Catching a Lion (?)
"Saintess!"
"Don't run."
Atana, freshly woken from her slumber, had heard the shocking news and came barreling toward me like an overexcited puppy. When I stopped her short, she carefully switched back to walking.
"Thank you! For saving my life!"
"Yes, you should be grateful."
"...Huh?"
"Yep."
Why, you ask?
Because I'm not a saintess anymore.
I had no reason to guard my words like I used to, no reason to spout lines like it was simply my duty to help every time someone thanked me for a good deed.
You should be grateful. Obviously.
Atana swayed her long, multicolored hair and let out a low uuu... of protest.
"That's not how the saintess I knew acted at all!"
"And what kind of saintess was it that you knew, Miss Atana?"
"Well, first of all she was beautiful, and kind, and pure of heart... uh, she cared for the weak... she had so much grace... she was strong... and everyone said she spoke so, so wonderfully!"
"What a shame, then. That saintess is dead and gone."
These days I'm nothing more than a drifter wandering the world. The only reason I keep helping people at all is the curse.
'A curse that won't let me look away from the weak and simply walk past.'
Something tells me that one's going to follow me to my grave.
Atana looked up at me with an expression that clearly asked, really? Her multicolored eyes sparkled.
"...No, you're not."
"?"
"I think you're exactly the saintess I heard about."
Having studied me up and down in her own pondering way, she soon broke into a bright smile.
"The saintess is just shy."
"No way. I save people in exchange for proper compensation, I'll have you know."
"Father told me about it. How you saved tens of thousands of people from a colossal crab's attack, and then vanished without a trace."
"......"
The hammer in my inventory gave a mournful clang.
So it was mealtime, was it.
Atana saw my face, chuckled, and glued herself to my side.
"The saintess really is kind after all."
"...Atana, you do know there's a demon's fragment inside your body, right?"
Atana's expression turned grave.
I hadn't brought it up to change the subject—though it wasn't not that either—but it was something that needed mentioning eventually. I touched her forearm.
A bird of many colors, kept within a white cage.
"I've sealed it with my own power, but there may come a day when the seal comes loose."
"Huh... why? Is there going to be a day when your power runs low, Saintess?"
"Nothing like that. This is a power I separated off on its own, so it won't come undone even if I die."
"Ah! Don't say things like that! The Saintess is never going to die!"
She flung her hands up wildly and shook her head back and forth. She was so adorable that I reached out and patted her hair.
"Don't worry. I have absolutely no intention of dying."
There were exactly two scenarios in which that spell would break.
One: Coloris, the Demon of Color, being destroyed completely. That would be the best outcome for Atana, but Coloris was a demon as old as Pretus—an insane creature that didn't so much love fighting as simply splatter color across the world wherever it went. Short of it losing its mind one day and picking a grudge with one of Heaven's kin, there was little chance of it ever dying.
Two: ...
If, and only if.
'The war truly ends, and I return to Earth.'
If I crossed dimensions, the spell's very existence would dissolve—and Atana's seal would come undone along with it.
Honestly, that premise didn't have a snowball's chance in hell. It was likelier that Coloris would wander down a road one day, chance upon one of the Eight Seats of Heaven's kin, pick a fight, and get its head smashed in.
Because the war was never going to end.
"Anyway, from now on you should be able to handle single-colored ones easily enough. Just be careful around the multicolored ones."
"Okay!"
"And keep studying your magic steadily. In case of emergencies."
"...Saintess. Nothing's going to happen, right?"
Atana stared at me, worried. I shook my head.
"I'll be here until you grow old and pass. So there's no need for any big worries."
"...So that's how it was."
And so the journey that had seemed like it would never end, finally did—while I listened to the absurd tale of how demons and Heaven's kin had reconciled.
"Ahem. Well, anyway. That's not really today's content—we'll cover it in tomorrow's lesson."
So, the Birdcage of Many Colors was a sealing spell. Originally, it was a magic that sealed the power dwelling within the body itself, but I'd modified it into a spell that blocked only the flow of mana.
Breaking it required either superior physical capabilities or someone who could skillfully manipulate the flow of mana. In the end, even this spell wasn't absolute.
I took a moment to check my backlog of team chat.
