05

“…That’s right. My mother was an exceptional mage. So I should be able to use magic too. If I just put that magical knowledge into myself, along with my memories of her, then I can deal with those people…”

The girl wiped her tears with the sleeve of her filthy clothes, smearing her face even more as she looked up.

Ains reacted subtly to her words.

“…Haa. I’d like to savor this feeling a little longer, but it can’t be helped. Hey, you.”

Although he had already lost interest, Ains looked at the girl again.

“…Huh? Me?”

The girl clearly hadn’t expected Ains to speak to her, and reflexively asked back.

“Yes, you. What’s your name?”

“…Shiala.”

“I see. Then, Shiala. I could teach you the knowledge you desire.”

“Huh? Really?”

Shiala looked confused, unable to believe such words were coming from the same Ains who had shown her no interest before.

“Yeah. I won’t lie. I swear it in the name of Ains Silvetas. But there’s one condition.”

“…A condition? I don’t have any money.”

Who would give her what she wanted for free? Shiala assumed Ains was asking for something in return.

“Money is… not exactly my own power, but I’m not lacking it.”

Ains let out a dry laugh.

“Then what do you want?”

“I can’t teach you as you are now. So I need you to take a hard look at yourself first.”

“Myself…?”

As Shiala stared back at him, she saw that one of Ains’s eyes was a clear, translucent blue, while the other glowed red, as if opposing it.

“Shiala, once you can use magic, what will you do with it?”

Shiala’s gaze was drawn into Ains’s eyes.

“Of course, I’ll go get back my mother’s keepsake.”

“I see. But that’s not all, is it?”

“…? What do you mean?”

“Will it really end with just taking it back? Will you stop there?”

Ains’s red right eye fixed itself on Shiala.

Shiala fell silent and imagined it.

“…It might not end there.”

Healed wounds.

Wounds that no longer left even a trace. Shiala looked down at the places where they had been and bit her lower lip.

“Say it clearly. What will you do?”

“…I’ll make them suffer more than I did.”

Her voice was that of a young girl, yet it carried emotions no child should have.

“No, there’s a more direct word, isn’t there? You know it. And you know you’ll act on it.”

A chill ran through Shiala.

She felt dread from Ains’s burning red eye.

“…I’ll kill them.”

“That’s right. You want knowledge and power enough to kill them.”

A girl barely ten years old spoke the word “kill,” fully aware of its weight.

Even Sophia could not stay silent any longer.

“Ains-sama, that’s far too much for a child—”

Ains turned his face toward Sophia.

The usual easygoing expression was gone. It was the same look he had worn when facing Corbelli.

“Sophia, don’t interfere with my questioning. I won’t say it twice.”

“I-I beg your pardon.”

Sophia shuddered and immediately bowed her head.

“Let’s continue, Shiala. You said you want to change your current situation. So what exactly will you do?”

Ains turned his gaze away from Sophia and stared into Shiala’s trembling eyes.

“I’ll leave this place—the slums—and live by my own strength.”

“Leave the slums? Once you gain power after growing up here, everyone around you will cling to you, you know?”

“That’s…”

“Will you save them?”

“If I can help them…”

Shiala’s eyes drifted away from Ains.

“Everyone in the slums? The people who did nothing to help you when you were being abused, who only prayed that the trouble wouldn’t reach them?”

“……”

“Shiala. I hear your mother is dead. What did they do then? Did they try to do anything for your mother, or for you?”

Shiala instinctively understood.

Those red eyes saw through her past—and her true feelings.

And she remembered.

Her mother, valued as a skilled mage, being swept up in some noble dispute and cast out of public life. No one tried to help her.

Shiala and her mother drifted into the slums. What awaited them was praise and flattery from the residents, who elevated her mother and relied on her as someone to bear the injustices that fell upon them.

Shiala’s mother, a noble mage, fulfilled that role and became their shield. The residents rejoiced at their safety, while beside them her mother smiled, dragging a wounded, bleeding body.

Shiala had been proud of her mother for extending a helping hand to others without reward. At the same time, she carried an inexpressible unease.

‘My mother is amazing. I want to be like her.’

Yet many times, she had cried after seeing her mother wash blood away in muddy puddles late at night.

Her mother acted strong, but that could not last forever.

Wear and tear accumulated.

And eventually, she broke completely.

Then came the injustice inflicted on her mother right before Shiala’s eyes—and the slum residents, who had been helped again and again, acted as though it had nothing to do with them. As if offering up the very person who had saved them as a sacrifice.

Even recalling a fragment of it drowned Shiala in despair and seething rage.

Then came the injustices that befell Shiala herself.

And the sight of countless ugly, sewer-rat-like onlookers holding their breath and choosing to watch.

—It made her want to vomit.

“…Shiala, will you keep living as a rat that does nothing but peck at rotting corpses in the gutter?”

The man before her truly saw through her heart. Shiala laughed silently to herself.

“No.”

The uncanny aura surrounding Ains—detached from the mundane world, like a wandering specter.

He saw through Shiala’s heart and made the young girl recognize the ugly emotions and desires she carried.

A devil.

…A demon god.