the way home that day, she was going to visit the traveling carnival. She heard that in there was a zmeu's street show in the western district, too. Moreover, even the food provided at the school, though not very big, was much, much higher quality than what they had in the Eta Sylvan Province.
As she ate the well-simmered bean dish, she sized up Sephite sitting opposite her.
"Is it always like this for the Queen?" "…What ever do you mean?"
Sephite stopped picking at her food. Her white neck titled slightly, and she looked at Kia.
Kia had her elbows up on the table and was gripping her fork in a tight balled fist.
"Don't you ever get tired of allllways having your back up straight? With the way you eat, you won't get dirty at all, even without draping that napkin over your lap, right?"
"I suppose so."
Sephite fluttered her long eyelashes, her expression remaining largely unchanged.
"I do get tired. Very much so."
"…I mean, if Your Majesty's fine with it, then whatever, I guess."
Kia wanted to be free. Nothing had changed from when she was living in the Eta Sylvan Province.
She didn't have any desire to join in the conversations of the girls around her.
Kia's plate soon emptied.
Doesn't she ever get sick of it? She can't even ask for seconds in front of the other kids.
"Oh my. Kia, you're done eating already?" "You're so fast."
"Not really. You sure you're not all just slow?"
Kia pulled out one of the small berries she had in her pocket and plopped it into her mouth.
The Queen's cronies all looked at her dubiously. "Um… Kia, what is that? Food?"
"What? It's the yellow willowseed from the courtyard. They aren't growing it there so we can eat it?"
"Yellow willowseed… Wait, is it all right for us to eat that?"
"Beats me…?"
In Eta, it had been totally normal. For all these girls, it wasn't.
Ignoring the other girls exchanging glances with one another, she purposefully placed one of the berries in front of Sephite.
"…I'm sure Her Majesty's never eaten one before, right?" "..."
Sephite stared hard at Kia without saying a word.
Dark pupils. As if scenes of ruin were forever burned into the deepest recesses of her eyes.
The Queen took the pale-pink berry and tilted her head slightly with a smile. "Thank you. I'll try it."
Kia sighed. She briskly departed the lunchroom.
…Hmph, please, you're not really smiling at all.
In a district far removed from the school in the hills was the mansion where Kia lived. It was the house of her home tutor, Elea, a pretty structure that was ten times bigger than her house back in her homeland.
Just as Kia returned home, a man was opening the door to exit. A wide- mouthed man with his hair combed back behind him.
"Well now, if it ain't little Kia." "…Ugh."
Kia glared at the man with all the contempt she could muster. Jivlart the Ash Border, leader of a guild called Sun's Conifer. However, for Kia, he was nothing more than a tyrant staying at Elea's house and acting like he owned the place.
Kia knew that Jivlart was violent with Elea almost every day. He would drink booze in Elea's house and enjoyed extorting money daily, foisting unreasonable demands on her and abusing her.
"Hurry up and leave."
"Ha-ha, what do you think I'm doing?"
While Kia was in class, this man was always here in Elea's house. No matter what sort of fun she was having, or what food they provided for her in the lunchroom, Kia's mood would always sour whenever she remembered.
"I know that you hate me. I gotta be gentle with the kiddies, though, right?"
…Coward.
If Kia was there to witness it all, she would absolutely knock him senseless.
But whenever Kia would return home from school, she'd always arrive after it was all over.
"Don't ever come here again."
"Well now, that all depends on that woman's attitude, doesn't it? You better warn her, too, Kia. If she wants me to win the tourney, she's gotta come up with terms better than Rosclay's! Ha-ha-ha."
"Get lost! I'll make you disappear for good; I mean it!" "Yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it."
Jivlart took his leave, a nasty smirk still on his face. He liked children—there was no way.
Even now, Kia wished she had truly let the command "disappear" cross her lips.
"…I'm home, Elea."
Inside the house, Elea was cleaning up the messy living room, illuminated only by candles.
"You're home late today, Kia." "..."
Kia frowned, seeing the brand-new bruise at the base of Elea's throat. They were Jivlart's doing. Both the disordered room and Elea's wounds.
Ever since he was selected to be a hero candidate, Jivlart's tyranny only continued to get more dreadful.
