The guard knight chivalric order Troy.
It had five divisions, and Qualia recognized them as one of the biggest chivalric orders.
“…Humans detected. Determined to be the knights incapacitated yesterday.”
Behind the high-handed puffed out with pride Edwin, stood six knights that glared with provoking eyes.
“Yesterday, you covered for a lowly beast person that displayed a defiant attitude, and harmed my knights. This is a difficult crime to forgive.”
After hearing why Edwin brought a hundred knights, Spirito turned to Qualia.
“You had a scuffle with Troy?”
“Error. Word ‘scuffle’ not registered. Is it categorized as a commodity?”
“This is no time for jokes! What happened with Troy?”
“They were unfairly causing harm to a person named Mind.”
“Unfairly? Hey hey. Are you calling us unfair?”
Edwin spoke as if arrogance was given a voice, and it echoed throughout the empty field outside of the city.
“Guard knights are the safety of the city, its rules. What we say goes. Do you not even understand that?”
“Error. Guard knights are a military force that aims to protect people’s ‘tasty’. They are not the city’s safety, or its rules.”
Edwin’s voice was sounding progressively more annoyed.
Qualia’s on the other hand, had no hint of emotion.
“Guard knights protect the city… And it is the populace’s duty to treat them with the utmost courtesy!”
“Error. What you did to Mind the previous day contradicts the idea of ‘protecting’.”
As he spoke robotically, Qualia thought back to what Lobelia said.
There were people who rested on their laurels as a privileged class, and did things unbecoming of guardian knights.
Troy and the commander of its fifth division, Edwin, were perfect examples of this.
“Enough… You are being detained for treason. Don’t resist!”
Edwin’s patience was running thin, as he gave the order, and the hundred soldiers moved out.
The front line advanced with swords, spears, and clubs in hand, while the back row held up bows, and some began chanting spells.
It was excessive force, considering they were detaining one person.
“Hold it! Don’t just start saying whatever you want!”
Spirito put a stop to it, by stepping in front of Qualia.
As a result, she was now facing the disdainful looking Edwin.
“A child…?”
“What should we do, commander Edwin?”
“Detain her. She is young, but she does have charm. Maybe I will make her my slave… I’m growing bored of only having older women attend to me at night lately.”
Clearly, neither Edwin or his soldiers knew they were standing in front of the third princess. This trouble was brought on by Spirito rarely participating in public events.
But Spirito did not insist, and instead remained cool and held up her fake sword.
However, her movements were clearly awkward. The effects of the overuse of Kaitou Ranma still lingered. Even now, it seemed as though she was ready to collapse.
Qualia watched her, and pointed out this abnormality.
“That choice is wrong. You should not be figh…
“All my choices have been wrong from the start!! I get that!”
She yelled, cutting off Qualia.
Spirito was breathing heavily, and eventually fell to her knee.
But her sword was still pointed at Troy, and there was life in the eyes of Holy Sword.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, but I hurt you just to drive you away… And I refused to say ‘I give up’ when I should have. That is shameful…. If those things aren’t wrong, what is!?”
“What did you say?”
Spirito continued, paying no heed to the cackling soldiers.
“If my sister will be sad, she can be sad… If you want to resent me, resent me… You can decide I’m wrong as a person! But I don’t regret it, and even if it’s a mistake, I don’t think of it as such…! If I’m to save my sister from dying… The most important person to me from leaving me… This is the optimal solution…!! I only follow my heart!”
“Heart.”
Spirito mustered up her strength to speak through her tears, and at the end, there was that word, heart.
Qualia felt she spoke of a different kind of heart than the one he heard from Ina.
It gave off the image of a sword that although cold, would never break, and would pierce through anything.
“I’m taking a stand as your teacher. Qualia, run away. As long as you are my pupil, I can’t let you decide to just fight. If someone messes with you, it’s my job to wipe away the embers!”
Finally, one knight was close enough.
He cared little that he was fighting a wounded girl, and held up his sword to mercilessly hit her with its flat.
“I don’t really get what’s going on, but now that I’m looking up close, you really are cute as a doll… I’ll strip away that equipment and…”
A shadow robotically rushed between them.
“Troy has been labeled a threat.”
A flash passed by the knight as he licked his lips. Although it was a fake sword, it still crushed his jaw and sent both his body and consciousness flying away.
“Haga…”
“Enemy down. Threat incapacitated. Ninety nine remaining.”
A rough sound was heard in the empty, windless field as armor clashed with the ground.
“N-now you’ve done it…!”
Edwin’s dismayed voice was the catalyst for the other soldiers to finally start moving again.
“We have a hundred on our side! The elite of the fifth division! It’s too late to regret your actions… Execute these fools. Archers, mages!”
“Yes!!”
The soldiers in the back readied arrows and manifested spells, but that short pause was critical when faced with Qualia’s calculations.
“Optimal solution calculated.”
The 5D printer was already active.
“Type GUN.”
“Type GUN.”
“Eh…!?”
By the time the knights realized it, it was too late.
Beams were fired one after the other from the two photon weapons like a meteor shower, hitting the archers and mages in the back row.
“Uwaaaaaaah!?”
None of them were hit directly, but the bullets of light hit all the bows and multi-colored magic.
All the bows were burned in half, and the spells were destroyed and dispersed into the air after having holes blown into them.
“Qualia…”
“Spirito, you are not wrong.”
Said Qualia to Spirito, as she looked at him with an amazed expression behind him.
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