Eyes don’t lie.
And the eyes a person uses to look at another person—those, especially, don’t lie. Anyone can tell what’s inside them.
Rebecca remembers those eyes Dante once showed.
They weren’t eyes directed at her.
And yet she remembered them, because those eyes—always expressionless, always sharp—were truly warm toward only one person.
In a way, they were like the eyes you use to look at a companion animal.
In a way, like looking at a cherished family member.
Maybe it was even more than that.
Whenever it appeared in her dreams, the distortion grew.
Dante willingly gave a smile with his eyes for that.
With those eyes he’d never shown her even once.
Feeding it when it was time to eat.
Learning a non-human language in order to talk to it.
Pouring all his attention and kindness into it.
And when it got blank and fell asleep while reading some picture book, he’d willingly offer his shoulder, letting it lean its head against him.
All of those eyes reached only Eve.
“.......”
Rebecca remembers those eyes.
***
The plane landed at Arcobate Airport, a city deep in the Empire.
According to what the Imperial public security officers heard, there had been two types of terrorists.
Unknown assassins who had aimed to seize the fuselage.
And terrorists who took the princess hostage.
So right after landing, the public security officers stormed in like they were going to break down the door and subdue the terrorists, but for some reason the princess and the terrorist had vanished without a trace.
And so—despite [Challenger]-rank officers and specialized equipment being mobilized in full—they couldn’t properly find any traces, and people started saying it looked like they’d escaped through 『Teleport』-type spatial movement.
That was what it meant to be the 「Master of Mana」.
The problem was, the user was Rebecca.
“Hey, where the hell is this?”
“...I don’t know either.”
The princess and Dante opened their eyes in the middle of a mountain.
“Rebecca Hiakium. Do you seriously not practice magic? How bad does your coordinate-value setting ability have to be to cast 『Teleport』 from the city and come down in the middle of a mountain?”
“...I can make mistakes.”
“Is this something you can dismiss as a mistake? What if the coordinate value was in the water? What if you opened your eyes in the sky with someone else? Someone dies because your coordinate value is a mess.”
“Aah!”
Rebecca flared up.
“Then you shouldn’t have made me do it! I told you I’m bad at it, I’m not confident! I said that, and who forced me anyway?”
“If I knew it’d be this much of a mess, I wouldn’t have made you.”
“Yeahhh, I’m a mess! I’m a total mess of a bitch, okay?! Happy now? If this is how it was gonna be, shouldn’t you have just flown with that Radiant Constellation⁺₊⋆ or whatever?!”
“I’m pretty sure I told you. That today we have to conserve mana as much as possible.”
“I didn’t hear that?!”
They bickered and bickered—
“I’m leaving you behind.”
“Uh? Just try leaving! Just try, seriously! I’ll set everything here on fire—Kyaak!”
She stomped around in anger by herself, and then rolled right down the slope.
“.......”
Dante Hiakapo let out a sigh. It was a sigh crawling up from the deepest place in his lower abdomen.
He thought about just leaving her behind.
But.
He went down and checked her condition first.
“I’m fine.”
Rebecca, whether she was embarrassed or whatever, tried to wave him away and avoid him.
But the ankle she’d hit somewhere was stained red.
When he moved mana and checked, it was a badly sprained ankle.
“Healing magic.”
“Can’t do it.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“.......”
And Dante couldn’t use healing magic either.
After thinking briefly, he looked off into the distance on the mountain, toward the top of some tree.
|) =3
|ㅁ♥] !!
He met the eyes of someone who’d been watching in secret.
“You. Don’t just watch—come down and do something.”
“...Who?”
“There’s something like that.”
Soon, a spirit of Life♥ descended and let its energy flow into Rebecca’s ankle, and it truly began to heal her ankle quickly.
「 ♥ 」
Just like that, Dante carried her and went down the mountain.
It would heal soon.
But before that, they had to head toward the destination even a little.
As they went down together,
Rebecca had her head lowered.
Her dyed, pale blond hair covered her face.
It would’ve covered Rebecca’s eyes.
At the same time, it covered Dante’s eyes too.
“Why didn’t you leave me?”
“.......”
“You said you were leaving me behind.”
“.......”
“You were going to leave me anyway, so who cares if someone gets hurt, who cares if I sprain my ankle, who cares if I roll down a slope....”
Under the man’s face hidden by his bangs,
Dante’s lips parted.
“Quiet.”
A single word that came out irritably.
‘Quiet?’
Quiet?????
