Until His Return (1)
"Whew. Quite the spectacle, isn't it?"
Fireworks shot up into the Elgrid sky—a sky so dark even the stars seemed to have fallen asleep—and came screaming straight down toward the girls' dormitory.
With a thunderous blast, an entire section of the building collapsed without mercy.
Yet the mage who had fired the spell only clicked his tongue, looking faintly disappointed.
"Still, killing little kids leaves a bad taste in my mouth."
"Excuse me? Leader, how many people have you killed by now, and you're squeamish about this?"
"A man can still have thoughts, can't he?"
"You've killed a thousand easy, and now you're getting precious?"
The mage they called Leader kept bickering with the woman beside him—tiger ears jutting sharply from the top of her head—while never once taking his eyes off the dormitory.
"You said that Daniel kid isn't here, right?"
"Yes, that's correct."
At the Leader's words, another girl in a hood stepped forward. It was Hare, who had once attended Aeos Academy.
She was also the one who had quickly realized the female students were raiding Dogfight bases and related personnel today, and reported it to the Leader.
"Shame. I was curious what kind of level it takes to put Perimao down."
"He only got Doppelslime powers. Of course he lost. He wasn't anyone important anyway."
The tiger-eared woman pouted and grumbled, sulking.
The man who was their Leader nodded as if she had a point, then scratched the back of his head.
"Yeah, but he was still officer-class. Makes you a little curious when one of those dies."
He gets uncomfortable firing magic at girls he's seeing for the first time, yet a dead comrade barely registers…
For a fleeting moment, Hare felt a stab of unease about what she even was to this man.
Something about him was always slightly off-center. As if, when the house of his mind was built, the nails of common sense had been driven in at the wrong angles—his sense of the ordinary injected differently from everyone else's.
"I've been too busy to come by, but this place hasn't changed a bit."
"You came last time when you cast the memory-wipe spell, didn't you?"
"That's right. It was a real pain of a spell, so hearing it got undone so easily was a little disappointing."
The two of them spoke as casually as if they had stepped out for a stroll. The other Dogfight members around them weren't listening to the conversation—they were simply waiting for the next order.
"Anyway, the busy prep work is done, so I figured I'd get some air before we head into the Demon World Forest for real."
"Using warp magic just to get some air… only you would do that, Leader."
And bringing this many people along, no less.
"I appreciate you, Hare. You gave me the perfect excuse to drop by and play."
"It was nothing…"
Hare bowed deeply toward the faintly smiling Leader. He was so four-dimensional she never knew what sudden impulse he might act on, so she was always careful—doubly careful.
"Oh? She actually tanked that?"
"That woman looks pretty fun, doesn't she?"
The Leader murmured in admiration. The tiger-eared woman licked her lips.
Her clothes were still burning from the fireball just now, and her injuries looked severe—yet in the end she had made herself a shield and protected the female students. The maid.
"Do you know who she is?"
At the tiger-eared woman's question, Hare shook her head.
"No. There was no maid like her when I attended."
Elise had only brought Bertia along starting second semester, so Hare—who had left the academy before that—was naturally seeing her for the first time.
"Leader, I'll go."
"Hmm. Looks like she's coming to us anyway."
Despite her serious wounds, Bertia's eyes were locked on them with perfect clarity. The murderous intent rolling off her was so chilling the Leader let out a dry laugh, and the rest of Dogfight tensed, ready to spring.
"Go easy. Think of it as a warm-up before we enter the Demon World Forest."
With the Leader's leisurely voice—as if he regarded even Aeos Academy, one of the continent's most prestigious schools, and Elgrid, the heart of continental trade, as little more than a playground—the assault began.
"Well then. I suppose I'll go pick up a new comrade."
Thud. Rumble-rumble.
"Mm?"
At the noise from outside and the tremor running through the floor, Ares—who had dozed off in a hospital chair—slowly opened his eyes.
He sat up and checked the room first. Dyna McLane was still asleep, and Belin Meias, a fifth-year upperclassman, was nodding off in the chair beside her bed.
The Meias family—Tana Krista's main house—was one of the three great houses of the Frisia Kingdom, and Belin was a promising talent even within that lineage.
I heard they don't get along…
As far as Ares knew, Dyna McLane and Belin Meias were rivals of a sort—the kind who snarled at each other on sight. But looking at them now, Belin seemed to harbor something else entirely. Ever since Daniel left, Belin had barely left Dyna's side.
"Senior, wake up. Something's happening outside."
"Mm?"
