“Could you maybe stop talking for five minutes?”
Sherry, who cared about Lyon more than anyone else present, finally complained.
Noah ignored her completely.
He refused to believe he was incapable of creating the appropriately solemn atmosphere for a scene this emotional.
Spreading his arms, he forced as much grief onto his face as he could manage.
“To protect her disciples, she sacrificed herself to seal away a powerful demon, freeing one student from the darkness that had haunted him at the same time. What extraordinary devotion! Ur truly was a teacher worthy of admiration!”
Some distance away, Ultear’s fist clenched.
‘Why?’
‘Why could you sacrifice yourself for your disciples, yet abandon your own daughter without hesitation?’
Noah, entirely unaware—or pretending to be unaware—of what his speech was doing to her, continued.
“Ur was an incredibly powerful Mage, someone capable of fighting Gildarts on equal footing. She could’ve had an extraordinary future. If she were still alive today, her name might already be famous throughout all of Ishgar.”
He looked mournfully toward Deliora’s crumbling remains.
“And yet she willingly sacrificed all of that for one demon and for the sake of her disciple. What a terrible loss…”
Gray started crying even harder.
Loke noticed where this was heading and quietly moved closer to Noah.
“Hey,” he whispered, “that’s probably enough. I know you’re enjoying the reactions, but if you keep going, you’re not going to be able to salvage the mood afterward.”
What kind of accusation was that?
Enjoying their reactions?
Was Noah that sort of person?
He was obviously trying to—
Noah glanced at Gray, Lyon, and Ultear in the distance.
All right.
Maybe his delivery had been a little too effective.
There was an old saying that after hitting someone with the stick, you should at least offer them something sweet.
Since the emotional beating had already been administered, Noah decided it was time for the second half.
His voice softened into a warm, reassuring tone.
“Gray, Lyon… and you too.”
Ultear blinked when he included her.
Noah gestured toward the ice scattered throughout the chamber.
“Ice-Make really is an incredible magic, isn’t it?”
Gray stared at him.
“You…”
Even Cana and Loke looked surprised.
They had not expected something so gentle to come out of Noah’s mouth, especially after spending the entire journey listening to him mock Ice-Make whenever the opportunity arose.
He and Gray had argued about it more than once.
And now he was praising it?
Cana smiled faintly.
“Look at you. You’re finally starting to show a little dignity befitting an S-Class Mage.”
Noah looked at her.
‘You’re only realizing that now?
Your reactions are way too slow.’
More importantly, only someone with extraordinary mental strength could lie that smoothly against his own convictions.
Because deep in Noah’s heart, the truth remained unchanged.
‘Ice-Make is still inferior!
Hahaha!’
Yuka, Sherry, and Toby gathered around Lyon to comfort him, while Cana and Loke went to check on Gray.
Ultear remained at a distance, quietly watching everything with emotions she had no intention of showing.
As for Noah, he was already thinking about how to add one last touch to the scene.
Then—
Crack.
Everyone looked up.
“What was that?”
The pieces of Deliora’s corpse, which had already collapsed across the ground, were moving.
Chunks of frozen flesh began pulling themselves back together.
The frost coating them gradually receded, and droplets of water ran down the re-forming body before falling to the floor.
Drip.
Dark magic power suddenly filled the chamber again.
It grew heavier by the second, swelling rapidly until the oppressive force seemed to fill every corner of the ruins.
Then Deliora’s enormous body moved.
“AAAAAH! CURSE YOU, UR! I LIVE AGAIN!”
Everyone froze.
“!!!”
Deliora’s eyes, each nearly as large as Gray’s head, glowed with a sinister crimson light as they fixed on the people below. This story is hosted at g.com.
Its enormous mouth opened, spilling a foul stench of blood and decay into the chamber, as though the countless lives it had devoured still lingered somewhere inside.
The demon raised one massive arm and casually slammed it downward.
Several people were caught before they could react and sent flying.
“Gah!”
“What the hell?!” Gray shouted as he hit the ground.
“Wasn’t Deliora already dead?! Noah, what’s going on?!”
What was going on?
Noah was Noah.
Was it really so strange for him to have a little authority over life and death?
Where no one could see his face, Noah briefly wore the same deeply satisfied smile as a certain notebook-wielding genius watching his plans fall perfectly into place.
Then he turned around wearing an expression of genuine confusion.
“This… I’m not sure either. Maybe it’s some kind of final burst of life before death?”
The lie came out without the slightest hesitation.
A final burst of life?
The thing had already died, fallen apart, and turned into frozen chunks of flesh.
How exactly was it supposed to have a deathbed resurgence after that?
Still, Deliora was a demon.
The others reluctantly admitted that demons might simply be built differently.
And Noah looked genuinely shocked.
Their expressions darkened.
