Awakening, Elara!
Elara’s gaze lost its way and wandered.
What settled in her trembling blue pupils was the old servant’s body, crushed beyond recognition. And beyond it stood her former comrades—so horrific she could barely bring herself to face them.
“Kyaa, who do we have here? If it isn’t our runaway Heroine!”
It was Kurast.
He snickered, shoulders bouncing like a hyena that had just spotted prey. The torn corners of his mouth and the gleam in his eyes were thick with open mockery and glistening sadism.
“Elara, so this rat hole you crawled into was all you could manage? I figured you’d be holed up in some backwater nowhere. Heh, fuck… you used to act all high and mighty, bossing us around.”
Kurast ground the old butler’s skull under the spiked sole of his military boot.
“Ghhh….”
A feeble groan scattered across the lawn.
“……!”
She had to move.
But her feet would not leave the ground.
Elara stood frozen like a taxidermied specimen, overwhelmed by the nightmare before her. Her face had gone paper-white with terror; cold sweat glued her silver hair to the nape of her neck. Between the strands, her blue eyes quivered like glass beads about to shatter. Her tightly bitten lips were flushed to the point of bursting, and with every ragged breath her full chest heaved irregularly, tracing dizzying curves.
Her gaze remained nailed solely to the butler writhing beneath Kurast’s boot. The ghosts of the past clamped around her ankles far tighter than any rational urge to save him.
“What? Worried about who’ll do your laundry if this old bastard croaks?”
“Kurast, that is enough. …Even this old man is a subject of salvation. Let us grant him time to repent slowly, in agony.”
Lidia covered her mouth with the back of her hand and smiled with a sickly, twisted eye-smile. Then she jerked her chin toward Lillian behind her.
“Isn’t that right, Lillian?”
At Lidia’s question, Lillian stepped forward, chewing on her pipe. Gaila, reading the room, roughly yanked the leash of a young girl and followed.
“…Hoo. Looks like you’ve been getting along just fine with that quack. Your face has filled out nicely, hasn’t it?”
“What… do you want….”
Elara barely managed to open her mouth, eyes wide.
“What do we want? Obviously… we’re here to deliver notice to our Hero Party candidate. I told you before, didn’t I? ‘Come back.’ If you won’t… maybe we’ll just give your seat to this bitch instead.”
Chiriring────!
“Ghk!”
The leash wound tight around Gaila’s rough fist. The girl flung to the ground could not even scream. Choking, she only looked up at Elara with eyes that begged for life.
“How about it? Pretty useful, right? Her recovery’s ridiculous. Whether you use her as a punching bag or throw her as bait, she’s damn handy.”
Lillian exhaled a long stream of smoke and sneered. The pale tobacco haze drifted across the girl’s agonized face.
Elara’s lips turned blue.
If she did not return, that girl would die in torment worse than hell. But if she did return? She herself would have to walk back into that pit of fire.
“Come on, time’s short. Choose, Elara. Either you put the collar back on yourself, or you watch that substitute die while every human here gets massacred.”
Kurast snickered. Lidia smiled so brightly it made the title of Saintess feel nauseating. Gaila expressionlessly tightened the girl’s windpipe.
A perfect encirclement.
Before the violence that called itself the Hero Party, the peaceful garden transformed in an instant into a hellscape of chaos. In the very center of that suffocating violence—where no one seemed able to intervene—Elara’s thoughts were about to freeze solid.
“Yeah, hard to answer right away, isn’t it….”
Lillian curled her lips and released her mana. Her specialty: illusion magic.
White smoke rose and swallowed Elara’s vision. In that moment, reality itself crumpled before her eyes.
Over the image of the collared girl, horrific nightmares layered themselves. The once-beautiful garden melted into the ruins of a burning village; the coppery stench of blood and the reek of roasting flesh pressed in as vividly as reality.
— Aaaaaaagh! I’ll give you anything! Anything at all, just—please, spare my life!
— Kyaaaaaa! S-save meeeeee!
What burst from the smoke were the ghosts of the past.
The village chief begging with limbs severed by Kurast’s blade. Soldiers whose faces had been caved in by Gaila’s fists. And Lidia, smiling her holy smile as she shoved them back into the pit of agony under the pretext of “healing.”
The collared girl’s face flickered constantly into the dead faces of the countless people they had once treated like toys and discarded.
“Ah… aah….”
Screams and bursting sounds erupted from every direction. The noise of bones snapping and flesh tearing clung to her ears like slime. These were no mere hallucinations. They were the records of the sins Elara had personally seen, heard, and stood by and watched.