"Was school fun?" "…Sort of, I guess."
"If there's anything you're worried about, you can always talk to me about it, okay?"
"Not really… There's nothing to be worried about at all. I can do anything."
Kia averted her eyes. She wasn't worried about anything—concerning herself.
But Elea's lifestyle, compared to the version of her tutor she had long been familiar with, was an unimaginably desolate one.
Elea had no family or friends. Besides Kia, the only people she involved herself with were the hero candidate Jivlart or his scoundrel underlings.
There was broken glass and ceramic fragments scattered all over the floor.
It was possible that it wasn't just Jivlart who had come to the house that day. Not just him, but those Sun's Conifer losers, too.
…Gives me the creeps.
Just what was so fun for them?
"Elea. I don't want to cook today. Let's go eat out. I'll finish cleaning this up later."
"Tee-hee-hee. Will you now? You can't use Word Arts to clean up, you know."
"That much is fine, isn't it? I mean, I did it all the time back in Eta."
For the time being, she wanted to go outside. She didn't want to have to look at the aftermath of Jivlart's violence.
Why was he able to get violent with people weaker than himself?
Did people like Jivlart, when faced with the same awful treatment from someone stronger than themselves—someone like Kia—really think they'd accept the injustice without any complaints?
Who cares about "evidence" or whatever. Next time I see him, I'm bringing him to tears.
As of now, Kia had followed Elea's orders forbidding her from using Word Arts. On a previous day when something similar happened, she had healed the cut on Elea's arm, but Elea herself got unbelievably angry at her for it.
Nevertheless, when the time came when her patience truly wore out, she wasn't going to sit there silently and do nothing.
"Elea, did you know? At a place nearby the school, they serve Lithia-style seafood."
Kia continued as she pretended not to pay any heed to Elea's wound.
"It might be a bit expensive, but… Not even the Queen can eat fresh fish every night!"
"Honestly… You're talking like it's all but decided that we're going out tonight."
"Let's go, Elea."
Kia changed her shoes. The shoes were small and adorable, totally different from what she wore when living in Eta.
Elea had bought them for her.
"We're not making any detours to the theater now." "I know, I know!"
The two exited into the street.
The Aureatia streets were often noisy and filled with people. Kia always felt strange, wondering if, with so many people, they could actually all fit inside the buildings when it came time to sleep.
"…Hey, Elea. Can I bring some friends over to the house? I'm sure that
would make things a lot more fun." "Fun?"
"I mean, you're lonely, right?"
Elea looked surprised for some reason. She turned her eyes away from Kia and talked about something else.
"…Are you bringing friends from school, then? You're pretty friendly with the Queen, right?"
"Nope. They're kids I met at the plaza by the reservoir. The six of us had a tree-climbing competition, and I was the fastest. I didn't even use any Word Arts."
"They're probably military children. There's a family dormitory for Aureatia's army near there."
"…Military."
When she thought about it, the friend she played with that day had bragged about their father, too.
That child's father was supposedly a magnificent soldier and favorably viewed by the Twenty-Seventh General, Haade, who gallantly fought against the Old Kingdoms' loyalists and freed the conquered Toghie City.
"You learned in class, right? Aureatia was originally a final bastion built to protect the minian races from the True Demon King, so…there are a lot of citizens who have some involvement with the military. The owner of that bakery you're always going to has two children in the military themselves, and even at school there are some who serve as civilian employees for the army."
"Really…? I didn't know. So that's how it was."
The Aureatia army. Up until just recently, she might've brushed off the topic as something unrelated to her.
"Do you have friends in the military, too, Elea?" "…Does it look like I would?"
The sun was beginning to sink into the horizon, and night was covering the zenith above her.
Elea was at a gap in the gas lamps lining the street, and it seemed like even her smile had a shadow cast over it.
"I just thought, well, since you're one of the Twenty-Nine Officials, that maybe…you'd have an acquaintance or two in the military."
"Is there something bothering you?" "Hmm…"
Really, it wasn't that important. Since it was nothing more than a rumor.
"The Aureatia army… They're not going to attack Eta or anything, are they?" "..."
It was simply a rumor she had heard at school. If it turned out to be true, then it likely never would have reached the ears of a child like Kia in the first place.
