“The Wind King?” Lukas echoed, “I reckon that’s more than just another fancy title made by Asukan pillocks to hide their insecurities?”

Tanya snorted. “Only an Outsider could say this. Being a King is the highest mantle one can attain in the Asukan Empire.”

A look of confusion spread on his face, as he sat down next to her. Their shoulders touched.. “Hang on, I thought the rulers of the kingdom were called Shoguns. Unless…”

“You’re right,” Tanya said, her voice hollowed. She edged away from him slightly, just enough to keep their shoulders from touching. The last thing she needed was to act on her impulses. As it was, her body was reacting like it always did when he was close— a lustful remnant of his goddess-teacher’s curse. Employing psychomancy to ignore such thoughts helped, but now that she was in an emotional high, it’d be exponentially difficult to control herself. Just what was it that he did to her?

So far, she had kept herself away by addressing these feelings with suspicion. That he might have done something to her. That he might be employing his Outsiderish powers against her. But now she knew better. Lukas didn’t try to impress or woo her, and often went out of her way to make her uncomfortable. If anything, he wanted her to stop hiding and reveal her true self. And given they were all alone in this borderland and she had sensed the….

Tanya physically shook her head, attempting to shake off her thoughts.

“Errr… are you alright?”

She nodded. “Yes, um, the Shogun. He’s the bureaucratic head. Emperor’s representative, governor of the army, that sort of thing.”

“And a King?”

She flipped her hair, her casual tone returning with every passing second. “A King is a title, signifying a mantle of power that isn’t chosen, elected, won or bestowed upon. It can only be gained by ascending to the zenith of a particular skill, or if you're talking of manacrafting, then a particular element.”

“Element,” Lukas repeated, immersed in her words.

“Fire, Wind, Earth, Water and Ether,” she said, counting her fingers, “Five Kings. Five entities that hold power second only to the Emperor himself.”

“And they rule five kingdoms?”

Tanya laughed. “You’ve got it backwards, Lukas. Kings are kings not because they have a kingdom, but because each of them are single-handedly as powerful as one. Not even the entire Llaisy Kingdom can stand against the might of a single King.”

Lukas whistled. “So they’re country killers.”

Tanya made a nasty face. “They can be.”

“But they don’t?”

“They can’t. All Kings swear an oath of fealty to the Empire, and accept the dominance of the Asukan Pantheon. They usually stay neutral even during civil wars. If one King decides to involve himself in political matters then another one will, and soon there won’t be a kingdom to quarrel over.”

“A deterrent force then, only subservient to the Emperor.”

Tanya frowned. “Kind of. Plus, two kings fighting would mean largescale devastation. No one, King or not, wants to bear that much Sin.”

At this point, she was moving from her personal knowledge to commonly accepted fact. Tanya didn’t know why or how changing the landscape incurred Sin, for otherwise, modern towns and cities wouldn’t exist. Genocide perhaps? But even that didn’t make sense. Genocide was just a fancy way of calling a massacre of prey, not unlike the way she had ‘massacred’ through the monsters inside the anomaly and as of very recently, in this borderland.

And from Lukas’s expression, he didn’t take her words at face value either.

“You’ll need to ask Zuken about that. I was never very much into theology as an apprentice.”

“And how does one become a King?”

Tanya narrowed her eyes. “You don’t know?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be asking now, would I?”

He had a point. Tanya grimaced, and looked down again, drawing odd shapes on the sandy floor using her finger. “Guess that makes sense, given your history.” She raised her head and met his eyes questioningly, “You know how leveling up skills requires exponentially higher soul capacities, right?”

“What about it?”

“You’ve to understand that there are, like, two hierarchies of power in Asukan society— the Path of the Scholar, and the Path of the Warrior. Scholars are mostly busy in deciphering the powers of the Gods, and enacting spells with that power. We call them Onmyōji.”

“Aren’t those supposed to be priests?”

Tanya snorted. “Warrior-priests. They worship the Gods, but they’re also willing to kill in their Name.”

“Fanatics.”

‘... Yes. If an Onmyōji raises a skill to Level-4, we call them a Sage.” At his nod, she continued. “A warrior on the other hand, becomes a Warlord at Level-4. When either reach Level-5, they become…”

“A King?”

