McLane
“Sis?”
I called out again, but she still glared at me with bared teeth, like some mindless beast.
Clear hostility. Clear murderous intent.
Right now, my sister was protecting them from me.
“……”
My teeth ground together. The grip on my sword tightened until the tip of the blade trembled.
“Calm down.”
Eris laid a hand on my shoulder from the side, giving me just enough time to think coldly before I lunged without realizing it.
“She was a necessary asset for conquering the Demon World Forest. We were short on combatants who could fly.”
The man who seemed to be their leader pressed a hand over his wound and spoke in a ragged voice, as if he’d read my state perfectly.
“The other races were just experiments. She was different. We planned to put her on the front lines as an outstanding force for the assault on the Demon World Forest.”
In my previous life, no matter how hard I searched after entering the forest, I never found my sister.
Even if Dyna had grown tired of me and stopped looking, the fact that I couldn’t find her either had always felt wrong.
So this is the ending she met.
I didn’t know exactly what “conquering the Demon World Forest” meant, but fighting there already meant abandoning any ordinary life.
Probably…
She met her end in the very land where I used to live.
Imagining my sister abandoned and alone, torn apart by the magic beasts that roamed the Demon World Forest, sent a fresh surge of heat stabbing through the back of my skull.
If I’d only been a little braver and gone deeper inside…
Or if I’d grown stronger just a little faster…
Wouldn’t there have been a chance to save her?
“But during the assault we discovered the Apocalypse. If you know about the Earliest Apocalypse, then you understand you can’t just leave that black-haired girl alone—”
“Enough.”
The man who looked like the leader seemed to be trying to persuade me, but I cut him off cleanly.
“I get what you’re after. I even understand that you were trying to protect the world in your own way.”
The atmosphere must have turned dangerous.
Even Eris beside me flinched and took a step back, and my sister, her senses sharpened, grew violently agitated.
“If we talk this out, things could still go in a good direction. We could stop Rin’s rampage.”
“Exactly! I—!”
“But.”
The other faculty members were starting to recover their mana and looked ready to charge at any moment, so I stepped forward first.
“The place where our conversation starts is a prison cell.”
Only after I shove you behind cold iron bars first will our talk even be possible.
The moment I lunged, my sister—standing right at the front—naturally charged at me. I tried to slip past or knock her out somehow, but—
Dyna’s body floated up and went flying sideways. She flailed, yet didn’t seem to be in pain.
“Leave her to me, Daniel.”
Eris had restrained her with wind magic.
“Thanks.”
I meant it. Then I shot straight ahead. The woman called Horan hastily stepped into my path and swung her hand.
Crack.
My sword stabbed clean through her swinging palm. Suddenly I remembered this very sword was the gift my sister had given me when I came to the academy, and my grip tightened even more.
“Kyaaaah!”
Horan let out a strange scream and tried to yank her hand free, but I simply swung the blade and split her palm cleanly in half.
“You fight on pure instinct, huh.”
The ears sprouting from her head made it clear she was a beastman.
Beastmen’s base physical abilities were so outstanding that some of them fought with raw instinct and power instead of technique.
This woman Horan seemed especially tilted that way.
Which made her the easiest type for me to handle.
“I’ve fought magic beasts that were far bigger, faster, and stronger than you more times than I can count.”
Fighting on instinct ultimately depends on your own skill.
At her level, she was still nowhere near ready to thrash around in front of me.
“Ghhk!”
After a few exchanges, Horan staggered back with a pained groan. Hare and the other Dogfight members only clustered around their leader; none of them managed any real resistance.
Then the other Dogfight members who had been holding off the Elgrid guards realized their leader was in danger and came pouring in one after another, blocking my path.
“It’s a real shame there are so many eyes watching—I can’t just kill you.”
I spoke my honest feelings and was about to swing when—
“Kyaaaaah!”
“Calm down! It’s all right!”
My sister’s condition was anything but normal.
She tore straight through Eris’s restraining magic, shot into the sky, and suddenly flew off toward the city.
Then the destruction began.
Watching her smash everything in sight as she flew around, I couldn’t help scowling hard.
“You bastard…”
The leader forced a crooked smile onto his lips.
“If you don’t stop your sister right now, she’ll die.”
“What?”