Rebecca felt his insolence boiling inside her,
but in that instant his bangs parted slightly and she could see Dante’s eyes.
Those eyes, looking down at her ankle.
“.......”
At that moment, Rebecca widened her eyes, then lowered her head again.
A small realization became a light and settled into her thoughts.
“.......”
***
After arriving in the Empire, Dante moved relentlessly.
Since he couldn’t leave the princess behind, he had no choice but to put an [Illusion] mask on Rebecca.
First, he identified the main base of the assassin group that had carried out the aircraft terror incident.
Surprisingly, they were an assassin unit under Legion, presumed to be the final boss.
At first he wondered how, by sheer coincidence, they’d run into those guys too—but when he reached their base, he realized.
The entire Black Abyss force that had stretched a hand into the Empire was within the territory of Reaper Constellation Ω.
The moment Reaper Constellation Ω became Legion’s helper, every usable assassin unit under it began moving for Legion’s power.
“Who are you, you bastard!!”
“.......”
The location was inside the city’s sewers.
Assassins who, obeying Legion, had been kidnapping Imperial nobles and reaching for key figures were hiding there.
Among the nobles, there were even children.
Without replying, Dante drew a single sword.
It was the 「Giant Soldier’s Sword○」, a rental he’d requested an extension on a couple times, yet the return date was close now.
“Kill him!!”
The heads of those who rushed in exploded.
An invisible hand moved and cleaned up the assassins completely. Those who rushed in with weapons were crushed together with their weapons. Every means of assassination they tried was blocked.
Realizing the gap, the assassins hurriedly began fleeing outside.
“H-Huff... Wh-what kind of monster is that...!”
But at the only exit, Rebecca was waiting.
Kwakwa-KWANG!!!
Hundreds of explosions continued down the subterranean waterway inside the sewers.
It came with an impact no one could endure unless they were [Challenger]-rank.
That was only the beginning.
After pinning the assassin commander’s hands to the wall by driving the sword through them, Dante learned in detail about Legion’s forces and their movements.
『World Forgery』 was effective for torturing people too.
“Let’s go.”
“Yeah.”
After that, they headed to a mana mine in a nearby city, and there too they found roughly 200 kidnapped people.
Dante sketched Legion’s position in his head.
Legion had one “cheat.”
A cheat that could, without fail, turn a small number of outstanding people to his side.
To do that, he needed more contact with “outstanding people.”
But Constellations were rotten immortals whose best option was self-preservation.
Constellations who’d heard directly or indirectly of Reaper Constellation Ω’s defeat would avoid Legion.
So Legion changed methods.
He kidnapped key people’s very close, and vulnerable, people.
Reaper Constellation Ω’s power made that possible.
No matter how much a father tries to run, if his son is kidnapped, he can’t not come.
The upper ranks get dragged out, and then the upper ranks above them get dragged out.
When a Constellation comes, Legion makes them his.
Dante began blocking those routes one by one.
“What should we do now....”
“Go out and go home. And do not come outside your home.”
“Th-thank you!”
After freeing 200 hostages, Dante gestured.
“Yeah.”
Rebecca unleashed a massive explosion spell and collapsed the entire mine.
This was a mine that held the Stigma of Scout Constellation |ㅅㅇ), a place no one could find unless they were Dante, who received the immense love of Scout Constellation |ㅅㅇ).
With it collapsing, Legion lost another card. A place to hide hostages disappeared.
“Let’s go.”
“Yeah.”
Dante dragged Rebecca around, tearing through the Empire.
“Set it on fire.”
“Yeah.”
They set fire to the massive cathedral that had concealed Legion’s crimes.
“Flip the whole ground.”
“Yeah.”
They turned over the entire factory site Legion had just laid foundations for.
“Blow it away.”
“Yeah.”
They shot down the communications facility Legion had attached up in the sky and dropped it into the sea.
Lastly, they robbed one of Hattengraj’s commercial banks.
“Everyone, hands on your head!!”
“Hands up before we kill you all!!”
While roughly 120 assassins hastily made with 『World Forgery』 smashed up the commercial bank, Dante found Legion’s closest aide who’d infiltrated the bank.
“Why did you do it?”
“.......”
“I’m asking the reason. As far as I know, you weren’t even brainwashed. Why did you siphon out gold here and deliver it to a madman?”
Shockingly, he was the commercial bank president.
A religion that grows large inevitably colludes with politics, finance, and the military.
Even pure faith could do that.
