“Ooohh…” Nicole replied, looking with awe at the Hellfire in my hand. “That’s pretty cool… I like how your eyes get red, and a couple of fiery horns show up in your hair; and the dark tint at the tips on it looks nice too…” her face then turned somber and I worried about what she might say about my powers. “I-I’m not sure if I can compare to you or Asteora… I mean, I almost died just now.”

“Eh?” I replied, not expecting her to completely gloss over my powers. “Aren’t you… at all worried about my powers?”

She looked at me with slight confusion. “Well… no? I mean, I know that you have all sorts of amazing powers, but I don’t see why that would worry me.”

“I-is that so…” I said, feeling somewhat strange about how she didn’t care at all about my Darkness and Hellfire Power.

Behind me, from somewhere in the air, I heard a muffled chuckle. I turned to see Asteora floating in the air as she looked at me with pity, covering her mouth and suppressing as best as she could the laughter that was threatening to burst out.

Nicole pouted and hid her face between her knees as she hugged them. “I don’t understand how you both can be so carefree about this whole thing…” she said with a soft tone of voice, causing me to look at her with a worried frown as she continued, “I nearly just died and it’s like neither of you care.”

“I do care… I did everything I could to make sure you weren’t hurt…” I replied, placing one hand on top of her head. “But, I’m sorry I wasn’t doing my best to ensure everything was fine…” I turned my head to glare at Asteora, who had calmed down by now. “I know that I can’t just trust someone else for that.”

After a moment, Nicole raised her head to look at me with the same pout from before. “Really… How can you be so calm about this whole thing? You faced off against two of those things and took them down easily, and even went back to help me…” her face got somber again. “Maybe I shouldn’t try to do this and just listen to my dad when he tells me to drop the whole magic thing…”

“I… well, I had no choice. I had to face these sorts of things and be able to overcome them, no matter what,” I said, remembering just as well the few times in the past when I didn’t want to continue, only to keep going forward because the Holy Gods were looking over me.

She turned her eyes to me, frowning slightly as she did. “You had no choice? Why is that?”

I tightened my lips slightly as I braced myself to say what I’d refused to say so far. I shut my eyes and after a moment, then opened them once more after a short moment. “Because… I was the Hero of the Holy Gods.”

Nicole looked back with the same confusion, going as far as even slightly tilting her head to the side. “…What? Are you joking with me right now?”

It was understandable that she wouldn’t take me seriously, since I was supposed to be long dead. But I stood up, Asteora floating to be somewhere behind me. I looked down at Nicole with the same seriousness that I usually carried.

I shook my head. “No. That’s who I am. Althea, Hero of the Holy Gods.”

“W-wait!” Nicole exclaimed, quickly standing up to look up to me. “Y-you mean like… the one that was supposed to have fought with a God?”

“That one,” Asteora replied before I said anything. “I know, she was supposed to be dead.”

“E-eh…” Nicole said, apparently still not quite understanding what I just said. “Well… if Lady Asteora says it then… I guess I should—Wait!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth as she looked at me with widened eyes. “T-t-t-t-then that means that you’re much more powerful than anyone ever! Even Lady Asteora!”

I returned a sad smile and shook my head. “Not anymore… I’m not too different from any other mage that you’ll find in this world or our world.”

“Yeah! Yeah! I was going to ask why you couldn’t just destroy this whole Magic Red Zone in one go! Or why you’re going to the Institute! And—and—and aren’t you supposed to have glowing golden hair and bright golden eyes?!” Nicole exclaimed, pointing a shaky finger my way while still covering her mouth with the other hand.

“That is because, as you might’ve guessed, I’m no longer that Hero of the Holy Gods,” I said, gesturing to myself and the dark armor.

“T-then… why not?” she asked, calming down slightly.

“Because… they betrayed me at the last moment and… killed me,” I said, looking to the side and placing one hand in the middle of my chest as I remembered once more the burning sensation of the Holy Blade.

“So you really died!?” she exclaimed once more, getting just as surprised as the last few times.

“Yes… that’s quite the curious thing, isn’t it?” Asteora leisurely said, floating around me to be next to Nicole.

“H-how are you alive?! Did you… are you like Jesus?” Nicole asked, narrowing her eyes. “Did you rise out of the grave by the power of God?”

