Graduation
I had, without question, grown stronger.
But compared to my master's strength, I was nothing at all.
At her sudden declaration of my graduation, I could only give an awkward reply.
"Come on... Master, that's just a joke, right...? I haven't even landed a single solid hit on you yet."
Luna, who had been standing there in a daze, chimed in as if she shared the sentiment.
"She's right. Even if we both attacked you at once, we wouldn't last thirty seconds."
Despite this chorus of perfectly reasonable objections, my master's expression didn't change in the slightest.
Was this person... actually serious about graduating us?
"You're both correct. It's impossible for you to defeat me with magic or force to begin with. But it is equally true that I have nothing left to teach you."
My master tapped the ground twice with the black parasol she always carried.
A magic circle flared to life beneath her feet, and two rings materialized in her hand.
"These are my gifts to you."
She pressed an identical ring into each of our palms — mine and Luna's.
They looked like ordinary silver rings, nothing special about them. No demonic energy could be sensed from either one, and their design gave no hint of any particular function.
Luna, apparently thinking along the same lines, simply stared blankly at the ring in her hand.
"Master... is this just a regular ring?"
My master gave me a look of fond exasperation, as if to say, when has that ever been likely?
"Put it on."
Classic Master. Never one for long explanations.
Luna and I slipped the rings on at the same time.
Nothing seemed to happen...?
Wondering if there was anything unusual on Luna's end, I glanced over at her — but she looked just as unimpressed as I felt, her reaction utterly underwhelming.
Perhaps sensing my gaze, Luna turned and met my eyes.
In that instant, I realized what the ring did.
Luna's eyes had turned the same sky-blue as Seria's.
The crimson eyes that were the very symbol of the demon race were gone entirely, and Luna — looking somehow fresh and innocent now — tilted her head at me.
"Luna. Look in a mirror."
"Huh? Why?"
I summoned a mirror with magic and handed it to her.
"Pretty as ever, that's all. Huh? What — what is this?"
Only then did Luna seem to notice the change in her own body.
She flung the mirror aside and thrust her hand out into the empty air.
But for all the force behind that outstretched arm, nothing happened.
"...My demonic energy is gone..."
She was genuinely, visibly shaken.
My master said nothing, only smiled at the two of us.
Luna, stripped of her red eyes and her demonic energy alike, looked — no matter how I looked at her — like a human being. Nothing more, nothing less.
Could it be...
"The time has come, my disciples. Our very first promise. I trust you haven't forgotten it."
The reunion with Seria I had craved so desperately had arrived — far, far sooner than I had ever imagined.
Every Hero in history, in accordance with the sacred succession, had passed through a fixed series of stages before reaching the throne of the Demon King.
The first stage was Awakening. Chosen by the Saintess's divine revelation, the Heroes came to understand their mission and began to cultivate the qualities befitting a champion of humanity.
The second was Proof. To prove themselves the bearer of humanity's strongest power, the Heroes enrolled at the Academy — where the finest talents of every nation on the continent gathered — assembled the companions who would aid them, and reigned at the summit of the institution as humanity's representative.
The third was Qualification. To stand against a Demon King wielding the power of the primordial demons, a Hero needed more than innate strength alone; only when the holy relics acknowledged their worth could they fully command that power.
Only after passing through these three trials, it was said, could a Hero at last begin the journey to the Demon King's castle.
The demons had plotted countless times, countless ways, to cut the Hero down at the root — to stop them from ever reaching the abyssal castle at the world's depths.
But by the time the first stage, Awakening, was complete, a Hero was already a being who had reached the very limit of human potential.
Killing them through force or assassination was only feasible before their Awakening; any attempt at ambush during the second or third stages had long been dismissed as a pointless exercise.
That is — until the variable known as me, Yuwol, appeared on the board.
Every Hero in history had entered the Awakening stage already hardened by trauma and hatred, their families slaughtered by demons.
In a word: any half-baked scheme built on sweet words had never once worked before.
But if the Hero's family were still alive — and if that surviving kin had chosen the demons' side, a living witness to humanity's ugliness — then the shackles of fate could be twisted loose. That was what my master and the assembled demons hoped I would accomplish.
And in the worst-case scenario, should my plan fail... I would serve as the ultimate hostage. A bargaining chip.
Yes... if I were still human, I'd have thought the odds were actually decent.
But thanks to a certain someone, I now held a status in the human world where I'd be lucky to escape execution on sight.
"Luna... you can't possibly fit all of that in the dorm... take less..."
My master informed us that the Hero's stage of Proof would soon begin.
She also explained one unusual detail: this generation's Hero, Seria, had undergone her Awakening at a far faster pace than anything in the records.
Poor Seria. Just how much cruelty did she have to endure from humans to achieve something like that...?
Even now, I wanted to bolt straight out and rescue her.
