Remilia Scarlet looked down at Flandre Scarlet's aggrieved expression before drifting off to sleep with a sense of quiet satisfaction.
As for whether her younger sister would hold a grudge...
There was no need to worry; such minor spats were completely forgotten by the very next morning. Remilia didn't carry a single shred of concern.
Sure enough, when the next morning arrived, the moment Flandre Scarlet crawled out of bed, yesterday's scolding had completely evaporated from her mind. She trotted along cheerfully right behind Remilia, looking entirely unaffected by the previous night's events.
Once breakfast concluded, everyone went their separate ways to attend to their respective routines. Flandre scratched her head, looked around the hall, and decided to wander out toward the upper deck alone.
In her view, there wasn't much for her to do inside anyway, and staying cooped up within the metal bulkheads of Rhodes Island for too long made her feel stifled. She figured she might as well head outside to play.
Retracing the path Amiya had shown her yesterday, she quickly pushed through the heavy pressure doors and stepped out onto the vast exterior platform.
At this hour, quite a few Operators were out on the deck conducting their morning physical conditioning. Flandre hovered up into the air, looking down with bright curiosity at the exercising crowd below.
"Hey there, little one!" A voice called out from the nearby watchtower platform.
Flandre fluttered over and spotted a tall Sarkaz man. He was leaning casually against the guardrail of the lookout tower, observing her approach with an intrigued expression.
"Mr. Scout?"
The two had crossed paths yesterday, but because Amiya had been present at the time, they hadn't held a proper conversation. Scout certainly hadn't expected to spot the young girl gliding back out onto the open deck so early today.
"That's me. Your name is Flandre Scarlet, right?" Scout studied the girl floating before him. She looked completely natural, cheerful, and harmless. He found it virtually impossible to connect her adorable appearance with the terrifying combat monster who had beaten the Ursus Imperial Army bloody—the same entity responsible for wiping out more than half of the Old Nobility's private army and nearly shattering the domestic balance of power within Ursus.
"Why do you keep staring at me like that?" Flandre asked, tilting her head as Scout trailed off into thought.
Scout snapped back to reality, shaking his head with a mild chuckle. "Sorry about that, I was just lost in thought. I heard reports that you personally destroyed several High-speed Warships belonging to the Ursus Imperial Army and even captured one intact. Is that true?"
Flandre shook her head emphatically. "It wasn't Flandre!"
"It wasn't you? But I remember the official intelligence dossiers explicitly crediting you!" Scout scratched his chin; he doubted Rhodes Island's intelligence division would make such a glaring error regarding frontline combat reports.
"I was indeed involved in the battle—like board-capturing that single warship..." Flandre explained, refusing to take credit for feats that weren't hers. "But as for blowing up those other High-speed Warships, that was all Big Sister's doing!"
Though she had indeed cut down countless Ursus soldiers, in truth, the only High-speed Warship she had personally obliterated was the one she had breached and captured from within.
"Big Sister? Are you referring to Lady Remilia?" As an Elite Operator of Rhodes Island, Scout was naturally familiar with the names and profiles of the Scarlet Devil Mansion party.
"Yup! Sister is super amazing. Taking down a High-speed Warship is totally easy for her!"
Scout quietly committed this fresh intelligence to memory.
In Rhodes Island's official tactical archives, the most distinct characteristic of these visitors claiming to be from Gensokyo was their innate ability to fly without external apparatus. Following that was their command over those dense, glittering salvos of Magic Bullets that made an onlooker's scalp tingle just watching the footage. Back in Ursus, Flandre and Remilia had relied on these endless carpet-bombing salvos to completely suppress armored imperial divisions from the safety of the sky.
Rhodes Island's tactical division had naturally analyzed those Magic Bullet displays as well. However, their ultimate conclusion was that the technique could neither be easily replicated nor was there any practical need for normal Casters to learn it.
The reason was simple.
