Those are the orders…

After what I heard, I don’t know why, but… I felt nothing.

Nothing at all.

In fact… how similar was this situation to that? In my first year at the academy, in my first practical exam, I had almost… the exact same situation.

A friend of mine was standing in front of me, having betrayed me and pointing her weapon at me…

I’m surrounded by people I consider my enemies…

“Hah…”

This…

This is…

“Haha…”

It’s funny…

“Ahahahah…!”

Maybe…

Maybe Alice is pretending like Aiden?

She is forced into this situation, maybe…?

After all, she said ’orders’…

“All right… All right…”

I smiled when I finally managed to stop laughing a little. I narrowed my eyes, gripped my spear tightly, never taking my eyes off Alice for a moment, not caring about the others.

“Do you guys… want to kill me?”

For some reason…

“There are quite a few people who want to kill me… so I’m not surprised.”

I don’t feel like Alice is pretending.

“But… I’m curious about this.”

But it doesn’t matter.

I can find out the truth after I finish them off.

“Do you really think you can kill me?”

I took my stance, kept smiling, and watched Alice’s reaction.

“With such… weak… people?”

They are not weak, actually. There are even a few with B or B+ grades.

But… does it matter?

First, I activated my ascension skill, even though my use of it was limited, so that I could finish everything quickly.

My hair grew longer, golden-colored runic letters enveloped my body. Mana… suddenly became refreshing like it was fresh air.

“You did your homework wrong…”

I didn’t stop there, I also reached out to ordea. As my vision turned slightly blue, a profound peace enveloped me. I felt strengthened many times over, as if I could heal whatever wounds I had received… even reducing the damage done to my body by my ascension skill.

It was as if…

I was immortal.

“You should have brought much more stronger ones.”

Using a combination of my mastery, ascension skill, ordea, and my spear style, I touched the mana in the atmosphere, dragging it to my spear.

Everyone around me jumped on me at once. Everyone, except Alice.

I didn’t say anything more, I compressed, compressed… and compressed the mana in the atmosphere… I drained all the mana around me into my spear, causing cracks to appear on it.

But I didn’t care.

I spun my spear around one turn as fast as I could.

A sword, millimeters away from touching me, suddenly disappeared from my sight, along with the person holding it.

Everyone around me was coming toward me… and in the next moment, they were either thrown backward, with a huge gap where their bellies should have been, or… they simply vanished.

All sound disappeared in a vacuum.

Everything was covered in a white glow, nothing could be seen.

Then… all the vacuumed sound exploded at once.

*******

The white light that covered everything disappeared.

My ears, which couldn’t stop ringing, slowly began to recover.

There was… no cloud of dust.

Dust cloud aside, there was… nothing.

“H- huh…?”

Adrian…

Just a moment ago, he was surrounded by dozens of men…

Wait, that aside…

Weren’t we… on a street?

I forced myself to look around as my eyes gradually widened.

And… I realized I was in a huge crater.

I was… still on that street.

I hadn’t even moved from my spot.

I hadn’t even been thrown back by Adrian’s attack.

Even though I didn’t know why… the attack hadn’t hurt a hair on my head.

But…

But…

“Huuu…”

Everything else was…

“It was harder than I thought, huh?”

Simply gone…

“Now…”

All my thoughts were erased from my mind. I felt myself stiffen, and then… I saw a pair of emerald green eyes turning on me.

“Can I have a word with you, if possible… Alice?”

He was looking at me…

Just like my grandfather.

“Because I have… many questions to ask, you know.”

Coldly, calmly…

Carelessly.

As if…

“Why… did you drag me here?”

As if I was a fly… which he didn’t even have to care about.

“H- how…”

I clenched my fist, not even caring that my long nails were digging into my palm.

The strength in my legs disappeared and I fell to my knees.

Staring at the literal ’pure destruction’ around me… I realized that I was actually a lower being than a fly.

Because flies were… at least annoying creatures.

I was… someone he didn’t even have to pay attention to…

“How… how did you get so… strong…?”

“How?”

“You are half-elf… extremely unlikely to be born… even though somehow born, extremely likely to be crippled or diseased… So how… How can you be so… perfect and strong?”

Emerald green eyes…

Silver-colored hair…

A perfect body with no problems…

A literally flawless combination of the human and elven races, with no genetic defects whatsoever.

“Oh, you mean the racial stuff…”

He narrowed his eyes and slowly began to walk toward me. His expression was… stoic as each step he took echoed through the street that was no longer anything but a crater.

“Luck.”

Luck…?

Ah…

Luck, of course…

“How can I know how it happened… when it’s been like this since the day I was born? Simply… luck.”

When has life ever been… fair?

