The village looked the same as ever.
The familiar faces were mostly unchanged.
There were more residents than before, but the eerie silence that pervaded the place was just as it had always been.
She hadn't found it eerie back then, but having seen the whole world, Roxy could say with certainty — this village was abnormal.
Just silence, with not a single spoken word exchanged between anyone, and yet the villagers communicated perfectly well.
When they saw Roxy, they simply stared.
Roxy knew what was happening.
They were speaking to her through the Migurd tribe's special ability — thought-speech.
But Roxy couldn't understand them.
She could hear something faintly, like static noise, and nothing more.
She couldn't respond to their words.
After a while, her parents appeared.
Her parents, whom she hadn't seen in so long, were unchanged as well.
They were overjoyed to see their daughter return and welcomed her warmly.
They asked in worried voices how she had been doing, whether she had come alone.
It seemed the two of them had their own feelings about what it meant to come home.
Roxy recounted her journey so far in a matter-of-fact manner.
Her parents listened with expressions of surprise and relief.
They told her to stay as long as she liked.
But Roxy felt a sense of alienation.
Their words of worry, their words of welcome — to them, those were foreign languages.
The words that truly mattered, they would never speak aloud.
Especially words that whispered of love.
Perhaps, deep in their hearts, they were genuinely worried about her.
But that feeling never reached Roxy.
It could never reach someone who was unable to use the Migurd tribe's ability.
Roxy felt lonely knowing that.
Staying here any longer would only be painful.
It would only confirm what she already knew — that she was a failure of a Migurd.
Thinking this, Roxy decided not to stay long and to depart soon.
She prepared for the journey immediately.
"You're leaving already?"
"Yes."
"At least stay one night."
"No — I'm in the middle of a long journey. I only stopped by briefly."
Her father wore a worried expression as Roxy shook her head, expressionless.
"When will you come back next?"
"I don't know. I may never come back."
Roxy said honestly.
Her mother, standing beside her father, wore the same worried look.
"Roxy... come home once every twenty years or so, all right?"
"Sure..."
She answered without conviction.
"Maybe... I'll be back within fifty years."
"Really? Promise me."
"I will."
When Roxy nodded vaguely, her mother's tears spilled over.
"Oh, Mom...?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I promised myself I wouldn't cry. I'm sorry."
Tears.
Seeing them, something stirred inside Roxy.
Before she knew it, she was embracing her mother.
Then her father wrapped his arms around both of them.
In that moment, Roxy finally understood.
It wasn't just words.
In the end, she stayed in the village for about three days.
She spent those days in a rare state of peace and leisure.
--- "The Master of Dead End."
That person was none other than
It had taken Roxy a certain amount of time to accept this.
She had entered the Demon Continent and headed north, always seeking information about Rudeus.
The further north she traveled, the more often she heard the name Rudeus.
She was getting closer.
That feeling came hand in hand with a growing sense that something was off.
The reports about the "False Dead End" and the sightings of Rudeus overlapped suspiciously well.
A human boy who cast magic without incantation, and the "Master" of the False Dead End.
It was no exaggeration to say they were the same person — Talhand had told her as much, repeatedly, along the way.
No. She had known from the very beginning.
She simply hadn't wanted to admit that they had passed each other by without recognizing one another.
But by the time she reached the town of Licaris, she could no longer deny it.
The "Dead End" incident that had supposedly occurred two years ago.
The testimony of Nokopara, a former party member.
And the testimony of her parents back in her hometown.
Piecing it all together, Roxy finally accepted the truth.
The Master of Dead End was Rudeus.
--- Presently, Roxy was sharing a meal with Nokopara at a tavern.
When he had told her about Rudeus, Nokopara had been visibly reluctant.
It seemed Rudeus had switched to a profession one couldn't exactly speak openly about.
Roxy had no intention of judging him for it.
On the Demon Continent, those things couldn't be helped.
"So... Blaze is dead?"
"Yeah. Swallowed whole by a Red-Eating Great Serpent, apparently."
It had been several years since she'd left the Demon Continent.
They should have had a mountain of things to talk about, but what kept surfacing were old memories.
Roxy closed her eyes and thought of Blaze.
He had a face like a pig, a foul mouth, and had never failed to grouse whenever Roxy screwed up.
But he wasn't a bad person.
He was a man you could rely on as a warrior.
By the time of his death, he had grown into a veteran capable of leading a B-rank adventurer party.
The leader of a B-rank adventurer party on the Demon Continent.
That sarcastic man had become something admirable.
But his party name was Super Blaze.
His sense of naming hadn't changed since the old days, apparently.
And that veteran party had been wiped out by an enemy that Rudeus's group — a party that had only just been formed — had managed to defeat.
Starting out as adventurers and immediately slaying an A-rank monster.
The Roxy of old couldn't have pulled that off even standing on her head.
But that, too, was so very like Rudeus, and Roxy smiled faintly.
