Conversation The Elf’s Tragedy
“Oh? It’s been a while.”
A young girl sweetly smiled at me.
The last time I saw her was years ago, when she was still a little girl.
She was so small, with nowhere to go—someone I thought I had to protect.
But by the time we met again…
“Shouko…Negishi…”
“Would you mind not calling me by that name?”
Negishi licked her fingertip, looking displeased.
The seductive gesture made her seem far more mature than her years.
It was as if to show me plainly that she’s no longer a child, no longer in need of my protection.
All the more so because it was fresh blood she was licking off her finger.
“My policy is that our past lives are the past, and this is the present. I’m not the kind of person who needs her teacher’s pity anymore.”
“Pity? But I…”
I couldn’t completely deny Negishi’s words.
Her position in her past life couldn’t be described as a good one by any stretch of the imagination.
She certainly didn’t fit in with the class.
I did my best to reach out to her whenever I could, but if you asked whether that came out of my pride as a teacher or pity for her as a person, I have to admit I would be hard-pressed to answer.
“How…?! How can this be?!” the elf summoner shrieked.
The blood on Negishi’s hand came from the monster he’d summoned.
He was one of the most famous and powerful elf summoners, and the beast he had called upon was one of the strongest.
Its danger level was S rank, a monster on par with wyrms and dragons, but it was swiftly ripped apart beyond all recognition.
“How?! How…?”
As the summoner repeated his cries deliriously, his voice was suddenly cut short.
I looked over to see his body collapsing, his head removed from the neck.
The chakram that must have beheaded him flew back into the hands of a white-clad girl, who had appeared seemingly from nowhere at Negishi’s side.
As I stood there dumbfounded, all the other elves around me were gone.
Their bodies now on the ground.
A sea of blood began spreading around me.
“Why…would you…do this…?”
The question rose from my lips unbidden.
“Why? Because the elves are a nuisance to us.”
Negishi answered as if it were obvious.
“Us?”
“Yes. Us.”
“So you really are with the demons…”
The last time I saw Negishi was near the border of the empire.
After that, she was taken to the demon territory.
So I suspected that she must have ended up joining their side.
“The demons? Yes, I suppose that’s one way to put it.”
“What?”
But her response was strangely phrased.
“We are technically putting the demons to work. But I don’t think it’s quite accurate to lump us in with them.”
“You’re not with the demons…?”
Then what in the world is going on?
“You wouldn’t know about the Administrators, would you?”
My eyes widened at that word.
How? Why?
The “Administrators” she refers to are unbelievable beings.
Even though I’d been taught about them all my life, I was never sure if they even really existed.
“I can’t believe the elves are trying to oppose them. How stupid can you get?”
“It can’t be! You mean you’re doing this under the Administrators’ orders?!”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“Ms. Sophia.”
As Negishi rolled her eyes and shrugged, the girl in the white clothes addressed her reproachfully.
“I know, I know. I’ve already said too much, right? You’re such a stick-in-the-mud.”
Negishi laughed at the other girl teasingly.
That smile made her almost look like a normal girl her age…
…save for the fact that she was standing in a sea of blood she had wrought herself.
I didn’t understand how she could laugh so casually under such dire circumstances.
That was when I realized she wasn’t the Negishi I knew anymore.
She was always a difficult child, but it felt like I was talking to a completely different beast, one who was far more terrifying.
“Well, then. I’ll let you go this time, since you’re an old acquaintance and all. Now that you see the difference in our strength, don’t get in our way again.”
Then, with a brisk wave, she led the white-clad group away.
This all happened not long ago.
I was in the empire, near demon lands, to investigate the ongoing disappearances of elves in the area.
Although I brought along the summoner and several other skilled elves, I was the only one who survived.
And that was only because I was spared, not because I was strong enough…
Which I’m sure was the case just now, too…
We fled to a mansion that Leston uses as his base.
“Leston is supposed to meet us here. Then we’ll slip out of the country.”
“Ms. Oka, wait! We have to do something about Hugo, or Sue will—!”
“We can’t.”
Shun wants to go back to fight Hugo and put a stop to this rebellion, but that’s just not possible.
Not as long as Negishi is there!
Even if Shun is the hero now, I doubt he can win against someone who could effortlessly destroy an S-rank monster.
How did she get here, when she was in the far-off demon realm not long ago?
All I can think of is that Hugo let her use a teleport gate.
The kingdom and the empire each have a teleport gate, which allows one to warp across the long distance between them instantly.
The empire borders the demon realm, and I already know that Negishi was assassinating elves there anyway.
I don’t know how, but she must have made contact with Hugo while she was undercover in the empire.
Then she zeroed in on Hugo’s power and decided to use him…
At any rate, this situation couldn’t be worse.
I don’t know how far Sophia’s side can reach with their power. We have to leave this kingdom and take refuge somewhere safe.
“But, Ms. Oka, if we can stop Hugo, this whole thing should blow over. We have to go back and catch him…”
“No.”
“Ms. Oka!”
Even if I explain how dangerous Negishi is, I doubt Shun will accept it.
