Anytime. As Much as She Needs.

Time to clean up.

Albert brought a chair and set it in front of me.

I crossed one leg over the other and sat.

Wounded people being tended to, Military Police officers at their work, dark elves who had burst in ready to take over and found themselves on the wrong end of that plan — every eye in the room was on me.

“Have Arsen stay outside and hold the perimeter. Officers, see to the wounded. The partygoers will want to leave, but keep them here for now — there are press considerations.”

“Sir! Second-Rank Officer Mirei! Understood!”

Mirei snapped a salute and withdrew.

While I was speaking, Albert dropped to one knee in front of me, head bowed.

A formal salute.

The Military Police officers and the human nobles watching from a distance murmured among themselves.

A dark elf of obviously high rank, prostrating himself before a human — that was not an ordinary thing to witness.

Albert, on his knee before me, said,

“I make this request in humility — let me stay, and send my subordinates free.”

Arsen was outside, the perimeter was sealed. I could wipe out these latecoming dark elves on a word if I chose.

Part of me genuinely considered sending a warning to the Queen of Assassins then and there.

“A Division Chief is an extraordinarily high rank among your people. Logic says your subordinates should be the ones who die buying you an escape.”

“What would I do with myself, walking away alive over their corpses?”

He was offering his own neck to spare his men.

I asked without thinking.

“Were you a war veteran?”

“Yes. I served on the front lines from the seventh year of the campaign, under His Majesty.”

“……I beg your pardon — your father’s name?”

“Georg. Although I’m not sure why you’d——”

Oh.

So that was why the face looked familiar.

This was the son of the man who had stepped forward in my place to hold back the Seven Sin God’s pursuit — to let me escape.

I had spoken briefly with him once about his son, Albert, also serving in the imperial forces.

He had even shown me a portrait.

“……”

A wave of feeling swept through me.

In any other circumstances, the one who owed a bow would be me.

Your father saved my life.

And here was the son, a veteran himself.

Whatever else — a former comrade-in-arms.

“Hhhh.”

I shook my head slowly.

When I thought it through, what fault was any of this on them?

They had orders from above, and they followed them.

“On your feet.”

“……”

“I said get up.”

Albert rose carefully.

I gathered myself and spoke.

“Where is the Queen of Assassins right now? And I don’t mean a specific location. Can you reach her?”

“I’m not in a position to answer that.”

“Then pass a message when you return. Tell her I’d like to meet.”

The situation was growing messier by the day. I needed information.

And beyond that — having at least one of the empresses working with me rather than around me would be better for everyone.

Setting aside whatever personal feelings I had, the empresses were the empire’s acting rulers. Working completely around them would be the greater gamble.

When I thought it through from every angle, winning the Queen of Assassins’ cooperation was the fastest path forward.

Albert hesitated.

“You’re truly letting us go?”

“You’d rather work to stay?”

“……The grace you’ve shown us is beyond measure. We will not forget it. Though I cannot offer you my family name, I swear this — I will fight for you with everything I have, once, if you ever call on it.”

Albert said it with solemnity.

For a dark elf, revealing one’s family name was an oath that pledged one’s very soul — this was one step below that. The promise of absolute effort, once called upon.

But I shook my head firmly.

“No. You’ve already given enough.”

Your father gave his life. And now you’ve fought at my side as well.

The debt runs the other direction, if anything. The shame is mine.

I kept my voice warm.

“Go carefully.”

“……”

Albert bowed his head deep and long, then withdrew.

I turned to the Military Police officer beside me.

“Tell the Central Police to use Arsen’s name for now — we’ll explain everything properly later. And——”

Then laughter broke out.

Slowly building.

“Hahahaha! Hahahahahaha!”

Laughter, in a room where people had just died and been carried out.

Everyone who had been tending wounds, binding injuries, turned to look.

The one laughing was Luke — pinned on his knees between two Military Police officers.

From all the way across the room, he stared at me with eyes burning with hatred.

“Me? Incompetent? You called me incompetent?”

“……”

Pointless defiance?

No.

My instincts — the ones forged across endless wars — were sounding.

This man was about to do something catastrophic.

I swept Luke’s condition with clairvoyance.

Both arms severed, no way left to act——

His teeth. His molars.

Clairvoyance cut through him like an x-ray. Lodged in the hollow of a molar: a capsule.

