The Last Place Hero's Return

Chapter 252: Interlude – Warmth (1)

The city where the blizzard had raged fell silent once more. As soon as Laneige withdrew her power, the snow that had piled up to knee height melted away in the blink of an eye, vanishing like a mirage. What remained were the scattered remnants of ruin and, amid that chaotic debris, the still body of a woman with violet hair, lying quietly with her eyes closed.

Seeing Laneige stare down at Seria’s body in silence, I turned to her and asked, “Will you be okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. Go ahead, Dale.”

I let out a deep breath and summoned the Ashen Flames. Brilliant gray flames flared to life, wrapping themselves around Seria’s corpse. So that her life would never be toyed with again, so that not even her bones would remain, her body burned and crumbled into ash, scattering into the air.

Watching her mother’s remains dissolve into ash, Laneige reached out without realizing it. The ashes slipped through her fingers. She bit down hard on her lip, forcing back the sob that threatened to spill out.

I gently pulled her into my arms. “You don’t have to hold it in.”

Laneige buried her face in my chest and wailed openly. Just as Seria had done for her, I patted Laneige’s back as she cried, hoping, even if only a little, that her frozen heart would thaw.

We stayed like that for a while. Then, with red, swollen eyes, Laneige finally pulled away and looked up at me.

“Do you feel a bit better?” I asked.

She nodded faintly. “Yeah.”

“Then, shall we head back?”

“Yeah, let’s go.”

Holding Laneige’s hand, I walked back to where we had parked the magi-car. I had been worried that the aftermath of the battle could have destroyed it, but fortunately, since we had parked far from the city, it was unharmed.

As we stepped inside, Laneige said, “Ugh, Dale, sorry. I’m really tired.”

“Go ahead and sleep. I’ll wake you when we arrive.”

“T-thank you.”

Whether it was from overusing the power of her Blessing or from finally releasing all the resentment she had been holding inside, Laneige fell asleep the moment she sat down in the passenger seat. It was like she had passed out.

She mumbled in her sleep. “Mom...”

I gently stroked her hair and pressed down on the accelerator. On the road back to the Hero Academy, I narrowed my eyes as a name surfaced in my mind: the Prophet of Eternity. What kind of bastard was he?

He was a mysterious figure capable of meddling with life itself. Even though I had never even heard of in my past life, he lingered in my thoughts like a bloodstain on a white shirt. I was curious about who he really was, but what I couldn’t understand the most was his goal.

Since Mephisto was cooperating with him, reviving the Demon God couldn’t be his objective. If anything, it seemed to be the opposite. The previous time, Mephisto had sent his own forces alongside his to stop the Primordial Ember.

However, that didn’t mean his goal was to stop the Demon God’s revival either. What purpose could there be in resurrecting Seria Maram, a person who had been dead for sixteen years? It couldn’t be for the sake of stopping the Demon God’s revival. Moreover, Seria Maram appeared the moment Laneige and I arrived in the city. It was highly likely he had tracked our movements and sent Seria there. If that was indeed the case, the objective of the Prophet of Eternity was one of two things: either awakening Laneige or me.

I frowned as the thought took shape. Why would someone who had never even seen my face be targeting me? The more I thought about it, the deeper the maze seemed to become. In the end, I let out a long sigh, forcibly clearing my tangled thoughts. There simply weren’t enough clues yet. The only certain thing was that the Prophet of Eternity possessed a Blessing that allowed him to interfere with life itself.

And that, that bastard can’t be left alone.

Recalling Seria’s final moments, I pressed harder on the accelerator.

* * *

Arriving at the Hero Academy late in the day, I said to Laneige, “We’re here.”

Laneige was still half-sleep. “Mmm, already?”

“Well, ‘already’ might be a stretch. It’s almost evening.”

I gently lifted her. Cradled in my arms in what people would call a princess carry, Laneige blinked up at me. As if the drowsiness had vanished, she looked at me with wide, clear eyes. “D-Dale?”

“I’ll take you to your room. Come to think of it, you said you changed rooms from your old dorm, right? Where should I go?”

Laneige slowly shook her head. “No. Not my room. Take me to yours.”

“My room?”

“Yeah.”

Up until now, no matter what happened, Laneige had always returned to her room to sleep.

“Today, I want to sleep together.” Clutching the edge of my clothes tightly, Laneige looked up at me with hesitant eyes. “Is that not okay?”

How could I possibly refuse her in a situation like this?

“Let’s go.” Carrying her in my arms, I headed toward my room. Once inside, I gently laid her down on the bed. “Then you sleep on the bed tonight, Laneige. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“No.”

“Huh?”

Laneige shook her head side to side, tightening her grip on my collar. “I don’t... want that. I want to sleep together with you, Dale.”

