Since the sun hung in the air behind the figure and obscured their face in shadows and contrasting light, Jonah didn’t see them clearly until it was too late. He wasn’t the best at controlling his triangles after he had sent them out in the first place. Making them stop or redirect when they were already right in front of their target wasn’t something Jonah could do at the moment, especially when he still wasn’t used to the density of the mana in the air.
“Dodge–!”
Jonah shouted as soon as he realized that it wasn’t an inquisitor coming to take his life. It was Serina coming to take him.
He knew that his shout was too slow and that Serina was going to get hit by a triangle sharp enough to slit someone’s throat if the wielder was the slightest bit uncareful. He had already killed one Serina today, even if it was a fake one and probably not a human being. That was enough. He wanted it to be enough.
Jonah closed his eyes right as the triangles were about to reach Serina. He would have considered the possibility of it being another fake if it weren’t for the two explosions before. It was pretty clear that the person who appeared at the door was the one who had emerged victorious. And, it just so happened that Serina had won against the inquisitors.
That was how much Jonah had time to think before he heard a soft tapping sound. It was a familiar sound. When he practiced with his triangle magic back home, his triangles would make that sound when he dropped them on the floor for various reasons.
Well, it was a little different since his apartment and training room had a better quality floor than the shed. But it was close enough that Jonah dared open his eyes, even at the risk of seeing Serina with a pair of black triangles sticking out of her throat or the injuries left behind by them.
However, the only dark things in Serina’s face’s proximity were the shadows cast by the sun and the dark glare she levied in Jonah’s direction. She was rightfully angry at Jonah, and he shrunk back with guilt and fear.
Considering the power of the two explosions he had heard and felt, Serina was a pretty powerful mage. Jonah didn’t know how she ranked on Thyskria, but if she could unleash that much power on Earth, she would have been a highly regarded mage wherever she went. Of course, raw power wasn’t the only thing that was important on Earth in terms of magic accomplishment, especially since combat magic was practically outlawed.
But magic required a thorough understanding of it to unleash its might. And Serina would at least have the magic knowledge to match the power of those explosions.
“I’m sorry! I thought there would be–”
“Twice!”
Serina interrupted Jonah before he could apologize and explain himself.
“You’ve tried to kill me twice! And you think a sorry will be enough?!”
“H-hey, it was an accident!”
“Yeah, sure!”
Serina stomped into the shed and grabbed Jonah by the arm, and pulled him out as she continued.
“I might have believed you about just now, even if I would have died if not for my bracelet. But! What happened to the other Serina? My mirror image, huh?!”
Jonah froze as his face paled again. If that hadn’t been a mirror image, as Serina called, he really would have killed.
“Accident! It was an accident!”
“Oh, wow! Who could have guessed? First, you end up in Thyskria by accident, then you kill a Rock Roared by accident–”
“That was self-defense, actually.”
“Then! You kill an exact copy of me. By accident! And then, you try to kill me! The real me! By accident!”
Serina threw Jonah, who couldn’t resist, on the ground and raised a hand. An orange magic circle appeared above her hand and quickly generated a sphere of flames.
Jonah would have liked to point out the inefficient mana usage, but now wasn’t the time for that, and he put his hands in front of him.
“I swear! It was all accidents! Well, except for the dog. And how did you even know I killed the mirror image?! Did you set me up?!”
“No!”
Serina glared at Jonah with anger blazing in her eyes as intensely as the Fireball burned in her hand.
“The inquisitors from the Seventh Divions caught me with one of their stupid fucking mirrors. A Mirror-Image Displacement Mirror. Do you know what that is? Do you, Jonah?”
“No! How would I?!”
“Hmph! It switches the object caught in its view with the mirror image in the mirror. I was trapped in the mirror while my mirror image was controlled by those fucking bastards!”
Serina pointed at two charred-to-a-crisp corpses a few meters away. They were still smoking.
“O-okay…?”
Jonah was a little startled by Serina’s sudden admission to murder. but she had said that people leveled up in this world by killing each other, so that was why she probably wasn’t so bothered by it. But that still didn’t explain why she was so angry at him.
“Do you know how to break someone out of those mirrors, Jonah?!”
“No! Once again, how would I?!”