A suicide poison capsule?

No. Far worse than that.

“Kill him!”

I threw myself out of the chair and shouted it, but the Military Police officers couldn’t move fast enough.

I launched into a Mana Sprint with my sword already drawn, but——

Crunch.

Luke bit down on the capsule first.

BOOM!

Jet-black mana erupted from Luke’s body, flinging the officers on either side of him through the air.

Then it came rolling toward me like a wave.

I threw up a Telekinetic Barrier and channeled everything I had.

FSSSHHHHK!

The black mana’s thorns stopped a hand’s width from my chest.

An ordinary person would never have blocked it.

“Everyone back! That’s an order!”

I bellowed it until my throat burned and charged straight at Luke.

Shhhwooo.

Jet-black mana coiled around Luke’s risen form. Where his arms had been, that darkness roiled and surged in their place.

“Hahahaha! Power! I’m overflowing with power! Yes! This is it!”

Black mana poured from his laughing mouth and nose like smoke.

Something was deeply wrong.

I stopped and asked.

“Do you have any idea what you just took?”

Mana changed color as it climbed in rank.

First rank: red. Second rank: orange. Third rank: yellow.

But black mana existed nowhere in those seven ranks.

This was corrupted mana.

“That’s the Seven Sin God’s mana, you lunatic!”

Contact with a fragment of the Seven Sin God corrupted mana and turned it black.

Dark mana.

Overwhelming in power — but it burned through the soul, and the only destination was complete destruction.

I had watched it happen during the war, more times than I cared to count.

Luke, wreathed in black mana, looked at me and began to laugh.

“Hahaha! The power of god? Even better! I’ll kill everyone with this! Starting with you, the one who disrespected me — then my brother’s already dead — I’ll kill them all! Hahaha, I feel like I could kill anything!”

“……”

He’s drunk on the dark mana’s madness.

Leave him, and he’ll drown the entire capital in blood.

“I’ll join you!”

Albert called out from a distance, turning back.

I shook my head.

“No — get the people out first! That’s the priority!”

“Sir!”

The dark elves who had come to take over and ended up empty-handed ran out into the crowd, guiding people toward the exits.

Fortunately, Luke’s attention fixed entirely on me.

“Die, Librata!”

He slammed his palm into the floor. Black mana became a wave and came crashing in.

KRAKAKAAK!

It tore through the stone floor and surged forward.

I sprinted sideways to dodge, but Luke slammed the floor again.

“Hahahaha! Hahaha! The man who was so confident — all he does is run! Hahaha!”

“……”

I kept my path away from the crowd and gave ground, watching.

Those waves of mana would kill an ordinary person on contact. One mistake and it was a civilian massacre.

I couldn’t take a direct hit either.

“But running forever isn’t exactly exciting, is it?”

Luke’s eyes lit up — and he swung his hand toward the crowd still scrambling for the exits.

No, he feinted.

He was baiting me.

Knowing it was a trap and walking straight in anyway.

Fine, then!

“Haah!”

I drew my sword and hit Mana Sprint, charging directly at Luke.

Luke spun around and hurled a wave of dark mana straight at me.

KRAKAKAKAAK!

A wall of black mana over a meter high, coming to tear me apart.

I had already seen it coming. I rolled sideways to avoid it — and threw my sword.

“What the——”

Ordinary people couldn’t channel mana through a thrown weapon.

Which meant a thrown blade couldn’t punch through a mana shield.

But I was not ordinary.

“Ngh!”

Luke registered the mana in the thrown blade a half-second too late and twisted his body in a panic.

His opening.

THOOM!

Continuing the sideways roll, I drove my heel into the floor and launched.

WHIRRRRL!

Soaring through the air, I spun my body — turning through the trajectory, lining up the approach.

Close enough to finish it.

Luke, dodging the blade, swung his arm on pure reflex.

FSSSHHHHK!

Black mana crashed over me.

I held the Telekinetic Barrier for one split second — just long enough — and drove my fist down into the crown of Luke’s skull.

KRAAKK!

Luke’s body folded and his face smashed into the floor.

The impact was enormous — his body bounced back up off the floor like a spring.

The Telekinetic Barrier hadn’t caught all of it. I was bleeding from head to toe.

