121. What Ifs Don't Exist
121. What Ifs Don't Exist
Not long after entering the Black Forest, Atlas encountered a participant in the Hunting Festival.
"Nunim?"
"How are you here?"
Of all people, it was Hera, the head of the Swordsmanship Research Club.
Traces of magical beasts remained on her body, showing she had already hunted several.
Hera and the other club members wore expressions that said they couldn't understand why I, who wasn't a participant, was here in a tuxedo of all things.
"You don't seem to be lost..."
I thought for a moment.
Time was pressing. Should I just break all four of their rings and send them back, or should I explain the situation roughly and ask for their cooperation?
The latter seemed like the right call for now.
"Let me just check one thing."
"Check? Eeek?!"
I moved in an instant and pressed a specific acupoint on the back of each of their necks, one by one.
They were all just startled, with no abnormalities, which put me at ease.
If any of them had been wearing a fake face, it would have come off just now.
"Wh-what are you doing?!"
"A body was found outside the forest."
"What...?"
When I mentioned a body had been found, they were all shocked.
A few of them probably thought I was joking.
"Someone killed an academy student and stole their face. The professors seem to want to handle this quietly, so it looks like they're trying to deal with it discreetly while the Hunting Festival is underway."
"If what you're saying is true, then we can't continue the Hunting Festival! I'll formally inform the Headmaster and get the festival suspended."
"...Do you have a way to contact the professors from here?"
"No, I was just going to take off my ring, go back, and tell them?"
"But then... you'd be automatically disqualified."
"What does it matter if we're trying to get it suspended anyway?"
At the mention of giving up on the Hunting Festival, the club members behind her let out sighs of dismay, but Hera's will was firm.
"Aren't you worried I might be lying on purpose to get you eliminated, Nunim?"
"Why, is it a lie?"
"No, it's not."
"Then that settles it."
"You just seem to be giving up too easily..."
"Winning first place in the Hunting Festival is important, but I've already won once before... people's lives are more important.
If you came here because you were worried about your friends, I'll look for them too once I'm done with this. So let's meet up again in a bit."
Hera grinned and fiddled with the ring on her finger.
"Hey, what are you doing? Take your rings off too, quickly!"
"Ah, seriously... Chief, is this really okay?"
"We're not exactly short on budget, so what's the big deal? If he's deceiving us, I'll just scold him later."
"Aah... fine... let's take them off, everyone."
At Hera's sharp command, the Swordsmanship Research Club members all removed their rings in unison.
Immediately after, they were all summoned away, leaving only the rings in the air to fall to the ground.
"She believed me without much explanation."
She really was a good person.
A thought suddenly crossed my mind.
If I had just one family member like her during my childhood in Titan... would I have turned out a little different from how I am now?
"...What a strange delusion to have."
It was a pointless attachment.
What ifs don't exist in reality.
"Now then... where should I go first?"
From all directions in the once-silent Black Forest, loud, chaotic noises were reverberating.
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Suffering from pain so intense it felt like her body was breaking apart, Rio barely managed to regain consciousness.
"Ugh... ptoo, ptoo..."
Her mouth was dry, filled with the soft soil of the Black Forest.
Rio was buried in the dirt.
"Ow ow ow... why am... I..."
She wanted to stand up right away, but given her state, that was difficult.
Looking around where she had collapsed, she saw a small crater had formed, and remnants of magic that seemed to be her own handiwork were visible here and there.
"I definitely... encountered a magical beast called Orthos... and was running away..."
Retracing her memories one by one, Rio realized why she was in this state.
"Right... I used magic from on top of a tree to block Orthos's attack and got sent flying along with it..."
During the strategy meeting, they had been discovered by Orthos and became the target of its attack.
She had barely avoided a direct hit by using defensive magic, but because she had cast it from a tree instead of the ground, she seemed to have been sent flying along with the hemisphere-shaped barrier she formed.
That was the only way to explain the situation.
Because that was where her memory cut off.
"Right... my teammates..."
When she raised her head, a bright light was visible in the middle of the dark Black Forest.
It was the scene of the fire created by Orthos's flames.
The defensive magic had protected all three of them, but she was the only one who had been blown away.
Were they perhaps still fighting that terrible monster?
"Po-potion..."
She had prepared a recovery potion just in case.
Well, prepared was an overstatement; she had received it from Liber.
Fortunately, her injuries seemed to be limited to full-body bruising, so a single bottle of potion would be enough for her to recover to the point where she could move immediately.
