Hector set out to search with three escort knights in tow.
Even if he meant to bring Frondier there, he had to know where “there” was.
Ridwi did not remember the exact location. He said he had fled in a blind panic, which made it clear just how terrified Ridwi had been at the time.
“How will we look for it?”
Hector and the knights were on horseback, and one of the knights asked him.
The area a person could walk in half a day was vast. Just Hector and three knights would be too few.
But Hector did not see it that way.
“Ridwi didn’t come back here with any particular destination in mind. He ended up in Teivon only after he ran.”
“What difference does that make?”
“It means Ridwi didn’t come here in a straight line after finding Yggdrasil.”
Ridwi would have prioritized fleeing. He would not have fixed a direction.
“At first, he probably wasn’t even worried about mana tracking. So he would have used a flying spell. He would only have come to his senses once he could see his destination.”
Clop, clop.
The horses tossed their heads as they moved lightly along. Teivon’s weather was cold. As if to loosen their stiff bodies, their steps came short and quick.
“So the search splits into two directions. One is to use mana detection.”
“You mean, look for where the mana residue was cut off along the way.”
“That’s right. If we find that, it’ll be the simplest. If we trace it back, we’ll end up at the place Ridwi was.”
“But unless we know exactly when Lord Ridwi stopped flying, the range is still wide.”
“True. But the point we should focus on is that Ridwi never showed himself during the possession incident.”
There was no doubt Ridwi had been possessed by a god.
Yet unlike the others, there were no eyewitness reports for him.
“At the time, the imperial palace was busy trying to locate the Zodiacs who had been possessed. Not just the ones heading for Agoris— they tried to track all of the Zodiacs’ whereabouts. But they couldn’t find him.”
“......In that case, ultimately.”
“Exactly. Ridwi was not in the Empire.”
The god who possessed Ridwi had crossed the barrier.
It had taken Ridwi somewhere in a domain humans did not yet know, someplace beyond the barrier.
‘Well, there’s nothing inside the Empire that would scare Ridwi that much anyway.’
Hector lightly nudged his horse’s flank with his heel. The knights moved with him, and their overall speed increased.
He said they were going to search, but Hector acted as if he had already chosen his direction.
“Outside the barrier, not too far from Teivon, with traces of mana residue. With that much to go on, we’ll find it soon enough.”
“And there’s one more area we can rule out.”
“Where is that?”
“The Sacred Forest.”
The Sacred Forest, where the lake fairy Nimue and the great mage Merlin resided. There was no way the god who possessed Ridwi would ever set foot there.
“I have always been curious about something.”
As they picked up speed, one of the knights spoke.
“Who is Lord Ridwi’s god?”
Ridwi did have divine power. That was likely why he had been possessed this time as well.
But Ridwi had almost never revealed his divine power. Not since his prime, in the monster war. People from that time might know, but for some reason, no information had ever been made public.
It was a fact that Ridwi possessed divine power. But beyond that, there was nothing.
The reason was actually simple.
“I don’t know either.”
“Sir?”
“Ridwi does undoubtedly possess divine power. I’ve seen him borrow that power in battle. In his prime, his responsiveness to the god was so high he was said to have even seen the god’s form.”
“That’s incredible.”
“But no one knows who that being is. Because Ridwi never said.”
Usually, unless the human who received the divine power said it themselves, those around them couldn’t know which god it came from. That was why many chose to hide it.
But for nobles, in general, openly declaring it brought benefits in many ways, so they tended to reveal it.
Back then, after Ridwi had rendered remarkable service in the monster war, it had been all but decided he would rise to high rank. If he had advertised it strongly, it would not have been strange for him to become a Zodiac as early as that.
But Ridwi never spoke of his god. Nor was he interested in becoming a Zodiac.
When Hector had been young, he had simply thought, so that’s how it is, and left it at that.
Thinking back on it now,
“......It might be.”
“Sir?”
“It might be that even Ridwi himself doesn’t know who his god is.”
“Sir? Is that even possible?”
If no one else knew, at least the person in question was supposed to know the source of their divine power.
It was almost like an intuition. It wasn’t something you guessed at because someone told you, or deduced and got right. When a human received divine power, they knew which god it was from. Almost as if it were a law.
But if you treated something shaped by accumulated experience as a law, a single exception could shatter it.
“The one thing we do know is this. In the past, when the responsiveness was high enough that the god’s form was visible even to others, they saw it.”
“What did it look like?”
“It’s only something I heard, but.”
Hector recalled what he had been told, and the Ridwi he had seen today.
For some reason, they overlapped in his mind.
“They said it was an old man.”
***
After hearing Heracles’s story to the end, I returned to Atlas.
‘The Giants are still somewhere on this land. Trapped inside Pandemonium.’
And if I was the only one who could release them, then from my standpoint, there was no reason not to.
The problem was that doing so might truly incur the gods’ wrath.
If that wrath were poured solely onto me, that would be fine, but it would probably end up being a divine punishment that fell on all of humanity.
‘Even if I decide I want to release them, I have no idea where they are.’
Pandemonium existed somewhere on this land. But finding it would not be easy. Even I couldn’t find it unless I was very close.
My intuition picked up on most things, so if I combed the land like I was picking through lice, I could eventually find it, but by nature it was sensitive to hostility and killing intent. If I wanted to use it for anything else, its detection range was far too small.
Finding Pandemonium, which could be sleeping somewhere on this vast continent, was beyond my capabilities.
‘If only there were something like mana detection...... an artifact that detected Ecleksis.’
Humanity’s knowledge of Ecleksis was almost nonexistent. I myself had heard it described as “the power of demons” at first.
