06

“Then what will you do, Shiala?”

That was when Ains posed the question.

At a short distance away, several men appeared—creatures who seemed to embody pure vulgarity, likely companions of those who had stolen Shiala’s pendant.

“Hey, that high-quality chick is still here! We came back thinking we’d sell the kid to a slaver, but damn, we hit the jackpot!”

“Heh heh heh. Yeah. Let’s kill that guy quick and start having some fun!”

Laughing crudely, the men began arguing over who would get the woman first.

Sophia noticed immediately. But she had no sword now. Never in her life as a knight had she regretted being unarmed this much.

“Ains-sama, it may take some time, but I’ll deal with them—”

As Sophia spoke while staring down the men,

Ains, without even turning toward them or Sophia, tapped the ground once with the left leg of his prosthetic.

A sharp knock.

From that single point, the surroundings froze in an instant.

Ice Hell (Cocytus).

Leaving only Sophia and Shiala untouched, everything else was sealed inside a world of ice.

“…!”

Sophia could only gape in shock as the men were entombed in thick ice, their lives snuffed out in a heartbeat.

Bitter cold slammed into her.

Her body trembled—whether from the cold, or from something else, she could not tell.

“…Shiala.”

In the extreme cold, Ains’s silver hair fluttered as he kept his focus fixed entirely on Shiala.

“This slum, this place, and the residents who sucked dry the living blood of me and my mother here, then abandoned us—”

“……”

Ains did not interrupt. He waited for her words.

“—I will kill them.”

Shiala’s eyes, which had wavered before, now stared straight at Ains.

“Very well. This is the last question, Shiala.”

Ains was about to ask his final question.

And Shiala already understood, somehow, what that question would be.

“Were you proud of your mother?”

There it was.

Shiala closed her eyes once. Her answer was already decided.

“No. …That didn’t matter to me at all.”

“What did you want your mother to do for you?”

Amid Ice Hell, Shiala noticed a rat peeking out from a roadside gutter—frozen solid in death.

“I wanted her to ignore the sewer rats crowding around her, and look only at me.”

“……”

Ains remained silent, watching her calmly.

Shiala knew.

He understood that she would continue speaking.

“And anyone who still came near—I wanted her to drive them away completely and save only me. Anyone who wasn’t helping me or my mother… I wanted her to kill them.”

That was a severing.

After listening quietly, Ains paused for a beat, then spoke.

“This concludes the ‘Questioning.’ —Restriction Release: Miracle Right Arm.”

Shiala’s eyes widened.

From Ains’s empty right arm, a translucent blue hand emerged.

He removed the white glove fastened at his right shoulder and slipped it onto that unknown hand.

“Sorcerer Ains Silvetas, under oath, shall bestow upon Shiala the power she truly seeks—this sorcery.”

Ains placed the gloved right hand on top of Shiala’s head.

She felt a strange sense of comfort from that eerie hand.

Then, like a rushing panorama, a single sorcery—its manifestation and control—flooded Shiala’s mind. It felt as natural as limbs she had been born with.

“So this is… my power.”

In the next instant, Shiala’s world froze, as though time itself had stopped.

Space tore open, and a foreign entity from another world appeared, speaking directly into Shiala’s mind.

Startled, she looked to Ains—but Ains and Sophia behind him stood completely still, not even blinking.

This phenomenon was meant for Shiala alone.

She listened to the entity’s words.

The moment she finished listening, it retreated back through the rift. Space returned to normal, and the world began to move again.

“Restriction Release: Black Flame Will (Volition).”

A small black point appeared at Shiala’s chest.

It flickered, expanded, and stretched into her right hand.

The dark crimson flame blazing there left her hand and fell into Ice Hell.

Leaving only Ains and Sophia untouched, it swallowed the frozen world and burned it all away.

The men sealed in ice were engulfed by the black-red flames and vanished without leaving even ash. The rats vanished as well. The decaying sleeping places burned away—and along with them, the sewer-rat-like residents who had been hiding there, erased without even a final scream.

A short time passed.

The ruined stone pavement was gone. Before them lay nothing but scorched earth.

A farewell to the slums—and to the people who had lived there.

Shiala had done it.

“Sophia, shall we head to those villains you mentioned next?”

Sophia had witnessed the entire moment of the girl’s awakening to sorcery—and stood dumbstruck before that overwhelming power.

Then Ains called to her, his voice once more carrying its usual easygoing tone.

“Y-Yes. But we don’t know where they are…”

The companions who knew their base no longer existed—not even as ash.

“Shiala, you know, don’t you?”

Ains looked gently at Shiala with both his clear blue eye and his clouded one.

“Yes. I feel like my mother’s pendant is telling me.”

Shiala nodded firmly.

“I’ll stay with you to the very end, Shiala.”

The black-flame sorceress Shiala, who wielded flames that burned everything away, and Ains and Sophia began walking across the scorched earth where nothing remained—heading toward the place the girl sought.