“Exactly!”
“Without knowing that it was the right answer, you still went ahead and killed my mirror image!”
Serina pointed at Jonah with the Fireball and anger, which she finally made Jonah admit was justified.
“Wait…. So, I freed you from the inquisitors by killing the fake you?”
“Yes!”
“And that’s what let you, uh, attack and kill those two?”
“Yes!”
“Let me get this straight. By killing that fake, I basically saved both you and me from ending up in the hands of the inquisitors?”
“Yes!”
Serina seemed a little satisfied that Jonah was finally seeing what he had done wrong.
Jonah furrowed his brow as he looked at Serina in confusion and doubt.
“Um, what would have happened if the inquisitors had kept you captured?”
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Serina shrugged a shoulder.
“I don’t know. But I would probably have been brought in for treason against Thyskria since I colluded with the enemy. Trial and probably a bunch of years in prison, at least five, even if my parents try to help.”
“I don’t know about this place, but prison wasn’t that great of a place back home.”
“Yeah, no. It fucking sucks.”
Jonah’s confusion deepened even further, and he sat up as he pinched his brow.
“So, you’re angry at me and about to blow me up because I stopped that from happening?”
“Yes–! Wait, no. I am angry because you killed an exact replica of me without knowing that would happen!”
“But it wasn’t you?”
“Rrgh!”
Jonah was only getting more and more confused and exasperated, while Serina was getting more and more irritated at Jonah’s lack of understanding and reflection on his actions.
“It doesn’t matter that it wasn’t me! It was an exact copy of me! You might as well just have killed me!”
The flames on the Fireball in Serina’s hands intensified in response to her growing irritation.
“But it wasn’t you.”
Jonah realized that they would just continue going in circles like this, so before Serina could say that it could have been her, he continued.
“I mean, I knew it wasn’t you. The matter about killing the mirror image was an accident, but I knew from the beginning that it wasn’t you.”
“–wait, really?”
Serina tilted her head and moved the hand holding the Fireball to the side as she looked at Jonah. She didn’t quite believe Jonah’s words, and her anger hid below the surface of her eyes. One wrong word and it would explode forth again, followed by the Fireball.
“Yeah. It might have copied your appearance, but it acted off. I tried to get information from it, but then it shouted, and my hand….”
Jonah made a cutting gesture with his hand after quickly conjuring a simple black triangle that he held in his hand before dispelling it once Serina understood what he meant.
“...Slipped.”
“If you knew it wasn’t me, who or what did you think it was? Since you didn’t know it was a mirror image.”
Jonah shrugged and showed her palms helplessly.
“An inquisitor with disguise magic. I wanted to ask what happened to you, but it tried to scream, I got startled, and whoops, it had one neck less.”
“You sound pretty nonchalant.”
Serina narrowed her eyes as she could no longer see Jonah tremble in fear at her fury.
“Yeah, that’s fake. I’m hiding my fear. Please don’t kill me.”
“...I’m not going to kill you.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it:”
Serina crouched as she dispelled her Fireball and rested her forehead against her hand.
“This is a damn mess.”
Serina sighed deeply as she complained out loud.
“...Sure is. And you haven’t even been transported to a new world.”
Serina gave Jonah a sharp glare out of the corner of her eye before closing her eyes.
“I guess you’re right.”
The two sat in silence for a while until Jonah dared to speak up.
“So, uh… What now?”
“‘What now?’ We just killed two inquisitors, and you’re an invader. What do you think happens now?”
“Cake? And for the record, you killed the inquisitors. I didn’t do anything.”
“Shut up. I need to think.”
“How’s that working out for you?”
“Do you know what ‘shut up’ means?”
“Nope.”
After experiencing the brunt of Serina’s anger, Jonah had fun teasing her, even if he knew he shouldn’t poke a fire-wielding bear.
Jonah let Serina ignore him for a little while before he talked again.
“Alright, why don’t we begin with you telling me why you’re interested in an invader? It doesn’t seem like you found me by accident.”
Serina removed her arms from her face and looked at Jonah. She still seemed a little grumpy at being interrupted from her thinking. But Jonah didn’t mind since, to him, it looked like she had been trying to escape reality.
“...”
