episode_0065

Leone’s two assistants, Babetti and Gretchen.

The two, who had accompanied Isera as assistants on her business trip, encountered the disaster known as ‘demons’.

After graduation, both had experience being deployed to a disputed region with Kashmir, making them battle-hardened veterans in their own right.

In fact, even at this level, they were highly skilled in practical combat for students.

However, Deurosa and Haimon, whom Kardmos had dispatched, were quite high-ranking combatants among the demons.

And Antikrea, despite having poor combat power, possessed quite abundant practical experience, making the encounter with the demons a harsh ordeal for Babetti and Gretchen.

When they were with Isera, they could track through the Maugen Dorf Forest without much difficulty, taking the shortest route.

However, without Isera, who had cleared the path with her animalistic instincts and extensive combat experience, it was difficult for the still-novice assistants to get out of the forest.

“Gah…!!! Another damned trap.”

“Gretchen, watch out…! Dodge to the right!!!”

This was already the fifth time Antikrea’s magic traps, set up here and there, had been activated.

The traps were specifically designed to make them ‘lose their way’, inducing hallucinations, short periods of lethargy, or scrambling their sensory systems.

In addition, physical traps interspersed throughout continued to hinder their escape.

Of course, even though the assistants lacked some experience, they weren’t incompetent desk-bound types, so no serious injuries or fatal accidents occurred due to the traps.

But the problem was that their escape was being severely delayed in a forest where the magic communication devices were jammed.

“How much time has passed?”

“I don’t know. My sense of time, and the communication devices, are all jammed. Communication devices don’t usually work quickly in the Maugen Dorf Forest, but…”

Gretchen, who was speaking, was bleeding profusely from her knees and back.

Babetti tried to cast a healing spell on Gretchen, pulling up mana from her exhausted body, but Gretchen stopped her.

“Babetti. One of us has to get out of here first. If I’m completely immobilized, you have to escape. I’ll try my best to just not die. At least…it’s a relief that no monsters are in sight.”

“Just this once. Phew… Why is there a demon here who can fight Isera Professor-nim head-on?”

Babetti’s healing spell, faint but still maintaining a gentle vitality, infused Gretchen with healing power.

“Rosalie Professor-nim… I miss her so much. Just bear with it a little longer, Gretchen…!”

The two novice assistants steeled their resolve, but time, mercilessly, flowed by unchecked.

They finally managed to escape the forest only when it was almost dawn on Monday.

*

“Ras…thank you for today. Every time we meet, I’m always grateful, aren’t I?”

“What did I do? I just quietly followed you around today.”

Spending the whole day having fun, night fell in the blink of an eye.

Rose Lake, a quiet and serene cafe street on the outskirts of Delphi, a restaurant they entered on a whim without any prior research.

It was completely different from dates with Lizley, where he would have had to plan extensively at least three days in advance to properly appease her, and even then, she’d often find fault.

“You were quiet, but you still went along with it well. Honestly, I boasted a lot, but I wasn’t sure if you’d enjoy it… I’m a bit older than the other kids, after all, you see?”

Ms. Rosalie, looking a little shy while talking about her age, was incredibly cute.

Pisces and Irha are all cute too, but Ms. Rosalie’s cuteness has a slightly different feel.

Should I say Ms. Rosalie’s cuteness has a surprising quality? It’s precious because it appears occasionally, giving it a unique charm.

“Even if you speak as if you’re a grandmother, you’re just cute. Honestly, you just seem like an older sister, only a year or two older.”

“Older sister…! There was such a nice-sounding word in the world…”

She usually uses the honorific ‘Teacher-nim’ every time, but when he suddenly called her ‘older sister’ like this, she seemed very pleased.

Though it was dark and hard to see, Ms. Rosalie walked, looking only at her tiptoes, likely with a flushed face.

“Hehe… Your older sister has poor night vision, so she’s holding your arm tightly like this with Ras. Understand?”

“I know. For some reason, I like people with poor night vision.”

“I don’t know…”

Even though they had held hands and linked arms all day, it seemed she became shy again when they had time alone in a quiet place.

