Chapter 127

The announcer's voice—filling the spacious hall with instructions for the next stage—finally fell quiet after delivering the last piece of business.

"……"

Mikhail had been staring up at the empty air where the announcements had been echoing. He shifted his gaze to the operations manager who had approached with brisk, purposeful footsteps.

"I'm here to distribute the required supplies."

The manager offered Mikhail a polite bow along with the explanation, then handed over a white cube roughly the size of a pebble.

Next, he detached the mana-absorbing orb from Mikhail's magic tool and collected it.

Click.

Mikhail fitted the cube he'd just received into the now-empty slot on top of the device.

The snowflake-white cube flashed once, then projected a directional arrow across its surface.

A support device for smooth navigation through this stage. Also doubles as a safety mechanism—keeps you from getting caught up in the forces embedded in the ruins.

Mikhail tapped the cube's brightly glowing surface a couple of times, then glanced sidelong at the faction gathered nearby.

The Allied Knight Order, assembled in their familiar formation.

The knights were slotting their cubes into their own devices, trading excited remarks back and forth.

"Talk about a windfall. We get the western zone—the one with the highest scoring potential—handed to us just like that."

"I was sweating bullets thinking Salvator would snatch it. Either way, it worked out for us! Let's use this chance to build some real momentum for a comeback!"

Mikhail watched them steel their resolve, then turned his head toward the presence that had sidled up beside him.

Lloyd was wearing a grin laced with easy familiarity.

"Standing all by yourself over here—what are you up to, Mr. Mage?"

Lloyd slung an arm over Mikhail's shoulder and jerked his chin toward the crowd beginning to move.

"Looks like everyone's heading out. Shall we get going too?"

Mikhail swept his gaze across the figures filing toward the corridors that branched off in every direction, then gave Lloyd a nod.

He fell in with the group and started walking.

They headed for the western edge of the hall, then stepped into a corridor that stretched out in a straight line ahead of them.

Krrrrmm….

A few paces into the passage, a faint vibration reached Mikhail's ears.

He blinked slowly, stopped mid-stride, and looked down at his feet.

A subtle tremor was traveling up through the soles pressed flat against the ground.

So the ruins' activation valves have opened.

Mikhail recalled the lore tied to the tremor he'd just felt.

The backdrop for Round Two—the very ground beneath his feet.

The Ruins of the Adversaries, standing in the heart of the wasteland, had originally served as a training facility for ancient combatants.

In its dormant state, the ruins gathered data on the magical beasts prowling the surrounding area. Once activated, it called up that collected data and constructed combat environments from it.

Mikhail pictured the beasts—rendered so faithfully they could pass for the real thing—charging with savage ferocity.

Grrrrr─!

The threats about to appear would be illusions, but that didn't make the impact they dealt any less real.

And while they'd look identical to the creatures from before, some would carry entirely different characteristics than their originals.

"……"

Before long, Mikhail resumed walking.

The southwestern reaches of the ruins. Footsteps like marble striking stone marked the path toward their destination.

Ethan looked down at the magic tool projecting an arrow against its white surface, then raised his eyes to the view ahead.

The scenery stretching out before him was nothing but monotonous open space. The corridor ran long and straight, its first combat zone still nowhere in sight.

"……"

Ethan pressed forward—then lowered his gaze without warning.

He knew full well how fatal and amateur a flaw it was to lose composure before a fight.

And yet the tremor clinging to the tail end of every breath refused to settle.

"Hah."

Ethan forced the ragged exhale down past the back of his neck and swept his bangs up off his forehead.

Joy or sorrow. Affirmation or denial. A tangle of threads impossible to define as any single thing was churning through his head.

"Ethan."

A voice pitched slightly higher than most drifted into his awareness. Ethan surfaced from his thoughts and looked to the side.

Nisha had drawn up beside him at some point and was speaking in a low, conspiratorial murmur.

"I can't seem to settle my nerves no matter what I do. Mind if we talk for a bit?"

Ethan studied Nisha's face for a quiet moment, then let the tension around his mouth ease and nodded.

She'd opened with her own concerns as the topic—but woven into the words she was pulling together was worry meant for him.

The kind of intent tucked behind a conversation that years of friendship since enrollment let him read without effort.

"Sure."

Nisha beamed as though his agreement alone had made her day.

She stole a quick glance toward the back of the group where Mikhail and the others were positioned, then fixed her eyes forward again and let out a long, charged breath.

"Haah… I know I shouldn't be this wound up before a fight, but no matter how many deep breaths I take, it won't go away."