“I… don’t know anything about that person, but I did come back thanks to the powers of a God, which was Salrak, the one that I killed,” I said.

“Then they’re all real?! So when people say that—wait a minute…” she suddenly changed her tone as she was speaking, narrowing her eyes once more. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you? You both saw how sad I was and how scared I was and are now joking with me so I forget about it…”

Asteora turned to look at the pouting Nicole, a cold look on her face as she did. “Do I look like someone that jokes?”

Nicole recoiled under my old master’s sight. “E-eh… well… No…?”

“I’m not joking either. Everything we’ve said so far is the truth,” I said. Although I didn’t have the same cold look that Asteora had.

The girl’s expression turned complicated. It was something between surprise and disbelief. Apparently, she was conflicted between believing what we said or simply taking it as a joke. However, after fidgeting slightly and looking between both me and Asteora, she relented with a sigh.

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“Then let's say that what you’re saying is true… that you really are the Hero of the Holy Gods and that all of those Gods do exist…” she said, turning her face to look seriously at me. “Wouldn’t that make you an enemy of almost half the people of your world?”

“That… that it would, yes…” I replied, trailing off after a moment, since the idea that I might be forced to fight them again hadn’t completely crossed my mind.

“Eh… isn’t that bad? Are you going to go to war against demons and all of that again? Including Bo’guth?” Nicole asked, the anxiety in her face showing slightly more.

“No,” I said with a shake of my head, “All of that is in the past now. And like I said before: the Holy Gods betrayed me and took everything, from my power and my life, to the very world that I lived in, so I won’t be blindly following their words anymore.”

“You can still hear them?” she asked, her eyes shifting to look at the darkness, as if there would be someone there saying things.

“No, not at all. They’re not in this world, and so far, they haven’t found it,” I said.

“They’re looking for it?” Nicole asked with her eyes widening slightly.

“They probably are. They still want to have all the magic power in this world, which is everything that Salrak took from them. This world is nothing more than the safe haven that Salrak found to save our people from… from the Holy Gods…” I said, my voice waving slightly on that last part, since it was mostly my fault.

Nicole frowned as she looked between me and Asteora. “Then… the reason you’re supposed to be training and why Asteora wanted to train me as well is because they might be coming to Earth… to destroy it?”

Asteora nodded and I matched her gesture. “That might happen.”

Nicole paled when she heard that, and I worried that she might just pass out from hearing the news, but she took a deep breath and calmed herself after a moment. “‘Kay so… you’re the Hero of the Holy Gods; you killed a God named Salrak; you died because another handful of Gods betrayed you; you got revived by that same God that was supposed to be dead; and you’re currently training to become stronger so they don’t destroy our world,” she said, tapping a finger in her hand with each thing she listed. “Correct?”

“That’s right,” I replied immediately.

She looked at me with an unreadable expression, one that she’d never displayed before in the time that I’ve known her. “Are you really not just joking with me, or just—y’know—having some sort of fever dream or something like that?”

Asteora softly chuckled, crossing her arms under her chest as she floated around Nicole. “What a skeptical child… I never would’ve guessed her to be this untrusting.”

“E-eh… well…” Nicole replied, scratching her cheek slightly. “I mean, it all sounds just too incredible to be true, especially when you never appeared to be the kind that would go around killing all willy-nilly, like they say the Hero did.”

“I never went around killing… ‘all willy-nilly’, but I did use my powers to end anyone that I deemed lost to the darkness, which included all demons, goblins, ogres, skeletons, and anything related to them.”

“I see… that would explain why you used to be so hostile with Bo’guth a few days ago…” she said, placing a finger on her chin as she looked up, before looking at me again. “What changed between then and now, by the way? Before, you looked like you would kill him at any moment, but then you were much more friendlier with him.”

“I… The reason why I couldn’t go to the Academy in the last few days is because I got attacked after that one intense training session with Reeta. It was Daniel, that zealot we once met at the restaurant,” I said and Nicole’s expression turned to surprise. “It was while listening to his nonsense that I realized that it was the same kind of nonsense I used to proclaim, and that worrying about whether or not something was Holy, or Unholy, or Dark was pointless.”

