Aisha stabbed her greatsword, which was still impaling Little Musashibo A, into the ground, using it to fling herself into the air, like she was doing a cartwheel.
Aisha was standing on her hands atop the hilt of her greatsword.
“There!” I cried.
With the remaining two Little Musashibos, D and E (both equipped with crossbows), I took a shot at Aisha, who presumably couldn’t maneuver with her feet off the ground. The two bolts fired straight towards Aisha.
“Not good enough!” Aisha called.
On top of the greatsword thrust into the ground, Aisha did something similar to one of those capoeira kicks where you stand on your hands (I don’t know the proper name for them), spinning her feet and kicking the incoming bolts out of the air.
“Ow!” I called.
With a splat sound, a light impact on my forehead that knocked my head backwards.
In the middle of my forehead there was a smushed ball of clay about the size of a 10 yen coin. If it had instead been a throwing knife, or a stone, I’d have died instantly.
Well, this being a practice match, the bolts didn’t have arrowheads, and we were using clay instead of stones, so neither of us could possibly have died, but still, losing this badly was depressing…
I sat down dejectedly.
“Aw, geez… I’m not even a match for you, huh,” I said.
“Th-That’s not true…” Aisha stuttered, hastily trying to reassure me.
“Aisha, an accurate analysis of his fighting strength is important, so you should be honest with him,” said Liscia.
She was right. I was searching for a fighting style that suited me. As king, I was in a position to be protected, but it wouldn’t hurt to be able to protect myself, if it ever came to it. I’d had a narrow miss with Gaius in the battle a little while ago, after all.
“Liscia’s right,” I said. “Give it to me straight.”
“W-Well, then… it may seem harsh to say this, but even though you set up your dolls like an adventuring party, they didn’t feel all that strong,” Aisha said. “I feel as though giving them each two swords and having them rush me would have been more difficult to deal with.”
I considered that. “Pi*min tactics, huh… but you still blew them all away when I did that, didn’t you?”
“Which means what you did was even worse than that, I suppose?” said Liscia.
“Urgh…”
When Liscia pointed that out, I slumped my shoulders. Since Pik*in tactics wouldn’t work, I’d tried using a composition based on an adventuring party, like Juno’s, the one I’d gone adventuring with using Little Musashibo, but… the result had been a miserable defeat.
“In an adventuring party, they’d have a mage, after all,” Aisha said without seeming to care too much. “If those shields had been reinforced with magic, I would’ve had difficulty punching through them, and if I’d had spells flung at me instead of arrows, it would have been more difficult to respond to.”
That she said it would have been “difficult” for her, rather than that she “couldn’t” do either of those things, only served to show how ridiculously powerful Aisha was.
“We can talk about mages all you want, but I can’t use elemental magic or reinforcement magic…” I said. I couldn’t use any magic whatsoever, so there was no way I could use it to give the weapons carried by the dolls I controlled with Living Poltergeists an elemental alignment and make them shoot fire or ice.
“If I went to a magic school, or some place like that, to train, could I learn how, maybe?” I said.
“No, not possible.” Liscia quickly shot down the idea. “I mean, I’ve never heard of someone with dark-type magic being able to use another element.”
She proceeded to explain.
“The four major elements, fire, water, earth, and wind, manipulate magicium found in the atmosphere to produce various phenomena, and the light element interferes with magicium inside the body to do things like speed up the natural healing process, or strengthen the body. The dark element doesn’t have any sort of ability like that. So… just give up.”
It looked like I could train all I wanted, but I’d never become a mage.
This, after I had the good luck to be summoned to a world with magic, too… somehow, I’m disappointed. I slumped my shoulders dejectedly.
“What’re you moping about?” Liscia asked, with an exasperated look. “The dark alignment isn’t that common, you know? I’ve only ever seen three people with it.”
“Three?” I asked. “Assuming two of the three are Tomoe and me… who’s the third?”
“Mother, or so I hear. She’s been never willing to tell me what her power is, though.”
Hmm… Lady Elisha can use dark magic, huh, I thought. Lady Elisha is Liscia’s mother. If I recall, Lady Elisha was the one who actually inherited the throne, but she left managing the country to her husband, Sir Albert, right? We haven’t had much occasion to talk, but she’s always smiling and seems like an amiable sort.
“But with the abilities I have, I can’t see any way to defend myself…” I said.
“Rest at ease, sire! I will always be there to defend you!” declared Aisha, thumping her chest with pride. While she seemed reliable, I was starting to feel pathetic myself.
“It’s pretty lame for a hero to need girls defending him…” I said.
“What are you saying after all this time?” Liscia said bluntly. “You were never much of a hero to begin with.”
I mean, she was right… but couldn’t she have sugar-coated it just a wee bit more? I was thinking she could have, but then she said, “Besides, isn’t delegating the tasks that you can’t handle yourself one of your strengths, Souma? You’re protecting all of us in ways that only you can.” She smiled tenderly.
Aisha nodded in agreement. “The princess is right! You protect the country we all live in, sire, so let us protect you in turn!”
When they said it like that, I still felt pathetic, but I was a little happy. I might be an unreliable king, and a hero in name only, but I just need to protect them in my own way… no, I want to protect them. I felt that way from the bottom of my heart.
“Your Majesty!” a voice called out, and I turned to see Juna in her marine uniform bowing to me with one hand at her chest.
“Sire Hakuya has been looking for you,” said Juna. “He wishes to discuss the districting of the city, he says.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
I stood up and brushed the dirt off of myself. Leaving the clean-up to the soldiers, I brought Liscia and Aisha with me to the governmental affairs office. It was time for me to do what I was able to do now.
When I reached the governmental affairs office, Hakuya and the Captain of the Royal Guard, Ludwin, were waiting for me.
I sat at my desk, while Liscia, who had been acting as my secretary for a while, and Juna, who had been doing the same because we had a shortage of people lately, stood behind me, on either side. Aisha stood by the door, acting as a guard. Lately, it had become the norm for us to work in this formation.
Once I confirmed everyone was ready, a somewhat sleepy-eyed Hakuya laid out a map of the divisions of Van that he had prepared. “I have completed my proposal for the redistricting of Van, so I will have you take a look.”
At Hakuya’s behest, I looked at the map. The square walls of city were vertical, while lines representing the main roads were running towards the princely palace in the center. Each of these main roads had side roads running off of them at a right angle in regular intervals, giving it a grid of squares, like a Go board. It was like a map of one of the ancient capitals of Japan, Heijo-kyo or Heian-kyo, that you might see in a history textbook.