novelraw Chapter 155 : Chapter 155
Chapter 155 : Chapter 155
155
A massive Ogre wandered through the ruined city, drool dripping from its jaws.
—Grrr.
A low growl escaped its mouth along with thick, dark smoke.
Its saliva was thickly mixed with what appeared to be human blood.
That meant it had already slaughtered humans elsewhere.
Its nose twitched incessantly as it drew in the air.
The smell of ash from everything burned down.
Dust from collapsed, aging buildings.
And amid the scent of pain left behind by people who had fled in haste—
There was a faint but unmistakably fresh scent of flesh.
—GRAAAGH!
At last, the Ogre lifted the remains of a collapsed building.
A single girl was hiding beneath it.
“U-uh… uh……”
The emaciated girl could not even form proper words as the shadow loomed over her.
Her right leg was injured, leaving her unable to walk properly.
Her family—and everyone else—had abandoned her and fled.
She had braced herself for death, but when she actually came face to face with a monster, even breathing became difficult.
—Hrrng.
Seeing the terrified girl, the Ogre smacked its lips in satisfaction.
Human flesh was fine, but a true delicacy was fear itself.
The Ogre deliberately approached her slowly, savoring the scent.
Spot—
That was her last memory.
The Ogre’s neck slid cleanly from its body.
The creature staggered forward two steps in the direction it had been moving, then collapsed.
It fell with a heavy thud, as if about to crush the girl beneath it—
Yet not a single drop of blood or entrails splattered onto her.
Someone was standing there.
“G-gh……”
Perhaps because all the tension had suddenly released, pain surged through every muscle in her body.
A languid drowsiness.
A sense of total exhaustion.
It felt as though if she collapsed and closed her eyes now, she would fall into an eternal sleep.
“Hey.”
But she could not fall asleep.
The person standing before her grabbed her shoulders and pulled her upright.
The grip was strong enough to cause a dull ache.
Yet sharper than the pain was the woman’s voice—and her gaze.
Her fading consciousness jolted awake in alarm.
“Have you seen my Teacher?”
“I-Teacher?”
Who was she even talking about?
She wanted to ask, but no words came out.
Those unblinking eyes were staring straight at her.
The focus of the gaze was strangely off, as though the woman was looking at her without truly seeing anything.
It was a different kind of fear than when she had locked eyes with the Ogre.
“N-no. I haven’t.”
“Really? You really haven’t seen him? Huh? You haven’t seen him alive, and you haven’t seen him dead either. I mean, there is no way he is dead, but anyway, you said you did not see him, so you have to take responsibility for that statement, okay?”
The girl, unable to understand what was being said, nodded frantically.
Rozalin stared at her for a long moment, then slowly turned away.
“Right. If there were someone like you here, he would never have left you behind.”
She was like a storm.
Even as the woman who had saved her walked away without another word, the girl could not speak.
An instinct screamed that if she tried to stop her, she might die.
Not long after Rozalin vanished, people came rushing in.
A rescue team.
“Are you all right?”
“Y-yes. Yes.”
The girl did not cry.
She did not feel relief.
What she had witnessed was too shocking.
“It is all right.”
“Good… let us go.”
The rescue team seemed to believe she had fallen into despair after enduring extreme circumstances.
With solemn, sorrowful expressions, they carried her away.
In her fading vision, only the uniform Rozalin had been wearing remained like an afterimage.
‘That uniform… where was it from?’
It was white, like the petals of the Akarind Tree.
Meanwhile, Rozalin continued to wander the Kingdom of Namress.
She gnawed relentlessly at one fingernail, her unstable gaze obsessively scouring everything around her.
This was a large-scale operation to eliminate monsters spread throughout an entire kingdom.
Under normal circumstances, such an operation would have moved under Rozalin’s command.
Yet with Rozalin roaming like this, command had fallen jointly to Viscount Welfes of the Namress royal court and Hati.
Ironically, Rozalin was the one who found the most survivors.
Her obsessive gaze swept over ruins, corpses, and the living alike.
That was why a dedicated rescue team followed behind her.
One of those rescuers cautiously approached her.
“……You need to rest.”
“No. I do not know where my Teacher is.”
“You have not slept for four days and nights. You have not eaten anything, either.”
“No. My Teacher has not eaten, either.”
“If you keep going like this, you will die.”
“No. My Teacher will die—”
Rozalin froze.
Only then did she realize what she had almost said.
Her gaze turned toward the rescuer who had tried to stop her.
It was deep and sharp, gleaming like the eyes of a feral beast.
The rescuer sucked in a sharp breath, but still swallowed and spoke.
He had already learned how to deal with this situation after seeing it several times.
“You have to meet your Teacher.”
“……”
“If you become this worn down, your Teacher will not like it.”
“……”
Rozalin did not respond further, but she also stopped wandering aimlessly.
She simply dropped where she stood and stared blankly up at the sky.
The rescuer quickly gestured to others, and food was brought to her.
A sandwich that could be eaten easily.
And warm soup.
“……”
Rozalin ate in silence.
She looked no different from a soldier on a battlefield.
No—her state was worse.
Those soldiers at least had the justification of fighting for their country and people.
This was like searching for a missing person after a flood or fire—an endless, uncertain wait.
‘He is dead.’
‘No. He is my Teacher.’
