"Bleurgh… I can’t believe I’ve done that," Ana lamented, puking her guts out.

Caressing Ana’s back while also urging her to get moving, Ina suggested, "Calm down, it’s done now. You are officially a murderer now. Welcome to the club, now calm down."

"There was nothing left of that man... His entrails... outside... his brains... splattered to the ground.And I did that!?"

"Listen, if that might reassure you, it was pretty much self-defense-" Exchanging a gaze with Ana, Ina immediately corrected herself, "Okay, maybe not self-defense, but that bastard deserved it, right? Now he's dead. But we're alive, and if you want that to continue to be so, we, especially you, must keep our heads together. There's a good chance we'll run into another of those bastards, especially with that teleporting bastard knowing what we did. By now, he must've already informed his friends."

Hearing these words, the faces of the four girls went pale. Yet it was nothing compared to how grim their expressions went when they noticed shadows and footsteps approaching in their direction.

"People are coming this way. Lizzie, prepare yourself," Ina warned Ana.

"Um," Ana nodded, shoving her confused thoughts aside in order to summon her magic.

The shadows got closer and closer, and soon the faces of those they belonged to came into Ana and the girls' views.

Seeing no familiar face among them, Ana was ready to unleash her strongest magic upon them without hesitation. However, seeing the expression on Ina's face helped her to control the impulse.

"You…"

***

"We can't hold this guy. He's going to kill us all."

"He's just one boy."

Inside one of the many hallways of the underground fortress, with blood and entrails pooling on the ground, a headless body flew across the room to land at the foot of a group of armed comrades.

"Eeek!"

"What's up with this guy?!"

"Don’t make me repeat myself." The one speaking was a young boy, no older than fifteen, and with how short he was, it made it look as though he was far younger than he already seemed. "Where have you taken her!" He barked, tossing the man’s head at them.

"Her?! Madman, we don’t even know who you’re talking about."

"I know it’s you! Yesterday, four of your people abducted girls from the Rose Blanche, and among those girls were—" The boy teleported, unexpectedly appearing beside one of the men, reaching for one of them by the back of the neck before teleporting away to reappear in midair, in a position that ruthlessly slammed the man's face against the ground. Getting a good taste of the ground, the man's skull cracked, like a watermelon, "Among those girls was a person precious to me. And you people have abducted her. Where is she!?"

With these words uttered, the boy stood over the man he just killed and went to grab a nearby metal pipe.

Five minutes or so later, there was no one else but the boy standing alive in the room.

Alone, in the middle of a room littered with severed limbs and grotesque body fluid, he sat atop another man, bashing against the man’s face with what seemed to be a book, a "reality figer," to be exact.

"Where is she? Answer me!" he screamed at the man.

The man didn’t answer; after all, he was dead. It was just that the boy was in such a euphoric state that he didn’t care to care.

It was at that moment that, in the middle of the room, suddenly appeared a second teleporting boy, and only then did the boy’s attention leave the poor, already-dead man.

"What… this?" The second teleporting boy mumbled in horror at all the corpses he found himself teleporting around. "Was this you?"

"You... you're the teleporting bastard that abducted them," the first boy muttered. He stood over the butchered corpse he had been obstinately trying to get information from and began to walk towards the second boy.

Putting aside his "reality finger," he reached out for an ax he unjabbed from a human torso.

The second boy, seeing this, unsheathed a dagger fitted for his petite stature and then teleported himself away, seemingly to take his opponent by surprise.

He appeared behind the second boy, thrusting his sword into his back. Everything led the second boy to believe that he would successfully stab the first boy, but that was before counting that he also wielded teleportation magic.

The boy disappeared, and his dagger was thrust into the thin, empty air.

"What!"

The boy reappeared behind the second boy, swinging his ax down at his opponent's head. Had he not teleported across the room, his head would’ve been split in half.

"Teleportation magic… You’re not with Edouard and Barbosse; you’re the Aristocracy’s teleportation magic dog, Aryan."

"Yeah, well-guessed, buddy. Now before I split your head in half, let me ask you a simple question: where are they? Where did you take her?"

The boy didn’t answer Aryan’s question; instead, he just teleported away, but that didn’t stop Aryan from pursuing him, asking, "Where do you think you’re going like this!?" He, too, teleported away.

