That night, Riveria learned a great deal.
Watching Isagi summon one "final boss" after another, each one different, each carrying its own godlike menace, was an eye-opener in every sense.
As for the result.
Naturally, Ais was defeated.
The girl was, when it came down to it, only one person, while the things Isagi could call forth were endless. She had never had so much as a sliver of a chance.
So—
Deep night.
When Ais drifted awake, she caught sight of the scattered stars and the moon of late summer spilling in through the window.
It did not take long for the girl to notice the boy at her bedside—and, slumped over him in a thoroughly undignified heap, her "mother."
"…"
Ais pressed her lips together. Her feelings were tangled, but she could more or less guess what had happened.
The Nightmare from before, she no longer remembered.
Only a faint impression lingered: that she had slept for a very, very long time, and had dreamed of some enormously long stretch of the past. The missing memory made everything feel wrong to her, because before this she had always been able to recall what she dreamed.
That nightmare she had carried since childhood, the one that never left her. Her father, her mother, both swallowed by that vast blackness of the end…
"Ah!"
The Elf princess let out a small yelp before she could stop herself, then, cheeks coloring, scrambled up off Isagi with well-practiced speed.
She left the boy's shoulder as it was, damp where she had drooled on it. Riveria could hardly bring herself to wipe her own drool away right now.
Not with Ais watching!
"You're all right now, Ais."
"Mm."
"Good…"
"Did I sleep for a lot of days?"
So she had passed out after the battle?
All Ais truly remembered was the very end, the Corrupted Spirit throwing itself at her with reckless abandon, murmuring "Ailiya" over and over. Had they been close friends?
Sisters, even?
Did Spirits have such a thing as "family"?
So many questions, and no answers to be had. In the world as it stood now, forget Great Spirits, even an Intermediate Spirit like Yufi was a rare sight.
And that particular someone, who behaved exactly like a snot-nosed brat, was never going to answer a single question about Spirits.
"Ais, you're awake?!"
Isagi was the last to surface from the Nightmare.
He had burned through a great deal of Divine Power, which left him looking worn thin, but the moment he saw the golden-haired girl sitting up in bed, he brightened and hauled her straight to her feet.
"Let's go!"
"?"
The boy moved too fast, and the girl had no guard up at all.
And so.
Ais was towed along by Isagi, and not out the front door either. They sprang out through the window, golden wings and a light breeze carrying the two of them up into the night sky, out toward the fields beyond the city.
Which left only Riveria in the room, at a loss, her feelings a knot she could not untie, staring after the two shrinking figures.
A boy and a girl, tearing off in the middle of the night—to do what?!
Isagi wasn't the unreliable sort, granted, but her mind refused to settle!
That being the case.
Riveria gritted her teeth and made a very "bold" decision—
Isagi brought Ais down onto the grassland outside the city.
The place everyone knew well.
Their usual scuffles, and Lefiya's training whenever she wasn't allowed to use magic, all happened here.
No one could say how many times the little stand of trees in the distance had been flattened, or how many times it had grown back. Isagi and the girl in her nightclothes touched down safely, and then he looked at the golden-haired girl, whose face wore a blank, faintly bewildered expression.
And asked his question.
"Ais, can you still use that?"
"That?"
"Mm. That."
The [Wind of the End] was the Strength Ais could wield after taking in the Corrupted Spirit's power.
It had happened inside the Nightmare, yes, but in reality she ought to possess exactly the same Strength.
"I—"
She understood soon enough.
She had no memory of what had taken place in the Nightmare, yet that Black Wind felt as though it had already become instinct.
"[Sweep forth.]"
An entirely different chant activated the girl's innate enchantment magic, [Wind Spirit Dash].
And so.
Beneath the night sky, in the glow of the Magic Stone lantern he had produced, a thin strand of black wind surfaced around the girl.
"!!!"
Ais was plainly terrified.
In an instant the girl froze, eyes wide, the delicate color draining from her face. Her mouth fell open as if to scream, and her knees nearly gave out beneath her.
Of course she knew what this Black Wind was.
A single instant of the sensation told Ais everything, laid bare where this [Wind of the End] had come from.
So she was afraid.
It was the enormous terror branded into the deepest part of her from the beginning.
And then, in the trembling of her face and the clench of her teeth, what showed through was rage beyond words.
That, it seemed, made the Black Wind circling her "delighted" all over again.
Its speed leapt.
Round and round, round and round.
About to wrap the girl's body completely.
"Good, Ais. Control that Strength."
This was exactly what Isagi had come for.
If Ais could use the [Wind of the End], she would inevitably become far stronger than before. So let her learn it. Let her master it.
Strength had no right or wrong to it. What mattered, always, was the one who used it.
Why the Strength of the Corrupted Spirit should have given Ais a Wind of the End tied to the [Black Dragon] instead, he couldn't say.
Perhaps.
Perhaps the Corrupted Spirit was only a key.
What it had opened was a small door deep inside the girl that had always been shut fast.
After all, whether Corrupted Spirit or Black Dragon, both drew their essence from the Strength of the Dungeon. Maybe there was something they held in common.
"No… I can't…"
Ais was working, without thinking about it, to crush that Strength back down.
The reason was simple.
The [Wind of the End] had belonged to her from the start, which meant that across all those years, the girl had already sensed its presence in some dim, half-formed way.
But she had always ignored it.
The reason for that was simple too. If she used a "Monster's" Strength, wouldn't she become a "Monster" herself?
And more importantly.
Ais knew that this Black Wind was a Strength she could only summon once she saw other people as "Monsters" too.
Abstract as that sounded, the girl understood it perfectly well.
She had always had one great flaw.
And it was this.
Her skill, [Princess of Vengeance], only triggered when she faced Monsters, raising every one of her [Stats] across the board.
But what if the enemy was a "person"?
Then the skill simply would not activate. It made no difference whether the other party was a comrade, an adventurer of the city, or a member of a Dark Familia.
And going one step further.
What if the enemy was a "Monster wearing a human shape"?
Like the "monster-people" who had served under the Corrupted Spirit. Were they Monsters, or were they human?
What was she supposed to do if she ran into their like again?
In that case, was she to look at other people as Monsters as well?
Ais had never been willing to face that question.
She had no wish to be an adventurer, and she cared nothing for saving the world. Her one reason for growing stronger was [Vengeance].
Killing the villains of the Dark Familia was nothing to her. But regarding everyone else as Monsters, that she could not do.
And yet.
The mere fact that the Wind of the End existed at all already said something.
Deep down, the girl had always harbored a "fantasy" she refused to let herself remember.
And it was this.
What if the [Black Dragon] also wore "the shape of a human"?
Just like the monster-people.
It was hardly likely. Behemoth and Leviathan alike had been colossal beasts, unimaginably vast.
And in some of the deep mountain villages of the Beio Mountain Range, they still enshrined a "scale of the Black Dragon," treating it as a sacred relic that kept the village safe from Monster attacks.
That scale certainly existed. A single one was half the size of a grown person, which argued all the more that the [Black Dragon] had to be a Great Dragon.
But what if…
What if the Black Dragon truly wore a human shape.
That was the thought buried deepest in Ais, and to it, Isagi could actually give the girl an answer.
Because.
He had seen the [Black Dragon] himself.
There in the Dragon Valley. Borrowing the sight of the [Soul Teardrop], Isagi had already seen what lay within that valley, and what was sealed inside it, the last commission of the adventurers of this age, the target that had to be slain—
One-Eyed Black Dragon.
____
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