12. It’s not over til it’s over (11)
#13 Their story: Atia nel Karuan’s story.
I watched Iris and Ast battle it out.
There would be no hope for success if things went on like this.
Iris was at her limits merely evading the silver-coloured cludgel.
Simply surviving for that long against a blatantly broken weapon that inflicted pain simply by making contact with your sword would be an incredible feat in itself.
If it were any other time I would have praised her even if she lost, but not this time.
It’s Ast.
For ten years I waited, for ten years I prepared.
Yet the man whose face I never saw once through all ten of those years was right in front of me.
I could almost touch him if I just reached out my hand.
If I just reached out… I was within capturing distance…… but why did my hand never reach that place?
Ever since I was little, I had obtained everything I wanted.
The Karuan Empire was a superpower on the continent, and even the head of that superpower, the emperor, my father, could not refuse my words.
But, for the first time in my life, someone rejected my words.
At first it was fascinating.
All his actions were that of a petty lowlife’s, but if I thought of the way he treated me, there was no man as bold as he was.
He was not a genius.
But neither was he an idiot or a simple commoner.
Sometimes he looked like an idiot in the way he didn’t know obvious things, but at others he created new methods that not even I had managed to think of.
There was an old saying that the line between a genius and an idiot is a thin one, and watching Ast made me realise just what kind of person that idiom referred to.
So I was happy.
Because he and I could converse with each other on equal grounds, something that no one else had managed.
He was different to those who simply bowed their heads in front of imperial t.i.tle.
Ast’s eyes had no traces of fear or wariness.
Instead, how would I say it. Looks of exasperated apathy and ones that questioned just what was I up to again were plentiful.
Nor did he, like the ones who knew of my fate, look at as if I was a monster or send me looks of pity.
Instead he gave me looks that said ‘what kind of madwoman is this’ or ‘let’s not give her any attention’.
‘…All of a sudden it feels like I was treated quite meanly but that’s just me, right?’
As a laugh threatened to escape my lips as I recalled past memories, I clamped my mouth shut and barely managed to stop it.
Ast was always like this.
Unlike the others, he was close to me, much like Reia did, who knew everything.
But the only came close, he kept some distance from me and always maintained it.
A quaint distance that was neither too friendly, nor too distant.
Was it because of that distance?
I had always been thinking of death, and had thought I would die alone, but when death came for me, when I heard Ast’s voice, and unlike my normal self, I entertained a sudden small thought.
If I asked Ast to die with me, would he really die with his master?
The moment I thought of that I immediately knew the answer.
That he would never, ever do such a thing.
And so I smiled faintly as I said.
I’m inside so come in.
And I thought to myself.
If it’s together with you, at least the path to the underworld won’t be boring.
But because Ast came into my room that day, my fate was overturned.
Ast took away the death that had come for me.
The thing that all the people and resources of the empire couldn’t solve, Ast went and solved it.
I was surprised at my unexpected new life, but thinking that good things were good, I began to enjoy it.
I spent the days with Ast and Reia, and that didn’t change even after the Great War began.
We bullied Reia as if to outdo each other, we laughed along together at Ast’s acts of lunacy, and after we played together like that a few times the neighbouring country was conquered, and so we picked out a new target and started another war.
But in the middle of all that, Ast vanished.
At first I thought that Ast was insane enough to oversleep in the middle of a war.
When he was not discovered in his chambers I wondered if he was preparing something weird somewhere else.
And when the letter that said he would be leaving the imperial court was discovered, I worried whether he had been kidnapped by an enemy nation, in a manner quite unlike myself.
When I found out that he was originally a spy for the organisation named Howling, I was the most furious that I had ever been in my life.
That he had used me? No.
It was anger at the fact that between Howling, a parasite leeching off the empire, and myself, a princess of the empire, he had chosen Howling.
That I would lose to Howling of all things, there was no greater shame than this.
“Bring him to me, right now!”
In the middle of a war, I brought together my subordinates and began to throw a tantrum.
The empire’s hidden darkness? Trash naturally acc.u.mulated itself when you cleaned it out, so we had simply left the trash that was easy to take care of.
I could not stand the idea that my belonging was in the middle of that trash that could be dealt with at any time.
But right now we were at war.