"Roxy, you've changed quite a bit."
Nokopara said, sipping slowly at the Demon Continent's characteristically strong liquor.
Roxy looked down at the cup in her hand.
She studied her own face reflected on the surface and wondered: have I?
"I can't really tell, myself..."
"No, you've gotten a lot more mature."
"What's that supposed to mean? Are you making fun of me?"
Back when she adventured with Nokopara's group, Roxy had already looked like an adult Migurd.
Since then, her physique hadn't changed much.
She felt she was exactly the same.
"I'm not making fun of you.
It's more like... your vibe.
The old you was a lot more childish."
"My outside hasn't changed, but I've been living properly, thank you."
Saying this, Roxy nibbled on the roasted beans that served as bar snacks.
They were seeds of the Stone Torrent plant.
To Roxy's palate, they weren't particularly tasty.
She just kept putting them in her mouth out of habit.
It was a habit-forming flavor, in its own way.
"That's exactly what I mean.
Back then, you were desperate for people to take you seriously.
The old you would've been thrilled to hear something like that."
"Would I have?
...Yes, I suppose there was a time like that."
This was from when she hadn't yet understood her own measure.
Back then, she had worked desperately hard so people wouldn't think of her as a child, wouldn't look down on her.
She had declared she was a magician with no weak attributes, that she could do anything.
Before long, that reputation had taken on a life of its own, her name outstripping reality.
From the time she was called "Water
Even on the Demon Continent, saying she was Rudeus's teacher never failed to draw astonished reactions.
Rudeus apparently never missed an opportunity to boast that "everything I can do is thanks to my teacher's guidance."
Thanks to that, people assumed Roxy herself could cast magic without incantation.
When she couldn't do anything of the sort.
Her master, who had once berated her relentlessly — had he felt the same way, perhaps?
If so, she had some apologizing to do.
The anguish of a teacher cursed with a pupil who was too excellent.
It was something you could only understand by standing in those shoes yourself.
She felt both proud and embarrassed.
And yet, strangely, she found she didn't want Rudeus to stop calling her his teacher.
The fact that Rudeus hadn't kept quiet about it, that he'd gone around boasting she was his teacher — that made her genuinely happy.
"You haven't changed at all, Nokopara."
"Oh yeah?"
"Everything but your appearance, that is."
His cheapness, his tendency to prey on the weak — those were the same as ever.
Roxy had thought many times that Nokopara was one person she never wanted to have as an enemy.
"What's that supposed to mean? You calling me old in a roundabout way?"
"I suppose you could say that. Nokopara, you've gotten old."
"Well, look at you talking like that now."
Nokopara gave a dry, wry laugh.
"Nostalgic, isn't it?"
"Yes."
Back in those days, there had been two others here.
A boy who always had a complaint whenever Nokopara spoke, and another boy who would chide Nokopara with a resigned "give it a rest" whenever they quarreled.
Those two were gone now. All that remained were two middle-aged people.
Well, one of them, given his race, hadn't aged all that much...
But gone days never come back.
That day, the two of them shared stories of the past until Nokopara drank himself unconscious.
Her parents, and old friends.
Just being able to see these two made it all worthwhile — having come back here.
Her heart was full.
--- By now, Rudeus should have arrived in Milshion.
Even if they had missed each other at Windport, it had been half a year since then.
And though the rainy season coincided with the trip, the Sacred Sword Highway was a road with nothing along it.
As long as he hadn't made detours through Long-eared or Carbonfolk settlements, he should have reached Milshion by now.
She really hadn't needed to search for him at all.
Just as
The girl named
The two of them had crossed the Demon Continent together without incident.
What should have been a difficult journey — they had breezed through it with ease.
And along the way, they had even taken on Roxy's most dreaded Spelltribe as a companion.
"Roxy's pupil is quite something."
"He truly is. Hard to believe he's Paul's son."
Elinalise and Talhand had said as much, full of praise.
But it didn't matter whose pupil or whose son he was, Roxy thought.
Rudeus had been a genius long before he ever met her.
Even without meeting her, he could have accomplished this much.
That aside.
"What will you do from here?" Elinalise asked.
Roxy considered.
Her primary objective — Rudeus — she had failed to meet.
But he had almost certainly already reached Milshion.
She wanted to see him, that much was certain, but she couldn't lose sight of her true purpose.
"Let's search the northwestern Demon Continent."
Rudeus had been found, but the other three remained missing.
Along the way, they had encountered several refugees from the Fittoa Region.
There were surely more in the northwest.
"You're not going to see your pupil?" Talhand asked.
"It's fine."
Roxy shook her head at the question.
First of all, if word got out that she had passed right by him without even recognizing him, she wouldn't be able to show her face.
She was already pitiful enough as a teacher.
"There are still plenty of towns on the Demon Continent. We'll continue visiting them one by one, as before."
The two exchanged a glance and chuckled softly.
Roxy Migurdia's journey continues.