“It’s a deal. We’ll disappear from here. You go stop your sister. The farther I get, the weaker the binding spell becomes.”
“……”
I wanted to tear them apart right that second.
Their numbers had grown, but I was still certain I could kill them all if I took the time.
But if I go stop Sis right now?
Could the professors and Eris arrest every last one of them?
My head shook on its own.
Most of these people had been grafted with the power of magic beasts from the Demon World Forest.
Just Hare’s cockatrice illusions alone would let them escape the professors or Eris with ease.
Then what about leaving Sis to the professors and Eris?
That side actually seemed to have a better chance—but the leader, already healing himself with magic, saw right through my hesitation and sneered.
“If you don’t go now, consider your sister finished. Want me to fully rampage her and turn her into a complete magic beast? Choose now and she can at least keep some of her reason.”
“……”
I slowly turned my head and looked at my sister flying through the city.
In my previous life, I had chosen only for myself.
My sister had become something no longer human—a Dragonian—forced to fight in the Demon World Forest until she met a miserable end.
I had abandoned her, plain and simple.
And once again a choice was being shoved in front of me.
Members of Dogfight who knew about the Earliest Apocalypse. Capturing them would give me clearer clues to save the world.
I could seize information I didn’t yet know and take a much bigger step toward the ending that would save the world from the God of Death.
But—
I can’t abandon Sis again.
I was a pathetic little brother, but I didn’t want to leave her alone once more to die a lonely death.
This time, it was my turn to go find her.
I pushed the boiling emotions down and slowly turned my body.
The Dogfight leader’s mana surged as he prepared a warp. The headmaster and other professors began pouring out magic, but the rest of the Dogfight members used their own abilities to block it.
“Wise choice, Daniel McLane.”
At the leader’s mocking words I tilted my head slightly and glared at them.
“We’ll meet again real soon.”
Leaving the figures vanishing in blue light behind me, I sprinted straight toward my sister. Eris fell in beside me.
“You did well.”
“……Thanks.”
For the sake of the young elf’s treatment method alone Eris had needed to capture Dogfight, yet she respected and understood my choice.
“I’ll help with magic. Now that Dogfight is gone, the mental-type spell binding Miss Dyna is already starting to weaken.”
“So it just needs time to break?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
Good. Then it was a race against time.
I had to keep Sis from causing any more damage.
That was for Elgrid’s sake—and for hers.
If those sharp claws ever killed someone, Sis would suffer every night under the weight of guilt.
She had an unbreakable will, but that also meant she had no flexibility.
“I’m going.”
“It might feel a little awkward or hard to control.”
Her words brought back old memories, and a small smile slipped out.
“Don’t worry.”
I’d already practiced with you plenty of times before.
I rode Eris’s wind magic straight toward my sister. Behind me I heard her startled gasp at how naturally I handled it.
I slammed my sword down on the mana gathering above Sis’s horns. Then I dropped the blade, pulled her into my arms, and let the explosion take us both.
“Kyaaaah!”
Even in the violent aftershock she spread her wings and fought desperately to keep her balance and stay aloft.
At the same time she thrashed to throw me off, whipping her tail against my back.
“You used to love it when I clung to you like a sticky rice cake—now that you’re older you’re trying to shake me off?!”
Determined to peel me away, she flew straight into a nearby wall. My head smashed into a building chimney; dizzying pain flashed through me, but I still didn’t loosen my grip.
“Yeah, it was my fault. I never should have left you behind.”
Words I never could have said if Sis had been in her right mind spilled out of me on their own.
“Back then I’d been expelled, and I thought my childhood friends had betrayed me. Everyone was calling me a criminal.”
It had been too much hardship for an eighteen-year-old to bear.
“But I should have waited for you a little longer. Or at least gone to find you instead of running away alone.”
How long had she searched for me?
How far across the continent had she wandered for my sake?
And in the middle of that she had fallen for Dogfight’s magic beasts, become a Dragonian…
Mind-controlled, forced to fight in the Demon World Forest until she died—my sister.
“I’m really sorry, Sis.”
I had doubted everyone, yet never once doubted that she loved me—my only family.
Arrows from the Elgrid guard force came flying.
I hastily stretched out a hand and took them in her place. The eyes of the sister who had been thrashing to throw me off trembled faintly.
“Yeah… looks like you’re coming around a little.”
