Chapter 120
“Please take us with you too!”
“……?”
Teiti tilted his head with a puzzled expression.
What are these insignificant humans saying right now?
Teiti muttered without realizing it.
“Take you with me? You guys?”
“Yes!”
The children shouted with one voice and one mind.
“Where to?”
“To where the black mages are right now!”
“…….”
Teiti clutched his forehead and staggered slightly.
The ones who had just been beaten by black magic and collapsed—what? They want to be taken to where black mages are scattered? Have they lost their minds?
“Ah! It’s not that we’re going to fight the black mages ourselves. We just want to go and lend a hand!”
Bunny waved her hands and shouted.
“You said explosions were heard in the village, right? Then it must be chaos there. Shouldn’t we at least go help?”
“It looked like there was fire too?”
“Daphne went too, so why can’t we go?”
Teiti opened and closed his mouth.
No, you guys shouldn’t go…… Your legs are still shaking like crazy even now……
“Hurry! Let’s go now! We’ll follow behind!”
“Come on!”
Teiti, standing amid the pestering children, took a deep breath and pressed his forehead.
So annoying, so annoying.
A nauseating sensation surged up, making the back of his neck feel cold.
“Hey. You lot.”
Teiti looked down at the children with colder eyes than ever before.
“If I hadn’t been here just now, you all would have died. That building was completely filled with black magic. Even if you didn’t take a direct hit, your bodies are sufficiently poisoned by it. You need to lie down quietly for three or four days just to recover, and what? You’re going to help someone?”
He judged that the reason for his irritation was because these humans he had graciously saved were now recklessly rushing toward danger.
Not because he was worried about the children or anything like that—he was annoyed because it felt like they were carelessly throwing away the lives he had gone out of his way to save.
That’s what he thought.
“Don’t recklessly throw away the lives this body specially spared. Got it?”
At Teiti’s sharp tone, the children shrank back a little, but they still didn’t retreat.
Among them, Morris stepped forward the most and spoke.
“Still, we didn’t die. We’re alive.”
Cilia followed right after.
“There might be people dying there. Just like sir Teiti saved us without asking for anything in return, we want to save them too. Even if we don’t have great power like sir Teiti , we can still help.”
Bunny also raised her hand and said,
“And this academy is for training future warriors, right? I don’t think a warrior would just stand by and pretend not to see something like this…….”
Teiti let out a hollow laugh.
Throwing away your own lives to save someone?
Sacrificing yourselves nobly to save others while you die?
How foolish!
“They’re complete strangers to you anyway—so what changes if you don’t save them?”
Teiti genuinely couldn’t understand.
Complete strangers.
People you would never have met in your lifetime anyway.
What good would come from saving them in your barely functional state?
“And if they die from something like this, they’re insignificant lives anyway—so is there really a need to save them? What’s the reason for trying to save those kinds of peop—”
“Sir Teiti?”
It was Shio who stopped Teiti from rambling on.
Shio wore the same calm smile as always, but the slight trembling at the corners of his eyes made it look like he was suppressing his emotions.
Shio grabbed Teiti’s arm.
“Let’s go for now. It’s better to move quickly. Isn’t it a waste of time to stay here arguing?”
“……Yeah. Got it.”
Teiti swept his gaze over the children once, then muttered curses under his breath and turned to run back.
The children’s shoulders slumped.
They looked like they didn’t understand why Teiti had scolded them.
“And you all…….”
Shio approached the dejected children.
He erased the expression he had shown Teiti and, with a perfectly bright smile, spread both palms wide.
Immediately, bubbles rose with a pop pop in the air, and inside the bubbles, white butterflies fluttered their wings.
The white butterflies burst out of the bubbles and circled around the children.
A cool, refreshing sensation swept over their bodies.
“I’ve cast a pain-relief spell and a defensive spell. You should be able to endure without issue for about an hour. But you must get proper treatment when you come back. Got it?”
The children moved their limbs—now free of pain—and opened their eyes wide.
“Yes! Thank you!”
Then they smiled brightly and hopped around.
“Wow, for real. It doesn’t hurt at all.”
“Hey hey. Hit me. Let me see if it hurts or not—ow! You crazy bastard, why hit so hard!”
Shio looked down at the children and held a gentle, sincere smile.
The children hit by black magic had truly almost died.
Afterward, they might fear death and pull back.
But instead of that, the children thought first about saving someone else.
-Just like sir Teiti saved us without asking for anything in return, we want to save them too.
Such beautiful words.
Heartwarming words as well.
“There shouldn’t be any reason behind the act of wanting to save people.”
Shio muttered while looking up at the dark night sky.
“So we must eliminate those who created this situation in the first place—those who try to kill people.”
His hands clasped behind his back clenched tightly.
***
Red flames blazed within Daphne’s light green pupils.
The writhing flames seemed intent on completely consuming both of Daphne’s eyes as they grew larger.
“Kyaa! Aaaah!”
“S-save me! There’s someone here!”
“Father! Father!”
Daphne looked down at the village turned into pandemonium and opened and closed her mouth.
Then she gasped for breath upon seeing the ‘sacrifice mark’ engraved on the village ground—on the earth itself.
The black mages, those lunatics, had finally done it.
They were trying to use an entire village as a sacrifice.
To increase their own power.
“These insane humans……!”
A house collapsed with a crash.
The cries and screams of those trapped beneath the buildings echoed.
Shouts begging for help, cries saying “I’m here, save me,” and desperate pleas of “At least you run away” rang out one after another.
How laughable.
Saving a single human is so incredibly difficult,
yet killing dozens of humans is this easy.
Laughable.
So laughable it makes her furious.
Daphne stomped her foot.
Kuuuung!
The ground shook as if an earthquake had struck.
The panicked people froze in place at the sudden tremor, and in that brief moment, Daphne observed and pinpointed the locations of the black mages.
Swoosh!
Dozens more claw-shaped whips extended from behind Daphne.
If it had been before, she might have teased the black mages by calling them lunchboxes, but not now.
She absolutely could not.
The black mages were too vile and wicked to even be treated as a joke.
“Mom! Mom! It hurts!”
“Save me, Dad!”
If Daphne hadn’t come here, those children too would have all died and become sacrifices.
What crime had they committed?
Daphne clenched her fists tightly.
“I will not let you die peacefully……!”
Right at the moment when Daphne’s two eyes turned blazing red—
“Huh? Huuuh?”
A high-pitched voice rang out directly above Daphne’s head.
When she looked up, a girl with sky-blue hair tied in twin braids was floating there.
“You’re Daphne, right? It’s you, isn’t it?”
The girl smiled widely and reached out toward Daphne.
“Wow! I finally found you!”
Crackle!
BOOOOM!
Lightning struck right above Daphne’s head.
