Encounters (3)
Even a High Demon—a living calamity incarnate—could only descend upon the Material Realm in a limited form.
As for the Demon Gods, beings so vast that such comparisons hardly applied, the constraints upon them went without saying.
In all of recorded history, they had directly meddled in the Material Realm but once.
For the fate of an ordinary human to become entwined with a Demon God's was, in truth, something close to impossible.
"And you know as well as I do..."
Caldis went on, picking her words with care.
"If we go looking for him now... it'll only bring pain to the both of them..."
"..."
Ellie said nothing, but the hollow emptiness of her eyes still brimmed with sorrow.
Caldis studied her with a pitying gaze, then changed the subject as if to lighten the mood.
"Oh, right. Lucia reached out to me a while back."
"...What?"
And Ellie's expression cooled all over again, frost creeping across it.
Five whole years spent together, and yet the two of them showed no sign of ever getting along.
Their temperaments were oil and water to begin with, and their very first meeting had gone spectacularly, poisonously wrong.
Considering the world's reverent praise for the Sword's Successor and the Saintess alike, the truth behind it all was almost too bitter for laughter.
"She asked me to tell you to contact her. I thought about mentioning it yesterday, but... you collapsed the moment you got back from the Illusion Realm and went straight to sleep, so..."
"...On what grounds?"
"No idea. She just said to pass along the message."
"Haah... where on earth is she, and what is she even doing out there..."
Ellie bit down on her lip, impatience plain in her voice.
Her goal was one that could not be achieved at all without the Sword's Successor.
And yet the very person she needed had been drifting about outside for close to a full year now.
"...Understood. I'm going to rest a little longer."
"Mm-hmm..."
With a long sigh, Ellie left Caldis behind and made her way back to her bedroom. Once the door was shut, she drew a small crystal orb from her breast pocket and stilled her mind, focusing.
—Oh? So you're finally back, are you?
A faint light flickered across the orb's surface, and before long, an unwelcome woman's voice rang out from the far side of the connection.
—Didn't I tell you? I said it was a waste of time. You should have just waited quietly like I—
"State your business. Only."
—...
At the flat, clipped edge of Ellie's voice, the mockery from the other side cut off at once.
It surprised her not at all. Their conversations always went exactly like this.
—Haah...
After a moment, the voice on the far end let out a long, drawn sigh. There was something oddly hesitant about it, and Ellie tilted her head, puzzled by the strangeness of it.
When the words finally came, after a very long pause, they were sheepish—and of a kind she could never have predicted.
—Can you... by any chance... cook?
The short break had ended, and Basic Swordsmanship was back in session.
The absurd rabbit hunt was carrying on much as before, but the students threw themselves into the lesson with a seriousness they had never shown in the early days.
Part of it was that they had felt the training's effects with their own bodies during the Alheim Practical Exam.
Setting aside how much more instinctively they could now evade the attacks of mana beasts, they had even managed something resembling a counterattack against the terrifying ambushes of the Demonic Beings.
There were other changes, too.
"I—I caught it!"
The girl with tightly bound platinum hair tore off her blindfold and snapped her eyes wide open.
Clutched in Garnet's hands was a horned rabbit mana beast, its stub of a horn hacked down blunt, thrashing wildly in her grip.
"D-does that mean I'm first...?"
Garnet glanced around and murmured the words cautiously, though joy she couldn't hide was already blooming across her face.
It had been less than a few days since she'd even joined the training.
"Seriously, it hasn't even been that long since training started, and she's already..."
"Real talent really is talent..."
Even the envious voices of the surrounding students carried far less venom than they once had.
Hugging the rabbit tight to her chest, Garnet whipped around and called out.
"Professor! I caught on—"
But the feverish excitement on her face vanished in an instant, cooling to ice as though it had never been there at all.
The reason: she had discovered Kallen slumped over the outdoor lectern, dead asleep from the waist up.
"Zzz... hmmm..."
