The Last Place Hero's Return

Chapter 247: The Frost (2)

We arrived at the training hall on the first floor of the party house. Designed for parties to train under conditions close to that of real combat, the hall boasted an impressive amount of space. Standing at the center of the party-exclusive training hall, I looked toward Laneige.

Laneige had changed out of her maid outfit and into her training clothes. She looked excited, perhaps because it had been a while since she had trained with me. Her eyes sparkled as she shifted restlessly in place.

“Dale, what should we start with?” she asked.

“Hmm, first of all.” I positioned myself about twenty meters away from her. “Attack me with everything you’ve got.”

Laneige flinched, her cheeks instantly flushing red. “What? D-Dale, is t-that your kind of thing?”

“What?”

“I-I’ll try my best to live up to your expectations!”

“No, wait a minute.”

What is she even talking about now?

She chuckled. “Hehehe. Just kidding.”

I looked at her. “Do you think I’m Elisha....”

“Huh? Why are you mentioning Professor Baldwin?” she asked.

Ah. Shit, I said the wrong thing.

I immediately replied, “N-no, it’s nothing! Ahem.”

Laneige frowned deeply. “But, do I actually have to attack you, Dale?”

Her face clearly screamed, “I really don’t want to.”

“Yeah. There’s something I want to test. You don’t need to hold back. Just attack me with the full power you can use right now,” I answered.

“F-full power?”

Normally, telling a mage hero to attack someone at full strength while that person just stood there was practically like committing suicide. Compared to warrior heroes, mage heroes lagged behind in versatility, mobility, and instantaneous response, but they were still considered essential in any party; the reason for that was their overwhelming firepower.

Moreover, it was even more intense with Laneige. In my previous life, she possessed a blessing powerful enough to turn half the continent into a frozen wasteland. Even I couldn’t easily predict the extent of the destruction if she unleashed her full power without any interference.

She looked at me. “A-are you really sure? Even if I attack with everything?”

“I’m sure.”

“B-but...”

“I’m not going to die, am I?”

Laneige stamped her feet and shouted, “But you’ll get hurt, Dale! I hate seeing you get hurt!”

Her genuine concern for me made me happy, but this was training. So, I replied, “I probably won’t even get injured, so you don’t need to worry.”

“R-really?”

I nodded reassuringly. “Yeah.”

However, the hesitation on Laneige’s face didn’t fade. She groaned, then trailed off, clearly unable to bring herself to unleash a full-power attack on the man she loved.

“Hmm. If it’s really that hard, how about trying a sort of role-play scenario?” I suggested.

Laneige’s eyes widened, clearly asking what I meant. “Role-play?”

“Imagine you’ve just caught me cheating with another woman.”

“What?”

“The setting is my dorm room. Not Iris, not Yurina, not Elisha, it’s someone you’ve never seen before.” I provided her with detailed descriptions so that she could immerse herself in the scenario. “She has platinum-blonde hair, like melted gold. Slightly languid eyes, much taller than you, and such a gorgeous appearance that anyone could tell she comes from a noble background at a glance.”

I made sure to poke lightly at her insecurities, such as her height and mixed-blood origins.

I continued, “You came into the room to wake me up in the morning, and that’s when you saw it, me and that woman, naked, rolling around together on the bed.”

Laneige murmured, “That’s... cruel.”

“Huh?”

The light vanished from her eyes. Her gaze, cold as a frozen tundra, locked onto me. “Dale, that’s too cruel. I trusted you. Trusted you. Trusted you. Trusted you. Trusted...”

She did remember that this was just role-play, right? I was beginning to get a little concerned. “Uh, L-Laneige?”

Laneige shouted, “I trusted you!”

Suddenly, a violent blizzard tore through the vast training hall. It brought along a bitter cold that could freeze one’s very soul. The raging snowstorm gathered in midair, forming the shape of a massive snowflake.

It looked like she was seriously trying to kill someone here. That aside, I narrowed my eyes slightly as I glanced at the enormous snowflake forming in the air. Her control over her blessing had improved. Even though she had supposedly been consumed by rage after witnessing her lover’s “infidelity,” the power she had released from her blessing was remarkably stable.

She said, “Bloom.”

White breath spilled from between her lips. The giant snowflake suspended in the air scattered dozens, no, hundreds, of shards of ice, forming a storm of whirling ice shards.

Watching the avalanche-like barrage of ice crash toward me, I slowly drew in a breath. The Primordial Flame flared up and wrapped around me. Then, another beam of light flowed out from my soul stigmata. A deep green aura intertwined with the Primordial Flame. Where fire and tree merged, dark gray embers, Ashen Flames, roared to life.

My body burned as if molten lava were flowing through my veins instead of blood. The greater the pain was, the more fiercely the embers coiling around me blazed. Then, my body burned away and vanished, and in its place, Ashen Flames filled the void.

