“You’ve had…
quite an eventful couple of days.”
Forgive Black Heaven’s limited vocabulary.
“Eventful” was the only word he could find for Ryo’s past two days.
If he remembered correctly, his original assignment for Ryo had just been to go pick up Leticia…
So how had things spiraled into this?
“Hehe~ Not too shabby, right?”
Ryo scratched the back of his head with an innocent grin.
Ryo genuinely thought he’d done a good job.
Black Heaven’s mouth twitched.
You think I’m complimenting you?
I swear, Ouroboros has gained another Problem Child.
The vibe Ryo gave off reminded him of the days teaching Canary.
No — even Canary in her first days as his student hadn’t caused this much chaos.
A headache.
And now dealing with Algol would be a whole pile of work.
Whatever — he’d just dump it on Poseidon.
Poseidon was Greek.
Let him go say hello to Zeus and Athena.
With a weary sigh, Black Heaven glanced at the thoroughly pleased Kurma and rubbed his temples.
Right.
Almost forgot — this one’s a Problem Child too, just as bad as Queen Halloween.
She probably genuinely thinks Ryo did a great job.
“Forget it.
Algol can stay with you for now.
If needed, you can request a seal reinforcement.”
“Thanks, Alliance Master.”
Ryo hung up with perfect politeness, leaving Black Heaven sighing on the other end.
“Look at what your newly adopted little brother’s done.
Dragging Algol in — drawing Athena’s attention.
Ouroboros probably won’t stay hidden much longer.”
“Really?
Little Kurma thinks little Ryo did a great job.”
Kurma picked up an apple and took a bite.
Ryo had done great!!
This was exactly what Little Garden needed — more chaos, more excitement.
What was the point of Black Heaven’s obsession with rigid hierarchies and stagnant order?
Boring.
“That’s your opinion.”
Black Heaven rubbed his brow, feeling exhausted.
Teaching Canary had already drained him.
He wanted nothing more to do with Ryo’s affairs.
“From now on, don’t dump Ryo’s problems on me.
Handle them yourself.”
“Fine.”
Kurma finished her apple in a few bites and wiped her hands and mouth.
Then she propped up her chin and tilted her head curiously at Black Heaven.
“Speaking of which — are you really so heartless as to watch your precious student lie in bed, wasting away?”
“Precious student, huh?”
Black Heaven let out a cold laugh but didn’t deny it.
“Given the filth she’s done, dying quietly in bed is already the greatest mercy she could hope for.”
“True.
Facing despair with no chance of realizing your dream…
better to drown in hatred instead.”
Kurma nodded in agreement.
“And those little ones left from Arcadia?
What do you want to do with them?”
“Send them back to Arcadia?
Let them play their little revival game?”
Black Heaven didn’t answer immediately.
His fingers tapped the table in a slow, steady rhythm — clearly thinking.
“If you haven’t decided, how about giving Kasukabe Yō to me?
Kukulkan’s been trying to get her hands on Kōmei’s daughter ever since she heard about her.
She’s even come begging to me.”
Kurma said casually.
During the Anti-Utopia War, Kasukabe Kōmei had saved Kukulkan’s life by chance, forging an unusual bond between them.
“Arcadia has no more value to us anyway.”
At that, Kurma suddenly turned and stared at Black Heaven with a surprised expression.
Black Heaven, don’t tell me you’ve actually gone soft?”
“Just take it as me going soft.”
Black Heaven sighed, then rejected Kurma’s suggestion.
“Those kids go back to Arcadia.
Let them play their little community-revival game.”
“And while we’re at it…
it’s about time we dealt with that mad dragon.”
“Tch.
If you’ve gone soft, just say so.
No need to make excuses.”
Kurma clicked her tongue, not wanting to engage with the old tsundere.
A Two-Digit old timer — who was he even being tsundere for?
In just a few sentences, Black Heaven and Kurma had decided the fate of Arcadia — and the future course of Little Garden.
If Ryo had been there, he might have understood what Black Heaven meant.
This was likely the signal that Sakamaki Izayoi, Kuon Asuka, and Kasukabe Yō were about to arrive in Little Garden — the beginning of the first arc of the original story.
Izayoi and the others would arrive in Little Garden, join the community their elders had built with blood and tears — a community destroyed for unknown reasons, leaving only a hundred-odd children and Kuro Usagi in No Name.
Then would come the battles — defeating Perseus, recovering Leticia, attending the Fire Dragon’s Birth Festival, and eventually facing the Human Final Trial — the Absolute Evil, Azi Dahaka.
Of course, all of that was based on Ryo not being in the picture.
The current story had already been completely derailed.
Ryo had no intention of letting Leticia flow back into Arcadia’s hands.
After settling Ouroboros’s next objectives with Kurma, Black Heaven took his leave.
Unlike Kurma — who was content to be a hands-off Vice-Master — Black Heaven, as the actual Alliance Master, had endless work.
Intelligence gathering and analysis, plan execution and coordination, negotiations with three-digit old foxes…
Nothing got done without his personal involvement.
Demon Lord Alliance?
Sounded impressive.
But call it what it was: a rabble of misfits and schemers held together by force.
Without him keeping a lid on things, Ouroboros would never have reached its current scale — or stayed hidden from Thousand Eyes’ professional intelligence network for so long.
If he truly let go, Ouroboros wouldn’t last two years before the Heavenly Army and Thousand Eyes rooted it out and crushed it.
And when things went wrong, the first ones to pass the buck would be those so-called “higher-ups.”
How could a snake hiding in the grass compare to a mighty dragon soaring in the sky?