Chapter 5: Psychic Hazard (July 25th-26th)

By the time the calendar flipped over to July 25th, we’d reached the edge of the spirit world in our attempt to shake off our pursuers.

“If there’s an outer edge to this world, then does that mean it isn’t round like ours?” Tsumiki asked.

“Maybe,” I said with a shrug.

“It’s like a fantasy world,” she said quietly.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

Of course, we hadn’t fled to the ends of the world for nothing. The gate we needed to use was here. We’d finally made it, and the gate itself dwarfed the World Tree in the capital. Its towering figure was majestic, reaching higher than the eye could see. And on the other side of it was the demon world.

As long as we were in the spirit world, the Spirit King’s men would come after us. That was why Corona had suggested we hide in her world—the realm of demons. And here we were at the gate, getting ready to cross over.

“...”

I glanced at Mio to check on her.

In two days, the Psychic Hazard she spoke of would overtake Earth. She’d witnessed it herself, but then traveled back in time. More precisely, her mind from the future had entered her current body on July 20th. Apparently, she’d jumped right out of bed when it happened, and that put us at the start of the story she’d told us before. We still had no idea why she was able to do something supernatural like time travel, but we’d managed to clear up several other things.

We knew how Mio knew my name when I first found her—she knew me from the future. We also knew why she’d abandoned her tour to come to our town—she was trying to find me for help. And most importantly, we now knew why her story conflicted with Satsuki’s Magic of Omniscience—the Akashic record only contained a history of things and events that had already happened. It wouldn’t tell us anything about the catastrophe Mio had experienced in the future.

“Huh? What’s wrong, Rekka?” Mio noticed my glances and looked up at me curiously.

“Hm? Nothing... Can you recall the last bit of your memories yet?”

“Not yet...”

The final mystery of Mio’s story was who had pushed her off the roof. She still couldn’t remember. She said she’d run to the roof to get away from the rioting crowds, but that was where her memories stopped. Most everything right before and after that crucial moment was a blank. It was possible that the roof incident was linked to her missing memories and how she’d managed to time travel.

“Sheesh, that Yang guy sure caused a lot of trouble...”

This whole thing seemed like it’d be a lot easier to solve if Yang hadn’t sealed her memories. We’d probably be able to handle things much more directly that way. Considering the circumstances, it was sheer coincidence that Mio ran into Yang again... It would be putting it mildly to say it hadn’t been her lucky day.

But the good news was that we still had time. The Psychic Hazard originally happened on July 27th, but that was in time-traveler Mio’s world. History should have changed greatly when she met me on July 20th.

I now knew that Yang was trying to cause the Psychic Hazard, a disaster that probably involved Ellicia’s story, as well. And this turn of events should have had some effect on Yang’s plans. There was no guarantee that the Psychic Hazard would still happen on July 27th in this time line. That’s right... there was still time for us.

My chest suddenly throbbed in pain. I knew why. It was because I had left Lyun in the capital. I wasn’t able to save her little sister. By the time I reached her, it was already over.

Still... I couldn’t just give up.

Even if I couldn’t save her sister, Lyun’s story wasn’t over yet. Both her fate and the fate of the spirit world were on the line. Only me and my Namidare bloodline could save them.

Even if I could manage that, it wouldn’t bring Lyun’s little sister back... She might never forgive me for that. But I still wasn’t going to abandon her and her story.

“Let’s go, Corona,” I said.

“All right, stand back.”

Corona placed the palm of her hand against the enormous structure and started to chant something quietly. Apparently, this gate could only be opened by the hand of either the Demon King or the Spirit King.

I took a deep breath.

First, to the demon world. We’d head to the Demon King’s castle and borrow something from Corona to use in Harissa’s new spell. With that, we’d head back to Earth via Aburaamu. Once we made it, we’d go to Ellicia—no, first we’d exchange information with Satsuki and the others, then...

Oh, right! Before all that, we’d have to stock up on Red Threads while we were in Aburaamu. After we stopped the Psychic Hazard, we’d need those to get back to the spirit and demon worlds.

Man... I’m starting to panic.

I was even pacing back and forth without realizing it. As I was telling myself to calm down, the gate that connected the spirit and demon worlds slowly creaked open.

▽

On the other side of the gate lay a vast expanse of dusty yellow land—the polar opposite of the lush, verdant spirit world.

“So, this is the demon world...”

“That’s right,” Corona said with a small nod.

“There aren’t any trees or flowers.”

“We have an abundance of minerals instead. You can make any weapon conceivable here.”

Corona explained the demons here used weapons to hunt savage beasts as their primary food source. They apparently did plenty of fighting amongst themselves, too.

“It’s probably the reason demons seem uncivilized in the eyes of the spirits.” Corona sighed and pointed diagonally to our right. “My castle is in that direction. If it hasn’t been weathered away by now, that is.”

Come to think of it, Corona was sealed away for several hundred years. What were we going to do if her castle was gone?

I had the fingerless glove Hibiki gave me, so we still had a way to get back to Earth, but Harissa could only cast her spell once more as things stood. If we used it now, Harissa wouldn’t be able to return to her home in Aburaamu, and we wouldn’t be able to come back to the spirit world later. Using it would have to be a last resort.

“...”

I could see Harissa clutching her staff tightly.

“How long will it take to reach the castle?” I asked Corona.

“Let’s see... if your snake lady keeps flying without rest, then we’ll make it in half a day.”

“...Call me Lea.”

Lea didn’t seem too pleased about being called a snake lady. Her cheeks reddened in indignation.

“My bad,” Corona apologized lightly.

“Lea, can you make it?” I asked.

Lea had been working nonstop for the past few days. I felt bad asking her to do more, but...

“Of course. If it’s to protect the people I love, this much is nothing.”

“Thanks, Lea.”

That meant it was time to set off again. Lea transformed, and after we all climbed aboard, we made a beeline for the Demon King’s castle.

▽

After fending off the beasts that rashly tried to attack Lea’s flying dragon form en route to the castle, our destination finally came into view.

“That’s the castle,” Corona said.

She pointed to a great stone castle built into the side of a mountain. It reminded me of how the Spirit King’s palace had been incorporated into a giant tree. Perhaps spirits and demons weren’t as different from each other as they thought.

“Well, I’m glad it’s still standing,” I said.

“Yeah. At least there’s something left,” Corona replied.

“Now all we have to do is borrow something you have from Aburaamu...”

“If everything goes smoothly, that is.”

“Huh? Is there another problem?”

“It’s highly likely someone else has inherited my position, just like how I passed my title of hero in Aburaamu on to you.”

“Are you saying there’s another Demon King?!” I yelled in surprise.

“There are three royal families here, each ruling their own territory. But interaction between them is basically nonexistent. They all signed a non-aggression pact and went their separate ways. The House of Gardendos, the family I’m from, governs the land closest to the gate to the spirit world.” Corona paused for a moment. “There are many things that only a Demon King can do, other than managing the gate. That’s why the king must be of royal blood. But I had 25 siblings, you know. One of them has likely taken my place.”

“B-But they wouldn’t just completely disregard your position as the former king, right...?”

“Who knows? Demons live long lives, so one of my retainers might still be alive, but... there’s no familial love between demons. If anything, it’s more likely they’ll see me as a threat and attack on sight. If the current Demon King ordered my execution, my retainers would obey.”

Corona’s household sounded pretty brutal...

“So that means we might end up fighting your family?”

“Don’t hold back. You’re a hero, so make sure you fight like one.”

That would be easier said than done.

Despite all my worries, we approached the front gate of the castle.

“Oh? Your Majesty. When did you leave the grounds?”

“Huh?”

I was quite taken aback at the unexpected greeting from the goblin soldier guarding the castle gate.

“You know who I am?” Corona asked.

“Of course. There’s no way I’d forget the face of the great Demon King. But it sure is rare to see Her Shut-In Majesty out and about for a change.”

It was hard to tell if he was being polite or just plain rude. Did all demons talk like that...? Well, whatever.

“I know you said demons have long lifespans, but is this guy one of your former underlings?” I whispered to Corona.

“I don’t know him. Well, I never remembered most of my underlings’ faces... And if I’ve become known as a shut-in in my absence, then it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“Figures.”

Corona’s response left me intrigued.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the reason, they seem to think I’m still the Demon King. Let’s use that to our advantage.” Corona turned to the gatekeeper. “Hmph. I just went for a walk. Hurry up and open the gate already.”

“Of course, Your Majesty... Wait, who are your guests? I didn’t realize the Demon King had any friends.”

“...”

“What’s this? Are they even demons...?”

“Gatekeepers who take up more than three seconds of my time will be fed to a roc.”

“I’m opening it right now! Give me a break!”

The goblin hurriedly threw open the gate.

“What’s a roc?” I asked.

“A ferocious bird of prey with a body three meters long.”

We all followed Corona into the castle after that.

“The layout of the corridors hasn’t changed... but the interior design has gotten worse.”

“Hmm... Does that mean someone’s changed things in here?”

The only one who should have the authority to make changes in the Demon King’s castle should be the Demon King, right...? And since Corona had been sealed away, we knew it wasn’t her.

I had some doubts about the situation, but at least we’d made it inside safely. Now all that was left was to collect one of Corona’s possessions from Aburaamu.

“Corona, where’s the item you mentioned?”

“In the throne room.”

“The throne room? Why would you put it there and not in your room?”

“My last day here in the castle was two days before I was sealed in the Ruler’s Dungeon. I hid it in the throne itself so it would be safe. I suspected my successor would throw out anything and everything in my private quarters.” Corona answered my questions in rapid succession as we hurried down the corridor, but her voice slowly faded into a mumble. “...And it was precious to me.”

What could she have wanted to leave behind even after she was sealed?

Either way, no one we passed dared to stop a party led by the Demon King, so we arrived at the throne room without a problem. It was heavily decorated with flashy gold and silver treasures. It was impressive, sure, but pretty tacky.

“This isn’t your style, is it, Corona?”

“Of course not.” Corona scoffed and looked down at the floor of the throne room. “There’s even a carpet now.”

“Is that unusual?”

“There simply aren’t many demons with the skill to craft this kind of thing. While blacksmiths are a dime a dozen... Well, even the guys you passed in the corridor just now were only wearing the top half of their armor. They were basically naked from the waist down.”

“What?!” the girls all shrieked at Corona’s offhanded comment.

“Well, they hide what they need to.”

“No one wants to see naked men in armor, after all,” R said.

For once, I agreed with her.

Wait, that meant the goblins, werewolves, and other unidentified creatures we passed just now were all... Nope. I had to stop that train of thought right there. I was about to hurl.

Overwhelmed by the sudden urge to leave this place, I pointed to the back of the throne room and tried to get things back on track.

“So, is that the throne?” I asked.

The intricate throne seemed to be carved into a polished boulder. It sat rather modestly among the other extravagant decorations in the room.

“This throne has been used by generations of kings. No scoundrel would dare lay a hand on it.”

Corona mumbled to herself as she approached the throne, which was placed atop a dais. One by one, she ascended the familiar steps up to it... and someone suddenly jumped out of the shadows and swung a bladed object at her. The attacker leaped forward with a yell.

“Kyeeeh! En garde!”

“Who are you?”

“Ack!”

Corona promptly knocked her attacker down with one hand. He was surprisingly weak...

“Hmm? Is that you, Eskro?” Belatedly coming to a realization, Corona muttered the assassin’s name.

“G-Gah! M-My arm! My arm’s broken! S-Someone help, gyah!”

The demon she called Eskro looked like a bipedal lizard. Unlike the other demons we saw earlier, this guy writhing in agony on the floor was wearing clothes. He was also wearing gold accessories around his wrists and ankles, and a small crown had fallen from his head.

