The Return Of The Exiled Villain

[...Demonic Energy.]

”Fuck...” Gray cursed as soon as Jasmine spoke.

He started moving right without breaking pace.

”Then... what could the demons want with Seraph?” his eyes narrowed slighly. ”And also, guide me to where the Demonic Energy is coming from.”

[Just go straight to your right.]

Seraph was the eldest princess, and that much was obvious as a reason.

But kidnapping royalty during a public festival with hundreds of witnesses and four academy faculties present was not a subtle operation.

Whoever sent these demons wasn’t trying to keep it quiet.

Which meant they either didn’t care about being quiet.

Or they were confident enough that quiet wasn’t necessary.

Neither option was particularly comforting.

[Left at the large root.]

He went left.

The trees thickened around him as he moved deeper into the forest, the sourceless light dropping to something dimmer.

Maybe... they wanted to kidnap her to bring out the Emperor and the Empress?

That could be a good idea, but Gray knew how self-centered the Emperor was, and knew that even if they threatened to kill Seraph, he wouldn’t budge a little.

’However... since they knew that Seraph would be here, and sent demons directly towards her location... Someone placed those demons inside the sealed festival dungeon ahead of time.’

That required either access to the dungeon’s construction process or someone with enough power to breach the seal from outside without triggering the monitoring arrays.

Neither option narrowed things down comfortably.

[Head straight down, and you’re practically there.]

”Okay,” Gray nodded lightly.

Grrrrrrrrrr!

He could hear it before he saw it.

A low collective sound, movement, and breathing, and the specific rustling of a very large number of bodies occupying a space together.

It was built as he approached, filtering through the trees, and he slowed slightly to read the shape of it before he cleared the last line of trees.

His eyes calmly moved across the scene.

Seraph, back against a rock face, sword raised, sword qi still running along the blade but thinner than it should have been, the look of someone who had been burning output continuously for longer than was comfortable.

And in front of her.

Imps.

Hundreds of them.

Packed between the trees from edge to edge, a solid mass of red skin and small horns that extended back into the forest further than he could see clearly, more still arrived from between the trees at the edges.

Gray stared at them.

They hadn’t noticed him yet.

He looked at Seraph.

She hadn’t noticed him yet either, her attention entirely and reasonably consumed by the several hundred demons directly in front of her face.

He looked back at the horde.

”...Hm.”

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

”I’ve dealt with hundreds of beasts before,” he mumbled to himself, ”but somehow, hundreds of tiny red men feel worse.”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck.

”[✧Swap✧]”

Seraph blinked.

She was no longer against the rock face.

She was standing at the tree line, the rock face now several meters behind her, the horde of imps now several meters in front of her, and Gray was standing exactly where she had been a second ago, his back to the stone, facing several hundred demons with his rapier loose in his hand.

He turned his head and looked at her over his shoulder.

*Wink*

Seraph stared at him.

He turned back to the imps, reached up with his free hand, and ran two fingers slowly along the flat of his rapier’s blade.

”Atrinae~” he called out softly.

”Come out. It’s for your meal.”

He grinned slightly.

Swish!

A faint energy escaped from the blade, nine colors bleeding into each other in soft overlapping waves.

It drifted downward and pooled and then rose again in the shape of a small snake, her white scales catching the nine-colored light and returning it as something even more luminous.

Atrinae landed on Gray’s shoulder and looked at the imps.

The imps looked at Atrinae, and in an instant...

The front rank went very still.

Grrrrrr...

Then the stillness spread backward through the horde like a wave moving in reverse, hundreds of small bodies going rigid one after another as whatever passed for instinct in the lowest tier of demonkind delivered a piece of information that every single one of them received at the same moment.

They shuddered.

All of them.

Simultaneously.

A sound rose from the horde that was not their war sound and not their hunting sound but something considerably smaller and considerably less confident than either.

Atrinae tilted her small head.

She opened her mouth.

Something began forming in the space directly in front of her open jaws, small at first, a point of compressed energy that pulled the light around it inward rather than outward, dark and dense and rotating slowly, nine colors moving through it in sequence too fast to track individually.

The ball grew.

Cling.