With Legion’s complete brainwashing, it went without saying.
But.
Through repeated torture, he learned there were, exceptionally, people who followed Legion without going through brainwashing.
The money the bank president siphoned out was used, in reverse, to attack the Imperial public security bureau, and there were not a few casualties because of it.
And yet he wasn’t brainwashed, so Dante was curious.
“Because that is order.”
“Order.”
“He is the new order of this fucking world. No matter how much you open your eyes and struggle and try to stop it, it’s useless. The world is clumsily shaped on a wrong system.”
Then the bank president sprang up.
“At last, a new era comes! The thousand-year Empire, forcibly dragged along by a useless bloodline called the imperial family, is over! Now, a superhuman with real power and correctness!! That superhuman will bring the rightful ending to the whole world—!!!”
Bang!
Once his curiosity was satisfied, there was no reason to listen.
‘So he has mana.’
As Legion’s close aide, it seemed he’d had many conversations with him.
And he chose voluntary submission, not brainwashing.
Dante’s evaluation of Legion shifted a little. He’d only thought of him as someone who swung around curses in the 100s, but it didn’t seem to be only that.
‘The Demon King... in the end, is the master of all demons.’
If the 100s-level curses carry that Demon King’s consciousness,
then charisma, a crowd leader, a revolutionary—whatever it was—he had the strength of a leader allotted as a system value.
And because of that, Dante estimated a possibility.
‘I can kill him.’
If he cut off his limbs one by one, and in the remaining body,
if he drove a blade into that heart—
If he could only get it in....
Anyway, the bank robbery ended there.
“Let’s go.”
“Yeah.”
They got out and started fleeing by car together with Rebecca, drenched in sweat.
It felt exhausting.
Now their mana was hitting the bottom.
That was why Constellations pulled out.
If it was like this for Dante, Rebecca was no different.
Her pretty, pale skin was dirty with soot in places. Her bright blond hair was grimy. She had a lot of scrapes too.
“You look like a beggar.”
“You too....”
At her powerless grumbling, Dante laughed.
Yeah. In truth, he didn’t look any less like a beggar.
“I want to wash and rest.”
“Me too.”
But it wasn’t over yet.
Wiyong! Wiyong!
“Huh? That’s a public security car. Don’t we need to avoid it?”
“We do.”
As they were about to leave the city, pointless pursuit latched on.
Over ten vehicles, and even a few airships in {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} the sky.
‘More than I expected.’
Dante urgently gathered the remaining mana and hid the car with 『World Forgery』.
Somewhere on the mountainside.
“Ah... what is this. I said I want to wash and rest?”
“You can’t.”
“Do something. Sweat, blood, dust. I want to use the bathroom too, I feel gross like I’m going insane.”
“Then use 『Teleport』.”
“Teleport? You’re saying that when you know what I did?”
“What did you do.”
“I cast five grand magic spells. I don’t have mana.”
“I don’t either.”
“No, I’m seriously in the negatives. I’ve been saying I’m in the negatives, but you kept telling me to do this and that. I won’t recover until tomorrow morning.”
“I’m the same.”
“.......”
“.......”
Dante meant it, and Rebecca did too.
Both of them had really dragged themselves all the way down to the bottom and kept moving.
In the end, the two beggars spent the night inside the car, unwashed, with an [Cognition Immunity Barrier] on it.
“.......”
“.......”
When the public security vehicles and airships disappeared, quiet settled down.
“Um....”
Unable to take it anymore, Rebecca spoke.
“Now let’s go....”
“No.”
“Ah, why agaaain....”
“The stealth mobile guard unit is searching nearby. We vanished around here, and there were no spatial-movement signs, so they’ll suspect concealment.”
“Then?”
“Probably we have to stay here until tomorrow morning.”
“...Apologize.”
“.......”
Silence fell again.
Rebecca thought he’d pretend he didn’t hear again.
But an unexpected answer came back.
“I’m sorry.”
Rebecca’s eyes widened in the passenger seat.
“......?”
“Still, thanks to you we got a lot done, and shortened unnecessary time. A grand mage... and one who’s used to killing, and has the 「Master of Mana」—there are parts where a grand mage like that can’t be replaced. For that, I should express gratitude.”
“.......”
“So endure it for one day. I’ll rent you a private airship so you can go home.”
“.......”
After that, silence fell again.
And maybe that strange quiet felt like a last chance to Rebecca.
“Um.”
“Yeah.”
Rebecca asked in a blank voice.
“What are you to her?”