Amid the falling snow, I held my Saber at the ready.
I was wary of the five opponents facing me, but even with their movements slowed by Skills, they showed no sign of retreating.
Quite the opposite—
"A support-type Skill? How thoroughly plain. Suits you just fine, Laiel."
The one smirking at me in provocation held a stance similar to mine.
We were of the same school, so our fundamentals were the same.
Breathing out white plumes of mist, I used my Skills to survey the area.
Who would make the first move, and who was targeting whom.
If I focused on the fight, I also needed to position myself to shield Shannon and Eva, who were right behind me.
I had planned to put them down with just minor injuries, but I'd been too optimistic.
(I can't believe the knights and soldiers of House Walt are this troublesome.)
Watching my movements, the soldiers—who even threw feints to keep me in check—wore serious expressions.
I'd hit them with magic once, but they were tough enough to get right back up.
The Fifth Generation gave me instructions.
'Killing them here would cause trouble. I'd rather avoid it if possible... but I never expected we'd run into them in a place like this. And they've gotten aggressive on top of that. Laiel, if you hold back, they'll seize any opening. Fight like you mean to kill.'
If I killed them, it would mean declaring ourselves enemies of their side.
I'd been prepared for some ridicule, but I never imagined I'd run into Alfred—my senior fellow disciple.
The Third Generation spoke.
'To think the soldiers of House Walt—who've been trained rigorously generation after generation—would end up as our enemies. Now that's truly a pain.'
The soldier directly behind me took a step forward, so I reacted.
Alfred pressed in, exploiting that opening.
His follow-up thrusts aimed at my vitals were sharper than before.
I deflected the saber with my own blade and dodged. Sensing the soldier attacking from behind with Second Generation’s Skills, I flew backward, drawing the dagger at my hip with my left hand and stabbing without even looking.
The target was his thigh.
The opponent groaned as the blade sank deep, so I drove my right elbow straight into his face.
As his body opened up, Alfred pressed in again. I scooped up snow with my foot and flung it into his eyes, blinding him.
With his attack momentarily thrown off, I used the dagger to deflect his saber.
Immediately wary of the other soldiers, I saw Alfred create distance and begin chanting a spell.
“Your magic is the same as ever, I see! Fire Bullet!”
The low-power but instant spells I scattered around were guided by my Skills, so they flew directly at Alfred and the other soldiers.
The soldiers hit by the flames burst into fire, but they immediately rolled in the snow on the ground to extinguish the flames and then scrambled back to a safe distance.
One of them was bleeding from his thigh.
However, the fireball I had launched at Alfred simply stopped right in front of him.
It vanished without a trace, right there.
(What? It was crushed as if by an invisible hand.)
Alfred looked rather unimpressed.
“Down to one. And forcing me to use Skills is worth some praise. You’ve been flailing your sword around like an idiot, but at least you’re useful.”
Alfred reset his stance as his saber hummed through the air before him.
The fallen soldier clutched his thigh, tightly bound the wound with cloth for emergency first aid, and then crawled away from me.
Judging by the amount of blood he'd lost, there was no way he'd be rejoining the fight.
"(I should stay on guard, though.)"
Behind me, Shannon was—
"We have to run! Rael, we have to get out of here right now!"
"I know!"
With a shout, two soldiers charged at me with their blades. As the remaining one moved to retrieve a fallen ally, I hurled my short sword at him.
One took the blade deep in his right shoulder, while the other slashed across my arm with a saber.
The Sixth Generation roared.
"Rael, get serious!"
My body twitched in response, and suddenly it felt as though something had seized my right arm—
"What the—?!"
I tried to wrench free, but the grip was too strong.
With the Second Generation's Skills, it felt like something was coiling around me.
While I was struggling with that, Alfred came slashing in.
I immediately threw a kick, landing a full-force blow right to Alfred's gut.
Saliva sprayed from his open mouth.
"You—you—!"
He grabbed my foot—perhaps finding the close quarters too awkward for saber work, he drew the short sword at his waist instead.
"I was waiting for that."
With Alfred gripping my foot, I planted my other foot on the ground, kicked off hard, and drove it straight into his chin.
The sensation of being grabbed vanished, and I spun once in midair before landing on the ground.
I scooped up the dropped short sword with my left hand, then looked down at Alfred, who had fallen flat on his back with blood gushing from his nose.
Alfred saw the short sword clutched in my hand and screamed.
"G- Give it back! That was given to me by Lady Ceres! Don't you dare touch it!"
"This isn't something you should be holding."
I kicked away the saber Alfred had dropped, then shot a glare at the soldier tending to our wounded comrades.
He was looking at me with frustration in his eyes. The injured ones lying around wore the same expression.
