Sani crashed into the clearing from the tree line at a dead sprint, breathing hard, his usual grin somehow intact despite whatever had put that much urgency in his stride.
“Mikey! What’s going on?!”
Mikey turned, brow lifting slightly.
“Where have you even been?”
“Doesn’t matter right now.” Sani waved it off, already scanning the gathered crowd, some of his energy sobering fast.
“This looks bad.”
Mikey’s gaze swept over Sani and Kei, something settled and resolved behind his usual calm.
“The demons. We’re the three strongest here — you, me, Kei. We take point on this.”
“Agreed.” Kei’s voice stayed cool, precise.
“We protect the first-years. That’s the priority.”
Yuji shoved forward before either of them could move, thunder sparking hot around his knuckles.
“What, so the rest of us just stand around? We want to fight too, you know.”
“Yuji’s right,” Nicolle said, stepping forward with quiet firmness that cut through the tension better than volume would have.
“We help each other. Nobody fights alone tonight — that’s the whole point of gathering everyone in the first place.”
Beside her, Nagi said nothing beyond a single nod, calm as the surface of still water.
It was somehow more convincing than an argument would have been.
Laughter rolled out of the mist before anyone saw where it was coming from — bright, delighted, entirely wrong for the moment.
“Truly. I didn’t expect this much organization out of children.”
A tall figure emerged from the fog, and the clearing went dead silent around him.
One side of his face was handsome, almost gentle — the kind of face that belonged in a portrait somewhere, well-loved.
The other side wore a curling horn and an eye that burned low, demonic red, the two halves sitting together on the same face like an argument that had never been resolved.
His coat, once elegant, hung torn and careless off one shoulder.
Behind him, six shapes stepped out of the mist in perfect unison — demons with dark energy pulsing visibly around their forms, red eyes fixed hungrily on the crowd of first-years.
“Ah — introductions.” He spread both arms, delighted with himself.
“Nagumu. Half human, half demon, in case the face didn’t already explain it well enough.” A short, genuine laugh.
“Isn’t it wonderful? The kind of thing storybooks warn children about, standing right in front of you.”
Underneath the performance, though — visible only to anyone paying very close attention — his eyes were already moving, cataloguing.
Mikey’s stance, weight balanced for a wind-assisted opening move.
Kei’s stillness, the particular quiet of someone who never wasted a motion.
Yuji’s fists, clenched too tight, temper doing half his thinking for him.
He read the whole clearing in under two seconds, filed everyone into categories only he could see, and kept smiling the entire time like none of it mattered to him at all.
The six demons fanned out along the tree line, dark energy pulsing brighter with every step.
Students tightened their grips on whatever weapons they had, a ripple of raised magic answering back across the clearing.
“These six,” Nagumu said, gesturing lazily, “will be handling tonight’s entertainment. Do try to make it interesting for them. I’d hate for the boss to think this island’s gone soft.”
Yuji’s face went red with fury, thunder crackling louder around his fists.
“Yeah? I’d like to see you try, you freak!”
Nagumu’s laughter came back sharp and delighted, head tilting back with it — and then, just as fast, it settled into something quieter, more amused than manic, the shift almost too smooth to notice. Find the original chapter at novelping dot com.
“How funny,” he said, voice dropping half a register, the words landing with more precision than the laugh around them suggested.
“Truly. But you’re all so charmingly beside the point.” His human eye swept the crowd once more, unhurried.
“Where’s Kirito?
I came for him specifically.
The rest of you—” a small, almost apologetic shrug “—are simply too weak to be worth my personal attention.
No offense intended.
It’s just accurate.”
The clearing held its breath.
Mikey, Sani, and Kei stepped forward as one, wind and flame and frost gathering visibly around them, three distinct auras lighting the mist in colors that had no business looking beautiful in a moment like this.
Yuji stood rigid with barely restrained fury, thunder still sparking at his fingertips despite Mikey’s earlier order.
Behind them, Nagi stood with his short sword already drawn, calm in the particular way that made Gota and Kakame instinctively fall into position beside him, Nicolle a half-step back but not retreating.
Nagumu watched all of it with open, genuine interest — the mask of manic delight fully back in place now, laughter bubbling at the edge of his voice again like the calculation underneath had simply gone back to resting.
“No Kirito, then.” He sighed theatrically, though something in his human eye stayed sharp, patient, entirely unbothered by the disappointment he was performing.
“Fine. We’ll simply have to make do with the appetizers.”
He raised one clawed hand, and the six demons behind him surged forward all at once, dark energy exploding outward into the mist like something finally allowed to exhale.
Somewhere in the chaos about to unfold, Nagumu’s human eye found Nagi for the briefest fraction of a second — no longer than a blink, gone before anyone could have caught it — and something in his expression flickered, just once, into an entirely different kind of interest than the boredom he was showing everyone else.
Then the demons hit the front line, and the clearing dissolved into noise.
*End of Chapter 17*