At the sound of his snoring, Garnet fixed him with a glare all the darker for her foul mood.
Then, face twisted in fury, she stomped across the training ground in great thudding strides and planted herself squarely in front of him—and shouted straight into his ear.
"PROFESSOR!"
"Hwagh!"
Kallen jolted upright with a strangled, otherworldly noise.
He craned his head around, wondering if something had happened, but the only thing in sight was Garnet's sour face, her lips pushed out in a pout as she glowered at him like he was her sworn enemy.
"...Tch. You nearly took my ear off."
Only then grasping the situation, Kallen grimaced and grumbled under his breath.
"I've told you before—no sleeping during class."
"I was resting for a minute. Teaching you lot wears me out."
"Could you at least come up with a better excuse than that? I'm the one who does all the setup and cleanup, every single day."
Garnet fired back without yielding a single inch, rapid-fire, glaring up at him the whole while.
"Good grief... how does a kid your age nag this much already... maybe bringing you along was a mistake..."
Kallen shook his head as though thoroughly sick of it.
Who knew she'd be nagging me instead of the students...
When he'd made Garnet class representative, he had never once imagined things would turn out like this.
And now there was no swapping her out for someone else—she kept the students in line well enough, and beyond that, there was simply no grounds for replacing her in the first place.
Kallen heaved a deep sigh and spoke in a voice of pure resignation.
"So. What did you want."
"...I caught it."
"What?"
"The rabbit. I caught it."
"...Already?"
Kallen's eyes went round as he breathed the word, unable to quite believe it.
Even as she thrust the rabbit out at him with a curt huff, not a single blot of dye marked Garnet anywhere on her body.
He'd recognized her talent long ago, but even accounting for that, this was remarkably fast.
"Huh..."
Kallen studied the rabbit as it kicked and squirmed, then said in a low voice, "...Well done."
"It's hardly anything to make a fuss ov—hngh?"
Garnet had turned her head away with affected indifference, but a beat later, a foolish little sound slipped out of her mouth.
"Ah—ahh..."
Before she knew it, Kallen's hand had come to rest on her head, stroking her hair in an easy, natural motion.
And Garnet's cheeks, somewhere along the way, had flushed a deep, burning red.
Her eyes darted every which way before she abruptly snapped back to her senses, shaking her head hard and slapping his hand away with great fervor.
"Wh-who said you could put your hands on me without permission!"
"I pay you a compliment and this is what I get... tch."
Clicking his tongue at her temper, Kallen turned to face the students.
"...Garnet will be starting swordsmanship tutoring next week."
At those words, a noisy wave of groans and gasps broke out among the students.
"Huh...?"
Garnet, who had been glaring daggers at him a moment before, could only stare up at him blankly, clearly having expected none of it.
"Anyone else who manages to catch a wolpertinger before then will be joining Garnet for swordsmanship tutoring as well. So train harder. Class dismissed."
As Kallen turned to go, his eyes met Garnet's for an instant—and the ghost of a smile tugged at his lips.
"There's still time left in the period, isn't there? Practice on your own and tidy up when you're done. Class rep, keep the students in line."
"W-wait a second...! Class isn't over yet!! Professor!!
Really...!! What kind of professor just walks off like that...! And here I thought he was finally taking things seriously..."
Garnet could do nothing but stamp her feet in place, fuming, as Kallen's back receded into the distance.
Watching her from behind, Zarel murmured, genuinely puzzled.
"She's clearly got the same temper as before... so why does it look like they get along so well now?"
"Well, he did restore her honor. Her savior, basically..."
Kayden answered from beside him, where he'd been taking a breather.
The two of them still kept a certain distance from Garnet.
It wasn't personal ill will—it was simply that the memory of her remained vivid: the way she had been dominated by the Demonic Sword, radiating a dreadful killing intent.
That Kallen—who had taken the Demonic Sword's blade clear through his chest—could face her so calmly, as if none of it had ever happened, was honestly beyond them.
