P/N let me know if there's any mistakes and I will try to fix them
"!"
Unable to hear Finn's or Gareth's voices due to the deafening
sound waves, Aiz decided to use Airiel on her own.
The torrents of air surrounding her increased in velocity and
cleared a space around her in a few moments.
Once the coiling, almost animal-like fog retreated far enough
to see, it was true. The minotaur had vanished without a trace.
—Don't hold this against me!
Then…
The instant Aiz and the other adventurers emerged from the
fog and into Lido's line of sight, he swelled up his chest like a bal-
loon and released it all at once. Aiz, Gareth, and Finn had been
distracted by the missing minotaur and swiftly turned to face this
new threat, but they were too late.
An inferno came streaming out of Lido's mouth.
"A fire-breathin' lizardman…?!"
Aiz ignored Gareth's flabbergasted remark and enveloped
them with a protective wall of wind. However, they weren't Lido's
target.
The lizardman swept his head to the side along with the in-
ferno, igniting a wide area.
"?!"
Aiz's wind alone wasn't enough to protect the residential
buildings on either side of the street from the flames.
This being the slums, many flammable objects immediately
caught fire. Wooden materials and magic-stone products ignited,
turning the whole block into a hellscape right before their eyes.
"GROOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The siren and lizardman ceased their attacks and took off run-
ning the moment the gargoyle's voice echoed through the din.
The other monsters were already barreling through the back-
streets; the Xenos were in full retreat.
"...!"
"…We're shorthanded as it is. Cruz and the others take prior-
ity."
Finn looked defeated as he ordered Aiz to stay put just as she
was about to give chase. The three of them included, very few ad-
venturers could still move.
"What is transpiring out there…?!"
Riveria stood motionless, making sure the barrier protecting
the townspeople remained firmly in place.
She couldn't dismiss the magic due to the smoky black fog ob-
scuring her vision and keeping her from comprehending the situ-
ation—and her concern it might be poisonous. The people she
was tasked to protect had become her fetters.
Without someone to orchestrate their movements after Finn
joined the front line, Loki Familia had lost the offensive advan-
tage.
The adventurers were quick to regroup once Finn retook com-
mand. Gareth went to Tiona, Tione, and Bete before collecting
Ikelos and bringing them all to safety. Aiz also took part in the
rescue effort. To contain the fire, uninjured magic users joined
Riveria in freezing the area with ice magic and summoning
streams of water to douse the flames. Even Hestia Familia, who
was unable to side with either the Xenos or Loki Familia, pitched
in.
The damage was contained to a single block within ten min-
utes thanks to the powerful magic users' efforts. The fire had been
completely extinguished.
Pillars of black smoke rose above the stone street, now a
charred, barren wasteland of rubble.
"Finn, what happened to that minotaur…?"
"…It's underground."
Aiz walked somberly through the middle of the street toward
Finn, who was looking at the ground.
The paving stones had broken open from underneath to form
a passageway to the area below.
"What's this…?"
"The hole that metallic giant left behind. That monster proba-
bly passed through here to enter the sewers."
Aiz looked with surprise at the hole where Fels's golem had
emerged.
Indeed, there was a trail of blood leading into the darkness be-
neath the charred opening. The black monster had disappeared
into this gap during the commotion.
"…Should we pursue?"
"Yes, please do…but considering how well they pulled off the
escape, I think it's safe to say these armed monsters are quite in-
telligent. Please don't go after them alone."
Finn sighed as he answered Aiz's question, noticing that the
minotaur's severed arm had also disappeared.
A little more time passed before other adventurers and Guild
employees arrived on the scene in a flurry.
As people still suffering from the Howl received medical atten-
tion all around him, Finn looked up at the sky and reflected on
his blunder.
"That was a mistake…This failure is on me."
The vicious monster howls, explosive echoes, and, above all, the
stories of the townspeople fleeing from the labyrinthine district
plunged the relatively calm Orario back into chaos.
As Royman and the rest of the Guild's upper management
blanched and issued orders to every familia left and right, adven-
turers descended upon Daedalus Street in the city's third district,
the southeast block.
"Keh…!"
The setting sun had nearly reached the city wall, burning one
side of the boy's face.