"It was just something the teachers were talking about together, and it's just… They said that Aureatia needed to gather the resources to maintain the country from somewhere else. That since the Demon King didn't ravage Eta, it sort of checked all the boxes."
If Kia had questioned the instructors talking about it then and there, she could've figured out for sure how true the story was. But if that was indeed the case, what then was Kia supposed to do?
"…Truthfully, that topic has come up before in the assembly." "...!"
"But I lived in Eta and actually saw everyone living out there… So I absolutely don't want to let that happen. Though, my position definitely doesn't give me any say in the way the army does things. But that's how I feel, regardless of Aureatia's policy."
"But…if it does happen, is there even anything that can be done about it?" "Yes. If I win in the Sixways Exhibition, I'll be able to save everything." "The winner'll get any wish of theirs granted!"
They were words Kia heard on her first day in Aureatia.
Right. Jivlart's her hero candidate.
That was why Elea put up with all the violence that came her way and propped up a hero candidate in the Sixways Exhibition. To save Kia's homeland. "But…even then, I don't want someone like him coming to the rescue.
Besides, whatever happens to my homeland… It doesn't really concern you anyway, right?"
"Of course it does." Elea patted Kia's head.
When she had been Kia's home tutor in Eta, they were always at each other's throats, quarreling like sisters even, yet ever since they had arrived in Aureatia, Elea had grown totally gentle and kind. Thanks to the loneliness of her current life, she had become feeble and dispirited.
"After all, Kia, you're my student." "…U-um, s-supposing!"
A carriage was passing through the main road.
It was an army carriage. In Aureatia, the soldiers had become part of daily
life and could be found wherever Kia looked.
"Just supposing Eta really does get attacked, I… I'll stand up to the whole Aureatia army myself and beat them. I'll protect Eta."
"Yes. You might be able to do that."
"Right? After all, I just have to say, 'Blow them away,' and no matter however many thousands come at once, I'll send them flying in a gust of wind. I could even make them blow up with fire—or make the earth swallow them up."
This wasn't merely a child's braggadocio.
Kia was capable of turning even these grand boasts into reality. Whether it was changing the weather with just a word or making an endless military force disappear in the blink of an eye. Such omnipotent power had been gifted to her from birth.
"..."
"Hee-hee. I know that. You wouldn't do anything like that, Kia." "…Don't say that like you know for sure."
Each individual soldier in the Aureatia army might have had a family of their own. Like Kia's friend or the bakery owner. There may have been more interconnected relationships within the army than she could possibly imagine.
Fighting the Aureatia army is absurd.
Kia had spent too much time in Aureatia to declare that whatever happened to them didn't concern her.
Moreover, after she exterminated a military force to defend Eta, would all the people in her homeland still show her the same love that they had before? To a murderer of so many people?
"You're a kind child, Kia. That's so much more valuable than being invincible. That is what I believe."
"..."
She looked at the sky. The two moons should've been out in the sky, but a thick cloud was blocking them from her view.
Kia was close to whispering "Clear up." Just like she had casually whispered on a whim one day back in her homeland.
I am invincible.
With just a word, she could turn any and every intention of hers into reality.
Even when it came to the very shoes on her feet, she could make as many of them as she wanted.
There wasn't an enemy in the land who could threaten Kia. No matter what threat confronted her, Kia's Word Arts could eliminate it.
…Still. Is there any "enemy" out there who would truly make it necessary to go that far?
Time continued on toward the Sixways Exhibition.
To what would be a fight between Rosclay the Absolute and Jivlart the Ash Border.
Later that night.
Elea had an apartment separate from the estate where she lived with Kia, under a different name. An apartment for receiving radzio reports from her liaison.
"It seems Kia's caught wind of the Eta offensive perfectly. I was able to confirm things on my end, as well."
On the other end of the radzio was an instructor at Iznock Royal High School. His public persona, at the very least.
"That concludes your assignment. There'll be no more communication until the end of the Sixways Exhibition, and you're to stay undercover. Understood?"
Elea cut the line.
