Argen was drenched in cold sweat as he looked around at the devastated forest.
Clearly, as of this morning, before this situation unfolded, it hadn’t been this badly damaged. So what on earth had happened?
“What in the world… happened here…?”
The forest was completely ruined.
The mountain at the back of the Academy, which once gleamed with the colors of pristine nature, had now degenerated under the influence of magical energy into a place with only rotten trees remaining.
“It’s unbelievable…”
Stella and Uriel, who were observing the forest, also couldn’t find words to describe the scene before them, a shocking sight too terrible to put into words.
“The last time we came here… some of its former beauty still remained…”
Seeing the once-beautiful forest behind the Academy now in ruin, Stella’s face turned blank with disbelief.
How had it come to this?
“Maleficent…”
Though the forest wasn’t exactly manicured, as it was a mountain behind the Academy where the students had lessons, the feeling of loss was undeniable.
“Where are Evan and Aria…?”
Argen murmured Maleficent’s name with a tone of frustration when Stella and Uriel began looking around for Evan and Aria.
However, because the forest was so vast, and it was overwhelmed by powerful magical and divine energies, the coordinates seemed distorted, making it hard to pinpoint their exact location.
While they could sense they were somewhere nearby, finding their precise location wasn’t easy.
But there was no way they could give up now.
“We have to find them…”
As Stella murmured her determination, suddenly…
BOOM!
“What is…?”
“That explosion…?!”
Shocked by the sudden explosion, Argen and Stella’s heads immediately turned toward its source.
If the powerful divine energy they felt nearby had been another burst from the earlier incident, it might have been Aria’s doing, but this felt different.
“This feeling… this divine power isn’t Aria’s.”
Argen, drenched in cold sweat, said this.
This divine power, while aiming to purify everything, was ferociously intense. It wasn’t the kind associated with the holy maiden.
Having spent a long time accompanying the hero in the distant past, she couldn’t mistake it for anything else. There was no way this divine power explosion originated from the holy maiden.
How could she ever confuse it?
After all, divine power for her was the second most familiar force after magic power.
“Could the hero… have awakened?”
Argen muttered with astonishment.
By now, there was no mistaking the truth.
Argen wiped his cold sweat and hoped silently that the situation wouldn’t unfold as he feared, then headed toward where the divine energy was strongest.
And finally,
“Evan…!!”
The three were finally able to find Evan.
“Evan…?”
“Aria…”
Confused and distressed, tears rolling down his cheeks, the three approached Evan and Aria as they noticed something different about Evan and Aria lying on the ground, half her body incapacitated.
“Why… am I crying…?”
“What happened here?! What about the holy maiden!?”
And the decayed heart held in Aria’s melted hand, the magical energy flowing from it, made Argen’s eyes widen with shock.
“Th-this…!”
Only then did they understand what had transpired here.
“Could she… have tried to purify Maleficent’s Lifevessel alone?”
Argen whispered, his face full of shock.
It was spoken that somewhere in the Academy, Maleficent had placed a Lifevessel to penetrate its barriers and invade the Academy. They had said they should look for the Lifevessel first, but they never imagined she would try to purify it alone.
Even so, it seemed half successful as the decaying heart seemed significantly weakened.
“A-Aria…”
“Don’t look… Uriel.”
Blocking Uriel’s eyes from the sight of Aria, he spoke with a mournful voice.
He knew there was nothing that could be done.
He also recognized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to capture Maleficent, a high-ranking official of the Demon King Army.
But…
Such an appearance… Uriel, not used to seeing Aria this way, shouldn’t be subjected to seeing her like this.
“I’ll destroy it right this second.”
As Stella covered Uriel’s eyes and Argen was deep in thought, Evan, displaying a mix of confusion and complexity, looked up at the decaying heart, the Lifevessel, held in Aria’s hand.
If only this were gone…
If this were gone, Aria wouldn’t have to endure further pain.
With this thought, Evan raised the sacred sword to strike down.
KLANG!
“Grk…?!”
Evan winced, his eyes wide. It felt as if he had struck something solid. When he came to his senses, a barrier had appeared before him.
“Wait, smashing it now won’t do anything.”
“…But…!!”
“I understand your feelings. You wish to quickly destroy the Lifevessel that torments Aria. But…”
Aria wouldn’t have acted so rashly.
Of course, coming here alone was a mistake on Aria’s part, but now that this has happened, they had no choice but to capture Maleficent with certainty.
“I’m sorry to say this about her… but I hope she can hold out just a little longer.”
Evan was about to protest with a distorted expression, but there was no flaw in what she said.
It wasn’t certain whether purifying the Lifevessel here would mean life or death, but despite the importance of the Lifevessel, destroying it here wouldn’t necessarily kill Maleficent.
This very fact meant that placing it here might have been a safeguard against the possibility that it could be destroyed.
Evan wasn’t unaware of this fact.
But…
“Quickly… we need to help her…”
He wanted to alleviate her suffering as quickly as possible.
Why?
Though he had always worried about Aria and wished she wouldn’t be in pain even before, now it felt different.
It was more… an incomprehensible yearning, a sadness that kept rising, making his heart feel a complicated emotion.
“Don’t worry. Aria seems to have fainted, so she won’t feel the pain… and the purification magic she used has already weakened the Lifevessel to its limit, so there’s no need to worry.”
Even with Argen’s reassurance that there was no need to worry, Evan looked down at Aria with guilt for being unable to do anything. Gradually weakening, it was indeed true—Aria, who received infinite divine power from the goddess, was slowly returning to normal. But, conversely, the Lifevessel was steadily losing its pulse.
It was weakening from the continuous flow of divine power coming from Aria.
“But at this point, it shouldn’t be too difficult to track Maleficent’s location.”
Argen approached the heart with a sense of opportunity.
Attempting to stop him before his hand touched the heart and Aria’s fate befall him, Argen’s hand moved swifter.
“Don’t worry. This won’t cause me any trouble.”
As Argen had stated, at this point the Lifevessel was so weakened that touching it posed no serious problem.
Though even now, an ordinary person would have been eroded by the magical energy upon proximity and would painfully perish, fortunately, he was not an ordinary person.
One of the most accomplished magicians of the current era, and once the mage of the legendary hero party—worrying about this at this stage was absurd.
Though unfortunate for Aria, through this Lifevessel, they had a good chance to locate Maleficent and eliminate her with certainty.
If it was true that Maleficent was preparing for her appearance at the Academy, this was the perfect opportunity to ensure she would not return.
Interfering here was not a good idea.
Evan withdrew the hand he had extended to stop Argen and watched as the tracking magic was cast.
He made a silent promise that when it was all over, he would completely destroy the heart so that it could never exist again.
Evan resolved this within himself.
