"Linie, where's Aura?"
"Lord Aura went to patrol the Northern. Lately there've been troublemakers out there causing chaos under Gaderia's name."
"Why didn't you go, Linie?"
"If I left, who'd cook?"
Under Jane's slightly trembling gaze, pink-haired Linie held out a pot of some equally pink, indescribable dish.
"What is this? Octopus?"
Pointing at the thing poking out from beneath the thick pink broth, Jane swallowed, just a little.
"It's deep-sea fish — a rare ingredient, hard to find here in Gaderia. To get rid of the fishy smell, I added apple, cherries, and a few sweets. Well? Doesn't the color look a lot more appetizing than before?"
Linie's cooking used to always come out black, or some other dark, murky shade.
This was the first time Jane had ever seen pink fish soup, but for some reason she had a feeling — a feeling that eating this would be even more terrifying than anything before it...
"This one's a confident effort! Too bad Lord Nanoda isn't here. Jane, you'll just have to eat extra."
Linie wore a rare, almost human-looking smile of anticipation.
"..."
I really miss Aura's cooking.
Jane didn't smile at all.
Solitär had lost her smile too.
This Aura was just too strange.
"Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!"
At that moment, Aura sat astride Solitär's waist as she lay flat on the ground, raining a flurry of pink-fisted blows straight into her face, punch after punch, each one landing solid.
"You like blasting me from a distance with magic, huh! Thought that without your subordinates you'd still be able to beat me, is that it! Wanted to borrow my name to go stir up trouble, did you!"
The Magic of Obedience formed, dissolved, formed, dissolved.
With her Mana cutting in and out, Solitär never had a chance to fight back.
She never would have guessed that Aura, who looked so thin-limbed, could hit this hard.
It hurt — and not just her face.
Her dignity as a Great Demon was being pounded to pieces along with it, punch after punch.
She had never been this humiliated in her entire life.
"You're... insane."
Solitär's face was already a bloody mess by then. Her once serene, lovely features, now covered in blood and swollen bruises, looked utterly grotesque.
"What was that? Can't hear you."
Maybe punching alone wasn't satisfying enough, because Aura snatched up the Scales of Obedience in her hand.
Scales of Obedience: ?
Whack! Whack! Whack!
Her hair flew wild as Aura wore a thoroughly satisfied grin. If she'd had her sword on her right now, she might not have been able to resist trying to take Solitär's head clean off.
The hard object slammed into her skull again and again, leaving Solitär dizzy and disoriented.
Was this really how a Demon was supposed to fight?
Midswing, Aura suddenly stopped, leaving the barely-breathing Solitär pinned beneath her.
She rose slowly to her feet, the blood-slicked Scales of Obedience still in hand.
"Come on out."
Her mood snapped back to cold indifference, every trace of her earlier excitement gone.
"I saw it."
At some point, unnoticed, Schlacht had stepped out from the shade of the trees nearby.
His mismatched black-and-white eyes wide open, the Omniscient One walked slowly toward Aura.
Schlacht's appearance put Aura instantly on edge — this was the one who could rally and command the entire Seven Sages of Destruction.
"Why are you still alive? Everyone said you were dead."
Because of a pact made back then, every member of the Seven Sages of Destruction, Aura included, had had their memories of the battle against the Hero of the South erased by Brother Miracle.
"I was chosen."
Schlacht's single line left Aura completely baffled.
"I saw it. How pitiful, Aura."
"Hey, what exactly are you trying to say?"
Displeasure crossed Aura's face. Drawing on a phrase passed down from Nanoda, what she most wanted to say right now was that she hated riddle-speakers.
"You've lost your future. It's not that you can't see it — your future is being held in someone else's hands."
"Huh?"
"We've lost this round. Let Solitär go. Next time, we'll come for the real target."
"Why should I let her go just because you say so? I'm not the same Sage of Destruction I was back then."
"You're planning to wait until I let my guard down, test me first with a burst of Killing Magic, then use a broken-contract Magic of Obedience to bind my Mana, and finally try to land a punch on the face hidden under my cloak?"
Schlacht's prophecy froze Aura in place.
It was as if he'd read her mind outright, laying her whole plan bare.
But Aura knew Schlacht's magic was far more terrifying than mind-reading — it was foresight itself, the power to see the future!
Just as the two Great Demons stood facing each other in a tense standoff—
—a shrill dragon's roar rang out from the village.
"Zaha, are you trying to kill me too? How is that dragon of yours so stupid?"
Briz's bronze armor had been scorched red-hot, white smoke pouring off it.
"You're the one who called me here to help."
Single-horned Zaha wore a face of utter indifference.
Elsewhere, Schlacht crouched low, half-kneeling behind his greatsword, using Mana to reinforce both body and blade as he weathered a blast of dragonfire head-on.
"Ahh! My butt's on fire!"
Strand after strand of Mana threads, cocooned like a spider wrapping its prey, snapped and scattered as they fought against the searing heat.
The young human warrior scrambled to plant himself on the ground, rubbing his backside frantically against the dirt.
"What a pain."
Seeing that the young man couldn't put the fire out no matter what he tried, Draht simply flicked a finger, and a Mana thread sliced clean through his pants, fire and all.
A perfectly good pair of pants was instantly turned into one with the seat cut clean out.
"Draht, send me up. I can't fly."
No sooner had he spoken than a single strand of Mana thread shot up from the ground into the sky.
Without a moment's hesitation, Schlacht planted his foot on the sturdy thread.
His seemingly bulky frame moved with unexpected lightness.
Greatsword in hand, he became a bolt of lightning shooting skyward, bearing straight down on the dragon circling overhead.
Standing atop the dragon's head, Zaha's pupils contracted.
By then Briz, caught in his ally's indiscriminate attack, found himself unable to move for the moment.
His still-uncooled bronze could shift shape fast, but without hardness it posed no real threat.
More importantly, Briz had no idea how to coordinate with Zaha — the two hadn't even served under the same one of the Seven Sages of Destruction to begin with.
A crackle of lightning flashed, and with a single stroke Schlacht severed one of the retreating dragon's forelegs.
Just as he began to fall, he hurled his greatsword like a bolt flung by the God of Thunder himself, sending it straight toward Zaha atop the dragon.
Amid the dragon's pained cry, Schlacht's greatsword plunged into its neck!
Draht's Mana thread was still wound around the sword's hilt. It vibrated steadily, reeling the blade back to Schlacht's side.
At once, dragon blood sprayed across the ground, falling like rain and dousing the sea of flames.
Zaha had no choice but to leap off his teetering mount.
Briz and Zaha, the two Demons, exchanged a glance — and this time, in perfect unspoken agreement, each read the other's wish to retreat.
____
⚡ BONUS CHAPTER GOALS
✍️ 5 REVIEWS = +1 Bonus Chapter
💎 100 POWER STONES = +1 Bonus Chapter
🔥 P@TREON (Walnut-chan): Read +40 chapters ahead and get access to over 60 exclusive stories!
🔥 New history: DanMachi: Inheriting the Legacy of Alternate Versions — posted on The_Mikudayo