Had Deliora truly survived ten years inside Iced Shell?
Gray’s thoughts raced.
‘Then there’s no choice.
I’ll have to use Iced Shell and seal it again!’
Lyon, meanwhile, reached the exact opposite conclusion.
‘I still have a chance to surpass Ur!’
From farther away, Ultear stared at the demon in confusion.
‘What happened?
Deliora was definitely dead.
That condition couldn’t have been faked…’
Then something clicked.
‘Wait.
There was an unusual fluctuation of magic power just now.’
Lyon surged to his feet, excitement blazing in his eyes.
“Ur! Watch me! I’ll defeat Deliora right here and surpass you!”
His followers immediately retreated to give him room.
“Go, Lord Reitei!”
Noah glanced at them.
‘You’re still calling him Reitei after all this?’
Gray rushed after Lyon.
“Lyon, wait! Damn it, has he completely lost his mind?!”
Both disciples raised their hands.
“Ice-Make: Dragon!”
“Ice-Make: Freeze Cannon!”
Their spells erupted at the same time.
The two streams of ice twisted together almost immediately, intertwining in midair as naturally as though they had always been meant to become one.
Like Gray and Lyon themselves, the spells came from the same origin, and the shared foundation of their magic produced a strange resonance that caused both techniques to surge in power.
Noah’s eyes widened.
“A Unison Raid?!”
Even he had not expected the two of them to produce something like this.
The combined ice magic struck Deliora head-on, instantly freezing its massive body solid.
“Nooooo!”
With the demon’s inexplicably dramatic scream, something even stranger happened.
The air itself cracked.
Crack!
Cana suddenly frowned.
“Wait a second…”
Everyone looked at her.
“Why does Deliora know Ur’s name?”
Silence.
“…”
“???”
And finally realization.
“!!!”
The chamber became completely still.
A moment later, everything around them fractured like glass.
Deliora, the flying bodies, the renewed battle—every part of the scene shattered into countless translucent fragments before fading away.
Reality returned.
Deliora was still lying exactly where it had been before, its corpse broken into frozen chunks across the floor.
It had never revived.
No one had been attacked.
Nothing had happened.
Then Noah’s cheerful laughter came from behind them.
“That’s right! It was an illusion I made!”
He grinned brightly.
“Pretty convincing, wasn’t it? I scared you, didn’t I?”
Gray and Loke spun around.
“You bastard!”
Judging by their expressions, he had scared them quite badly.
Cana’s eye twitched.
“I take back everything I just said. You don’t have a shred of dignity befitting an S-Class Mage!”
How fickle.
She changed her opinion faster than she changed cards.
If only her card-switching speed in battle were that impressive.
Yuka, Sherry, and Toby collectively let out relieved breaths.
“Damn… that scared me to death. I really thought Deliora had come back.”
Noah looked at them with disdain.
‘Pathetic.’
Lyon lowered his head with a bitter smile.
“I thought…”
There was no need to hear the rest.
He had obviously been about to say, ‘I thought I finally had another chance to fulfill my dream.’
And now that hope had been shattered for the second time in the space of a few minutes.
It would probably take him quite a while to recover from this.
Poor guy.
Ultear was the only one who reacted differently.
“Hehehe… Noah Hopelight. You really are an interesting man.”
The look she gave him, however, was less like someone admiring an interesting person and more like someone observing an escaped mental patient.
Noah clapped his hands and smiled at everyone.
“All right, all right! You were all looking so miserable that I decided to lighten the mood a little. There’s no need to make such a big deal out of it.”
Several people immediately looked ready to attack him.
“What did you just say?!”
Noah held up his hands.
“What? This whole trip was supposed to show you what’s expected of an S-Class Mage.”
He smoothly invented another explanation.
“That illusion was a special exercise I designed to test how well you respond to an unexpected crisis. I even deliberately left a verbal clue so you could spot the inconsistency.”
He nodded toward Cana.
“And the results clearly prove that Cana’s intelligence is far beyond either of you two.”
Gray and Loke stared at him.
“So we’re supposed to thank you now?”
Noah smiled shamelessly.
“Hehe. No need to be so formal. I’ll gladly accept your gratitude.”
His explanation was infuriating, but after everything that had just happened, the ridiculous illusion really had lightened the mood.
And there was something else.
Gray and Lyon looked at one another.
After a moment, both smiled.
Whatever resentment had remained between them had finally begun to dissolve under the weight of Ur’s sacrifice.
For those few seconds when they had believed Deliora was alive, their instinctive cooperation had felt just like the old days when they trained together in the snowy mountains under their master.
Gray had said earlier that Ur was the person he respected most, and that he would never forgive whoever tried to undo her sacrifice.
Noah glanced between the two disciples, remembering that declaration.
‘Heh.’
‘Funny how things change.’
End of Chapter 20