But I was in close, and now I held on.

“RAAAGH!”

I touched down, wrenched my posture upright with telekinesis the moment my feet hit the floor, and reached for Luke as he bounced upward.

“Wh — what the——”

Luke thrashed in midair, stunned. His body’s convulsions sent black mana spraying, slashing across my cheek, my neck, tearing into my side.

SSSHHK!

But I had closed the distance, and I kept it.

I pressed my fingers tight together and drove them into Luke’s chest.

Telekinetic Penetrating Strike.

Where the Telekinetic Fist multiplied the force of a blow — and the Telekinetic Palm detonated telekinesis inside the body — the Penetrating Strike drove straight through an enemy’s mana defense and shredded the flesh beneath.

“UGHHK!”

Luke vomited blood but kept thrashing, still fighting.

I tightened the hand I had buried in his chest and closed it into a fist.

Crushing the heart.

KRAAKK!

“Grrk.”

The heart was the source of mana.

That held true for the Seven Sin God’s dark mana as well.

“Hhhh — hhhh……”

It was over.

I pulled my hand free and threw Luke to the floor.

“Gk — grrhk. Grk.”

Luke convulsed and looked up at me.

By any ordinary measure, that should have been instant death. But the dark mana mutation was still keeping him breathing.

He laughed as he wheezed.

“It doesn’t…… it doesn’t matter. The empire ends anyway. The god are returning. Returning. Ahh, they are coming! They are coming! On your knees before them! Worship them!”

“Is that right? All the better, then. This time I’ll be able to finish them off properly.”

Luke went still mid-rant.

The look in his eyes changed as he stared at me.

“You…… what did you just……”

“Still haven’t figured out who I am?”

I set my foot on his chest.

“While I am here, the empire wins. That is how it always goes.”

Luke blinked. And then, as something clicked behind his eyes, horror spread across his face.

“You — you can’t be——”

KRRRNNCH!

I crushed what remained of his chest entirely.

The dark mana holding him together went out like a snuffed candle.

“Haaah……”

A long exhale, and then the tension left me. Pain flooded in to fill the space.

Every part of me — face, neck, chest, all of it — soaked in blood.

“Amelia is going to have words about this.”

I looked down at my hands and almost laughed.

Crimson going dark red, not a clean patch anywhere.

My own blood, mixed with what had been Luke’s.

“Oh——”

“Is — is it over?”

The crowd that had been fighting to push through the exits froze the moment they realized the noise had stopped. When I turned to look, they flinched as one and refused to meet my eyes.

Well. Understandable enough. Punching a man’s heart out of his chest wasn’t exactly the look of someone gentle and approachable.

“Doesn’t matter. Win the floor, that’s all you need.”

I made my slow way back toward the chair.

The Military Police officers who had been thrown off their feet scrambled upright and snapped to attention.

“What a display of valor, sir.”

“That was — remarkable.”

“Without you here, Special Officer, this could have been catastrophic!”

“Save the flattery. It’s over. The officers — both of them?”

The officers looked at each other blankly. I repeated it.

“The two who were with Luke when he went off. If they’re breathing, see to them now.”

“Yes, sir!”

Officers rushed to where their comrades had fallen.

“They’re alive!”

“No major wounds that I can see!”

Luke had just started to break loose when it happened — his power hadn’t peaked yet. That had kept the blast from being lethal.

I dropped into the chair and let out a long breath.

Ow. Everything aches. Every single part of me.

One of the officers stepped forward and draped a blanket across my shoulders.

Eyes full of that particular shine.

Admiration. Reverence.

I had dealt with Luke’s rampage alone, and the first thing I had asked afterward was whether their comrades were alive.

But I was tired now. Genuinely tired.

“Your wounds need attention, sir. I’ll fetch a healing potion!”

“Sore all over, but not dying. Use whatever you have on the civilians first — there were people cut before we could get control. That’s the Military Police’s duty, isn’t it?”

“Y-yes, but——”

“Don’t just stand there. Go. All of you. I need a moment.”

“We’ve already got everyone covered!”

“Right, then. Mirei stays. Everyone else out. You’re making it loud.”

“……”

“Not going? I’m tired.”

Officers peeled away with reluctant looks. Mirei remained.

I propped my chin on a blood-soaked hand.