Their will to fight hadn't been broken.
Then Shannon shouted.
"Laiel, he's got a ton of hands! It's a Skill! Four of them sprouted from his back!"
At Shannon's words, I looked toward Alfred.
She said arms had appeared, but Alfred had only just gotten to his feet. Yet there were marks on the ground as though something had pressed down on it—no, as though something had been used to push against it, even though nothing was there.
Nearly twice the size of a human palm, they were bigger than anyone else's hands present on the scene.
The Fourth Generation spoke.
"Invisible hands, you mean? He has Skills?"
The Seventh Generation, as though suddenly recalling something.
"The Barden family, now that you mention it, has always been known for producing peculiar Skills. Did they develop them out of necessity... Come to think of it, they were an underground organization. Invisible hands would have been useful in all sorts of places."
Cheating, or assassination... A Skill that would certainly come in handy for dirty work.
Alfred pressed his left hand to his face, then extended his right arm out to the side.
The saber that had fallen to the ground slowly levitated through the air and returned to Alfred's hand.
Shannon trembled.
"He... he's growing four arms from his back, and wielding them freely..."
I couldn't see them myself, but Shannon apparently could.
Alfred looked at Shannon.
"Are your eyes special? Then I should deliver you to Lady Ceres... Rael, I'm taking your head. I'll slice you to pieces, crush your bones..."
The way Alfred looked at me was already rotten.
Before—
Back when he was my senior disciple.
In the beginning, he was a kind and strong person.
He'd casually strike up conversations and teach me all sorts of things.
And now, here he was, grinning uglily.
"Ceres... Ceres made him do this!"
As my feelings spilled out in words, Alfred answered with an invisible hand.
I couldn't see it, but I was also a Skills user.
The Second Generation's Skills let me sense my opponent's movements.
With Shannon's guidance, I was able to recognize the vague mass of mana as arms.
The falling snow was being blown away by invisible hands.
However—
"Once you understand it, this is easy... Earth Hand!"
A brown arm emerged from beneath the snow and immediately grappled with the arm Alfred had created with his Skills.
A creaking sound could be heard, but Alfred was clearly suffering.
"You... you good-for-nothing screeeeam!!"
I dashed between Earth Hand and the invisible arm, driving my Saber into Alfred.
And then—
"Laiel, his body's being protected by arms!"
When Shannon called out, I released my Saber and created some distance.
I'd missed my intended target, but the blade had lodged into Alfred's left arm, and blood was streaming down.
Shannon looked disgusted as she explained to me what Alfred's body had become.
"Arms are growing out all over his body, like armor protecting him. And they're squirming around, the fingers wiggling like crazy..."
Eva heard that and went.
"What the... that's gross."
I had the exact same reaction.
However, Alfred swung his left hand, and my Saber was pulled free, floating in midair.
"O-Oh, heavy. So this is the kind of weapon you were using."
He'd tried to wield it, but it was heavier than he'd expected, so he just tossed it aside.
The Third Generation spoke as though it all made sense.
*"Looks like he can't draw out that much power. All his Skills are troublesome, but this one seems more suited for tricks than actual combat. Or maybe theft?"*
The Fifth Generation added.
*"Neither skilled nor strong. He's even manifested advanced applications of his Skills, but once you see through the trick, this is all he amounts to."*
It would have been terrifying if we hadn't figured it out, and that was thanks to Shannon.
At the same time, I came up with a plan to counter Alfreed.
The situation had swung heavily in our favor in an instant.
Alfreed kept glancing at my short sword, unable to focus. She was probably desperate to figure out how to get it back.
*(If the Jewel had been stolen, would it have been dangerous?)*
Just as I was about to strike with magic, a carriage stopped at the far end of the street.
——Novem was worried about Lyriel, who was late coming home.
She was waiting on the ground floor of the inn, but there was no sign of her returning.
"You're late. Dinner will be ready soon."
Aria, chewing on beef jerky, spoke to Novem with a look of exasperation as Novem sighed with her hand on her cheek.
"She's not a kid, so she'll come home eventually."
Miranda, seated across the same table, looked at Aria and sighed.
"Don't you ever get tired of eating the same thing? And you should worry a little. I hear Lyriel's family is in the Royal Capital too."
Aria said proudly.
"I'm just doing a taste test to see which beef jerky is the best. Besides, as long as I don't go to places where I'm likely to run into her, it's fine. She's not someone I'd want to meet on purpose."
Monica was standing near everyone without taking a seat.
Perhaps displeased with Aria's attitude, she muttered under her breath.
"You've gained two kilograms since we first met."
When Aria glared at her, Monica played innocent.
