A New Era

In the throne room, with the sound of shuffled game pieces echoing through the space, Haruto and Komugi were immersed in a game of Gungi. The board between them was a battlefield of wits, a grid where thought and counter-thought waged a silent war.

"The Great King," Komugi spoke, her soft voice contrasting the sharp click of her next piece setting into place on the board. "I feel weird. As if the incredible moves flood to my mind. I can become stronger and stronger in this game."

Haruto's eyes were drawn to her hand as she spoke. Unseen, but sensed, was the light touch of Nen at her fingertips as they caressed the Gungi pieces, moving them with a kind of sureness that had nothing to do with sight. It was instinctual, natural, as if the pieces themselves whispered their next positions to her.

In that moment, with the clarity that only a seasoned player would have, Haruto realized the opening she was aiming for. 'This is Kokoriko,' he noted in his mind, the words cool and unyielding like steel.

"Komugi," he spoke. The single word was laden with a change in his mood. It was subtle but undeniable, like the chill that precedes a storm. "Are you mocking me?"

The room seemed to grow colder. Komugi, seemingly so absorbed in the game until this moment, was taken aback. "N-no, the G-great King. I am not," she stuttered, the vulnerability in her voice accentuating her words, making them tremble like leaves in the wind.

With precision, not a flicker of overt emotion, Haruto continued to play, his move deliberate and calculated, like a grandmaster composing a symphony of strategy and insight.

When he came up with this move, Komugi had easily countered it. Later, she told him it was a move she had created. To her, it was her baby in a sense, and thought to be unbeatable. She had nurtured it, breathed life into it through her mind's infinite hallways, a beacon of her skill.

And when an opponent used it against her later on, she had reacted not with panic, but with innovation—she created a counter to defeat her own move. In a sense, she had killed her own baby, calmly and decisively, in the quest to remain undefeated.

Now, here she was, using the same move?

Did she think Haruto couldn't remember the counter?

"Your play," he prompted, his voice as cold and clear as ice over a still lake, when the silence stretched just a breath too long.

The atmosphere in the throne room was thick with anticipation. Only two sounds persisted—the whisper of Haruto's breath and the soft slide of Gungi pieces as Komugi placed them. The dim light reflected off Haruto's eyes, giving them an ethereal glow. But behind those eyes, a storm of thoughts churned.

Komugi, hands trembling, followed the Kokoriko pattern. Her fingers, lightly stained with the dust of the game board, caressed the pieces. Her usually airheaded demeanor, now focused, held an ethereal quality, almost like she was existing in another realm—a realm of strategy and pure intellect.

Haruto was no amateur. Every move she made, he recognized and countered. The game strategy she had birthed and later demolished herself was now facing her, and the space between them on the board was closing in. He felt a sense of satisfaction rising within him as he placed a piece onto the board, invoking the move she herself had created to counter Kokoriko.

The board was silent for a moment. Time seemed to stretch, each second heavier than the last.

Suddenly, almost as if whispering to the pieces themselves, Komugi's voice floated through the room. "4-6-2 Shinobi."

The very ground seemed to shift beneath Haruto. His hand, previously so sure, now hovered over the board, fingers trembling ever so slightly. He felt his world upend. She had done it. The Reverse-Revere-Arate. This was beyond any strategy he had ever encountered.

Komugi's voice, fragile and soft, drifted to him once more. "My baby came back to life."

Haruto felt as if he was observing the scene from a distance. The girl across the board, innocent and unassuming, had not only bested him but had done so using a reincarnation of her old strategy—a strategy she had once killed. The tables had turned in a way he hadn't thought possible. It was like watching the ashes of a phoenix rise, forming a majestic creature once more.

For what felt like an eternity, silence reigned. All that existed were the Gungi pieces, the two players, and a pulsating, living tension that filled every crevice of the room. And then, like a candle being lit in the darkness, Haruto saw it. Komugi's aura, emanating a soft luminescent glow. The Nen she had inadvertently summoned in the heat of the game now danced around her like wisps of ethereal smoke, its pale blue tendrils curling and twirling.

