“You looked pretty cool flying off. Did anything break?”
Andal was supporting Isilteru. Having noticed Riley walking toward them, Andal asked while laughing.
“That mouth…”
Riley raised the hand he was using to wipe off the blood on his chin. Riley expelled his frustration at Andal. He then looked at Isilteru, the silver blonde elf, and crumpled his face.
‘If she didn’t show up, I would not have lost that son of a bitch.’
Riley soon corrected his thoughts and shook his head.
‘No. Even if this bitch was not here, at the moment I swung my sword… that black hand would have interfered.’
Riley corrected the target of his anger. With deadly eyes, he turned to look at Nainiae. He asked,
“So, where did that bastard run off to?”
Just a moment ago, the voice mentioned Riley’s past life. Riley thought about what the voice said. The look on Riley’s face was mixed with complicated emotions.
“…”
Nainiae kept silence.
“… Nainiae.”
She just vacantly stared at Riley’s face. She looked sad. She lowered her head and was not able to answer Riley’s question.
“Tell me.”
Riley mumbled in violent voice as he walked closer to Nainiae. Andal, who was watching from the back, seemed like he thought this must not continue. He raised his hand and grabbed Riley’s shoulder.
“Riley.”
“…?”
Noticing his friend grabbing his shoulder from the back, Riley, while maintaining his violent look on the face, turned his head toward Andal.
“That’s enough.”
“What?”
“I said that’s enough.”
“…”
“Now that it came to this, looks like I’ll have to say things that I was going to explain later.”
Andal tightened his grip on Riley’s shoulder and pulled back to make Riley turn to face him. Andal had just as violent look on his face and continued,
“Stop working Nainiae. Stop making this lass do grunt works for you. It seems you had been making her do lots of it before you let her be under my care. Instead of getting better at taking care of herself, she developed bad habits. She keeps on trying to overexert herself. Can’t you see?”
Having heard Andal’s backseat driving, Riley’s eyebrow started to twitch.
“She did the same earlier too. Before she went off to Solia, I definitely told her not to strain herself, yet I saw her doing that by herself.”
Having heard Andal, Riley twitched his eyebrows some more. Testing his own patience, Riley asked,
“So what?”
“What do you mean so what? If you are capable of doing some heavy lifting yourself, then don’t just sit around your butt. Move your ass, you get what I’m saying? Stop taking advantage of someone else’s pupil, all right?”
“Excuse me…”
The two were glaring at each other with vicious looks on their faces, and Nainiae was standing between them. She broke cold sweats, not knowing what to do.
“Did you just say, stop taking advantage of someone else’s pupil?”
“That’s right, you rascal! You get what I said, right?”
“Ah, of course! I understood what you just said! So, is that all you wanted to tell me?”
“E… Excuse me… Everyone…”
It seemed they could not hear Nainiae’s voice at all. Andal and Riley glared at each other. With just their eyes, it looked like fire sparks could splash from the collision of their glares. They were exuding violent energies.
“That’s right. I said everything I wanted to say! What are you going to do?”
“Ah! Hey, Andal. Aren’t you mistaking something a little?”
“Teacher… Young Master… Let’s calm down for now…”
“You have no right to order me around.”
“What?”
“It looks like you became full of yourself for acting as a teacher for a few months. This girl is actually…”
Riley was twitching his eyebrows. He suddenly tilted the eyebrows in the other direction and extended his arm out. He grabbed on to the Nainiae's shoulder, who was panicking and not sure about what to do to mitigate the situation, and pulled her toward himself.
“… Ah?”
Nainiae, who had her shoulder pulled, was held by Riley on his waist. Nainiae had a blank look on her face.
“She is mine. Didn’t you know?”
“… Ut?!”
[TL: Two extremely powerful men of super natural proportions fighting over a teenage girl…For this chapter, this show just turned into Twilight.]
Having heard what Riley just said, that she was Riley’s, Nainiae shook her shoulders.
She flinched because she remembered how Riley held her in his arms to protect her from the dragon corpse’s breath.
“You rascal. You were the one who lectured me and said I should not treat people like objects. Are you going to act like this now?”
“I am not treating Nainiae like an object.”
“Wow…”
“I merely stated the obvious.”
“Riley, you… It would be best for you to don’t over do it.”
“What? What is it that I am not supposed to over do?”
The atmosphere was becoming more violent. Meanwhile, Nainiae was blushing in Riley’s arms as she thought about what happened earlier. Having realized the worsening situation, she barely got a hold of herself and shouted,
“S… stop…”
Nainiae got out of Riley’s arms. She took in a deep breath. Having noticed this, Riley and Andal both opened their eyes big.
“… Please stop it!!”
“…?!”
She yelled in a ‘unique’ way. Riley and Andal faltered a little from the whirlwind that swept through the area. Nainiae went between looking at Riley and Andal. She then carefully asked,
“At the moment, a fight like this is meaningless. Both of you know this very well, right?”
“… Hey.”
“Even so, still…”
Nainiae got their attention. Andal and Riley both turned to look at her. Their faces looked like they were sick of this.
“Carelessly shooting the dragon’s language in a situation like this is a little…”
“That was the dragon’s language just now?”
The dragon’s language could be expressed by voice or written words. It heightened the magic’s efficiency and could shock the entire area. It was something that only dragons could use. It was a power of some kind.
Using the dragon’s language alone exhibited power by drawing mana from the surrounding. Humans obviously could not use this power, and even elves, the beings blessed in mana, could dare to use this power.
“That is… Two of you are friends, but it looked like you were having a serious fight. It looked like this was the only way to stop the fight, so…”
Looking at the expressions on Andal and Riley, Nainiae lost confidence and withered. She started to mumble as she fiddled with her fingers.