Clara, who had been reading, looked at Monica.
"Monica, you really are something else. How did you calculate that?"
Monica was showing Clara how she'd done the calculations, while Aria carried on, loudly insisting the numbers were just made up.
Novem was waiting for Laiel and the others to return when someone walked into the inn.
"Well now, I've had quite the day."
A guest who told the innkeeper they'd "had quite the day" went ahead and paid their bill without being asked. They must have been a regular—the owner handled them with a familiar ease.
"What happened out there?"
"A fight. A full-blown fight. Knights and adventurers going at each other with swords, five against one—it was chaos. But—"
Novem rose to his feet and closed in on the guest in an instant.
"Pardon me. Where did this fight take place?"
The man took a step back as Novem approached.
It wasn't so much fear as it was being overwhelmed by the intensity of Novem's expression and aura.
"Not on the main street—over in the back alleys. The area where all the bards gather. I have no idea why they'd be fighting in a place like that… Do you know someone involved?"
The moment he heard those words, Novem bolted.
He burst through the inn's front door, and Aria and the others scrambled to chase after him—.
Snow was falling.
Ceres appeared before me, her boots planted firmly on the ground, wearing a fluffy white coat.
The Skills I had acquired blared a maximum alert straight into my mind.
Now that I possessed the Skills of my ancestors, I could understand just how abnormal Ceres truly was.
Behind me, Shannon—clutched in Eva's arms and trembling—probably understood it too.
"Who are you?"
I drew my short sword, and only then did I realize that my hands were shaking.
The trembling won't stop.
I've come to understand what Ceres truly is, more than I could before. And yet, that understanding only implants in me a terror far greater than what I once felt.
Eva whispers.
"She's not human. What is this... what does this mean?"
Ceres brushes back her beautiful golden hair and, as if reading lines from a script, speaks with a sorrowful tone.
"There's no need to be so cold to a sister you've finally reunited with, is there? It hurts. It really hurts... Besides, I heard there was a famous elf bard in the area, so I went out of my way to come visit—and here I run into someone who got kicked out of her own home. You're still alive? What a shame. It would've been better if you'd just died."
The last part came out with a little giggle, and with a cute expression on her face, she told me to go die.
Alfredo and the soldiers rushed to gather around Ceres.
Even though he was injured, a knight who had been at Ceres's side pushed his way toward her despite his wounds. The knights who had remained on Ceres's side glared at him.
"You lot from House Walt can't even carry out a simple task, can you? What a disgrace!"
One of the retainers he had once respected as a fellow knight hurled abuse at the wounded soldiers.
The Seventh Generation looked at Ceres.
*'What is the meaning of this? This is Ceres? ...She's clearly a different person!'*
The Third Generation, upon seeing Ceres, had lost all trace of his usual composure.
*'Layel, can you use your Skills at full power to escape from here? Take the two of them and get out immediately.'*
Before.
I had challenged Ceres, desperate not to be cast out of the house.
Now, having experienced growth three times over, both my physical strength and magical power had increased compared to before. And yet, no image of victory came to mind.
Ceres, smaller and more delicate than me.
Her slender limbs and neck looked as though they might snap if not handled with the utmost care.
Her innocent smile looked less childish than before.
She traced her lip with a finger, then touched that same finger to Alfred's approaching lips.
The gesture looked alluring, hardly befitting someone two years my junior.
It was something you could only tell after stepping outside.
That Ceres was not human.
And yet, Ceres said to Alfred with a smile.
"Alfred, you've worked hard up until now."
"Ceres, I... eh?"
Shannon let out a small, sharp gasp, and even Eva averted her gaze.
Without anyone noticing when she drew it, a rapier with a yellow gem embedded in its hilt was now in Ceres's hand.
As Alfred pitched forward, blood was visible on Ceres's blade.
The snow on the ground where he fell was turning red.
Alfred's face was turned our way, but we didn't exist in his eyes. He simply gazed at Ceres, smiling.
And then, slowly, Ceres raised her rapier.
"Wipe it."
"Right away."
The knights moved to wipe the blood from the rapier, but not one of them looked at Alfred.
The injured soldiers, too, just kept their eyes on Ceres.
And then, still smiling, Ceres said.
"Hmm, I'll be dealing with that thing today, so I won't kill you. That means you're going to work for me."
"Yes!"
"I'd give my life if I had to!"
"Lady Ceres!"
"…L-Lady Ceres."
One of the soldiers whose thigh I'd stabbed was staring at Ceres, his face twisted in pain.
And then—.
"Oh my, you look dreadfully pale. You're in agony, aren't you… Here."
She placed her left hand on the injured soldier's face, and with a sickening crunch, the sound of bone snapping echoed through the air.