No matter how much momentum we had behind us, in a situation where anything could happen, there was no way I would permit the creation of internal strife, and because of that, all I could do was endure and end the war as quickly as possible.
And so as I tempered my anger, and drank tea made with Reia’s amateur skills.
“Your Highness… you really like Ast too much.”
As Reia said so with a bitter smile, I dropped the teacup I was holding.
Like? Me? Ast?
I ignored a shocked Reia as I deeply thought over it.
Why was I so angry.
Why did it feel so stifling just because Ast wasn’t here.
Why did I so openly express my wish to see Ast.
“So it is.”
I, liked Ast.
It took two entire days for me to come to that conclusion.
And the answer I found at the end of those two days made me happy.
I never thought I would ever have the chance to love anyone, but thanks to Ast I had obtained yet another thing!
So I ceased all activity related to Ast’s search.
Ast had run away in disgust when I had simply threatened to marry him as a joke.
And how horrifying were his escape skills?
He had escaped without anyone the wiser in the middle of a warzone under maximum security.
If I were to carelessly lay my hands on him then I would only give him the opportunity to escape.
Therefore I had to set a perfect trap and create a situation where escape was impossible.
To create that scenario, I suffered a bit to end the war.
And I even lifted up my little brother so that he would become victorious in the fight for succession.
I created all sorts of excuses to liquidate the n.o.bles that had ties with Howling, and I secretly had my spies infiltrate Howling.
I also recruited his disciples that he had trained at Howling, and identified each and every one of the choices and decisions he could make.
And when I believed everything to be perfect, I eliminated Howling.
But… I missed Ast.
Everything was for the sake of capturing Ast, but the most important Ast escaped.
How much had I regretted my choices back then.
If I had taken action personally, the results could have been different.
So despite the opposition of countless bureaucrats of the imperial court, I had taken action personally.
I roamed many countries of the continent, sometimes I wheedled them, sometimes I threatened them.
And let alone humans, I had even been searching through the kingdoms of other races for Ast as well, and how happy was I when I heard that he was actually in the capital!
He was waiting for me in the best place where I could eliminate as many outlying variables as I could, where I could stage my plan the most effectively!
It was the moment when the scenario that was so perfect I even imagined that Ast could actually be waiting for me to arrive.
‘Although that’s broken now…’
How much time had pa.s.sed by.
The moments that flashed before my eyes like a revolving lantern, as if all my past memories were reliving themselves was invigorating.
I had previously said that looking forwards to the future was more efficient than looking back on the past, but only the past with Ast… no, the things that might be better called memories returned to me often.
“This time for sure.”
I will capture you.
I will not lose you again.
I am not an imbecile that would lose this opportunity right in front of my eyes.
For some bizarre reason, Ast was very popular with some very troublesome women, so the fact that I had even withheld information on Ast to my allies to prevent any intelligence from being leaked to them had backfired, but I could deal with that much.
Magic sealing device? All it did was interfere with the flow of magic power in a certain s.p.a.ce to freeze it.
Meaning, it wasn’t that mana wouldn’t move, but it moved irregularly so that it was hard to use.
Just that.
If I moved my magic power to match the new flow, then I could use magic again.
It might be impossible for ordinary people, but was I an ordinary person?
I am a woman of the Karuan Empire.
Of those who inherited the blood of the Karuan Imperial Family, said to be the descendants of a union between man and dragon, I was the one that had most strongly received the legacy of the dragons.
As a descendant of dragons, those called the masters of magic, lords of magic, it was inconceivable that I would be unable to manage that!
“It’s over, now……”
And when Iris began to fall not far from where I stood.
“It’s over, now……”
I, too, could almost perfectly understand this flow.
I didn’t even bother to imagine that the knights would be able to defeat Ast without mana.
Disregarding how disgusting his methods had been, Ast had defeated the Sword Heaven with his sword.
And even the Sword Heaven himself had admitted that Ast’s raw skill was not below his own.
So my knights’ role was to hold out until I could completely comprehend the flow.
Because of that, I didn’t interrupt his disagreeable conversations, but only laid out orders to prevent him from becoming suspicious.
And as a result, the silver flare of sword aura blazed on the sword in my hand once again.
“Hm?”
As he looked for me who said the exact same words that he had, his eyes bulged as they focused on the sword aura glowing on my blade.