Thus, a regrettably short time passed, and it was time to part ways.

While he was escorting her to her dormitory, Ms. Rosalie suddenly seemed to remember something and took out her communication device.

“Hmm… But Isera is too quiet, no contact from her? Usually, by now, I’d have received two or three calls. Lately, it’s become a daily routine for her to send monitoring messages like ‘Is she with my little Ras?’ Hehe.”

“Oh my… ‘My little Ras’. It’s truly embarrassing every time she does that in front of other people.”

“Hehe~ Ras. Would you feel embarrassed and dislike it if your Teacher-nim did that?”

Ms. Rosalie asked him with a playful expression.

But honestly, even if Isera Professor-nim called me ‘My little Ras!’, it would just be embarrassing, not something I’d dislike.

Let alone if Ms. Rosalie did it, what could there possibly be to dislike?

“No? If Teacher-nim does it… well, it’s all good.”

When I answered with a grin, Ms. Rosalie was very pleased.

“As expected..! I’m way ahead of Isera.”

As always, her voice was so clear that her monologue was completely audible, but I pretended not to hear it.

“Anyway… nothing serious must have happened in the forest, right? Isera isn’t the type to get hurt in a place like that and come back.”

“Nothing will happen. It’s not a place where communication works well in the first place. Perhaps she’ll contact us tomorrow? Anyway… please go in and rest quickly. You must be tired…”

Ms. Rosalie rolled her eyes around, thinking about something, then suddenly burst into my arms for a farewell hug.

“Then, Ras, you go in and rest quickly too, okay? Promise to think about Teacher-nim a lot until you go to sleep tonight~”

“Alright. Then I’ll really go in now, Older Sister.”

“…!!!”

Since I’d been ambushed, I couldn’t lose, so I repaid her, then quickly turned around and dashed away.

Though I had better night vision than anyone else, for a moment, my face felt so hot that my vision narrowed.

Excitement truly is dangerous on a night path like this.

*

“Really, how can a man like you not reply until so late at night? Ras-gun… If you disappoint me like this, I can’t tolerate it either. Surely not…! The two of them aren’t already doing *that*…”

Marisa had thoroughly enjoyed dinner with her two cheerful and cute subordinate friends before parting ways and returning to her dormitory room.

As Marisa received treatment comparable to royalty, she used a very comfortable and spacious private room. The single room, which was usually lonely, didn’t feel empty today, perhaps because she had met with people.

It had been a very satisfying day… but Marisa was quite resentful of Ras for not replying until late at night.

“Ugh… Rosalie Professor-nim is a teacher, and you, Ras, are a student…! For you, who are still so young, to be doing such disgraceful, and also unhealthy things…”

A secret time just for the two handsome young people… However, Marisa was so naive that she had never even experienced novels dealing with romance between men and women.

Since her entire knowledge of such matters consisted only of shallow and fragmented information she had vaguely overheard, she couldn’t form any concrete imaginings.

Thrum thrum!!

Marisa’s magic device vibrated with a thrumming sound, and Marisa reflexively opened it.

[Oh, sorry. I finally have time to check now because of an appointment. I’ve roughly written the article for the school newspaper, but you seem good at writing, so please take a look at it tomorrow. Shall we meet around lunchtime in front of the fountain? We can grab a meal and discuss this and that.]

Marisa felt a strange sense of relief upon seeing Ras’s sincere reply, realizing he wasn’t with Rosalie, but…

‘It seems you have a bit of a playboy’s disposition. How demonic must your charm be for so many pretty girls to follow you one after another… I’m curious, so wouldn’t it be alright for me to watch your demonic charm from the side for a bit?’

Completely unaware that she was thinking such strange and peculiar thoughts, she was quickly typing out a reply to Ras.

Marisa was still unaware that she was grinning and raising the corners of her mouth herself.

*

“She’s not the type to not make contact or not answer like this…? It’s strange… At the latest, she should be back in Delphi by now… Could she really be this late?”

Monday dawn.