Elara clamped her hands over her ears and sank to the ground.
“Hey, Elara?”
Lillian smiled thinly and yanked the girl’s hair.
“This slave bitch is going to live just like that from now on. Just like the nightmares you went through. …But you’re an adult, aren’t you? For our next Heroine, I’ll specially give you another chance.”
Lillian stretched out a hand and pointed at Elara.
“Come back. Join us again. Then you’ll start to see a different world too.”
“…Ghhk.”
Elara felt she was going mad. She wanted to erase the delusions churning through her skull. Wouldn’t it be easier just to listen to them?
In the instant she was about to abandon herself—
— …Cough.
An extremely small, alien cough broke the silence.
“Ah, shit. The smell.”
The direction Lillian’s pipe smoke was drifting. Right behind them. The entire Hero Party flinched and spun around.
There had been no presence. No killing intent, no ripple of mana. Just how long had he been standing there?
A man wearing a stretched-out T-shirt instead of a crisply ironed dress shirt. He waved the smoke away from his nose with a scowl.
“Didn’t anyone teach you that public places are no-smoking zones, Miss Lillian? Looks like the one who really needs counseling is you. Did you forget because you’re too stupid?”
Elara’s counselor, Aris Mardia.
He stood behind Lillian. His gaze passed over her, moved in turn to Gaila’s hand gripping the leash, then to the trampled old butler. The man’s eyes cooled to a chilling stillness.
“Whew… looking at you lot who only pick on elderly people, I think I should send you to a prison or an incinerator rather than a hospital.”
I had spat it out with plenty of swagger… but what came next was the problem.
—Chzzzzzzzzzt.
The anxiety levels detected by my Psychological Insight skill were critical. I had to ease that first.
Huh?
The moment I brushed past Elara, the hallucinatory noise tormenting her died away as if it had been a lie.
“T-Teacher…?”
Fortunately, the noise was gone. A result of the affection work? Even better.
Then it was time to show her the thing I did best. I decided to trust the advice that ILoveBlondeBigBreasts had given me and push forward.
I turned toward her and deliberately put on a leisurely smile.
“Elara, it’s counseling time. We’ll use this place as our consultation room for now.”
At my sly attitude, the archer with arrowheads strapped to his thigh scowled.
“The hell is that bastard?”
“Heeh, so that’s the quack doctor Lillian mentioned?”
They were muttering among themselves, but I had no leisure to care. The murderous intent rolling off them from the front was already making my skin sting.
Even so, I crushed my hammering heart and kept my expression as dry and arrogant as possible. Cold sweat poured down my back like rain, but I could not show it. If I gave ground here, it was over.
I walked toward the enemy line with calm steps.
“T-Teacher, it’s dangerous!”
Elara frantically tried to grab my sleeve, but I did not stop. At last I stood right in front of Lillian’s nose.
Lillian slowly lifted her head. Her crimson eyes blazed as if they meant to tear me apart.
Overwhelming killing intent. A vicious pressure that would have made any ordinary person wet themselves on the spot.
…Fuck, my legs are going to give out.
But I am a counselor. A specialist who has long since gotten used to handling lunatics.
“My, Miss Lillian. To grace us with your presence in person today—could it be you’ve come for counseling?”
I asked it deliberately, provocatively.
“Bullshit… this quack bastard. Does it look like I came for counseling?”
“Haha, a quack? Your words are far too harsh. The first step of treatment is using kind language.”
Lillian let out a hollow laugh of disbelief, and the man beside her cut in.
“Wh-what the hell is this bastard… is he actually insane?”
“Insane? Aren’t you the ones who are insane?”
“What?”
I smiled brightly and turned my body. Making a show of exposing my back, I strode toward Elara and met her eyes.
“Elara! Look carefully. Do those things still look like heroes in your eyes?”
“…….”
Elara could not answer. To her, still trembling with fear, I delivered my diagnosis in a voice full of conviction.
“You sealed yourself away just to protect the good, because you could no longer endure those cheap thugs. That is your noble ‘white.’ But what about them?”
I jerked my chin toward them and recited an on-the-spot diagnostic opinion.
“A severe nicotine addict who starts shaking without a cigarette.”
I glared first at Lillian,
“An inferiority complex who only picks on the weak to prop up his self-esteem.”
I swept a contemptuous look over the archer still stepping on the old butler.
“A hypocritical psychopath who uses God as an excuse to indulge his sadism.”
I spat venom at the Saintess who looked nothing like one,
“And lastly, an empty tin can with no self who just does whatever he’s told. His head’s so empty he can only keep a weak little girl like that tied up.”