‘Then why did you let him go alone?’
‘The Inquisitor went with him.’
‘You know better than anyone how terrifying demons are.’
Countless voices clashed inside her head, each one stabbing at her.
‘Damn it.’
The bread in her mouth felt like chewing rubber.
Similar scenes were unfolding across the battlefield.
Pan. Bridget. Eleveth. Hati.
Everyone directly or indirectly connected to Teacher Cassian scoured the Kingdom of Namress in a daze.
As a result, countless survivors were being rescued—but with every monster that fell, their minds were being worn away.
If only there were even a single clue.
It was then—
—KIIIEEE!
A long, piercing cry echoed through the sky.
The cry of a griffon.
The rescuers frowned.
“A flying monster? Did that ocean-hole thing spit out something that awful, too?”
Until now, all the monsters had been ground-bound.
A flying beast—and a high-grade one like a griffon at that—was horrifying.
“A griffon?”
Rozalin’s reaction was different.
In her previous life, Ocean Hall had never released flying monsters.
Which meant that the griffon in the sky was highly likely to be the one that had belonged to the Inquisitor who had gone with her Teacher.
She looked around.
Beyond the cold winter sky, far in the distance, a single dot was visible.
She narrowed her eyes, focusing on that faint speck within the sunlight.
A griffon was approaching.
There was someone sitting atop it.
Even from afar, where the figure was no larger than a finger joint, she knew.
Not particularly tall.
A gentle, unassuming appearance.
Someone who looked more like a fragile scholar than a sword Teacher.
Black hair tinged with gold by the sunlight, and pale blue eyes.
‘Ah…….’
Tears welled up before she realized it.
The hope of humanity.
The father of all swordsmanship knowledge.
The swordsmanship Teacher of Akarind.
My Teacher.
“Teacher!”
“Rozalin!”
As the griffon landed, Cassian leapt down.
At that exact moment, Rozalin charged like a tackle, knocking him over.
A choking sound escaped him, but she did not care.
She buried her head in his chest and breathed quietly.
Where had he been?
Why had he not contacted them?
How had Ocean Hall been dealt with?
What was this griffon?
Was his body all right?
Was he injured?
Why had he disappeared like this?
Did he not miss his students?
Did he know how much worry he had caused?
Did he understand what would happen to humanity if he treated this like a joke?
The flood of thoughts nearly suffocated her.
Forcing them down, Rozalin stood up.
The tears, the despair, the hollow expression—all gone.
She returned to her usual confident self.
“You are late! You did not show up anywhere in the Namress territory, so I thought I would have to dive into the deep sea to look for you! No matter what happened, an Teacher should never worry their students like this!”
She shouted.
Cassian looked at Rozalin, who stood there scolding him with her arms crossed.
He could see her hands trembling slightly where they were hidden.
How could a teacher fail to understand a student’s emotions?
Cassian smiled apologetically.
“I am back. There were circumstances.”
“Circumstances?”
“Yeah. In any case, Ocean Hall is taken care of. Let us go back. Everyone else must be worried, too. We have a lot to talk about.”
***
“Should we just destroy the Holy Kingdom? Huh? It is going to disappear next year anyway, so would it not be fine if it vanished this year? The moment demons appeared, did God not already die? No, that sounds a bit harsh—maybe He just kicked the bucket? Or maybe the demons are part of God’s own staged punishment for the Holy Kingdom’s twisted faith? Huh? Either way, can we not just wipe them all out?”
Rozalin muttered ominously.
She had been like this ever since hearing that I had been detained—detained in name only—by the Holy Kingdom.
Crouched down, scheming like a back-alley ruffian.
“I will help.”
Around her, students wearing the same expressions exchanged sinister looks.
I could not allow a former Grand General of an empire to plot a coup with fellow alumni.
“Enough nonsense. Let us return to what Seris said.”
“You mean someone is summoning demons? Come on. That makes no sense. Anyone capable of that would have to control all these demons. It is not realistic.”
“That is why we need to think beyond common sense.”
Strip away human considerations.
How could such a thing be possible?
“The Sword Master cut time. Then could space be cut as well?”
“You are saying a sword technique that allows exactly one demon at a time to cross over, each carrying the means to destroy humanity? That is ridiculous.”
“What if it were something beyond a Sword Master?”
“Then magic seems more likely than swordsmanship.”
At Rozalin’s words, a hypothesis suddenly came to mind.
Pan had glimpsed the laws of demonic order at the 5th-circle.
Ulf, at the 6th-circle, had seen not demonic order, but human order.
What if those people continued their training and grasped an order beyond demons?
Every tier advanced by understanding knowledge, and then mastering it.
Which meant—
“What if there is a 7th-circle mage in this world?”
“Come on. No way.”
Rozalin snorted and shook her head.
No one in human history had ever reached such a realm.
And yet.
The moment I voiced the idea, a strange intuition told me it was correct.
What would the 6th-circle mages think of this hypothesis?
“As for 6th-circle mages right now… two are wandering, one is Ulf, and one is at the Magic Tower.”
Ulf and the Tower Master were both unreachable.
Because of the Wolf King—and Ban.
“Ah. Maybe there is one we can meet.”
Rozalin suddenly looked thoughtful.
“There is one. A 6th-circle. A bit eccentric. Not a mage—an Alchemist.”