Straf, Cycelia and Lily continue walking beside each other down the road. Cycelia is leaning ahead of them, looking at both Straf and Lily. The vampire girl's dress is soaked with blood and covered in dirt, while also being slashed open in the center of her chest. Straf's clothes are pristinely clean however, albeit also badly shredded. The massive gap in his shirt reveals some of his lean, toned torso

「Straf, are you not at all concerned about this easterner Willow, that the lowly worm mentioned?」

Lily tilts her parasol, peeking her inqusitive eyes out from under its rim up at Straf.

「Huh? No, not really. He bet all his money on me and lost, because he's a gambling addict. I know the story without the need to be told. I thought mages were supposed to be smart?」

Straf pulls his hands out of his pockets and shrugs with them.

「Straf, how come you're perfectly fine after all that?」

Cycelia chimes in, asking as she's staring at the massive tear in his shirt and his chiseled muscles beneath.

「Hm? Well, when you're someone like me, you have to learn to deal with trauma quick.」

Straf says as he looks down at his ruined shirt.

「…Still, I'm gonna need a new shirt. What a pain in the ass. I could make myself one, but I don't want to waste the materials.」

Straf continues his thought, shrugging as he sighs.

「Straf… I really thought you were going to die. I don't think I was ever this scared in my life.」

Cycelia says, then fidgets with her medallion as she looks down.

「Have you ever seen a story where the protagonist dies-?」

「I am surprised as well, Straf. What exactly are you? I know no regular human could regenerate from, or even survive that amount of damage…」

Lily interrupts Straf before he can fully reply to Cycelia. His attention is now split between the two.

「Oh, no, I am a regular human. Physically. Racially.」

《Though internally, I am a fucking beast.》

Straf explains his nature with a shrug of his hands, and snickers as he thinks to himself.

「That can't be right. I am one of the quickest of my kind, if not the quickest… And yet, you were toying with me, like I was toying with that pathetic maggot when we first met.」

「Yeah, well… You just need to accept that while some humans check their closets for monsters, monsters check their closets for me. They'll never find me, I'll be waiting on the ceiling.」

Straf returns his hands to his pockets, and shrugs his shoulders.

「Straf, what did that spearman mean when he said the truth about you?」

Cycelia asks again, anxiously playing with her silver medallion.

「Huh? Well, it's kind of complicated. For now, let's just say that I won the tournament twice.」

「What? You were competing 4 years ago?-」

「No, I just won twice. Take that statement at its face value, or else it'll get really confusing. Trust me.」

Straf shakes his head, and insists with a nod.

「By the way, Straf… Why is there not a speck of blood or dirt on you?」

Cycelia looks at the jarring contrast between Straf's freshness, and Lily's grime.

「That's just my ability. If it prevented my clothes from getting damaged, now that would be helpful.」

「Straf, you have a blessing like that? That's… Mildly useful.」

Lily asks, finally realizing what made Straf's appearance so odd to her.

「Yeah, I think think the biggest benefit is that my hands are basically disinfectants.」

「Dis- What?」

Lily tilts her head with a squint of her red eye. Her twin tails jiggle gently as they hang off the sides of her head.

「Please don't make me explain the little creatures. I can't get sick no matter how much filth I touch, that's the gist of it.」

Straf shrugs, placing his hands back in his pockets.

「I… See… Well, my blessing is weight control.」

Lily nods her head, mildly confused. She looks straight ahead, and declares with a proud, smug smirk.

「Yeah? Fatties would love that.」

Straf looks down at her parasol with an amused grin, Cycelia is somewhat surprised.

「No! Not like that! I can control how much the gravity affects me. If the pest from before didn't dodge my boot, he'd be squashed beneath it like the cockroach he is.」

Lily shrugs with her free hand as she explains, also adding a shrug of her shoulders and closing her eyes in an exaggeratedly expressive way.

「Huuuh. So that's how you pinned his spear in place and saved my ass. Honestly, I didn't think about it much. I think me missing half my chest had something to do with it, though. So you can make yourself a lot heavier?」

「Correct. I can also make myself lighter for a short while, to a degree. Here, take my hand. Let me show you.」

Lily shifts the parasol around and presents Straf her tiny, pale hand in a ladylike manner. Straf takes it, and holds it a constant height as they walk together. Her smug smile disappears after a few seconds, and she looks at Straf's unimpressed face.

