│ㅅㅇ)
│ㅅ♥]
I want you to like me a little more.
......What on earth does that even mean?
Once, Adele told me there was a part of me that was dull about human relationships.
After that, whenever language with others went askew, I started thinking a bit more carefully. Studying the other more closely—their gestures, their expressions.
"......"
Having said it, Rebecca’s cheeks were flushed red. With her eyes she looked at me, shied away for a moment, then came back and looked again.
It felt like a hammer struck my head.
No way.
Right now, is this princess asking me for love?
"...Why aren’t you answering?"
My mind went blank. Because it was so out of the blue.
Since when?
No...
Why?
Only after the second hand on the wall clock ticked loudly quite a few times did I open my mouth.
"What do you mean by that."
"Hard to understand? For a ‘smart’ professor?"
"No... Only, we’re not in that kind of relationship, are we."
"......"
Rebecca’s mouth opened, then quietly closed.
Her expression shifted as if she were holding something back.
"I don’t quite understand why you’re saying that before me. Between us."
"...What are we."
"We’re a contractual marriage to catch the Demon King."
"So that’s how it is for you. Then why am I like this?"
"......"
"Because I’m an idiot who doesn’t even know we had a contract marriage? Or because I’m just a crazy woman jumping the gun alone? No."
"......"
"I’m not that kind of idiot, and I’m not a crazy bitch. I am a piece-of-trash bitch, but I’m not insane. And I’ve never asked anyone else to like me. So why do you think I’m asking you to like me?"
Nothing came to mind.
"You made me fall for you...."
Rebecca’s voice sank into gloom.
"You did that. When I tried to kill neutral professors, you stopped me and persuaded me it was wrong. When my feet hurt from walking all over the academy’s funerals, you wiped them. When I said we had to block the Imperial pact, you said you wanted to help me, and even though I betrayed you, you still shielded me."
"At the academy, at the auction, at the casino, at the royal palace, at the banquet—you kept holding my hand, hugging me.... You kept, kept making me depend on you."
The past came to mind.
Yes, that had happened.
At times I’d acted kind with the thought of stabbing her in the back someday. At other times I’d been genuinely kind. Sometimes the situation had left me no choice; sometimes I hadn’t thought much at all.
‘...So that’s why I didn’t know.’
I had always had different intentions. Kindness. Betrayal. Necessity. No-thought. But what Rebecca received was always “kindness.” By coincidence.
"That happened. Then why...."
Rebecca’s eyes crumpled. Her breathing trembled.
"Then why, after making me like this, do you treat her better...?"
Right after those words, Rebecca buried her face in both hands.
I realized this point was extremely ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) important. That Rebecca hated Eve. This was the last piece in deciding the Hero Party.
"First, I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding. Rebecca."
"......"
"I’ve never consciously tried to treat Eve more specially than you. It’s just that I pay her a bit more attention because I’m the only one she keeps close. We’re friends and comrades. There’s nothing of what you imagined."
"...Did you sleep with her?"
"No."
"Kiss?"
"No, no. Nothing even like that. What on earth are you talking about?"
"I don’t know..."
Rebecca spoke in a shrinking voice.
"...I just can’t stand how much I mind the two of you."
What flashed up for a moment was the memory of reading a book in sign language to Eve on the train with Rebecca there. Rebecca staring blankly this way for a couple of hours in that scene.
And now, Rebecca—who at our first meeting had always acted like an adult—was whining like a child.
I felt a bit strange.
‘At this rate, it’s going to be awkward asking about what happened in the royal family in the past....’
The timing was wrong.
Around then, an urgent transmission came from Ezekiel.
- Professor Dante! Come to the academy, now!!
"What’s going on."
- The two-horned demons have started flying toward Hiaka Academy! Looks like they mean to bomb you and your base—the academy!
After that he sent video through the [Crystal Orb], and in the far distance the purple body of [Trappycche] was spilling over mountains like a tidal wave and surging toward land. Setian was moving. Its speed looked like a real tidal bore.
- Didn’t you say a few days still remained on the contract?
"Yes. That’s right."
- Then why is that crazy old monster already doing this.
Why indeed.
I narrowed my eyes.
‘Ah.’
Today—at this hour—was when Betelgeuse had planned to infiltrate the royal seat.
At that moment a large status window floated up.
「 ⧉ [Main Story] No.6 Two-Horned Demon Summonkken 」
It meant only one thing.
‘......Betelgeuse.’
The man who had boasted he wouldn’t get caught had failed to evade the demon’s eyes.
My jaw tightened.
I rose in haste.
Rebecca looked up at me with raw, reddened, hollow eyes.
To me, Rebecca had been a witch who plundered the souls of those killed by a serial killer.
As we spent time, she also became a princess with unexpectedly decent sides.
Now I understood what Rebecca wanted from me. But I didn’t have an answer prepared for it.
Magic is the field most affected by mental state. Taking her like this wouldn’t help at all.
"Stay here. Don’t come out. Suppress your mana so you won’t be sensed as much as possible. It could be dangerous."
