Chapter 466: The Strongest Man Alive
"What she said!" Titania nodded vigorously, her butterfly wings fluttering with renewed energy as she found validation for her earlier reaction. "It means Tamar becomes a spiritual entity when she shoots her arrows, and becomes a physical mass again after she’s done."
Elara drooped her eyes and sighed at the baseless fact, her expression one of exhaustion.
She rubbed her temples with her fingers, as if warding off an impending headache. "Now... how does that make any sense?"
"I-It doesn’t! That’s what I’m trying to say! Hhggh! You meanie!" Titania’s frustration boiled over, and she launched herself at Elara with the fury of a hummingbird attacking a hawk. "Take that! Take that!"
Her small fists pounded against the Amazon queen’s shoulders with all the force of a light breeze, her butterfly wings beating furiously as she attempted to make her point through sheer physical persistence.
Elara, with the patience of a woman who had dealt with far more troublesome beings than an angry fairy queen, simply reached out and caught Titania.
She settled the flailing queen onto her cushion and sat on her, where Titania continued to squirm and protest, her words reduced to an incomprehensible stream of defiance.
"Titania is correct, Elara-chan," Sakura sipped in wine, and then glanced at Elara with an expression that had shifted from playful to quite serious.
She set the silver cup down with a soft thud against the wooden table, her fingers lingering on it as she gathered her thoughts.
"Ren usually attempts this, and that made Kyūdo popular," Sakura continued, her voice dropping to a more contemplative register, "but he did not complete transition. He became LIKE a spirit, in that he allowed parts of the world to enter his body, fragments of the natural order flowing through his form like water through a riverbed. He can feel the world, he can perceive its movements, he can even align himself with its rhythms, but he remains fundamentally himself. He does not become something else entirely. It’s absurd."
She paused, her fox ears twitching slightly as she considered her next words with care. "And we can excuse him since arch humans have a high percentage of spirit in their organization, a natural affinity for the ethereal that makes such partial transitions possible. But Tamar is only a level one demi-god at best, no?"
Tamar, who had been listening to the exchange with growing bewilderment, finally spoke.
"It isn’t something I can do just all the time," Tamar said, as she sought to correct their assumptions. "There are conditions or limitations that prevent me from accessing this whenever I wish. If I am upset or emotionally unstable (author’s note: which is basically all the time), it won’t work at all, and the arrow will just fly off, as wild and uncontrolled as a startled bird. It sometimes requires a specific state of mind, a particular kind of focus that I cannot maintain when my emotions are in turmoil."
The "divine projection" she thinks she’s been doing was actually "particularization."
A means to manipulate any type of particles or matter or energy into something else entirely, but related to the outcome one desires.
An example could be when a mage turns magic into divine energy for flexibility.
This is normally impossible, at least for everyone who is not a god or high ranking spirit.
The boundaries between different types of energy are supposed to be mostly absolute, and yet Tamar had been crossing them without even realizing it.
"If you think about it," Sakura said, now fully recovered from her earlier shock, "she is Irina-sama’s granddaughter. That bloodline still stands. It is inevitable she will become something beyond what most will understand... Reminds me of our man, Benjamin."
"Ah, that could explain a lot," Titania managed to plea her way out of Elara’s powerful ass and into freedom. "Namadris’ children are all weird and easily law-defying. One of them can access—basically instantly destroy—you as long as you exist in any space. Irina is Namadris’ direct daughter with Artemis, so a granddaughter being this anomalous should not throw us into panic at all."
"Namadris?" Tamar perked at Titania, her silver eyes brightening with curiosity as the name rang foreign in her ears. She tilted her head, her dark hair swaying with the movement.
Titania looked at Tamar and smiled very warmly, devoid of the childishness she always held.
The playful mask slipped away, revealing something older and deeper beneath. Her butterfly wings settled against her back, and her voice took on a softer, more reverent tone.
"Namadris... is the strongest man alive."
"Eh?! Truly?!" Tamar’s eyes flew wide, the silver shimmering in the late afternoon light as she leaned forward, her entire body radiating excitement.
"Mhm. The best. Well, WAS the best." Titania nodded, her smile growing wistful. "He’s been dead for a long time now." She paused, then grabbed a skewer that impaled chunks of roasted meat and fruits. "One could say he was too good for his own good, haha. But the strongest man position currently is quickly moving towards Benjamin though! Ahaha, I have such great taste in men!"
"Ah... So he was Queen Titania’s husband?" Tamar nodded, understanding the context. "I wonder how old you must be, to have known someone that long ago."
"Oh, no you don’t!" Titania whined and jabbed a tiny finger at Tamar, her childish demeanor snapping back into place. "You can’t call that scheming fox Aunt Sakura while you address me with that stuffy formality! Call me Aunt Tania as well! And yes, I’m really old, you know! Older than multiple Celestial Wars in fact."
"Yes, she’s a granny."
"A real old woman, for sure."
"Are you sure you should be moving those old bones so energetically, Grandmother?"
Sakura, Violette, and Elara respectively verbally stabbed the formerly smug fairy queen, their words landing like perfectly aimed arrows, each one finding its mark with devastating precision.
Titania’s face cycled through several shades of grimace, her cheeks flushing pink, then red.
"Stop that! I’m forever a young maiden no matter how much time passes!" She nagged, then began munching on barbecue.