Glowe and Elpokin kindly told him what had happened that day, each from their own point of view.
First, Elpokin.
“After you went to the restroom with Matten and didn’t come back, I figured something was going wrong. Not that it was surprising. The smell coming off those merchants wasn’t good.”
“Smell...?”
“That’s Elpokin’s way of putting it. His sense of smell is sharp, so he says he picks up people’s emotions or suspicious signs as scents first.”
Glowe, who’d had the same question as Fay earlier, added a gentle explanation. Fay nodded, looking dazed.
“Ah... I see.”
“Mm. So I sent Glowe to bring you, and I blocked the rest of the merchants...”
It wasn’t bragging, but Elpokin was someone who’d scraped by for months in that illegal fighting pit at Nukijo. Facing many alone was really disadvantageous, but he was confident he wouldn’t go down easily.
But just as he spread his wings wide to block the way, warded off the blows pouring in, and was about to press into a real fight—something astonishing happened.
A shadow cast on the wall suddenly writhed and turned into a human shape.
“What, a shadow?”
“At first I almost attacked it, thinking it was an enemy too, but then Senior Gakein popped out beside it, and I realized it wasn’t. Manipulating a shadow double—that’s his ability.”
Gakein was in simple plainclothes at the time, but fortunately, Elpokin remembered well the face of the “Rose of the Cavalry,” a senior who’d left a deep impression since the South. Startling friend and foe alike, the Rose of the Cavalry looked at Elpokin with fond pity and, wearing a kind smile, said this:
“—You were holding them here to protect your fellow recruits, weren’t you. It’s all right. Now that I’m here, you can fold those injured wings for a bit!”
“And after saying that, suddenly... the shadow started beating people up.”
“...Huh?”
“I’m telling you, the shadow beat people up.”
Elpokin repeated it kindly.
Since the shadow double was Gakein’s ability, strictly speaking it was Gakein who fought. But to Elpokin’s eyes, Gakein stood still while a pitch-black lump of shadow whipped about, pummeling people left and right.
Even when the enemies panicked, shouting and swinging weapons, the shadow took no damage. The body wielding the ability, Gakein, was the same.
It had its limbs cut and its neck erased, yet kept regenerating without end; wherever shadow was cast, it would melt away and then pop back up, unleashing attacks from trajectories beyond common sense. For the enemies, it was a waking nightmare.
Elpokin’s gaze went hazy as he recalled it, and he murmured with awe and reverence,
“It was incredible. Normally you think of attacks coming from front, back, or sides—you don’t imagine something shooting up from under your feet, or the ceiling, or between your collar. That’s not human fighting... If I’d met an Awakener who attacked like that in the pit, I would’ve died on the spot.”
What kind of training would you even need to fight like that? Elpokin couldn’t begin to imagine.
In a blink, three of the five enemies collapsed unconscious without even knowing what hit them. Two held out, snarling like men with some combat experience—but that was their limit.
Still, even the weakest-looking enemy keeps a trump card tucked away. One of those survivors, the one who looked oldest, pulled out something he’d hidden.
“It looked like a small magic stone, but I’m not sure. He was about to pop it...”
Suddenly, water conjured out of thin air engulfed the man’s head with a wet smack!
It was like he’d jammed a fishbowl made of a giant drop of water over his head. The enemies scraped at the water covering their heads, twisted their bodies, even bashed their heads—but nothing worked. It didn’t take long before they’d drunk themselves fit to burst and toppled over, faces turned blue.
Gakein glanced back and, looking not the least surprised, smiled to greet someone. Elpokin saw Vice-Commander Steber walking in, unruffled. The one who had summoned that quiet, deadly droplet was none other than the endlessly gentle Steber.
How could a person devise a style of attack so efficient and terrifying? Elpokin, who’d taken the role of aerial rescue in the South and thus never seen Steber fight under the sea, was deeply shocked. If anyone dared say water-aspect abilities were weaker and less lethal than fire, they should be shown what he’d just witnessed.
Seeing Elpokin’s astonished face, the two seniors seemed to brood a moment, wondering if they’d just shoved too gruesome a sight in his face. But Elpokin’s shock came from the wonder of seeing strength beyond common sense—so in truth, it was the opposite.
