North of the Fiore Kingdom, in the heart of a boundless desert.
"Whew..." Achill let out a soft breath and slowly opened his eyes. Looking at the moon-white longsword floating before him, glowing with a faint, milky light, he recalled everything that had just happened in his inner world. He shook his head and sighed softly. "At least it worked. Looks like my idea was right after all. It was a bit of a stretch, sure, but it still worked, didn't it...?"
Shaking his head, Achill rose to his feet in midair, his entire body crackling like beans roasting in a pan. He reached out and took the floating moon-white longsword, then carefully slid it into the matching sheath at his left hip with a faint scrape of metal.
"Still, choosing this deserted place to suppress the Hollow instead of staying in Magnolia turned out to be an unexpectedly wise decision..." Patting nonexistent dust from his clothes, Achill casually looked down. What should have been sand below him had become a bottomless abyss more than ten thousand meters across! He shrugged indifferently. Since he had finished what he came to do, there was no reason to linger. With that thought, Achill vanished in a flash, becoming a streak of light that disappeared into the sky—
Meanwhile, in the newly built assembly hall of the New Magic Council in the Fiore Kingdom.
"Have you determined the cause of that sudden surge of powerful, unidentified magic from the north?!" Chairman Gran asked a frog-like researcher from the Magic Council's magic detection agency in a grave voice. "Read me your most detailed report!"
The other council members also stared at the frog researcher with solemn expressions.
"My apologies, Chairman, honored council members!" the frog researcher replied bitterly. "Our magic monitoring department began operating