Bell was running.
He was in hot pursuit of the vouivre destroying everything in
its path.
"Wiene!"
Bell's scream didn't reach the wailing dragon girl as she
plowed forward.
Breaking through walls and racing up stairwells, the vouivre
and Bell burst out of the dungeon-like district, leaving the slum
behind.
"Eep…! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKK!"
"Hey, you—adventurer! Over here! It's over here!"
A group of demi-humans shrieked and scattered in all direc-
tions once they caught sight of the furious monster.
Leaving Daedalus Street meant that they were now careening
through busier city roads, creating a ruckus and terrified cries.
Women dressed like courtesans called out to adventurers one
after another.
Bell grew more anxious by the moment.
"Wiene, stop!"
"AAAAAAAaaa!"
He'd jumped onto her many times while passing through the
dungeon town; he'd held on to her only to get bucked off by her
undulating snakelike body. His hands were already cut up and
bloodied from trying to hold on to her sharp dragon scales. Call-
ing out to the girl had proven useless, making the task of return-
ing the garnet jewel next to impossible.
Bell had clung to her dainty upper body, and her relentless
convulsions had flung him around like a rag doll until he was dis-
lodged by a collision with a street sign and rolled across the
ground once again. Witnesses screamed, fearing for his life.
The curse should have lifted by now…!
The ominous red tint was gone from Wiene's eyes.
Dix's curse should have been broken. But even so, the dragon
girl's rampage persisted.
Bell, blood flowing down his face, glanced at the messy punc-
ture wound in Wiene's left hand.
—The spear that had pierced her.
As unfortunate as it was, there was a high possibility that
Finn's spear attack had been exceptionally traumatic.
It was a reminder of Dix's spear, his scornful laughter, his
wickedness.
The curse of his existence wouldn't go away.
"There it is! Right there!!"
"?!"
Unable to stop Wiene, adventurers started appearing one by
one.
They were hesitant at first, seeing a crazed vouivre, a rare
large-category monster like a lamia, charging toward them. How-
ever, they raised their weapons, determined not to let it come any
closer.
Their longbow strings creaked with arrows at the ready; their
fingers clasped around javelins; the jewels of their staffs glinted.
Bell screamed, enough to hurt his throat, at the adventurers
lining the road and standing in their path.
"STOP—!"
However, Bell's cry was drowned out by the adventurers'
shouts as they attacked.
A javelin plunged into the dragon's tail; an arrow pierced her
shoulder; fire magic hit head-on. Countless broken scales fell
from her body.
" !"
A shrill howl came from Wiene.
Writhing in pain from the adventurers' merciless assault, she
sped up in a desperate attempt to escape from the threat.
She bowled over the adventurers in her path.
"...!!"
Bell clenched his teeth so hard they nearly snapped.
As even more adversaries gathered in the vouivre's path, Bell
cast aside the discord and doubt in his mind and thrust his right
arm in their direction.
"Firebolt!!"
A round of Swift-Strike Magic raced toward the adventurers
preparing to attack.
"The hell?!"
"?!"
"WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAA!"
At their feet, off their armor, into their bodies.
An electrified inferno ignited, knocking them onto their backs
in an explosion of sparks.
Hot on Wiene's tail, Bell rounded on those who should be his
allies, the adventurers.
"Little Rookie, you bastard!"
Red-faced adventurers roared at Bell as his burning lightning
bolts interfered with their attacks.
Lower-class, upper-class adventurers, even their familia didn't
matter. They all seethed at the lone newbie getting in their way.
Wide-eyed women and children peeked out from the higher
floors of buildings lining the street, bearing witness to his bar-
baric actions.
Was he crazy? Did he want the drop item that much? What
was he thinking, at a time like this? Each one of his fellow adven-
turers' criticisms cut deep into his heart and made his hands
quiver, but Bell continued casting his magic nonetheless. Protect-
ing the vouivre, chasing her down.
The endless pursuit soon reached a new arena, the Pleasure
Quarter reconstruction zone.
Formerly Ishtar Familia's territory, it had been heavily dam-
aged during the attack from Freya Familia that drove the former
owners out of business. Many buildings still bore the scars of that
day, and piles of debris were still rampant even for the Pleasure
Quarter. Citizens had been forbidden to set foot in the area.