The way she tugged at my clothes, acting cute, was so adorable that I almost forgot to breathe. “Uh, o-okay. Sure. Let’s sleep together.”

Even someone like me, constantly mocked for being oblivious to romance, could tell that what she meant by “sleep together” wasn’t just about getting a good night’s rest.

Thinking I should cool my overheated head with some cold water, I turned toward the shower. “Ahem. Then I’ll go wash up first, okay?”

Once again, a hand pulled at my collar. I muttered, “Laneige?”

When I turned back, I saw Laneige hesitantly pushing herself up from the bed, her face flushed bright red. I asked, “You’re going to wash first?”

“N-no.” She hesitated for a long moment, lips fidgeting, then tugged at my collar and started toward the bathroom. “L-let’s wash together.”

“What?”

“I-I mean, y-you must be really cold today too, Dale! S-so!” She swallowed hard and pressed herself against me. “I-I’ll warm you up.”

I let out an unintentional chuckle at her bold declaration.

She looked at me. “W-why are you laughing?”

“No, it’s just... hearing you say you’ll warm me up feels kind of surprising.”

“I-I can warm you up too, you know?”

With a tense expression, she grabbed my hand, pulled it toward her, and firmly pressed it against her chest. Her chest was asserting itself far more strongly than one would expect from her small frame. The soft warmth filling my palm, the pale skin visible through the thin fabric of her dress, was more than enough to set my body on fire.

“It’s warm, right?” she asked.

“Ahem. Y-yeah. It is.”

“Then....”

Carefully, Laneige slipped out of her clothes. In an instant, she stood before me naked. She gently took my hand and led me toward the shower. The two of us stood together inside the shower stall. I had bathed together with Elisha before, sure, but that had been in a spacious room large enough for ten people. This was different, completely different. Here, in a cramped shower booth barely big enough for one, our bodies pressed tightly together.

“U-um, Dale...”

“Y-yeah?”

The shower filled the space with the steady sound of water. Laneige, who was standing with her back to me, slowly turned around. Through the white steam rising like fog, her form gradually came into view.

“H-hiiiyahh!”

She squeezed her eyes shut and suddenly threw her arms around me. As we touched skin against skin, an almost unbelievable softness and warmth enveloped my body.

She leaned against me, holding me tightly. “Hehe. It feels warm... Are you warm too, Dale?”

Maybe because of our height difference, her wet hair brushed against my chest, sending a ticklish sensation through me.

“Y-yeah. I am.”

“That’s good.” She smiled softly and tightened her arms around me. “I-I was actually scared the whole time.”

“Scared?”

“That someday, I might end up like my mom. But then, I met you, Dale, and I gained so many precious people. Iris, Yurina, Professor Baldwin, Sophia, and everyone in the party too. I’ve come to love them all so much.”

She had been afraid of becoming a witch and hurting the people she loved. However, with time, so much warmth had flowed into her once-cold life. And it was precisely because of that she was even more afraid.

“I thought... if I was going to hurt the people I cared about, maybe it’d be better if I just disappeared. That’s why I left without saying anything back then. But this time, I changed my mind.”

Until now, she had believed Seria had gone berserk simply because she had become a demon. Laneige thought it couldn’t be helped because Seria bore the soul stigmata of the Demon God. But the image of Seria she had seen at the very end was exactly the mother she remembered.

She recalled her mother’s words. “So warm, my daughter.”

“My mom didn’t do anything wrong, right? She didn’t hurt the people she loved because she was evil, right?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

I couldn’t be completely certain yet, but there was a strong chance the Prophet of Eternity had interfered even back when Seria first went berserk.

Laneige lifted her head with a faint smile. “I see.”

Our eyes met. She looked up at me, her eyes glistening with moisture. “Thank you, Dale.”

The arms wrapped around my waist slowly slid downward. As I felt her touch below, a groan escaped me before I could stop it.

“For stepping in instead of me back then, for giving my mom peace.”

If I hadn’t been there at that moment, she would never have been able to kill Seria herself. She would’ve remained frozen in place, bound by faded memories. And Seria would never have found peace, even at the moment of her death.

“Thank you, for killing my mom, Dale.”

“Laneige...”

“A-and, um, a-as a reward....”

She pressed herself against me, and her face burned red, as if it would burst. Then, suddenly, the water pouring from the showerhead gathered together, forming icy cuffs around my wrists.

I was surprised. “Huh?”

Though they were made of ice, they weren’t cold where they touched my skin. If anything, they felt warm, almost comforting. Calling it warm ice didn’t really make sense, but that was exactly what Laneige had created.

Laneige smiled brightly as she looked at my arms bound in ice. “As a reward, today, I’ll make you feel really, really good. S-so good that you’ll m-melt, Dale, hehe.”

For some reason, as I was dragged across the floor toward the bed, wrists bound in cuffs, a deep sense of dread crawled up my spine.