“Lefiya!!!”
✦ ✦ ✦
With a howl of magic, the barrier of ice shattered.
“?!”
Stunned, Lefiya and the monsters turned to the west.
At the foot of the Wall of Sorrows, glimmering diamond dust and balls of electricity scattered as the battered and injured 7th Squad appeared.
There was no way it should have broken. It should have been impossible.
Students shouldn’t have been able to shatter the ice barrier that she had built.
They must have fired it—Nano’s magic cannon.
Ignoring the obvious risk, they unleashed her lightning multiple times at close range to break the barrier from inside.
“Why…?”
Her sword and song both stopped as she watched, dumbfounded, but they didn’t give her a chance to finish as they rushed over.
“To help you, obviously!”
Even as blood poured from open wounds burned all over their scorched bodies, the 7th Squad charged through the monsters surrounding Lefiya. They had been focused entirely on her so they were caught completely off guard with their backs exposed.
“What are you doing? What are you getting so smug about? If you’re gonna scold me, then don’t try and join the dead yourself!”
Luke roared as he slashed into the wall of monsters.
“Did you not teach us that adventurers help each other?!”
“You said yourself that the Dungeon is not something to face alone!”
Miliria nocked an arrow, and Cole thrust his knives into the monsters, pleading with her.
“No! Don’t go off alone! Don’t leave us behind! We don’t want to be bystanders! Let us fight with you!”
Nano was wobbly as she ran over, scraping the bottom of the barrel while shouting tearfully.
They faced Lefiya with her own words. Her own teachings that she had thought up and used to guide them. The true and honest lessons she had taught them were now coming right back to her.
As she stood there dumbfounded, those words became a mirror.
“Listen to us! I wanted to save people! I got full of myself because of that brash sense of duty!”
His gray hair swaying, Luke charged Goliath alone.
He drew the furious giant’s attention to himself, his hands clenching his sword and trembling from the pressure, even as he turned his thoughts into words and roared for Lefiya’s sake.
“But now I look up to them! To adventurers! To you!”
Lefiya’s hands quivered.
Her heart was composing a single melody.
“I don’t want to just be protected!!!”
He was a reflection of the old Lefiya.
Weak, naive, and a crybaby, but still chasing after her dreams.
The starting point for Lefiya Viridis, who experienced failure, fell countless times, but still refused to stop aspiring for more.
“Where are you looking, Lefiya?! Who are you looking at?!”
Her disheveled strawberry blond hair swayed as Nano moved through the path Miliria and Cole had opened for her. She could barely walk and every breath was a struggle, but her eyes were focused on Lefiya as monsters’ howls rang out all around her.
“I’m scared! Even though you’re you, sometimes you turn into someone else! You seem like you might go someplace far away, and it’s so scary!”
Frozen, unable to move, she stopped right in front of Lefiya and shouted:
“Don’t look at someone who isn’t here! Look at us, Lefiya!!!”
Nano did not even reflect Lefiya’s past self—she looked just like Filvis. Lefiya could only look on in shock.
A false white elf, chasing after a phantom, wearing her skin, putting on a mask of her face.
The images in those two mirrors forced Lefiya to realize everything.
Those simple, polished mirrors hit Lefiya with the truth.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Lefiya is Lefiya!”
Alisa shouted.
Even if they were the words of a god, she rejected them for her friend and did all she could to hold onto that bond.
“She’s kinder than anyone, willing to be hurt for others, to cry for them! No matter how talented or how clumsy she is, she’s honest! She can’t be anyone else!”
Tears fell from her eyes, glimmering with her feelings for her friend.
“Yes. That is correct, Alisa. No matter what path she might follow, no matter the mask she might wear, the result will be nothing more than a twisted thing. It is an end for the still living that is more gruesome, more pitiful than clinging to a rotting corpse.”
As Alisa leaned forward emphatically, Balder agreed with a sad smile.
Distressed for the child and student who was even now lost, he raised his face, turning his thoughts to her.
“She cannot become anyone other than Lefiya.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“But still, as much as she might attempt to stop being herself, Lefiya cannot be Filvis Challia.”
Riveria’s answer, the same as that of a certain god of light, was carried by the wind as she, along with Loki, looked to the Dungeon, where the girl was fighting.
“The current Lefiya will arrive at a single result. However, that is nothing more than self-satisfaction. A contradiction will inevitably arise, and she will self-destruct. The answer is obvious.”
That was what made her different from Aiz.
Aiz was undeniably unsteady. But she was not trying to become someone else. She was simply seeking the strength she needed to achieve her own goal. Unlike Aiz, in chasing someone else’s phantom, Lefiya was attempting to obliterate herself.
“That’s right. I bet Lefiya’s got a contradiction brewin’ in herself right now. And now that she has to look into the mirror of those students of hers, she’s been hit with somethin’ she can’t untangle.”
That was the reason why Loki had sent Lefiya as a recruiter and Balder had placed her with the 7th Squad. Knowing she would try to be honest and proper when facing the students, they wanted her to notice the contradiction building in her own self. To realize her misguided path as she became aware of the truth.
“A teacher is a person who guides students while at the same time being taught by them.”
To borrow Leon’s words, that was the crux of the matter. Lefiya needed to become a teacher capable of understanding what was right instead of a student who could continue onward even as she committed to making a mistake.
“Notice, Lefiya!” Alisa shouted out the window.
“Remember, Lefiya,” Riveria called while looking at the labyrinth.
“Reclaim yourself, Lefiya,” Balder declared, his eyes still closed.
“Mm, just a bit more, Lefiya,” Loki said as she opened her eyes to the shifting breeze.
✦ ✦ ✦
““““You are not anyone other than Lefiya Viridis.””””
✦ ✦ ✦
In different places, from various perspectives, four voices overlapped.
Inside a labyrinth where anyone would continue to wander lost, Lefiya heard a throbbing sound.
“I’m begging you, Lefiya!”
“Please!”
Luke ran up Goliath’s arm, losing his footing as the arm swung. He landed hard on his back but thrust his sword into the ground and stood back up.
Nano cried, dropping her wand and gripping Lefiya’s battered shoulders as she stood in front of her.