The Great Ancient Wizard, Contact with the Unknown (3)

  “I’m sure that the Master can take care of this himself.”


  “It’s hard for any country to bury multiple dragons at once. What the hell do you think I am?”


  “Well, the question hasn’t even been answered in my mind yet…”


  Maybell stared at Evan with a very suspicious look, but Evan couldn’t help but feel hurt.

  ‘No, I’ve been dealing with dragons one-on-one, but I haven’t dealt with multiple at once!’


  It seemed that a dragon was easy because he had hunted it rather quickly, but their power increased exponentially should he fight more than one at a time. The Great Ancient Wizard also hunted only in situations where only one dragon could be called out to fight in the game. All other situations were bad endings!

  “And the flow is important in this kind of thing.”


  “The flow?”


  “Yes.”


  The plan to wipe out the Demons with dragons was, in fact, just a more important step in preparation for the plan.

  “The plan is to co-destruct the dragons with the other dragons that crawled out of the Spirit Realm.”


  “Oh, come to think of it, there are other dragons, too.”


  “Yes, if they were allied with the Devil, they’d be in the North by now…”


  Evan couldn’t break the North’s barrier now. It wasn’t because he thought the dragons would notice the barrier, but he intended to encourage the dragons’ rivalry with each other.

  “The Dragons are the ones who think of each other as doppelg?ngers. If the Demons in the South are swept away, it will naturally be reported to the North’s main camp. If the dragons of another world find out about it, they won’t be able to survive without coming forward.”


  Of course, the plan was meaningful on the assumption that the dragons crawling out of the Spirit Realm had minimal cooperation with the Demons, but it probably wouldn’t go that far. Well, even if things went wrong, Evan just needed to clean up the dragons consumed by the battle with the Demons and return.

  “You’re a good fighter, Master.”


  “What you can do is simple. When the dragons show up, you just need to give a little boost to the instincts of the Demons. If you instigate the lower Demon Tribes, the upper Demons will be forced to enter the battle because they cannot control them.”


  “It’s the specialty of the Succubus if it’s instinctual.”


  “And Fayna said…”


  Evan smiled and told the operation to the angel of the Earth Mother, who had a frightened look on her face from the moment she was told that there was a dragon. Fayna seemed very unhappy with it, but she managed to convince herself that it was insurance if things went wrong. It made the plan perfect. The two dragon factions would never stop fighting until either side was wiped out!

  …And, of course, those who remained at the end of it would have been arranged in the hands of Evan and his party.

  * * *

  Evan wanted to move right away, but his decision proved to be postponed until the next day. Everyone looked forward to his return from the Demon Realm, and the Succubae wanted to move after taking his energy. To put it bluntly, there was a problem of establishing a home for the Arpeta family, and it was necessary to convey the primary education policy to Shimma Cattleya.

  “Whoa, it’s over now.”


  “Good job, Zero.”


  After finishing what he had to do right away, the sun had already set after speaking briefly to the elves, humans, and Dwarves. It was enough time to realize how dependent they were on Evan, who they had just met.

  “So, what if I’m gone?”


  “Ugh.”


  Mirole pulled her sleeve tight at the casual remark. Evan smiled bitterly when he realized his slip of the tongue.

  “Sorry.”


  “No, I know Zero isn’t from here. But….”


  Her green eyes, emitting a brilliant light like an emerald, were shaking uneasily. She took a step closer with her hand on Evan’s sleeve, strengthening her grip.

  “I feel like it’s getting closer and closer…the time when Zero leaves us. As many things happen, and as I meet a lot of people, those thoughts consume me more and more.”


  “…”


  “I’ve been thinking since the Demon Realm. Zero is motivated to do everything…it looks like it’s just to get everything done in a short time.”


  He couldn’t refute it because it was true. It was also confirmed that Evan’s longing for Sherden was growing day by day. But he thought he was hiding it. Yet Mirole, who had been looking at him, seemed to have already seen through his innermost thoughts.

  “Zero is an alias, right? When the humans called you, they would often say words that I couldn’t understand. I’m sure they know more about Zero than I do.”


  She was probably referring to Leo’s party. To be honest, the lie of memory loss was more or less discovered, but Evan couldn’t help but answer vaguely because he couldn’t admit it on the surface.

  “Well…I guess so.”


  “I think so…but when they get back to where they were, Zero will go back, too, right?”


  He couldn’t nod, so he didn’t say anything and kept his mouth shut. Perhaps resigned, she tugged on Evan’s sleeve with a lonely look on her face and backed away.

  “I’m sorry. Zero is already doing his best for us, but I was acting like a baby. I didn’t mean to ask you. It’s just that I’m so lonely…”


  “Well…”


  “I’ll try harder from now on so that I can help Zero do his job. So don’t abandon me and just watch.”


  “Mirole.”


  Evan made it clear that it was his mistake and caught Mirole trying to escape. But he couldn’t make irresponsible remarks about staying here after everything was over, so he thought about what would be good to soothe her.

  “Let’s have a cup of tea. I want to drink the Elven Tea that you make.”


  He had gotten the worst of it.

  “…Would that be all right?”


  “Huh, yeah?”


