"Layland, what have you been doing?"
I stop musing about the recently resurrected feeling in my heart when I hear a familiar voice scold me. I turn to the east, which is the direction where the voice comes from, and find Millonia with the rest of the girls looking at me with a light frown.
Rather than asking why they are here, I make quick mental math to count how much time has passed since I came here. I am not very sure how much time dilated when I was being tested by Ignio but, in my rough estimation, it should have been an hour and a half.
The girls coming here means that the situation in the town is no longer out of hand, which is a commendable achievement.
"Good work, everyone. You finished your task splendidly."
Therefore, I praise them for their work to take their attention away from the question: "What have you been doing here?" For some reason, I don't want them to know what happened here.
"Well…it is not that hard anyway." Millonia shrugs but I can tell she is happy that I praised her. "What are you doing here—leaving us alone back at the town?"
"I wanted to see how much you could excel. I came here to create a situation that let you know that you didn't have me by your side; thus, you had to fend for yourselves," I explain, saying some lies that sound credible.
"Like we ever needed yourself," Millonia scoffs.
As I smile softly, fully believing that the girls have let go of the matter, Lunea points out something. "Layland…have you grown bigger?"
'Oho? Very keen,' I remark inwardly. "I wonder if you saw me and thought I was small before?"
"No, no, no. I mean, you have become more…buff. I have always been aware of how big you are but you have never been this big."
"Well, maybe you weren't comfortable properly looking at my body back then."
"Eh…? I have always been leering at him since day one, haven't I?" Lunea mutters softly, which I considerately dismiss as mishearing.
Expecting that to be the end of the discussion about my change, I am slightly surprised by Winerva who jumps into the discussion. "You have gotten stronger. Your pressure…you are more terrifying than before."
Lunea and Millonia have always been surrounded by powerful people; for them, powerful people are just people with above-average power because they have already gotten used to them. Only an extremely powerful and hostile powerful individual can surprise them with his pressure.
Winerva, on the other hand, is new to the world of absurdly strong people. She is more "sensitive" to the pressure because she hasn't developed an immunity to the pressure that is three times more intense than her.
"Well, you know how it went when I finished your team off, don't you?"
Winerva's breath hitched at the mention of her team. She is probably reminded of the grotesque, nightmarish scene of that day.
"Y-Yes…I know. That's why…I wonder what made you reveal some of your real power," she says timidly.
"Interesting point," I remark. "Well, actually there was no need to reveal some more of my power yet but there were some annoying guys that bugged me. I revealed a tiny bit more, so I could enjoy the utter terror on their face."
"You sound genuinely ecstatic about it, don't you?" Millonia comments.
I merely smile softly at her comment. I am sure she can't see my smile but she scoffs right away as if she knows what I am doing with my lips.
The girls stop asking any more questions about the change in me even though they are still very intrigued about it. I tell them it is time to return to the town and then inform them about the activity of the Bounty Hunters after our lives.
They are impressed by how much money is put on my head but, other than that, they show little to no worry. I like their confidence and I don't want to probe them about it because I don't want to hear the corny line: "Besides, we have you."
"Did Genelos tell you that I was there?"
"Yes. The citizens were clueless about your whereabouts, so we asked Genelos."
"What was he doing at that time?"
"Sleeping and still."
The fact that Genelos could stay calm during my absence, despite knowing what I was doing, shows how much he is confident in me…or worse, how he doesn't care about me, which is highly unlikely.
He looks like a lazy bastard but I don't blame him for sleeping even in a chaotic situation. He has taken us to many places, at which each of them is far away from the other, for the last week, so he deserves his rest.
"Oh my…you are alive!"
Upon reaching the town, which is after twenty-five minutes of running at Winerva's top speed, I am immediately greeted by the old man whom I had terrified before I left to meet the Bounty Hunters. He looks genuinely bewildered and astonished that I survived whatever fantastical scenario he has in his mind.
"What do you think about my girls' performances?" I ask, ignoring his remark.
"O-Oh…they were extremely helpful. Thanks to their brilliant method, we could survive the night with fewer buildings getting destroyed."
"That…might not be impossible."
Satisfied by the response, I leave the bemused old man behind; the girls follow me without saying anything to him. Upon reaching our half-destroyed inn, I have Lunea help me reconstruct it. We don't do much to it, though; we are not Samaritans. We just want it to be good enough to let us sleep inside it peacefully.
After that, we enter the inn and days pass like an arrow flying through the air—moderately fast.
….
Two days and a half have passed; other than some encounters with a few groups of Bounty Hunters, something interesting happened to the environment. Water has been coming out of the sand for the past two days, so people have created many wells.
No one can tell what is happening but they attribute it to the disappearance of the "heat," which is no other than Ignio's Earth Essence. I had expected something like this to happen the moment I saw the fire disappear from the ground that Ignio occupied after I killed him; I am not surprised.
According to the history of this land, which Ignio showed me, it was originally a plain until Spartus, who was possessed by Ignio, came here and brought eternal drought upon this land. Now that the "parasite" has died, the land must be recovering.
As someone who knows the cause of the peculiar phenomena and is the one who triggered them, I wisely stay quiet. There is no merit in telling them the truth either way.
"You are leaving already? Just when things are getting better?" the old man who greeted me before the gate on day one asks. "You haven't drunk enough beers with us. We haven't even fully thanked you!"
"It is fine. You have rewarded us enough with the food," I reply, recalling the banquet the people always invite us to come to every night. Food, in this place, is a luxury.
"You barely ate the food! You always let your girls and those bastards finish it."
"It is fine. I am full when my girls are full."
In truth, I just didn't find the food more interesting than the lively atmosphere that I could relate to. Ever since I became a Demon, even in bustling places, I always felt alone, so after being reminded of emotion by Ignio's heart, I find myself indulging in the sensation of being I am part of the atmosphere.
'Lonely, huh?' I didn't know I felt lonely until I got Ignio's heart. I always felt complacent about my situation since I thought I had felt enough. Being introduced to emotion again makes me realize there is no "enough" in feeling. 'I wonder; is Valeria still hiding some part of her unknowingly? Does she still feel lonely despite my company?'
The more I wonder, the more I want to meet Valeria. She is a kindred spirit, so I want to share this experience with her; I want her to feel what I feel, so she doesn't miss the best part of realizing that we find comfort in someone's company.
Maybe, this is why I don't want the girls to know about what happened that night. I don't want them to conclude that what happened last night made these changes within me.
Call me a weirdo but I am embarrassed just thinking about letting the girls know I didn't know how to express my emotion well, which is what people know as soon as they are born. I don't want them to think I am still learning about it.
I want them to think that I am slowly showing emotion because I believe them more and more, which is just another strategy to make them trust me even more. Yes, I still find sharing my feeling with anyone appalling.
"Layland, you have been quiet ever since we left the town. What happened?"
I am awakened from my thoughts by Millonia's nudge. I point to the approaching carriage and calmly say, "The Hero might not be a Hero."
"Huh?"
Presence-wise, whoever it is, suits to be a Hero; however, there is something "off" about his Mana. It lacks that foreign signature that I believe comes from the System.
"Hunting the Arsonist?"
Besides, this supposed-to-be-Hero has a giant promotion poster plastered on his carriage, indicating that he is a Bounty Hunter…one that hunts me, specifically.
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