Perhaps...?
Probably...?
Once the quest was over, I returned to Elbrit as Lily.
Thanks to the sudden quest, my PK points had piled up nicely, and my hideout was now layered with protective wards of the caliber that only high-ranked players could get their hands on.
At this level, it should keep out most rankers or even an entire knight order.
"By the way, there's something I've been wondering about for a while now~"
"What is it?"
The administrative office of the Elbrit Principality.
Besk and Serek handled most of the day-to-day affairs, but every so often there was spare time to go around—when Besk got tied up with business outside his official duties, or when Serek's remaining manifestation hours ran low. In those moments, there was no one else to do the work, so I handled it myself.
Leo rolled around on the sofa as she asked her question.
"Why is your name Rafina?"
"Hmm."
The reason I'd named my alternate account Rafina.
"There was someone I knew."
"Someone you knew? From Lily's alien-planet days?"
"You could say that."
'What a remarkable woman she was.'
Rafina was one of the people from my past.
A pure human—corrupted by neither an ancient monster nor by the blood of a Celestial like me, nor by anything of the demon race. She was fully human, and like me, she was a fixer who made her living cleaning up the things that troubled the world.
Though her work leaned more toward humans than monsters.
"Right when I was trying to pick a name, she came to mind. And the reason I chose an assassin, too—I modeled her appearance to some extent."
"Oh... then she must have been your friend, Lily?"
"A friend?"
'Could you really compare someone as insignificant as me to someone as great as her? Hmm?'
'I'll stick to catching the criminals who've earned it, so you handle the nastier monsters. The monsters, and even those damned winged vermin while you're at it.'
Because that was how she took her revenge.
"We were friends, yes."
"Were friends?"
"Well, most of my words are like that... Anyway, done. Just this last bit and we're finished."
"Ah, I almost forgot, Lily, your stream key—"
"Even if I turned it on and told you, you wouldn't believe me."
Really, even if I flat-out said I was Rafina, no one would believe it, would they?
I mulled over the Rafina situation for a while, then rose from my seat.
"Where are you going?"
"Yena should be at the Academy right now. I want to have a word with her."
Leo was an outstanding ranker affiliated with the Empire, but she belonged to the Empire, plain and simple. When it came to matters concerning the kingdoms, Yena would know far more than Leo would.
"Mmm."
A dilemma.
"Mmmmmmm..."
A very serious dilemma.
Currently ranked 15th overall. Yena, the Rank 1 assassin and a ranker enjoying her second golden age.
Yena sat in the Academy's manifestation lab, sunk deep in thought.
Before her was one of her magic homework assignments: a fusion magic circle combining Light and Bolt.
For someone who had only just learned Fireball, the assignment might have been a bit much—but rankers were people who had already tasted real power. Though the system blocked them from using their abilities freely, now that the door had opened somewhat, simple fusion magic was well within reach.
"Ah!"
CRACK!
Of course, exceptions always existed.
Light and Bolt, in the middle of fusing together, triggered a mana crash and blew apart.
Yena, absorbing the full brunt of the failed spell, brushed the lightning residue off herself and let out a sigh.
Truthfully, the failed magic wasn't what troubled her.
She was an assassin; she only practiced manifestation magic because Lily kept stressing how important it was. She had no particular intention of ever actually casting spells. Throwing herself into concentration for a single spell was far less efficient than swinging a dagger one more time.
So what was the dilemma, then?
"...Are we all going down like this?"
It had been nearly three months since the Imperial War.
After Lily restored the world to order, the days that followed seemed peaceful enough—but the reality was a little different.
The kingdoms that had banded together against the Empire were now, at last, eyeing each other with suspicion and distrust.
A natural question arises here: why were the kingdoms attacked by the Empire so desperate to check and undermine one another instead of uniting?
The reason was simple.
For centuries, the Empire had gone to war on a remarkably passive footing. The moment it looked like they might suffer even the slightest loss, they would unconditionally halt the war, and the Eight Swords—the Empire's pride—never moved unless something truly extraordinary occurred.
In other words, the Empire's true strength hadn't been revealed since centuries ago.
Needless to say, only a tiny handful of people still remembered that.
But the Empire, as if mocking that very fact, invaded the world with the majority of its forces—and alongside them, the immortal being known as the Undying, their highest-tier otherworlder.
Having witnessed the Empire's overwhelming power with their own two eyes, the kingdoms inevitably understood.
'Even united, we could never win.'
Lily was holding the Empire at bay, yes—but she was only one woman, and she was no volunteer. If they wanted her protection, they would have to pay a price of equal weight, just like Talikal had with its Masterpiece.
Ever since that day, the kingdoms teetering on the brink had been struggling through hardship.
Jurodis Kingdom had been swallowed whole by the bandit, Grim Reaper.
