Chapter 88 – [Passive] Thief
"Focus on the shape, Devon. Don't get distracted by the elemental conversion~" Madame Elisa dictated, the busty sorceress witch showing her famous patience with her students, even if they were slow to keep up with her.
Devon frowned and tried again, reorganizing his mana into a ball.
But before he could get to doing that, something terribly wrong was beginning to occur in the distance. Coming down from the mountain in the distance was a gargantuan Behemoth with twin spiraled horns and a bull-like face, and muscles so large that a single calf muscle would require half an army to take down.
The behemoth roared and stomped the ground with each heavy footstep as it ran down from the mountain, delivering an earth shaking tremor through the valley between the mountain and the river where the battlefield was taking place, as Algorians, royals, and howler monkeys alike were frozen in place seeing the calamity-level monster approach them.
"So that's why the howler monkey migration was early this year," Madame Elisa murmured under her breath. "Devon, we'll have to cut our lesson short for today."
"Driver!" she shouted to the carriage driver who was positively quaking in his boots at this point.
"Y-yes, madame?" he replied, the horses whinnying nervously as he tried to reign them in.
"We're leaving," she replied tersely, a sense of urgency in her tone that Devon never heard before, not even during the initial howler monkey onslaught. He could tell that the magnitude of this particular monster showing up was completely different than anything else, and that this situation was completely out of her control. "Let's go. Come on Devon, hop on the carriage. We have to go, now."
The horses were already moving before Devon could get to the carriage, and he had to sprint to leap onto the moving carriage. He grabbed a hold of the wooden door and hoisted himself up and in through the curtain, where the madame was already seated with her thighs crossed. Inside was the still unconscious white haired countess with the petite and luscious body.
"What the hell is that thing?" Devon asked. Outside the carriage, the battle was decidedly over, and not because any particular side won. The encroaching behemoth sent soldiers and howlers running left and right, men and beasts alike abandoning their previous engagements in the face of a rampaging calamity-level beast.
"It's an ancient behemoth, if I'm not mistaken. I've only ever seen it in ancient manuscripts and legends," the knowledgeable reddish-brown haired guild backroom madame of Malon replied. She blinked her big eyes and slowly stroked her unconscious countess student's hair affectionately. "We'll need to mobilize the full force of the royal army and enlist the help of multiple sages to deal with a calamity-level threat like that."
"Really?" asked Devon. "But I thought the royal army is already here?"
The madame scoffed as the carriage bumped up and down, making her breasts jiggle in place. They were drifting away from the battlefield faster than the other carriages, as howler monkeys ran right next to them, completely ignoring them now ever since the appearance of the behemoth. "Oh, Devon. The empire is much wider than you think, and what you see right now is only a small portion of the empire's military might. For now we're going to head back to Malon and see how the empire reacts."
Devon nodded. "Alright. It'll be good to get the countess to safety as well."
"Yes~" Madame Elisa replied. "While the empire sorts out their paperwork for such an undertaking, we can rest for a while at the guildhouse in Malon~"
Devon liked the sound of that. He succeeded in saving the countess before she was raped by the Algorians, and because of that he was okay with giving up a night with the cow girl back at the earl's estate. She could wait, but countess Ilyana's virginity could not wait.
Devon already decided a while ago that he was fine not being able to take her first time immediately as long as it meant that nobody else was able to take it either. When he claimed ownership of a girl, he'd really drive down the stake and protect his territory.
In his musings while the carriage continued to depart from the battlefield, Devon realized that he was treating this new world as almost like a video game or even… a visual novel dating sim. It was a weird thing to think of, but the way he so callously approached the world with what was effectively a save-and-reload system that was [Dead Man Walking] did remind him a lot of just gaming on his pc. It felt almost like playing god, in a sense.
Meanwhile…
"Damn it!" Hecate cursed. No matter how hard she looked, she couldn't find a single trace of Devon's file in her office. Her manager was right– someone did steal it. But how, and more importantly, why? Who would go through so much effort and risk angering one of the Olympians just for some second chance program participant?
The only thing that separated Devon from the other second chancers was his loadout. And it wasn't like his passive could be stolen…
Wait…
Hecate chewed on that thought further.
In this universe, was there an entity that could steal passives? That was something that she completely dismissed when Hades was in possession of his passive. After all, nobody would dare try to steal Hades's passive from a god himself.
But his passive now existed outside of his body, on a mortal, no less. Suddenly the calculus was thrown off. An entity that wouldn't dare touch Hades himself, but might be tempted if the passive was on a juicy target without transcendent power like her manager…
Hecate rushed to the phone and dialed the number for her manager.