Both Aryan and the boy appeared in the adjacent room, but just as they'd just appeared out of thin air, the boy teleported once again, and following him, Aryan also followed him. This time around, Aryan, upon appearing, immediately went for a swing of his axe. Unfortunately, the boy once again teleported away. With the boy leading the dance, Aryan followed closely behind. This went on for several dozen teleportations.

"How?! How can you follow me?!" The boy yelled before teleporting away once more.

"It’s really simple," Aryan, following him, also teleported and once again appeared behind the boy, screaming, "It’s because I can smell you, and you smell horrible!"

The boy appeared in an alleyway, but what followed him was the same: an Aryan, screaming, chasing him with an ax.

It was inside a room similar to the one where they first met that Aryan finally caught up to the boy. Aryan swung his ax down, clearly intending to split the boy's head open.

Having luckily moved sideways of a few steps, the boy avoided by a few centimeters the skull-splitting fate that could've easily been his. But even so, the axe didn't entirely miss its target; instead, it finished its course, lodging on the boy's shoulder.

The boy took advantage of that desperate and unfortunate opportunity to thrust his dagger toward Aryan's face. A dagger that, if not for Aryan's quick reflex of putting his palm in the way of the dagger blade, would have made Aryan's skull scabbard.

"What! How is tha–"

The boy was not even offered the opportunity to finish his sentence before Aryan, closing the gap between them, violently headbutted him to a painful silence not once, not twice, but three times.

The boy fell to the ground, his teeth knocked out. Taking advantage of the situation, Aryan restrained him, stomped into the boy's arm—the one with the ax still lodged in it—and stood over him.

Painfully extracting the dagger off his palm, Aryan asked the boy the same question he had previously butchered for the other men: "Among the girls you guys abducted, there was a girl; her name is Sha—" but something stopped him midway through.

It was the sight of the boy, crying, "Let me go,…"

Aryan didn’t feel pity at this sight; instead, what stopped him in his tracks was a sense of familiarity, a sense that led to a bitter assessment.

The boy reminds Aryan of himself. Mostly because he seemed no older than he was, which corroborated Arte’s assessment.

"You’re… You’re a child of light... Aren’t you?"

The expression with which the boy reacted to his question gave away his answer.

For them to both have teleportation magic and be roughly the same age, Aryan was certain it couldn’t be a coincidence; he was the one the mother had once talked to him about.

Taking advantage of Aryan's brief moment of inattention, the boy kicked him off before teleporting away. For a short moment, Aryan hesitated between chasing after the boy, but glancing at what he left behind—his entire left arm—he voted to let him off.

Maybe freed of the adrenaline rush he was experiencing, Aryan fell to his knees, lamenting, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, my hand!" Dammit! With a glance at the boy's left arm, he sighed, "But it's better than having an arm severed, I guess."

Hearing footsteps he knew weren't friendly coming toward him from the depths of this underground labyrinth, Aryan teleported away, only to reappear among his people, members of the aristocracy sent to attack this church's stronghold.

His unexpected appearance was met with a weapon sheathed in his direction, but as soon as they recognized his face, their expression quickly softened.

"Aryan!"

"Where have you been?"

"You’re okay?"

"Yes, I’m okay. No need to worry, everyone. Sorry… I'm sorry for earlier; I shouldn't have gone ahead on my own like that," he apologized immediately, knowing what he had done wrong.

"They don't pull stunts like that anymore," said an old voice among the expedition.

He was a veteran of the Eirwens' brotherhood, "I’m sure you are impatient to come to her rescue; thrust me; we all share that feeling. There is nothing wrong with that, but we all received clear instructions we’re meant to follow."

Though the man was right when mentioning impatience, he failed to mention what drove Aryan’s action, the most, guilt. The guilt of allowing her to be abducted like she was.

"I am aware of —.I understand; I'm sorry; that won’t happen again."

"It’s all good then if you do. "You can't imagine how disastrous it would be if something happened to you," the man said as he approached Aryan to bandage his wound. "You should know better than anyone that teleportation magic doesn't grow on trees to be sent on the frontlines like this."

"Huh, I’m not so sure of that."

"What do you mean by that?" The voice speaking was that of a girl, who, with her appearance and blue and golden hair, stood out the most from the crowd.