“This bastard’s been running his mouth… looks like he wants to die…?”
Killing-intent-laced curses exploded behind me, but I firmly gripped Elara’s shoulders. Her wavering blue eyes took me in.
“Elara, one piece of advice. Now it’s your turn to save us. So….”
I spoke with the most serious, gentlest eyes I could manage.
“Don’t be scared. Those things are just pitiful mental patients who need treatment.”
Crunch—!
The sound of Lillian’s pipe snapping broke the silence.
“…Ha.”
Lillian twisted her lips and let out a hollow laugh. Behind that laugh, ominous crimson mana rose like heat haze and locked onto my back.
“Interesting last words, quack!”
Murderous flames surged toward me.
I had been waiting for exactly this moment. I might not know the others’ patterns, but I had prepared a custom trap just for Lillian.
The instant magic carrying hostility toward me was detected, the installation hidden beneath the garden lawn sprang up like a coiled spring.
— KWA-KWA-KWA-BOOM!
“Wh-what the hell!?”
A gigantic spring-loaded fist. The so-called Punching Machine. But this was on a completely different level from any carnival toy. An absurdly huge fist canceled out the magic and smashed her face right where she stood. As the most expensive point item, its power was bound to be considerable.
Let’s go! Fire Fist Machine!!
Whoooosh—!
Thwack──!!
Prediction confirmed.
Merciless physical force exploded against Lillian’s face. As expected, physical therapy is the answer for mages. This was my secret technique: the Buldak Fist.
KWAANG!
“Kyaaaak!”
Struck clean in the face, Lillian tumbled like a bowling pin with a single scream.
“Li-Lillian!”
“Th-this crazy quack bastard…!”
Lillian staggered back to her feet, clutching an eye socket already turning purple. The unsightly state of the mage who always pretended to be so lofty. At that absurd spectacle, a deflating sound slipped from Elara’s lips.
“P-puh….”
What burst from Elara’s mouth was neither a scream nor a groan.
“Haha, funny, right?”
“Puhahahaha! Wh-what is that… for real… ah, my stomach….”
She clutched her belly and doubled over, laughing. Every time her upper body shook with the violent laughter, the full curves of her chest, plastered to her sweat-soaked shirt, swayed blatantly. The face that had been white with terror now bloomed with a flush of excitement and heat.
“That’s my one-time special move. …The problem is I don’t have a next one.”
I whispered so only Elara could hear, cold sweat running down my face.
As if finally grasping reality, Lillian screamed, voice thick with venom.
“This fucking bastard… how dare you touch my face!”
“Lillian, your face is half… Pfft.”
“Shut up! Stop laughing and kill those bastards right now!!”
At Lillian’s poison-soaked shriek, the Hero Party members re-gripped their weapons with murderous intent. The joking was over. Real death was now right in front of our noses.
I pulled the only weapon I had—a self-defense wooden sword—from my coat and held it out to Elara.
“Elara, can you help me? I no longer have any means of counterattack.”
I tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, but the fingertips gripping the wooden sword trembled faintly. Elara’s blue eyes swept in turn over my shaking hand, the wooden sword, and my eyes.
And then.
“Haa….”
With a languid sigh she curled her lips into a captivating smile. The pitiful girl paralyzed by terror was nowhere to be found. Standing before me now was a lofty predator leisurely regarding the prey in front of her.
“You know, Teacher… you made a mistake too.”
“Pardon?”
Elara took one step, closing the distance until she was right against me. A deep fragrance washed over me; her breath was close enough to touch.
“You told me to look only at you, Teacher.”
“……?”
Thok.
Her white hand lightly knocked aside the wooden sword I had offered. Clatter, roll… My only lifeline of a wooden sword tumbled weakly to the ground.
But I felt no anxiety. Because standing before my eyes was a light far greater and more radiant than that wooden sword.
Elara turned her head and fixed her gaze on the Hero Party bristling with killing intent. The pressure radiating from that cool profile crushed the air itself.
“If I’m going to protect you, Teacher, I have to look those bastards straight in the eye, don’t I?”
Elara took one step forward.
KWAOOOOOM—!
The instant her foot touched the ground, a dazzling white aura erupted from her entire body like a storm. Her silver hair danced as if defying gravity, and behind her a vast shape of light—like an angel’s wings—shimmered. It was salvation, and at the same time the most merciless light of judgment descending upon her enemies.
“Hey, you lot. You wanted the Holy Sword, right? Fine, I’ll give it to you! If you can take it, that is!”