"No."
Duncan answered instantly.
"Ehh~ Come on, just try it. Boys shouldn't reject things that fast."
Seeing how quickly he had refused, Alise only became more insistent, clearly enjoying herself.
"I'm telling you, Alise, I can't afford to provoke a Level 4 into a fit of embarrassment and rage. Especially not when I'm still injured. If you want entertainment, this is not the way."
Duncan sighed at the girl whose face practically had I want to watch the chaos written all over it.
"Well, you never know. Ryuu's actually pretty tolerant toward kids."
Alise muttered unhappily.
Perhaps because her voice had carried farther than intended, Ryuu turned around. When she saw that both Alise and Duncan were looking at her, she rose with a stern expression and walked over.
"Y-yo~ Ryuu, you're still awake?"
Alise asked a little guiltily.
"You were talking about me again, weren't you?"
Ryuu frowned faintly.
She could say with certainty that Alise would never speak ill of someone. A few years of living together had changed Ryuu, and at the same time it had taught her exactly what kind of person the justice-driven red-haired girl before her was. Whether in character or in conduct, Alise simply wasn't capable of that.
But aside from that, if someone brought up another person in conversation, Ryuu could also say with certainty that Alise would absolutely join in—and with great enthusiasm.
"Duncan said he's never really interacted with elves before, so he was asking me how to get along with them."
Alise hurried to explain.
"I don't think asking Alise will be of much use," Ryuu said with a sigh, turning to Duncan. "If anything, following her example is more likely to make my kin dislike you."
"Ehh~ What do you mean? Wasn't I the first one you let touch you the moment we met?"
"Perhaps I was simply blinded by anger at the time. Honestly…"
Ryuu cut her off and spoke to Duncan with perfect seriousness.
"Listen carefully, Duncan. If you meet elves in the future, do not behave like Alise and try to touch them without warning. While I've heard the elves of Viessche don't care much about such things, most elves are extremely conservative. Acting that way will only make them dislike you more."
She then began solemnly instructing him on how to interact with elves, which only added rigid and overly earnest to the list of labels Duncan already had for her. She clearly didn't care whether Alise was teasing or being serious. If anything, she seemed inclined to take every word literally.
"Are either of you even listening—?!"
Seeing Duncan and Alise exchanging knowing looks, Ryuu was just about to emphasize her point when she suddenly looked sharply into the distance.
Not only her—Alise turned toward the same direction at once.
A moment later, Duncan's expression changed too. The difference in level meant the two of them sensed what was happening before he did.
"Enemy attack!"
Alise drew the rapier at her waist at nearly the same moment that the Artemis Familia members keeping watch from the treetops shouted their warning.
Ryuu had already leapt up into the canopy. The darkness made it impossible to see far, but even through the black shapes of the forest she could make out a great cloud of dust billowing through the trees in the distance.
The ground began to tremble.
The familiar vibration turned the faces of those who had just heard the warning deathly pale. That was the unmistakable rumble of a monster stampede in motion. Judging by the way the vibration spread through the earth, the herd's range was enormous.
"Is this a monster horde coming to take revenge?! Or trying to reclaim its territory?"
One of the Level 1 members, trembling, voiced the thought on everyone's mind.
"Who cares why it's coming? Right now it's charging straight at us. Even if it were just on its way to dinner, it'd still flatten us in passing."
"West, two kilometers," Ryuu called down after surveying from above. "The stampede spreads for several hundred meters. There are too many to count, and they're coming directly at us. The front is too wide—we can't evade it."
"Form up. Level 1s and the more seriously injured fall to the rear. Aira, prepare your chant. Ryuu, Alise—the vanguard is in your hands. If they're not specifically targeting us, let them pass. Priority is maintaining formation. Everyone else, guard the flanks."
Artemis was already fully armed and standing before the group, giving out orders with crisp efficiency.
After the brief initial panic, the entire camp snapped into motion. Using the barricades they had erected by cutting down timber around their campsite, they braced themselves and waited, hoping the horde would simply rush past.
But fate had a cruel sense of humor.
The stampede they had hoped would ignore them drew closer and closer—then, as if it had fixed on them specifically, the rushing mass abruptly shifted direction and came straight at their position.
It looked exactly like a mob venting its fury on the first convenient target.
"They're turning this way! Five hundred meters!"
"Do monsters bully the weak too?! They couldn't beat Andares, so now they're taking it out on us!"
"Four hundred meters!"
"Maybe they just rallied their forces to retake their territory, and we're the nearest thing to trample along the way!"
"Three hundred meters!"
"Can you all please take this a little more seriously?!"
"Two hundred meters!"
"At this point talking won't change anything! Just focus on taking the impact!"
"One hundred meters!"
"Prepare the spell!"
"Ar—!"
"Father, forgive me for devouring the suppers of the gods."
Before Aira could release her magic, an unfamiliar chant cut through everyone's thoughts.
Under normal circumstances, no one should have been able to hear a chant in this chaos. The pounding of the monster horde and the shuddering ground should have drowned out even Artemis's commands.
And yet, impossibly, the words carried clearly to every ear.
"Revel, O tongue of hellfire. Devour, O fangs of scorching heat!"
"Rea Laevateinn!"
A flash of light blazed in the forest off to one side.
Then it expanded with terrifying speed.
The light became a beast baring its fangs—and in an instant it swallowed up most of the stampede.
A deafening explosion followed.
Towering flames turned the night bright as day. The shockwave blasted through the barricades, hurled trees aside, and would have torn through the group as well if the scouts in the trees had not shouted for everyone to get down and leapt from the canopy themselves at the first moment.
"What… what just happened?!"
Alise swept aside splintered wood and flying debris, forcing her eyes open as she tried to see what had happened. But for a while, she could make out nothing at all.
Only when the shockwave had flattened the forest outward in a widening ring, when the roar had faded to echoes, and when the dust slowly settled, did the truth finally come into view.
The entire stretch of land in the blast's path had been scraped flat.
At the center of the detonation yawned a crater wider than a football field.
The stampede that had been charging so menacingly a moment before had been wiped out so completely that not even drops or magic stones remained. Anything that hadn't been caught in the blast had been thrown who knew where by the shockwave.
"Is that all it can manage now…"
From the place where the blast had originated, a giant of a man stepped into view, a greatsword resting across his shoulder as he walked toward them through the fading glow.
....
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