Nightmare
Nightmare
Deep in the night.
Danya's quarters.
Her room was fairly spacious, which only made the small bed stand out more.
A bed that was small but plush.
Danya lay curled up tight, almost buried in the blankets, her eyes wide open.
The countless events of the combat training replayed in her mind.
The bomb-headed skeletal soldier.
The dungeon with a hole punched through it.
A cadet falling to corruption.
So much had happened.
But the one thing her mind refused to let go of wasn't any of those major incidents. It was the look on Ian Blackangus's face.
Rina, surrounded by professors, basking in their praise.
The eyes Ian watched that scene with were... how to describe them? Deep and dark, like they held water from an abyssal, unfathomable trench.
"What on earth was he thinking..."
No matter how many times she tossed and turned in bed, she couldn't guess why Ian had worn such an expression.
But a vague suspicion had begun to take root.
"... Was it true, then? That Rina attacked Ian?"
That first burst of flame shot at Ian.
Could it have been deliberate, and not an accident? That was the suspicion.
She hadn't seen it herself, so it was purely speculation. And the thought of turning everyone's beloved Rina into an enemy was terrifying.
"I should tell him what I saw, right?"
She should. It was the right thing to do.
Assuming Danya herself truly trusted Ian, that is.
"Trust him, huh..."
Danya buried her face in her own tail.
Beastfolk fear "trust."
More precisely, they are averse to trusting other races.
As the elders put it, it's no different from looping a rope around your own neck and handing the other end to someone else. That's why it's the very first lesson taught from childhood. Never trust another race lightly.
It's not excessive paranoia.
Because beastfolk can be "tamed."
Tamed. Danya had only recently come to understand what that word truly meant.
If you have a class with someone at nine, you start looking forward to it from eight.
You find yourself staring at a sink full of soapy water while doing the dishes, and oddly, your thoughts drift to them.
"No. That last one doesn't sound right."
Anyway.
That process of growing attached—that's what Danya figured being tamed was.
"... You can't trust people."
She swore it to herself again and again, but...
The Ian she had seen today seemed like someone who needed it.
Needed someone to tell him he was trusted. The man who'd watched Rina surrounded by that crowd with such infinitely deep, hollow eyes.
Someone to say, "I believe in you."
"But if I actually say the words..."
Saying it out loud felt like it would make the trust real, make it irreversible. That was what frightened her. She already trusted him to some degree, of course. But voicing it felt like stepping past a point of no return.
"Agh, seriously. Why is this so hard?"
Danya buried her face in the pillow.
"Kkh-kkh."
She ran out of air almost immediately.
This was getting her nowhere.
Danya got out of bed.
She decided to go for a walk.
◆
Ian was focused on class, same as always.
The setting: the Basic Magic Practicals lab.
"Today we'll be conducting a practical on elemental affinities. Rina Rosewell, of the flame element, please come to the front."
Rina walked forward to the cheers of those around her.
"Now then, what element can block flame? Water? No. When water and flame meet, they create steam. A mutual interaction. So, to demonstrate what can truly block flame, Earth-attribute mage Ian will now give us a demonstration. Please come forward, Ian Blackangus."
"Ah."
What kind of disjointed nonsense was this?
Ian rose from his seat and was escorted forward.
The open space at the front of the classroom, set up for simple magical demonstrations.
He stood facing Rina Rosewell.
Her beaming smile morphed in an instant. It was a look brimming with murderous intent.
Yet everyone was laughing, even seeing that expression on her face.
- That's our Rina!
- Give it to Pongpongi!
What was with these reactions...?
Was being a heroine a free pass for this kind of thing?
While Ian was lost in confusion,
Rina's hair turned a vivid green.
"!"
Without any warning, a torrent of intense flames poured out.
A high-ranking spirit's attack.
Ian swiftly cast a basic defensive spell, raising an earthen wall.
- Fwoosh!
But the wall crumbled.
It couldn't hold.
It was hot.
His hands were burning up.
The Lunar Staff... ah. He hadn't brought it with him.
The earthen wall melted away completely.
Flames began to lick at his hands.
Hot.
So hot he practically wished for death.
People cackled as they watched.
And Rina Rosewell, the corner of her lips curling upward.
No matter if she was a heroine, this situation was utterly absurd.
"... Is this a dream?"
Ian jolted awake.
*
— Gasp!
Ian shot upright, clutching his throbbing forehead.
Sweat dripped from his feverish body.
The blanket was already soaked through.
[ Laurent Magical Textiles - Heatsulating Blanket ]
A tag he caught a glimpse of at the edge of the blanket.
— Hmph! Witness the technological prowess of the Laurent Trading Company!
He'd subtly stoked Emilia's competitive streak to wring this blanket out of his sponsor, Sylvia. He'd asked for something warm, worried that staying too cold might lead to muscle loss, and she'd sent him what was basically a sauna blanket.