Rio rummaged through the bag where she kept her essential items, intending to take out the recovery potion.
But when she put her hand inside the bag, all she felt were burnt pieces of leather.
Perhaps from a stray spark, the bottom of the bag had burned through, creating a large hole.
Most of the items in the bag had been lost.
The appearance of a high-ranking magical beast she couldn't possibly face, the loss of most of her prepared supplies, bruising so severe over her entire body that it was hard to move...
'Is this... the end for me here?'
Taking off the ring and returning immediately would be the correct choice.
But a lingering attachment remained.
The moment she took off this ring, she would have to leave the academy.
Just then, she felt a presence nearby.
"It's quite spectacular over there... isn't someone going to die like that?"
"I know, right."
The voices of familiar people sounded close by.
Voices she heard every day in class, voices she absolutely never wanted to hear in a situation like this.
"What's this, it's the beggar bitch? Why is she lying around here?"
"Was she abandoned or something?"
"If you're going to throw her away, at least sort your trash properly. What's the point of leaving her with her ring still on?"
"Isn't it so the magical beasts can rip her apart and eat her?"
It was the recommendation-admitted noble students who always tormented Rio.
Looking down at Rio, who couldn't even control her body properly and was collapsed on the ground, they approached one by one, each wearing a greasy smirk.
"So this is what happens when you act out of line."
"Taking off this ring means instant disqualification, right? Should we take it off now?"
"We will take it off, but wait a moment..."
One of them approached and pointed to Rio's tightly clenched hand.
"And where did you steal this from?"
What he was pointing at was the wand she had received as a gift from Atlas.
"I didn't... steal it..."
"There's no way you could afford this. Even my older brother couldn't buy it, said it was too expensive."
It was indeed odd that Rio, who was always strapped for cash, possessed a display-grade item so expensive that even the children of territory-holding lords would find it burdensome to purchase.
The feel of the thin, soft leather luxuriously wrapping the handle seemed to declare that it was out of Rio's league.
"This is too much for a commoner like you. We're taking it."
"You can't... take this...!"
The student grabbed Rio's arm and tried to forcibly pry her fingers open to steal the wand.
Whether he was truly a paragon of law-abiding spirit trying to return a suspected stolen wand to its owner, or just had his eye on it, no one could tell.
Four brawny male students, whom she could never overpower physically, swarmed her, trying to force her grip open. She resisted with all her might, but it was only a matter of time before it opened.
This wasn't just any wand.
It was a gift from the people who had been kind to her in this damn academy where she had been thoroughly trampled upon.
She absolutely refused to have it taken away.
"I said... you can't!!!"
With a light swing of the wand, large rocks surged up from the ground.
It was a failure.
She had intended to create a massive rock barrier wall, but her body was so unsteady the magic didn't come out properly.
Even though it was a half-baked spell, it still had an effect.
Because the students were struck by the suddenly rising rocks.
But the problem was that it wasn't a spell strong enough to knock them down completely.
"How insolent... you used magic on us, is that it?"
-Peok!
"Aack!"
One of them broke through the rocks and kicked Rio.
Her whole body was already throbbing with bruises, and being kicked sent a jolt of pain through her entire frame.
"Ugh..!"
Enduring the pain, Rio swung her wand once more.
This time, the magic she used was one that turned solid ground into a swamp.
Because her body ached, delicate manipulation was difficult, but this was a spell that didn't need any adjustment. Simply casting it would turn all the surrounding ground into a quagmire.
"You're fucking around!"
But as soon as they saw the signs of the ground turning into a swamp, the students grabbed onto Rio and clung to her.
Seeing the surroundings change into a quagmire, they grabbed Rio to drag her in with them.
"Let... go of this!!"
"Our feet might get stuck, but you're going headfirst into this, so look forward to it."
She tried to resist, but she couldn't escape the hands of the male students whose forearms were several times thicker than hers.
Just before she suffocated in the swamp of her own making, she saw something bizarre over the shoulders of the male students.
With a strange sensation as if time had slowed down, the figure of a man in a black robe appeared in a corner of her vision.
Wearing a terrifying mask that looked like a skull adorned with goat horns, he looked at Rio from a distance and spoke.
How did she know he was speaking even though his face was completely covered by the mask? It was because she heard the voice directly in her ear.
-Why are you holding back?
Who was holding back? She had resisted several times, but it had ended up like this anyway.
-You... are suppressing your power.