“Ah... I see now. So you were the one pretending to be the king this whole time. I knew something was weird.”

Corona narrowed her eyes as she looked down at Eskro, but she didn’t appear to be angry. If anything, she looked exasperated.

“Gweh! M-My legs are broken, too! I’ll die if you hit me again, gyah!”

“Your acting is as terrible as ever.”

“Gyah!”

Corona planted a kick in Eskro’s gut and sent him rolling along the floor. He bounced two or three times before hitting the wall, then stood up on wobbly legs. Apparently they weren’t broken after all. It seemed Corona had gone easy on him.

“Um, Corona? Who’s that?” I asked.

“Eskro. A strategist in my army. He was valued as one of the few demons that could actually use his brain. His only flaws were his compulsive lying and occasional backstabbing. Oh, and his affinity for flashy things that often led to him pocketing army funds. That caused some trouble, too.”

“Aren’t flaws like that normally considered pretty damning...?”

“He was originally a refugee from the neighboring territory. In a situation where he only had himself to rely on, he was able to survive this violent world with just his silver tongue. This is the same man that won over the demon leaders, people who are more inclined to talk with their fists than anything else.”

When she put it that way, it did sound kind of impressive.

“And his prowess in illusion magic made him useful on the battlefield... You used that magic to deceive the retainers, right?”

“W-Well... yes. That’s correct, gyah.”

Eskro confirmed Corona’s theory, then took a folding fan from his breast pocket and started fanning himself.

“You’ve been living it up in my place, so when I suddenly returned out of the blue, you made a spur-of-the-moment decision to assassinate me.”

“Y-Yes, gyah....”

He cowered under Corona’s stone-cold gaze, averting his from everyone. There was a tense pause as the real Demon King glared at the lizard like a predator staring down its prey. Then her expression relaxed as she sighed.

“Whatever. You’re forgiven.”

“That was fast!”

I was surprised at how quickly Corona forgave him.

“Everything was placed on his shoulders after I was sealed, after all. He could’ve easily elected a new Demon King to do the work instead. And while I didn’t expect him to be slyly impersonating me this whole time, well... from what I saw of the land, he’s been governing the territory well enough. I have no complaints.”

“Heheh... What royal graciousness, Your Majesty! So understanding, gyah!”

Eskro picked up the fallen crown and placed it on her head. In his relief at being forgiven, he had immediately turned to flattery. What a suck-up...

“But why didn’t you use your signature illusion magic just now? You would’ve had a better chance of landing a scratch on me with trickery.”

“Only a scratch, gyah...? Anyway, I’m out of mana right now.”

The lizard scratched at his head and laughed sheepishly. Corona cocked her head in confusion.

“What do you mean you’re out of mana? You lasted three days and three nights during the Spirit War, shielding our base from the prying eyes of the enemies all the while.”

The Spirit War that Corona was referring to was probably the conflict between spirits and demons that occurred just before she was sealed.

“Oh, well, about that. It’s Magic Deficiency Syndrome, gyah.”

“Magic Deficiency Syndrome?” Corona asked.

“Oh, right. Your Majesty never falls ill, gyah. It’s a sickness. The same magic-draining sickness that spread through our army during the Spirit War, gyah.”

“Oh... that kind of rings a bell.”

“You were there! It was a really rough time for us, gyah. The afflicted soldiers were sapped of their energy along with their mana. They became sluggish and fell behind in marching... Fortunately a strange sickness spread through the spirit army at the same time, so we managed to make it through alive, gyah.”

“So you’re suffering the same illness again?”

“It’s pretty much chronic now, gyah. The symptoms subside once all the mana in your body is used up, but they resume once you’ve recovered enough mana, gyah. I can only use my illusions for short periods of time because of it, so now everyone thinks Your Majesty is a shut-in who never leaves her room, gyah.”

“I see... You’ve had it tough, too.”

“That’s right, gyah. All the other demons rely on strength rather than magic, so they’ve barely suffered at all while I’ve lived in constant fear of being discovered and killed.”

Eskro spoke sadly about his woes over the last few hundred years.

...Wait, this wasn’t the time to be waxing nostalgic!

“Hey, uh, Corona... could we wrap up the reminiscing here?”

“Hm? Oh, that’s right.”

“Come to think of it, who’re these guys, gyah? Acquaintances of Your Majesty, gyah?”

Finally taking note of our presence, Eskro curiously tilted his head as he looked at the group of us.

“Oh, they’re the ones who broke my seal. I owe them my life.”

“Is that so, gyah? Then thank you for taking care of Her Majesty... unnecessary as it was, gyah.”

Might wanna watch your tongue, buddy. Got a little honest there at the end.

Although Corona probably heard Eskro’s mutterings loud and clear, too, she ignored him and headed for the throne. Reaching into a gap between two engravings, she pulled out a small ring.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“Yes. This ring belonged to the sorcerer who summoned me to Aburaamu... Pastel. She entrusted it to me when I returned to this world.”

“I see.”

I took the ring when she presented it to me, then turned to Harissa.

“Harissa, do you think you can use this?”

The only way for us to get to Aburaamu from here was with Harissa’s new spell. And for that to work, we needed an item that had a strong connection to Aburaamu. Would this ring do the trick?

“Lady Pastel has long passed,” said Harissa. “But there’s a splendid grave for her in the capital. If this ring was hers, that’s where it should take us.”

“All right!”

In that case, we should head off immediately—wait!

“We’ll need to take something with us that has a connection to the spirit world, too.”

Without that, we wouldn’t be able to return and save Lyun’s story. There was no time to do anything about it while we were fleeing from the Spirit King and his men, but we really should have thought about this sooner. Returning to the spirit world now to get something would waste so much time...

“Then use this,” Corona offered.

She took Eskro’s folding fan and tossed it to me. The lizard demon protested with a screech.

“This guy’s been using that thing for hundreds of years now. I can open the gate to the spirit world anytime, so all we’ll really need to do is get back here.”

“I see.”

“Your Majesty! That’s a memento from my great-grandmother!”

“Liar.”

“Ugyah!”

Corona delivered a swift karate chop to his throat to shut him up.

While I kind of felt bad seeing Eskro snivel so miserably, we didn’t have any more time to waste here. I decided to go with it and borrow the fan for now.

“All right, let’s head to Aburaamu!”

▽

A blinding flash of white light and a weird floating sensation later, we crossed the boundary between worlds. The first thing that came into view as the magical light faded was a well-maintained grave.

“There’s no mistaking it. This is the same grave I once saw in a memorial service for Lady Pastel,” Harissa said, nodding with certainty as she looked at the grave.

At last, we’d finally arrived in Aburaamu.

“So, this is Harissa’s hometown, huh?” Tsumiki muttered while looking around.

There wasn’t anything in the immediate area other than the grave.

“...”

Harissa seemed a little speechless at her own homecoming, but unfortunately, we didn’t have any time to waste here.

“That just used up the last catalyst for your new spell, right? We’ll have to get our hands on some more Red Threads.”

“Ah, yes!” Harissa snapped back into the present.

“Where can you find them?” I asked.

“They’re sold at just about any magic shop, but I don’t have any Aburaamian currency on me right now...”

“You need currency to buy things here?” Lea asked curiously.

“I have my savings in the bank, but in order to withdraw it, I’d need to go back to the dorms I was living in to get my national sorcerer’s license. It’s pretty far from here, so let’s go to the castle instead.”

“The same castle you summoned me to before?”

“Yes. There’s a national magic research facility next to the castle that has all kinds of magical items stocked. You need permission to take them... but I’m sure you could make something work, Sir Rekka.”

“So, you’re saying I should go throw around my name as the hero to get what I want, and then come back and apologize later?”

“That... is exactly what I’m saying, yes.”

It was quite a bold suggestion coming from the usually docile Harissa.

“But you and your world are in trouble! There’s no time to be fussing over the details.”

“Yeah...”

I had to agree with her there. Tsumiki, Lea, and Mio didn’t seem to have any objections to the plan, either. So with that settled, we made to leave... Well, most of us.

“...Sorry, could you go on ahead? I’ll catch up later,” said Corona.

Her eyes never left Pastel’s grave. The expression on her face was hard to describe. Her eyes were filled with emotion as she gazed at the name carved into the tombstone. I guess this was the grave of a former comrade of hers...

“All right. We’ll go ahead.”

“It’ll take a while to make catalysts from the Red Threads anyway,” Harissa added.

Corona only nodded in response, not saying a word.

We left her behind for the time being and headed for the magic research facility. Because the graveyard where Pastel was buried was reserved for the royal family and a select few important people, it wasn’t exactly close to the city. Fortunately, however, the tower of the royal castle was visible even from this distance, so I figured Corona would be able to use that as a landmark to find us later.

“Come to think of it, we were planning on visiting your village while we were here, Harissa.”

Now that we were here in Aburaamu, I recalled the reason Harissa had made this new world-jumping spell of hers in the first place. We’d finally made it to her home world—after a few complications here and there—but now we were rushing to leave just as soon as we could. I felt kind of bad for her.

“Don’t worry. That can wait until another time. Once everything is over, maybe.”

“Sorry.”

We all ran down the road leading to the castle. There seemed to be some people in town who recognized me as the hero, but we were hustling along at such a brisk pace that no one stopped us. We couldn’t afford to waste time chatting with the citizens right now. Of course, however, things didn’t go as smoothly once we reached the research facility.

“Hero!”

“The missing hero has returned!”

“Lady Harissa, too!”

We received a much warmer welcome than expected. Before we knew it, we were surrounded by people clad in robes like what Harissa wore.

“L-Little ole me ain’t anyone worthy uva title like that!”

Embarrassed by the way she was being addressed, Harissa’s country accent slipped out. I could sympathize with her. I was pretty embarrassed myself.

“You really have saved people from everywhere, huh? I guess I knew that already, though,” Tsumiki sighed.

“Lady Harissa! There are no summoners in the country right now. Please lend your powers once more for the good of Aburaamu!”

“U-U-Um... you see... I’m in a hurry right now! The fate of the world is on the line!”

“What! D-Don’t tell me the Overlord is...?!”

“I-It’s something like that! Now please let us through!”

When Harissa raised her voice, her fellow sorcerers parted like receding ocean waves on either side. She asked the crowd where the stock of Red Threads was kept, then led us away.

I guess it was true our Demon King was a lot like the Demon Overlord they knew, and the fate of the world was at stake... It was just Earth, not Aburaamu, and the Demon King was on our side this time.

“That was some quick thinking. You saved us, Harissa.”

“I-It was nothing. This is an emergency, after all.”

Anyway, we made our way to the basement where the Red Threads were stored after that. The storage room down there was a disordered mess, but Harissa was familiar enough with it to locate a wooden box of Red Threads right away. She got to work crafting the catalysts immediately while the rest of us waited for Corona, who showed up eventually. In order to avoid rousing suspicion, she’d hidden her horns and tail and was wearing the clothes Tsumiki had lent her.

“Sorry for the wait.”

“No worries. You okay?”

“Hm? Well, this place was easy enough to find, but I panicked a little when one of the sorcerers said I looked like the portrait in the hall.”

When I’d asked if she was okay, I really meant about Pastel. Seeing her friend’s grave must have been hard and brought some dark feelings like sadness or grief to the surface. But wait a minute... If there was a portrait of the former hero Corona, then did that mean there was one of me, too? Wow, that made this all even more embarrassing than before.

Putting that aside, I decided to ask Corona about something that had gotten me curious.

“Corona, um... what was your relationship with that Pastel person?”

“Hm?”

“I mean, this Pastel lady was the sorcerer that summoned you to this world, right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I was pretty confused when I was first summoned by Harissa, so...”