Isera, who hadn’t made or received contact all weekend, was now starting to worry Rosalie greatly.

Furthermore, since their dormitories were close, she had gone to check a few times, but there was no news.

As the Maugen Dorf Forest exploration and management business trip was a task Rosalie also regularly performed, she knew exactly its difficulty and required time.

Unless there was a sudden spell of bad weather, a business trip with only three people couldn’t possibly be delayed this much.

The forest was a place where, even if an entire year of Leone students were brought along, a round trip could be comfortably completed in a day and a half.

“Something’s off. Beyond Isera not answering her calls, there’s a subtle, unsettling feeling, a bad omen. It’s just like when I was in the war zone.”

It had been about five years since she had been fighting on the front lines of the hellish Azuldar and then came to the Academy.

Peace had dulled Rosalie slightly, but even so, she had spent more time in the war zone.

And compared to others who had also spent time in war zones, she had experienced far more intense periods.

“Should I just go to the Maugen Dorf Forest? My intuition… is pointing in a very bad direction…”

As she resolved to depart and rose from her seat, her magic device rang, and the awaited call came.

The caller was Babetti Bergen.

She was one of the assistants Rosalie herself taught and supervised.

[Rosalie Professor-nim. High-ranking demons were in the forest. Isera Professor-nim handled one demon, but its companions escaped somewhere. From the situation, it seems the remaining demon is buying time, but its objective is unclear. We barely managed to escape the forest, but we don’t know what to do. We will report as quickly as possible…]

The urgent message contained maddening news, and the communication was even cut off midway.

“Oh, no…..”

Rosalie furrowed her beautiful brows intensely as she received this bad news.

However, she was a seasoned soldier and had experienced real combat to the point of nausea, so she didn’t clumsily panic.

“Support to send to Isera, forming a pursuit team to track the remaining demons, and personnel to defend the Academy must also be left behind…”

Having organized her thoughts, Rosalie quickly began contacting everyone she could call immediately.

“I need to go to the Academy right away. First, I’ll organize a search party… By the way, why did the demons enter Delphi in the first place…?”

From the bustling Rosalie, there was no sign of her usual warm and affectionate healer persona.

*

“Finished?”

“Yes. So this is what it feels like to possess great power.”

Antikrea had completed the task of absorbing the mana from the ley lines, which she had extracted from various places while moving through the Maugen Dorf Forest.

For reference, the three demons had been roaming the forest for four days.

The demons had already been meticulously extracting mana from the ley lines throughout the Maugen Dorf Forest for several days before Isera came out for her dispatch mission.

Kardmos had generously provided top-grade magic crystal orbs, making it easy to extract and store the ley line power, which allowed the work to be completed quickly, and similarly, Antikrea was able to swiftly and accurately make the ley line mana her own.

“So now, are we attacking Leone Academy? I’ve been on escort duty for over a full day, and my body is itching for action.”

Given that dawn was breaking, the weekend must have passed, and it was likely Monday morning.

Haimon, who had a somewhat battle-maniacal side, was slightly excited at the thought of fighting the humans Sephiroth had highly praised for their combat skills.

Antikrea looked at Haimon, who was excited like a child, and let out a chuckle.

“Our numbers are few, so let’s push through quickly. Humans won’t even know we’re in Delphi anyway. Let’s just quickly kidnap that woman—Rosalie or Lowkick or whatever her name is—and escape to Azuldar as fast as possible. I don’t want to die a dog’s death in a place like this after finally becoming strong.”

“Unlike a coward, you’re surprisingly decisive, I like it. Yes… If we can just get our hands on that woman somehow, your cunning methods should allow us to escape. Let’s go then.”

“Hey, you should… use honorifics… with me…”

“What?”

“N-nothing. I just meant we should go quickly since there’s no time.”

In truth, Antikrea wanted to threaten him with ‘use honorifics with your superior,’ but it’s impossible to shed the years of being a thoroughly exploited pushover in an instant.

Even from her current position, having become stronger than Haimon, it was not easy to overcome long-standing trauma all at once.