While re-reading this manga after reading the wn, something occurred to me. The in-universe rules seem consistent. I don't think it was covered in the manga, but in the novel, the heroine, Yunis, is virtually invulnerable to the point that a nuclear weapon wouldn't be able to kill her even if she wanted it to happen. This is stated as, "The hero's star grants certain favors," and basically the characters run around acting as if some external agent were meddling in the story making nonsensical saving-throws occur courtesy of insane troll logic, such as, "You were about to behead Yunis, but then you suddenly had to sneeze and a dragonfly flew in front of your face and now you've accidentally inflicted a mortal wound on yourself." To get around this, Air uses hypnosis. Actually, the author keeps making stuff up and writing it off as Aur saying, "Actually, I had planned for this eventually, when I was hypnotizing Yunis I slipped just the right trigger word/meme/idea into her subconscious, I was just pretending to be retarded all along," when in the novel the entire hypnosis passes in about three sentences and an ellipses. However, the universe is still self-consistent, in a tabletop rpg sort of way where stuff is made up that kinda-sorta works.
So, here is my guess. Air knows the enemy king will dispatch Yunis. That was his plan all along! Then, right when Yunis strikes for him, the god of Insane Troll Logic will snatch defeat from the hands of victory because...
- First, Air will tapdance or something and this will send a Shiver into Yunis' heart because of hypnosis shenanigans...
- Second, Yunis will refuse to kill Aur...
- Third, Yunis' dad's subordinate will be forced to try to kill Yunis...
- Fourth, Yunis will sit there and do nothing because of her conflicting loyalties...
- Fifth, out of frickin nowhere, the "Born under the Hero's Star" macguffin will trigger, so a meteorite just happens to wipe out the enemy army and the sword snaps just before it hits Yunis and the unfortunate guy just happens to suffer a seizure.
Hrm, on second thought, that's just bad writing....