The first thing I did when I was summoned was ask for Harissa to send me back home. It was a complicated situation with extenuating circumstances, but I honestly thought it was impossible for me to be the hero.

“In the end, I managed to defeat the Overlord and save Harissa, but I was wondering why you accepted your role as a hero... I’ve never really met anyone who went through the same thing I did, so I was curious how it was for you.”

“I see.”

Corona closed one eye and let out a deep sigh. Then she shrugged her shoulders.

“They might both be sorcerers, but Pastel’s personality was completely different from Harissa’s. She threatened to keep me in this world until I defeated the Demon King, so I reluctantly agreed to be the hero.”

“O-Oh...?”

Her answer was so unexpected, I couldn’t even form a proper response.

“She was stubborn, unyielding, a self-proclaimed genius, and a pretty smooth talker, too. I don’t think I ever won a single argument against her... She used to hit me in the head with the end of her staff. Maybe saying she stabbed me would be more accurate. Anyway, it hurt. The people called me a hero, but I was being tyrannized by her.”

The more I learned about her, the more incredible this Pastel person sounded...

“She’d snap at me if I did anything wasteful, make me save every single civilian in need we came across, and force me to drink root soup, do her laundry, wash the dishes, bathe together to save water, stay in the same room to save rent, sleep in the same bed—”

But the more she talked about her, the more it sounded like...

“Honestly, she was an incredible person.”

Corona was recalling fond memories.

“Yeah, she sure sounds like it.”

“Yeah... She hasn’t changed at all since the last time I saw her.”

Huh? That... seemed like an odd thing to be saying about someone whose grave she just visited...

“Well, anyway, she was extraordinarily odd, even for a summoner. After all, she was the one who summoned the Spirit King.”

“Wait, what?! As in the guy we just met in the spirit world?”

“No, his predecessor. Normally, the summoners of Aburaamu can only summon a spirit’s astral body and not the entire spirit. But Pastel could perform a complete summon, material body and all. Even with the Spirit King himself. Well, that might be hard for you to appreciate since you’re not a sorcerer.”

“No, I mean, I don’t understand the details, but that’s incredible, right?”

“That’s what I said. She was extraordinary.” Corona chuckled before continuing. “Granted, the moment the previous Spirit King suddenly appeared before me, we nearly killed each other. It was the middle of the war, after all. But Pastel stopped that, too. With the pointy end of her staff, no less.”

“...”

“The Spirit King and I were made to kneel and promise to get along.”

“I’m surprised the two of you agreed to that.”

They were the leaders of opposing armies. It was hard to imagine that was all it took for them to get along.

“I suppose I would have been surprised as well under any other circumstances... but for some reason, we just accepted it. She was simply that good at getting people to bend to her will.”

“She really was something, huh?”

“That’s right. Pastel hit it off with that blasted stuffy Spirit King before I knew it. Perhaps that was her greatest talent, even more so than her magic.”

Corona then nodded towards Harissa.

“You know how I just said normal summoners can only summon a spirit’s astral body?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“You’ll probably get the gist of what I mean if I just call it a spirit form, but an astral body actually has a very faint shape. That’s why spirits are perceived as higher beings by the summoners in this world.”

“I see...”

I’d seen Lyun the sylpheed and plenty of other spirits in the spirit world. They had humanoid bodies and talked just like normal people. That was why I didn’t register them as “higher beings.” But it would have been a different case for summoners who could only see their astral bodies—their ghost-like, ethereal forms. Ghosts were certainly mystifying and otherworldly to normal people.

“Maybe it was because Pastel could summon their material forms, too, but unlike other summoners, she thought of spirits as beings to work with, rather than beings to put to work. She treated them as equals. She’d even sit down and eat meals together with them.”

“...But didn’t she lecture them and hit them with her staff, too?”

“Only because she treated them as equals. You don’t get mad at your tools, right? Even if you did, you’d know how pointless that was, wouldn’t you?”

“Huh... Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

Just like how you don’t actually expect a frozen computer to fix itself by angrily whacking it a few times.

“They might talk about spirits as higher beings, but most summoners only treat spirits as tools or means to an end. That’s why spirits hate summoners. But the more resistant they grew to the idea of being summoned by such people, the harder summoners focused on their spirit-controlling abilities to try and keep them in line. Yet that only made the spirits hate them more.”

“I see...”

It was a vicious cycle. Hearing that made me understand just how extraordinary Pastel really was. But that wasn’t the only thing I understood now. This whole summoning thing was the reason why Lyun acted so coldly to Harissa in the spirit world. She probably pushed us away like she had because of her hatred for Aburaamu’s sorcerers. Harissa had also looked totally shocked when we first saw the spirits there. She must have been confused by how vastly different they were to her image of them.

“So, that was how I ended up traveling with Pastel and the Spirit King. Well, the Spirit King only accompanied us when Pastel summoned him, but... for some strange reason, I had lost the will to fight with that stuffy king by the time we finished our journey. And the feeling was mutual by then.”

So that was how the war between spirits and demons ended... But if they’d reached an understanding, why was Corona sealed in the Ruler’s Dungeon? I asked her about it.

“There were a couple of reasons, but the biggest was to set an example. My defeat would equal the spirits’ victory. It was the most convenient and efficient way of making it clear to both sides that the demons were defeated and the war was over. My long absence and the Spirit King’s frequent disappearances had caused the war to drag on long enough at that point, so everyone was already worn out. It was a chance to put a decisive end to things.”

“...”

“Without me, the demon army had no resistance against light magic and had to retreat. While some lives were lost as we fell back... the Spirit King stopped pursuing the demons once they reached the other side of the gate. Then he closed it and declared that the war was won. After all, the demons would never be able to open the gate without me, meaning they’d never attack the spirit world again.”

“...”

“All that was left was my execution... But that stuffy king somehow managed to convince his people that I should be sealed in the Ruler’s Dungeon instead. The rest you already know.”

Before I knew it, I was complete engrossed in Corona’s story. Maybe it was just that I didn’t know what to say in response. How had Corona felt about all this? How had the previous Spirit King felt to seal her away like that? Did Pastel know what would happen when she sent them back to their own worlds? I could only imagine what it was like, but it didn’t feel right to speculate about their feelings out loud. That was between the people who’d been involved.

As we were talking, Harissa finished making catalysts for her new spell and excitedly called out to us.

“Sir Rekka, sorry to have kept you waiting! We can now go back to Earth!”

“All right, sounds good.” I looked over at Mio, Lea, and Tsumiki. “You three will stay behind as planned.”

“But...”

Lea seemed a little uncertain as she glanced between Mio and me. Her face seemed to say “I want to go, too.”

“I can understand how you feel, Lea, but we can’t leave Mio here by herself, right?”

“Right, but...”

“I’m counting on you, too, Tsumiki. We didn’t have time to meet the king and use my hero privileges to ask for somewhere to stay, but...”

“Whatever. We’ll work it out somehow. The people here saw us with you earlier, so we’ll find some way to explain it,” Tsumiki answered offhandedly with a look on her face that said she wanted me gone already.

“Well, then, Harissa—”

I was about to say it was time to go, when suddenly...

“W-Wait!”

An unexpected voice called out, halting me in my tracks.

“Mio?”

“Um, I...” Mio hesitated for a moment as everyone in the room turned to look at her. “P-Please take me with you, too!”

“Huh?!” I raised my voice in surprise. “M-Mio? We’re about to go to a really dangerous place right now, you know?”

Originally, we’d planned on hiding Mio in Aburaamu since we still didn’t know who’d pushed her off a roof. Even the Magic of Omniscience hadn’t been able to give us any leads. That potentially meant we were up against someone powerful enough to deceive the great Omniscient Magic, which is why we’d gone as far as trying to hide her in another world. Just to be safe. But now that Mio’s memories had returned, we knew what had happened to her was a result of future events. That was why the Magic of Omniscience hadn’t worked. The Akashic record was the history of the universe, and it didn’t include things that hadn’t yet come to pass. While we still didn’t know who’d pushed Mio, we at least had a better idea of what we were dealing with. I wasn’t as scared knowing we weren’t up against someone who could fool Satsuki’s magic. But even then...

“Yang is extremely wary of Mio’s knowledge of the future. He might have just sealed your memories the first time, but that might not be the case next time, you know?”

“I know, but...” Mio clenched her trembling hands together. “What if my knowledge of the future is useful to everyone?”

“Well, it could be, but...”

“I was really scared when I found out I had amnesia,” Mio whispered. “That’s why having you constantly by my side saying that you’d save me really made me feel safe. I was a little unsure at first, but... you really were my pillar of support.”

Come to think of it, Mio was always clinging to my waist.

“Yesterday when my memory finally returned... I couldn’t remember everything, but I knew that even in the future, it was you who saved me. You’re always saving me... so I want to be as useful as I can to you, Rekka!”

“You don’t need to worry about that. It’s just who I am.”

Nevertheless, I was happy that Mio felt that way. As I was contemplating whether or not I should let her come along...

“I think it’d be better if you took her with you,” R suddenly came up to me and whispered in my ear.

I didn’t want the others to see me converse with a girl they couldn’t see, so I reluctantly excused myself from the group and turned around.

“...What do you mean?”

I tried to reply to R as quietly as possible, but I could still feel everyone staring at me as I stood in the corner. No doubt I looked suspicious. But the girl from the future was unsympathetic to my suffering as ever.

“What do you think Mio’s story is about, Rekka?” she asked.

“What? Isn’t it about who pushed her off the roof?” Finding the perpetrator should solve her story, right? “Isn’t that obvious...?”

“You really think that’s Mio’s story?”

“Yes?”

“Think about it.”

R held her palm open in front of my face.

“Through some kind of method—though that in and of itself is another mystery—Mio returned to the past where you then found her and took her to another world.”

R counted off the events on her fingers as she recounted them in brief.

“And now here we are. Don’t you think Mio has taken fairly different actions compared to her past self—or rather, her previous future self? She’s already met you and canceled her tour. Do you really think she’ll still be pushed off the roof like she was before? I mean, just put the Psychic Hazard aside for a second. That doesn’t really have anything to do with her anyway.”

I almost hated to say it, but R was right. If everything went as Mio remembered, she met me when we were running from the riots and fled to the roof. It was probably the same roof that she was pushed off... But the fact that she ran to the roof of her own will meant it was a coincidence. Did the perpetrator even push Mio with the intention to kill her? And why do it in the middle of the huge disaster known as the “Psychic Hazard”? If Mio was pushed off the roof by accident... would rewinding everything mean that Mio’s different actions up until this point had prevented the past (future?) from repeating itself?

“Besides, the conditions are weird. The Namidare bloodline only gets you caught up in ongoing stories. That means they need, in the present continuous tense, an incident or mystery to be actively occurring to trigger your involvement. Otherwise it’d be possible for heroines that need help 50 years from now to appear, you know?”

“Huh...”

“So regardless of whatever happened to her before, not much has happened this time around. She had her memories sealed by Yang, sure, but that’s not enough for the Namidare bloodline to get you caught up in it,” R declared. “So there must be some other reason you met her there in that empty lot.”

Just when I thought the mysteries of Mio’s story were finally unraveled, I got put right back at square one. But either way, I understood what R was getting at. Mio’s story was still uncertain and nowhere near being solved, so I shouldn’t leave her side.

“All right. Come with us, too, Mio,” I turned back to the others and said.

“Okay!” Mio answered happily.

Her story might be a real doozy, but I was determined make it a happy ending this time! With my newfound resolve, I stepped into the sending circle Harissa had drawn on the floor.

▽

When I opened my eyes, Hibiki and the others stood before me.

