The Asterisk War, Vol. 10: Conquering Dragons and Knights

by Yuu Miyazaki

  “Stay out of this, kid!”

  “Argh… Don’t think you can talk down to me just because yours are bigger…! Stupid breasts!”

  “…I wasn’t talking about that.”

  Saya’s oversized weapons required charging before every shot, so they had little chance of matching Cecily in speed. The rate at which she could use her spell charms was nothing short of incredible.

  “…I guess I’ve got no choice.”

  Saya seemed to have realized that, too, as she quickly returned the Waldenholt to its activator and readied the Ark Van Ders Mark II.

  Among her impressive arsenal, the Ark Van Ders was the most suitable for close combat—which basically meant it could be fired while still charging. Given the situation, that was no doubt her best option.

  “You’d better not let down your guard around me…!”

  Julis had been distracted for only a moment, but Hufeng had taken advantage of that to increase the intensity of his assault.

  Julis’s close-combat abilities were no match for those of her opponent. Her Rect Lux helped to compensate for that somewhat, but Hufeng had already batted away two of the three units she still had under her control.

  She blocked an oncoming kick with the Nova Spina—used to control the other units of the Rect Lux—while using the last remaining unit to lash out at her opponent’s fist. The next moment, however, he used all his strength to shatter the ground around them, blasting Julis aside before she even had a chance to react.

  “Ugh…”

  She winced at the pain, but fortunately, it was her left arm that was injured. Even if it was broken, she could still keep fighting. She gritted her teeth, preparing to meet another of his strikes, when she felt a cold shiver run down her spine.

  The ground at her feet began to shimmer as a trap activated around her.

  The Li twins…!

  They must have used their illusion seisenjutsu to hide the spell charm.

  A flurry of chains burst up from the ground, coiling around her body.

  “This is it!” Hufeng cried out, lunging toward her exposed school crest, when—

  “Sorry, Hufeng!” Cecily called out.

  “—?!”

  Saya, having escaped from Cecily’s lightning bombardment, brought the Ark Van Ders down on Hufeng.

  Hufeng began to cross his arms in an attempt to withstand the bombardment, but before he could properly ready himself, Saya pulled the trigger.

  “Boom.”

  There was no hope of avoiding it at that range—or, at least, there shouldn’t have been.

  But Hufeng seemed to have pulled away just in time; he was simply there one moment and gone the next, as if he had somehow teleported out of the way.

  “Heh…” Glancing at the burnt edges of his uniform, Hufeng let out a sigh of relief.

  Julis, meanwhile, had used that opportunity to recall the units of her Rect Lux and break free.

  “Thanks,” she said, glancing toward Saya.

  “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t think he’d be able to dodge it, though,” she replied, her tone filled with a mixture of surprise and frustration.

  It looked like she, too, had failed to appreciate just how fast Hufeng could move. Saya’s eyesight had always been sharper than her own, so Julis had hoped that she, at least, would be able to keep pace with him. Thanks to the Tongtianzu, however, he was even faster than usual—too fast for even her to follow.

  Hufeng, having rejoined Cecily, was discussing something with her in a hushed voice.

  “I needed a breather, but what more can we do…?”

  Their opponents were more formidable than any they had yet to face. Julis was supposed to be the team’s raider, and Saya their rearguard, the two supporting Ayato and Kirin, but neither had any opportunity to come to their aid.

  “Still, we can’t give up,” Saya murmured, as if reading her mind.

  “…Right,” Julis replied with a deep nod, tightening her grip on the Nova Spina.

  “Heh-heh… It looks like we—”

  “—have the superior team.”

  Claudia’s battle against the twins was, compared to the others, somewhat less flashy.

  “When the Glühen Rose stepped into my little trap—”

  “—wasn’t that your fault, Parca Morta?”

  The twins appeared to be chuckling as they bolted across the stage, always maintaining a fixed distance from her, but Claudia, not allowing herself to be deceived, focused on her surroundings while attempting to discern their true locations.

  At times, their figures seemed to melt away into thin air, or else multiply in front of her, but Claudia nonetheless continued to focus on their actual positions, trying to limit their opportunities to deceive or attack.

  What she was doing wasn’t as accurate as Ayato’s shiki technique, but against opponents of this level—and given that she gave it all her concentration—she was able to make out their whereabouts fairly accurately. If she had been facing either of the twins one-to-one, she would have easily come out on top—but just as she had when Julis had been ensnared by that trap, she found herself slipping up when facing them both together.

  Which was why she was using herself as bait to try to keep the two occupied.

  But isn’t that a tacit confession that I don’t have any other options? In that case, I had better go all out.

  The twins, no doubt, wanted to support their teammates. However, they couldn’t afford to ignore the opponent in front them. They might have been able to do it if one of them was willing to sacrifice themselves, but if they did that in a team battle, they would end up losing their power balance.

  Moreover, their opponent was the other side’s team leader. If they were able to find an opening and destroy her school crest, that would be the end of the match. If they planned it properly, it wouldn’t be impossible for them to snatch victory by themselves—and for them, there could be no more enticing prospect than that.

