Three Years of Hard Work, Reduced to Nothing
Three years of hellish grind had gone up in smoke.
Haa... I’m really going to lose my mind.
A woman appeared alongside seven meteors, her massive platinum wings spread wide to either side.
Lord of the Skies, ruler of every dragon alive—the White Dragon Emperor, Serapagnia.
The moment she revealed herself she looked down on the three transcendents floating in midair and roared in a voice laced with the draconic tongue.
“What is the meaning of this, Serene Roelina, Arsiena Silvairia, and even Nemesia Ragneil? Why have every last transcendent who ought to be guarding their own domains gathered here?”
“…….”
Even under Serapagnia’s question the three beings simply kept their silence, arms folded, watching her drift above them.
“Have you all gone mute? Do you dare look down on me, thinking I will simply overlook the fact that you smashed my meteors?”
“… It has been a long time, White Dragon Emperor Serapagnia.”
The first to break the silence was Serene, mistress of the Roelina Empire.
The reason she alone offered courtesy while the other two did not was simple.
Arsiena, Lord of the World Tree; Nemesia, Manifestation of the Black Moon; and Serapagnia, the White Dragon Emperor—those three had known one another since the day they were born thousands of years ago, and they had never once stopped competing.
In short, whoever spoke first lost. So they were all playing the silent game. Serene, being the junior among them, simply lowered her head.
… That’s all well and good, but I’m really going crazy here. Damn author…
Why the hell did that maniac set up characters who barely even appear in the novel with this much detail?
If you dug deep enough, of course, the author who wrote the settings had done nothing wrong. The idiot who used those settings to do something irreversible out of pure jealous rage was me.
Still, I could curse the author all I wanted and the author couldn’t curse me back, so I poured a nice stream of mental abuse his way.
Even while I was busy forgetting to run and cursing the author instead, the three transcendents kept staring only at one another. Not one of them opened her mouth first.
That left Serene Roelina—the only one among them who was still human and who did not particularly enjoy creating innocent casualties—as the sole person who could defuse the situation. She knew it better than anyone, and so she spoke carefully.
“White Dragon Emperor, would you first withdraw the dragon’s aura you have spread through the surroundings?”
Serene’s gaze swept over the students still foaming at the mouth amid the rubble, crushed under the weight of Dragon Fear, before she continued.
“I have no intention of finding fault with the great Lord’s actions, but if you keep producing innocent victims, will that not damage Lady Serapagnia’s dignity?”
“… Ha! The child who only just ascended to the realm of transcendents is rather insolent. My mood has soured.”
Serapagnia let out a hollow laugh and fixed her eyes on Serene, pouring the dragon’s aura out even more fiercely in every direction.
Yet Serene met that Fear head-on, chin raised, staring straight into the vertical pupils.
After a short standoff of perhaps a minute, it was the White Dragon Emperor who took the first step back.
“… Tch. I would love nothing more than to educate this insolent child on the spot… but my purpose today is not the destruction of the human world, so I shall yield just this once. Therefore lower that insolent bowstring at once.”
“I am truly grateful for your consideration.”
Confirming that the Fear had fully receded, Serene dipped her head lightly and loosened the Heavenly Bow whose string had been drawn to its absolute limit.
“More importantly, Lady White Dragon Emperor said she visited Argentina Academy for another purpose… may I ask what that purpose might be?”
“Hmm?”
Serapagnia tilted her head slightly at Serene’s question.
High in the sky, above the place where seven meteors had been reduced to dust, her platinum wings unfurled wide and then slowly folded again.
“Purpose… simple enough.”
She lifted her chin a fraction.
“I merely came looking for one extremely insolent human.”
“… An insolent human?”
Serene’s brow twitched ever so slightly.
Arsiena quietly turned her gaze aside.
Nemesia snorted.
“To make the White Dragon Emperor travel all this way, the brat must be rather interesting.”
“Interesting falls short.”
