"Protect Lady Aura—"
A mere flicker before the eyes—the threads of Mana were instantly severed by Severance Magic. Loyally guarding his mistress, Draht hadn't even finished speaking before he was sent flying aside with a single backhanded slap.
"......" Hend, who had originally thrown himself flat to block a fireball for Aura and was now lying on the ground secretly observing, quietly shut his eyes and played dead.
Linie stood frozen in place, seemingly still unable to grasp the present situation.
For one fleeting instant, the chaotic battlefield came to a standstill.
"Long time no see, A~u~ra~"
After such a long separation, Nanoda had actually missed Aura quite a bit—after all, she was the member of the Demon Race who had stayed by her side the longest, and had contributed a great deal to her.
That, however, was an entirely separate matter from Aura wandering off as she pleased and failing to keep her promise to mind the house.
The voice rang out like the warning bell of hell—that demon had truly returned from the far side of the gate into the world of the living!
At this rate, she really was going to die.
"Forgive me! I was just… I was just so bored all alone! A world without you was simply far too dull, so I left that place that broke my heart!"
After the terror came a sudden shift into grief. Aura dragged along her legs—already gone soft from running—and trotted all the way up before Nanoda. Her boneless knees buckled at once, and she flung herself entirely against the thigh beneath Nanoda's black robe, a pair of tear-brimmed eyes lifting to meet her gaze.
"Boo-hoo, look, I never raised a hand to harm any Humans. I even followed in your footsteps, building a territory where Humans and the Demon Race could coexist—all of it was so I would never forget you!"
Bean-sized, crystalline teardrops streamed ceaselessly down that exquisitely proportioned, fair-skinned face, and with each sniffle a flush rose at her nose. Aura wept like a rain-drenched pear blossom, pitiable enough to stir anyone's sympathy.
"Your acting's improved, hasn't it? Did you rehearse a long time for today?"
Had one not known Aura's true nature, this Hollywood-grade performance could have fooled nearly anyone.
Her adjutant Hermet gaped, his mouth hanging wide. That Aura, who had once reigned supreme over the Kinton territory—even at the very end, when she had been defeated and beside herself with fury, she had not shed a single tear.
And now what was he witnessing? The great lord, clinging to someone's thigh and pleading piteously.
In an instant, the image held by all the people of Kinton—of the aloof, indomitable, iron-blooded yet merciful Lady Aura—came crashing down.
The Ohaly troops who had closed in to surround them were likewise dumbstruck. What was going on? They'd been having a perfectly good battle—how had it turned into a family squabble?
"Lord Nanoda, please save me~"
Ignoring Nanoda's sarcasm, Aura shamelessly nuzzled against his leg.
Nanoda had originally meant to give her a beating first, but the current situation wasn't a good one, so he simply peeled away the Aura who clung like a wriggling mealworm.
It was at this very moment that a hearty voice rang out, and the surrounding Ohaly soldiers, as though jolted by electricity, snapped into a single neat step in unison, the sound echoing through the vicinity.
"Ahahahaha, you two lovebirds get along quite well, don't you?"
Anhadī III came striding out through the path the soldiers consciously parted for him, his one remaining arm swinging idly.
"Hey, hey, a joke, just a joke." Catching the murderous, cold indifference in Nanoda's eyes, Anhadī III backpedaled with a laugh.
"Since everyone happens to be here, there's something I'd like to announce right now."
Everyone's gaze swung back from the encircled Aura.
"Ohaly's King of War… Anhadī III." Adjutant Hermet murmured, his face pale.
Lying on the ground, Hend held the same fallen posture as before, his unsettled, stray-dog gaze stealing glances at the supreme being who filled his heart with dread.
The red-haired man spoke words that astonished everyone present:
"I'm done being King!"
Within a vast, spacious cavern,
a little girl poked her head out from the pitch-black mouth of the cave, glancing all around. She clutched tightly a bottle of red wine, half of it already drunk, as though searching for something.
The ground began to tremble, the jungle grew clamorous, and shadows began to appear not far off.
The dejected lord, the adjutant lying on a stretcher, the lightly equipped Demon Race soldiers, the Kinton mercenary uncles, the newly arrived blood-soaked figures in white propping each other up, the unfamiliar people in black robes, and that stray-dog of a man.
The little girl broke into a run, sprinting straight toward that stubble-faced man.
Nanoda watched the little girl who brushed past him, and the wretched, bedraggled Kinton territory-folk hiding within the cavern.
Every one of these scenes was so familiar. That little girl made him think of Yuna—likewise people who had been driven from their homeland by calamity.
"Um, see, it's true, I really have been governing the Humans properly."
Aura wore a meek, humble look, speaking as though testing the waters. The atmosphere all around was somewhat strange; aside from Linie, everyone who followed Aura—Humans and Demon Race alike—was secretly sizing Nanoda up.
With a sigh, Nanoda decided to deal first with the great band of survivors Aura had brought along. "Let's head back together."
"Back where?"
"Gaderia."
"You mean… you're letting me off the hook?"
Like a child who had done something wrong, Aura—having received no especially harsh scolding or punishment—instantly broke into an expression brimming with hope.
"I'll settle accounts with you once we're back." Nanoda arched an eyebrow, having no intention of so easily letting the thoroughly rebellious Aura off.
At those words, her face fell again at once.
"By the way, Aura, have you come across any being that calls itself a demon?"
"A demon?" Swallowing the words "Aren't you the demon yourself?", Aura shook her head with utter honesty. "No—is there any being foolish enough to call itself a demon in front of the Demon Race? Especially me, Aura the Guillotine of the Seven Sages of Destruction. Others call me a demon; I don't go calling others demons."
As though recalling her own glorious deeds, Aura grew a touch smug again.
"Then have you ever seen that child, Yuna?"
"Yuna? Who's that?"
"Fine, I shouldn't have asked you."
After spending so long together with Yuna in Gaderia, for Aura to not even remember the person was beyond hope.
It suddenly occurred to Nanoda that, thinking in the manner of the Demon Race, perhaps it wasn't that Aura couldn't remember—it was simply that she had no need to.
"In a certain sense, you really are a simple-minded creature…"
"?"
At this moment, in the sky not far off,
Serie, who had remained invisible all this while, finally revealed her form.
"Truly baffling—what on earth do you Humans think about, day in and day out?"
She looked at that crude grave Anhadī III had personally fashioned, and shook her head expressionlessly.
"So that's the 'master' that girl spoke of?"
Serie came once more to that fiercely contested ground, sparing only a careless glance at the battle scars stark enough to make any ordinary person halt and stand transfixed.
After a light snort, the mysterious golden-haired elf vanished without a trace once again.
A small white flower bloomed upon old Wilhelm's grave.
The wind, which had stalled all around for so long, began to blow once more.
____
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