6
There was a bang so light it sounded like a joke, and then the audio that had been streaming in was suddenly mixed with static. Flustered, Kanami ran her hands over a waist-high table that looked like a lectern, pulling and twisting knobs here and there, but it didn’t solve the problem.
Her small “Oh” and the sound of something breaking came at the exact same time.
Kanami turned around, holding a black lever-shaped component. Everyone except for the indigo-haired girl averted their eyes; her own eyes teared up as she began upbraiding the magic item in earnest.
Elias, who felt beholden for having caused so much trouble during this incident, just watched the situation play out. He hadn’t spent all that much of his long life with her, which made it odd that this tepid reaction to Kanami’s acts of barbarism was already a habit for him.
“This stupid thing’s acting up! Hey, hey, you, listen to me. Punch it, kick it! Argh! Tiger Echoooooooooo!”
“Hey, no, knock that off. Kanami! You moron! Oh my God?!”
The young guy who’d called himself Leonardo yelled, but Kanami had gotten desperate, and she crashed into it first, trailing lemon-yellow magic light.
Elias massaged his eyes through his closed eyelids, as if he was troubled.
With a sound of destruction that was just as apathetic as he’d assumed it would be, it spouted pastel smoke that was far more pastoral than he’d expected.
Needless to say, the magic device was completely destroyed, and it fell silent.
“It looks like it broke.”
Kanami turned around with a terribly serious expression, arms folded, and Leonardo hit her with a flying kick. Kanami wasn’t the type to just let herself be kicked; she sent a counter-hook into the side of his face, and the next thing they knew, they had a fight on their hands.
“And you’re the mother of a kid?! Seriously?!” “What are you talking about, my daughter’s an angel, she’s adorable!” “Then don’t break stuff!” “I told you, it just broke on its own!”
Even as they reproached each other, neither stopped their physical onslaught. They paid out high-speed punches, catching them and evading them, acting out a comedic scene.
“Do you wish to be healed?”
“Coppélia… No, I’m all right.”
Elias dropped his eyes and smiled.
There was bitterness in that smile, but it held an even greater sense of satisfaction.
“Coppélia would like to point out that your HP has fallen, Lord Elias. It is a full seventy-two percent below its maximum. Do you wish to be healed?”
“Coppélia. Until the heat of these wounds recedes, I need time to reflect on myself… There are some wounds that don’t need to be healed.”
“Is that so?”
After she answered, Coppélia simply stood there as if she had nothing to do.
Kanami, the master she served, was busy arguing with Leonardo. In that case, the girl was shy to begin with, and there weren’t many people she’d voluntarily talk to.
“Coppélia thought you might defeat Lord Leonardo, Lord Elias.”
“I see.”
“Why did you not do so?”
In an attempt to respond to that question, Elias mentally reviewed the answers that had come to him. All sorts of remarks rose within him, but they all sounded a bit affected, or formal, or empty and official, and he hesitated.
This girl, Elias’s traveling companion, was innocent, and this was a virtue that warranted a type of special treatment even among the group’s eccentric members. It wasn’t only Elias; Kanami and Chun Lu and Leonardo had all given special consideration to her growth.
Her careful question made Elias think seriously.
The words that came to him were washed by the waves in his peaceful heart, slowly pared down—or lost their nonessential components—and, finally, he told her what remained.
“In fights between men, the one whose heart is strongest wins in the end.”
“…?”
“Leonardo was a noble hero.”
Coppélia stood rigidly, her head tilted to one side. Finally, maybe because the words had made sense to her, she nodded. “Is that so?” Elias didn’t know what was going on behind that small forehead of hers, but the dawn-colored eyes that peeked through her bangs seemed to be satisfied.
“I’b zowwy.”
“Just as long as you are sincere there.”
They seemed to have reached a stopping point. Kanami was giving a dejected apology, and Leonardo was standing with his arms crossed and his chest puffed out. Behind them, he could see a big man in blue steel armor. It was Krusty, the Adventurer he’d attacked when Enchantress Youren had led him astray. Thinking that he needed to apologize, he stood up, and in that moment, the air changed.
A straight line had appeared in empty space, and a torrent of jet-black mana spouted from it.
It wasn’t as if the surrounding sounds had cut out, but the room grew tense, as if it had frozen over. The awful pressure made Coppélia reel back.
Conversely, Elias went forward.
The flames in his heart blazed bright red, repelling the malicious presence.
It was a presence he knew. The Words of Death: words from the underworld, a curse that had lured his companions who’d heard it into a frozen sleep. It was that same aura. He felt as if he’d caught a flickering glimpse of the Great Stronghold of the End, the location they’d intended to assault through the Spatial Teleportation Device.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s dangerous.”
Behind him, as Chun Lu began to step forward, he heard Coppélia check her. Even as he kept track of that in a corner of his mind, Elias carefully leveled his two-handed crystal sword.
The fissure in the air yawned open, clad in pale sparks.
The vertical split in space writhed for a few moments, and then the end of the sleeve of an elegant robe emerged. It was magnificent, bordered in gold and silver thread, but that was only true of the robe.
The fingers, which were covered in the golden fur of a beast, were curved in a feminine way, but the talons undermined everything: They had been sharpened to the point where they seemed malformed. They looked a little like the Nue’s, but when you saw them directly, it was doubtful whether anyone could have confused the two. The difference in the sinister atmosphere they radiated was just that great.
Even if it was sheathed in a noble sleeve, it was unmistakably the foreleg of an evil beast.
“Truly excellent evidence of the power that governs this land. I hereby acknowledge thy coronation and promote thee from lost sheep to shepherd.”
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