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To prepare against monster attacks, the Order of Holy Knights had established several barracks throughout the city. The barracks where Elt was stationed was located just off the main street, and his unit's training grounds were nearby.
"Let me see, right about now, big brother should be... just getting done with Ms. Mercè's training, I suppose."
Sure enough, the barracks were crowded with soldiers just back from training. The average woman might grimace at the characteristic stench of sweat, but Mimiru's many suppression expeditions had thoroughly accustomed her to such smells. She wouldn't have been able to engage in magical combat if she let a little dirt bother her — a magician's job was not limited to reciting spells in safe zones.
Passing through the midst of the soldiers exhausted by intense drilling under Instructor Mercè, who handled her halberd so manfully that she seemed to have forgotten her own sex, Mimiru sprang into Elt's view. The other soldiers in the barracks paid no particular attention to her behavior, and made no move to greet her. They all recognized her presence as a part of everyday routine — Oh, I guess that guy's going to get told off again; That guy must be a real masochist to take Lady Mimiru's insults like that every time; He doesn't look like he minds it half as much as he'd like us to believe. It was just another scene of everyday life in the barracks.
"Big brother!"
When Mimiru arrived before Elt, he was sitting on a bench and performing maintenance on the weapons used in training. Most of the types of weapons used by soldiers of the church — long sword, lance, battle axe, mace, and so on — were leaning against the wall near him. The weapons to his right were practically sparkling, and those on his left were dirty with soil and grime. The weapons arranged on his left side were numerous enough that it was probably impossible for him to service all of them in his break time. Actually, it was doubtful he could do it even if he took all day.
"Hm? Oh, little Mimiru. Welcome."
Elt paused in his weapon maintenance and turned to face Mimiru. In spite of the difficult maintenance he was performing after being worked hard all day, there was hardly a trace of exhaustion in his voice. Considering that training had left him out of breath at first, Mimiru supposed that he had made remarkable progress. Regardless, she was merciless in her assessment.
"You got beaten black and blue again, huh? Looks like you're still pretty weak, big brother."
"You sure are harsh. I'm making progress every day, you know?"
"How so?"
"Well, I can last several minutes longer in a bout with the instructor."
"What good does making the fight last longer do you? In battle, boasting about what a long time you were fighting seems pretty dumb."
"Ha ha ha. I guess you're right. Still, I've made a lot of improvement controlling my lance and my body compared to when I enlisted."
"So what! It doesn't matter how much you improve if you can't defeat your opponent! At least save that kind of talk for after you manage to score a point off Ms. Mercè. Honestly... You'll be no good in an emergency in this state."
If this conversation had been between a brother and sister, the nearby soldiers would doubtless have been looking on in amusement. But soldiers who have been called "weak" by an operations planner generally feel, to use a vulgar expression, "snubbed." The words dent their egos like a charging minotauros or ogre dents a wall. It can, after all, be interpreted as a notification of their removal from the battle plan.
Elt accepted the words calmly, and retorted as if nothing was the matter. Doesn't this guy understand how serious what she's saying is? The thoughts of his fellows were almost audible.
"Anyway, I can't send you out to the front in this condition, so get stronger, okay? If you can't even make Instructor Mercè's shoulder touch the ground, you'll end up dying when you fight a monster!
"Well, if it comes to that, I, 'little' Mimiru, will get 'em with my magic! Zapapow♪"
Elt responded to Mimiru's confident boast with a smile.
"Thanks for your concern, but I'll be getting stronger anyway."
Mimiru, frustrated that Elt appeared unfazed by anything she said to him, shouted one last jibe at the top of her lungs, turned on her heel, and departed.
"If that's how you feel, hurry up and get strong enough that I won't have to worry! Or maybe you'd rather give up on the Holy Knights and scurry off home?"
That was just about the most sarcastic thing she could find to say to Elt, who probably had no home to return to. Consciously or unconsciously, she had struck at his weak point, but Elt evaded even this surprise attack.
"No need to worry about me. But if you get lonely, feel free to come here any time!"
Elt couldn't tell if his voice had reached Mimiru, but going by the fact that her footsteps seemed to become rather louder, he decided that it had, and resumed the "voluntary" weapon maintenance that her visit had interrupted.