“Rekka...?”

“Hey. Long time no see.”

Reuniting after five days, I waved to Hibiki...

“Don’t give me that!”

But I was abruptly cut off by her yelling. It seemed I’d worried her.

“Yeah, um... sorry I’m late.”

We’d gotten waylaid by one unexpected thing after another, but apologizing seemed like the best thing to do right now. The other girls were also glaring at me pretty hard... Looking around at them, I realized there was someone I hadn’t expected to see in the room.

“Huh? What are you doing here, Chelsea?”

“It’s been a while, Rekka. And, well, it’s a long story.”

After I resolved Chelsea’s story last time, she’d departed on an overseas journey to continue her life as a treasure hunter. When did she meet up with Hibiki and the others?

“It seems you’ve also picked up another girl, hmm?” Rosalind said as she looked back and forth between me and Corona with narrowed eyes.

“...”

Suzuran was silent, but the look in her eyes told me she was on her master’s side.

“It’s a bit of a long story, too, but...”

“Yeah, you’re right. We have a lot we need to talk about,” Hibiki said with a furrowed brow.

That was when it hit me. We had returned from Aburaamu, but we’d warped automatically to wherever Hibiki and the other girls were. I didn’t recognize the room, and the furnishings didn’t look very Japanese. Not to mention the place was easily big enough to fit all 11 of us without a problem. Had they gone somewhere, then? Another country, maybe? Did it have something to do with Chelsea joining them? I had plenty to tell them about what had happened in the spirit world, but it seemed like it went both ways.

Everyone found something to sit on, and we started exchanging information.

▽

“Satsuki was kidnapped by Ellicia?!”

I stood up so suddenly when Hibiki told me the news that my chair toppled over behind me.

“I’m sorry... We let our guard down.”

Hibiki lowered her head and apologized so sincerely that I could only be so mad about it.

“No, I’m sorry, too. For yelling like that...”

I picked up the chair I’d knocked over and sat back down.

“But... why did Ellicia kidnap Satsuki?”

“About that... There was a letter from Ellicia in Satsuki’s room. A blackmail letter from the organization she’s a part of. According to the letter, what the organization is really after is something that Ellicia gave you.”

“Ellicia gave me something?”

That could only be one thing. I took the earring out of my pocket.

“What’s that?” Hibiki asked.

“Ellicia slipped it into my pocket when we met.”

“Then that’s probably it. The organization wants to exchange Satsuki for that earring. The deadline written in the letter is nightfall tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, huh?”

Should I be happy we’d made it back in time? Or should I be lamenting how little time we had left?

“Okay, so that’s the time limit, but where’s the exchange taking place?”

“It says ‘the place where you fought for Satsuki.’ The letter also demands that you come alone and bring the earring. Do you know where they mean?”

“Well, I have an idea.”

It was most likely the open field where I fought Messiah. The letter was probably written that way so that even if someone from the Margaret clan read it, they wouldn’t know where the exchange would take place. Who knew what would happen to Satsuki if I didn’t bring them the earring tomorrow night... I didn’t really want to think about it. I just stared at the earring in my hand as my thoughts wandered to Satsuki. I was praying for her safety.

“By the way, what is that? It looks like a normal earring,” Hibiki asked, peering over at it.

“Holding on to this lets me use the same wall walking ability as Ellicia.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how it works, but it lets whoever’s holding it use Ellicia’s power.”

There was just one problem with that.

“This was stolen from Chelsea’s family, which means it’s a magical item, right? So why does it give the ability to use psychic powers?” I asked.

“That’s...”

Chelsea was about to answer my question when...

“Hello, friends! How are we all?”

A girl in a bright red dress suddenly threw open the door, announcing her presence loudly as she walked in. Behind her trailed numerous maids.

“...Wait, what?”

“Oh? I had heard an uninvited guest appeared, but I didn’t expect it to be a familiar face,” the girl said with a grin.

Her face was familiar to me, too.

“What? You know her, Rekka?” Rosalind asked, looking unhappy for some reason.

“Um, she’s the girl I met when Mio collapsed in the empty lot...”

“You’re the boy who gave me a ride on your shoulders,” said the girl. “Thank you for that.”

“What?!”

Rosalind was looking even more unhappy... but I ignored her as I turned to the girl in red.

“So, who are you?”

“Hm? Ohohoho... Now that you mention it, I didn’t introduce myself, did I? I’m Nartessia Margaret, the head of this family.”

The girl named Nartessia sat down on a chair Chelsea brought to her and introduced herself with an arrogant smile on her face. I’d heard from Hibiki that they got in touch with the Margaret clan, but... the head of the family was a child this young? Judging by the attitudes of Chelsea and the maids, it sure seemed like it...

“And what’s your name, boy?”

“I’m Rekka Namidare.”

“Oh? So you’re the Rekka mentioned in the letter?” Nartessia said, narrowing her eyes.

I could only assume she was talking about the blackmail letter from the organization.

“How strange indeed. To think we would actually meet again like this...”

Come to think of it, she’d said something about meeting again when we parted ways in the vacant lot. Well, having met her already made it a little easier to talk to her now, so I guess our encounter was fortunate in that regard.

“Nartessia, is the organization demanding this earring in exchange for Satsuki?”

“That would be correct.”

“...And is there any chance of you listening to their demand?”

“None.”

She answered so flatly... I guess it made sense since the organization was demanding a treasure that belonged to the Margaret clan. To her, there was no reason to give something like that up for Satsuki. But I wasn’t about to give up that easily. I racked my brain for another way to negotiate this.

“Wait, Nartessia, I’d like to confirm one thing,” Hibiki said with a discerning look.

“Hm? And what is that?”

“From what we heard already, this earring—this Margaret clan treasure—has the power to destroy every major city on the planet and throw the world into chaos. But Rekka says all the earring does is give him the power to walk through walls. What’s the meaning of this?”

“It’s nothing that concerns you.”

“Yes, it is. We agreed to cooperate with you after hearing the world was in danger. Now explain why you lied.”

“Hmph, fine. I’ll oblige, though it’s a bother...”

Nartessia shrugged her shoulders and winked cheekily. Her target, Hibiki, crossed her arms in an unimpressed manner.

“The Scarlet Doppel Stone in that earring has the ability to remember powers.”

“Remember powers?”

“It’s exactly as I said. The earring can recall either magical or psychic abilities and replicate them. That’s exactly what Rekka experienced.”

Aha, so the reason why I was able to walk through walls was because the earring remembered Ellicia’s psychic powers!

“Right now it’s been overwritten with that wall walking power, but originally it held the Margaret clan’s heirloom magic, the Fire Dragon’s Breath, which is wide-area annihilation magic.”

“So when you said it could destroy the world, you meant the Fire Dragon’s Breath?”

“That’s right. So, really, I didn’t lie. The earring held the power of the Fire Dragon’s Breath when it was stolen. I had every reason to believe that the fate of the world was at stake.”

What Nartessia was saying seemed to make sense. There was no way for her to know that the Fire Dragon’s Breath was overwritten with something less destructive, so it was only natural for her to take action based on the worst-case scenario. But... the “Psychic Hazard” Yang had caused in Mio’s future didn’t sound like that kind of direct destruction, either. Which meant...

“Do you understand now? If so, kindly hand it over already, would you?”

“That’s...”

If I returned the earring, Satsuki would...!

“That scary-sounding Fire Dragon’s Breath thing isn’t on this earring anymore, right? That means it should be safe to hand it over to the organization as it is, so...”

“So you want to trade it for the return of your friend? Not happening. It’s out of the question. This is hardly a negotiation, Rekka,” Nartessia tutted with a smirk. “Negotiation 101: first and foremost, hide your own weaknesses, and then after that, explore mutually beneficial options with the other party. You’ve done neither of those things.”

She paused for a moment and then looked me dead in the eye.

“But there is something you’re trying to hide, isn’t there?”

“H-Hide?”

“That Satsuki person was kidnapped by Ellicia herself, no? The same girl who stored that wall walking ability in the earring. In other words, the organization already knows that it no longer contains the Fire Dragon’s Breath. So why do they want the earring?”

“That’s...”

“That means they want the earring itself and not the power stored in it. In other words, their goal lies somewhere else.”

Crap, she was onto me...

The truth was that I already knew Yang’s objective. He was going to cause the Psychic Hazard, and he probably needed the earring to do it. He’d probably get away with it too if I handed over the earring. But if I didn’t, Satsuki would be in danger.

“...”

The only possibility now would be to meet the organization and negotiate for Satsuki’s return, then try and protect the earring... Yang and his telepathy would see right through me if I didn’t actually bring it with me. But it was too dangerous to take the earring anywhere near Yang. Nartessia wasn’t wrong for thinking that it was best to keep it away from them at all costs, but still...

“If they have another objective, the organization isn’t going to relent.”

As I struggled to find the right words, Hibiki spoke up.

“So regardless of whether we meet them for the exchange, they’ll come for the earring eventually.”

“That might be true,” Nartessia admitted.

“If Rekka pretends to accept the organization’s exchange, we can then go back him up for the fight.”

“Oh? So you’re willing to fight for a chance to get your friend back? From the sounds of it, you’re saying that if I reject your plan here and now, our alliance is over.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, you’re better at this than Rekka is, at least.” Nartessia twirled the end of her hair around her finger and nodded in interest. “But your proposal is still weak. There are big flaws. The opponent is a psychic that can read minds, you know? How are you going to pretend to accept the exchange?”

“A comrade of ours will be arriving soon with an item that should help. As long as we have that, we should be able to resist Yang’s telepathy.”

“Oh? How convenient. Just what kind of comrade do you have that can get their hands on such a thing?”

“An alien.”

“Ha!” Nartessia laughed like it was the best joke she’d ever heard.

“Just so you know, she’s not lying,” I said to back Hibiki up.

But even then, Nartessia clutched her stomach and laughed for a good long while. When she finally collected herself, she looked back up at the two of us.

“Either way, it’s not happening. The Margaret family has more than enough power to annihilate the organization outright. The only reason why I sought you out was for the girl with the ability to locate Yang’s whereabouts... Satsuki, was it? All of you were just extras.”

“You...!” Rosalind was seething after being talked to like that. “So the reason why you made us waste day after day just sitting around in this mansion was...”

“Because you weren’t needed. A Margaret family pursuit team was dispatched the moment that girl revealed Yang’s location.” Nartessia grinned at Rosalind provokingly. “Granted, Yang managed to shake them off. Just as we were about to ask the girl to find his location again, she was kidnapped. We were in quite a predicament... until the earring returned, that is. Now there’s no reason for us to make a move. If we wait, the organization’s remnants will launch an attack on their own. All we have to do then is exterminate them. Of course, we can that do without you.”

“This little girl...!”

“Wait, Rosalind... Huh?” As I reached out to hold Rosalind back from exploding, something struck me about what Nartessia had said. “Wait a minute. What do you mean by the organization’s ‘remnants’?”

Nartessia paused at my question.

“Oh, you don’t know, Rekka? I’m pretty sure I informed Hibiki over there.”

“I haven’t heard a thing.” Hibiki denied her statement with narrowed eyes.

Nartessia continued to smile wryly under her glare, then said, “We destroyed the organization’s headquarters some time ago. I believe it was on the afternoon of the 20th? It was the day I met you in that empty lot, Rekka.”

The organization’s headquarters had already been destroyed?!

“Mistress Nartessia! You haven’t said a word about this to me!”

“Hmm? And what would you have done if I’d told you, Chelsea? Wouldn’t you have gone to Hibiki? There’s a reason I didn’t tell you, you know.”