Nisha rested a hand on her hip, vented a lighthearted complaint, then flashed Ethan a playful grin.

"The thing is, among the beasts waiting at the end of this path, there's one I've been dying to take down myself."

"Dying to… take down?"

"Yeah. The sand mantis. A mantis-type beast—fast, vicious, and massive enough to be a constant headache for anyone crossing the desert. One of the nastier ones out there."

Nisha drew out the end of her sentence and narrowed her eyes, as though tracing her way back to a single moment in the past.

"You know my parents were adventurers before they opened that big general store, right? This was around when I was six or seven. Dad came back from an expedition after a long time away—empty-handed—and locked himself in his room sobbing. Three days and three nights straight."

Nisha dropped a sigh into the pause and continued.

"When I finally asked what happened, he said a swarm of mantises had attacked, and a group of civilians walking beside them got caught in danger. So he gave up all the rare texts and relics he'd scraped together—practically gave them away to the escort party in exchange for protecting those people. One book in particular… apparently it meant the world to him."

A faint, sympathetic groan escaped Ethan, and Nisha folded her arms as she went on.

"Anyway, Mom barely managed to coax him out of his little owl's nest after all that moping. I'd never seen Dad slurp down Mom's soup while sniffling like that before."

"……"

"Rotten things. How dare they make my dad cry. Do they have any idea how worried Mom and I were? That was almost ten years ago now, and I can still see it clear as day."

Nisha shook her head to cap off the story, then turned back to Ethan.

"Anyway, beyond settling a personal grudge… I think this fight's going to be great experience for all of us. We'll be facing a much wider variety of enemies than any other faction. That's going to be a real asset down the line."

Nisha paused for a breath, then leaned toward Ethan and spoke.

"So, Ethan—the enemies we'll run into this time won't be the familiar ones from before. Don't charge ahead on your own. Fight with us. Right beside us."

She punctuated the finish with the force of a rallying cry.

Then she straightened up, pulled back the posture she'd tilted toward him, and broke into a proud, teeth-baring grin.

"……"

Ethan held Nisha in a long, quiet gaze.

Then, slowly, he dipped his head in a nod and answered.

"Yeah."

Nisha let a deflating sound leak out at his reply and mirrored the gesture with a nod of her own.

She turned to face forward again, settling back into her usual self.

"……"

Three or four steps passed in that rhythm.

Then a voice—low and unhurried, carrying an openness that held nothing back—slipped from Nisha's lips.

"Actually… about when we were deciding where to go earlier."

Instead of answering aloud, Ethan turned his head toward her.

Nisha had her chin dipped, staring down at the floor in front of her feet.

"I felt a little ashamed. That Mikhail was the one who pointed out what the rest of us had been missing."

She laid a single breath across the gap in the conversation, and the fingers hanging in front of her laced together.

"When he said—did we really think we'd feel fine watching you throw yourself into danger alone? The moment I heard that, it hit me like a slap to the back of the head. …Yeah. How could I forget something that obvious? If we're friends and teammates, that should've been the very first thing on our minds. How did the people who thought they were closest to you not see it?"

Nisha opened and closed her eyes in a slow, deliberate rhythm—then shifted her tone and asked Ethan directly.

"Hey, you and Mikhail worked things out, right?"

Ethan held her gaze without a word, then let his eyes fall at an angle before answering.

"Yeah."

"And there's nothing else weighing on you?"

"…Probably not."

The slight pause before his answer, and the way his fingertips curled inward along an unsteady arc, went unnoticed—Nisha's eyes didn't reach that far.

She fixed her gaze on the corridor's distant vanishing point and let a gentle curve settle at the corner of her mouth.

"Good. I'm glad."

That single line brought the conversation between them to a close.

Nisha quickened her pace by a fraction. Ethan held to the same speed as before.

"……"

Ethan stared at the first chamber drawing steadily closer and bit down on the inside of his lower lip.

What Mikhail had said—catching him completely off guard—had left him genuinely speechless.

If you throw yourself into danger by yourself, do you think the rest of us watching from behind are going to feel fine about it?

Words delivered with the most natural certainty in the world—spoken as though counting him among their own was never a question.

What I'm saying is… you don't have to lead from the front like that. You don't need to cling to doing everything perfectly. And you don't need to prove anything.

A single line that had seen straight through an anxiety he hadn't even recognized in himself.

And yet—for all the comfort those words had given him—the one wish that mattered most remained unresolved.

Ethan pressed the heat rising through his chest deep down inside and thought:

But I… I really did want to prove it. That I could protect them.