"What did you do to me?"
Esdeath's eyes widened as she glared fiercely at Rowan.
She had never encountered anything like this before.
Her own body was actually defying her will.
Or rather, she could no longer control her body at all.
With a thud, she dropped to her knees before Rowan once again.
Alongside her shock came an unprecedented sense of humiliation.
"Demon's Extract really is an excellent Imperial Arm."
"Unfortunately, Imperial Arms have one very obvious weakness."
"They're ultimately nothing more than external tools."
"They can't compare to my Puppet Magic."
"So, how does it feel?"
Puppet Magic originated from the Lost Magic known as Human Subordination.
It had originally belonged to Zoldeo of Grimoire Heart.
This magic could weaken a human's physical abilities and magical power, while also allowing the caster to summon humans like Celestial Spirits and turn them into puppets.
For that reason, it was also known as a ruler-type magic.
However, the spell had one major weakness.
It could only be used on humans.
If used on a nonhuman life-form, the caster would instead merge with the target.
Incidentally, Rowan had not copied this magic from Zoldeo.
Before leaving the world of Fairy Tail, he had never even dealt with Grimoire Heart.
He had copied the spell from the Magic King August.
Then, after modifying it, he transformed it into the Puppet Magic he used today.
Anyone touched by Rowan's magical power could be turned into his puppet.
When Esdeath had tried to attack Rowan just now, he had transmitted his magical power through the ground beneath their feet.
If Esdeath had been a mage, she naturally would have noticed his magic.
Unfortunately, she was not.
This world did not even possess magic, much less magical power.
Therefore, Esdeath never noticed Rowan's magic at all and was effortlessly placed under his control.
"I lost."
Esdeath repeatedly tried to break free from his control.
But no matter how hard she struggled, no matter how violently her thoughts raged, her body gave absolutely no response.
It was as though her body no longer belonged to her.
At that moment, Esdeath realized that the outcome had already been decided and decisively admitted defeat.
She was not the kind of person who could not accept losing.
If she lost, then she would acknowledge it.
Rowan snapped his fingers and released Puppet Magic.
Esdeath immediately regained control of her body.
"You…"
Seeing her astonished expression, Rowan calmly said,
"I never intended to do anything to you in the first place."
"If you hadn't insisted on fighting me, I couldn't even have been bothered to deal with you."
"I only came here today because I wanted to meet you."
"Now that we've met, you people can discuss the rest among yourselves."
With that, Rowan teleported away and disappeared from the throne room.
After Rowan left, the previously expressionless civil and military officials, along with the young emperor, suddenly became lively again.
A moment ago, they had looked like wooden dolls.
Now they were once again living human beings.
This only made Esdeath even more astonished.
Who exactly was that mysterious man?
He could manipulate an entire nation in the palm of his hand, and even she was no match for him.
How interesting.
After meeting Esdeath, Rowan never returned to the imperial court.
Every day, he either ate or wandered around the Imperial Capital.
Occasionally, he would bring his maids outside the capital and ride Black Dragon into the wilderness to hunt Danger Beasts.
Of course, most of the hunting was done by the maids.
Rowan merely watched the excitement from the side.
Once they finished hunting a Danger Beast, everyone would simply cook and eat it on the spot.
His days were incredibly carefree.
Meanwhile,
after being toyed with by Rowan, Esdeath began investigating him.
She even began researching Imperial Arms.
She did not believe in magic.
In her opinion, Rowan must have controlled her using an Imperial Arm.
Therefore, she investigated all forty-eight Imperial Arms, including those that had already been lost.
Unfortunately, because of the great upheaval five hundred years ago, many Imperial Arms were now known only by name.
No one even knew what their abilities were.
Esdeath never managed to determine which Imperial Arm Rowan was supposedly using.
However, during her investigation, she discovered that one Imperial Arm was specifically designed to counter other Imperial Arms.
It could destroy them.
More importantly, the Imperial Arm known as Erastone seemed strangely familiar.
She felt as though she had seen it somewhere before.
After thinking about it for a moment, Esdeath suddenly realized—
wasn't that the gemstone ornament Prime Minister Honest always wore on his forehead?
Esdeath had never imagined that the decoration was actually an Imperial Arm.
And not merely an ordinary one, but an anti-Imperial Arm capable of destroying other Imperial Arms.
No wonder that pig Honest had never been afraid of her.
So he had been confident he could destroy her Imperial Arm.
Demon's Extract was a particularly unusual Imperial Arm.
It was blood-type and had already fused completely with her body.
If it were destroyed, Esdeath would undoubtedly suffer catastrophic injuries.
What a sinister bastard.
But then again—
if Honest possessed such an Imperial Arm, why had Rowan defeated him so easily?