The fact that his openly shocked expression was… quite cute was my little secret.
“Holy s.h.i.t?”
As always he said something that you wouldn’t believe he was saying to royalty, words that he’d have no rights to plead against were he to be executed for it, but it simply made me smile.
“This is the end.”
The will of my sword turned my steps into a dance.
And the martial art that arose from it was one of the imperial family’s secret styles.
A style that was said to have been created through imitation of an enraged blue dragon that lived in the ocean.
The Dragon King’s Sword, Chapter of Blue.(1)
“Countless Currents (千里萬波)”(2)
I watched silver waves gradually fill, then flood the small cave.
In the middle of this unfamiliar flow of mana, avoiding the knights and only aiming for Ast’s lower body is difficult.
But overcoming all these, my sword aura finally began to reach Ast’s legs.
“Were you really going to cut me!”
He deflected the first wave of sword aura with that silver weapon of his, but like its name, Countless Currents was an attack that created countless waves of sword aura crashing down on you.
As I saw Ast scream at my attack, I didn’t even think to wipe the sweat off my forehead as I shouted happily back to Ast.
“It’s alright, Ast! I won’t dislike you just because you’re missing some legs!”
My love for Ast wouldn’t disappear with just a paltry disability like that.
No, on the contrary, it is very good because then there wouldn’t be any pests attracted to him, and Ast could not run away.
“That’s not love but obsession!” Ast half-screamed as he jumped into the air.
“It doesn’t matter even if it is obsession.”
I gripped the hilt of my sword as I controlled the movements of the sword aura.
Manipulating sword aura that had already left my control was a very difficult task.
Moreover, doing so in a s.p.a.ce under lockdown by a magic-sealing device made the task all but impossible, but right now I could surpa.s.s that impossibility.
“Hoo.”
With a short breath, the wave of sword aura leaped upwards.
And as he looked down at the sight, Ast bit his lips and,
“Do or die!”(3)
“What are you doing!”
He adjusted his center of gravity mid-air, and placed his body in the path of the wave of sword aura.
“If you want my corpse, then take it!”
That’s a fake.
Could the man who prioritised his own well-being over anything else really risk his life like that?
Ast would never do such a thing.
‘But……”
Did a way to evade my attack in that position mid-air exist?
It is impossible without magic.
But let alone using magic himself, he had a bizarre const.i.tution where even spells casted onto him by other people simply vanished, so there was no way any such method existed for him.
“d.a.m.n… it… all!”
In the end, the one with the most to lose was me.
I wanted a live Ast, not his dead corpse.
“Haaaaaaaah!”
If I were a second late, then Ast could be diced into chunks of meat.
With all the strength I could muster, I forcibly bent the direction of the magic off-course.
Boom!
“Haah. Haa. Haah.”
I managed to end it with my sword aura just skimming beside Ast and breaking the wall behind him.
“Ast, now it really is over…”
“An opening!”
“Even now!”
Whose fault was it that I worked hard enough to drench my entire body with sweat, and he attacked in that moment!
‘But.’
Now it really was over.
Ast’s attack was to throw his only weapon, the metal bat.
I couldn’t guarantee what would happen to me if I got hit by that, but I was not exhausted enough to be unable to dodge that.
And inversely, the moment I dodged, I won.
Without the wooden bat or the metal bat, there was no way for Ast to defeat a swordsmaster.
Having perfectly evaded the metal bat thrown at me, I smiled victoriously and looked up at Ast.
“Now it’s truly over…”
‘He’s smiling?’
But before I could even finish.
The moment I saw Ast’s quaint smile and realised that something had gone horribly wrong.
“Ultimate move, Aru Punch☆”
As I heard a voice come from behind me, the world whited out.
As always, feel free to leave any suggestions and corrections in the comments.
(1) Original was 용왕검, 청색의 장, and as I do not read wuxia (KR or CN) I have little knowledge of what 장 translates to in this usage.
(2) I hate wuxia attack names. The literal translation of this would be smth like ‘(A) Thousand Leagues(2.5) (of) Torrential Currents”
(2.5) Referring to the unit of distance, literal translation would be li, same unit of distance as the Chinese one, which TIL has been standardised in the modern day to 500m
(3) I was so tempted to localise it to ‘leroy’ instead