"It can't be, why me!?"
Meili ran with all her might, but her small, weak body wouldn't take her very far.
Five minutes earlier, she had been wandering through the city, completely disoriented. While searching for a familiar face, she unexpectedly bumped into several, but they weren't the ones she wanted to see.
They were his former colleagues from the assassins' organization.
They saw her too, and she had no choice but to speed away.
"I have to get rid of them! But at this rate..."
Without the beasts, without Elsa and without Leandro, Meili was just a defenseless child.
Even so, she had a survival instinct that compelled her to move in order to survive.
She turned a corner, plunged into a series of dark alleyways, and didn't stop until she was sure she had left her pursuers behind. Only then did she manage to calm down a little.
"If they're here, Mother might be too. I must find Elsa or Leandro before Mother or her henchmen catch me."
Finally, Meili went back out onto the street, trying to go unnoticed and get away from that area.
"Where are you going, you little rat?"
Suddenly, a shadow passed by her, hitting her legs and making her fall with a groan of pain.
Frightened, Meili tried to get up and escape, but someone grabbed her by her hair braid and lifted her up.
"No!" she cried desperately. "Let me go!"
"Hahaha! Cry and kick all you want!"
Mocking voices and cruel stares surrounded her as she tried in vain to free herself. Meili knew she was in serious trouble.
She had been captured by her former colleagues from the assassin organization.
"Mother will be satisfied with this capture."
"But the other one is missing. Mother said they would both be here."
"How did she know? Can she see the future now?"
"Don't ask me, I have no idea."
While they talked, they seemed to ignore Meili's futile efforts. However, when she managed to bite the forearm of the person holding her, the reaction was swift.
"You fucking brat!" Meili was violently thrown to the ground. Then, without any mercy, the killers began kicking and spitting on her.
"Now that you don't have a bodyguard, we can finally teach you a lesson!"
The girl cried and screamed, her throat raw, but no one came to her rescue. The abuse only stopped when she fainted from the shock.
Of the people passing by, none were the least bit moved by the scene. Some even smiled wickedly, reveling in Meili's cries of pain as if they were listening to music.
That's what the people of that city were like.
"We should take her to Mother," said one of the assassins.
"Or we could use her as bait to lure Elsa," another suggested.
"Do you think she'll come for her?"
"If you ask me, I'd say yes."
Alarmed, the assassins turned toward the voice that spoke behind them, but they were too slow.
In a fleeting instant, something slipped between them and with sharp blades slashed their throats.
"Gahh?!"
"You bitch...!"
Mortally wounded, the assassins fell to the ground helplessly.
"Tsk."
Elsa kicked a corpse aside and bent down to pick up Meili's battered body. Seeing her condition, she sighed with a mixture of sadness and anger.
"Trusting Leandro was a mistake. We have to leave."
With Meili in her arms, Elsa started walking away from the alley. Her plan was to find a way to escape the city and get to safety. She'd figure out how to deal with Mother later.
But he had barely taken a few steps when someone got in his way.
"What do we have here! It's the naughty girls who ran away!"
The shadows shifted, taking the form of a teenage girl with short, golden hair and pink eyes. Her face wore a cynical smile.
"Did you think you could escape from Mom?" she asked in a mocking, squeaky voice. "Wrong⁓!"
Elsa frowned in disgust. Although she was good at hiding her emotions, fear seeped through her, and Capella savored the feeling of cornering a helpless prey.
"You bad girl... Mommy is going to punish you!"
Capella's demented laughter echoed throughout the place, sending chills down Elsa's spine, who couldn't think of a way to get out of that situation.
***
Julius sighed and elegantly adjusted his hair.
He had to take off his white trench coat so as not to stand out so much and was wearing a simple black suit, but although he no longer wore the uniform that shouted "I am a knight", his gallant aura and handsome boyish face were still too striking, too contrasting with that environment.
This attracted many suspicious glances and whispers. It seemed his attempt at being an undercover agent wasn't working.
"I wonder how they're doing."
Although the plan had deviated from its original course, Julius trusted his teammates' abilities. He couldn't afford to be left behind either: at the very least, he had to play a satisfactory role.
With that resolve, he began searching for a candidate to subdue and interrogate. He couldn't afford to fail and be discovered, so he patiently selected the ideal target.
However, saying it was easier than doing it. Julius realized that many people were staring at him intently, as if they were just waiting for him to make a suspicious move so they could attack him.
"Is my costume really that bad?"
"Help! We need help!"
Suddenly, a female voice reached his ears. It sounded like a damsel in distress. Julius's chivalrous instincts made him move immediately, rushing to the aid of this unfortunate victim.
Following the voice, Julius entered a dark alley and ran, quickly drawing his sword to deal with any threat.
Of course, the knight was aware that it could all be a trap, given the city's exclusively criminal population. However, ignoring such a scenario would violate Julius's principles.
Upon reaching the source of the voice, Julius encountered a middle-aged woman, beautiful but with something dangerous about her presence: a rose with thorns.
"Thank you for answering our call, sir," she said, strangely using a plural pronoun even though she was alone.
"What's the emergency, miss?" Julius didn't let his guard down and remained attentive.
"We're hungry, really hungry... We came here because someone told us we'd find good food, but we never imagined there would be enough quality dishes to feast on!"