Brothels stood in shambles; scattered barrels and ash covered the
streets. A master-less Belit Babili overlooked a lonely, empty cas-
tle town.
The two barreled their way through the web of debris that
filled the street.
A group of adventurers had circled ahead, waiting for Bell and
Wiene directly in their path.
"...?"
Zing! Bell immediately knew something was off.
…They're not attacking?
Weapons held at rest, even the sounds of their pursuers had
vanished.
The adventurers just stood to block Wiene's path or perhaps
intimidatingly fire off their weapons, but the onslaught had
stopped as far as Bell could see.
Almost like they'd given up…
—No, that wasn't it.
A cold chill zipped down the boy's spine the instant he revoked
his own reassuring hypothesis.
They're leading her…!
All color left Bell's face a moment later.
"Wiene, don't go that way!"
She was being drawn into a trap.
Nothing else mattered to Bell once he realized it, and he
screamed at the top of his lungs.
A human alongside a dwarf with a massive shield at the ready
appeared in their path. The vouivre veered away, racing down a
different passage to avoid the people blockade. Bell reached out
to grab her tail, but an arrow crossed just in front of him, denying
him the opportunity.
It came from an animal person on top of a nearby roof as if to
say, "Don't get in the way."
"...?"
Then Bell's wish was proven to be in vain.
The dim backstreet suddenly opened into a wide area that was
illuminated by the setting sun.
It was like a bowl, a clearing surrounded by a ring of rubble.
The vouivre broke through an iron gate, shattering the bars
with astonishing force before the ground disappeared beneath
her, and she fell all the way to the bottom.
The stone pavement crumbled with a series of crashes until
she came to a stop at the very center. Countless adventurers stood
on the rim looking down at her from all directions.
The adventurers had conspired together—across familias.
Bell's heart pounded even louder at the sight of so many magic
users prepared to release the spells they had on standby.
He dove into the clearing without missing a step.
"Little Rookie! Stand down!"
"You crazy or something?! You'll die!"
Adventurers shouted angry warnings at the boy the moment
he landed.
"Doesn't matter! Just do iiit!"
A man who seemed to have lost himself in the chaos shouted
from somewhere around the rim, and his voice set everything in
motion.
Innumerable flashes of magical energy erupted in a volley of
simultaneous spells.
" ."
The fusillade descended directly toward the center of the
clearing.
Wiene's eyes shrank, her face briefly illuminated before the
light engulfed her.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Magic explosions drowned out the monster's shriek.
Wiene disappeared amid the roaring wind.
" !"
Bell raced forward.
Streaking flames, electrical discharges, and icy wind rocked
his body back and forth as he made a break for the middle of the
clearing.
No matter how much his skin was scorched, his hair sizzled, or
his body burned with frost, Bell rushed to reach the girl at the eye
of the swirling vortex of magic energy.
A wordless scream burst from his lungs.
Time slowed to a nauseating crawl.
Trapped in this world without time, Bell reached out.
There, amid the flickering magic energy, was a scale-less
dragon monster staring up at the sky.
Smoke was rising from all over its body; its faint silver-blue
hair swished back and forth as its ash-colored extremities started
rotting away.
Catching a glimpse of the approaching boy, she looked at him
with vacant eyes as her lips formed one word:
Bell.
"!!!!"
Bell thrust his hand forward with all his strength and was just
about to reach her, when suddenly—
A crimson spearhead plunged through her chest.
" ."
The missile had been thrown from behind Bell.
It was a cursed blade with a deep-seated grudge.
"HAH! Hya-ha-ha-ha! AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Got
it! I finished it off!"
A large man hooted with the scornful laughter of the insane.
Half his face missing, the stocky human's cackling set time in
motion again.
The skewered girl's body started to tilt ever so slightly in front
of Bell's eyes.
"—Wiene!"
Just as the crying boy's scream rang out—the ground gave
way.
"What's that?!"
"It's caving in!"
The clearing crumbled at the center, the focal point of the
magic volley.
The stones disappeared from beneath his feet, and he fell right
along with her.
Bell grabbed hold of the girl falling into darkness and em-
braced her.
