[Gaderia — a free city without strife. A chosen destiny. An ideal.]
Somehow, Yuna always felt that the voice in her dream carried grief along with its hope.
"Who are you? Huh?"
Waking with a start at midnight, Yuna discovered that at some point a single tear had gathered at the corner of her eye.
An unease she couldn't explain settled over her.
In her nightgown, staff cradled against her, she swung out of bed, eased the door open, and walked toward the children's bedroom.
The sight of the children asleep on their neat white beds let her breathe again.
Thin moonlight spilled through the window onto the floor, making the room look all the more still and peaceful.
And yet the unease coiled in her chest refused to fade.
Yuna softened her steps, moving like a cat up on its toes, counting the beds as she went.
The one nearest the window was Übel's, and the last in the row.
She looked at the small white bundle beneath the moonlight, wrapped up tight without a gap.
A helpless smile tugged at Yuna's mouth.
Sleeping with the blanket pulled clear over your head was hardly a good habit.
After a moment's hesitation, she decided to fold the blanket back a little for Übel.
She lifted one corner with great care — and the smile dropped from Yuna's face.
What lay under the blanket was not Übel, but a rather ugly, crudely stitched cloth doll.
…
Outside Gaderia, the battle in the deep of night went on.
Those caught up in it had no idea that yet another party had quietly stepped into the picture.
"Looks like your oracle was accurate. I can feel it already — that enormous Mana, still climbing and pouring out even now. That's definitely not a Human, is it?"
Lois's face was grim. As a former court Mage of the Ohaly Kingdom, he had never seen a Mana volume that absurd in a Human body. The only existence he could think of to stand beside it was the elf and legendary great Mage, Minus.
"That is the guidance of God. You blaspheme against the newly awakened New God!"
A line of script had surfaced on the Scripture Schwenk held.
[East. Five li. Battle.]
Only he himself could see the oracle, and Lois's careless attitude did not sit well with him.
"So what, then — did that god guide you here to watch a show? Let me say this in advance: the thing up ahead is genuinely dangerous. If we get dragged in, we could very well die."
"I should have brought a few of the Demon Race along, or Lord Nanoda. I was too eager to verify the oracle."
Schwenk closed the Scripture with a touch of regret, as though weighing whether to go at all.
"You're not going? It's bound to be interesting."
The slightly childish voice made them both freeze.
Perhaps because the presence ahead radiated such overwhelming Mana, Lois had overlooked one very small trace of it.
"A child?"
Schwenk was startled too by the green-haired little girl who had appeared out of nowhere. He felt he had seen her somewhere before.
"I'm Übel, and I'm not a child anymore. The Grand Bishop of the Church of the New God — and some impressive Mage I don't know."
Übel gave them an unreadable smile.
She had slipped out of the orphanage to practice magic, run into these two in their hurry by chance, and tailed them the whole way using Magic that turns you into a patch of grass.
"Let's go take a look after all. We might gain something from it."
Lois made up his mind in the end. An oracle, a monster of a Mage, an event this far outside the ordinary — perhaps some hidden truth waited at the bottom of it.
"Great, off we go then."
Before Schwenk could get a word out, Übel had already started walking.
"Hey — the child stays here, it's too dangerous! Leave the execution of justice to us."
"I can protect myself."
Caught by the arm, Übel showed no temper. She only raised the little staff in her hand to indicate that she was a Mage too.
Lois stared at her for a long moment, then pulled her around behind him.
"Stay close to me. No unnecessary movements, no sound."
"Ahahaha! So this is the swordsmanship that slew a demon dragon?!"
A roar tore through the air, and the pressure wave dragged out by the longsword flung both ring blades away. More than that — where Rolwen's sword had swept, the ground split open in a web of cracks and furrows opened in it, and a formless sword qi went racing along the hairline fissures straight at the bare-handed Tutesi.
His own invention: the Ground-Running Slash.
Steadying his breathing, Rolwen broke into a run, following the trail the Ground-Running Slash had carved to close the distance fast.
At the edge of his vision, moon-pale silver flashed. The two ring blades he had knocked away curved back on impossible arcs into Tutesi's hands.
As the Ground-Running Slash reached her, the blades shivered and hummed. The tall woman twisted her waist like a dancer, the rings whirling with her arms, and spun the sword qi away to nothing.
Just as Rolwen was about to close, Tutesi flung the blades out again like blades scattering like petals in the wind.
Two rings glinting with murder came slicing at him mid-stride.
"So that's it. There are threads attached to those ring blades, are there?"
Having seen through the trick that had looked so much like magic, Rolwen brought his sword around to cut the threads short.
The swing was halfway through when his honed combat instinct fired, the warning travelling inward from every inch of muscle, alarms shrilling inside his skull.
No good.
Rolwen changed the move mid-motion, his body tilting down and to the right.
The edge struck sparks off threads he could barely see. Lifting the longsword as he went, he slid low and let the two blades pass over him.
Only then did he realize: if he had simply cut, the unbreakable threads would have snarled his blade, and there would have been only two ends to it. Either the rings would have swung back and buried themselves in his back, or he would have had to abandon the trapped longsword.
And with the gap closing, the two blades flying past behind him could just as easily be steered by Tutesi into an ambush from the rear.
Rolwen had a finishing move of his own that he hadn't used yet. He was still waiting for the moment. The opening it left was enormous — if the ring blades struck him during it, he would win only at great cost to himself.
"It really would be a shame to just kill you like this. How about considering joining us? Then we could fight together every single day."
Having her technique read gave Tutesi no panic at all. She held out an olive branch instead.
"I'm a Demon Hunter. Keeping company with the Demon Race goes against my principles."
Seeing her pull back her attack, Rolwen began settling himself. The distance was about right for that move now. He had to decide this and go help Timmy.
"Besides fighting, there are other things we could do together. Men who are strong like you and suit my taste this well are genuinely hard to find~"
Tutesi gave up on using the returning blades as an attack and simply recalled her weapons, as if to show her sincerity.
"Because you're not the type I like."
Rolwen turned her down flat.
____
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