On the morning of the 13th, Horn Trist woke up exhausted in a bedroom in an unremarkable home outside Dragon Tooth City.
"Toss, you bastard! What kind of daughter did you raise? Didn't you say she was supposed to be your backup body? How come several True Gods took turns protecting her?!"
Horn tore open his pajamas. Clear burn marks covered his chest and back, and he could even smell the magic of the Moon School on them.
"Thank goodness this body is High-Rank. Otherwise, being burned by True Gods three times in one night would have killed me!"
Remembering what had happened the night before, Horn still felt shaken.
While searching for the Witch of the Southeast yesterday afternoon, he had unexpectedly run into someone he knew at the Temple of Life. Although the girl named Lily claimed not to know Toss Hel, she was plainly Toss's adopted daughter—or, more accurately, the backup body he had found for himself.
Ever since Hel had left a message in Dragon Tooth City a few years ago saying he planned to live on the Gallop Plains for a while, Horn's old friend and occasional adversary had vanished without a trace.
Horn had often kept an eye on news from the Gallop Plains, but had never managed to find his old friend.
At last, yesterday, he discovered that the girl named Lily had inherited most of Toss's power and had even reached High-Rank. A troubling suspicion began to rise in his heart.
So last night, he had disguised himself as Toss, taking on the appearance of Lily's father, in order to find out what the girl had been through over the past few years.
But he would have been better off not asking. Starting with the question of who her teacher was, he