"Sirius, a girl's luggage is supposed to be about this much. And — what, would you rather I let you get looked down on by all the other girls once we're at the Academy?"
Once the departure date for the human realm was set, the busiest person of all turned out to be Luna.
My master, for her part, carried on with her duties as usual — all calm skies and good luck, kids — while Luna threw herself into gathering intelligence on the human world, then had her underlings hunt down the latest fashions for her.
Apparently the Academy issued its own uniforms, but when I pointed that out, Luna didn't so much as pretend to hear me.
She seemed determined to enter this journey resolved to utterly crush Seria on every possible front.
Luna... Seria doesn't even know who you are...
Watching her wage an endless war against a girl she'd never once met, I couldn't keep the strangeness off my face.
Truthfully, my feelings about Seria were still a tangled mess.
I love Luna.
That much is genuine.
But Seria had been more than half my life — my first love, my everything.
Right now I was devoted to Luna, living out happy days at her side, yet the thought of actually facing Seria again was something I wanted with all my heart and dreaded all the same.
Are you doing all right, Seria...?
Still — you're the Hero now, so surely no one's giving you hell anymore... right?
Her long golden hair floated up in my mind's eye.
The face that always looked down at me with such disapproval whenever I overslept.
Three years. Nearly four, come to think of it. She must have grown too, just as I had.
Just as Luna had blossomed from a little girl into a stunning young beauty.
Half anticipation, half dread — and the time slipped past, until suddenly the enrollment day for the Academy, the stage of Proof, was upon us.
My master told us she had prepared identities for our admission.
Demons had long hidden themselves throughout the human world, watching humanity's every stir and moving in secret — as nobles, as beggars on the street, in every shape and station. For them, forging a few false identities was no trouble at all.
Thus we enrolled not as citizens of the Empire, but as the children of Count Iaros of the Zeros Kingdom.
"So Luna is a count's daughter — Lady Luna Iaros — and I'm her servant. Is that right?"
"Precisely understood. Sirius."
"Why don't I get to be a noble?"
I'd always wanted to know what it felt like to live as one, even just once.
I clicked my tongue in disappointment, and Luna giggled at the sight of me, clearly finding it adorable.
"Sirius, you could just marry me and be done with it... Should we get married once we're in the human realm?"
Whoa... there's an option...!
Except if I showed up before Seria as a married man, human Yuwol's life expectancy would drop to roughly zero.
That much, I could guarantee.
For about a week before departure, we made a habit of wearing the rings at all times, practicing life with them on.
For my part, I was already used to living without drawing on demonic energy, so it made no difference to me at all — but Luna, forced to cast spells with pure mana alone, had a rough time of it.
Having tried living as a human, Luna declared that my daily endurance urgently demanded a reevaluation, and shot me a look of grudging respect.
Yes, demons really do live off the fat of the land, huh...
Even so, our combat strength with the rings on was assessed at roughly half of what it had been before.
Luna especially couldn't summon even half of her true power.
And yet, even diminished, we could still hold our own among humans — no, we far exceeded anything an ordinary human could put on the table — so we judged it no real handicap at all.
At last, my master gave us her final counsel and had us review the mission from top to bottom.
"If you cannot stop the Hero at the stage of Proof, holding her back at the stage of Qualification will be far harder. See it done, somehow, within the three years you have been given. That is my strong recommendation."
Three years... It felt like a long stretch of time, but there was no room for complacency.
"Should she complete every stage and march toward our lands, it becomes a total war whether we like it or not. Sirius — you, too, would have to take the field."
I swallowed hard. That, above all else, was the outcome I wanted to avoid.
"The method doesn't matter. Use your history with the Hero to persuade her, or use your unique magic to drive her senseless, or simply beat her into the dirt. If you're capable of it, that is."
My unique magic... Honestly, I couldn't begin to guess what would happen if I used it on Seria as she was now.
Would she end up liking me even more, the way Luna did...?
"The rings you wear now were crafted by my own hand. So long as you wear them, your identities will never be uncovered. That said — before the Saintess herself, I cannot promise you anything. Avoid contact with her at all costs."
That much I needed to take very seriously indeed. The moment our true nature was exposed, plans and plots alike would cease to matter — we'd be lucky to leave the room alive.
"That concludes your briefing. May fortune favor you, my disciples."
My master twirled her parasol in a flourish and opened a portal for us.
"We'll be off, then."
Luna seized my hand and hauled me through with her.
I turned back for one last look at my master, receding into the distance — and she raised her right hand and pointed at me.
Her right hand...?
In my own right palm, I felt the faint texture of paper.
A note?
On the small slip of paper, just this was written:
[A message from the Demon King.]
[I will be watching.]
That was all — one chillingly clean, concise line.
The left hand that gripped Luna's went slick with sweat.