The original plan had been to take Luke alive and pull information from him in interrogation.

Then he had to go and produce dark mana of all things.

This was growing more serious by the day.

That was when I saw Miriel coming toward me, her hand in Lisera’s.

The situation was over.

I started to raise a hand in greeting — and stopped.

The hand I had just lifted was covered in blood. All of it was.

Not something to wave at a child.

I turned quickly and wiped my hand on the side of Mirei’s uniform.

“Special Officer! That tickles!”

“Hold still! I need to wipe this off! Just stay still for a second!”

“That’s my lower back!”

“You wouldn’t stop squirming! Your fault entirely! Now what are you going to do about it? Take some responsibility!”

“……Sh-should I — buy you cake?”

I had been trying to clean up before the girls got close enough to see, but it was already too late.

Miriel and Lisera were right in front of me.

I put my hands behind my back and managed an awkward smile.

“……Well. The situation has been resolved. You’re both safe now. Your Highnesses.”

“Miriel has agreed to come back to Welling Manor with me. Would that be all right?”

“Of course. I hope the Third Princess will feel welcome to stay as long as she likes.”

I answered while carefully not quite meeting Miriel’s eyes.

Standing stiffly, hands clasped behind my back.

……The truth was, something quiet had crept up on me.

What if what she had just watched — what I had done — was too awful? Too frightening?

Then Lisera spoke.

“Would you show Sister Miriel your hands?”

“……Ah. They’re really not fit to be seen.”

I hesitated, but held them out anyway.

Hands caked in blood. A sight to turn a stomach.

But Miriel didn’t flinch. She took out the handkerchief she had been holding and began to wipe my hands clean.

The white cloth went red immediately. She didn’t stop. She worked into every crease between my fingers, thorough and careful.

Not a trace of reluctance on her face.

“……Did it hurt?”

“No, I’m perfectly fine. That’s the other man’s blood — the bad one.”

I said it with a smile, but Miriel’s face was tight, close to tears.

I was bleeding from several places across my face and arms, after all.

“It’s just a scrape. Please don’t worry.”

“Miriel is finding it difficult to speak comfortably, so would you mind dropping the formal speech?”

Lisera’s gentle nudge.

Usually it would be the other way around — but I nodded without thinking much of it.

Miriel was pressing something down with everything she had, her face full of effort.

“……Will you keep my secret?”

“I will.”

The secret of the healing medicine.

She would have heard from Lisera that I already knew.

Miriel gave a slow nod, still looking at me. Then, without any warning——

She buried herself in my chest.

It was completely unexpected.

Wonderful — and terrifying that someone might see, both at once.

I wanted to pull her close immediately, but couldn’t quite bring myself to——

“Oh……”

And then, from somewhere deep inside me, warmth began to spread outward.

The front of my shirt grew slowly damp at my chest — and the wounds there began to close.

Small, trembling shoulders.

Miriel was crying.

Everything she had held back, every tear she had forced down — it broke open now, soaking into my chest.

“Thank you…… for helping me.”

The two beside her — Lisera and Mirei — had quietly turned their backs and formed a wall between us and the rest of the room.

And in that moment I understood.

There were dozens of people busy all around us.

This fragile secret could be exposed at any moment.

And still Miriel could not leave me covered in blood. So she healed me.

Even knowing all the risk.

“Oh.”

My chest felt like it might burst.

I pulled my daughter into both arms and held her close.

Because this child’s heart was too good.

Because she was too dear, and too brave, for words.

Pressing back the heat rising behind my own eyes.

I ran a hand gently down Miriel’s back.

“You’ve had a hard time of it, haven’t you?”

“……”

The sound of quiet sobbing.

I wrapped both arms around Miriel and spoke softly.

“It’s over now. If you want to cry, go ahead.”

“……Oh. Ohh.”

The crying grew.

I held my daughter tighter and said nothing more.

Tears broke from my chest.

“Daddy…… Daddy……”

The words came out without thought.

Not because she knew I was Sirik — but because her body knew before her mind did.

The very first word any child learns.

The name they call out first when things become too much to bear alone.

“It’s all right now.”

I said only that, again and again.

Because in a parent’s arms, a child is allowed to cry as much as she needs to.

Anytime.

As much as she needs.

I held Miriel until the crying stopped.

Simply that.

With everything I had.