Chapter 24

Belle flashed past the Boss and took his head in the same heartbeat.

A shimmer of heat rippled behind her.

A thunderclap split the air.

The black armor the Boss wore cracked apart and clattered to the ground in jagged shards.

Yet the body inside was perfectly intact—

just as mine had been.

First the shell, then the flesh; the armor had to be broken before the blade could reach the meat.

Belle was no exception.

“Hhh...”

With the usual hiss of escaping air, she lost her balance—

“Ah...”

—but did not fall.

Her legs stayed planted like tree roots.

She flexed her empty hand, shook the tension from her shoulders, and quickly checked herself over.

“Why... am I fine?”

The question turned to laughter.

Belle began to laugh.

The Boss she had struck rocked his head, eyes snapping open, sharp and murderous.

He looked as though he had decided to show no more mercy—

just as he had in my last life,

when he had trampled Belle to death.

With a roar he charged her.

She caught the axe on her blade and flung it aside.

“Ngh...”

That single parry left her face white with pain.

“Kinjo, set me on fire too.”

Belle ducked and wove around the axe as she shouted.

“What?”

“Fire! Like you do for Mago!”

Flames curled around her sword the next instant.

“Hot.”

She gathered herself for a second detonation—

a single strike to end it.

As the Boss’s axe descended toward her shoulder, she met it with a slash.

The axe shattered.

Along the haft, up the arm—

shoulder to shoulder, shoulder to neck—

her blade tore the Boss to ribbons in one clean line.

Teeth and horns strung around his neck went flying.

Last came the head.

The Boss’s helmeted skull hit the ground with a wet thud.

“Hah...”

Only then did Belle collapse as she always did.

I turned back to the hill path and began cutting the goblins down one by one.

When the last fell, I opened my eyes to the third lake—

today’s final lake—

and knew the day’s hunting was done.

Kinjo descended the slope with Belle in his arms.

His lips moved, but I heard nothing;

a louder sound swallowed his voice.

A wolf howled.

“Ah, right.”

This was wolf territory.

“Of course.”

Wolves, scenting prey, slinking forth—

“Must be the smell of blood.”

Human blood, demon blood—

the whole hillside stank of it.

The howling drew closer.

A black wolf glared up at me, lips peeled back in a snarl.

In the space of a breath we were ringed by pitch-black wolves.

Wolves on every side.

We were only three.

And Belle was out of the fight.

“Ngh...”

Kinjo sank to his knees, Belle still cradled against him.

“Blocking that axe—pretty sure it broke my arm.”

Kinjo was as useless as Belle now.

Which left me.

“Mago, your arm—”

“Yeah, left one’s gone. Useless.”

One arm remained.

With that single arm I had to protect not just myself but Kinjo and Belle as well.

The wolves circled, tightening the ring, ready to spring the instant their courage aligned.

“Still... still a long way to go...”

I stood alone, blade raised, holding their gaze to the end.

I whipped my head around, eyes darting.

If even one of them lunged, I’d split it open before it touched the ground.

Every muscle was coiled.

The biggest wolf charged first.

I took its head off—clean.

The others seemed to shrug, as if to say, “He was only a decoy.”

Then they came from every side at once.

Goblins. Orcs.

I’d even dropped the Orc Boss.

Unlike my last life, Kinjo and Belle hadn’t died.

And yet—

In the end, the wolves still kill me.

“Thanks for holding out, Mago.”

A red line flashed across my vision.

A crimson crescent, faster than thought.

Where it passed, heat burst into flame.

Wolves hanging in mid-air were halved in an instant; the pieces rolled down the hill.

“Mago.”

El.

Elizabeth Red’s voice.

Her blade glowed scarlet.

“Mago, snap out of it.”

She spoke clearer and steadier than I’d ever heard her.

“Thank you—for everything. I’ll pay you back, and I don’t do cheap.”

“Ms. El!”

Kinjo’s shout cracked like a sob.

“Take care of Belle for me!”

“Huh? Y-yes...!”

Heat rolled off El in waves.

* * *

“Kinjo, I’m crossing the mountains straight to the capital.”

“Are you insane? With one arm—and your flask is empty!”

“You go down with Ms. El. I’ll see you later.”

“W-wait, Mago. You’re going alone? No water, no fire, and you call that a plan? It sounds like suicide.”

“Does it?”

“At least take Ms. El—”

“I have to meet someone. I need to ask a favor.”

“A favor? Of who?”

“The Fourth Exam will be voided. We won’t get a retest, so our current scores stand. Belle killed a boss today—shame to waste that.”

“Right...!”

El answered first, cradling the sleeping Belle.

“I’m heading to the capital to find the Special Task Force. I’ll tell them what we did and ask for special selection.”

“Task Force? How do you even know who’s here—let alone that they’re here now?”

“They came. I’m sure of it. That’s the kind of person she is.”

“Who?”

“Marcello Arnes.”

“Yeah, Marcello—wait, Marcello Arnes? You’re going to her?”

“And that’s the last of our to-do list.”

I jerked my chin sideways.

“Why are you lot still breathing?”

Amon looked pole-axed.

“Does this look ‘breathing’ to you?”

He hoisted his arrow-riddled left arm like a trophy.

With a twist of his wrist he dismissed the blood-forged swords into the dirt.

“Amon... what was that just now?” Kinjo asked.

“Hmm? Something happen?”

Amon shrugged, innocence itself.