  Why was she asking if it would be okay? Evan became a little nervous when he realized that the atmosphere had changed. Mirole came back and grabbed his sleeve again. She held it a little more complicated than before.

  “Are you sure it’ll be okay?”


  “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…?”


  “I never thought I’d get a chance so soon…and he’s a great…”


  “Mirole?”


  He tried to pull away from his arm lightly, but she didn’t budge. Evan realized that the new Mirole had become very strong in the days she spent in the Demon Realm.

  “Come on, let’s go drink.”


  “Mirole?”


  “I’ll make it smell good, so let’s go drink.”


  It was weird. Mirole, who had been covered in a sad atmosphere a while ago, seemed to have a spirit that was hard to recognize now.

  “I’m sure it’ll be very delicious.”


  “Uh, but…”


  “…”


  A smile that was endlessly bright and attractive but with some shadows. Her smile stripped all power to resist.

  “…So, you’ll drink the tea?”


  “Sure.”


  Eventually, Evan had no choice but to be dragged away by her without hesitation. The Mother Tree stretched out its branches as if curious about their conversation, but it couldn’t get into its daughter’s room.

  * * *

  Early in the morning, Evan called out to Cattleya. Cattleya had a very vivid look after a good night’s sleep, perhaps because she escaped from the world of persecution she was born into. Yes, it was the opposite of Evan, who had been dogged by the forest fairy’s persistent courtship all night.

  “…Why do you look so tired?”


  “I fought to protect my innocence last night.”


  “Innocence?”


  “There’s something like that. You’ll find out when you grow up.”


  Evan, whose condition was ruined, replied with a yawn because he had to play a thrilling game where he would lose if he took even a single step back. However, Cattleya rumbled with her cat ears pointed up because she didn’t like those words.

  “Stop pretending to be an adult with all those difficult words.”


  He didn’t mean to. But if he explained in detail, Evan would become a sexual harasser, so he decided to do as she wanted.

  “Yes, let’s say I’m a child.”


  “Hmph!”


  However, his response seemed to have made Cattleya feel even angrier. Evan continued, ignoring her trembling body.

  “I originally tried to educate you by looking at you for a few days, but the damn thing that I drank made me so radical that I couldn’t afford it. So, I’ll just give you basic training.”


  “Basic Training?”


  “Let’s find out your aptitude.”


  “Aptitude?”


  Evan laid out all the weapons he had prepared on the floor. It was a waste of time to explain what an aptitude was.

  “You can choose the one you want the most.”


  “You want me to use a weapon? Don’t be ridiculous. I became a demon because of this vast magic.”


  “So, you know how to use magic?”


  At this, Cattleya shut up immediately. He supposed so. The moment he saw her, he knew she was in a tribe that could handle magic. Perhaps Cattleya’s growth had been low all this time because she struggled to use magic that didn’t even work for her. Yeah, like Evan from the original Yo-Ma Great War 3 game.

  “You’re a close-knit cat. So, take your weapons. If you don’t have any sense of the weapon, you’ll learn to fight.”


  “You want me to sweat?”


  “Then die if you don’t like it.”


  At Evan’s cold words, she began to choose her weapon. However, she didn’t react to the weapons enough.

  “What do you feel about this? You just wanted to wake up someone who’s been sleeping well for a long time and bother them?”


  “All right, all right, it’s not bad that you’re ignorant.”


  But really, she didn’t catch a reaction from any weapon. It wasn’t on purpose; she just didn’t feel anything. Then there was the only reaction when she touched a Gauntlet, a defensive tool, not a weapon.

  “Hold on…”


  At that moment, Evan had a clue. A half-human, half-beast Demon Tribe with a cat’s ears. The faint aptitude with the gauntlet. Then there was only one answer.

  “Is it your claws!”


  A claw. It was a weapon that had been made by mimicking an animal’s claws. There was something that was made to be worn on her hand so that she could swing her nails, and Evan intuitively felt that she might have that aptitude.

  “I have one more favor to ask of the Dwarves.”


  A claw was a weapon not found in Yo-Ma Great War. So was this aptitude officially nonexistent? Surprisingly not. Some DLCs released in the early days of Yo-Ma Great War 4 had content in tiger form! There, the tiger’s skill required the claw aptitude. Of course, it wasn’t disclosed, but later, a connoisseur looked at the program’s source and found out.

  Fans of the Yo-Ma Great War series, who wanted to swing the claws around, constantly suggested to the production team that they should make Claw aptitude for humans. Still, the production team’s answer was consistently this: “It’s not an aptitude that humans can have.” It ended up in a Demon!

  “You should be grateful to me.”


  Evan looked so proud that he showed off to Cattleya.

  “I’m the only one in the world who knows how to train that aptitude.”


  Although Yo-Ma Great War 4 wasn’t much liked Yo-Ma great War 3, he was proud of himself for remembering the training method because he liked the tiger that used Claw combat. Just because others knew the aptitudes didn’t necessarily mean that they knew how to train as efficiently as Evan!

  “This man is so bad…”


  Cattleya looked at Evan with a fierce look and began to grumble. Next to her, the little cats, Meow-one and Meow-two, were crying in a good mood. Evan saw them and realized something like a bolt of lightning in his mind.

  And thus, the number of trainees in Claw combat skills increased to three.