“Yeaaaaah!” The young mages cried in triumph.
The side of the living hadn’t suffered a single casualty against the demon army, which now lay annihilated. The second battle for Greer had ended with a perfect victory for the mortal side.
We now turn back the clock a little.
“In the name of Derry, Chairman of the Magic Council, I declare Red One! All combatants to battle stations! All civilians take shelter at the academy!”
As Derry’s voice echoed across Greer, the citizens staring dumbfounded at the red sky came to their senses. Perhaps thanks to long years of drilling, or because most of the current generation only knew of the red sky and great war through history books, people started evacuating toward the academy without falling into extreme panic. Of course, Franz and his friends were among the people evacuating, so they also ran toward the academy alongside other citizens.
Something’s strange. Connie entertained certain doubts as he evacuated. Although she wasn’t in this city right now, Lara was supposed to dwell within the abyss of magic, which humanity couldn’t comprehend, so it was inconceivable that she wouldn’t notice the Great Demon King’s revival. Yet the sky was indeed red.
“What’s going on?!”
“I have no clue!”
Emmeline and Hagen kept running, simply confused about the color of the sky above.
“This way! Here!” Franz was the only one among them who chose the right answer for this situation instead of wondering about it. It wasn’t the optimal solution for himself, but for his friends. Franz led them to a small, deserted weapons store, the owner of which had already run away.
“Hey, Franz?!”
“The academy is where it’s safe!”
“Don’t worry about it! I just have the feeling that this way’s better!”
Franz rushed into the shop, forcibly dragging the confused Hagen, Emmeline, and Connie with him. Since magic was so prevalent in this city, business wasn’t going particularly well for this store, and its selection wasn’t that impressive. Thinking about it logically, it would be much safer to flee to the academy, which had many professors and functioned as a last bastion. However, the fact that there were so many people there was also a problem. Franz was doing this to protect secrets that must never come out. Not his own secrets, though; Franz didn’t believe he had any secrets of his own, and in truth he actually didn’t have any hidden side to him; he was just a boy loved by fate a little. But there was Emmeline, who was harboring a secret she didn’t even know herself, as well as...
On a different topic, Udo, who’d mastered astrology and alchemy despite living in isolation, could easily be called a genius. That was why no one would have imagined that he’d succeeded in the creation of artificial life-forms identical to humans, to the point that not even Falke and Agnes had noticed.
“Ugh!” Emmeline, groaning in pain, held Franz down and placed a shining finger at his neck.
“What are you doing, Emmeline?!” Neither Hagen, Franz, nor even Connie could react to the unexpected development in time.
“D-Don’t move! Argh!” Emmeline shouted at the others. Judging from the look of complete anguish on her face, it was clear that she wasn’t in control of her own body.
I’d need to take a sword from one of the shelves, stop Emmeline’s magic without killing her, and rescue Franz. That would be difficult... Unfortunately, Connie didn’t have the skill to pull that off.
“Here you are.” Four robust men appeared at the entrance of the weapons store that had suddenly turned into a battlefield. They all had identical blank faces, like expressionless quadruplets, which could give some people the impression that they were actually golems.
“You’re the direct descendant of Arzyna’s royalty, right? Come with us.” The men weren’t looking at Connie or Emmeline, and certainly not Franz, who had no secrets. Their eyes were fixed at Hagen, who was now white as a sheet and had tried to change the topic whenever the Arzyna Kingdom came up in conversation.
Hagen Arzyna was a direct descendant of the Arzyna royal family, which had been driven out of the kingdom during the great war, and was the youngest of the family who’d tried to hide his identity and fade into history.
“If you don’t come with us, your friends’ lives are forfeit. We have command of Number Six,” one of the men told Hagen.
“N-Number Six?” Emmeline stuttered.
“That’s right. You’re Number Six, created by Master Udo. Don’t you remember?”
“My mentor?” Emmeline was confused, with no idea what the man meant, and her expression remained one of anguish.
She’d been born and raised in isolation, so there were many things she lacked real experience with. As a result, she somewhat lacked any idea of what she should do, and she was also unaware of how inexperienced she truly was. Udo was the one responsible for that: In his senility, he’d judged that real experience wasn’t necessary for Emmeline and had abandoned her. With no destination and no clue, Emmeline had followed the idea that magic was magnificent and knocked on the door of the Magic Academy. There, she’d been treated as a scholarship student and had her tuition waived, partly because letting her roam free would be dangerous, and she had stayed there ever since.
But that was only natural. Although she possessed advanced computational abilities for magic as the result of Udo’s long and careful research, she was nothing more than a prototype already discarded; an experimental artificial human now needed once more.
“What do you intend to make me do? Do you even understand the current situation?” Hagen asked.
“We need you, the direct descendant of the royal family, along with Number Six, in order to completely unlock the treasured article’s functions. What is happening at the moment is unrelated to the orders we have been given. I will say it again: If you do not come with us, your friends’ lives are forfeit,” one of the Hounds—specially made artificial humans who had been tracking Hagen using the blood and smell of the current King of Arzyna—replied indifferently, reissuing their ultimatum.
Instead of manipulating Emmeline from the start to have her restrain Hagen, the Hounds were trying to make use of the friendship they shared. This stemmed from Udo’s hidden obsession, but that was irrelevant here.
“Well?” Manipulated by the Hound’s voice, Emmeline took a step forward with the restrained Franz in order to press Hagen to make his decision.
Here stood the direct descendant of the rulers of a hopeless country that was already completely done for, and an artificial human who followed the orders of her creator. There was no way these secrets could be allowed to be brought to light. If the truth came out, Hagen would be involved with a country that was effectively finished, while Emmeline might even be disposed of, in the worst-case scenario. Maybe that was why Franz had been shown the way to this deserted place, where he could resolve everything with his friends.
But what followed from that point on was ultimately a choice made by one person’s resolve. Thanks to Emmeline’s step forward, Franz could reach a secondhand sword left careless lying on a shelf.
“We’re buddies because we’re prepared to die for each otheeer!” Everything revolved abnormally around Franz, who let out a battle cry. This was similar to the miracle that the Hero—who was currently supposed to be in seclusion on some mountain—had caused seventy years ago through his own determination.
When Emmeline heard Franz’s shout, she regained control of her body, albeit for only a moment, which created a small opening where she wouldn’t fire her magic.
As an aside, there were actually quite a few swords that Ferd the Hero had imbued with light and thrown as antiair weapons during the great war. In the chaos of the battlefield, they’d been recovered as ordinary sword, passed on to other people, and sold as secondhand weapons after the war. In particular, the swords that the fully awakened Ferd had imbued with light even once during the latter half of the war had somehow not degraded over time, and they were still in good condition even seventy years after the end of the war.