"Have we... met before?"
Hafleet, kicked to his knees, felt an instinctive stab of fear — that sensation of being coerced was one he knew all too well. His head, which had only been level with Nanoda's once he knelt, now dropped another notch. For the life of him, he couldn't place who this terrifying figure standing before him was.
Nanoda studied the pitiful, cowed Hafleet, and found herself oddly nostalgic, comparing this to the arrogant, blustering man she'd first met moments ago.
In the old days, she might have simply killed this 'enemy of Gaderia' once the questioning was done.
At least now he was one of Aura's underlings — badly tormented, by the look of him, and apparently his memory had been tampered with by Brother Miracle as well.
Poor thing.
Though she felt no urge to kill, killing intent still radiated off her all the same. She spoke, cold-voiced.
"I'm talking to you. Who's giving you orders?"
Hafleet's lost memories weren't the main concern here — finding the mastermind behind him was what mattered.
"Uh, that would be..."
Hafleet hesitated. He suddenly realized that, for some reason, ever since running into this demon he'd gone soft as a human.
He was a Demon General. How could he betray the Omniscient One, the very future of the Demon Race, so easily?
"I don't know either. I'm just following my big brother's orders, standing guard here."
"Big brother?"
"Divine Technique's Revolte. He's my big brother."
"Well, at least you're honest."
Nanoda's remark left Hafleet stunned.
That's right — why couldn't he even summon the will to resist? Why had he just answered so obediently? Why did this demon, whose Mana he couldn't even sense, make him instinctively submit? Was she some kind of walking death omen?
"And who's behind your big brother?"
"Hm? What do you mean?"
"Revolte's just a powerful general. Whoever commands him has to be some Great Demon. Say — a former member of the Seven Sages of Destruction? Grausam the Miracle?"
"I don't know. I really am just following my big brother's orders."
Seeing Hafleet stick to his story, Nanoda didn't press further.
"You. Want to live?"
"Yes."
"Then behave yourself and come with me for now."
Under Hafleet's stunned gaze, Nanoda put away her weapon.
As Hafleet slowly rose to his feet, Nanoda's voice drifted back to him again, light as air. "Do you remember Aura?"
There was a wet thump — the knee Hafleet had just straightened bent right back down.
"Eh?"
Even he couldn't make sense of it himself. Like muscle memory, the instant he heard that name his body moved faster than his mind could follow.
"Aura?" Nanoda repeated, testing the reaction.
By now Hafleet's eyes had gone wide, faintly bloodshot, straining with everything he had to hold himself together.
"Aura."
His mouth fell open against his will, scalding white mist spilling out, every tooth in his head chattering.
"Aura!"
The Demon General couldn't hold back any longer. He dropped to all fours, throat working, and finally let out a single, crisp sound.
"Woof!"
"Pfft—" Even Nanoda, usually so unmoved, couldn't help a short laugh.
Aura really had trained poor Hafleet like a dog. Even with his memories gone, the instinct still lived on in his body.
What Nanoda didn't know was that, back then, Aura had simply been venting her frustration at being reduced to a lackey under Nanoda's own command — and had taken it out on the even-lower-ranked Hafleet by bullying him.
"It's fine. Only I saw it. Nothing to be ashamed of." Nanoda tried to comfort him, patting his broad shoulder with a small hand.
"Can you just kill me?" A brief blank spell, and then Hafleet recovered himself. "...Never mind. I still want to live. Please, don't say those three letters again. I'll behave."
"How embarrassing, Hafleet."
An abrupt voice rang out from the bushes nearby, and the mist that had already begun to thin gathered itself back together.
As the demon's form faded from view, Nanoda caught a clear look at him — a demon with the appearance of a young man, wearing an eyepatch.
"That's one of my big brother's subordinates. I don't know his name either."
Hafleet, unexpectedly, volunteered the information himself.
"No name? Just some background demon, then."
Nanoda searched her memory but couldn't find any demon matching that description.
Still, that magic felt somewhat familiar.
"Aren't you going after him?"
"No need. Just now, when the mist parted, my Mana Perception caught the strongest presence in the area. Let's go find him first."
"Fine."
Two figures, one tall and one short, vanished into the thick fog.
For some reason, standing beside Nanoda, even through his lingering fear, Hafleet felt an inexplicable sense of safety.
I'm sorry, Lord Schlacht. I'm about to switch sides. But I haven't given away a single thing about you — I've kept the secret. If the chance comes to slip free of this devil, I swear I'll come back.
Hafleet narrowed his eyes, reciting the words silently to himself.
Bam! With a loud crack, his forehead collided straight into a tree.
The mist really was thick. And he really was having the worst luck.
"Save me..."
The girl pulled back the hood shielding her face, revealing young, childish features to Lernen.
She had no horns. She looked human.
Lernen feigned a sigh of relief and dropped his Defensive Magic barrier.
"Come here, child. I'll keep you safe."
The girl's expression didn't shift. She broke into a trot, closing the distance to Lernen quickly.
A small hand, hidden beneath her clothes, drew out a pitch-black short blade!
A flash of cold steel!
"Eh?"
By the time she registered what had happened, one arm had already been erased by a fleck of black light — the severed half-limb, still clutching the dagger, hung frozen in midair.
"Sorry. I've always been the cautious type, so I tend to be rather sensitive to danger."
Lernen merely tapped his staff, and the spell fired.
His eyes, aged but no less sharp for it, gleamed as they stayed fixed on the weapon that had been so carefully concealed until now.
The girl-shaped demon crumpled to the ground. From the grisly wound the magic had bored through her, she began to dissolve away.
"Failed... this time... huh... Rev—"
She slowly raised her fading head. There wasn't a trace of sorrow on her face.
Watching the small demon vanish, Lernen let out a breath of relief and reached to rub his stiff old bones — but his expression turned grave again almost at once.
"Who's there?"
White mist. White hair streaked through with black. And behind it, a tall, red shape following close.
Just as Lernen sensed something approaching from ahead, he also became aware of a cloaked figure closing in from behind him.
Surrounded — that was his first thought.
He gripped his staff tighter, turned side-on, weighing which direction's enemy to deal with first.
"Didn't expect to find someone this skilled among the Humans."
"Hm? This one looks a little familiar..."
A man's voice and a woman's voice came from two different directions at once. Lernen swung his staff and struck first at the nearer of the two.
____
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