“Also, how did the Rock Roarer and the inquisitors find me?”
“...Do you think entering another world is a subtle affair?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t done it before.”
Serina sighed.
“It differs a little depending on where you’ve traveled from and which method you used, but it’s transportation through time and space, usually across universes or immense distances.”
“I see. Regardless of how you tweak the magic, the fluctuations of the amount of mana necessary for such a journey aren’t something one can hide. So, it’s just the initial teleportation or whatever that is noticeable?”
“Yeah. Well, there are a couple of dimensions whose inhabitants are clearly not from around here, and they have a harder time blending in unless they’re good enough at magic to conceal those traces. But sometimes, that magic is what reveals them, so….”
“But I’m good?”
Serina nodded at Jonah’s concerned question.
“Yeah. The ruckus caused by your arrival was a blast. It covered almost the entirety of the Jador Woods.”
Serina waved her hand and pointed at the tall trees all around them.
Since they sat on a well-kept grass lawn and there was a shed in front of him and an ordinary log house off to the side, Jonah hadn’t really thought much about it. But they were in the middle of the forest.
The tall, mostly bare trees, aside from the dense foliage at the top, created a barrier that separated this place where Serina had brought him from the outside world.
It was a fantastical sight, an endless forest of straight, majestic trees piercing the sky, stretching out as far as the eye could see, farther, even. And in the middle of it all, a simple cabin of logs made from young trees, small enough to make timber of the perfect size.
There was a simple garden next to the house, probably the reason for all the farming tools in the shed.
“It was probably such an event that this half of Thyskria sensed it.”
“Oh, wow.”
Jonah couldn’t quite imagine it, but if he overlaid the storm that had surrounded the Academy and Belmerre with his surroundings, he could kind of see how bad it was.
“That’s actually a good thing, you know?”
“Is it? Wouldn’t half the world knowing about my arrival be bad?”
Serina shook her head at Jonah’s continued concern.
“Nope. Disturbances on that level usually only appear when the invader is strong, like way too fucking strong.”
Jonah tilted his head. If such a disturbance was supposed to be a sign of someone strong, why was Serina here and alone? Did she think she could handle it? Or did she have a card up her sleeve?
It also didn’t seem like the inquisitors had been especially strong, considering two relatively small Fireballs had taken them out.
The Fireballs would have been impressive on Earth. But on Thyskria, they were most likely pretty common. And Jonah’s assumption had almost been confirmed by the quality of the magic circle.
Almost as if Serina could read Jonah’s doubts, she answered them.
“I knew the invader wouldn’t be that strong before the disturbance even appeared.”
“Uh, good job?”
Jonah didn’t know why Serina sounded proud when she said it, but he complimented her anyways.
Serina’s proud smile faltered a little.
“I won’t go into detail, but my father predicted your arrival. Well, not specifically you, but that an invader who could help me would arrive. He even managed to narrow down the location, thanks to you being so weak.”
“Oh, geez, thanks.”
Jonah was incredibly curious about how Serina’s father had predicted when and where he would arrive, but he could somewhat tell that Serina wouldn’t be telling him much more about it.
“Oh, and those two weren’t the inquisitors we were waiting for. They were just nearby and decided to investigate. The rude bastards thought it was suspicious I lived here alone and used that stupid fucking mirror on me to scout out the situation.”
Just thinking about it made Serina angry again. She also intentionally didn’t tell Jonah how she had inadvertently revealed his existence by saying she wasn’t hiding anyone in the shed. That was a secret she would take to the grave.
Jonah noticed a hint of guilt show itself in Serina’s expression, but he just assumed it was because she had killed two innocents.
“They were too weak to show up on my father’s magic. But since more will be coming, we should get going.”
“Wait, if they can’t track me, how do you know they’re going to come here?”
“Obviously, because it’s suspicious. And the inquisitors in charge of this region will be combing through the forest any possible hiding places, so this place is a bust.”
Serina stood up and brushed off her dress-pants combination. Jonah stood up and brushed off his pants. Not that he could do much against the dampness from the still-wet grass.
“Alrighty then, where to?”
“Not so fast. We gotta hide our tracks first.”
With those words, Serina headed toward one of the charred bodies.
“What are you waiting for? Grab the other one.”