  Claudia and the twins knew everything that they needed to know about one another, certainly enough to keep one another in check.

  She knew, however, that she wouldn’t be able to completely hold them down by herself.

  Like the spell that had ensnared Julis earlier, the twins were succeeding in spreading the seeds of traps throughout the arena. There was nothing she could do about that.

  “Hmm… You’re certainly doing well, keeping us tied up all by yourself.”

  “Are you used to being chased, perhaps?”

  “It must be tiring. All it would take is one oversight, and your friends would be finished.”

  “But no, we’re going to stay here and take you down ourselves…”

  The twins were doing everything in their power to whittle down her concentration.

  If she could maintain the present state of affairs, victory would be hers.

  However, if she slipped up, even if only for an instant, that would be the end for her.

  She was walking a most precarious tightrope, with no option but to persevere.

  Right. Even if the rest of her team were defeated, as long as she was still standing, the match wasn’t over. There might come an opportunity to do something, but with the Pan-Dora’s stock being what it was, she couldn’t afford to act rashly…

  At that moment—

  “Are you thinking about something?” came Shenyun, appearing in front of her from out of nowhere.

  “That won’t do. You need to pay attention!” added Shenhua, quivering like a ghost before disappearing.

  “Ngh!”

  Shenyun had managed to worm his way inside her guard, lashing out with his elbow, and while Claudia managed to evade the attack, he followed through with a rapid succession of punches.

  In this kind of close-combat fighting, the twins’ martial arts were much more effective than her two swords.

  “Did you think we’d just been fooling around this past year?” he gloated.

  “We’ve been training, too, you k
now!” Shenhua’s voice added from behind her.

  “Bào!”

  With that, she was engulfed in a violent explosion.

  …Or so it had seemed.

  “You certainly do look to have improved since the Phoenix…,” Claudia said with a smile, having used the Pan-Dora to see through the illusion.

  It was the same kind of spell charm that the twins had used against Ayato and Julis during their tag match—and surprisingly realistic when experienced firsthand.

  “I see, so that was the Pan-Dora.”

  “What a nuisance.”

  The twins practically spat out the words.

  If not for the Pan-Dora’s precognition, she would have been in serious jeopardy. Perhaps the twins were stronger than she had suspected.

  “Not to worry…”

  “We’ve got plenty of time…”

  The twins flashed her a pair of devilish grins before, once again, taking off down the stage.

  Exactly. We still have time.

  They would just have to carry out this contest of endurance all the way till its end, she thought as she took off in pursuit.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE CELESTIAL WARRIOR AND THE KEEN-EDGED TEMPEST

  On that day, Xiaohui had been on the verge of death.

  Indeed, had he passed even one more minute in that state, he very well might have died then and there at the age of only six years old.

  The ruins of dilapidated towns and villages lined the barren remnants of what was once the Qingyi River. It was in the middle of the main road in one such settlement that Xiaohui lay, flat on his back, parched and unable to move.

  “Oh… You have a good sacrum, boy,” a voice said.

  A woman wearing a strangely amicable smile had suddenly appeared within his vision. Everything looked yellow and blurred due to hunger and thirst, and so only her cheerful voice reached him clearly—distinct but, at the same time, strangely distant.

  “Become mine. It would be a shame to let such raw talent go to waste. Although, if that is what you desire, I won’t compel you otherwise…”

  Xiaohui tried to respond, but he couldn’t even produce so much as a weak groan. He succeeded only in opening his cracked lips a fraction wider.

  “Don’t fret. Just say it in your heart,” the woman said, her voice remaining calm and detached.

  And Xiaohui filled his mind with a single thought: I don’t want to die.

  At that moment, a lone tear dripped down his cheek.

  “Very well. From now on, you belong to me,” the woman said with a gentle smile before lifting a bamboo canteen to his lips.

  The cold water flowed down his throat, and Xiaohui lost consciousness.

  A world controlled by the integrated enterprise foundations required by simple necessity an underprivileged class. That wasn’t to say that those on the other end of the spectrum lived in security and peace of mind. All it took was one mistake to be mercilessly cast down into the abyss.

  Xiaohui’s had been one such family, brought to ruin by some trivial blunder and scattered in the wind. While he was still too young to fully understand what was going on around him, his mother had taken him across the country, from one dilapidated provincial town to the next, until at last she, who had lived her whole life in luxury, could endure the hardship no longer and departed from the world, leaving him to fend for himself.

  After an unknown time had passed, the young Xiaohui found himself wandering away from her cold sickbed, wandering without purpose or destination, until he could wander no longer.

  “…!”

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself in what looked like an old, elegant hermitage. Apart from the bed on which he was lying, the room was fitted only with a lacquered black desk. Even so, it looked to be meticulously maintained, unmarred by even a speck of dust.

  He lifted himself up, glancing toward the latticed window at his side. Before him, he could see flowers rich in bloom, small birds singing, and a gentle light that glowed with all the colors of the rainbow. At the time, he had thought he must have died and woken up in paradise.

  “Hmm, so you’re awake. These drugs are strong, but you must be stronger still.”

  He glanced around, to find a woman standing at the foot of the bed.

