CH 43.2

YoukaiRaz9-12 minutes 17.05.2021

“Alexia! Roseline!”

Alexia turns in surprise. It’s the person she could never forget. The person she thought she would never see again, the one she loves, is here right before her eyes. Alexia lowers her staff, forgetting all about the princess of the enemy nation and the battlefield she is currently on.

“Tea… cher…?”

Chaos approaches Alexia until he’s within her reach. There are many things she wants to talk about, but she can’t get even a single word out. As she thinks of what she should say or what they’d talk about, words appear in her mind and then disappear. In the end, not knowing what to do, Alexia unconsciously reaches out to him.

“Ah…”

Alexia’s extended hand meets nothing but air. Without a word, Chaos ignores Alexia and walks over to Roseline. Stunned, Alexia withdraws her hand and follows Chaos with her eyes.

“Why…?” Roseline says with clear astonishment, as if she’s looking at something unbelievable. The boy who’s supposed to have run away is right here in front of her.

“Are you alright?” Chaos says, offering a hand to Roseline. Automatically, Roseline takes his hand. He pulls her to her feet, and as she stares at his face which is so close to her own, she realizes that it really is him.

Roseline doesn’t understand. She never thought the boy who was so distressed would ever return to this place. And even though Chaos was so distressed, right now, he looks the same as always to Roseline.

“Why did you come back?! This is a battlefield! If you return, you’ll be involved in this as well. You may have to fight your friend! How can you return to the battlefield with such nonchalance?!” Roseline says in an attempt to push him away. The opponent before her is Chaos’s acquaintance, and she can’t imagine that he’d be able to fight against her. That’s why she wanted to keep him away from this place no matter what it took.

“Honestly, I’m so scared that I still want to run away.”

“Then…!”

“But I couldn’t just let this happen. I don’t want to regret doing nothing.”

“…How dumb are you? You really are an idiot.”

Tears fall from Roseline’s eyes. Chaos scratches his cheek, looking embarrassed.

Meanwhile, Alexia watches this transpire, feeling lonely.

‘Yes, that’s the kind of person he was.’

Her teacher is a person who reaches out to others. Alexia can’t imagine how he ended up here, but she can infer that he knows Roseline and came running to her knowing the danger she was in.

Alexia feels a surge of nostalgia. However, that’s not all that’s in her heart.

‘Why couldn’t that be me?’

Why is the one she loves not by her side, but by Roseline’s?

Feelings of alienation, isolation, emptiness, envy, and jealousy. Despite how much she yearned for Chaos, despite how close he is, she’s come to understand that her hand could never reach him, no matter how much she wants to deny it. This infects her heart and consumes it.

Chaos looks at Alexia, and she stares back at him. Since it’s only been a month since they last met, naturally, Chaos’s appearance hasn’t changed much. His unique black hair. His unfriendly face. His body, more slender than the average man’s. All of these things are the same as before.

However, she can’t shake the feeling that something is off.

“Lady Alexia, long time no see.”

“Yes, it has been a while, Teacher.”

“I never thought we’d reunite like this.”

“…Yes, I didn’t want us to meet again in this manner either.”

From their conversation, Roseline finally realizes that their relationship is of teacher and student. People don’t usually have pupils at Chaos’s age, so she never considered that could be their relationship. Roseline doesn’t know very much about mages, but considering the fact that her own teachers were elderly, she thought it must be the same for mages.

One other reason she finds it difficult to believe that they’re student and teacher is the difference in their abilities. It’s true that Chaos is a highly skilled mage. However, even Roseline, who’s an amateur when it comes to fighting, can see that he’s clearly not on Alexia’s level. That’s how extreme the difference between them is. Students growing to be more skilled than their teachers does happen often. However, this big of a difference would be unprecedented.

“Lady Alexia, the vampires are behind this war. So please, stop this fight.”

“Teacher, I would like you to tell me something first,” Alexia asks, interrupting Chaos. “Do you no longer have your staff? The staff with the dragon soul that you had made when we were in a party together.”

“It’s…”

Roseline makes a puzzled expression, seeing how Chaos is clearly hesitating to say it. Normally, it would be difficult to imagine that anyone would hesitate to say where their staff is.

Dragon souls are well known as first-rate items. If she saw a staff with a treasure like that on it, she would recognize it immediately. However, Roseline doesn’t remember Chaos ever holding such a staff.