A tidal wave of ice shards crashed down upon the body that had turned to ash. The moment the shards touched the Ashen Flames, they shattered into countless pieces. Swallowed up by the embers, the violently raging storm of ice vanished instantly.

Laneige stared, eyes wide, her mouth hanging open in shock. “Huh? D-Dale, your body... It’s... F-flames—”

Before she could even finish speaking, I let out a ragged breath and collapsed to the floor. The body that had transformed into flames reverted to its original form. The horrific pain of being engulfed in fire lingered like an afterimage throughout my body, but I couldn’t stop the corners of my mouth from lifting.

It was exactly as I had expected. The power of the Tree of Creation was the key to the Incarnation of Fire state. The Incarnation of Fire—perhaps, “Flame Body” would be the more accurate term—was an ultimate technique that transformed my body into fire and granted near-limitless mana.

Ever since the first time I had used it in the battle against the Archbishop of Dreams and Fantasies, I couldn’t activate it at will. However, after becoming aware of the Tree of Creation within me, I had finally grasped the thread that led to it. It was never something that could be done with the power of the Primordial Flame alone. That’s why no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control it.

Of course, simply knowing the method didn’t mean I could use the technique perfectly. The amount of time I could maintain the Flame Body at will right now was, at best, only a few seconds. Still, it was far better than when I had no clues at all. If I continued to fuse the power of the Tree of Creation with the power of the Primordial Flame like this, one day, I would be able to invoke the Flame Body freely.

I looked down at the gray flames coiling around me as they burned. The Ashen Flames weren’t ordinary red flames, but dark gray fire, so I had casually taken to calling them Ashen Flames. I had never imagined they’d fit together like this—flames clinging to the ashes left behind by a burned tree—Ashen Flames. In a way, the term suited my current state perfectly: a body formed by the power of the Tree of Creation, burned away to give birth to these Ashen Flames.

It was a flame born from the fusion of the Tree of Creation and the Primordial Flame. If I ever came to wield this power completely, what kind of being would I become? The thought was so unreal that I let out a short, incredulous laugh and shook my head.

I then turned to Laneige. “Alright. Let’s try it one more time.”

“A-are you sure, Dale? You look really tired.”

“I’m fine. This much is nothing.”

I had finally found the clue I had been searching for all this time. There was no way I was going to stop training just because I was a little tired.

“O-okay. Then....” Laneige squeezed her eyes shut and began muttering to herself, as if hypnotizing her own mind, “Dale is a womanizer, Dale is a womanizer, Dale is a womanizer.”

No. How did that become your courage-boosting mantra?

* * *

After Laneige and I trained all morning, she pulled out the lunchbox she had prepared. She opened the lid with a shy smile. “M-make sure you eat well, Dale.”

Inside it was a generous assortment of ingredients said to be good for stamina, such as garlic, chives, and eel.

“Y-yeah. Thanks. I’ll dig in,” I replied.

I could chalk up at least this much to cute affection. As I ate the food, she looked at me and asked, “S-so, how is it, Dale?”

“It’s good.”

“D-do you feel... like your body’s getting hot or suddenly full of energy or anything?”

“Haha. It hasn’t even digested yet, of course not.”

Ingredients that were good for stamina were really just nutritious, healthy foods. They didn’t actually work like real aphrodisiacs.

In a voice so soft I almost couldn’t hear it, Laneige muttered, “T-that’s strange. Professor said it’d work right away once you ate it though.”

This is just healthy food, right? You didn’t mix anything weird into it, did you?

I gave Laneige a suspicious look as I finished the lunchbox cleanly. “Thanks for the meal. I really appreciate it, Laneige.”

“Ehehe. It’s nothing. I’m just happy you enjoyed it.” Smiling brightly, Laneige reached out for the empty lunchbox.

However, I said, “You go rest. I’ll take care of the cleanup.”

“N-no! I’ll do it!”

“Hey, you already made the lunch, I can’t make you clean up too.”

“I-it’s fine!”

She stubbornly pushed me away and handled the cleanup herself.

“Geez. You could’ve at least let me do that,” I said.

She smiled bashfully as she tucked the lunchbox back into her bag. “Hehe. I’m your exclusive maid, remember? This is my job.”

“Still, I feel kind of bad.”

Laneige glanced at me and, with her shoulders curling inward, said, “T-then, um, can I a-ask you for just one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Um, if you’re okay with it, there’s somewhere I’d like you to go with me.”

“Where?”

“Well...” She fidgeted, lips moving soundlessly as she hesitated, before finally forcing the words out. “The cemetery.”

“The cemetery?”

“Yeah. My mom’s... grave.”

It was a location I had never expected to hear from her lips.