Ch.194Side Story 2. The Story After, Milia (2)

The Story After, Millia (2)

“Wo… Wowowowo!! Calm down! Please calm down! Millia!”

“I am perfectly calm, Lug. This isn’t an impulsive choice, but one I’ve made after careful consideration.”

“No, wait! Let’s talk, let’s talk. Let’s start with a conversation.”

“A conversation?”

Millia tilts her head.

Her reaction, as if asking why that was necessary, momentarily left me speechless.

“Isn’t conversation important?”

“That’s right.”

“Throughout our journey as heroes, didn’t we always resolve our differences through dialogue and compromise?”

“Are you saying you don’t like my proposal?”

“…”

When she asks like that, it’s truly difficult to answer yes.

It feels like she might purge me if I say I don’t like it.

“…For now, yes.”

But if I don’t reveal my true feelings here, it will lead directly to a kidnapping-imprisonment-tentacle ending.

I’d rather die than face such an ending.

“You know, Lug. Did you think saying that would change anything?”

“…”

“I’ve always done what I wanted to do, haven’t I?”

Terror.

Memories I had long forgotten flash through my mind. Millia’s numerous rampages, how we dealt with them, and the results.

“Uh…”

Come to think of it, I’ve never once successfully persuaded Millia.

I’ve never stopped her stubbornness. In the magic tower, I got my head cracked open for talking nonsense, and in the demon realm, I was almost pounced on right after saying I’d match her pace.

She’s fundamentally not the type to listen to others.

“If you wanted to persuade me, you should have brought Esmeralda.”

Her rampages were never resolved through words, but always through violence.

She was a human who lived like a demon, adhering to survival of the fittest, submitting only to power greater than her own.

And only then did I understand that the current situation was something Millia had been planning for a long time.

I had never once persuaded her, and problems just faded away without fundamental resolution.

Her heart, her impulsive nature…

“So listen to me, Lug. I’m sure you’ll come to like it too.”

Had never been fixed.

***

Fortunately, what I feared didn’t happen immediately.

Millia’s plan to kidnap and imprison me seemed to have been prepared quite some time ago, but my escape had apparently complicated things.

As Millia asked me to wait a little longer while she made adjustments, I remained imprisoned here.

I gained some time, but after spending a whole day crouched on the floor, unable to leave the sealed area created by Millia’s magic, the next day she came saying she had improved the magic and expanded the range I could move in.

Thanks to that, I could now move around spaces that allowed for basic living, like the bed and dining table.

Now, let’s think about this.

Is this really a good thing?

“I think I’m pretty fucked.”

In just one day, she modified a small-scale sealing magic to increase its range.

It might seem like nothing if you think she just expanded the range, but extending a seal through magic circles to a room filled with various objects is no simple matter.

Others might not understand, but as someone who once worked as a Mage, I know how absurd this is.

Magic circles fail to function properly even with the slightest misalignment.

But if she adjusted it to work in a three-dimensional space filled with tables, beds, and various books, how complex must that process have been?

“A genius is a genius indeed…”

The oddity of the hero party.

The girl with the most talent besides Esmeralda.

Her talent is enough to transcend human limitations.

Just look at how she summoned me by mixing spatial magic and curse magic.

She combined two completely unrelated types of magic.

For such a genius magician, how long would this “magic adjustment” she’s currently working on take?

“What’s scarier is that the adjustments still aren’t complete…”

Millia’s magic is simple.

She typically deploys tentacle magic to defeat opponents.

This might make her sound like a biased ability user who only handles one type of magic, but it’s actually the opposite.

It’s a magic so complete that she can solve most situations with just that one spell.

She’s adjusting that magic. The question is how she’s improving it.

“Damn it.”

No matter how positively I try to think, I can’t imagine the result being normal.

To be blunt, it wouldn’t be surprising if she dissolved me into tentacles to make me live inside them forever.

I did persuade her once in the past, but I’m not even sure if she was truly persuaded.

“My head was cracked open then!”

I had my head cracked for talking nonsense and was captured again.