Musra Kingdom had defected outright to the Empire's side to escape its wrath.
And the great kingdom alliances, the very ones who should have been stopping these defections, were too busy checking each other in a race to recruit powerful otherworlders... So unity was simply impossible.
"Haaah..."
Of course, for Yena, the kingdoms' fragmentation was cause for celebration.
After her guild had turned a kingdom on its head in the past, it had landed on their blacklist, after all.
The kingdoms' downfall could only benefit her—there was nothing bad about it at all.
Except.
"The economy's in shambles, so none of it matters."
The -Ye- Guild was one of the guilds that earned its keep through monster byproducts and farming crops.
Originally, they took in a 70% return on everything they sold—but as trade route fees and every kingdom's taxes climbed steeply, they were now down to scraping by on 40%, at best.
Split that among the guild members, and almost nothing remained.
Yena was a famous personality and a ranker with a fair amount of money, but the guild's operating budget and her personal savings were two different matters.
So that neither side would burden the other, they deliberately restricted the guild's operating expenses to funds the guild itself earned.
But even that was now running dry.
"...Maybe I should just use my own money."
Frankly, it wouldn't have bothered her.
She'd been earning plenty lately, and she'd put away quite a bit in the past, too. She was certain that spending it would pose no real difficulty in running the guild.
She hadn't announced it, but for the past month or two she'd quietly been chipping in about ten percent of the operating costs anyway.
"Absolutely not! Once you start dipping into it, it becomes a hole that just keeps drinking water, I'm telling you? Do you want to end up flat broke, unnie?"
"That's right. It might be fine at first, but the burden will come eventually. The guild members might start taking it for granted too, since they won't be earning it themselves."
But the guild's officers had talked her out of it.
It wasn't about the money, they said. If she spent her own funds, the guild's atmosphere would inevitably grow slack.
...Was time really the only answer, then? Or should she have just acted on her temper back then, like she—
"Eh, whatever. Once the Great Cataclysm hits, everything—"
Clunk!
The lab door swung open and someone walked in.
Pink hair, and a magical girl outfit as flamboyant as it could possibly be.
The giant lollipop staff in her hand was radiating starlight.
"Ah."
Candy Star froze mid-step the moment she saw Yena.
"Candy Star? Don't worry about it, go ahead and use it. I'm done with all my sessions today."
"...Yes."
Candy Star walked past the rising Yena and sat down at the one designated seat installed in the lab—the only one of its kind.
Yena glanced back at her.
It had been like this before too, a steady familiarity she'd been noticing for a while now. She was certain she'd met this person called Candy Star somewhere before... but for the life of her, she couldn't recall who it was or where.
Would she figure it out once she got more attuned to mana?
'Come to think of it, she was first in magic, wasn't she?'
The one who had proudly claimed first place over every ranker in the Academy—including the flame mage ranker Redberry and Rank 2, Leo.
Yena knew she was a magical girl, but she hadn't realized the gap was this overwhelming.
Not that she had any room to talk—Candy Star had beaten her once already.
That very 'designated seat' was proof: a seat only a single person in the entire Academy was allowed to use.
"Candy Star?"
"What. I mean, what is it?"
"Do you happen to have any tips for using magic well? Even the magic professor praises you like crazy."
"...Why do you want to know?"
"Oh, I just want to get better too. Us players are terrible with magic, you know. Even Leo can't use it as well as you, Candy Star."
That was no flattery.
She had actually heard it in class: 'The magical girl is leagues beyond that nymph brat. She clearly has a gift for it.' — straight from Professor Rasty's mouth.
She hadn't seen it with her own eyes, but if the Progenitor herself said it, it had to be true.
To Yena's question, Candy Star answered only with silence.
"Candy Star?"
"...Are you pretending not to know on purpose?"
"What?"
"If you don't know, that's fine."
Zzzt!
Candy Star's giant lollipop thinned into a blade-like edge.
FWOOSH! Pink starlight poured down, and before Yena knew what was happening, Fly had been layered over her—and she was soaring through the sky.
"Huh?"
Clunk!
KABOOM!!
Tossed out of the building, Yena stared back at Candy Star with a look of utter bewilderment—but the girl was smiling.
Smiling with the purest innocence, the expression of someone untouched by the world's stains.
"...Sorry! But this magical girl Candy Star has research to do!"
"......"
As Yena stared blankly at her beaming face, a single scene flickered through her mind.
Barely two months ago, delivering a victory speech before a crowd of thousands—smiling with an uncharacteristic brightness...
"Nah, no way."
The image didn't match at all.
That prickly, sharp-tongued person, a magical girl? Impossible.
-My Magical Shield isn't working?! Urgh... this is bad. I'll have to raise my output even further!
"No way it's her..."
Probably...?