The soldier whose neck had been broken wore an expression of bliss.
I looked around. A crowd of onlookers had gathered.
But every single one of them was captivated by Ceres.
"Why…"
The Fourth Generation spoke to me.
*"Laiel — that's your sister? Was that really your sister?"*
The Sixth Generation was just the same.
*"The monster the First Generation spoke of… I don't think we ever truly understood it. That thing is far too dangerous."*
My ancestors — people who rarely lost their composure — took one look at Ceres and felt a surge of dread, speaking as though trying to flee.
The Fifth Generation shouted.
*"She's coming! Don't hold anything back!"*
The next instant, Ceres appeared right beside me and gazed up at my face.
When I tried to put some distance between us, my foot was stepped on and I couldn't back away.
A chill crept up my spine, making my skin crawl.
"Hmm~ You've gotten a little stronger, have you? And you have eight Skills… How interesting. They're lower quality than my Jewel, though. A shoddy Jewel for a shoddy person — seems fitting."
Lower quality. Those words made me glare at Ceres.
I felt like I was being mocked.
At the same time.
*(She figured out the number of my Skills. But more than that — she called me a failure!)*
Everything I'd built up until now — everything I'd inherited from my ancestors — it all felt like it had been trashed in one go.
Ceres's eyebrow twitched in response.
"Oh my, are you angry? I knew it — I hate you. You don't even fall for me when you look at me… Ah, that girl over there, I believe—"
As if Ceres had grown more interested in Shannon than in me, she instantly moved over, grabbed Shannon by the hair, and tossed Eva aside.
"Kyaa!"
As Shannon thrashed and struggled in Ceres's grip — the woman was holding her up by the chin.
"Let go! Let me go!"
Ceres wore a smile.
"You're so cold. Last time we met, you were so friendly toward me. Though I suppose you can see much better now. Have you grown a little? Ah, that's right! Where is your big sister? The beautiful one. I always wanted a big sister like that. But now your eyes have caught my attention too… Hey, give me those."
"N-no, no, noooo!!"
When Shannon screamed, I snapped out of it and reached a hand toward Ceres.
The next moment, Shannon was hurled away and sent flying.
Ceres looked at me and Shannon, giggling.
And there she was, grinding her heel into the head of the fallen Eva.
"St-Stop..."
It might have looked like she was only lightly pressing down, but even Eva—who was physically larger than Ceres—couldn't break free no matter how desperately she struggled.
"Your voice isn't nearly as pretty as I'd heard. I sound better, don't I?"
When she said that, the knights and soldiers surrounding them agreed with Ceres.
"Yes, Lady Ceres's voice is far superior to that of that barbaric elf."
"There's no comparison to be made."
"Just being able to hear that voice makes being a knight feel worthwhile."
Ceres placed a hand over her mouth.
"Oh, thank you. Well, I suppose I won't need this anymore either."
Saying that, she kicked Eva in my direction, sending her flying.
Eva groaned in pain, her arm badly swollen.
"You... what do you think you're doing? What right do you have to—"
Setting the two of them down on the ground, I stood up.
I could feel hostile gazes all around me, but Ceres toyed with a strand of her hair between her fingers, seemingly lost in thought for a moment.
Her gaze drifted—just once—toward the yellow Jewel.
"Right... or rather, it's because I've inherited everything. You probably don't understand. That's right—you could never possibly grasp it."
Meeting Ceres's hate-filled gaze, I braced myself.
The Seventh Generation spoke, looking at the rapier embedded with a Jewel that was golden rather than merely yellow.
"That Jewel... is it Xenoa's? She stole my wife's Jewel! What is the meaning of this! That was supposed to be stored under the strictest security! Even Maisel wasn't told about it!"
The Seventh Generation was confused, but it turned out the owner of the Jewel was Grandmother.
I recalled the words the Seventh Generation had spoken before.
Agrissa, the beauty who could topple a nation — the descendant of the clan that brought down a kingdom over three hundred years ago was my grandmother, Xenoa.
"Grandmother's Jewel..."
When I murmured those words, Ceres's cheek twitched.
"You knew? So it really is like that. That's why I hate you..."
Ceres looked down for a moment, then raised her gaze and saw the blue Jewel hanging from my neck.
"Even so, that blue gem is Grandfather's, isn't it? I wonder where you stole it from. Well, even if you have it, nobody could use it anyway. Oh, but... that old man was there."
Being called an old man, I remembered Zell, who had helped me.
Seeing my reaction, Ceres spoke with amusement.
"He was already dead, though. He was in the way, so I burned the whole shack down with him in it."
Hearing that, I activated my Skills at full power.