「Well? Are you going to do it?」

Straf impatiently asks.

「I- Yes…」

Lily replies, then grimaces while looking at her hand. She looks up at Straf again, who is still looking at her with bored eyes. She looks down at her hand, and clenches her teeth. She grimaces heavily while focusing on it intensely, and their hands don't even flinch.

「Oh. I can kind of feel something.」

Straf exclaims, and starts throwing her hand up while still in his grasp. Lily's face twists into pure shock.

「Yeah, that's kind of neat.」

Straf admits with a nod of his head, and lets go of her hand. Lily's hand plummets down towards the ground the second he lets go.

「Oof!-」

Lily loses her balance due to her hand swinging down without a warning, and bumps her shoulder into Straf.

「Hm? Did you trip?」

He asks, with raised brows.

「…Just how powerful are you?」

Lily asks, covering her mouth in shock with the back of her hand. Her red, vertically-slit eyes stare at Straf in sheer disbelief and awe.

「I am the strongest.」

Straf shrugs. They come across a dirt path connected to the stone road they're traveling.

「Straf, this road leads to the village I've told you about, but it's also somewhat unsafe-」

「Cool. Let's go.」

Straf turns and walks onto the dirt road nonchalantly, cutting Cycelia's warning off.

「Straf! Can you please be more careful!?」

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Cycelia catches up to Straf, fiddling with her medallion the whole time.

「Relax, Lia. You've got me and a little vampire girl with you. Just stay away from turtles this time, they're bad luck.」

Straf reassures Cycelia with an amused smirk.

「Indeed. Anything that would waylay us will not even get a chance to regret it.」

Lily adds, catching up to them at her own pace.

「This is a rather fortunate direction as well. My castle is not too far from here, I'll return to it at night, take a bath, and change my clothes.」

She looks up at the mountains in the distance.

「You have a castle after all? Where?」

Straf looks down into Lily's ruby-red eyes beneath her parasol.

「Right there. You can see it at the peak.」

She lifts her hand and points at a mountain far in the distance, nearly hidden in the atmospheric haze.

「Ah. I see. That's not really close though, is it?」

Straf stops walking. With his fists on his hips, he looks at the giant ominous castle in the distance at the ridge of the mountain Lily is pointing at.

「For me, it is. An hour or two of travel at most.」

Lily says nonchalantly, twirling her parasol on her shoulder.

「Where is it? I don't see anything…」

Cycelia asks, squinting heavily as she fashions a sun visor from her fingers.

「Right over there, see it?」

Straf leans over towards Cycelia and points his arm at the castle. Her eyes widen.

「You could see that tiny thing!? That's a castle!? It looks like a part of the mountain to me!」

Cycelia exclaims, looking shocked at Straf.

「Hmpf. It's not tiny. It's decently big. You're welcome to visit me there, Straf.」

Lily pouts, turning away from Cycelia due to the mildly insulting comment.

「Huuuuhhhh...」

Straf humms as he looks at the castle.

《Honestly, I could make it there in a couple seconds at best… But it would probably kill everyone in this quarter of the planet.》

「Maybe one day. Let's go…」

Straf shrugs, and continues along the dirt path…

…

「I'm back!」

Emilia announces, and shuts the door behind her as she squeezes her hat into the Mages' Guild.

「Ah, Emy! Welcome back! How was your trip?」

The bored, bespectacled mage at the counter perks up and smiles when she sees Emilia walk in.

「The trip itself was uneventful. I delivered the list and the potions.」

Emilia says, fiddling with her satchel.

「I see. That's good- Hm?」

「But apparently, there was a problem with the list. Here's a letter from the other guild.」

Emilia hands the witch-hatted guild girl a folded letter. She takes it with a tilted head, and unfolds it.

「I'm going to go unpack and rest. My legs are killing me.」

Emilia says as she walks past the counter into the backrooms.

「Okay…」

The guild girl nods, as she reads through the letter.

「…To the Murusburg Mages Guild head mage… We have received the potions, and we are grateful for them… Received the rank list…」

She reads the letter under her breath, partially skipping some words. Her brows furrow when she reaches one of the lines.