So I’ll approach from a different angle.
“The Church has announced the new hero. His name is Hugo Baint Renxandt.”
The Holy Kingdom of Alleius is the headquarters of the Word of God religion.
Just a few days ago, their pontiff presented the name of the next hero: Hugo.
That announcement is the reason I came hurrying back to this kingdom.
“Huh?”
Shun gapes at me blankly.
I had a similar reaction when I first heard this news.
Titles are absolute, and Shun is undoubtedly the holder of the hero title.
And yet, the Church pronounced Hugo the hero instead.
Clearly, something shady was in the works.
And sure enough, I arrived to find this disaster unfolding.
“Even the Church is working with him.”
That’s the only possible conclusion I could reach.
As I said before, titles are absolute.
The Appraisal skill is rare, but there are some people in the world who have it, like Shun himself.
And there’s also the existence of Appraisal Stones.
The fact that Hugo isn’t the hero would be found out immediately if either was used on him.
Since the Church put forth such a ridiculous claim nonetheless, they must have some hidden motive in mind.
“Do the elves have any idea why the Church would be complicit in such an absurd plot?”
Mr. Hyrince seems to have reached the same conclusion.
I’ve already come up with the answer.
“Most likely, it’s safe to assume that Hugo’s brainwashing has allowed him to worm his way into the Church.”
Shun told me on the way here that Sue was being controlled by Hugo.
Following that logic, I concluded that Hugo must have used that power to take control over the Church and make them announce him as the new hero.
“Impossible. The effects of brainwashing are limited. It’s not powerful enough to incite a situation like this, is it?”
Hyrince seems doubtful, but considering what Sue did, it’s easy to see that’s not the case.
It’s incredibly difficult to brainwash someone enough to drive them to kill themselves or someone else.
Even back on Earth, it was said that using suggestion and such to make someone do something they strongly objected to would be all but impossible.
The same holds true in this world: Even if some skills can temporarily make someone obey the user, the brainwashing will quickly fail if the victim rejects it strongly enough.
But there is just one skill that makes all those things possible.
“Usually, no. But there is one exception.”
“An exception?”
“One of the top-class Seven Deadly Sins series skills, Lust. Its brainwashing effect is far more powerful than any other skill can induce. I have no doubt that Hugo now holds this skill.”
There is a limited amount of special skills in this world.
The Seven Deadly Sins series and the Seven Heavenly Virtues series.
I learned the basic information about these skills from Potimas, after asking for certain reasons.
And one of those skills is Lust.
It uses potent brainwashing to force the afflicted to obey the user.
All of the Seven Deadly Sins skills Potimas told me about had extraordinary effects, but Lust stuck out in my mind as especially horrid.
Still, Potimas was only guessing at the skill’s effects from a person who once had the Lust skill in the past, so he didn’t know exactly how effective it might be.
So I don’t know exactly how many people Hugo can brainwash at once.
“At any rate, we have no way of knowing how far Hugo’s influence has spread. It’s best to assume this entire kingdom has been lost.”
“That can’t be…”
For now, our best option is to prioritize safety and regroup somewhere beyond the borders of the Analeit Kingdom.
“I can’t let that happen. That’s all the more reason we can’t just let Hugo go! If we do something about him now, we might still be able to stop this in time!”
“No!”
Shun’s logic is sound in theory, but there’s a reason we can’t do that!
“As long as Sophia is there, we have no chance of winning.”
Sophia, once known as Negishi, is on another level of strength from us.
I fought for the humans in the war.
My goal was to make contact with Tagawa and Kushitani, who were fighting in the same battle, but all three of us found ourselves facing down a demon general called Merazophis.
Merazophis’s strength was so overwhelming that it was only when we fought together that we stood even the slightest chance of landing a hit on him.
We didn’t stand a chance of winning.
A single hit was all our efforts won us.
It turns out that Merazophis is a former servant of Negishi’s family.
According to Potimas’s research, he was originally an ordinary human but gained his current strength after Negishi’s powers turned him into a vampire.
In other words, Merazophis’s master Negishi is even more powerful.
I don’t say this to brag, but my stats are fairly high.
And yet, I had to team up with Tagawa and Kushitani, who were likely even stronger than me, to be anywhere near even footing with Merazophis.
In that intense battle, where I thought Tagawa might be cut down at any moment, I felt the fear of death intensely even though I was providing support from the rear.
Worse yet, I feared that Tagawa and Kushitani might be killed before my very eyes, so much so that I could barely breathe.
When Kushitani was gravely injured, the fear was so strong that my insides felt frozen.
After all that, the most we could do was escape with our lives.
And yet, Negishi is even stronger than Merazophis.
We don’t stand a chance of winning.
“Teacher, who in the world is she?”
Shun looks at me with alarm, perhaps finally realizing how serious I am.
“Sophia is…”
But just as I open my mouth to explain about Negishi, Leston and the others arrive.
The timing is unfortunate, but right now, escaping is more important than explaining.
Once we made it to safety, I would tell him all about it.
Or so I thought…
“Fancy meeting you here.”
…until Negishi stood in our way yet again.
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