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A Landing Castle floated on the ocean's surface, with the Deucalion docked nearby.
Inside one of the Landing Castle's rooms, a pink-haired girl suddenly stiffened as if startled.
"I-I came to see my sister."
Her voice carried a trace of nervousness.
She seemed afraid of the man watching over her sister, though that was not quite right. It felt more like simple shyness around a stranger.
There was also a hint of envy buried deep within her eyes.
After Kain nodded his permission, she approached the bed to visit her sleeping sister.
As though sensing her presence, the girl on the bed stirred. Her eyelashes fluttered before her eyes slowly opened.
"Sister?"
"Lemrina?"
"Yes, it's me. Are you all right?"
Lemrina stepped forward and helped her sister sit up.
She had never imagined that so much could change during a single trip to Earth, especially in only a few short days.
Her once-gentle sister had ruthlessly suppressed the Martian Knights. It was almost as if she had become an entirely different person. Some people were even saying that Asseylum had grown too iron-fisted and merciless.
Moreover, there was now little doubt that her sister would become the future queen of the Vers Empire.
In the past, Lemrina might have felt envious, perhaps even jealous.
Now, however, she felt no jealousy at all. Her sister deserved everything she had earned.
If Lemrina had faced such upheaval herself, she never could have brought the Martian Knights under control. She knew she was far too timid.
Others might call her sister cold and ruthless, but as family, Lemrina understood that she had not truly changed.
Deep down, Asseylum was still the same person she had always been. She merely had to conceal her vulnerability and wear a mask of strength so that she could establish her authority before the remaining counts.
She could not afford to let Earth underestimate her during negotiations, either.
Her sister was enduring enormous pressure, and that pressure was causing her considerable pain.
"I'm fine," Asseylum replied with a shake of her head.
"Does activating Aldnoah consume that much mental energy? If you can't support it alone, why don't I go down there and try it with you?"
Eddelrittuo had already told Lemrina why her sister had collapsed.
If one person could not activate it, perhaps the two of them could combine their strength.
"I'm afraid even the two of us wouldn't be enough," Asseylum answered with a strained smile.
She had poured nearly all her mental strength into the device, yet she had not even reached ten percent of the activation requirement. Adding Lemrina's strength would almost certainly still fall short.
Her gaze shifted toward Kain.
His mental strength should be more than sufficient to activate it.
Asseylum had only understood why he had failed after making contact with the Aldnoah activation device herself. Kain had not obtained the complete code contained within her Activation Factor.
"So it still won't work?" Lemrina murmured with a sigh.
Noticing something in her sister's expression, she took a step back.
"I made some rice porridge for you. I'll go bring it here."
In truth, she had realized that her sister wanted to discuss something with Kain in private.
"Thank you."
Saying there was no need would have been unnecessarily polite. After all, Lemrina had made it for her out of genuine concern.
Asseylum also understood that her sister was deliberately giving them privacy.
Once Lemrina left the room, Asseylum became visibly nervous, her hands shifting awkwardly in her lap.
"Mr. Kain, the reason you couldn't activate it is because you didn't obtain the complete code within my Activation Factor."
Kain said nothing. He knew she had more to explain.
Still, Asseylum was behaving rather strangely. Her face was steadily turning red, as though what she wanted to say was extremely difficult to put into words.
"I granted you secondary activation authority, but even that wasn't enough. It can only be activated by someone possessing exactly the same code as mine. You should be able to copy the complete code by extracting the necessary information from my blood. As long as I provide a sufficiently large blood sample, you should be able to reproduce it in full."
Asseylum had reached this conclusion based on the feedback she had received from the Aldnoah activation device beneath the ocean.
When she attempted to activate it, the device had shown her a record of the previous attempt. Kain had managed to input slightly more than fifty percent of the required activation code before the process abruptly stopped.
That interruption suggested that the code he had copied from her Activation Factor was incomplete.
The most likely explanation was that his original blood sample had been too small.
"But I'd like to try another method first."
"Another method?"
What kind of method could possibly make the princess's face turn as red as a boiled octopus?
She looked even more embarrassed than she had back in A2's world, when the two of them had been alone in a sealed room shortly before his departure. Back then, she had realized what some of the products in the room were meant for and had even seen what was playing on the screens.
Nothing improper had happened during the following hour. Kain had destroyed the recordings because they were distracting him from playing games with Asseylum. They had merely passed the time together in an entirely respectable manner.
"Yes. It's..."
Asseylum's voice grew softer and increasingly mortified.
She took a deep breath and forced the words out in one burst.
"Through physical intimacy, you might be able to copy my Activation Factor directly."
The instant she said it, her mind grew so hot that she felt dizzy. She quickly lowered her head.
"That doesn't sound like a method you learned from Aldnoah. Who told you that?"
The princess fell silent.
Her reaction all but confirmed that someone else had suggested it.
"It was 6O, wasn't it?"
That mischievous girl was by far the most likely culprit.
"She lied to you."
"But Miss 6O said there really is a chance you could copy the code that way. I want to try. If it doesn't work, we can extract it from my blood afterward."
"Are you certain?"
"I am. Unless... unless you dislike me, Mr. Kain."
Asseylum looked at him with a mixture of anxiety and hope.
"No. If this is truly what you want, then of course I'm willing. I'm hardly going to refuse when something so tempting is offered to me. But I need to make something clear. I'm not the sort of person you imagine..."
"You're the hero in my heart. My prince on a white horse. Miss 6O told me that you're actually quite unfaithful, but even that secretly made me happy, because it meant I might have a chance too."
Her heartfelt confession cut him off.
By the time she finished, Asseylum felt as though her face had grown hot enough to cook an egg.
Biting her lip, she gathered the last of her courage, sprang from the bed, and threw herself toward him.
Kain caught her before she could fall.
Asseylum wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his.
Her kiss was clumsy and uncertain, but Kain gently showed her how to respond. The tension slowly left her body as she entrusted herself to him, and the rest of the world seemed to fade away.
(End of Chapter)
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