Adventurers and magic users shielded their faces with their arms,
motionlessly observing the scene below.
A cave-in.
Swelling clouds of dust in the air.
A gaping hole had opened in the center of the bowl, making
the area resemble a man-made inverse anthill. Crumble! Crack! A
few stone fragments collapsed into the hole as if only just realiz-
ing what had happened.
Designed by Daedalus himself, secret underground passage-
ways crisscrossed beneath the Pleasure Quarter. One of these un-
derground tunnels passed under the bowl, meaning the space be-
neath the clearing was hollow to begin with. Unable to withstand
the cascade of magic, the stone pavement had collapsed in on it-
self.
A few adventurers cleared their throats, filling the silence.
The boy and the vouivre had fallen deep into the hole and dis-
appeared without a trace.
"Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"
There was a large human among them, laughing like a mad-
man.
It was Ikelos Familia's Gran. The last surviving hunter had
used a key to return to the surface via Knossos's stairwell and,
lost in his own rage, hurled Dix's spearhead at Wiene.
"Did you see that, Dix?! I killed the beast, killed it dead! Me,
all me !"
"!!"
A gargoyle claw plummeted from the sky and crushed the de-
ranged man.
Gros had witnessed the shining beacon from the air after es-
caping from Loki Familia and led the winged monsters in a dash
to the clearing. That was when he saw it.
The gargoyle, having ended the hunter's life for sure this time,
stood amid the adventurers' screams and gawked at the hole
where Bell and Wiene had fallen, trembling.
" OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
"A flying monster?! What's it so upset about?!"
"Dammit, let's get out of here!"
The Xenos went wild.
With the last vestiges of strength in their badly injured bodies,
they rushed after the screaming adventurers in full retreat.
All so that the boy and girl could spend their last moments to-
gether uninterrupted.
A steady stream of sand and rubble poured down around them
like an hourglass counting down the remaining time.
The stone and debris of a dark underground tunnel sur-
rounded them.
A red sky looked down on Bell embracing the girl's limp body
from a hole over their heads.
"Wiene…Wiene?!"
Eyes glistening with tears, he took hold of the cursed spear-
head lodged in her chest.
The curse was already eating into her flesh. Pulling the
wickedly curved blade from the girl's body, Bell cast it aside with
a dry clang.
The light-blue body twitched.
Bell withdrew the garnet jewel from his pouch and pressed it
into the limp girl's forehead.
Although a faint flicker passed through the reddish stone, the
girl in his arms didn't move.
In fact—thud!
The long dragon tail was turning to ash.
"…?!"
Deep inside the spear wound in her chest…
The bloody purple crystal just visible inside the opening was
cracked.
Outer portions of her body turned to ash, falling away as the
crack expanded.
"No…Don't!!"
Bell kept yelling, bawling like a child.
Don't, don't do this—don't go. He repeated the same words
over and over again.
An endless stream of tears fell from his eyes, squeezed shut,
and dripped onto her cheeks as she lay weakly in his embrace.
"…Be…ll?"
"!"
Bell's eyes flew open the instant he heard her weak whispers,
barely more than breaths.
Wiene was awake. The light had returned to her amber eyes,
peeking out from behind her cracked eyelids.
Her cheeks were still solid and elongated.
She gazed up at Bell, so feebly she seemed about to expire at
any moment.
"Wiene...!"
"…Be…ll…I'm…so sorry."
She apologized in a hoarse voice, fixated on Bell's bleeding
face.
As the sound of crumbling ash grew louder in his ears, Bell
shook his head over and over.
He laughed through his tears with a smile that could hardly
pass as genuine.
"I'm fine, just fine, so…don't worry about me, just…!! Please,
Wiene—!"
—Don't disappear.
Bell tightened his grip on her shoulder, pleading with all his
heart.
Trembling, Wiene pressed her cheek against the boy's chest,
smiling as if all was right with the world while tears welled up in
her amber eyes.
Fsh…a faint sound came from her chest as her dragon ab-
domen crumbled to the floor.
"…I…had a dream."
"You did…?"
Only Wiene's humanlike torso remained as she gazed up into
Bell's wide eyes.