Serapagnia wore a childlike, mischievous smile, her shark-like teeth gleaming in neat rows.
“A mad child who dared whisper love to the Lord of the Skies herself. That is why I came down here in person to meet him.”
“…….”
A word none of them had ever imagined hearing from the Dragon Lord’s mouth. Nemesia—no, all three transcendents—could feel the earlier sense of foreboding solidifying into cold fact.
Still unable to believe it, Nemesia asked again with a faintly incredulous expression.
“… Love? The Dragon Lord?”
“Indeed.”
Instead of a long explanation, Serapagnia simply slipped a hand into her robes and, with perfect confidence, as though displaying a prized treasure, drew out a single cream-colored envelope and held it high in the air.
No blood, no ash, no mana—impossibly clean cream paper.
“To think someone would even confess love to this body… I could scarcely imagine how starved for affection the child must be.”
The White Dragon Emperor grinned.
“Judging by the questions you ask, you received something similar yourselves, did you not?”
Serene wordlessly lifted the envelope she held.
Arsiena did the same. So did Nemesia.
Three cream envelopes, and one more.
Four identical envelopes caught the sunlight in the hands of the four figures above.
…….
Watching the scene from right beneath them, I felt the world spin and pressed hard on my temple.
Fuck… they’re supposed to be transcendents, masters of entire continents. Why the hell are beings of that scale this simple?
Empress, Elf Queen, Demon King, and now the Dragon Lord on top of it. The complete set of the Rahelon Continent’s Four Great Calamities, each holding a cream-colored envelope.
Even I, who already knew everything, found it absurd. How much more so for the professors and students below who had barely recovered their wits and were watching this in real time?
And right on cue, people began grinding their teeth and muttering almost in unison.
“Th-that envelope… you heard it earlier, right? The letter from the culprit… cream-colored…”
“KJH…! Just how much of a grudge do you hold against Argentina that you summoned every transcendent on the continent here…!”
“If we find him, we kill him. We kill him for sure…!”
“We should hang him from the academy’s front gate…!”
…….
Only then did it hit me again.
Ah, right. I was in the middle of running away.
I had genuinely forgotten. The spectacle overhead had been so unreal that my sense of reality had briefly checked out.
“Hoo… okay.”
I drew a deep breath and once more began carefully crawling sideways across the rubble.
To survive, I first had to get a grip on my nerves.
There’s an old saying that even if you fall into a tiger’s den, you’ll live if you keep your wits about you, right?
Of course, this place was infinitely more dangerous than any tiger’s den…
Meanwhile, up above, the White Dragon Emperor was laughing as though she were having the time of her life.
“How unfortunate for you all.”
Serapagnia’s gaze slowly swept across Serene, Arsiena, and Nemesia.
“Whatever you may be thinking, this man will ultimately be mine.”
Her platinum wings unfurled a little and folded again.
“Rather than ignorant little children like you—”
Serapagnia stretched the corners of her mouth to an almost excessive degree.
At the same time her platinum hair began, for some reason, to grow shorter.
Finally her height shrank, her wings vanished, and floating in midair was an ordinary human girl who looked about middle-school age.
Pale skin, platinum hair, golden eyes that shone like a galaxy.
Completely polymorphed into the form of a girl who could pass for a middle-schooler, she planted both hands on her hips, thrust out her chest, and declared with absolute confidence:
“Wouldn’t it be far better to fall for this body, who possesses mature charm?”
“… That seems highly unlikely.”
Serene was the first to react to that outrageous self-assurance.
Nemesia nodded in agreement and opened her mouth as well.
“After living more than three thousand years you’ve finally lost it, you damn lizard.”
Arsiena joined in without missing a beat.
“If you’re going to grow old, at least do it with some dignity… Your behavior is embarrassing, Lady Serapagnia.”
“Ha?”
The White Dragon Emperor’s brow twitched.
At the same time the air changed again.