So I turned my body alone.
│ㅅㅇ) ....
│ㅅ♥] ....
***
Setian spread devil-hand-shaped wings from his back and flew to the northeastern woods of the academy. By then his horns had torn through his skin and were thrusting up toward the sky.
Its name was no longer Setian. Among the Twelve Heterodox Powers, the demon endowed with the greatest authority of [Summoning].
Two-Horned Demon Summonkken.
As the monster stretched out its hand, the skin of its flesh burst and the body hidden within showed itself. A gigantic devil-like form. Veins lit with violet demonic energy.
At the same time, the demon raised its hand to the sky.
FWOOAAGH! FWOOOAAAGH!
A colossal three-dimensional magic circle was inscribed in purple blood. Within it, demonic energy Ω thrashed. It was to call forth an alien monstrosity from the cradle of Eternal Return.
Thus the first to show itself was “Trappycche.” A massive purple slime poured like a waterfall and began to spread across the district.
A calamity was unfolding.
"Aaaaaagh!"
"R-run!!"
Trappycche, which engulfed an entire village, turned into a wave and reached farther still. It climbed a wall that delineated a certain boundary, then poured down within. That was Hiaka Academy.
"W-what is that!"
The first place it hit was Sector 2 in the north of the academy. Where the Magic Faculty was.
Emergency sirens blared.
It was an incident the cadets could not handle at all. The professors of the Magic Faculty rushed in.
"This thing is Trappycche!"
After the royal residence was half-destroyed, Dante Hiakapo had laid open the information on demons without reserve.
It had been presented once through Ran and Adele’s paper. Thanks to that, many now understood humanity’s enemy, and about it—
"If it’s Trappycche...! What should we do, professors!"
"We have to cut the momentum of the fluid!"
"Understood!!"
The professors understood the flow of a fluid and knew the principle of a breakwater.
The earth/construct line of professors moved first. They heaved the ground up to set an incline. Between those slopes, the ice-magic faculty created tetrapod-like structures so that Trappycche’s body would shatter fine and lose force. Above that, various mages used 「Telekinesis」 to block Trappycche’s flow with broken building debris.
It was an excellent strategy. Trappycche was creaking and losing strength.
If only Summonkken hadn’t been standing upon that wave.
Different from the largely mindless one-horned demons. From the moment a two-horned demon exists, the one-horned become his tools under his control.
"W-what! That monster is rising!"
Trappycche raised its body. The giant slime whirled like a waterspout and reared like a serpent. It meant to leap clean over the makeshift tetrapods.
"That— that isn’t a simple fluid!!"
"What is that movement! It’s not the Trappycche we analyzed!"
"Where is it going?!"
The professors turned their heads and then were appalled.
The Mage Tower!
In Sector 2 there was the mage’s tower within the faculty; it was the main base of magic research in the academy, and also the place where the totem of the academy-guarding 『Blessing of Peaceful Nature☮』 existed.
Trappycche was aiming for it!
"No! We must keep it from reaching the faculty’s tower!"
"Guard the Mage Tower! If that is broken, the whole of Hiaka Academy will collapse uncontrollably with ease!"
"Everyone—expand barriers to maximum!!"
The mages who had floated into the air hurried to draw up mana—
A voice slammed into the professors’ ears.
" I will do it. "
It was Ezekiel, Dean of the Magic Faculty. “The Dean is here!!” In his judgment, having the professors pour their mana into one place was a huge loss. He had to do it himself.
Ezekiel planted his staff in the ground and stood. The wave that speared up like the sky fell toward him as if plummeting. It was larger than buildings.
"......Hurry and get here."
Right now, somewhere far off, the Hero Party in training and Dante Hiakapo were on their way.
That idiot Trappycche probably thought Dante was here and was doing this.
Because the order had been switched—if they were late, the academy could be annihilated.
Until they arrived, he had to hold it.
"......!!!"
Ezekiel’s eyes flashed wide, veins splitting to temples and cheeks. That colossal mana began to light every vein in his body—
He unfurled the ultra-massive barrier that blanketed a 200-meter domain: 『Carapace Wall of Land and Sea』.
A semi-transparent, tortoise-shell-like thing spread wide around the Mage Tower, and Trappycche crashed down upon it.
FWOOOOOOOOSH!!!!!
Trappycche’s body splashed in all directions, and at the same time buildings across the district began to crumble.
At the center of that catastrophe, the entire professoriate of Hiaka Academy moved.
The Warrior Faculty, the Magic Faculty, and even every White Saber and Black Abyss professor of the Assassination Faculty.
"Move, quick!"
"Yes!!"
Shaman Kreutz, Head of the Assassination Department, rose into the sky with the chief professors—and with some two hundred shuriken.
Then Shaman’s eyes began to turn golden; 『Golden Eye』 opened.
In his sight, the two-horned demon standing on Trappycche was plain.
The enemy of humanity Dante Hiakapo had always warned of.
Kill that bastard.