One wave rang out from it, hitting the air in every direction simultaneously.

Cling.

A second wave then came, slightly larger and deeper.

Cling.

Cling.

Cling.

Cling.

Cling.

Cling.

Cling.

Seven more in rapid succession, each one building on the last, the nine consecutive waves overlapping into a resonance that made the trees around the clearing tremble at their roots and sent loose debris on the forest floor jumping with each pulse.

The ball’s color changed.

The nine colors collapsed inward and resolved into two, blue bleeding through from one side and red from the other, meeting at the center and not mixing, sitting against each other with the specific tension of opposites held in perfect balance.

The imps in the front rank took one collective step backward.

It didn’t help.

Swooooshhh!!!

The breath left Atrinae’s mouth, and it was not small in the way that Atrinae was small.

It expanded the moment it cleared her jaws, fire and water erupting outward in twin spiraling columns that wove around each other without cancelling.

It hit the horde.

The sound it made was enormous and brief and final.

The wave of imps at the front simply ceased; the ones behind them caught in the expanding reach of the breath as it pushed outward and forward and didn’t stop until it had covered the full width of the clearing and driven itself deep into the treeline beyond.

Steam rose from the forest floor where the two elements had met the ground.

”Hiss~”

Atrinae closed her mouth, licked her lips once with her small tongue, and made a sound of quiet, complete satisfaction.

”Slick~”

Gray looked at the empty clearing where several hundred imps had been thirty seconds ago, and smiled in satisfaction.

”Good girl,” he muttered, gently brushing Atrinae’s scales.

He turned around to look at Seraph.

”...What are you doing here?”

This was somehow the first thing she asked.

Gray turned to face her fully, Atrinae already coiling back toward his collar with the satisfied energy of something that had eaten well and was now interested in sleeping.

”Your locator seal went dark.”

Seraph’s eyes moved to the empty clearing again briefly.

”I was handling it,” she replied firmly.

”You were backed against a rock.”

”I was handling it,” she repeated, in exactly the same tone.

Gray said nothing to that.

”You said you weren’t participating.”

”I wasn’t.”

”And then you did.”

”Yes.”

”Because of the locator seal.”

”Indeed.”

She deeply stared into his eyes for a moment.

”Ellen couldn’t stop the festival,” Gray added, gently letting Atrinae lick the edge of his fingers, ”And your position had been static for too long.”

”So you came in yourself.”

”It was faster.”

Seraph was quiet for a moment.

”...Thank you, Gray. Truly.”

Gray nodded once.

She sheathed her sword.

Her eyes moved to Atrinae, who had settled into her usual position along his collar, her small head resting near his neck, nine-colored scales catching the pale forest light in soft overlapping waves.

Seraph looked at her for a long moment.

”...That snake,” she said.

”Mm.”

”The breath technique.” She glanced at Gray.

”That wasn’t a standard beast ability.”

”No.”

”The energy before it. Nine colors.” Her pale eyes moved back to Atrinae, carefully analyzing her.

”Hiss!~”

This made Atrinae hiss in annoyance.

”What is she?”

Gray looked at Atrinae.

Atrinae looked at Seraph with one half-open eye, decided she wasn’t interesting enough to open the other one for, and closed it again.

”An ordinary snake.”

Seraph looked at him.

”That’s not an answer.”

”It’s accurate.”

”Gray.”

”She’s mine. That’s the relevant part,” he finally spoke coldly, shutting her instantly.

Seraph was still full of questions, but noticing Gray’s colder tone, she gave up, giving Atrinae one last look before sighing.

Atrinae did not return the look.

”...Fine.”

She turned toward the forest ahead, her posture resettling into its calmness.

”The demons weren’t random,” she said, her voice dropping slightly. ”Someone placed them here specifically.”

”I know...”

She glanced at him.

”...Do you have any enemies currently?” Gray took the opportunity to ask.

”...Enemies, huh? Does the rest of the Royal Family count?”

”Mhm...”

Gray hummed thoughtfully at her words.

’...I’ll rule out the possibility of kidnapping Seraph being a way to attract the emperor.’

He really needed to be careful about this because it had a high chance that he would be swept up in the storm.