“That’s fine. It’s the same old kind of bickering.”
Still, it looked like the mood was vented. Riley relaxed his face quite a bit. He scratched his head and responded. Andal said,
“Still, this brat really…”
Having heard what Riley said earlier, Andal was pissed and reacted. He tightened his fist and shook his body in anger. Riley turned to look at Nainiae. He asked the question he didn’t get to hear the answer last time.
“So, where is that son of a bitch at?”
It seemed Andal was curious as well. He stopped being angry at Riley. With a serious look on his face, Andal looked at her face.
“That is…”
Nainiae was hesitant to answer. Instead, she kept on checking Andal and Riley. She threw her gaze toward Riley and walked toward him.
“Young Master, can you give me a moment…”
Nainiae called Riley to step away from Andal for a moment. She then checked Andal again, who was tilting his head side to side. She hid her mouth with her hand and whispered to Riley in his ear quietly.
“… I think I should tell you this separately.”
“… Just hurry up and tell me the whole thing quickly.”
Andal seemed to be not liking this. He cringed.
Andal slowly turned away, waved his palm around and cast a magic.
“… Hu… Uk?”
Before anyone realized, Peruda and Hamil were watching Riley and others. By Andal’s gesture, they flinched once and collapsed to the front as if they just fainted.
“I’ll go wrap things up, so…”
Andal was not just talking about the witnesses. Things for him to do included moving the leader of the dragons to a safe place.
Andal waved his hand once more and cast teleportation magic. Andal disappeared with Isilteru.
Nainiae sighed big enough to make the ground sink.
“Ugh…”
Nainiae gave quick glances at Peruda and Hamil who were lying on the ground unconscious.
Nainiae looked uncomfortable. She explained to Riley why they fell asleep.
“This is the teacher’s work. When they wake up, they probably will think they had really weird dream.”
“…”
Peruda and Hamil were not going to be able to remember their dreams very clearly when they wake up because the dream that people have when they sleep were quickly forgotten when they woke up.
Of all options that Andal could take, it was the cleanest way of eliminating the witnesses given the circumstance. Nainiae would have chosen the same option.
“So, where did he run off to?”
Riley furrowed his brows as if he was not interested in her explanation about the sleep spell. He asked about the black hand that came out of the dimensional space again.
“… Since we are on the topic of dreams…”
Nainiae opened her mouth.
“Excuse me… Young Master… By any chance…”
Nainiae had her back turned to Riley because she was looking at Peruda and Hamil. She carefully asked,
“Are you from another world?”
“…?”
Riley vacantly opened his eyes and tilted his head side to side.
“… What?”
“That is… Before…”
Nainiae turned and looked at Riley. She had a bitter look on her face as she kept her gaze steady at the boy’s eyes. She continued.
“One time… I saw a world in your dream. It’s about that world.”
“…”
When Nainiae talked about that dream, Riley’s face petrified like cold ice.
“The scenery from your dream about that world is the same as the world that the black hand went to.”
Having heard what Nainiae said, now not just his face, but Riley’s entire body, starting with his shoulder all the way to the tip of his legs was petrified.
“How should I describe the scenery… There were so many of huge and tall buildings. Buildings in our world like the Magic Tower or Solia Castle can’t even be compared to the size of those buildings.”
Nainiae continued to describe the world she saw with her right eye.
“There were these mysterious carriages. They all looked pretty similar and had black wheels. The carriages didn’t have horses to pull them, but they carried people and moved around very quickly. People wearing strange clothes walked around with small, rectangular shaped objects held next to their ears. Although they didn’t use magic, fire came out of a device. There were boxes where laundry got done automatically…”
Nainiae pursed her lips and paused for a moment. She thought about if she missed anything. It seemed she remembered. She said,
“Ah, there were boxes where people came out.”
After that, she looked sad.
“But, in that world… There were no trees or land filled with soil.”
With a gloomy face, she explained the scenery she saw.
“It was harder to find a tree than finding those buildings that were taller than the Magic Tower. The ground was covered in black rock looking thing and suffocating. Also…”
Nainiae looked at Riley. What she was about to ask was the thing that concerned her the most.
“Monsters and humans were fighting there. The fighting was far more violent and intense than here.”
“…”
“Should I call them… monsters? They had horns, goat-like legs or bat-like wings… I saw beings with things like that.”
Nainiae mumbled as if she was whispering. She mumbled more about what those beings were doing.
“Those things were slaughtering people.”
“…”
Although her explanation continued, Riley still kept silence.
“The person you saw in your dream was living in that world.”
Nainiae melancholically grabbed her chest tightly and asked,
“Is that person someone precious to you?”
It was a laughable question.
If anyone else heard this, they would have laughed it off and told her to stop with the nonsense. However, for Riley, the question felt a little… no… a lot different from how anyone else would have felt.
“Young Master. Please tell me. The world I just described to you… It is a world that you know well, right?”
“…”
“Isn’t that right? Occasionally, you told me and Lady Iris about your dreams. The dreams you told us about are just like what I saw through my right eye.”
Riley looked at Nainiae. He vacantly opened his lips, but then he bit the lips hard, hard enough that it was at the brink of bleeding.
“… Nainiae.”
Riley, who had been maintaining silence until now, plaintively called her name. With a very sincere face, Nainiae faced Riley and responded,
“Yes.”
“This is an order. Erase this incident from your head.”
“… Young Master?”
Nainiae’s mouth opened vacantly.
“It’s an order.”
“…”
Riley’s head was aching and pulsating. He held his head. He turned his body around from Nainiae and walked away.
“… Yes.”
Nainiae just watched Riley’s back for a moment. She had a similar look on her face. All she could do was keep pinching at her skirt.