There were several of Elea's undercover agents who had infiltrated Iznock Royal High School, as it was one of the few places where it was possible to make direct contact with Queen Sephite. They would carry out orders through exchanges of conversation and every day commodities, and she would pay them when they achieved results—that was the extent of the relationship. Her agents would never inquire about their given orders. One group of them acted as Sephite's cronies and attempted to make Kia come into contact with the Queen.
A few days ago, the matchups for the tournament had been decided.
Everything was proceeding exactly according to her schemes.
Elea had deliberately ensured information on the Eta invasion was leaked to Kia. Even if it was a slight seed of doubt at first, once planted, it would be difficult for a young child like Kia to uproot the danger from her mind.
"…Useful resources aren't only things visible to the naked eye."
Leader of Aureatia's intelligence division—Seventeenth Minister, Elea the Red Tag.
Even if an assault on Eta did indeed become a reality, she herself would be the one responsible for it. Depending on how Kia acted going forward, she could either send her squads into action or stop them.
Furthermore, the information itself that Eta would be attacked could be used as a resource of its own.
With it, she would narrow the available courses for Kia to protect her homeland until only one remained.
She rubbed the bruise on the back of her neck. A mark from where Jivlart had hit her.
However, Elea had known full well that she would be subjected to this sort of violence.
It's okay. I'm not the same as my mother.
Jivlart the Ash Border, like Kia, was a necessary piece in her plot. Those who lacked character were easier to manipulate, and when it came time to discard him, she could do so without any regrets.
"Terms' better than Rosclay's" had been his words.
Jivlart should already be wrapped up in Rosclay's camp's schemes. Rosclay's moves during the Sixways Exhibition are far more discreet and thorough than I had expected.
Jivlart was set to receive a far greater reward than victory by safely losing the first-round match. He likely intended on adding weight to his own accomplishments by claiming he crossed swords with the world's strongest knight.
It would then tie to Sun's Conifer's reputation as well, and with his relationship with Rosclay's camp, he could gain a stabler foundation for his activities in Aureatia going forward.
Clever. I didn't want him thinking things through that far.
To Elea, Jivlart's role was to be the bait ensuring a first-round fight against Rosclay. There may have been someone even stupider than Jivlart—someone actually convinced that they stood a chance at victory over Rosclay the Absolute
—but within the limited amount of time, Elea's individual efforts hadn't been able to find someone more suitable than Jivlart, possessing both fighting skills and notoriety.
Up to the moment the Sixways Exhibition started, she had no one on her side.
She needed to fight all on her own.
If he has already joined up with Rosclay, I'll need to change course to get rid of Jivlart before the match. I need to win the first match… Rosclay is the one I
need to ensure loses, no matter what…
Even if it was merely an ostensible, forward-facing position, the Twenty- Nine Officials were originally only supporting one single hero candidate. The Second General, Rosclay the Absolute.
By crushing Rosclay first and foremost, she could bring the largest faction over to her side. That was Elea's goal.
There's too great of a difference in the total power we can devote to intrigue, and at best, I'll only be able to win one battle. But in the first round, if I defeat Rosclay at the start, I'll then be able to hijack Rosclay's camp's plans for the second round and beyond. Who possesses the power most suited to become the hero. Who we should secure victory for. I just need to place Kia into that position, instead of Rosclay.
Starting from the second round, when the sixteen candidates will be trimmed down to eight, the Queen will be spectating the matches in person. With but a word from the Queen, it would be easy to overrule which hero candidate Aureatia should be promoting.
It was for that purpose that she was also scheming to bring the Queen and Kia closer together.
Overwhelming power was already within Elea's grasp. All that was left was to obtain someone to support her.
I have the World Word on my side. A trump card that no one would even imagine exists.
She rubbed the bruise on the back of her neck again.
Kia had worried about this wound of hers and tried to take her out. A tiny child like her.
…It would be okay. Kia had plenty of faith in Elea and certainly wouldn't suspect a thing. She would never dream that she was being wrapped up in a conspiracy.
"I mean, you're lonely, right?" It's fine.
Elea closed her eyes, as if to hide from the blinking lights in the starry night sky outside her window.
Elea had always been on her own. She didn't need to trust anyone.
Before her Sixways Exhibition match started, she would arrange all these schemes by herself.
First, Rosclay.
At the end of the darkness, there was sure to be light waiting.