「…However, there was an issue with position 13 on the list. The entry was damaged, and we could not copy it into our register. The messenger had no explanation for why this sole entry was rendered unreadable, and she admitted it was strange. She claims that she saw the list undamaged, just moments before she delivered the list to our guild…」

The more she reads, the more her brows furrow.

「Position 13? Who was that…」

She asks herself, setting the letter aside. She pulls out a large, thick ledger from beneath the counter, and places it down on it with a loud, heavy thud. The noise brings one or two pair of eyes to her, but they quickly look away as the sight is nothing unusual.

She opens the thick tome, and flips through the pages rapidly until she reaches blank pages. She flips the pages back cautiously, until she finds written entries. The witch-hatted guild girl adjusts her glasses, and slides her finger along the list. Her eyes widen, and her mouth twists into a frustrated scowl.

「That bastard… Straf!」

The guild girl exclaims, and slams her fist on the counter. A few mages look at her curiously.

「Huh!? He's back!?」

Emilia's voice calls out from the backrooms.

「No, no, Emy… Did you happen to see him there?」

She looks towards the backrooms as she asks. Emilia sticks her massive hat out from beyond the doorframe, holding it with one hand so it doesn't fall off her head.

「Ah, yes! Now that you mention it, I did run into him! I gave him some potions as a thank-you, and I-」

「Tsk.」

「Huh? Is something wrong?」

The guild girl scowls as she crosses her arms. Emilia blinks, confused by her reaction…

…

「…Signed, Willow… There.」

The old mage sets the quill aside after scribbling down last words on a piece of paper in front of him, as he sits at a desk. Pigeons coo in their cages.

「Ready to send it yet?」

A man momentarily pauses feeding the birds seeds. He asks, looking over his shoulder at Willow.

「Almost. Tell me how this sounds. Ahem…」

Willow lifts his letter, and showily clears his throat.

「Your Divine Excellency, on my mission to observe the tournament for potential threats, I have discovered one man by the name of Straf Katastrof Vindict. He presented himself as a foreigner from a distant land, and from the very beginning of the tournament, he did not present any illusions of weakness. Quite the contrary, from the very first bout of the tournament, he carried himself in an almost braggart manner…」

Willow sighs, before continuing.

「He humiliated one opponent after the next, and won with ease. This, however, was not enough for me to mark him as a danger. There was another contestant, only known to all as Sturm. I am ashamed to admit this, Divine Excellency, but the true nature of Sturm eluded me until the final match. Sturm from the beginning acted like a cowardly amateur, in stark contrast to Straf.」

「Does this go on for long?」

The man asks, and throws more seeds to the pigeons. They hungrily peck away at them, loudly cooing.

「Just a moment longer… In the final bout, Straf and Sturm were to fight against each other. I had been very late to realize that Sturm and Straf are one and the same. Straf, by means of blinding speed, had managed to conjure a phantom opponent for himself. Straf lost the tournament, and his false identity won. I can only theorize and wonder as to why he would go through such an effort, only to trick the masses. These inhuman speeds at which he moved would prove devastating, should he ever had joined this kingdom's military.」

Willow swallows his dry throat, and takes a deep breath.

「Final paragraph… I have set a foreign man by the name of Shien the Beast Hunter against him. He has a reputation for mercilessly slaughtering beasts, and does not concern himself with politics or money, making Shien an excellent choice for an unwitting tool. Shien has agreed to ambush him outside the city, and by the time this letter reaches you, Divine Excellency, the problem should be already solved. Signed, Willow.」

Willow sets the letter down, and turns around to the man busy with the pigeons.

「And? What do you think?」

「I think it's a slog. Couldn't you condense it to there was a guy, I got him killed and skip all those words?」

The man looks over his shoulder away from the pigeon cages with a slanted mouth.

「Pah. I knew I couldn't count on you. Send it. I will be heading out immediately.」

Willow throws his arms up, and walks up to the man to hand him the letter. Willow takes his staff in hand, and heads down the stairs out of the attic, the wooden shaft clanks with every few steps.

「…Are you that sure this guy is dead?」

The man asks, looking at the paper Willow has handed him with his brows elevated.

「Almost certain. I will handle him myself, otherwise. It's unlikely we'll ever hear of him again.」

Willow smirks, and disappears down the stairs…