Although weapons aren’t things that can be changed out so frequently, there is a limit to its use. Even a valuable staff containing a treasure like a dragon soul will eventually wear out. It’s not uncommon to exchange it for a new one. But if he bought a new staff, then that makes it all the more difficult for Roseline to think of a reason why he’s hesitating to say it.

“I lost it,” Chaos says, answering Alexia’s question with just those few words.

Alexia’s expression is as serious as can be, so even as an outsider, Roseline can guess how important it was to them. Roseline thinks it might have even been a gift from her. Since Alexia is a noble, perhaps she bought it for Chaos, who is a commoner. But could he really have lost something that meant so much to him?

Alexia has complicated feelings about it. It pains her that the matching staves they made no longer exist. And since he said he lost it, the thought that the staff didn’t mean that much to him makes her feel miserable.

However, she can’t deny the possibility that Chaos replaced his staff after it wore out. Alexia knows that he replaced his staff several times while they were in a party together.

However, his response was that he ‘lost it’. The fact that he didn’t say ‘replaced it’ or ‘discarded it’, but ‘lost it’ is what bothers her.

Chaos, who works as an adventurer, would never lose the staff that is his weapon. Particularly since he always had it on hand, though Alexia never could never tell where he was carrying it. As long as he didn’t let go of it of his own will, she can’t imagine that he would lose it.

Then, Alexia mentions the part that feels out of place to her more than all else.

“…Then, how are both of your eyes black? The colors of your eyes were black and blue.”

His black eyes. That’s what felt off about Chaos.

Alexia would never mistake the appearance of the person she’s in love with. In the time she spent together with her teacher, he had heterochromatic black and blue eyes.

However, the Chaos before her has two black eyes. It would be impossible for his eye color to change from blue to black.

“That’s…” Chaos hesitates again, trailing off. He contemplates something, as if choosing his words. That brief moment leads Alexia from suspicion to conviction.

“You aren’t Teacher, are you?”

“Lady Alexia? What exactly do you mean by that?”

“I’m asking you if you’re human.”

“…Not human? Why do you say that?”

“Then why is your eye color different?!”

Chaos desperately defends himself, but he doesn’t explain the reason why his eye color changed. Even Roseline, who is the enemy, is suspicious of Chaos’s panicked behavior. To Alexia, it only seems as if he can’t think of a decent excuse.

There are vampires in this land. Alexia read in a book that vampires can turn humans into their underlings. When a human becomes a vampire, their body acquires certain characteristics. For example, fangs. It’s not a trait that can be quickly noticed if they don’t open their mouth wide enough, but when a person becomes an underling, some sort of sign will appear on their body. In fact, by the time they arrived in Clermont, they encountered many such underlings.

Perhaps, if he became the underling of a different monster… For example, one that changes the eye color of humans become their underlings…

…Then that means the thing in front of her that looks like her teacher may, in fact, be a monster.

She thought it was only vampires that were acting in the shadows, but the monsters that attacked Brandenburg were griffins and an unknown monster. She can’t deny the possibility that there are other monsters involved.

Chaos is strong. But if his opponent was a monster like the scheming vampires, he may not stand a chance with pure strength alone. It’s possible that they took advantage of his kindness and led him into a trap.

If this body really is her teacher’s and he’s become some monster’s underling, then there’s no way for him to return to being human.

All emotion disappears from Alexia’s face. The sense of alienation, isolation, emptiness, envy, and jealousy, all the negative emotions consuming Alexia’s heart all disappear. And not just the negative emotions. Her feelings towards Chaos also vanish.

“Be quiet.”

“Lady Alexia?”

“I told you to be quiet,” Alexia, her face lowered, barks in a low voice full of resentment that Chaos would never expect to be the voice of a younger girl. Chaos reflexively called her name when he noticed her change in appearance, but he’s shocked when he sees her lift her head.

Alexia is crying. Not only that, he sees flames of intense hatred in her eyes. Those eyes are glaring at Chaos as if piercing him.

“I won’t forgive you.”

The hole that suddenly opened up in Alexia’s heart fills with sorrow, rage, and hatred.

She won’t forgive him. She won’t allow the existence of a monster with her teacher’s appearance. To her, it’s an unforgivable sin.

Alexia points her staff at the enemy with the appearance of her beloved teacher.

“I will never forgive you! I will defeat you with everything I have!”