I thought I had survived because persuasion worked to some extent, but now I doubt whether she was truly persuaded.

“Lug.”

“Is… is the magic adjustment complete, Millia?”

Speak of the devil—while I was thinking about how to deal with Millia, she returned.

Fortunately, Millia shook her head.

“Not yet. But it will be soon.”

“…May I ask what kind of adjustment it is?”

“Are you curious?”

For some reason, Millia smiles brightly. I know this smile. It’s the kind people make when asked about a field they’re confident in, and they become unusually talkative.

It could be seen as cute, but also as filled with madness.

Swallowing dryly, I decided to open the gates of hell.

“Yes, I’m curious.”

Squirm!

With my answer, the gates of hell open. Black tentacles bloom like flowers behind Millia’s back.

For a moment my knees weakened, but I decided to stand firm.

Not yet. Not yet.

Since the adjustments aren’t complete, this must just be for show.

“Lug, you’re too weak.”

“…”

I never imagined the introduction would be a direct personal attack.

“And now you’re even weaker than before. You’ve become so fragile that a breeze could blow you away.”

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

That’s why I’m trapped here without even being able to resist.

Since she’s someone who doesn’t listen to reason, persuasion is impossible.

I miss the hero.

I miss Esmeralda.

“It’s the same this time. You were kidnapped. How can you be so calm about it?”

“…What?”

But what came out of Millia’s mouth was different from what I expected.

Not a personal attack or self-praise, but concern for me. Honestly, I had made the excuse of being kidnapped and imprisoned, but I never thought she would believe it without a shred of doubt.

Or rather, what happened afterward was so shocking that I had forgotten I even made such an excuse.

“You could have died.”

“N-no, that’s not true.”

“Lug, stop being so optimistic. People die easily.”

Millia seemed to understand that humans are fragile beings.

Like knowing exactly where to touch a delicately crafted glass artwork to shatter it.

As a magician and researcher, she knows well about human fragility.

“So I can’t feel at ease. You were safe this time, but…”

A gloomy expression.

Perhaps I had been thinking about Millia all wrong.

Come to think of it, while it’s true I couldn’t persuade her, she had never not cared for me.

Pure, devoted love.

That’s why she was keeping me locked up like this.

Because I was kidnapped. Because I said I was imprisoned.

Because she was worried.

“So Lug, stay here at least until you’re safe, until I don’t have to worry anymore. Then no one will be able to harm you.”

Because she feared I might die when out of her sight. I was the one who pulled the trigger on her terrible anxiety.

That’s why she imprisoned me. To prevent me from escaping. But she knew it wasn’t right.

Yet she couldn’t help it, because it was hard to control her anxiety.

“So this magic will become magic that you can use.”

She decided to find a way forward. Because she knew that simply keeping me locked up wasn’t right.

Millia stroked a tentacle that wriggled up beside her.

Though it looks a bit strange, it also resembled a pet.

“My ultimate goal is to make Lug strong enough to protect himself even when I’m not around.”

Millia smiled.

A faint smile bloomed over her usual expressionless face.

Her most natural smile.

With that smile, she said:

“You are mine. And I am yours. We will share everything.”

I felt guilty.

I had only seen one side of her and failed to believe in her love.

“When the adjustment is complete and quantum mechanics magic reaches its peak, I’ll understand the microscopic world and use quantum superposition to put these tentacles inside your body.”

Quantum mechanics magic?

Microscopic world??

Quantum superposition???

Tentacles inside my body…

“…What?”

I was tilting my head, not understanding what the earlier terms meant, when the last part snapped me back to attention.

“They’ll assimilate with the blood flowing through your veins, allowing you to tear your skin and bring out tentacles whenever needed. That’s the adjustment I’m working on.”

“Uh, that… what?”

“You know, Lug, you said it before. Don’t place too much meaning on a single body. That what makes you you is your ability to conflict, interact, and express emotions. So I decided not to dissolve you into tentacles.”

Let me correct myself.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in her love.

“So instead, I decided to dissolve the tentacles and put them inside your body.”

This was an issue of sensibility and madness, unrelated to her love.