“Yes. For spiritists like us, it involves leveling up our kami to Level-5 and attuning ourselves to be able to control its powers. ”

Lukas frowned. “I see.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No. Just… wondering.”

Tanya had an inkling of what he was thinking. Despite his powers, he had only recently come to use his skills like a full-fledged Level-3. He must have Leveled-Up and synchronized his body better with those skills. Nothing else explained why the difference between the current him and the one that entered the borderland was like night and day.

“It’s one of those things that are exponentially more difficult than it sounds.” she said, “kami are elemental beings, so even a Level-1 can wreck your elemental and emotional balance off the rocker. The stronger and powerful the kami, the greater the danger. Being a spiritist is fun, but you don’t hear about the sheer number of apprentices that went stark raving nuts because their kami fucked up their inner balance.”

“Then having a King-class kami would mean—” Lukas began.

“Not only would you need to have enough soul capacity to support one, you also need your own skills and your mental and emotional fortitude to an equally absurd level. You’ve seen what a Level-3 can do. Can you imagine what a Level-4 or worse, a King can wreck on our world if it went insane?”

Lukas winced.

“My great-grandfather, Wakamura Shimizu, was the Wind King. It was him that gained us our nobility. Made us one of the Sacred Eight. After his demise, it fell upon his descendants to rise up to the challenge and become the next Wind King. The Empire has an unbroken rule about that. It gives the King’s Clan three generations worth of time, or roughly two hundred years, whichever is greater, to claim the mantle by mastering the kami. If we fail to do that, then the kami— the King-class kami is taken away by the Emperor.”

The light in Lukas’s eyes told her that he knew where this was headed.

“Yes, that King-class kami is Ezzeron.”

“You….” Lukas was struggling with words, “You’ve a Level-5, a King-class kami.”

“...Yes.”

“That means you’re a— a King?”

She snorted. “Hardly. I’m a Level-3, with just one Level-4 skill, and even then I haven’t been able to fully master it. I can only do one thing with it, and it’s not nice.”

“I remember,” said Lukas, “that ebon missile you used to one-shot the bylestyrs. That was a Level-4 attack, wasn’t it?”

She snorted. “No. It was a Level-3, with a little more juice. I told you, I have the skill, but I haven’t been able to fully attune myself to it. Maybe if I have a few more years, things could be different.”

“This is blowing my mind.”

She chuckled. “I haven’t got started yet. You wanted this, remember?”

“Do you see me complaining?”

She twisted her lips in fond annoyance.

“Back to your story, how does a princess become a fugitive?”

And just like that, all traces of mirth died inside her. “It started when I was nine. I had just graduated from my apprenticeship, and would begin manacrafting to become an Adept. My teachers at the Shrine told me I’d be a fantastic aquamancer, but my father had other ideas. He… he wanted me to fulfill my duty as the heiress of the Clan.”

Lukas’s eyes narrowed.

“My great-grandfather was Wakamura Shimizu. He transformed Ezzeron into the King-Class kami, and gained the mantle of the Wind King as a result. It was because of him that we gained our Sacred Eight title. Naturally, it fell on his descendants to rise up to become the next Wind King and keep the mantle, and our status preserved. But his son, my grandfather Mujin, and his son, my father Yanric, both failed in achieving it. None of them could tame Ezzeron.”

She squared her shoulders. “I knew what he was asking. It was a great prestige, and a curse. If I succeeded, I’d become the next Wind King. I was already the heiress, but as the Wind King, I’d become the Lord of the Clan. One of the Sacred Eight. The entirety of the Eaborid Kingdom would bend backwards to obey my whims. I’d sit on a throne equal to the Emperor himself, only bowing to him out of respect, not fear.”

She paused and exhaled. “And if I failed, I’d become just like my father and my grandfather. Incapable descendants of an incapable clan. Ezzeron would be taken away, and we’d be reduced to another ordinary clan. And it’d be because of my incapability.”

“Don’t you think you’re being too harsh on yourself?” Lukas asked.

She shook her head. “You know my ECR. It’s unnaturally high. The Elders thought I was a blessing from Amaterasu herself. The savior of the Clan. The future Wind King. Father was adamant that I prepare myself for Ezzeron. That meant developing my soul capacity fit for a Level-2 kami. Obviously my high ECR helped, but it was a nightmare. Getting that much soul capacity meant gaining a fuck ton of experience, and to do that, I had to develop lifeforce skills to be able to fight monsters.”