"Nia... I fought and spoke to the teleporter involved in this, and I believe he is one of the mother's last children of light. She told me about him. He was meant, just like me, to be born with teleportation, but he ended up in the hands of the church before she and Mother Barbara could reach out to him as they had with me."

"I see. So, you want him to be spared then?" Nia, asked.

Aryan's answer was categorical: "No."

"No?"

"Whatever is going on in this place, he is part of it. He might be a child of light, but I do not see him as one of my brothers. In fact, I was about to ask you the exact opposite.With how his magic works, I think you and I are best suited to deal with him, so if we ever run into him…"

"You expect me to have no mercy?"

"Yes."

"Understood." Upon these words, Nia announced to the expedition of extermination, "Now let us go save our friends and proceed with our instructions, everyone." "No witnesses are allowed to leave this place alive."

***

(Back to the girls)

Seeing no familiar face among them, Ana, with no lingering hesitation whatsoever, readied herself to unleash upon them her strongest magic, but seeing the expression on Ina’s face, allowed her to tame her impulse.

"You… everyone."

Among the crowd, a young man hastily approached Ana and the girls. Still wary, Ana was ready to act if he were to come with anything fishy, but the young man, whose face arose in Ana a sensation of déjà vu, simply walked past her to dramatically reach Ina into his embrace.

"Shania, thank the Lord, you’re sound and safe. I was so worried about you?! You’re okay? You’re not hur– Is that blood? You're bleeding? You’re bleeding!"

It took Ana some time to remember where this sensation of deja vu struck her from with the boy; he was the boy she had seen Ina with, the first time they met.

Ana had her own little theory on the boy's identity, but for the time being, whoever the young man was, it was the least of her concerns. He could be a serial killer for all Ana would've cared; what mattered to her the most was that he wasn't an enemy of theirs. In fact, the care and concern for her safety that he displayed to Ina made Ana feel a warm sense of security.

"We have to get fixed! Damn! We didn’t bring anyone's healing magic with us. Don’t worr– I’ll take you to one immediately. We’ll just have–"

"Aryan— Aryan!"

"Hum?"

"I appreciate your concern and all. But I’m fine. Though I admit," Ina paused, looking at her three female comrades, " —Some of us really do need help. That being said, it is a relief to see you all here, you Aryan, everyone, … even you Nia."

Ana felt Ina's gaze sweep over the only female presence among the predominantly male crowd as she spoke these words.

She gave Ana the same sense of déjà vu that the boy had given her earlier, but almost instantly she realized where she had seen the girl.

The girl, namely, Nia, approached. The closer the girl got to Ana, the more Ana was certain of what she thought seeing. The hair and eye colors were different, but she was certain, the girl was the one Ana thought she was.

"Can I?'' she asked Ana.

She wasn’t sure what she was up to, and even less what her question was for, but upon being asked that question, Ana found herself instinctively nodding.

She reached out and grabbed both of Ana's hands, holding them tightly before releasing them with a warm smile.

Ana was perplexed as to what it was meant to be; it was only later, with a nagging feeling, that she realized what she had done to her. The unsettling sensation she felt was that of a pain she had grown accustomed to suddenly vanishing.

Her wounds from her battle with the man had healed.

After she finished healing Ana, the girl, Nia, approached Ina with both her hands held out; unlike Ana, Ina seemed hesitant to give the girl her hands.

Finally she spoke: "I apologize. I was entrusted with this simple mission: to protect you, which I failed at. None of this should’ve happened. I know none of this matters as it is already too late and the wrong has been done, but would you accept my apologies?"

"You're right, none of this matters because the wrong was done," Ina began, before handing over her hand to the girl, "but I've messed up too. It's not like you didn't issue clear orders about staying out of trouble. Yet I just went on to get myself into one. There were mistakes made. I think it went both, doesn't mean that everything ended up being a massive failure. There is still out there an opportunity to set things right."

Hearing these words, Nia smiled, letting go of Shania's hands, which were now as good as new.

"Yes," approaching Nia's ear, she murmured, "this place is the one we've been looking for for so long, right?"

"It is. Probably."

"So he is "probably" here, and "it" is most likely here, as our intelligence revealed us to be in his possession."

Ina and Shania exchanged a stare.

"All that would be left of us is to go on and seize it."