This was on an entirely different level from a moment ago.
Until now it had felt like she was teasing long-unseen comrades. Now pride was colliding with pride head-on.
“Very well.”
Serapagnia’s voice dropped a full tone.
“I never expected much, but it seems you lot are desperate to end your eternal lives and vanish today.”
Platinum mana surged into the sky like a galaxy poured upside down.
At the sight, Serene also raised both hands.
“I do not refuse a fight that is offered to me.”
Golden arrows once more rose around her.
Arsiena lifted the greatsword of the World Tree and leveled its tip; Nemesia smirked and raised a hand.
“Fine. Since it’s come to this, we might as well settle things once and for all.”
The Black Moon began to drip blood-red light again.
Just as the four beings’ unique authorities locked onto the same point and prepared to collide—
I, who had been moving my body as quietly as possible beneath them, nearly screamed inside my head.
Hey, wait a second. If those things properly smash into each other here… not just the academy, the entire city of Argentina will be wiped off the map, you know?
But before the thought even finished—
Lines of light so clear they could be seen with the naked eye carved themselves across the entire academy.
“… Huh?”
It began beneath my feet.
Over the rubble-strewn ground, an intricate magic circle suddenly began to etch itself.
In moments the circle linked every broken stone, shattered pillar, pool of blood, and fallen body into a single continuous line.
This is… don’t tell me?
In the novel’s ending, when Argentina was finally about to fall to the Outer Gods, the academy’s headmaster had activated one particular magic.
The academy’s final defense system.
A magic circle built as a last insurance policy, meant to be used only when Argentina itself was truly finished.
Apparently that circle had decided that the four transcendents’ power rising to its peak meant the academy was about to be destroyed.
“… Activate.”
A low voice seemed to come from somewhere.
In the same instant the entire world flipped, and my vision filled with white light.
No sensation of floating, no feeling of being unable to breathe—
just the sense of being cut cleanly out of where I had been and moved elsewhere.
Students’ screams, professors’ curses, someone’s prayer, someone’s curse—all of it was sucked into the light of the magic circle.
And then.
KWAANG—!!
A sound that nearly ruptured my eardrums arrived a beat late.
I reflexively looked back.
In the already receding view I saw the silhouette of Argentina Academy.
Not buildings, not towers, not the plaza.
Just one enormous lump of light that had suddenly appeared, and the moment that light went out—
the academy vanished without leaving so much as a trace.
Nothing remained in its place.
Only empty space that looked like a hole.
The sight was so shocking that sound refused to leave my mouth.
Fuck… I spent three years protecting this place… damn it all.
With that final thought, my vision went completely black.
“… Get up already, you insolent student.”
A voice both unfamiliar and familiar, thick with anger, made my eyelids twitch.
My head felt as if it would split. My whole body was heavy, yet I could still move.
… Whatever this is, I’m apparently still alive.
I wasn’t sure whether I should be grateful for that or whether dying would have been more comfortable, but I slowly opened my eyes.
The first thing that entered my vision was color.
To be precise—four colors.
The hair of the woman standing before me formed a natural gradient of four distinct shades.
Black-teal, deep crimson, pale gold, and a faint violet.
Like four rivers flowing together into one place, they blended softly from the roots.
Add to that a clean robe and sharp eyes that still carried a hint of fatigue.
“You’re awake, you insolent student.”
The woman looked down at my face as she spoke.
I opened my mouth on pure reflex.
“Where… is this—”
“Quite far from the place where Argentina ‘used to be.’”
She answered calmly.
“I am the headmaster of this academy. You saw my face on entrance day, didn’t you?”
“… What?”
The sudden confession of identity left me momentarily speechless.
… This woman is the headmaster?
While I sat there frozen in confusion, the woman with the four-colored hair held out a hand as though she already knew everything.
“Well then, Mr. KJH.”
“….”
“We seem to have quite a lot to discuss regarding those letters… shall we get started right away?”