“Wait so… did you—did you kill him?” she worriedly asked.

I shook my head. “No. But he was captured by the police.”

Nicole sighed. “I got worried there for a second, thinking that you might’ve gotten in trouble for it.”

Asteora scoffed. “She wouldn’t have gotten in trouble, even if she killed a full platoon of people like him.”

“Why is that?” Nicole asked with raised eyebrows.

Instead of answering the girl, Asteora turned to look at me with the usual unreadable that she would have. “Let's just say that you didn’t leave the Prosecutor’s Bunker by the grace of the Holy Gods.”

I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows. This meant that it was Asteora the one that got that fat man in that police headquarters to let me go. However, it seems like she’s not interested in having my thanks, so I ignored it and looked back to Nicole.

“Regardless of that, it was then that I decided to stop worrying about being associated with demons, or anything like that, and just accepted that they were beings that were no different from me or mine… and… it was also when I decided to stop running away from the special power within me,” I said, looking down at my fist.

“That Darkness and Hellfire?” Nicole asked, looking at my fist as well. “I thought it was just some cool magic that you could do.”

With a shake of my head, I looked up at Nicole. “This is the same kind of power of the God. This is… a power that could destroy the world,” I paused for a moment, thinking about how I used Holy Power to do just that, only to then remember what Salrak was trying to do with his. “Or save it.”

“How dramatic,” Asteora said, not giving enough time to Nicole to think about what I said as she took a leisurely sitting position in the air. “At the moment, you can barely keep yourself alive if faced with any of the higher ranked fighters of this world—much less someone like me, or an actual God. So how about we move on from this, now that we all know about who you really are, Althea.”

“Um…” Nicole replied, hesitantly looking at Asteora. “I-if Althea’s mission is to fight with Gods… is it really appropriate for someone as weak as me to be coming along?”

Asteora considered the girl for a moment. I personally would rather just make sure that she’s able to keep herself alive with the powers that she wields, but right now, she was my master’s trainee, and I wasn’t going to speak over her.

“You will never be able to fight against a God,” Asteora said, causing Nicole to sigh in relief. “Just as I’m not able to do so either. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be prepared. It was thanks to people like me that Althea was able to become as strong as she was in the past, which means that we still have to be ready.”

“Sure, but… I meant if someone like me should be hanging out with you guys as well…” she trailed off, looking somewhat ashamed.

Asteora replied with a mocking laugh, shaking her head as she did. “And what does ‘someone like you’ mean?”

“Y’know… someone that almost gets herself killed on her first day of training… someone that should perhaps be working on an engineering degree and not on using magic…” Nicole answered, looking away and to the side. “Y’know… someone weak…”

“You are not weak,” I said, “In these few days where I’ve been helping you with your Deviant Magic, you’ve grown just as fast as some of the most talented mages I’ve known—you even managed to create a large enough fire to burn me as well.”

Nicole looked at me with an apprehensive smile, but Asteora moved to be next to me before Nicole could say anything. “You’re a Fire Deviant—one of the most powerful kinds of beings there are. So don’t worry about being able to keep up with Althea, you’ll go at the pace that you’ll need to go.”

Nicole softly smiled, but I couldn’t tell if she was believing what we were saying or not, even if she nodded after a moment. “Thanks… I guess… I’ll try to do my best… and… hopefully not die like I almost did just now…”

With a wide smile, Asteora moved over to Nicole and patted the girl on the head a couple of times, prompting the girl to look at her with surprise.

“You won’t be dying while you’re under my watch, I can assure you that,” Asteora said, patting the girl a couple of times once more, before removing her hand and floating a few steps away.

“But if you don’t trust her”—I turned to glare at Asteora, before turning to look back at Nicole—“then I’ll make sure to put everything myself to make sure that nothing happens.”

Nicole forced a smile, which quickly turned wry. “I’ll try my best…” She then looked away and back at the place where we came from. “S-so, should we go back now?”

“Hm? No, I still haven’t killed an Unholy Dark Beast,” I said with a tilt of my head, turning then to walk deeper into the Tainted Land. “So let’s go.”

“O-oh… o-okay,” Nicole replied, and I heard a few uncertain steps following after me.

This time, I’ll make sure to use everything I have.