Not So Much a Gift

Aleister stroked the uneasy Little Crow while narrowing his eyes slightly and pondering in secret.

If Alphons's mastermind was Anna Kingsford, then he had been killed by the Night Demon's power... Did that also mean that Kingsford had some kind of relationship with the Night Demon?

"I'm terribly sorry, my dear boss..."

At that moment, a layered voice suddenly rang out. It was as if four or five people with similar voices were saying the same sentence in subtly different rhythms.

The voice came from the mirrors shattered by the explosion. Although the ceiling and floor had both been blown into empty voids, the mirror shielded behind Iver and the Night Demon had merely been blasted into a pile of fragments by the shock wave.

Now, those battered fragments simultaneously reflected the forms of several Mirror Demons.

Each remaining shard was simply too small to contain its existence. To report that it was safe as quickly as possible, the Mirror Demon had directly split itself into several parts, producing a voice like several recordings pieced together.

"That was an attack from the Night Demon. For a poor little demon like me, it was truly far too ferocious..."

"—All right, stop talking."

Before the Mirror Demon could say anything irreversible, Aleister hurriedly interrupted it.

The Mirror Demon, however, showed not the slightest resentment.

Instead, it smoothly launched into a second wave of flattery. "As expected of you, you truly understand the dispositions of us demons. Now I can rest easy—you at least won't run into danger because you believed the slander of other demons."

...Professional. It was simply too professional.

After Aleister cut it off, it immediately declared that if it had done anything wrong, that was merely the instinct of its species and not its own fault; next, it expressed