"I mean, he practically saved her life..."
"Aha, kind of like our dear Yulian here?"
"Hiihk!"
At Zarel's sudden arrow of a remark, Yulian, sitting beside him, shuddered from head to toe.
"I-I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Look at him playing innocent. Sweet little face, and a rotten core hiding underneath, huh? Hmm? So spill it—how exactly did you reel her in?"
"Wh-what are you even saying...! I never did any such—"
"Oh come on. That girl—Carol, was it?—shows up to meet him at the end of every single class, plain as day. You're telling me you haven't noticed? And you're still going to deny it?"
"Seriously though, I keep telling you, I didn't—huh?"
Without warning, a dark shadow fell over the heads of the two squabbling boys.
Kayden had already retreated a discreet distance away, suddenly very interested in looking elsewhere.
Garnet loomed over them, eyes cast down, and spoke in a voice cold enough to freeze the air.
"Class is still in session. Focus."
"..."
The two boys swallowed hard and had no choice but to nod.
"Phew..."
Kallen walked the corridor, lost in thought.
There had been no shortage of noise and bother, but for once, the whole affair had wrapped up without any real disaster.
The much-maligned rabbit hunt had more or less found its footing at last.
What was gnawing at him now was that other problem he'd been putting off.
"...What on earth am I supposed to do about the club?"
Kallen scrunched his brow in a wince.
Unlike the classes, that was something he couldn't get the faintest handle on.
"Haah..."
He slumped his shoulders, wrestling with the thought, then shook his head.
"...Tch. It'll work out somehow. Let's just get through the workday first."
Kallen quickened his pace.
Part of the urgency was the new ailment he'd lately developed.
A mysterious, incurable sickness: if his departure from work was delayed by even a single minute, his head would flare hot and every ounce of strength would drain from his body.
The only known treatment was to get himself out of Elysion, and quickly.
Besides, today he'd actually put real effort into supervising class, so quitting time had come later than usual.
Kallen hurried along, just turning the corner—
"Oof."
"Oh?"
At the faint impact against his chest, Kallen's face pinched slightly and he glanced down.
A small, slender girl of a student was sitting in a heap on the floor, hands scrabbling about in a panic.
Stationery and books lay scattered in disarray all around her.
Judging by the robe she wore, she was probably a first-year of the Magic Department.
"Watch where you're going, hm?"
"I-I'm sorry."
At Kallen's curt voice, the girl flinched hard and dropped her face downward.
Then, from where she knelt, came a voice as thin and frail as her slight frame.
"It's... I can't see very well... so I wasn't careful..."
Between strands of pale lilac hair, glimpse after glimpse of unfocused, wandering eyes flickered past.
Across half her face and down her delicate throat, what looked like the scar of a burn snaked its way in ugly, serpentine coils.
"Ah—good grief... well, you could have led with that..."
Kallen mumbled the words, flustered, his face contorting into an indescribably ridiculous expression.
Who are you calling a walking disaster, exactly...
"Eek?!"
Grumbling for no particular reason, Kallen hauled the girl up onto her feet.
Then, with brisk, practiced motions, he gathered up her scattered books and stationery and pressed them back into her hands.
"Hold still. Dust."
"Ah—aah..."
As Kallen brushed off her uniform as well, the girl's cheeks flared a vivid red.
"There. Watch yourself from now on, all right?"
"Um... u-um..."
"Ah, no need to thank me. And—don't go mentioning this to Professor Jiya, whatever you do. Take care, then."
Having said his piece, Kallen all but bolted, hurrying off down the corridor until he was long out of sight.
The girl with the pale lilac hair stood frozen in the corridor, as though a weight had just been lifted from her.
Her unfocused eyes were pointed toward the precise direction in which Kallen had disappeared.
"Sniff... sniff sniff..."
She nosed at the air like a small puppy—and then abruptly went utterly still.
On her face, by degrees, a certain conviction took shape.
"That person is..."