“Assassination team, fifty strong. Wounded, zero dead.”

He gave me the ground report.

“Good. The escort squad scattered—I lost count, but the boss threw everything at me, so...”

“And,” Amon cut in, “on my way up I counted the escort: forty-seven. Same story—wounded, no fatalities. Thanks to... Lady Elizabeth.”

“Really?” Kinjo’s face lit up.

“Last item: you lot. Mago, Kinjo Shua, Belle Red—plus the entire escort, all fifty. Everyone lives. All that’s left is getting home.”

“Amon, good work.”

I clasped his shoulder.

“You three go. I’m not finished.”

“Mago, it’s madness!”

Kinjo seized my wrist.

“No. It’ll rain soon.”

“What are you talking about? The sun’s blazing—”

* * *

I shook off my classmates and slipped away.

The training center had been saved from the invasion, but—

“That crowded capital...”

The capital was already ash and rubble.

...

It reached me first through my skin.

A chill.

The cloying stink of ash and blood clung like wet cloth.

I walked with the back of my hand pressed to my nose.

Nothing but corpses.

A roadside shop.

A private house, the city hall, a church.

Every place held bodies.

Citizens, soldiers, and Demon Beasts.

Even the Demon Beasts lay slaughtered, which meant someone had killed them—yet no breath of life remained.

Not a whisper of the living.

I kept walking.

Alone in a capital that felt switched off, I drifted as if in a dream.

“Ra—”

Then I saw a horse.

A big chestnut.

“Light?”

My former owner’s horse.

The brute my owner had loved like a child.

The same brute that had once nipped at me while nuzzling the real children.

Now master-less, he paced in circles, restless, sniffing the air for a scent that was gone.

“Light!”

At his name the gelding swung his head.

Huge liquid eyes met mine.

He knew me. With a soft snort he closed the distance and lowered his long neck until I could bury my fingers in his mane.

“Good boy.”

I gathered the reins and swung up gently.

“Never thought we’d meet again like this.”

Light eased into a jog; my already limp left arm flapped like a banner.

I let him carry me while I searched for any sign of life.

It had been ages since I’d last come to the capital, and old conversations surfaced.

— Mago, this world is built on unfairness.

In the inn lobby, just like always, I’d ordered lunch.

— Kinjo, bored while we waited for food, had opened his mouth.

— You’re hardly one to talk about wealth gaps, Mr. Privilege.

I’d answered sourly.

— Not that. I mean magic. You’ve talent, so listen.

— Magic, out of nowhere?

— The spell you can cast is decided before you’re born. Even if it shows up later, it was already yours—just a matter of time. At the University they call it a “Gift.” Most folk can’t cast at all, and even among those who can—

A sigh slipped between his words.

— each person’s repertoire is fixed. Absurd, isn’t it?

— Never thought hard on it, but no, it isn’t fair.

— I’ve got Reinforcement-fire and Clairvoyance. Train all I like, only those two improve. I can’t learn another.

— I know. Why bring it up?

— Sometimes the Gift runs in bloodlines. The Three Great Houses, for instance—Red, Coster, Moonlight—all have Unique spells. Know them?

— I do. I’ll meet Red and Coster soon enough.

— Huh?

— Anyway. Even if magic’s unfair, there’re mage-tools.

— You know about mage-tools? Were you really locked in a mansion?

— Legends travel.

— True. Still, among all that unfairness, some are born blessed—people who look tailor-made to be strongest. We’ve seen one, remember?

— I can guess who. That why you lectured me?

— Food’s here. Let’s eat, Mago.

Kinjo set the plates down, stabbed the rim of his steak, sliced the meat like butter.

He lifted a bite on his fork.

— To Marcello Arnes, a Demon Beast is about this size.

— This size?

— One mouthful. That’s all.

While that old talk replayed in my head, a massive head came flying at me.

It hit the ground, rolled three times, and stared up with the glassy eyes of a freshly-killed orc.

“Hey, trainee. This area’s hot. Back off.”

“Everywhere’s hot, so—”

“I mean around me.”

I traced the head’s arc.

A band of orcs had surrounded something—fifty, maybe.

A tight ring.

One by one they split apart and fell, the formation collapsing like a sandcastle at high tide.

Each time black armor split from green skin, a silhouette flashed through the torn gap.

Black hair for an instant.

Then the black fatigues of the Special Task Force for another.

As the orcs tumbled away, the woman inside the circle came into sharper focus.

It felt like hacking through dense underbrush to pry open a treasure chest—

one that was pitch-black from lid to hinges.

Yet her movements were unmistakably gem-bright.

I had known it long before; the sight only hardened my certainty.

“I watched her countless times in my past life...”

Kinjo could carve a steak with a butter knife; Marcello Arnes’s spear made the same kind of work of the orcs.

She butchered them as easily as a warm-up stretch before the main match,

as casually as a predator shredding prey.

Marcello Arnes.

One-Man Legion.

Walking Cannon.

Humanity’s Strongest.

And—Hero.

By the time she lowered her spear, the entire orc band had been reduced to a single, quivering mass of flesh.

It was chillingly absolute.

“I’ll never get used to that.”

I’d always wanted to become like her.

That wish hadn’t changed.

If anything, now that I’d gained the lake, it burned hotter than ever.

I dismounted from Light and snapped a salute.

“Trainee #71, 66th Class, First Training Center—Mago, ma’am.”

“Marcello.”

Right.

What more needs to be said?