"Ugh."
He'd have to be more careful about provoking his sponsor's competitive side in the future.
He got up and opened the window.
The cool night air soothed his overheated body.
"A nightmare out of nowhere? No. I guess it wasn't out of nowhere."
The cause of the nightmare was obvious.
Rina Rosewell.
A heroine of Fanta X Aca.
"So we're enemies now."
A hollow laugh escaped him.
Possessed into a trash game?
Somehow, he could wrap his head around that.
But to suddenly have to be wary of the heroines—and to find himself a complete and total enemy of one of them?
"It's tough. So damn tough."
He sighed and looked out the window.
The moon, now nearly full, shone brightly upon the night.
Come to think of it, Lunar had taken a lot of damage.
The magic staff that had been turned black after being struck by Rina Rosewell's attack.
Since he was awake anyway, he might as well recharge Lunar.
◆
A clearing near the dormitory.
Usually his go-to spot for training, but tonight was different.
"Hmm."
Ian stood there, the blackened staff in one hand, deep in thought.
Lunar ore.
This mineral, mined only from a specific region known as the Moonlight Mountains, possesses the unique property of absorbing moonlight.
Its signature high magic resistance stems from that property, but when subjected to magic beyond a certain threshold, it turns black like this, a sign of deformation.
When that happens, refilling it with moonlight restores its original color and properties.
"Where should I put it?"
He pondered for a moment, then hung it on a small, leafless tree. The faint shimmer of silver on its surface told him he'd picked a decent spot.
Seeing it hang there brought a fresh realization.
"How did she get so strong, so suddenly?"
He was talking about Rina Rosewell.
The amount of Lunar in that staff was enough to forge an entire suit of armor.
It had taken a single strike.
One strike from Rina Rosewell had blackened the entire thing.
"She shouldn't be at that level yet, not at this point in the timeline."
Rina Rosewell was a late-bloomer type of heroine.
The kind you painstakingly raise for a guaranteed payoff in the late game. Yet she was already displaying overwhelming prowess.
... And only when attacking Ian himself.
"Unbelievable."
Still, he had a strong hunch about the reason.
The reason she had grown so strong.
If he kept opposing her in the scenarios to come...
— Rustle.
The sound of grass being disturbed broke his train of thought.
A patch of underbrush twitched in the distance.
"......"
The surroundings were dark.
There wasn't any wind.
No real reason for anything to be moving.
"... Probably just a squirrel or something."
— Rustle, rustle.
The grass was moving a bit too aggressively for a squirrel.
Maybe a rabbit, then.
Lichten was a major city.
There was no way a monster would be lurking in its heart.
Though, it did seem to be getting closer, didn't it?
— Sh-sh-sh-shk! Sh-sh-sh-shk!
W-why was it coming this way?
"Agh!"
Just as Ian grabbed his magic staff and prepared to swing it—
"Kyaaaang!"
Boing!
Something leaped out from the other side first, a scream erupting at the same time.
"Uwaaaagh!"
"Kyaaaagh!"
They exchanged a round of screams before both finally calmed down.
Each of them reached that conclusion in their own way, but they both got there.
Ian blinked a few times.
His vision slowly steadied.
A familiar face.
"... Danya?"
"Why'd you scream out of nowhere, nya! Scaring a person half to death!"
"What are you doing out here at this hour?"
"Me? Well, obviously! A-ah, no. J-just getting some exercise, okay?"
"At dawn?"
At Ian's skeptical look, Danya bristled.
"I just couldn't sleep, alright?!"
Fair enough.
She'd nearly died, and then one of the cadets had turned corrupted and vanished into thin air.
Hadn't he himself woken up and wandered out here?
It made perfect sense for her to be unable to sleep.
Ian shrugged and sat down on a tree stump.
Danya stood there watching him.
"Sit."
Ian patted the spot next to him.
The stump was wide enough for two.
"......"
Danya, who had been standing still, took a deep breath and approached. Her steps were cautious and stealthy, like a cat approaching a human for the first time.
"What, am I going to eat you?"
"Th-that's not it!"
She snapped at him once before carefully settling onto the spot beside him.
Perhaps thinking she'd sat a bit too far away, Danya lifted her hips and scooted a little closer.
Sft, sft. Close enough that their clothes gently brushed against each other.
Danya flinched slightly but didn't move away again.
The moon was bright enough to illuminate her profile.
Danya's lips parted and closed, as if she was wrestling with some kind of worry.
After giving her a moment, Ian asked,
"What is it?"
She glanced up at him briefly, then bowed her head low. What could she be trying to say? The fact that she'd come all the way out here in the dead of night had to mean something.
Danya clenched her fist tight, as if resolving herself, and looked up at him.
Twitching, quivering.
Danya's trembling lips finally parted.