It was rare for one point to attack two, but when the difference in power was this extreme, the math changed. And in this case, since we'd struck first, the Non-Aggression Advantage didn't apply to us either—not that it mattered.
'A team with Lily and Vlack in it.'
Even without that little buff, we could win 4 against 8 just fine.
"Respawn timer is three minutes..."
Unlike the Grand General, Generals get two lives. But if the game ends before you can respawn, that second life might as well not exist.
"Then let's finish this within three minutes."
"Holy crap, this is insane."
Taebaek, the vice guildmaster of Black Moon, had skipped the hunt entirely and sat alone in his castle watching Lily's stream. His guildmates—men he'd considered elite, veterans with real credentials—were being cut down one after another, just like that.
Sure, she'd beaten Vlack one-on-one, but Lily wasn't even fighting at full strength right now. Even as her movements seemed, if anything, deliberately restrained, the gap was staggering. It made the word ranker feel like a joke.
"How does anyone fight like that?"
But that wasn't what had Taebaek marveling.
'Why is her smile so damn pretty.'
Her very existence was off the charts. Thanks to a class trait that gave him a deeper sense of Deoen than most, Taebaek didn't regard even a customized appearance as fake. If anything, her in-game looks far outclassed her real ones. And yet she played Deoen without ever seeming to care about her appearance—itself nothing short of paradoxical.
'Vlack called me a lunatic for it.'
The only one who understood him was Myeongwol, whom he'd felled with his skill just moments ago. Besides, this very personality of his boosted his class synergy—the guildmaster hadn't made him vice guildmaster for nothing. No one else was fit for the seat.
Lily moved toward the Purple Team's castle. She had no intention of playing defensively, it seemed. He'd been watching partly for the spectacle anyway—there was no leaving this castle for him—and he already knew her whereabouts through his summons.
Kugoong!
Before long, Lily arrived at the castle. Given that she'd strolled in on a free pass, the archer fellow was probably long dead or scattered somewhere. A glance at the map confirmed it: already dead.
'Doesn't matter.'
Alone or not, this castle was already within my domain.
"So you're the Grand General."
"Wow."
The moment Lily stepped through the doors, Taebaek found himself unable to look away for a heartbeat.
Hair like the deep sea, gemstone-blue eyes. A face that seemed to gather only the finest features of East and West, and a figure unlike anything he had ever seen—yet none of it felt excessive or awkward. If a god of Beauty truly existed in this world, he thought, it would have to be the woman standing before him.
That was how absurdly unfair her looks were.
Taebaek, momentarily lost, quickly came to his senses as the consciousness of the countless summons linked to his mind stirred awake.
"You're selling me short with one eye, I see."
A green spear was already hurtling toward his face.
"Ron!"
A tiny fairy with butterfly wings let out a sharp whistle, warping the spear's trajectory. The blow smashed into the castle wall instead, gouging out a chunk of innocent stone.
Lily's expressionless face cracked, just slightly.
Taebaek swiftly called his next summons: a transparent spirit beast in the shape of a bird, and a tree spirit with a long vine coiled around its body.
'A type like her has to be subdued by force.'
Knowing Lily's temperament from everything he'd observed, there was no winning her over with words. That much was certain. She clearly had confidence in her own strength, and pride to match. Unless someone broke her outright, she would never come over to his side, no matter what he tried.
But flip that around, and all he needed was to bring her down once. After that, a little contest, a little offer to help—it would be over before it began. Honestly, it might be far easier than every woman he'd courted so far.
Pishoo! Chwararararak—!
The spirit bird cried out, dragging down the speed of everything around it, and the tree spirit flung its vine.
The goal wasn't to wound Lily or take her life—it was capture. Not out of any reluctance to hurt a lady, mind you.
'Right now, I'm hunting a lion.'
For capturing a lion, a tough, resilient net was far more efficient than a weapon.
"A binding spell, is it."
Lily's eyes flashed. Rotation coiled into the green spear, and the vines that had been reaching to bind her burst apart where they stood and rolled across the floor. The bird's cry had little effect either.
'I expected this much.'
"Rami, Kai, Den."
His strongest summons—the ultimate trio of relics, capable of toying with even two-digit rankers on the field.
With these, the catch was guaranteed.
'Heh heh...'
"......"