She wasn't suppressing her power; she just couldn't control it properly.
If she used more mana and fired magic wildly and indiscriminately... those bastards would probably die.
And after that, only ruin would await her.
-Why are you doing that? You said it was a precious item. Were those just words? Why are you considering the circumstances of those you despise so much?
Even so, killing people was wrong.
Beyond morality, it was simply something one must never do as a member of a society where people live together.
Just as those idiots tormenting Rio could kill her if they set their minds to it, but chose instead to merely harass her.
A few days ago... back when she thought she had been thoroughly abandoned by society, she might have thought that way.
If she had been abandoned by society and reached a point where she could no longer live as a member of it.
But not now.
She had met good teammates, and from an acquaintance of theirs, she had received tremendous kindness for no particular reason.
There was trash that tormented her, calling her insolent for no reason, but the world was also full of people who gave her such warmth.
Rio still wanted to live as a member of this society.
-Now then, I shall help you, so protect your precious item...
"You guys...!! What are you doing to our teammate...!!!"
The masked person's words were cut off by Emy's voice.
One of the students holding onto Rio, trying to drag her into the swamp, went flying through the air.
The attacker was Emy, covered in scorch marks here and there.
Seeing the student soar through the air after being hit, Rio snapped back to her senses.
"Emy...?"
"Sunbae Rio, can you get up?"
Even though the surroundings had all turned into a swamp, Emy ran over without any trouble and helped Rio to her feet.
Standing up, Rio looked back at the spot where the skull-masked person who had been talking to her just moments ago had been.
'He's gone...?'
Only trees and grass existed there.
There was no suspicious figure in a skull mask.
She felt as though she had seen a ghost.
"Yo-you..!! How dare a freshman attack us?!"
"And you guys, hurry up and take your rings off and get out of here. You could die!!"
"Hey, don't change the subject!!"
Emy ignored the male students.
It was as if she didn't have a moment to spare for them right now.
The reason why became clear to them a moment later.
[Kung!!]
It was because Orthos, the red twin-headed hound with flames flickering in its mouth, had chased Emy all the way here.
"Uwaaaaah, what the hell is that?!?!"
"Hiiiiik???"
"I-I want to go back!!"
"I don't want to die!!"
The moment Orthos revealed itself, the students scrambled to throw away their rings and vanished in an instant.
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In another part of the forest, Lucia and Casey had fallen into a peculiar standoff.
Casey, as Atlas had instructed, had been roaming around to help students who got into danger when she was caught by Lucia.
Lucia, who had launched a sword aura at her, was glaring fiercely at Casey.
It looked as if she was asking for a fight.
Casey, having no intention of doing so, was stealthily inching backward, trying to create some distance.
In that standoff, Lucia was the one who spoke first.
"....Atlas... said it was... no big deal... but I still can't forgive you."
Lucia shot another sword aura at Casey.
Casey dodged the aura easily, but when it hit a tree, the trunk burst apart as if struck by a cannon.
Even with such an explosion happening right next to her, Casey stood on another branch without batting an eye.
"No matter the circumstances... the time I barely managed to get with Atlas... you ruined it..!"
"I'm sorry about that. I mean it sincerely."
It was surprising that Casey apologized so readily, but her tone, which sounded no different from usual, was irritating.
Only because Casey was high up in a tall tree could Lucia not act on it immediately; in her heart, she wanted to fight Casey right that moment.
Even if it was a surprise attack, Casey was the swordswoman who had landed an effective hit on Atlas, a man who had never allowed a single attack to land at the academy.
Her head understood that, but her heart didn't.
The teaching of House Russell was to always maintain an unchanging heart, but ever since coming to the academy, Lucia had been growing more and more emotional.
"Do you think... words alone make it better...?"
She raised her sword.
No matter how high up Casey was, the swordsmanship of House Russell had a technique that could drag her down to the ground.
Just as Lucia, having drawn up the earth veins with all her might from the soles of her feet connected to the ground, was about to swing her sword—
-Kung..!!
-Kukukung!!
At that moment, another loud sound echoed from afar.
This time, it wasn't just one or two places.
From multiple directions, sounds that were hard to believe could be caused by a mere academy student rang out.
"....It really does look like shit hit the fan... I understand how you feel, but do it after the Hunting Festival is over. Not now. I have a job the old man asked me to do."
"...Atlas... asked you... for a job?"
At the mention that Atlas had requested her help, Lucia immediately withdrew the sword she had been about to swing down.