"No one…would save me…It was so scary."
She was turning to ash in his arms.
The last moments of her life ticking away, Wiene lifted a quiv-
ering hand.
"But, you know?"
It softly brushed against his cheek, crumbling on contact.
Her voice barely audible between sobs, Wiene continued.
"This time…someone came…Someone saved me."
Bell's eyes opened as wide as they would go.
"I'm so happy…"
She closed her eyes, and a single transparent tear ran down
her cheek.
Her lips parted, but a single dream, one tiny desire, held her
close.
In that moment, the exceptional girl was whole.
Her body was dissolving.
The girl's form was becoming unrecognizable.
"Thank you," she said to the shocked boy.
As she cried, a smile bloomed on her lips.
Then…
"Bell…I love you."
She was gone.
She had crumbled.
Ash flowed through Bell's fingers.
Her warmth had vanished.
" ."
Time stood still as unyielding tears silently slid down Bell's
cheeks.
The motes of ash drifted gently around him, glimmering in the
light and fading as his memories of her did the same.
Their meeting.
The fear.
The sadness.
Bewilderment.
Touch.
Gratitude.
Name.
Joy.
Smile.
Embrace.
Tears.
Amid the ash falling from his chest, only the beautiful reddish
jewel remained intact.
"Agh, aaggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh—"
His heart was breaking.
A hole had opened in his core.
His throat quivered, but just before a wail could follow…
"O untrodden domain, O forbidden wall. Today on this day,
I turn my back on the laws of heaven—"
The words of a spell echoed.
"?!"
Tears flew from his cheeks as Bell whirled around to look over
his shoulder. It was the black-robed mage.
"Rod of Asclepius, Goblet of Salus. O ye who is beyond the
power of healing—I ask you to wait."
A white magic circle expanded by the moment. The twinkling
magic energy surpassed the realms of human comprehension.
Bell watched with wide eyes as Fels continued to chant in a
loud voice.
"Lord's judgment, lightning of conviction. Shall I be burned,
rejecting your providence—"
The white magic energy illuminating the underground tunnel
burst through the hole overhead, forming a white pillar that
reached to the heavens.
Everyone in Orario, both monsters and people, spotted the
beam piercing the twilight.
"That light—Fels?!"
"...?!"
Rei and Gros had successfully driven off the adventurers and
were now carrying a badly injured Lido over their shoulders. The
lizardman whispered in disbelief as all three stared at the bright
light coming out from the cracks in the pavement under their
feet.
"Lady Hestia!!"
"A deity being sent home…? No, it's not!"
Hestia was checking up on her familia's condition when Welf
got her attention by pointing to the pillar of light.
"Finn…"
"From the Pleasure Quarter…Bell Cranell—no, the vouivre?"
Loki Familia's adventurers stared up at the heavens as well.
"Using that now, are you, Fels…?"
A wizened deity closed his eyes.
"That light, how many times have I seen it now?"
A silver-haired Goddess of Beauty smiled from her vantage
point at the top of the giant tower.
"Somethin' big's goin' down…"
So said a goddess with cinnabar-red hair, sitting cross-legged
on a rooftop.
"A miracle if I've ever seen one."
A god narrowed his eyes beneath his traveler's hat.
"—I shall journey to the realm of the dead myself."
The song's tempo increased.
As the magic circle glowed even brighter, Bell's face and the
black robe disappeared in the white light.
"Gates of Charon, over the river of time. Lend your ears, O
Lord. Listen to this deranged melody."
It was a reverberating, majestic tune. A divine harmony.
And a sinful deed that went against the laws of the earth.
"Never-ending tears, lamenting wails. The price has already
been paid."
It was taboo magic conjured with an extremely long chant.
It could overturn predetermined fate, a secret technique capa-
ble of defying an irreversible, absolute truth.
"O path of light. I ask you to sacrifice the given past and cast
light on this foolish desire."
Resurrection magic granted to only the Sage of old.
"Yes, I will not turn away."
The conjuring was complete, the magic energy at its peak.
And a request was made in exchange for all of Fels's Mind.
"Dia Orpheus."
The pillar of light began to flake apart.
In its place, millions upon millions of light fractals over-
whelmed the underground tunnel.