“But that’s not the point, Alice.”

I paused. He was just walking toward me. But then… the next moment… I realized that he was in front of me.

I forced my head up, just… to look into his eyes, which I hated.

He was staring down at me.

I was… below him.

As it should be.

“Why… did you betray me?”

I stopped holding my head up, I kept my eyes on the floor.

If I had this power… this luck…

What would my life be like, I wonder?

“I… trusted you. Maybe we weren’t on the best of terms, maybe we weren’t even friends… but I trusted you. As someone I knew, someone who had given me several pieces of advice. So… I’m curious.”

He bent down, brought himself to the same height as me. He brushed my hair aside with his hand, looked into my black… ugly eyes fixed on the floor.

“Why… did you betray me?”

And… all I could do was smile.

I took a deep breath, lifted my head and… this time, I looked directly into his eyes.

“Because… those were the orders.”

The next moment… I saw an expression on Adrian’s face that I had never seen before.

His eyes literally flickered. His lips twitched and his face… he looked like he was suffering.

“Well, then…”

I felt a momentary pain in the back of my neck. The world suddenly went black, I felt my whole body weakening.

Yet… even in the last moments, all I could see was…

Green.

“Since you were part of a terrorist attack… I have no choice but to apprehend you.”

Ah, I…

I really hate green.

*******

From the moment I saw the explosion, I flew straight toward it.

When I got closer, what I saw was… a huge crater, literally.

It was almost a hundred meters in diameter. The fact that it completely destroyed everything around it was another surprise.

But… the real surprise was when I saw two people standing inside this crater.

I slowly walked down to them, and right behind them, I put my foot on the ground.

“Hey, Adrian…”

Was it him… who did this?

“Aiden?”

Adrian slowly turned to me with Alysia in his arms. His eyes filled with surprise for a brief moment, then relief.

“You’re fine, I’m relieved.”

“I’ve been in much worse situations in the war in Holar, that’s not so important. But…”

I looked at Alysia in his arms. She didn’t look like she had any injuries. In fact… she didn’t have any wounds at all.

“What happened…? Why did you have to cause such a thing here?”

I’m not even going to ask how he got so strong.

Even in the game, he’s never that strong in this time period.

To literally vaporize everything within a radius of fifty meters…? So… comfortably, that easily?

Trying to create that kind of instantaneous damage is… difficult even for me.

It’s not impossible, but I certainly wouldn’t be as comfortable as Adrian if I did.

“Ah, well…”

His face fell for a moment, his eyes narrowed. Then he looked at the face of the person he was holding in his arms.

I interjected before he spoke.

“Did Alice… do something?”

Adrian took a deep breath.

“Yes. She dragged me here, where other terrorists were lying in ambush. And then… what happened on the practical exam in our first year happened, pretty much.”

“Oh…”

Well… it must not be nice to be betrayed for the second time by someone you consider a friend…

“What… are you planning to do? Are you going to hand her over to the kingdom?”

“I don’t know… I have no idea.”

A pained expression appeared on his face for a moment, he couldn’t stop his eyes from twitching.

“I think… I’ll hand her over to the soldiers.”

You don’t seem to want to do that, though…

“…”

A silence fell between us. But I didn’t let it last too long, all I did was sigh deeply.

“Then… leave it to me.”

He paused, looking at me with a blank expression. I let out another deep sigh.

“If we hand her over to the kingdom, she will be interrogated, most likely tortured to talk. And… an unpleasant truth will be revealed.”

Adrian’s eyes suddenly widened.

“Wait… you… know who she is?”

Huh…?

Wait a second…

“What… exactly are you talking about?”

Adrian hesitated for a moment, as if… he couldn’t decide whether or not to tell the truth. But it didn’t last long.

“I’m talking about her… being an elf.”

Ah…

Then… he doesn’t know that the person he’s holding is actually his older sister.

That’s… good, I guess.

For now.

“Yes, I know that. But… what I’m talking about is more important.”

Like the Laute family, for example.

“Anyway, don’t… think too much about it. Just do what I say. Don’t hand her over to the kingdom, keep the truth. Because she’s someone we could really use…”

Adrian didn’t seem… pleased that I didn’t tell him everything.

But he didn’t question me either.

“Okay…”

“Run from here to where the sun sets for the city center. Almost everyone is there.”

This time, he didn’t say anything, just nodded. But he made sure to turn to me one last time before heading in my direction.

“You… what are you going to do, then?”

I put a smile on my face.

“I haven’t found Julian and Sue yet.”

And that’s when Adrian’s expression turned serious.

“I see… then don’t wait any longer. I’ll start looking for them too after I get to the center.”

“All right… see you, then.”

And… I flew up again.

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