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After Mimiru left the barracks, a soldier who had also been receiving training there and whose original social standing had been close to Elt's came to retrieve a weapon.
"Oh, 's fixed! Thanks! I 'ad no idea what was wrong wiv it!"
"Dust had built up and hardened where the blade joins the hilt. I had a hard time getting it out. How long's it been since you last serviced it?"
"Hmm. Don't rightly remembah!"
Elt flashed a wry smile at his comrade, who laughed heartily. This soldier frequently came to Elt with requests to fix his weapons. "I can use em, but when it comes to fixing em, well..." Was his usual refrain. Every time there was a campaign, all his comrades, himself included, worried that he would go to an early grave.
"Ah, me lovely little battle axe!"
While gazing at the newly-repaired weapon with the eyes of a parent being reunited with a daughter who had been left with relatives, the soldier unexpectedly broached a new topic.
"It's not right, Elt."
"What isn't?"
The soldier jerked forward and stared Elt straight in the eyes.
""Ow can ya talk so normally ta the Lady Mimiru? If somebody saw ya like that they'd think ya were brothah 'n' sistah."
"'The'?"
At that answer, the soldier heaved a sigh. Didn't he understand the seriousness of the situation? Another soldier, whose specialty, if one had to say one way or the other, was more brains than brawn, came up from behind Elt, who did not understand why he was being sighed at, and cut into the conversation.
"Mimiru Miltié. In terms of practical ability, she's the current number one at the College of Sorcery, the organization that trains magicians for the magic combat units out country is so proud of. And they say she's number one by a wide margin, at that. Her single-handed repulsion of the 'Burst Gang,' followed by the amazoness expulsion, the banishment of the echidnas, and so on, she established a record of distinguished military service that common soldiers like us can't hold a candle to. On top of that, she's got a hand in planning some of the operations we carry out. I can't imagine how Elt finds the nerve to speak to her so familiarly; especially being so rude as to call someone who might as well be a divine being as far as we're concerned 'little.' He really ought to receive her respectfully and take a step back to show deference."
Elt nodded his comprehension. He'd known she was powerful, and he'd heard such things from her own mouth any number of times, but when her achievements were explained to him plainly like this and seeing the reaction of his fellow soldiers made them more convincing. The ordinary way he spoke to her could not help seeming strange.
"Well, I know how powerful she is, and that she's quite a bit smarter than me, but..."
Even her harsh criticism of him seemed almost natural when he considered that she had been blessed with such rare talent, and had performed feats to match. But to Elt, that information was completely meaningless. It would make no difference to him even if she were actually to perform great magics before his eyes, or to demonstrate thought and knowledge two or three steps ahead of his own.
"Somehow or other, when I'm talking with little Mimiru, even though I'm just an unruly orphanage brat, I end up feeling strangely like I'm dealing with a child trying to act like an adult. Maybe she's forcing herself to overreach. Like, even though she wants to act like a spoiled child, she's refusing to let herself. The sort of lonely person who can't be honest with her feelings, you know?"
"..."
Elt was sighed at by all his fellow soldiers. How could anyone have such an impression of the cornerstone of the holy nation of Lescatié's war potential?
Without piercing the surface, one cannot know the substance. Yet most behave as if they know by the outward appearance alone.
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There was a place Mimiru visited in secret after finishing her work at the College of Sorcery. Not to say that it was a secret hideout or anything like that, as was so common among children of her age. Mimiru had nothing of the kind, and her destination was a place well known to many people in Lescatié. Even so, Mimiru didn't want her visit to be known. On the contrary, she wanted to keep it as unknown as she possibly could. She was certain that if anyone found out, it would become a source of malicious rumors. "What is Lady Mimiru doing in a place like this?" they would ask.
The slums, a corner of what was known as the "poor quarter" where rows of uneven and conspicuously rickety buildings stood in contrast to the luxurious and beautiful metropolis of capital district. That was Mimiru's destination. The cobbled streets were in a poor state of repair, and the whole place had the unsanitary atmosphere of a campground. It was not a place to inspire fondness in ordinary sensibilities. But Mimiru had made her way there countless times, merely to view a certain scene from far off.