Belin Meias was living proof that a man could still look handsome even just waking up.
Ares and Belin—two beautiful youths—stepped into the corridor and checked the windows, but given the building's position, nothing was visible from here. They could at least make out flashes of light and the sound of things exploding.
"I should go check. Senior, please stay here."
"Got it."
Just as Ares was about to leave Belin behind and head out—just in case—a man came walking steadily down the dark far end of the corridor.
He wore a black robe and was on the thin side, with a thoroughly ordinary face. The kind of unremarkable, neighborly warmth you might get from the older brother next door.
But Ares, who had spent years reading women's moods and weighing every glance, knew from hard-earned experience and pure survival instinct:
That man is the source of this chaos!
And he had come all the way here looking for Dyna.
"Hello. That's Dyna McLane's room, right? I just have a little business with her."
"Belin hyung—go get your sword from the room."
Belin looked startled at Ares's words, but without argument he ducked quickly back inside to find his blade.
In that split second, Ares thought:
Run.
Leave it to Belin Meias and get out. The mana rolling off this man was nowhere near a level Ares could handle.
"Thinking of running?"
Ares's pupils shook as the man read his intention in an instant—but the man simply turned his body aside and gestured toward the open corridor.
"Go ahead. It's fine."
"…!"
"Hurry up. I don't particularly feel like spilling unnecessary blood."
Ares swallowed hard.
By the time he came back to himself, his body had already surrendered to instinct and was sprinting down the dark hallway.
"Staying true to your instincts. I like that. Life is precious, after all."
The Leader watched Ares recede with a faint smile, then walked straight into the hospital room.
Inside, Belin Meias was frantically unwrapping the cloth bindings from his sword—
"You—you bastard! What did you do to Ares?!"
"Don't be a nuisance."
Belin Meias charged. His body lifted gently into the air of the room, then slammed hard into the wall.
Without so much as a glance at the limp Belin, the Leader slowly reached a hand toward Dyna McLane.
"All right. Time to wake up now."
His voice was sweet, like someone gently rousing a late sleeper on an early morning.
Dyna McLane's body began to twitch. The horn rising from her forehead swelled larger and larger; the tail emerging above her hips and the wings on her back started to take shape—
"You son of a bitch!"
Golden light flooded the hospital room.
The Leader raised a barrier as if he had expected it—but to his surprise, cracks began to spider across the shield he had believed absolute.
Ares, who had fled, had come back. The Leader had already known that much from the presence outside the room.
But this was a surprise.
The Leader's eyes went round. A serpent's smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
"…Helios."
"Why?! Why do you keep making me have to think about this, you bastard?!"
Whatever the man said, Ares brought his sword down in a savage arc.
He had no fond memories of Dyna McLane.
Even as kids it had been bad, and especially over this last break she had worked him half to death telling him to get his head on straight—he hadn't even been able to rest properly.
He could feel how much stronger he had become, sure. But he had come back to town hoping to blow off academy stress, and he hadn't gotten so much as a moment with Rin, or any of the other girls.
And still—hate had turned into a kind of affection.
For that Dyna McLane he had cursed as a crazy bitch more times than he could count, Ares kept swinging his sword.
Of course, that wasn't the only reason.
Fate told me! You—you were supposed to save me! So I gave you everything! Now you have to save me!
He really had meant to run.
But in that moment, Adrina's voice from the festival had clung to his ankles like tar.
He had abandoned her—tear-streaked, snot-nosed, begging him to save her while magic beasts chased her down—and he had run.
What a disgusting idea. A conviction built on raw power always belongs to the strong. That kind of belief is self-centered. Arrogant. You were never fit to hold that power.
The words the elf Eris had spoken to him tightened around his whole body.
You stand on the opposite side from Daniel. He has power, yet he carries the convictions of the weak. You have no power, yet you covet the convictions of the strong.
And at the end of it all, being compared to Daniel McLane and coming up short was something he simply could not endure.
"I—I aaaaam—!"
Eyes red-rimmed, the boy poured every last drop of Helios's power blazing from the backs of his hands into each strike.
He was terrified.
So terrified.
But he did not want to be remembered as a pathetic person again.
That wish of Ares's was a precious kind of growth—but reality, as always, was cruel.
"The power of Helios… I've gotten my hands on some truly valuable material."
In front of the Leader of Dogfight—an organization that committed every illegal act imaginable—it was nothing but meaningless thrashing.
Ares Heliace felt a dull impact ring through his skull, crumpled as if his strings had been cut, and closed his eyes.