Even after four full years had passed, not the slightest hint of life had returned to this once-lush forest.
As far as the eye could see, gray-white, weathered dead trees stood like silent tombstones on the scorched, lifeless earth.
Even as they neared the edge of the wasteland, Elfman still kept his head lowered, his heavy footsteps dragging through the silence, as if he were still trapped in the memories from just now.
Mira, by contrast, walked lightly ahead of them.
She never looked back, clearly long since used to her little brother moping like this.
She led the two of them straight to the forest's outer edge, skillfully started up a magic-powered car that had already been parked there, and after unceremoniously stuffing them both into the back seat, floored it. The vehicle shot toward the nearest train station with a low growl from its magic engine.
"Why not just turn into your demon form and fly back?" Shane asked from the back seat, leaning back as he watched the dead trees slip past on either side. "Wouldn't using Satan Soul's wings be way more convenient?"
"That'd be way too flashy. There's no need for it."
Mira kept one hand on the wheel and lightly shook the high ponytail tied behind her head.
As she moved, a glimpse of her smooth white nape appeared between the strands of hair.
Only then did Shane suddenly notice it.
The delinquent girl who had once sworn up and down that she'd "never wear skirts again" was now wearing a long dress with a lace-up waist and cutout sides.
The fitted design perfectly lifted and framed her overly generous curves, while the cutouts at her waist starkly contrasted with her pale skin. She had lost some of that old, claw-bared ferocity and gained instead a striking, unmistakably feminine allure.
"Heh. Stunned speechless, aren't you?" Mira raised a brow proudly when she noticed him looking. "I'm past the childish age of being obsessed with weird outfits."
Her tone was light.
"As for you, after sleeping that long, your brain and life experience probably haven't grown at all. Mentally, you might even be younger than Wendy now."
"If you want, I can make a special exception and let you call me 'big sister.'"
"Oh? So in that case…"
Shane obediently pulled his gaze away and tested the waters.
"Then I guess those 'dark history' photos of yours that I kept are fine too, right? Perfect. The guild must've gotten plenty of newcomers in the last few years. Once we get back, I'll hand the photos around so everyone can admire Mira big sister's former glory."
He deliberately stressed the title.
"…"
The air in the car fell silent for a second.
Then Mira's composed expression cracked instantly.
She slapped the steering wheel in exasperation. "You bastard! Where the hell did you hide those negatives back then?"
At that moment, Elfman—who had been sunk in gloom in the back seat—seemed to get pulled back to reality by the noise.
He lifted his head and explained with utter sincerity, "Over the past few years, whenever Erza wasn't home, Sis would secretly sneak into your house."
"Oh?" Shane fought back a laugh and nodded gravely. "So someone really does care a lot about her image."
As for the fact that the girl had been illegally breaking into his house, he couldn't even be bothered to comment. After all, this was Mira they were talking about.
Still, he really was puzzled.
"You searched through everything for four whole years and still didn't find them?"
"Where exactly did you hide them?" Mira gritted out through her teeth. By all rights, she was the one who should've been the most frustrated.
"I tucked them behind the backing board of that photo frame Erza treasures so much."
Shane held his chin with one hand, sounding like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Come to think of it, that's the only group photo the three of us ever took together."
"Why the hell would you put something like that in the photo frame?" Mira's eyes widened.
Shane looked innocent, totally baffled by her sudden burst of anger.
"Because Erza really likes that photo. If it stayed in the frame, there was no way it'd get lost."
"Actually…" Elfman, once again fulfilling his role as observer, added helpfully, "every time Mira sneaked in, she'd secretly wipe down that frame with a cloth."
"I saw it myself. She even asked Erza for an identical copy of the photo and put it in her own room."
"Elfman! Stop saying pointless things!"
Mira's cheeks and ears flushed bright red in an instant.
Suddenly enlightened, Shane leaned back in his seat and said with obvious amusement, "Oho—so because you treasured that photo too much, you couldn't bear to mess with it, and over the last four years you never once had the heart to take the frame apart and check behind it?"
"N-None of your business!"
Completely exposed, Mira could only squeeze those three words out in embarrassment and rage.
The next second, she slammed more magic power into the vehicle.
The magic car let out a roar like a wild beast, its tires shrieking against the road as it rocketed forward.
For the rest of the trip, Mira stared fixedly ahead at absolutely nothing, as if there were something fascinating in the empty air, and kept her mouth stubbornly shut.
At that speed, the three of them arrived at the station very quickly.
The moment they boarded the train back to Magnolia, Mira dragged her little brother—who was already over two meters tall—to a different row of seats with a dark expression.
From the look of it, she was clearly about to teach him a very important lesson called Things You Should Never Say Even If It Kills You.
Shane couldn't be bothered to care about the bickering siblings. He casually took a window seat across from them.
As the train slowly pulled away, the scenery outside began rushing backward. The faint rocking of the carriage instead gave him a strange sense of peace he hadn't felt in a long time.
He slowly closed his eyes, drew his focus inward, and sank deep into his own consciousness.
Four years was simply too long.
He needed to confirm immediately just how much his body had improved after being refined for so long by the Class Cards during that endless sleep.
"And then there's that dragon tail from earlier. I need to figure out what the hell that was too."
With a thought, the pages of the Book of Heroic Spirits flipped open inside his consciousness with a rustle.
The instant his gaze swept across them, Shane's pupils contracted on reflex.
He discovered that all four of his physical attributes had finally broken through their old barrier and risen steadily from D+ to the rank of C.
That kind of breakthrough made sense. After all, four full years of accumulation had been sitting there. It was only natural.
But what truly delighted Shane was that two of his parameters—Endurance and Mana—had jumped an entire extra tier and now sat at C rank.
"This ridiculous rate of improvement… that has to be Lancer's doing."
Shane quickly pieced it together in his head.
Those two parameters for Lancer were both a terrifying A+, among the very highest of any Heroic Spirit.
During such a long stretch of "passive leveling," the intense tempering and assimilation caused by stats that high had clearly been much more effective for his body than the other attributes.
"If that's the case…"
Shane suddenly realized something extremely interesting.
If he switched to Assassin now, he would no longer just be "borrowing" power from a Heroic Spirit.
With his current physical stats alone, he could actually use his own base values to feed back into Jack's original C-rank parameters and raise them.
This was the first time that, in terms of pure physical ability, he had surpassed the Heroic Spirit itself.
"This feels… really strange."
Shane couldn't help clenching his fist tightly, mentally throwing a triumphant punch forward.
If this trend of refinement kept up, then reaching A+ across the board was only a matter of time.
When that day came, who would even need to release Noble Phantasms anymore? Flattening a mountain with a single punch might just become part of everyday life.
But after the brief burst of excitement, Shane quickly forced himself to calm down.
"Don't get carried away fantasizing about things that haven't happened yet. Deal with the current problem first."
He focused again.
That dragon tail that had shown up by accident earlier definitely had something to do with Lancer.
Sure enough.
He could clearly see that after four years of constant exposure to the atmosphere of the underworld, day and night without end, Lancer's fourth vision—the one that had been stuck for ages—had quietly filled its progress bar without him even noticing, and it was now giving off a faint glow.
Shane's heart skipped a beat, followed immediately by a wave of relief.
If he hadn't gotten the "save with bookmark" permission earlier, then the moment that progress bar filled completely, the Shane sleeping under the underworld soil would've been dragged into the forced unfolding of that vision without even knowing what happened.
At the time, he had been completely unconscious.
If it were only a matter of losing information, that would've been one thing.
But if he had gotten unlucky and been caught up in one of the real projections inside it, then things really would've become a disaster.