The woman clasped her hands together in a gesture of emotion. A large amount of saliva emanated from the corners of her lips.
Julius narrowed his eyes.
"Who are you?"
As if those words flipped a switch, the woman writhed as her body lit up. A second later, her appearance changed to that of a pale-skinned girl with blue eyes and long blonde hair.
"Archbishop of the Witch's Cult, representing Gluttony... Rui Arneb!"
***
Ram had a big problem.
First of all, she wasn't very good at working alone. Very few things went right for her. From birth, Ram was half of a whole, and she had relied so heavily on the other half that she became almost completely inept on her own, unaware that one day she would lose the pillar that supported her.
If she were accompanied, she could feign stoicism to the point of almost convincing herself of that false strength, but in the stark helplessness of solitude, her mask fell to pieces.
She was fragile. Pathetically fragile and dependent on others. What was a self-indulgent lie for Rem was a hateful reality for Ram.
Due to the circumstances, the pink-haired woman had hurriedly searched the city for Leandro, but after a few minutes of fruitless searching, she stopped to catch her breath in a dark, secluded corner.
As she knelt, her body arched, beads of sweat trickled down her forehead. It was hot, perhaps from the great effort of running everywhere.
However, Ram noticed that the heat continued to increase, instead of decreasing. Furthermore, the shadow of her figure, projected on the ground, began to distort as a light appeared behind her.
The oni's instincts kicked in quickly, urging her to move, which she did just in time to dodge a huge fireball that fell from the sky like a meteor.
"Tsk." Ram drew her wand and pointed it at the flames. "I don't care who you are or what you're up to: I don't have time for this, so stop hiding and let's end this."
"Even with everything you've been through, your sharpness remains intact," said a voice that was all too familiar, but lacking its characteristic drawl. "I must admit that gives me mixed feelings."
The fire faded, revealing Roswaal L. Mathers with a cold look on his face.
"You!" Ram's expression turned wild.
"Wow, that's intense," remarked the magician, who looked as good as new. "Although it shouldn't surprise me, since you used to look at me like that when I brought you to the mansion a few years ago."
Ram didn't even bother to ask how he was still alive.
"Die!" She frantically waved her wand, sending many gusts of wind toward him.
Roswaal sighed and placed a wall of earth between his body and the cuts, successfully blocking the attack.
"That's wrong, Ram. If you use your reserves so carelessly, you'll end up exhausted."
"Fuck you!"
Seeing that magic was useless, Ram unlocked her suppressed power to physically empower herself and threw herself at Roswaal without a second thought.
The air buckled in response to the speed of Ram's movement, as she threw a punch that could knock down an entire building.
However, Roswaal calmly anticipated the attack, remaining completely still. A second later, Ram's fist struck his face, but then something strange happened.
Instead of exploding like a pumpkin, splattering blood and guts, Roswaal's head disintegrated with a blue light effect, and the effect spread to the rest of his body.
Confused, Ram rolled on the ground due to inertia, but she was so amazed that she didn't feel the pain of the scrapes on her skin.
"What...?"
"Ram, I am not your enemy."
Roswaal's voice sounded behind her. Instinctively, she turned and unleashed a wind slash, cleaving the sorcerer's body in two, which then dissolved back into particles of mana.
However, somehow Roswaal reappeared, looking unharmed.
"Don't mess with me!" she shouted, losing her composure. But Roswaal continued talking.
"I'm here to warn you about Leandro. He–"
"Shut up! Shut up!" Ram lunged at him and punched him until all the mana in his body leaked out through his wounds, making him explode like a balloon. "I don't want to hear anything from you!"
It all seemed like something out of a nightmare, a personal torture designed for Ram.
Roswaal returned once more. He was determined to make his words reach her.
"I know you're angry and I understand, but you must understand that things are not as you think."
"What don't I understand?! You killed Rem, you killed my sister! You couldn't even stay dead and leave me in peace! When will you be satisfied?!"
At least for the moment, Ram stopped trying to kill him. Not because she knew it was pointless, or because she was less angry, but because her body was suffering the consequences of channeling too much power without her horn. At that moment, she was struggling to breathe normally and stay on her feet.
"Believe me, I'm not doing this for myself," Roswaal clarified. "Right now, you're following someone who's far more twisted and selfish than I am. You might think I'm only saying this to manipulate or confuse you, but Leandro isn't who he seems."
There was a somewhat prolonged silence, then Ram sighed, processing the anger and turning it into contempt.
"Was that it? You only came here to talk trash about the person who ruined your plan? What a sore loser."
"Ram..."
"Knowing you," she interrupted, "I expected something more clever, not this pathetic attempt at defamation. And you know what?"
She glared at him with a hatred that made her pink irises glow.
"You should look at yourself before criticizing others."
"I see you're not going to listen to me, so I won't insist."
Roswaal began to float, rising gracefully while giving Ram a condescending smile.
"I've done my duty to warn you. Even if you don't believe me now, time will prove me right. I hope you can reconsider before it's too late."
Then, as if speaking to himself, Roswaal added in a low voice:
"After all, nothing lasts forever."
With a farewell gesture, the magician flew away. Watching the figure of her former master disappear into the distance, Ram fought back tears.