Her voice, though soft, reverberated, laden with a confidence previously unheard. "The Great King, every move, every piece... It's like they're telling me a story. I... I never felt this connected before."

"Enough for today," Haruto said, his voice steady but carrying a finality that allowed no room for dispute. He turned his head slightly, a subtle motion, yet in the still air of the throne room, it resonated like a command. "Call the maid to assist her to her room."

As a maid entered the room, Komugi's posture shifted; it was the subtlest tilt of her head, a gentle acquiescence to the reality that the game was over for now. She sat still as the maid approached her, her blind eyes seemingly fixed on the Gungi board even though she couldn't see it. There was a lingering softness, a reverence in the way her fingers slowly retracted from the pieces.

"Thank you, Your Highness," she said, the words almost a breath. Her tone was pure, absent of the layers that clung to courtly speech. It wasn't deference, but gratitude — clear and simple.

"It's Haruto," he reminded her, his tone softer but unchanging. It was not a request. He wasn't one to plead; he commanded, and the world would yield. "You are excused, Komugi."

As she left with the assistance of the maid, Haruto remained seated, his fingers steepled together, poised just below his chin. The Gungi board, now void of its players, seemed to him a silent testament to human potential. He long realized how much Nen could change. He, unlike every other nation, discovered the potential in commoners. He taught them Nen for daily or industrial usage, but he was still amazed how vast, how endless its potential was.

His eyes, cold and calculating yet undeniably alive, tracked Komugi's exit until she disappeared through the archway. She was a commoner, an airhead, a foolish girl. All she knew was Gungi, yet she awakened Nen through playing and now probably became unbeatable.

'Unbeatable,' Haruto sighed internally, the sound as controlled as the rest of him. He had yet to win against her, and from the look of it, he would never win against Komugi. Especially after she awakened her innate talent.

In that moment, as if the world itself was conceding to his presence, a smile curled up at the corners of his lips, not warm, but appreciative. "Humanity is limitless," he whispered to the empty room, each word shaped with precision—a decree, not merely an observation.

His thoughts continued to dance with the possibilities, with the raw, untamed potential that lay in the girl who had just left his presence.

Haruto, the ruler who viewed the world not as a burden but as a prize yet to be fully claimed, saw in Komugi not just a girl, but a mirror of humanity's potential. In her, the abstract became tangible. His beliefs, theories, and visions about the capabilities of people—commoners, no less—were substantiated.

"If even one such as her can ascend to these heights," he mused aloud, his voice steady as a well-crafted blade, "then the world is far more malleable than even I presumed. A game, a simple board of wood and pieces, can be the crucible for power most profound."

The room, rich and regal but stark in its emptiness, seemed to absorb his words, as if the very walls were listening, learning from him. Haruto's presence, the calm and unwavering aura that he exuded, filled the space more completely than a host of courtiers ever could.

He rose from his seat, his movements fluid and purposeful, and turned his back to the Gungi board. It wasn't a dismissal of the game they had played, nor of Komugi's undeniable skill and surprising potential. Rather, it was an acceptance, an acknowledgment of a reality he had sculpted but was ever willing to reshape according to his design.

Walking towards the grand window that framed the outside world, he looked out, not at the landscape but through it, to the unseen horizons beyond.

"A new era," he continued, his words imbued with the weight of prophecy. "A world not bound by the stagnant chains of yesterday, but one that thrives under the rule of potential and power. It's time to mold that world."

In that solitary moment, in the stillness of the throne room, Haruto's resolve solidified further. The world was his, not as a possession, but as a canvas—vast and waiting for the master's touch.

And Haruto, with the innate conviction that ran through him like a lifeblood, knew with unyielding certainty—he would be that master.

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