So even if there was a detection function for it, you wouldn’t find it just anywhere. If it were an artifact, it would have to be at least Unique, at minimum Legend.
‘Would something like that even exist?’
My head grew complicated, but that didn’t mean I could just sit still. Right now, I was a teacher.
I conducted my classes as usual. Since I had handed over the combat portion to Aster, the work itself had actually become easier. Aster’s adaptability was impressive enough that I had nothing to worry about.
No, in fact, it was questionable whether I should even be impressed by anything Aster did well.
After about a week, I had received the health check forms from all the students. It wasn’t especially difficult, and it was in place of vacation homework, so no student refused.
‘Come to think of it.’
As I gradually got used to teaching again through my theory classes, the students’ faces began drawing my attention once more.
Students devoting themselves to their studies to someday stand against demons and monsters. It hadn’t been long since I graduated myself, but I naturally felt both pride and pity.
And when you kept watching like that, the students who couldn’t focus in class also caught your eye.
“Jenita.”
“.......”
“Jenita?”
Jenita di Sindri, sitting next to Vasileo.
She was the girl who had once made a bet with me in the library over who could solve more problems and lost.
In class, she was the type to show a very earnest attitude, but today her head was glued to the desk, not budging at all.
......I had thought she was sleeping, but at this point, that was.
“S-sir. I think something’s a little wrong with Jenita......”
“Vasileo.”
“Y-yes.”
Vasileo answered, tense to the extreme.
“Take her to the infirmary for me.”
“Ah, yes.”
There was relief in Vasileo’s voice.
Next to him, a faint, almost dying murmur leaked out.
“......I...... I’m...... fi......”
“Just take her.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was nothing more to hear.
***
In the staff room, I went through the health forms one by one.
[What are you using those for?]
In the middle of that, a message came flying.
It was Elodie.
Elodie was dealing with paperwork at her own desk in the staff room. It looked like she wasn’t sparing a single glance my way; she really had a knack for this.
[To check on the students’ health, obviously. They’re health check forms.]
[You said they were in place of vacation homework, right? The students from the other classes were jealous.]
[Well, no student likes homework.]
No matter how ambitious a student might be, as a rule, people only like assignments they give themselves, not the ones others force on them.
Then Elodie asked again.
[So what are you using them for?]
[......?]
What kind of question was that. Hadn’t I just answered?
[Like I said, to check on the students’ health.]
[Liar. You’re using them to put together some weird plan again, aren’t you?]
[.......]
I wasn’t, though.
I really did just mean to check their health.
If I were to be completely, brutally honest, making homework and collecting it was too much of a hassle, so I had just thrown together some temporary assignment that might win some favor with the students. And homework was homework, so I had to actually collect the health check forms for it to feel credible.
Granted, it did feel like I’d earned more favor than I’d intended, but there was nothing bad about that.
But when I didn’t answer, Elodie’s voice grew excited.
[See? Like I don’t know you. You’re laying the groundwork piece by piece to carry out some scheme again. I just hope this one isn’t on the scale of smoothing over a war.]
[......No, this is.]
[Ah, you don’t have to tell me the whole operation. Whatever you’re doing, I trust you. Just call me when you need help.]
[O-okay.]
When I glanced at Elodie, she flicked a quick wink at me.
With her trusting me that much, I had no way to deny it.
I went back to looking through the health forms.
‘No students with colds or illnesses. Well, it makes sense I should worry more about injuries instead.’
This wasn’t a normal school, so the results written on the health forms were quite different from those you’d see elsewhere.
In truth, whether I assigned homework or not, most students spent their vacations improving their skills on their own anyway. That was how it had been at Constel.
Constel differed from ordinary schools in many ways, but the thing that stood out most was that the students hated vacation.
They endured schedules more grueling than staying at school. They underwent training, techniques, or even magical bodily conditioning that had been passed down through their families for generations.
‘......So I thought it would be the same here, but I was just worrying for nothing.’
There was nothing good about a lot of injuries, but the physical condition of the Atlas students was excellent.
Unlike Constel, Atlas was not in a situation where the continent was under threat from monsters. There were demons instead, but it wasn’t as if those insane maniacs were slamming their heads against Atlas by choice. So perhaps the students’ vacation training was not as desperate as at Constel.
‘Oh, wait.’
Come to think of it, those demons were now under my command. Not all of them, but I had absorbed a fair number, and the remnants that remained weren’t likely to attack Atlas.
In other words, the continent of Agoris, including Atlas, was now safe.
People just didn’t know it yet.
‘Feels weird. Being King of Demons.’
All the more so because I was still human.
“Hm.”
As I flipped through the forms, my hand stopped on one student’s record.
Among my class, whose members were mostly healthy, one line stood out.
─Lack of fluids and nutrition. Needs better diet management.
“Hmmm......”
Judging by the explanation written and the symptoms, it wasn’t anything serious. Maybe she’d pushed herself too far on a diet.
But the student’s name bothered me.
‘Jenita di Sindri.’
Jenita, who hadn’t been in good condition during class.
It didn’t seem like a momentary issue with her condition.
‘Come to think of it, she still hasn’t received her prize for winning the bet. I’ve been too busy to even investigate and report back. Sir Liberto had made a request.’
Liberto di Sindri, Jenita’s father. Originally, it was from him that I’d received the request to look into Carla.
Hmm, I’ve let more pile up than I thought.
“......As homeroom teacher.”
It wouldn’t be strange for me to pay a home visit in order to check on my ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) student’s health.
If anything, you could call it exemplary behavior for a teacher.
“Ah.”
At that moment, realizing something, I looked over at Elodie.
Elodie was giving me a meaningful smile, as if to say she had known it all along.