Magic Bullets represented the most fundamental, baseline application of offensive Magic; almost any trained Caster could manifest a simple energy projectile after basic instruction. The true difficulty lay in scaling their explosive power and total volume.
For a Magic Bullet to inflict serious damage, every single projectile needed to carry a high density of energy. And for thousands of them to be fired simultaneously, the caster had to possess an virtually bottomless reservoir of internal energy to draw from.
Thus, if a caster was absurdly powerful and possessed vast energy reserves, manifesting an infinite barrage of lethal Magic Bullets was second nature. As for the colorful, dazzling patterns, in the eyes of pragmatic Casters, those visual aesthetics served no combat purpose other than looking pretty while incurring extra energy expenditure.
It wasn't that Terra's Casters hadn't studied the Danmaku Magic of Gensokyo; rather, it was functionally useless to standard soldiers. Any Caster could throw a projectile, but none possessed the absurd energy capacity required to match the sheer density, quantity, and raw yield demonstrated by the visitors.
Yet, when combined with high-speed flight, this high-density Danmaku turned its user into an unsolvable nightmare on Terra's conventional battlefields. Any nation or military faction attempting to engage her in open combat would have to calculate whether their ground troops could survive an endless, low-altitude saturation bombardment—and whether their anti-air assets could ever lock onto a target moving so nimbly through the sky.
If they couldn't guarantee both, provoking her was pure suicide. Setting aside her baffling, un-scannable primary ability, her aerial carpet-bombing capabilities alone were enough to make an enemy's existence a living hell.
Thinking through the tactical implications, Scout felt that Flandre Scarlet actually possessed remarkably high moral restraint. Otherwise, if she ever felt slighted by a nation, she could simply hover above their mobile cities and drop random saturation bombardments whenever she pleased. Her movement was fast, her presence was elusive, and her firepower was devastating. No mobile city on Terra could endure being shelled from the sky every few days.
Naturally, while such terror tactics would inflict catastrophic strategic losses on high-ranked leadership, the ultimate victims would be the ordinary civilians residing within the city blocks. Such behavior was utterly ruthless, and a normal person wouldn't choose to target innocent civilians.
Reflecting on this, Scout offered a warm smile to Flandre. "You mentioned your primary ability is Destruction. What about your sister? Does she command the same power? I heard from Doctor Eirin that virtually everyone from your homeland possesses a completely unique innate ability, right?"
Flandre nodded proudly. "That's right! My sister is super, super strong! Her attack is a power that reverses causality!"
"Reverses causality?!"
Scout's pupils contracted sharply. That sounded like an absurdly terrifying concept.
Flandre put her hands on her hips, proudly puffing out her chest like a little teacher delivering a lecture. "Mr. Scout, you know the basic rule that every cause leads to an effect, right?"
Scout tapped his internal earpiece, discreetly opening a recording channel before nodding for Flandre to continue.
"My sister's ability allows her to anchor the final result first, and then reality is forced to rewrite itself to produce the exact sequence of events needed to reach that result!"
Naturally, Remilia's true power wasn't a simple reversal of cause and effect, but Flandre felt that explaining it in these terms was more than enough for a casual chat.
Scout blinked, clearly struggling to grasp the abstract concept. "Could you... explain that in a simpler way?"
Flandre looked around before pointing down toward a massive, solitary withered tree standing out on the distant plains.
"For example, if I want to destroy that big tree down there, I have to use a weapon, right? Like a bow and arrow. But after the arrow leaves the bow, it has to travel through the air, and that journey is subject to all sorts of physical influences—wind can blow it off course, or it might hit the target but lack the force to break it."
Flandre raised a finger, her eyes gleaming. "But my sister can directly lock down the final outcome! That means the moment she decides to attack, the tree is already absolute-destined to be destroyed by that specific strike. Even if she shoots the arrow backward, upside down, or just tosses it casually over her shoulder... that arrow, empowered by her ability, is guaranteed to bend through the air, strike the tree, and shatter it into pieces. This is what we usually call a 'Guaranteed Hit'!"