Akira handed a worn leather notebook to Fels, its pages filled with his careful, concise handwriting.
"I've written down everything I could remember about our encounter with Evilus."
He said calmly, "The answer you're searching for should be in there."
Fels silently took the notebook. The black mist that enveloped their head swirled slightly as they flipped through a few pages. Then, raising their head, they spoke in their usual low, rasping voice.
"I'll report this to Ouranos… including the emergence of those new monsters. If you need anything in the future, don't hesitate to come to us."
Akira gave a short nod. "Understood. I'll be taking my leave, then."
With those final words, he turned and walked away. His figure gradually dissolved into the golden sunlight spilling over the alley's entrance, his shadow stretching long behind him.
Fels stood still, bowing their head slightly toward his fading back. Without another word, Fels then turned and strode deeper into the alley, their silhouette gradually swallowed by the encroaching darkness.
Far from Orario, in a remote hut hidden among the perilous mountains, Akira continued his search for materials to create new magic tools.
Inside a dimly lit cabin, the legendary witch Alfia—feared across the land as the "Monster of Calamitous Talent"—lay curled on a creaking rocking chair, wrapped in thick blankets. The only sound was the crackling fireplace beside her.
She glanced sideways at Zald, who had just returned from fishing, and lazily murmured, "I'm hungry. Go cook something."
Zald sighed, a helpless expression on his face. "What would you do if I wasn't around?"
"I'd die, eventually." Alfia replied without opening her eyes, her voice void of any real care. "Doesn't matter much at this point."
They were both dying—one poisoned in a battle against a powerful monster, the other slowly wasting away from an incurable illness. This secluded mountain cabin was where they waited out their final days.
There was no romance between them. Their age difference alone ruled out such notions. They weren't even of the same familia. If anything, their bond resembled that of a stubborn uncle and his defiant niece.
And yet, despite the lack of blood ties, they stayed together.
Bound by past tragedy and the weight of a shared destiny, Zald and Alfia were the final survivors of a destroyed familia. In this cursed silence, they kept each other company—two souls awaiting the end, refusing to let the clock of death tick freely.
"Ironic, isn't it?" Alfia said, her lips curling into a faint, bitter smile. "Two people waiting to die, clinging to each other like this."
Zald glanced at her from the kitchen, where he had begun preparing a modest meal. His gaze softened.
She still looks like a young woman. But she carries herself like someone who's already lived a hundred years.
He would stay by her side, because he couldn't bring himself to abandon her. Not when she was his sister's only child. Not when the world had taken everything from them.
It was that simple.
This was their shared mission now—not revenge, not redemption, but merely resisting fate for as long as they could. Just a little longer.
Alfia suddenly opened her eyes and asked, "What about them?"
Zald responded as he sliced vegetables with practiced ease. "A few small ones passed the barrier, but we can ignore them. If the big one breaks out now, there's nothing the lower world can do."
Their words were cryptic—understood only by those few who had once fought on the battlefield beyond the imagination of ordinary adventurers.
They weren't speaking as family anymore. They were speaking as guardians—keepers of a gate long forgotten by history.
Alfia slowly stood from her chair, her joints creaking faintly. "It won't matter soon. We can't play gatekeepers anymore. Our deaths are approaching."
Her voice was flat, like someone stating the weather. Yet in that calm was a deep sadness—resignation wrapped in steel resolve.
"I wouldn't mind dying in obscurity… if I could just witness the enhanced barrier that the school district is preparing."
Zald quietly placed two plates of simple food on the worn wooden table.
"If no one else blooms, if the final flower fails to blossom… what then?"
Alfia wrapped her scarf around her neck and chuckled darkly. "Then it'll just be a miserable withering."
She was just about to sit down when both of them paused.
Their instincts, sharpened over a lifetime of battle, sensed the presence outside their door.
Then, without knocking, the door creaked open with the howl of a wintry gust.
A voice—casual, playful, and utterly uninvited—floated into the room.
"Then, would you like me to take care of the last burst of fireworks?"
A man stepped inside. He wasn't a mortal, nor was he a god who bothered with subtlety. The divine power radiating from him was suffocating—dense, cold, like the void of the underworld itself.
With hair as dark as the abyss and eyes narrowed in mock innocence, he grinned like a child who had stumbled upon a forbidden game.
"Since we're all going to die, why not turn that death into a stepping stone for the world?" He said, hugging himself with a dramatic shiver. "—Ugh, it's freezing."
Erebus had arrived.
Under his silver tongue and insidious proposal, Zald and Alfia—once called heroes—chose to burn what remained of their lives in a final act of defiance.
They made a contract.
A pact with absolute evil.
And thus, everything began to move toward chaos once more.
The Great Struggle was only a month away.
...
At dusk, in the city of Orario, Akira returned home with bags of rare materials gathered from the market and the Dungeon.
Using specialized metals and enchanted ingredients, he began crafting a new magic tool in the quiet of his room.
Under soft lamplight, he carved complex runes into the metal with the precision of a master craftsman. He infused his magic into the core of the tool, etching a functional circle that would store and release spells with a flicker of magic.
After hours of work, the final piece clicked into place.
A success.
This wasn't just any offensive magic tool. It had a secondary function.
"Absorption…"
Akira held the tool up to the light, watching as the magic core pulsed faintly.