“Uh… uhh…”
“Don’t talk like an idiot. Always stand tall and strong—that’s what it means to be a McLane.”
When I said it with a smile, something inside her seemed to start fighting, thrashing hard.
“Daniel!”
Below, Eris prepared to catch us with wind magic.
I seized the horns that had been flying toward the moon and yanked downward; my confused sister went into a steep dive again.
Eris tried to catch us, but Sis’s tremendous speed made her eyes widen; she frantically poured out even more mana.
If we hit the ground like this, both Sis and I would die.
But Eris wasn’t the only mage.
“Those McLanes, I swear!”
The headmaster’s mana layered over us.
Not only that—the other professors who had followed stacked their magic one layer, then two, finishing the preparations to catch the two of us.
Even though we fell, I heard no sound at all.
But in the final moment I clearly felt it.
Sis twisted her body, wrapped her arms around me, and took the landing on her back and wings.
“……Sis?”
Wrapped in a curtain of wind and lowered to the ground, I called out in a trembling voice.
My sister’s hand—covered in hard scales—pulled me into a fierce embrace.
I tried to savor the warmth for a moment, but her fierce claws gouged my back and blood dripped steadily.
A Dragonian’s hands were lethal to human skin even with a light brush.
“S-sorry! Daniel, are you okay?”
She hastily let go, her face crumpling as she stared in fear at her own hands that had become so hideous.
I pulled that sister into an even tighter hug.
“It’s fine. No matter where you go, no matter how you change—Dyna McLane is still my sister.”
“Da…niel.”
“Thank you so much for coming back.”
Her touch wrapped around me, careful and gentle.
The Demon World Forest.
Blue light filtered down between the dense black trees as the members of Dogfight caught their breath.
“Treat the wounded first.”
At the leader’s order everyone settled in and began healing. Looking at Horan’s palm split cleanly in half left a bitter taste rising all the way to his throat.
They could heal it, but there would be some lasting aftereffects.
Even Horan, one of our main forces, got wrecked like that.
What if Daniel McLane had abandoned family affection right there and decided to kill them all?
Just thinking about it sent a chill down his spine.
They had gone there for a warm-up and some fun before conquering the Demon World Forest and taken unexpected losses—but the gains far outweighed them.
There’s no need to conquer the Demon World Forest anymore.
To stop the coming army of death they needed a force of equal scale.
The Demon World Forest was the place where the resources to raise such an army were most concentrated.
Extract power from the magic beasts, arm themselves with the treasures hidden in the forest.
If they even killed the ancient magic beasts and took their power, they could create the strongest army that transcended the limits of species—
But discovering the Earliest Apocalypse had made all of that unnecessary.
They just had to go kill that girl.
Our future direction is decided.
Of course, the wall protecting her—Daniel McLane—looked fairly high, but if they prepared thoroughly and launched an all-out assault, killing one girl would be easy enough.
Just as the Dogfight leader swelled with the conviction that they could save the world—
A violent killing intent erupted from deeper inside the forest.
A ferocious bloodlust he had never felt before in the Demon World Forest.
But the members of Dogfight had tasted this sensation before.
“This is…?”
Every one of them had had their senses sharpened by grafted magic-beast power; no one failed to notice.
At first the range was so wide they couldn’t tell where the killing intent was coming from, but as the presence drew closer every gaze locked onto one point.
“Impossible.”
There was no way they could fail to recognize the bloodlust that stabbed through their entire bodies.
It was the same one the boy had been pouring at them only thirty minutes earlier.
“How?”
How was he here?
How could he appear from deep inside the forest?
The distance from Elgrid, where Aeos Academy stood, to the Demon World Forest was considerable.
Even a mage who could use warp had to come here in person first to set the coordinates.
But as far as he knew, the only mages who could set coordinates deep inside the Demon World Forest were…
There are some!
But how?
What connection could those women possibly have with that boy?
Finding the answer was one thing; there was no time to examine the causal chain.
Because a boy in a school uniform was already pushing through the underbrush, radiating a murderous aura as he locked eyes on them.
“I told you we’d meet again real soon.”
At Aeos Academy it had been a battle.
A life-or-death blood fight that began between equals staking their lives.
But this place was the Demon World Forest.
In this forest the boy had never once done anything that could be called a battle.
This was a hunt.