"..."
There, at the end of Mimiru's gaze, was a little square before a small church, where a group of children her own age or perhaps a bit younger were playing.
"Merche! This time you're it!"
"Nine, eight, seven, six... Wait for me!"
"Welcome to our store.♪"
"I'd like one of these, please.♪"
Sasha Folmoon's church in the slums doubled as an orphanage, and the boys and girls Mimiru was watching were the children lived there.
A boy with raggedly cut brown hair was racing mischievously around the square, playing tag with a group of boys whose hair was close-cropped. Meanwhile, a group of girls led by a girl with brown hair gathered into two bunches and another with long, bronze hair were enjoying themselves playing house. There were smiles on their faces as they used bits of the trash scattered about the slums, worn-out ribbons and the like, as goods in a make-believe shop, and exchanged shells and bits of tattered paper in place of currency.
"..."
I'm jealous. Mimiru tried to suppress the emotions welling up inside her. That mysterious warmth was something she wished for, but could not have. Even just watching them, she could feel the itchy, sour, somehow comfortable atmosphere... But it was a distant feeling that had nothing to do with her. Even if, for the sake of argument, the opportunity to obtain that feeling had appeared before her that instant, she probably couldn't have brought herself to trust in it. And even if she did obtain it, she would probably continue to doubt. Why would anyone do something like this for me? What do they expect to get out of it? No doubt, unable to fit in with that atmosphere, she would end up growing dissatisfied and agonize over whether this was really what she had wanted as those feelings accumulated inside her.
She was different from those boys and girls. They didn't know anything. Nothing at all. Mimiru knew what the children did not, and yet she could not stop wanting what they had...
"..."
Her longings still unfulfilled, Mimiru trudgingly made her way home. Both her parents should already be home by this time. Already the sky was madder red. It was growing late for a child to be out walking alone. Besides which, properly speaking, Mimiru could not stay in a place like this for long.
"...Hey! This time..."
"...ah, dress up..."
Mimiru, the children's joyous cries still rising at her back, recited an incantation under her breath. A fist sized light whooshed into being on her palm. She chanted another spell, and the light split into five, twined around her fingers, and just like that became a set of rings that emitted light.
It would probably take those children five or ten years to learn even this elementary spell. And that was assuming that they were frugal with the time they spent sleeping and playing and devoted themselves entirely to the study of magic. But could she, who at roughly the same age as those children could perform it effortlessly, say that she was really more blessed than they...?
"..."
Still harboring oozing, unclear feelings, Mimiru extinguished the rings of light on her fingers.
Thus ability undermines the heart. If an unwanted gift purports to be a divine miracle, ought the god who performed it truly be revered?
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"...Your highness."
"Really, there's no need to be so formal... my dear little black goat.♪"
"...It is I who should be asking your highness to stop referring to me in that way. And I would prefer not to eat while correspondence remains unread."
"No way!♪ I mean, you're the one who won't call me anything but 'your highness.' And I prefer not to sit alone in a high tower evaluating heroes while there's still cake uneaten."
"But the example it sets for your followers—"
"You know, you only need to worry about tiny details like that when my followers are watching. The only ones here are me and you, so it doesn't matter what kind of example I set."
"Your highness... No, Lady Druella—"
"Drop the 'lady' too. You know you're different from the children I've changed."
"...Druella."
"Very good!♪ Now, Lucella, you said you wanted to talk to me?"
"Finally getting to the point? Well...
"Druella, about this invasion. There's someone I'd like you to let me face."
"Someone other than the little hero and the princess? Those two are off limits, you know? I'm going to 'expand their horizons' myself.♪"
"Of course. I would never be so boorish as to take one of your opponents. ...This girl."
"...Lucella, you aren't..."
"You don't need to worry, Druella. I'm not harboring any malice against this girl. But I want to see what the one who brought my old friends Monique and Harum to their knees is made of."
"...I understand. Well then, it's almost time for me to step out."
"Thank you for understanding so quickly, Druella. My preparations to sortie are complete. I'll have it commence at your signal—
"The invasion of Lescatié."
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