Amures roared as he summoned his magical energy.
The Magic Crest engraved across his body gleamed.
The aura of a spell being activated spread outward.
"Amures! You want to attack here?! You're taking revenge on Moran like this! Do you think Professor Kayneth will just stand by and watch?"
"I've already been expelled from the Clock Tower! You people ruined my future! And you, you bitch, dare tell me to consider the consequences!? You're even protecting Moran! Camus! Do you like him that much?!"
Confronting others had never been Camus's strong suit.
She had always been solitary and introverted by nature.
Amures's furious words struck at the truth in her heart, and amid her panic, she no longer knew how to respond.
Her innocent, bashful reaction showed through.
It only made Amures even angrier.
"Guh... So you really are a shameless pair! I don't care about the Clock Tower or Kayneth anymore! At the very least, I'll make you pay for ruining my future!"
Amures glared fixedly at the two before him.
Yet Moran calmly stepped forward.
Like a shield, he stood in front of Camus.
"So, is your clown show over? Is that all you wanted to say to me? Amures, you said you wanted to make me pay, didn't you? In other words, you intend to kill me?"
Moran questioned him like an executioner passing judgment.
His indifferent, calm gaze was profoundly unsettling.
But Amures did not notice that sense of abnormality at all. His heart held nothing but raging fury.
"Yeah! That's right! Thanks to you!"
"The person I want to kill most right now is you! You, Moran Edelfelt!"
"Heh. I thought you were merely shortsighted, but it turns out you're an idiot too. Based on my personal principles, I'll give you one last chance—run. Then you might still live."
Moran raised his head slightly and grinned.
He had once been renowned throughout all of Greece as a hero.
But that did not mean Moran was some softhearted fool.
This was a hero's mercy.
He would give the ignorant advance warning and a chance to survive.
Though most of them never listened.
This time would probably end the same way.
As a hero, Moran would not slaughter innocents indiscriminately.
But neither would he tolerate anyone pointing a blade at him.
"Run? At a time like this? You're joking, right?"
"You, a low-blooded failure who can't even complete a spell chant—Amures needs to run from you?!"
Amures responded with mockery.
His attitude could not have been clearer.
"Then from this moment on, we are no longer classmates in an El-Melloi classroom. We are enemies meeting blade to blade."
Moran remained entirely unmoved by the ridicule.
Because to him—
The man before him was no different from a corpse.
"Moran! Amures's magecraft is among the best in our class! We should go find Professor Kayneth..."
"Camus, do you trust me?"
Moran stood there like a city wall.
It was as if no storm or disaster could bring him down, giving her an inexplicable sense of security.
He had displayed a miracle in self-defense class.
He had overturned the outcome everyone had decided upon beforehand.
"I trust you!"
Camus clasped her hands and nodded.
No more words were needed.
That one sentence revealed the feelings within it: absolute trust, enough to entrust her life to the man before her.
"Heh, then watch closely. Since then, this will be the first time I recreate the power of an old legend in the modern age!"
Moran grinned, greatly pleased by her answer.
Meanwhile, Amures only thought Moran was courting death.
He remembered Moran's performance in class.
After all, Moran had not even met the standards for spell chanting back then, while he himself had already learned two-part chants.
"Die!"
Amures hurled a blazing fireball.
It was the same one he had used earlier at the training grounds.
He believed he had only failed then because Kayneth had been present. This time, Moran would never be able to stop it.
The crimson fireball hurtled closer.
An ordinary person would surely be reduced to nothing if struck by it.
Camus clenched her hands as she stood behind Moran, having entrusted everything she had to the man before her.
No matter how perilous the situation became.
She would never leave.
"Heh..."
Firelight licked across Moran's handsome face.
He had no intention of dodging such a threat.
He made only one move.
He swung his right arm as though snuffing out a flame, and crystalline Crimson Blood scattered like gemstones.
Sizzle—sizzle—!!
The immense magical energy contained within the blood formed electrical currents.
They linked together and conducted through one another, forming a web.
The instant the fireball touched the blood, it froze in place, as though an invisible wall had stopped it.
Drip, drip...
A strange sound of blood and flesh being kneaded together
Rolled over like waves.
The blood wriggled and swelled as if alive, brimming with powerful vitality like a living breath.
It was so eerie that it was suffocating.
"What is that...?"
Camus said tremblingly.
Her eyes widened in disbelief.
It was an inconceivable sight she had never seen before, something she had only glimpsed in books—
Enormous, savage scarlet beast eyes, like carriage lamps.
Three connected heads spewed great clouds of scorching white vapor.
Flames clung to the beast's body like clothing.
In a single instant, it expanded from a thumb-sized drop of blood into a hellish beast the size of a bus.
"No, impossible! It can't be! Why, why?! There was no spell chant!"
"There weren't even any signs of casting! In a public place like this, there wasn't time to prepare in advance either! No, that's not it..."
"This isn't even a monster a magus could summon—!"
Beads of sweat flew from Amures's brow.
His face was still as twisted as before.
But panic and terror had long replaced his fury. Every cell in his body wailed for help.
Even his mind was screaming.
That was absolutely not a creature that should exist here.
"H-Hell... Cerberus... Cerberus!"
Camus was completely stunned.
Even her voice shook as she spoke.
A brutal divine beast she had heard of only in textbook myths had appeared in reality just like that.
Any magus would have been terrified senseless.
"It's a divine beast that only exists thirty floors beneath the Albion Spirit Tomb under the Clock Tower! Why is it here?! Moran!?"
"Oh, it's very well-behaved."
Camus could not avoid that possibility.
Thinking back, she remembered the blood Moran had flung out.
Cerberus had emerged from it.
"Grrrrrr—"
Cerberus unleashed its hostility toward Amures.
The flames clinging to its body caused the temperature of the street to surge, while the pressure it exuded crashed forth like a tidal wave.
In an instant, a crushing weight comparable to the collapse of a mountain descended.
The So-Called Filthy Ending. Please Give Flowers! Please Give Monthly Tickets!
"Impossible! Impossible! How could Cerberus appear in the modern age! It's a divine beast that has been extinct for thousands of years since the Age of Gods faded—!!"
Amures dropped onto the ground.
The terrifying pressure made him forget how to breathe for a moment.
It was a creature humanity could never comprehend.
Those storm-tossed, chaotic eyes.
Those sharp teeth like mountain ranges.
Every part of it spoke of ill omen.
It was the watchdog of the underworld, an existence that heralded death.
"Heh, there's nothing that can't be understood. If there is, it only means your understanding hasn't reached that level."
Moran walked to Cerberus's side.
He reached out as though petting his own animal, so naturally that it became frightening.
The point was, Cerberus did not resist.
It even lowered itself to the ground.
"No, no—this isn't real! This isn't real! It's an illusion! It's fake! You're trying to fool me!"
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