Nartessia quieted Chelsea’s protests with a sharp glare, but her words proved to me that she never had any intention of telling us in the first place. And the fact that she had considered everyone other than Satsuki to be extras... She was only showing her hand now that Satsuki was out of the picture.

“You specifically said you wanted Satsuki to discover Yang’s location,” Hibiki said. “Even though you knew you were up against the organization, that’s why you never asked where their base was, isn’t it?”

“There’s no need to ask about something that’s already been obliterated, is there?”

“Yeah, that’s true. And thanks to that, I’ve figured out why Ellicia kidnapped Satsuki.”

Hibiki then explained her theory with a grave look on her face. According to her, Ellicia was on the run from the organization, but she had no desire to make enemies with them. Ellicia’s goal was most likely Yang—or really, to stop the Psychic Hazard. She didn’t hold any feelings of contempt towards the organization itself. Which meant...

“With the organization gone, Ellicia has lost everyone and everything that meant anything to her. Can you imagine that despair? She’s probably gone off the deep end. Overwhelmed by her anger and grief, she... ” Hibiki trailed off, biting her lip in frustration.

Ellicia probably heard about what happened to the organization after Yang took her back. Maybe Hibiki was regretting letting her get taken...

“...”

I knew I was. Ellicia had been trying to stop the Psychic Hazard until the organization was decimated, but now she was working with Yang to try and make it happen. In other words... Ellicia’s story was...

“Are we done with the questions now? Kindly hand over the earring, then.”

Nartessia extended her hand. Everyone’s gaze fell on me.

Should I give her the earring and watch her take on the organization’s remnants from the sidelines?

“...”

Or should I head to the exchange point and risk endangering the world in order to rescue Satsuki and save Ellicia from her despair?

Even if all that was left of the organization were the so-called remnants, it wasn’t going to be easy to get Satsuki back. On top of that, refusing Nartessia here would make enemies out of the Margaret clan. And if we ended up losing to the organization, the Psychic Hazard would spread chaos across the world. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to save Ellicia’s story.

But... But even so....

There is no progress without struggle. And without progress, there’s no way I’d be able to make it to the people who needed to be saved. Was I just going to sit there and watch quietly as Nartessia wiped out Ellicia and the others? What a joke.

“Sorry, everyone.”

I apologized in advance for involving everyone in my own selfishness.

“...Don’t worry about it.” Hibiki picked up on my intentions and let out a big sigh.

I glanced around and saw the other girls with similar expressions. Only Corona and Mio seemed somewhat uncertain. It seemed they’d picked up on the negotiation fallout and knew something was about to go down.

“Hmm? What’s the matter?” Nartessia asked after witnessing out exchange.

She still had the same grin on her face, too. The look in her eyes made me worry she’d seen right through me, but... there was no backing down now!

“Rosalind!”

“I should’ve done this from the start!”

With an ominous reply, Rosalind’s eyes flashed red. About half of the maids that had started bracing themselves after things had gotten tense were immediately charmed by Rosalind. They then moved to restrain the other half that weren’t charmed. The charm couldn’t handle all of them after all...!

“Heehee...”

Of course, Nartessia herself was unaffected by the charm, as well. She merely sat where she was, looking at me calmly. Just what was she thinking? No, now wasn’t the time to be distracted!

“Lea! Take care of Tsumiki and Mio!”

“Leave them to me!”

Lea picked up the petite Mio, and Tsumiki ran over to them in a hurry.

“The window!” Hibiki yelled as she tossed something cylindrical into the center of the room.

A large volume of smoke started pouring out of whatever it was, impairing the vision of Nartessia and the maids. A smoke screen? Count on Hibiki to be prepared! It was serious enough to even fill one of the oversized rooms of the Margaret estate.

While they were distracted, we made a break for the window. With their vision obscured, it looked like we might just get away... But as I was thinking that, a gust of wind suddenly blasted through the room and blew the smoke outside.

“Go on, get going already.”

Nartessia ordered the maids to come after us. It must have been her magic that cleared out the smoke. But lucky for us, the gust had also blown open the window. That was one less thing we had to worry about, at least.

“Wait!”

A maid yelled after us and then started to chant a spell. And she wasn’t the only one. The other maids followed suit. Before I knew it, bolts of fire, water, lightning, and wind were all flying at us!

“Wha?!”

Any one of those would knock me out instantly!

“Rekka!”

“Young man!”

Lea’s water magic and Corona’s dark magic scattered the spells closing in on me. What we lacked in numbers, we certainly made up for in power thanks to the two of them. They blasted away most of the elemental torrents all at once, but one still managed to slip through.

“Hah!” Harissa shouted as she cast a barrier to protect me.

“Thanks!”

“It was nothing!”

And with that short exchange, we resumed running.

“Pardon me.”

Suzuran apologized as she threw a silver knife. It pierced the leg of an approaching maid. She tumbled to the floor, and several maids behind her tripped over her.

“Take this!”

Iris grabbed a large grandfather clock standing against the wall and threw it in front of the maids. Instead of hitting anyone, she was trying to block their way. Then Hibiki threw another smoke screen. We knew Nartessia could clear it out in a second, but a second was all we needed. The window was right in front of us. All we had to do was jump.

“Lea! Please!”

I glanced back at Lea, who was running while protecting Mio and Tsumiki.

“Tsumiki, take Mio,” she said.

“Got it!”

Leaving Mio with Tsumiki, Lea stepped out onto the balcony.

“...Are there too many of us?” I asked, a little worried.

On top of the five of us who returned from the other world, we now had Iris, Hibiki, Rosalind, and Suzuran in tow. I didn’t know if Lea could handle carrying nine people all at once.

“I can fly by myself,” said Corona.

“It’ll work out. Give me a moment.”

With that hopeful answer, Lea began transforming.

“Speaking of which, where’s Chelsea?” I asked Hibiki.

“Her position in the Margaret family is somewhat complicated... She won’t be able to come with us.”

“I see.”

I hadn’t spoken with Nartessia for long, but I could tell she was going to be difficult to handle. Her intentions were hard to read, too... She gave a somewhat cold impression. There was probably no double-crossing a leader like that.

“All right! Get on, everyone!” Lea called to us telepathically.

“Let’s go!”

Everyone quickly climbed up on Lea’s back once she was fully transformed. Mio was so short that Iris had to help her up.

“Hang on tight!”

Leviathan’s large snakelike body rose into the sky without a sound. As soon as we took off, one of the maids burst through the smoke.

“Damn you!”

She started to cast a spell, but the instant the words left her mouth, she rapidly began to shrink. Her head and limbs became tangled in her uniform, and I could hear a squeaky screaming from underneath it all.

Wait, that’s right! Chelsea’s magic was being able to make people smaller! Even though she was in such a complicated position, and even though we’d had the smoke screen to defend us, she was still trying to help... I thanked her silently in my head as we flew off.

“All right...!” I started to say.

“It’s still too early to relax! They’re following us!” Lea warned me.

“Seriously?!”

I glanced back in a hurry to see maids holding their skirts as they jumped through the window. Was it normal for magical families to have flying maids?! To make matters worse, other Margaret family mages had come when they’d heard the fuss. They were coming after us too now. Just when I was thinking there was no way we’d be able to shake them all off, a light suddenly shone down on us from overhead.

“Huh?”

The next moment, we were rising into the sky as if the light was sucking us in.

“Wh-What is this?” Lea gasped, unable to hide her surprise.

She’d returned to her human form. The light was lifting us up and away, and had pulled us right off her back. That meant whatever this was... it was strong enough to make ten people float.

The maids and mages of the Margaret family were dumbfounded as they watched us rapidly rise into the sky. They were probably wondering what the light was. Honestly, I was, too. But I had a faint idea...

I looked over at Iris as we were being sucked up into the sky.

“Hey, Iris, was this your doing?”

“Nope, wasn’t me,” she said with a shake of her head.

“I see,” I said.

“How can you two be so casual? What’s going on here?” Lea asked with a worried expression.

“Oh, yeah, Lea hasn’t experienced this before. Don’t worry, we’re just being abducted by aliens.”

A silence fell upon the Strongest Beast for a few seconds.

“...Huh?”

▽

Surprisingly—or perhaps unsurprisingly—we were abducted and beamed up into a spaceship. Any possible quips about how we were able to breathe air in space could likely be countered with two simple words: “alien technology.” But as for the identity of our alien saviors...

“I was delayed a bit, but it looks like I arrived at a good time.”

“You were right on time. Thank you, Shirley.”

“You’re welcome,” Shirley replied, pushing her glasses up and smiling.

“It seems you went through a lot while we were on Berano,” Rain said.

“Were you guys all right without me?” added Fam at the same time.

“I was worried, too,” said Tetra.

Tetra was the one who’d pinpointed our location after they returned from Berano, and all three of them looked relieved to see us alive and well. The android Garnet was passing drinks around to everyone who was exhausted after the escape.

“Speaking of which, you guys sure took your time. Did something happen?” Iris asked between sips of the juice she’d gotten from Garnet.

Shirley and the others had gone to planet Estashion, which was researching psychic powers, in hopes of retrieving something that might be useful in confronting the psychics.

“Nothing in particular, but... Well, you know how I’m a wanted criminal on Estashion? We couldn’t get what we needed off the planet without a little favor from Squallow and the former Seageists. As for everything else, we had to rely on Rain’s mother’s influence and connections.”

The now-disbanded Seageists were a group of space pirates that Fam used to belong to. If the girls had to go to them, it probably meant they were doing something that wasn’t exactly aboveboard.

“So, how did it go?” I asked, cutting to the chase.

“Perfectly,” Shirley said.

She then turned and pressed a few buttons on the ship’s console. When she did, a section of the wall in the room opened up to reveal a line of what kinda looked like bulletproof vests.

“Is this it?” I asked.

“That’s right,” Shirley replied.

“They look like clothes... and they don’t seem to cover the head, huh?”

“Not what you imagined?”

“Well, the other side has the ability to read minds, so I guess I just figured we’d need something like a helmet, you know?”

When I said that, Shirley giggled.

“Understandable. That’s how the stereotype goes, after all.” Shirley approached the psychic-resistant vests and placed her hand on one of them. “Telepathy can be used to read memories and thoughts, but not by intercepting the electric signals in the brain. It reads information from the spirit, or rather the heart.”

“Hmm... Oh, I see.”

If the information was being read from the heart and not the head, then it did kind of make sense that psychic armor would be more like clothes.

“Well, don’t sweat the details. It’s just a countermeasure for the enemy’s mind-reading abilities.”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Wearing this jacket will prevent telepaths from being able to read your heart. It’s thin, so you can wear it under your normal clothes and no one will notice.”

“So, if I wore this to the exchange point...”

“Exchange point? What are you talking about?”

Come to think of it, we hadn’t told Shirley’s group yet. I gave them a quick rundown concerning what had happened with the organization, mostly that they’d kidnapped Satsuki and what they wanted in return. What was going on with the spirit and demon worlds would have to wait for later.

“I see. So that’s the situation...” Shirley said pensively.

“Yeah. So can this jacket block other types of psychic powers?” Hibiki asked.

“The jacket can also prevent spontaneous human combustion and mind control, but it has its limits against specific psychic powers. Powers like teleportation and telescopic vision would require something much more serious, I’m afraid,” Shirley said rather regretfully.

But even then, just having our minds shielded would make a big difference.

“All that’s left is... I guess we start with saving Satsuki first,” I said.

Yang had probably read both Satsuki and Hibiki’s memories, so he most likely knew about each of us and what we were capable of. That meant that even if we wore the jackets to prevent him from reading our minds, he’d already be prepared for us to try and sneak our group in using Harissa’s invisibility magic. It would never work now. Was it even a good idea to walk straight into the exchange in the first place...?