“Quite a conundrum,” Lukas observed. “To get those lifeforce skills would mean sacrificing more soul capacity, which was probably the last thing you wanted.”

Tanya snorted. “Tell me about it. It was a constant struggle. I had to be extremely picky about what lifeforce skills to develop. Develop too little and it’d leave me impaired against stronger opponents. Develop too much and it’d gorge on my soul capacity, pushing me further back on my goals. In the end I changed from a close combat fighter to a sniper, choosing to bombard from afar and kill monsters before they could get me. My friends, my cousins, they were all training to become spiritists, while I was stuck in a constant struggle to gain the soul capacity without a kami. There were days I just wanted to give up, but one look at my father’s face and I started off with a new zeal.”

“You… must have really loved your father.”

Tanya scrunched her face in confusion. “Doesn’t everyone?”

Lukas shrugged. “No idea. I grew up with my grandfather. I guess he was the closest I had to a father figure.”

“And did you love him?”

“Well…” Lukas drawled, “he was a pain in the ass, and not without his faults, but yes, I did love the old man to death.”

“There you have it.”

“Honestly, I think he was kind of a dick for doing that to you.”

Tanya narrowed her eyes. “Take that back!”

“No,” Lukas retorted. “You’re talking about duties, but do you know what it looks like to me? A douchebag that spits on his daughter’s dreams.”

“What’s a douchebag?”

Lukas blinked. “...Never mind. Point is, he had to have known you were training to be an aquamancer, like Olfric. Knowing you, you’d have become some kind of aquamancer guru by now.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s not that simple. You don’t know my father. He was bound by his duty as a Lord of his Clan.”

“He was also bound by the duty of a father. Choosing one white stamping over the wishes of the other isn’t something to be proud about. I get that this Ezzeron deal sounds important enough, but was it really necessary to do what he did? To trample on your growth, your learning and your gained skills like they meant nothing? Just to save face for his own shortcomings?”

“We’d have lost the Sacred Eight title,” Tanya defended. “That was important. Way more than one child’s education.”

“That one child is you.”

Tanya wrinkled her nose and looked away. “Every child belonging to the Clan has some duties to it. As heiress, my duties were greater than others. The Clan does not just give us a name to differentiate myself from the vagrants.. It gave me my ancestry, and with that, a legacy and a purpose. It does not owe me anything. It was there first.”

“The same legacy that you’ve been running away for your entire life?”

Tanya scowled, defensive. “...Let’s just continue.”

“Sure,” said Lukas, lying down beside her, as if she was sharing a bedtime story. “So, what happened? When did you finally gain the soul capacity?”

Tanya smiled. There was no humor in it. “I didn’t. I tried for years. The first time when I had saved up two thousand units of soul capacity. The next, with three, when I was twelve. A year later, I tried again, with four and a half thousand.”

Her face fell. “It simply wasn’t enough.”

“What?” Lukas asked, confusion evident on his face. “Why? A Level-2 kami needs only 500 units of soul capacity per skill. With four and a half thousand…”

He trailed off.

“Such is the nature of Kings,” Tanya said, “It wasn’t about the soul capacity. Ezzeron was restricted to Level-2, but his very nature was so very great, I couldn’t… I couldn’t perform the Binding successfully. Every time I tried it, it failed. I… I had all but given up.”

“Given you wield him now, obviously you succeeded.”

His words twisted a knife in her heart. “Your words have a bitter irony in them. I… I was almost about to quit. At thirteen, all of my cousins were on their way to successfully master Level-1 manacrafting and push to Level-2. And there I was, with soul capacity enough to hold a single Level-3, but without a kami. There were days I wanted to just give up, and get a new kami. But I was the heiress. I had duties. I was stuck. I didn’t know what to do. Choose a kami and reach my potential, and I’d let down my clan, possibly robbing it off its Sacred Eight status. With repeated failures, Ezzeron might even be taken away by the Emperor and our Clan would lose its glory. And my relentless attempts weren’t showing any success. It just felt like I was giving up my future for nothing. Something had to give.”

She met his eyes. “It happened when I was thirteen.”

“Ezzeron reacted to you? ”

“No, but something else did. It happened when I got kidnapped.”

“....”