“The two seniors acted like everything had been foreseen. They collected the items the enemies dropped, bound all of them up, and tossed them into Senior Gakein’s shadow for storage. I asked about it because it was so fascinating, and they said shadow-related abilities had many more applications than that. And Senior Steber said the water-aspect attack I saw was just the simplest form. Of course, simple doesn’t mean easy—but Senior Yuder is even—”
“Elpokin. I know you were moved by their abilities, but now please tell the important part too!”
Glowe whispered. Only then did Elpokin blink and come back to himself. Fay, half spellbound by the tale, finally remembered what the point had been.
“Ah, sorry. Anyway, that’s how I got rescued with nothing worse than a few small injuries. Turned out other seniors were already there, and when I heard Senior Yuder was outside, I thought it was all over—but then word came that you’d tried to kill yourself. That really shocked me.”
“From there, may I take it?”
Glowe let out a brief sigh.
“I ran into several seniors while I was on my way to find you too. Did you know Senior Elre was disguised as that inn staffer? Or that Senior Ever was posing as one of the customers on the first floor?”
“...I had no idea.”
“Me neither.”
When Fay answered blankly, Elpokin nodded.
“They said they’d thought those merchants were suspicious from the start and were tailing them. I didn’t hear the details, but it sounded like they’d been tracking a thread from Northern Peleta.”
“What? From there...? Then could it be...”
“The most likely is that, while chasing the merchants, they happened to find out we were there... But maybe they knew from the start that you were simply deceived by those merchants. Well, that’s not important anymore.”
The three recruits hadn’t known it, but the operation had been run in two teams.
One team infiltrated the inn to protect the recruits and deal with the merchants; officially, Steber held the responsibility, but unofficially, Commander Kishiar was overseeing everyone.
The other team was to nab, all at once, the caravan’s other members outside the inn along with their collaborators; Yuder and Nathan Zuckerman shared that responsibility.
Kanna Wand waited at a midpoint to read information the moment any unforeseen variable sprang out; the Elder siblings stood by her to guard and move her instantly wherever needed.
Everyone involved was perfectly concealed. Long before the merchants noticed, the inn’s staffer had already been swapped for Fruelle, and in the kitchen where the owner was supposedly cooking, Steber and Ever lay in wait.
No one let their guard down, and everything proceeded as planned.
Except for one thing: Fay’s attempt to kill himself.
“When I saw Senior Fruelle, I still didn’t understand. On my way, the first floor had so few people I thought they’d all just run off... It was only after I got to the restroom, knocked, and then met Senior Debran that I started to grasp it.”
“Ah...”
Fay faintly recalled the knocking then. The urge to cry rose up again.
“I heard Senior Debran blasted the door apart with fire at almost the exact moment you tried to kill yourself. If the Commander hadn’t come there, you might have really... died then, Fay.”
“...”
“Thinking back, I don’t think Senior Debran knew the Commander would arrive either. He looked more shocked than I was... Anyway, thanks to the Commander, you survived, and the Elder siblings took us straight back to the Cavalry. Elpokin and I were fine since we’d barely taken in any poison, but you’d injured your tongue badly and ingested far too much, so you needed longer treatment. Still, Priest Lusan says there’ll be no aftereffects.”
Fay nodded blankly. He’d heard it all, yet it still didn’t feel real.
“...I... see.”
“You really don’t remember any of it? You said earlier you saw the Commander and Senior Yuder in a dream.”
“I did, but... it was such a strange dream...”
A dream where countless angels escorted him and the Commander and Yuder came to see him? Even for a dream, wasn’t that bizarre?
“I thought angels had come to take me away—but when I woke up, I was here. Haha...”
From what his fellow recruits said, thankfully, it seemed it really had only been a dream. Saying so with a timid laugh, Fay happened to see the expressions on the two across from him—and stopped laughing.
A nameless sense of foreboding crawled coldly down his back.
“...What’s wrong?”
“Mm. That wasn’t a dream.”
Elpokin spoke with a slightly sorry look.
“You really did call me and Glowe angels then... The Elder seniors too—and, ah, maybe even Priest Lusan, when you woke for a bit here?”
“...What?”