Hang on...

“What if that was actually something we could use to our advantage?” I muttered.

Everyone’s eyes fell on me. I looked back at them one by one.

Yeah... She was probably the only one who could take Yang by surprise. Which meant if we did this, and then that and that...

I started to explain the plan I came up with to the girls.

▽

After putting our heads together for a bit, we all realized that none of us had slept properly since fleeing from the spirit world to the demon world and then returning to Earth. We decided to rest until the evening of the 26th, the day Yang had declared for the exchange.

“Aaah! That was refreshing.”

Sitting up in bed, I had a good stretch and then checked the hands of the clock. I must have slept a good eight hours or so. My head felt nice and clear now. It was the best sleep I’d had in ages. Thinking back on it, the beds at the spirit inn were a little firm. Compared to those, the beds on Shirley’s spaceship were soft and supportive. It was like being hugged by a cloud while you slept. Was this some kind of space-age technology. too? Maybe I could order one like it from Shirley when I wore out my bed at home. I didn’t have any alien currency, though, so I’d have to come up with another way to pay her... That’s what I was pondering as I passed through the silent sliding door into the hall.

“...What are you all up to?”

“N-Nothing,” everyone answered in unison.

What were they all gathered outside my room for if they weren’t doing anything? It looked like they were all glaring and grabbing at each other. A few of them were even on the floor. There wasn’t any evidence of a particularly violent battle or anything, but it felt safe to deem the hallway a war zone. It was weird. Very weird. I quickly made my exit. I’d already asked Shirley where the bathroom was, so I headed there to wash my face.

“Maybe they all bumped into each other when they came to either wake you up or stare at your sleeping face?”

“Why would anyone wanna see my sleeping face?”

Deflecting R’s typically irrelevant remarks, I made my way down the hall. She spent the whole time I was washing my face just floating behind me and sighing hopelessly.

After that, I ate breakfast(?) with everyone—Rosalind and Iris were still glaring at each other—and returned to my room to do some stretches and prepare myself mentally. Yang hadn’t specified an exact time for the exchange, but if this deal didn’t work out, then the organization’s survivors would charge headlong into the Margaret estate. We had until the end of the day, so they’d wait until just before midnight before making their move. But I didn’t intend on keeping them waiting that long.

“Time to get going...”

I stood up and left my room. When I entered the spacious common area of Shirley’s ship, everyone else had already gathered there. It seemed like I was the last one to arrive.

“You’re late. Did you fall back asleep?” Hibiki joked.

“I did not!” I retorted before changing the subject to the matter at hand. “The fight with Yang this time will be about who can read the other better.”

Yang knew all about us from reading Satsuki’s memories. But I knew what he knew about us. That meant this would be a matter of how well I could predict his countermeasures and continuously adjust our plans to counter his in turn—that would be the key to this battle.

“Our objective is to get Satsuki back,” I declared.

The worst-case scenario would be if they somehow managed to keep me from doing that. If that happened, we’d be cornered into deciding whether or not to hand over the earring.

“So, let’s go launch this surprise attack.”

“Yes!”

Harissa was the one who answered me with enthusiasm. She pointed the tip of her staff to the floor of the spaceship where a sending circle was drawn and started chanting.

“Eclena Cashu!”

The next instant, a white light filled my vision.

▽

Harissa’s new spell had transported me somewhere totally unfamiliar. It seemed to be the inside of a coal mine. The ceiling, walls, and floor were all made of dirt, and the air smelled of damp earth. Bare lightbulbs strung up here and there illuminated the place well enough that I could see without an issue. Their orangey light shone down on about ten or so people, most of whom I didn’t know. The ones I did recognize were Ellicia, Yang, and...

“Satsuki!”

“Rekka!”

Satsuki called out to me when she saw me. Her hands were restrained behind her back by one of Yang’s female followers. We’d used her personal belongings and Harissa’s new spell to launch a surprise attack on Yang without having to go to the exchange point. While Yang knew about Harissa’s magic thanks to his telepathy, he had no way of knowing when we might show up. And that let us get the drop on him.

“Rosalind! Garnet!”

They didn’t even need to respond. Without a sound, the two of them ran in to retrieve Satsuki.

“Don’t move. Or I’ll kill the hostage,” Yang ordered in his intimidating voice.

“Just try laying a hand on Satsuki. We’ll immediately return to the spaceship and throw the earring into outer space,” I threatened him right back.

“...!”

A wrinkle appeared on Yang’s brow for an instant. He’d probably realized that he couldn’t read our minds. That meant he couldn’t tell whether I was serious or not, but as far as he knew, it was a totally valid threat. He knew I had the means to do it.

And if he hurt Satsuki and I really did get rid of the earring, he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plans anymore. On top of that, the Margaret clan had already destroyed the organization’s headquarters, so he would have practically no recourse now. They’d been driven up against a wall, leaving them practically no choice but to resort to the Psychic Hazard.

That was why even a veteran soldier like Yang would hesitate—he feared losing his last way of getting revenge on the world. So much so that one bluffing kid could scare him.

But in the end, a bluff was a bluff. It wouldn’t last long. He would eventually see through me even without using his telepathy. The purpose of this surprise attack was to prevent that from happening.

Rosalind and Garnet quickly closed in on the psychics, but the shock of our sudden ambush didn’t last forever. Their opponents stood ready to take on the rapidly approaching pair.

“Out of my way!”

Rosalind let her fists fly at speeds faster than any normal human could keep up with. But the man she was facing didn’t give up. He methodically countered her attacks with a knife. I honestly never thought he’d hit her, but...

“Gnuh!”

The trajectory of his knife suddenly twisted like a snake, winding upward and scratching Rosalind on the cheek.

“That’s probably a type of extrasensory perception! He probably sees the world in slow motion, where one second lasts for ten!” Shirley yelled to Rosalind.

We’d investigated the organization’s psychics to try and make up for the fact that Yang already knew our hand, and Shirley’s knowledge on his team compensated for that disadvantage nicely. But even then, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Garnet had also been intercepted by a psychokinetic.

“Ellicia!”

At Yang’s order, Ellicia and several other psychics closed in on me. It seemed they were intent on capturing all of us now. Yang had a good handle on us and our stories based on what he’d gathered from Satsuki. So if he captured us all here, there would be no one left to get in his way or eject the earring into space—that’s probably what he was thinking.

“Iris! Lea! Hibiki! Suzuran! Please!”

The four of them moved to intercept Ellicia and the other psychics, but they could only go so far. Behind me were Tsumiki and the other girls who couldn’t fight. If their line of defense fell, I would have to step in as their shield. We’d planned for that possibility, of course, but ideally Rosalind and Garnet would retrieve Satsuki before they had to face that danger. And then...

“Aargh! How annoying!”

Infuriated, Rosalind transformed into a mass of countless bats.

“What?!”

Even the psychic she was fighting yelled out, surprised at this turn of events. He slashed at the swarm of bats in a panic while Rosalind returned to her human form some distance away. No matter how slow the world seemed to him as he dodged her fists, there was no way he could keep up with Rosalind’s instantaneous speeds. She left him behind in a flash. With Ellicia and the other psychics coming after me now, the only obstacles left for Rosalind were Yang and the woman restraining Satsuki.

“You’re mine!” Rosalind cried as she ran in.

“Not a chance!” Yang yelled back.

Yang darted over and intercepted Rosalind’s fist as she tried to push away the woman holding on to Satsuki. Good grief, even with his psychic powers made moot, his eyesight and reaction time were crazy!

“Lucy!” Yang yelled to the woman.

I’d heard that name before... Hibiki had said she was Yang’s comrade that could use teleportation.

“Got it!” she called back to him.

“Re...!” Satsuki cried.

But in the blink of an eye, Lucy activated her powers and vanished, taking Satsuki with her.

This was probably the reason why they’d chosen to hide in a place like this. Regardless of when we arrived, Yang knew about Harissa’s new spell. That meant there was no way he hadn’t considered the possibility of a surprise attack. And here in a coal mine, there were plenty of shafts, tunnels, and chambers. Someone who could teleport would be able to move about freely, and it would be nearly impossible for normal humans to chase after them. Thankfully, however...

“Harissa! Use your spell to follow Satsuki one more time!”

“Y-Yes, Sir Rekka!”

We could use Harissa’s new magic to track Satsuki as long as we needed to now. Of course, Yang knew that, too.

“Don’t let them!” he yelled in his loudest voice yet as he deftly slipped through Rosalind’s attacks.

That’s right. Harissa’s new spell, her connection magic, was going to be our trump card in this fight. We’d only been able to launch such a daring surprise attack because she’d been able to get us in here in the first place.

Normally when a hostage was taken, there was no way to confirm whether or not they were safe. Crime dramas often showed kidnappers getting the abductee to talk over the phone, but that could easily be faked with a recording. And the biggest problem with someone getting taken hostage was that you had to listen to the kidnapper’s demands in order to get them back. If this were a normal kidnapping, then we could have just called the police and let them handle it, but no. Our opponents were a group of psychics. The cops didn’t stand a chance against people who could do things like teleport.

But we had Harissa’s connection magic, which negated the upper hand the psychics had after taking a hostage. They’d never be able to hide Satsuki if we could always warp to where she was. That would be the make-or-break factor for us in all this.

“Oh! The ground is too firm...!”

Harissa was trying to draw another sending circle on the floor of the coal mine with the end of her staff, but the earth was too dry and hard for her to do it properly. In that moment of panic, someone broke through Iris and the other girls’ line of defense.

It was Ellicia. I called out to her, but she completely ignored me with a stern expression on her face. The girl who gave me the earring to prevent the Psychic Hazard in the first place was now trying to steal it back and cause it.

“Tch...!”

Conflicting emotions were surging in my chest, but I had to put all that aside to face Ellicia. She had the power to pass through walls. I wasn’t sure how it would be useful in a fight, but...

“Move!” Ellicia said darkly and reached out for me.

Was she going to throw me? Or put me in joint lock? A number of scenarios flashed through my head, but none of them were correct.

“What?!”

The instant Ellicia grabbed my wrist, my line of sight dropped by several feet. Looking around, I saw my lower body buried in the ground... Wait, what?!

“There’s another room below. In other words, this isn’t the ground—it’s a ceiling.”

Was that why she could use her wall walking power to make only my lower body pass through it? No, hang on... While it was true that this could be a ceiling depending on how you looked at it, it was still definitely the ground... Did that mean this wall walking power relied on the perception of the person using it? As long as Ellicia saw it as a wall or ceiling, she could pass through it? Come to think of it, Satsuki had once said that psychic powers weren’t techniques like magic, but rather talents with versatile functions. So this was just another one of those functions...

“Wah! Waaah!”

With me taken care of, Ellicia continued on to Harissa and snatched her staff away.

“Giv’it back!”

Harissa tried to grab the staff back, but she was easily evaded. Even with Tsumiki, Tetra, Rain, and Mio helping, the result was the same. Fam was faster on her feet, but Ellicia instantly buried her like she had with me. Then she took Harissa’s staff and stuck it into the ground, too—or should I say ceiling? She thrust it so far down that not even the tip of it was visible anymore. And without her staff, Harissa couldn’t use her connection magic.

“It’s over. So you’d better not make any rash movements,” Yang declared.

“As if! It’s not over yet...!” Iris snorted.

“Hey.”

Ignoring Iris, who was still raring to go, Yang approached my half-buried self. Several of the girls moved to stop him, but I raised a hand to tell them to stand down.

“You should understand,” Yang said. “You can no longer confirm the safety or location of the hostage with the powers at your disposal. Now you have no choice but to go through with the exchange if you want your friend back.”

