The Eminence In The Shadow

It is a place that I have no recollection of. I look all around.

"We"re inside a memory."

So says Violet-san.

"Your memory?"

"I do seem to remember it."

So saying, she proceeds forward. I follow her so as to not be left behind.

After quietly walking through the forest for a period of time, our vision suddenly opens up. There is an open plaza brightly illuminated by the morning sun. And in the middle of the plaza is a small girl sitting on the ground, clutching her knees.

The little girl"s hair is black.

"She"s crying, isn"t she?"

"So it would seem."

The two of us approach the little girl.

I squat down to peer into her face, and notice tears flowing from her violet-colored eyes.

"She looks exactly like you."

"She only looks like me."

"Why do you think she"s crying?"

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"Did she perhaps wet herself?"

So says Violet-san. I"m pretty sure that"s not it.

The girl is crying without letting her voice spill out. The bruises all over her body are plain to see.

"So anyways, what are we supposed to do?"

"If we want to proceed, we have to end this memory."

"In other words?"

Violet-san lifts up the face of the crying girl.

"Crying won"t solve anything."

Then she slaps the little girl"s face with a loud sound.

"Horrible."

"It"s fine, it"s myself."

"So you do acknowledge it."

Then the world cracks. Just like a mirror shattering, the morning forest breaks into a thousand pieces, then disappears into a deep darkness.

Then we are in an empty darkness.

But I can still faintly make out Violet-san"s figure.

"Let"s keep going."

"Sure thing."

Inside the empty darkness, we continue towards the direction that our magic is begin sucked towards.

There is no other feeling in this place.

Even while walking, the feeling of my feet on the ground is vague, and I have almost no sense of up and down. As a test, I try to walk upside down, like when doing a handstand.

Oh, it works.

Violet-san looks at me walking upside-down with half-open eyes.

"Don"t peek into my skirt, alright?"

"I can"t see, so no worries."

After walking for a while longer, we are enveloped in a madder red light.

"Uwah."

I almost hit the ground head-first, but manage an ukemi in time.

"That"s what you get for fooling around."

Violet-san looks at me rolling on the ground, and stretches out a hand.

"Thanks."

I grasp that cold hand and stand back up.

This place is a battlefield lit by a setting sun. The blood-colored sun is s.h.i.+ning right above the horizon.

"Uwah, they"re all dead."

Fallen soldiers cover the land dyed black with blood. This continues to the horizon.

"Let"s get going."

Violet-san starts walking, as if she already knows where her destination is.

Literal mountains of corpses.

While stepping on corpse after corpse, we make our way through the twilight battlefield.

I, too, want to rampage in a battlefield like this one day.

After a while, we find a blood-covered little girl crying in the middle of the battlefield. We stop before her.

The girl is crying while clutching her knees, sitting on top of a corpse.

Even without looking at her face, I can tell that she"s Violet-san.

"You"re crying again."

"I was a crybaby. Lend me your sword."

"Here you go."

Violet-san raises the sword, and stands before the little girl. Her face is devoid of emotion, as if the emotions had been locked away somewhere else.

Violet-san swings down the sword.

That instant, I jump into motion.

Grabbing her waist, I fly backwards.

"The corpses!"

It seems she has noticed it too.

The soldier corpses are beginning to move, and one of them had almost cut her. If I hadn"t saved her, she would have been slashed.

"The Holy Ground is rejecting us... how troublesome."

"Like an anti-virus program reacting to a virus?"

So I ask while kicking away several zombies.

"Not sure I understand that comparison."

"Sorry, I don"t know it well either. By the way, what happens if you die?"

"Probably back to the jail at the start."

"Eh, that sounds like a pain. You know how to use the sword?"

"To some degree, I guess?"

"Then it seems better for me to use it."

I take my sword back from Violet-san, then start slas.h.i.+ng at the nearby soldiers.

I can bisect them in one swing, but then the next one stands up, until we are surrounded. I quickly give up trying to wipe them out, and instead s.h.i.+ft to trying to break through.

Violet-san stomps on the zombies on the ground with her heels.

"You really do seem meh without your magic."

"I told you, I"m just a fragile, dainty girl. On the other hand, you seem to be moving quite well even without magic."

"I told you, "no problem.""

I make a mowing attack with my sword, cutting down the zombies pressing in.

"I was able to weave magic even since young, so I had remodeled my body along with my growth. I optimized my body for fighting. My muscles, nerves, bones, and everything else, I processed and stimulated with magic."

After cutting down 3 with a swing, I then send one more flying with a kick.

The zombies individually are slow. They"ve only got numbers, so I feel like an absolute juggernaut at the moment.

"How overwhelming. You"re like an adult kicking children around."

"Couldn"t you have come up with a cooler comparison?"

"If there is a tournament for humans who can"t use magic, you"d take first place."

"Thanks for the upgrade in status."

But with that said, even I would reach my limits if I only continue fighting endlessly. Without magic, I cannot kill all of the zombies in this crowd that reaches all the way to the horizon.

How great it would have been if I could use magic and go on a rampage.

I force my way through, and stab the little girl who is still crying.

"Sorry."

Blood spills from the little girl"s mouth, then we are swallowed into a whirlpool together with all the zombies, and the world cracks again.

After the world splinters into a million pieces, we are standing in darkness again.

"You alright?"

"Thanks to you."

So Violet-san answers me as I put away my sword. Then we resume walking in the darkness, until we are once again enveloped in light.

We have reached the center of the Holy Ground.