  She had long black hair, her modest clothes loose around her body. To his surprise, she was young—more girl than woman.

  “…Where am I?”

  “My hermitage at Huangshan. This area is filled with Nüwa stones—what you would call urm-manadite. They used to be quite useful, but I haven’t touched them since I went to Emeishan.”

  For a brief second, Xiaohui wondered whether this kind of place could really exist, but he quickly cast aside his doubts. He knew instinctively that the normal rules of nature didn’t apply to the woman standing in front of him.

  “In this body, I go by the name of Xiaoyuan Wang. What are you called?”

  Without waiting for him to respond, Xiaoyuan leaped, bringing her face up to his own. Her eyes stared into his, sucking him in, consuming his heart—his very soul.

  “…Xiaohui Wu,” he answered, his mouth moving of its own accord.

  “Good. Well, Xiaohui. Do you remember agreeing to become mine?”

  Xiaohui nodded.

  At this, Xiaoyuan, too, nodded in satisfaction, her eyes narrowing in delight. “Good, good. Then let’s start by hearing what you can do.”

  “What I can do…?” Xiaohui repeated, his mind going blank.

  He ought to have been able to do whatever he wanted—not because his life had been saved, but because he himself wanted to do it.

  That said, his six-year-old self had yet to fully comprehend that fact.

  “…Tea…”

  “Hmm?”

  “I can make tea.”

  Desperately trying to call something to mind, those were the only words that came to his lips.

  He had learned it from his mother and remembered fondly how his parents had praised him after his first attempt. Since then, he had volunteered to brew the tea himself at every possible opportunity.

  “Oh-ho! I see, I see. I’ll have you make some later, then,” Xiaoyuan said with a sonorous laugh, placing a hand on his head. “But, Xiaohui, that isn’t all that I want from you. I need you to be strong.”

  “Strong…?”

  “Indeed. Do you know any martial arts?”

  Xiaohui shook his head.

  He was a Genestella, but his mother had always detested fighting, and so he had never had an opportunity to learn anything like that.

  “Hmm, very well. In that case, we’ll have to start from the beginning. I will make you stronger, Xiaohui. Stronger, stronger, stronger, until one day you will be even stronger than I am… Satisfy me. That’s all I wish from you.” Xiaoyuan’s eyes glowed like those of a child.

  That was when Xiaohui first realized it, that the Xiaoyuan standing before him now, the young child that he saw in her eyes—this was her true self.

  “…I’ll do it. I promise,” he answered, staring back into those warm, innocent eyes.

  “A fine response… You should know, the signs all point to something great happening afar in the near future. I want to see it for myself. Which means that soon…yes, in four or five years, I will have to take a new body. You will need to grow during that time, too.”

  Xiaohui had no idea what she was talking about, but he nodded along regardless. He didn’t want to disappoint her.

  Xiaoyuan smiled down at him gently, stroking his head once more. “Well then, how about you brew that tea for me?”

  Xiaohui’s daily training regimen began that very day.

  “Listen well, Xiaohui. The basic principle of this world is conflict. None of us can escape it. So we must master the art of war to give meaning to that conflict.”

  They began by training his body, building upon that foundation by learning new techniques little by little.

  Xiaohui, who had no experience in the martial arts, d
evoured Xiaoyuan’s teachings like cotton absorbs water.

  That wasn’t to suggest that the lessons were easy.

  He would run through the untamed mountain, climb its sheer peaks, fight against Xiaoyuan with all his might, while she effortlessly resisted him using nothing but a single finger. When his body became worn out and exhausted, he would soak in the medicinal hot springs, the pain of his injuries searing through his body, tormenting him until the break of dawn.

  And yet, he didn’t once find those days to be unbearable, not even for a moment.

  “Listen well, Xiaohui. It is knowledge that lies at the heart of martial arts, and knowledge is based on understanding.”

  It wasn’t just the martial arts that Xiaoyuan taught him, but all of her accumulated wisdom.

  Everything from arithmetic, to the motions of the stars, to how to communicate in various languages spoken all throughout the world, until Xiaohui came to wonder whether there wasn’t anything that his master didn’t know.

  And sometimes, Xinglou would tell him about existences that defied the laws of nature.

  “…Are you saying that there are other people like you out there?”

  “Indeed. Well, I haven’t seen them for a long time. In fact, I could count those with whom I still have contact on one hand.” Xiaoyuan laughed nostalgically as she prepared an elixir by his bedside.

  Xiaohui, in the center of that weak patch of candlelight, listened carefully to her gentle voice.

  “I suppose the last time I met one of them in person was when I visited that decrepit old fool holed up in his ivory tower off in Europe. That must have been half a century ago now.”

  “Is there anyone else around here?”

  “Well, now… There were quite a few sages here when I first came to this mountain… Unfortunately, we didn’t get along.”

  “You didn’t get along…? What do you mean?”

  “They had thrown away their attachments. A rather tedious bunch. The ability to laugh with joy, to writhe in agony, to cry in despair—they had practically given up on life itself. Don’t you make the same mistake. A good sacrum is said to be proof of great talents, but it’s you who needs to clear your own path forward.”