“You sure look proud of yourself, but I’m pretty sure you panicked for a moment there,” I replied.

“Whether or not it would go as planned was a gamble. You were our opponent, after all, a truly exceptional human capable of more than any psychic or mage.”

I’d never had one of my enemies speak so highly of me...

“That’s because he knows everything you’ve accomplished, remember? There’s no way he’s underestimating you as just some normal teenage boy,” said R.

She was right. Yang didn’t lower his guard for a moment as he glared down at me with his sharp gaze. Even with everything going his way, he wasn’t about to take that for granted.

“That spaceship can’t come this far. And in a space this narrow, you can’t use your laser gun, and the monster woman can’t transform. The mermaid’s weather control is meaningless here, too. The vampire and mages are a bother, but... we won’t be defeated in hand-to-hand combat,” Yang muttered as though he was reconfirming that he’d crushed every single one of our options. “Do you have anything else?”

“Dunno. What do you think?”

“I can’t believe there really exists a way to shield yourself against telepathy... I can’t read your thoughts at all. Alien science... What utter nonsense,” Yang spat, clearly annoyed.

For a moment, his calm gaze wavered.

“If only Earth’s science had progressed that far...” he muttered to himself, sounding regretful about something.

“...?”

But before I could figure out what that something was, the hesitation in his eyes disappeared.

“Now hand over the earring already. You brought it, didn’t you? Or did you hide it somewhere?”

“Maybe it’s still with the Margaret clan?” I bluffed.

Yang scoffed in response.

“Hmph. If that were the case, you wouldn’t have launched a surprise attack on your own. You would have teamed up with the Margaret clan instead.”

That was fair. Yang seemed rather irritated at my evasive answer and kicked dust up at my face.

“Just spill it already. I don’t know how you’re blocking my telepathy, but if you’re using an item, then we’ll just strip you. If that doesn’t work, then torture.”

“No one wants to see a naked man, much less a naked Rekka. Blech,” R said, sticking her tongue out.

Wasn’t it enough to say “No one wants to see a naked man”?! Why did she have to call me out personally?!

“If you don’t want to be tortured, then stop wasting my time and—wait...”

Crap! He’d realized that I was just doing what I could to buy time!

“Tch!”

Yang moved swiftly once he caught on. With a murderous look in his eyes, he reached for my throat. I could hear the girls screaming. And just as Yang was about to snap my neck...

“What are you doing with that young man?”

I finally heard the voice I’d been waiting for, and Yang went flying off to the side.

“Gwah!”

He spit up blood as he rolled along the floor. This time, the psychics were the ones screaming.

“Tch! Rekka, if you do anything rash, these girls will...!”

Ellicia suddenly pointed a knife at Mio, but—

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“?!”

She too was blown back by an invisible kick. It was softer than the one that’d hit Yang, but it was still merciless.

“Guh... What was that?!”

With a hand on his stomach, Yang staggered to his feet. Sensing their leader was in danger, the psychics gathered around Yang to protect him. One of them came to lend Ellicia a shoulder, and then the two of them joined up with the rest of their group. The battle was temporarily halted, so Iris and Rosalind returned to our side, as well. They helped pull out the others who’d been half-buried in the floor, and Lea gave me a hand, too.

“Harissa, that’s enough,” I said.

“All right.”

Harissa waved her dirt-covered staff, dispelling the invisibility magic she’d cast beforehand. Corona then seemed to appear out of thin air.

“Wh-What...” Yang stammered in surprise.

That much was to be expected. He had no idea who Corona was. Yang had relied on reading Satsuki’s memories to find out everything about us and our team, but Satsuki—who had yet to meet Corona—knew nothing about her.

“I even brought the non-fighters on our team like Tsumiki and Mio to give the impression that we were all here,” I explained.

Yang obviously knew about Harissa’s invisibility magic, so if we’d left the non-combatants on the spaceship, he would have been suspicious and kept his guard up for anyone that might be invisible. We had to bring everyone in order for him to overlook that possibility. It was dangerous to get the normal girls to tag along with us, but they’d all agreed to it when they heard my plan. It was their bravery that had made this a success.

“It was checkmate the moment you assumed that I didn’t have any invisible allies.”

“What are you saying? I still have the hostage.”

“Corona, could you go get Satsuki?” I asked.

“Gotcha.”

Yang’s face sunk in shock. Corona vanished from where she stood and returned a few seconds later... with a safe Satsuki and an unconscious Lucy.

“How did you track Lucy’s teleportation?”

Only Harissa could follow her with her connection magic. At least at first.

“By overwriting the connection magic onto the earring and giving it to Corona, plain and simple.”

Honestly, it actually wasn’t plain or simple at all. We hadn’t learned how to overwrite the magic in it from Nartessia, so figuring that out took quite a bit of trial and error.

“...”

Yang bit his lip as his expression twisted up. Surely he hadn’t forgotten what the earring could do. But connection magic required a catalyst, an intermediary item, and most importantly, a sending circle.

It would have immediately been obvious what was going on if someone other than Harissa started drawing on the floor. If anything, it would be like advertising the location of the earring... as long as the user was visible, anyway.

But Yang had unconsciously disregarded the possibility of someone else using connection magic when he assumed that he could see all of my allies.

“Rekka... Thank you,” Satsuki whispered in my ear. She kept her voice low, almost as though she could tell that this wasn’t over yet.

“...”

And her intuition was right.

We had accomplished our main objectives for this battle, which were retrieving her and protecting the earring. But this wasn’t the end of the story.

“Ellicia... and Yang.”

I got the girls to stay back, and then I approached the psychics. Several of them stood ready to take me on, but Yang raised his hand as a signal for them to stand down.

“Will you stop the Psychic Hazard?” I asked.

Yang’s face twitched.

“If possible, could you tell me why you wanted to do such a thing?”

“Why would you want to know that?”

“Yang, you know about my bloodline, right? Then you should know why. As long they haven’t met the worst possible endings yet, I want to bring everyone’s stories to a happy resolution.”

I shifted my gaze from Yang to Ellicia.

“And I’m caught up in Ellicia’s story right now. As long as my blood still screams that she can be saved, I’ll go out on a limb for even the slightest chance. I’ll do everything I can to save her. No, that’s not quite it...”

I looked back at Yang.

“No matter what my blood tells me, I’d offer a hand to anyone who needs saving.”

“...”

Yang and I made direct eye contact with each other.

“It’s impossible for you to save us.”

“Don’t decide that before you even let me try.”

I wasn’t about to let him give up so easily.

“Then let’s test you.” Yang stood up and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth. “Stop blocking my telepathy. I’ll connect my comrades’ minds to mine, then I’ll show you all their memories. Experience for yourself the path we psychics have been forced to walk.”

Was connecting minds the same thing as Lea’s telepathy that let us share our thoughts with each other? So, he was going to gather everyone’s memories into his mind and then project them into mine... Okay, I got it.

“All right.”

I pulled my arms into the sleeves of my jacket, then took off the mind-shielding vest like it was just a sweaty undershirt.

“...You were serious?”

For some reason, Yang seemed surprised.

“Did you doubt me?”

“How many times do you think I’ve seen the truth behind human hearts? Words hold no value. But you...”

Could he be looking into my heart already? Yeah, that had to be it. Well, it worked out for me if he could tell that I was serious now.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. “I’m going to test you after all.”

“Hey, hey, now...”

What? Did that mean he was lying when he said he was going to test me just a minute ago? Was he just planning on taking me hostage when I took off whatever I was using to block out his telepathy then?

“That’s right.”

“At least show a little remorse!” I snapped back at him despite the serious atmosphere.

“Sorry.”

“Apologizing straight-up is also a little...”

“I’m still sorry.”

“Argh, fine! Stop apologizing and just do it.”

Yang nodded silently and placed his hand on my forehead.

“...!”

The next instant, a giant wave of something deep and dark surged into my head.

▽

Where am I? It’s pitch black.

Who... Who am I? What happened?

“Hey.”

Hearing that low, threatening voice in my ear, my vision cleared instantly.

“...Huh?”

Light returned to the world, and the first thing I saw was a large fist.

Slam!

“Gah!”

I heard a twisted scream. It took a moment for me to realize that it had come out of my own mouth.

“?!”

Violence I couldn’t understand. Loud jeers all over the place.

Why... Why was I suffering like this?

The answer immediately came to me via a scene that flowed through my brain as I was punched.

Yeah, that’s right... The man before me stole food and alcohol from a street stall. He punched the stall lady when he was running away and broke her teeth. When I read that from his heart, I told him to go back and pay up. Then he got furious and hit me.

“Watch your mouth, brat!”

He kicked me in the stomach.

“I don’t have any cash!”

He stomped on my foot.

“Don’t go looking into people’s heads!”

He grabbed me by the collar and threw me against the wall.

Finally, the man said, “That woman just had to leave behind a creepy brat and disappear...” and vanished from my sight.

That was the last I ever saw of him. That man was my father.

▽

I was thrown away by my parents.

One day, I realized that I could walk through walls and surprised my mother by coming into the house without opening the door. After that, my mother avoided me. She only paid attention to my little sister. My father would feed me less during meals. When I tried to climb into my parents’ bed, they’d hit me and throw me out. The only place I had to go was under the stairs.

Then one day, they tried to sell me to some shop. But before they could do anything weird to me, I walked through the wall and ran away.

▽

Wh... What? Huh?

Suddenly, I remembered who I really was. Rekka Namidare. And once I got that sense of self-awareness back, I could look down and see my own body with clarity again. Yang had thrown me into the memories of the psychics, and now their lives were flashing before my eyes at super high speed.

When Graham was young, he couldn’t control his powers of spontaneous combustion and burned his entire family to ashes.

Ail became isolated after she saw her friend’s secrets with her clairvoyance.

After being passed around her relatives due to her teleportation power, Lucy no longer trusted humans.

Then there was Stun, the telekinetic.

Yang.

Ellicia, too.

All of their memories that flowed into me were filled with so much anger, grief, and sorrow that it made me want to claw at my face and throat. Their memories started to mix with my own sense of self again.

What? Why? Why me? Me? Why this?

But eventually, all of their memories came together at a certain point. It was when Yang established the organization and gathered everyone together.

The organization did everything. Normal humans didn’t stand a chance against a group of psychics. They took on work, using their powers to meet their clients’ needs, and established a name for themselves in the underworld. The jobs they were given were always shady, always shrouded in darkness. They were forced to dirty their hands time and time again.

▽

The torrent of memories suddenly cut off, and my vision returned to reality—the coal mine. I blinked several times... then looked at Yang, who was standing directly in front of me.

“Well?” he asked.

“...”

The things I wanted to say were on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t put them into words. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by all the anger, grief, and sorrow that had haunted their lives. Somewhere in my heart, I was even doubting that a normal human like me could understand what they’d been through.

“That is the path we psychics have been forced to walk. Ostracized for simply being different, we’ve seen and done things none of us ever wanted to. But it was the only way for us to survive.”

“...”

“Do you really think you can save us?”

I could feel the glares of not only Yang, but all the psychics behind him stabbing into me. I had to choose my words carefully.

“So, Yang, you’re trying to cause the Psychic Hazard because you can’t let go of the hatred you hold for the normal people who hurt you?”

“That’s right.” Knowing that there was no point in hiding that much, Yang gave a small nod.

I had seen Yang Danshey’s memories from his childhood to the present, and there was a dark jumble of emotions constantly clinging to his heart. Hatred for his demon of a father. Hatred for his mother who’d abandoned him. Hatred for the strangers who looked down on him and his comrades. Being able to see the dark truths of people’s hearts, Yang had suffered endless misfortune.