Why had Rowan even managed to steal his position?
Had Honest lost too quickly to activate his Imperial Arm?
No.
Esdeath's gaze flickered.
Considering Honest's sinister and cunning personality, there was no possibility that he had not tried using his Imperial Arm to destroy Rowan's.
The real situation had to be—
Honest had used Erastone, but it failed to destroy Rowan's Imperial Arm.
But that made no sense either.
Erastone existed specifically to destroy Imperial Arms.
If it had been activated, how could it possibly fail?
Imperial Arms simply did not malfunction like that.
Take her Demon's Extract, for example.
Even after being preserved for a thousand years, it still retained tremendous vitality and power.
Could it be that man had actually been telling the truth?
Was he really using magic rather than an Imperial Arm?
That would explain why Honest had lost despite possessing an anti-Imperial Arm.
But did magic truly exist in this world?
Ever since childhood, Esdeath had refused to believe in something so absurd.
Now asking her to accept that magic genuinely existed was difficult.
She would rather believe Rowan possessed some completely unknown Imperial Arm than believe in magic.
Perhaps…
she could test him again.
Esdeath narrowed her eyes.
The reason she had lost last time was because she had not understood her enemy's abilities.
But what if she struck first this time?
At that thought, Esdeath suddenly came up with a good idea.
…
That afternoon, Rowan rode Black Dragon back to the Prime Minister's residence with his four maids after finishing another hunt.
The instant they entered the estate, a voice suddenly rang out.
"Mahapadma!"
In an instant, an unprecedented wave of cold swept across the entire Prime Minister's residence.
The formerly lively estate froze in a single moment.
More accurately—
it was not the estate itself that had frozen.
The space-time surrounding the entire residence had been frozen.
No ice appeared in the air.
Yet even molecular motion came to a complete stop at that moment, as though time itself had frozen solid.
Whether it was Black Dragon or the four maids, all of them became like motionless dolls, standing frozen in place.
Perhaps their minds could still function.
But their bodies could not move.
At that moment, Esdeath appeared.
She slowly walked toward Rowan, a triumphant smile appearing at the corner of her lips.
"This time, I win."
"Win? Win what?"
Rowan tilted his head and looked at Esdeath curiously.
Esdeath stared at him as though she had seen a ghost.
By the time she recovered, she had already shot backward and opened more than a dozen meters of distance between them.
Her pupils trembled violently.
"You weren't frozen?"
Mahapadma was a technique she had specifically invented to defeat Rowan.
A technique capable of freezing space and time itself.
Under this move, even space-time would be brought to a standstill.
Yet Rowan remained completely unaffected.
How was that possible?
"Why should I be frozen?"
Rowan asked in return.
"It's only a technique that freezes space-time."
"It's not as though I can't do something similar myself."
"So why did you think it would work on me?"
Esdeath had no choice but to admit that she had underestimated Rowan.
This man was far stronger than she had imagined.
Even Mahapadma, the technique she had specifically developed, was useless against him.
In that case—
she could only fight him properly.
Seeing the excited light appearing in Esdeath's eyes, Rowan sighed helplessly and flicked his finger.
Whoosh!
A beam of light instantly pierced through Esdeath's body, leaving a fist-sized hole in her abdomen.
Esdeath: "???"
All strength instantly left her body.
She collapsed to the ground with a thud.
"See?"
"You can't even withstand one attack from me, yet you still want to fight."
"Don't you think you're overestimating yourself a little?"
Rowan walked over and looked down at Esdeath lying on the ground.
Blood poured from the hole in her abdomen, staining the earth beneath her red.
After suffering such a severe wound, Esdeath could no longer maintain Mahapadma and was forced to release it.
The surrounding world immediately returned to normal.
Suzuka, Mez, Leone, Sheele, and the others looked toward Esdeath, their eyes filled with complicated emotions.
Surprise.
Fear.
And even sympathy.
This woman was unquestionably a monster.
Unfortunately for her, her opponent was a monster among monsters.
There was nothing unfair about her defeat.
"Kill me."
Esdeath spat out a mouthful of blood and spoke weakly.
Ordinarily, such an injury would be considered devastating to anyone else.
But for Esdeath, it was hardly fatal.
With only a little effort, she could freeze the wound shut.
She could even continue fighting afterward.
Yet judging from her expression, Esdeath clearly had no intention of continuing her battle with Rowan.
In other words—
her confidence had been completely shattered.
That beam of light had been far too fast.
So fast that she had been completely unable to evade it.
If Rowan had aimed not at her abdomen, but at her heart or her head—
she would already be dead.
Esdeath understood that perfectly well.
And because she understood it,
her fighting spirit had completely collapsed.