Sparkling white jewels fell like snow. Bell's wide eyes glittered
with the reflections as a high-pitched tone filled the air, and the
pieces began spiraling into a single point.
Lastly, soft blue light from beneath the magic circle swirled
into Bell's chest.
The light pillar shattered a moment later with the sound of
breaking glass.
Bell reflexively shut his eyes to protect them against the blind-
ing flash that turned the world white for an instant, shuddering
as weight and warmth returned to his chest.
Slowly, cautiously, Bell opened his eyes as if in prayer…only to
see the dragon girl, eyes closed and curled up against his chest.
"Aa ."
A small cry escaped him as his vision blurred and he placed a
hand on her cheek.
Cold. And yet warm. He felt a soft beat. She was breathing.
She had four supple, humanlike limbs. Gone were the dragon
wings, and the piles of ash on the floor were noticeably smaller
than before.
The reddish jewel embedded in her forehead started to glow,
spotlighting Bell's eyes.
"…That…was my first success."
Plop! A dull thud sounded soon after.
The black-robed mage fell to a seat on the floor behind Bell,
every ounce of energy and willpower spent.
"Eight hundred years, has it been…? How I loathed this point-
less magic, this useless hope that took up one of my Status slots
all this time…"
Bell met the mage's gaze, certain he could feel a smile coming
from beneath the hood.
Fels looked up, staring into empty space.
"But yes…there was a point."
Tears flowed from Bell's eyes as he watched Fels struggle to
form the words.
The boy then turned his attention to the girl, feeling the
warmth in her cheek once again—and embraced her with all his
strength.
A single, transparent tear trickled out from between the girl's
closed eyelids.
The sun sank into the west.
The white pillar piercing the heavens had vanished without a
trace.
The world had been momentarily cast in white light, but it was
now silent. Twilight returned to Orario, leaving behind only con-
fused townspeople and the excited whispers of deities.
In a corner of the slum in the white tower's shadow…
Finn was receiving an update underneath the evening light.
"Sorry, Finn…A water main broke halfway through…and we
had to give up the chase."
"The winged monsters that appeared in the Pleasure Quarter
also vanished into the sewers beneath the broken courtyard…
There's no trace of them."
"I see…What of Bell Cranell? The vouivre?"
"He is still missing. However, on the spot where he fell along
with the vouivre…we discovered traces of blood among a great
deal of what appeared to be monster ashes."
Finn said nothing, running his tongue along the base of his
thumb as he listened to Aiz and Riveria's report.
Out of the corner of his eye, he took note of Aiz's reaction to
Riveria's information and added, "All right, thank you," with a
nod. The prum general dismissed the two women and cast his
gaze back over the battlefield.
"So they got away in the end…"
He whispered while surveying the damaged and burned
cityscape.
At long last, he started issuing new orders to Loki Familia,
which had been busy helping the other adventurers attending to
the wounded and rescuing people from the rubble.
"..."
Aiz watched him in silence before gazing at her own hand,
then silently raised her head toward the sky.
The red sun was about to sink below the city.
Bell quietly stared ahead, hidden deep in the shadows where the evening light could never reach.
"Wiene, Wiene…!"
"Th-thank goodness…!"
They had arrived at the entrance to a drainage canal located
deeper inside the city's sewer network.
Concealed behind a trapdoor, this tunnel was surprisingly
large and resembled an area beneath a bridge. Bell had a feeling
he'd been here before, but he couldn't place it at the moment.
Bell, Fels, Wiene, and all the Xenos who had been able to
make it this far had hidden in this drainage canal, which was still
beyond the adventurers' range.
Lido, Gros, and Rei, as well as a lamia and a troll, were all
huddled around Wiene in front of Bell. Although she had yet to
wake up, the Xenos were trembling and crying tears of joy to see
that their comrade was safe and sleeping soundly.
"…Fels."
"What troubles you, Bell Cranell?"
Bell wanted to pose a question to the mage, who was standing
outside the ring of the Xenos just like him.
"Are they all that's left of the Xenos who came up to the sur-
face…?"
"No, there are Xenos who have yet to regroup. You might not
be aware, but many of them were separated during the retreat
from Loki Familia and are still hiding in the city, or…"
Fels's words hung in the air, and Bell closed his mouth.