And it all added up, pushing him towards the Psychic Hazard as revenge. The seeds of hatred—each of those terrible memories—had taken root in him, entangling his heart so that it was no longer possible to pull them apart. The same was true for the other psychics that had gone along with Yang’s plan. However...

“Within those memories you just showed me... It was faint, but I felt something like a warm light.”

“Light?”

“It wasn’t from a single person in particular, either. I’m certain I felt the same warmth in everyone’s memories.”

I thought Ellicia might know what that light was.

“Ellicia.”

“What?”

“Why did you try to stop Yang at the cost of betraying the organization?”

“Huh...?”

“Your past is just as painful as the others’, right? So why did you choose to try and stop Yang instead of getting revenge?”

“Why? I...” Ellicia hesitated to answer.

The faint light in my head slowly started to take a distinct shape.

“Everyone wants the best possible happy ending for the story of their life. Whether you’re a psychic or not doesn’t matter. People reach for the light because they want happiness.”

“Happiness...” someone whispered.

“Ellicia, you wanted to protect that light, didn’t you? Because if the Psychic Hazard happened, that light would disappear.”

Ellicia wanted to protect something.

“What you were trying to protect was...”

I tried to express the vague form the light was taking within me in words, but then a violent red flash of light tore through everything with a roar.

“Gwaaah!”

Blown backwards by the impact, I helplessly rolled across the ground.

“Rekka!”

Someone ran to help me up. Blinded by the light, I couldn’t tell who it was. In a few moments, something warm wrapped around my entire body. When the pain slowly ebbed away, I realized it was Satsuki and Harissa’s healing magic. Thanks to the two of them, my vision eventually recovered... only to witness the tragedy before me.

The smell of burnt flesh and blood permeated the coal mine. It was far more intense than the memories Yang had just put me through. Half of Graham’s body was burned. One of Ail’s arms was gone. Lucy had a hole in her stomach. And Stan...

“Stan! Hey, Stan! Get up! Answer me!”

Ellicia was desperately yelling for her fallen friend to get up. The telekinetic who’d probably protected her had a large chunk of his back missing like it was gouged out.

“Hrgh...”

I couldn’t look at it any longer. Clamping my hand over my mouth, all I could do was hold back the urge to puke.

“Hello, my friends.”

The author of this tragedy appeared, a crowd of followers in tow. Everyone in the tunnel knew exactly who it was.

“Nartessia!”

“Hello there. I suppose it’s been a whole day since we saw each other last.”

With a maliciously cheerful smile on her face, Nartessia turned her contrary expression my way and waved. The greeting was completely inappropriate for the situation. She and her mages had just attacked the organization in cold blood.

“You!”

Howling like a beast, Yang launched his injured body at Nartessia. Before he could get to her, however, it looked like he hit an invisible wall and was flung backwards at several times the speed he’d been running. He smashed into the dirt wall that caved a little under his weight before he slid down it and hit the ground.

A number of the still-conscious psychics from the organization called out to him, but no one could go help him. That was how seriously injured they all were from the surprise attack.

Despite their proximity to everything, Satsuki and the other girls were completely unharmed. As the closest one to Yang, I’d taken a little bit of collateral damage, but it was a scratch compared to what happened to him and his people. Nartessia had clearly come to take out the remaining survivors of the organization.

“Nartessia! Stop it!” I shouted.

After Satsuki and Harissa healed me, I stood up and stopped Nartessia from approaching Yang any further. She was still creepily grinning.

“I almost had Yang persuaded! Please, Nartessia, don’t attack anymore!”

“Ha! Are you an idiot?”

“?!”

It was a pretty run-of-the-mill insult, but... what was that shiver that just went down my spine?

“They stole the Margaret clan’s treasure with the Fire Dragon’s Breath in it, you see. There’s no way you could understand how serious a crime that is in magical society. Heirloom magic is something very special that ancestors of a family have devoted their lives to studying and developing. Inheriting it is my pride and honor as a mage. There is nothing more valuable. I too must refine this magic and pass it down to the next head so that one day the Margaret clan can reach the ultimate truth of magic... Do you understand?”

The expression on Nartessia’s face suddenly flatlined. No, that wasn’t it. It was like the look in her eyes suddenly became inhuman. They were frightening. Empty. Just looking into them made my blood run cold.

“This is a war, you see. One that they started. Do you think you can just wave a white flag and ask for forgiveness after doing something like that? No, I’m afraid it’s not that simple.”

“Wait, then...”

By that logic, was she after us too for stealing the earring?!

“Ohoho, don’t be so tense.”

Nartessia smiled at my nervousness. She wore the same malicious sneer as before.

“When you took the earring away, it no longer held the power of the Fire Dragon’s Breath, remember? It was just some rubbish ability from the scum lying over there. While the earring itself is a fairly rare magical item, I’ll let you off the hook for making off with it.”

Nartessia patted my shoulder and glared over at the fallen psychics.

“After all, it was thanks to you lot proceeding with this that they were distracted enough for us to take them out so easily.”

“What? What are you saying?!”

That made it sound like we were working together with Nartessia! Don’t tell me she’d purposely let us go so she could use us like this...

Come to think of it, she was strangely calm when we fled the Margaret estate. She hadn’t done anything herself to try and stop us. Maybe she’d already planted a tracer or some kind of spell on us by then... We were completely set up!

“Damn it!”

Anger rose within me at the thought of being used, but Nartessia had always been mysterious and the Margaret clan mages were the dominant force here. Most of Yang’s side was already seriously wounded and down for the count. The girls and I were okay, but with Tsumiki and Mio to protect, we weren’t in a position to stop Nartessia. At this rate, I was just gonna have to sit here and watch as she ended the organization once and for all.

Surely there had to be something I could do...

I desperately racked my brain to try and come up with a way out of this situation. Nartessia just giggled, watching me while twirling her hair around her finger as if she knew that it was impossible.

“Now, I think it’s high time you returned that earring to me.”

I gave Corona a resigned nod. She silently handed the earring over to Nartessia with an unhappy look on her face.

“Ugh...”

Huh? Just now, in my head...

“Ngh... You...”

“You... Yang?!”

He’d been slammed into the wall by Nartessia just moments ago, but Yang, bloody and beaten, was trying to get himself back on his feet. Was it his voice I was hearing in my head? His eyes, filled with a burning hatred, locked onto me.

“You deceived me...”

“No! You’re wrong!” I yelled back reflexively.

Something was weird. Yang was a telepath. He could read minds, so he should know I wasn’t working with Nartessia. So why...

Suddenly, flames rose up right in front of me. I jumped back in surprise, but the fire was gone in an instant. But in its place, other fires started breaking out here and there throughout the mine shaft. Unnaturally, they didn’t seem to burn anything, and they too disappeared just as quickly as they’d appeared. Were they not real?

Nartessia couldn’t use fire magic, and nobody in either my group or Yang’s was doing anything. The flames that appeared at my feet weren’t even hot... That meant they had to be illusions.

“Whoa!”

But they still startled me. One broke out right next to me again, and I reflexively jumped to the side.

“Sir Rekka, is something wrong?” Harissa asked worriedly.

Could she not see the fire? I looked around carefully, and it only seemed to be me and the Margaret clan mages that had noticed anything. Hibiki and Rosalind were just standing there watching me with puzzled looks on their faces.

“Just what is this...?”

I was bewildered by how the phantom flames were gradually increasing in energy and clarity.

“Hmm, this is...” Nartessia murmured. She was the only one whose mouth was still turned up in a calm smile.

“Unforgivable...”

Hearing Yang’s voice echoing in my head again, the scenery suddenly changed.

“What?!”

I was no longer in the mine. The sight of what spread out before me was completely different.

Flames. Flames. Flames.

A crumbling building.

Burning. People and things. All on fire.

The whole world was dyed in the red hues of blood and fire.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

“Nothing’s happening. It’s already happened,” Nartessia answered in a leisurely voice, apparently witnessing the same scene I was. “This is the memory of when my clan burned down their headquarters.”

“What?!”

“Well, I wasn’t present at the time, but... Look there. The one shooting fireballs over there is the same man standing behind me right now, see?”

It certainly did look exactly like the man she pointed out. So one was real and the other an illusion—past and present versions of the same person. And according to Nartessia, this was what had gone down when the organization was destroyed. In other words, the one who was showing us this vision was...

“Rekka! What’s gotten into you?” someone suddenly called, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me.

“Shirley...?”

“You’re acting strangely. Are you all right?”

“I can see... fire...”

“Huh?”

“Yang’s memories are...”

Yeah, it was probably Yang’s telepathy conveying this vision. Just like how he’d shown me everyone’s memories earlier, but on a much larger scale. Shirley and the others couldn’t see it because of the jackets they were wearing. Corona had even given Satsuki one when she’d rescued her, so she couldn’t see it, either.

“Is his telepathy out of control?” Shirley muttered after hearing my response.

Out of control? Was that why he incorrectly assumed that Nartessia and I were working together? He could no longer see the truth with his eyes. The light no longer reached him. The only thing left in him was...

“Hate.”

Hate, hate, and more hate...

It all flowed into me with the fiery vision. Memories of comrades being killed. Memories of the home built from scratch being destroyed. I could feel all the torment and sorrow Yang had experienced.

But even with all that weight on his soul, the Yang I’d been talking to just before Nartessia showed up still had light in his eyes, however faint it was. It was within him, and within his comrades who’d survived these flames. He was trying to bring about the Psychic Hazard to get his revenge on the world... but he was still barely holding on for the sake of the comrades he still had left. There was still a part of him that wanted to reach for the light.

But now... seeing those remaining comrades being blown away before his eyes—or perhaps hearing from Nartessia that I’d betrayed him—he’d completely lost it.

“UOOOAAAAARRRRRRRR!”

He let out a vicious roar like a wounded beast.

“Yang! Get a hold of yourself!” I shouted

“Yang!” Ellicia, who was unharmed, yelled along with me.

But neither of our voices reached Yang. His eyes, ears, and heart were a prisoner to the flames and hatred of his memories.

“My goodness, this is getting on my nerves.”

Nartessia glanced indifferently around at the scenery of Yang’s mind and sighed. A cold light glimmered in her eyes.

“Nartessia!”

I went to try and stop her from making another move, but I felt someone’s eyes fall on me and looked around.

I was surrounded by tragic images from Yang’s memories brought on by his rampaging telepathy. It was hard to recognize the illusions from the real victims lying helpless and wounded on the ground. Among them was a woman, Lucy the teleporter, who was staring intently at me and Nartessia while pointing at us. It was... She was real. And so was the wound on her stomach.

“Oh?”

Suddenly, Nartessia raised a questioning voice. I glanced over to see her looking around in confusion, opening and closing her palm as though something was missing. If I wasn’t mistaken, that hand was the hand Corona had just put the earring in...

Uh-oh.

Psychic powers were talents. They were versatile. So if a teleport power could move their body from one location to another... they might be able to move objects, too. Wait, that meant Lucy had the earring now!

I suddenly had a terrible premonition.

“Yang?!”

Someone was standing next to Yang, who was now short a hand after the explosion. The woman—Ail the clairvoyant, based on the memories I saw earlier—was reaching out to put something in his remaining hand.

“Yang... the rest is up to you.”

Ail opened her tightly clenched fist and handed the bloodstained earring to Yang. After fulfilling her duty, she collapsed to the floor, no longer moving. The phantom flames wrapped around her body, hiding her from view.

Did that mean... she overwrote the earring with her powers of clairvoyance? What she said before she collapsed... The reason the organization wanted that earring in the first place... And Yang’s rampaging power and emotions...

“Yang, no! Don’t do it!”

“Experience... my pain... for yourself...”

With those five words, the Psychic Hazard began.