Bell could count the Xenos survivors in front of him on his fin-
gers. He was concerned for the safety of all the monsters who had
rushed into the battle to buy time for Wiene and himself.
Lost in his train of thought, Bell focused again on the Xenos
surrounding Wiene.
"Bell Cranell…"
Still exhausted from the earlier spell, Fels spoke in a meek
voice while leaning against the wall.
"May I ask as to why you seem upset?"
Fels stepped forward immediately, pressing for the boy's
thoughts as he looked upon the Xenos with a heavy heart.
"..."
"The Xenos were saved thanks to your efforts. That is no lie.
The same is true for Wiene. You have my gratitude as well."
"I…"
"Regret your decision, do you?"
You regret the actions you chose to take?
That was the question, but implied rather than spoken.
Bell immediately started to shake his head, but then stopped
and stared at the ground as he answered.
"That man…The adventurer who wore goggles said something
to me."
The tyrannical hunter who had captured and tortured the
Xenos.
Bell repeated Dix's words.
"That…I'm a hypocrite."
"..."
The goggled man had declared and laughed scornfully at him.
He claimed that Bell's decision was nothing more than pretty
words, an absurd dream, a fabrication.
Nothing more than a "bat" flapping back and forth, unable to
make up its mind.
—He was correct.
Bell was desperate not to get driven out by the people but lent
the monsters a helping hand.
He'd become the target of Loki Familia's hostility.
He'd attacked other adventurers with his magic.
Bell remembered everything.
He had betrayed so many during his single-minded effort to
save the girl.
He'd stood opposite his idol, driven away his allies.
He'd even turned his back on his desire to be a hero according
to his grandfather's teachings. He had been that close to leaving it
all behind.
A monumental feeling of powerlessness had been waiting for
him at the end of it all.
For without assistance from Fels, the other Xenos, Lyu, and so
many others, he would never have been able to rescue Wiene.
He was unable to protect or save anyone—a hypocrite.
That man's laughter resounded deep in his ears once again.
"..."
Fels listened to the boy's answer as he hunched over.
Stepping away from the wall, the mage turned toward Bell.
"Bell Cranell, this is nothing more than a theory…However, I
see it like this: Only those criticized for hypocrisy possess the nec-
essary qualities to become a hero."
Bell's eyes flew open, and he looked up.
"Please continue to worry, feel anguish, and doubt as you
make decisions, like today."
"Fels…"
"Heroes have to make decisions that are sometimes cruel,
heartless, and go unforgiven…but they are also the most noble."
Bell couldn't help but feel that Fels was smiling deep within
the darkness underneath the hood.
"Because your answer—just like the heroes' of old—was not
wrong, no matter how scorned or criticized it might be."
Fels's words touched his very soul. Bell had no response and
could not answer.
It took everything he had to manage the emotions coursing
through his heart.
"Allow me to speak as one who has lost flesh and skin. I, a
mage composed of nothing but bones and regret, say this to you."
The long-lived, black-robed skeleton got to the point at last.
"Be a fool, Bell Cranell."
"..."
"You are the one who must do so. What you possess seems
foolish to us…However, I'm absolutely sure it is irreplaceable in
the eyes of the gods."
Fels stepped aside, allowing Bell to see the monsters again.
"Bell, thank you, thank you so much…!"
"Sorry, Bellucchi…And thanks!"
"…Thank you. You have…my gratitude."
Bell's vision blurred at the sentiment of these monsters who
could never see eye to eye with people.
He took one look at the sleeping dragon girl, and his throat
trembled.
"There were many who showed compassion and shared an un-
usual bond with the Xenos just like you…However, none of them
were able to care for and save them, as you have just done.
"Thank you."
Bell looked back down at his feet upon hearing those apprecia-
tive words.
The boy's back was toward the setting sun, and the last of its
rays dyed the sky red as they caressed the boy's cheek.
You don't have to be proud.
You can doubt yourself.
But never ever regret.
Because lives saved by foolish hypocrisy are surely right be-
fore you.
—He felt as though the red rays had borrowed his grandfa-
ther's voice to tell him so.