“Pinka, where are you?!”
Penka called out with a desperate voice, but no reply came from the opposite side, where the path was mostly cut off.
It would be a relief if she was just knocked down by the shock and couldn’t hear, but in the worst case, she might have been completely swept up by the explosion and plummeted below.
Driven by a sense of urgency, Ben stood up to check for himself.
“W-wait, Ben—!”
He was about to move, but Penka grabbed him from behind.
Thinking she might be trying to stop him because it was dangerous, Ben turned around.
Penka continued speaking, her face pale and troubled.
“I hear something.”
“What?”
All Ben could hear was the explosive noise swirling in the midst of the chaos.
He couldn’t hear Pinka’s voice asking for help, or the voice of anyone else he knew.
Yet, Penka stared intently at the opposite side, as if she were in a daze.
She was looking beyond the smoke with an Esper’s sight and hearing—a sense Ben did not possess.
—You can have… everything… you want…
“……!”
Ben flinched.
A delicate melody faintly lingered in the air.
Amidst the ear-splitting sirens, the screams echoing everywhere, and the explosions ringing in his ears, there was a sound gradually approaching.
Penka’s grip on Ben’s sleeve tightened a little more.
This must be the sound Penka had mentioned.
—It’s like magic.
A voice, fine enough to be buried under all the noise, was sickeningly clear.
Its level, steady pitch isolated the spot where Ben stood, causing it to exist separately from the surroundings.
A sound that absolutely did not belong here.
Why was such an unsettling humming caressing his ears?
“…Roilnia Lanilgraph.”
The woman’s name was abrasive, like a thorn caught in his throat every time he uttered it.
And simultaneously, he found his answer.
If the culprit behind this absurd terrorism—which was ruthlessly laying waste to the capital city of Central—wasn’t Roilnia, there was no one else who could explain it.
Ben was speechless at such a loud and brazen arrival.
“Hello. Long time no see.”
Finally, the fog created by the dust lifted, and the woman with loose, red hair appeared.
“Pinka!!!”
“Penka…! Don’t come over here!”
Roilnia had a hold of Pinka’s arm.
Pinka resisted, trying to break free from her hand repeatedly, but the woman didn’t budge, as if she were dealing with a frail animal.
A harsher, more thorny aura than before silently wrapped around their feet, threatening Ben with a fierce momentum.
A dark, burnt scar on one shoulder was the only visible imperfection, confirming that Roilnia was present again after the Niidgoo incident.
“Won’t you return my greeting?”
Was Ben on greeting terms with Roilnia?
Not only was he not, but it was a situation where his life was in imminent danger.
Ben shielded the trembling Penka by sending her behind him and stood facing the woman.
“Please release her hand.”
“Oh my. She’s a hostage, a hostage.”
“Who doesn’t know that and asks?”
“Then why do you say it if you know?”
Finding the pointless conversation tedious, Roilnia leisurely looked around at the ruined environment.
The act of dismantling and breaking down organization, order, and norms always excited her.
The blazing flames were pleasing to the eye, and the screams mixed with despair sounded better than any symphony.
A party, after all, must have a splendid beginning.
Roilnia momentarily relieved her boredom within the spectacle she herself had created.
While Roilnia was lost in self-admiration, Ben stealthily reached into his back pocket and pulled out his smartphone.
Now that he was face-to-face with the woman, the possibility of safely escaping, let alone reaching the bomb shelter, was slim.
His plan was to discreetly hand the phone to Penka while pretending to shield her, hoping she could use the emergency line to somehow call for help.
Understanding his intention, Penka, who had secretly taken the smartphone, tried to press the button, keeping her eyes averted from Roilnia.
Crack!
“Ah—!”
However, Penka’s attempt was futile as the slender smartphone in her hand was crumpled like a piece of paper.
The rest of the electronic devices that Ben and Penka possessed were also pulled out by an invisible force and powerlessly shattered.
Ben’s heart chilled as he lost all means of contact and all electronic devices that could be used for emergency GPS.
Roilnia scorned his petty trick and pressed her cheek against Pinka’s.
“Let’s not do anything unsightly. If you just listen to me, she’ll be fine.”
“No! Don’t do that to Pinka!”
A thin red line was drawn across Pinka’s neck, like a stroke of a pen.
Small beads of blood formed on the scratched skin along the line.
Though it was a light scratch for now, Ben knew that if he acted out of turn, the woman would undoubtedly slice Pinka’s delicate neck in half without hesitation.
Staring at the sight, Ben stood frozen in the middle of the carnage.
He felt as if he had been dragged onto a battlefield without a weapon and was facing the enemy unarmed.
A single wrong word or finger movement here could lead to the death of someone else, including himself.
That woman would coil around him like a snake, slowly squeezing and killing her prey with her sharp fangs.
“What do you want?”
As if she had been waiting for Ben’s question, Roilnia removed her cheek from Pinka’s face and pulled out a large black bag from somewhere, levitating it in the air.
The bag floated slowly toward Ben and stopped. Roilnia flicked her tongue over her lips and smiled.
“Could you open this for me?”
‘That’s it.’
Ben immediately knew.
The moment he saw the bag, he realized where the biological information that Enten had mentioned would be used.
Roilnia had come looking for Ben to open that bag.
But why did she have to make such a commotion just to show up?
Ben couldn’t understand what more she needed to destroy or whom else she needed to sacrifice to be satisfied.
He simply could not find the meaning in Roilnia’s actions.
Even if she surpassed her goal, Haimar Eilec, the trap of greed would only seek out another target.
He was sure that eventually, she would relentlessly pursue her own self-satisfaction until she consumed even herself without leaving a trace.
Ben utterly loathed Roilnia’s methods.
“Is that how you ask for a favor?”
“It’s not a favor, it’s a threat. Are you perhaps not satisfied with the hostage? Should I kill her and get a different one?”
Pinka hung limply in Roilnia’s hand.
Penka, confronted with the sight of her soulmate’s life being threatened, turned deathly pale as if all the blood had drained from her body, silently shedding tears without screaming.
She instinctively knew that losing control and shouting here would only hasten their deaths.
Faced with the absolute superior, Ben clenched his fists in helplessness.
Cold sweat dripped down his back from the extreme tension.
Think, think.
Ben fiercely considered his options.
He knew he had to say something to the woman quickly, but it was difficult to open his mouth, trapped in a swamp of deliberation.
Even as his lips parted, Roilnia gave him no time to hesitate, urging him once more.
“I guess you don’t like her after all. I’ll get another one—”
“Let her go first. Then I’ll do it.”
“Oh, didn’t you hear me say it was a threat?”
“Why? Are you afraid that without a hostage, you can’t make me open a simple bag?”
At Ben’s words, Roilnia tilted her head with an expression of interest.
Annoyance layered upon the woman’s face at his audacious remark.
“If you don’t like my tone, I can phrase it in the Haimar Eilec style that you despise.”
Yet, Ben did not stop.
No matter how disadvantageous the situation, he could not let his spirit be crushed.
If he just let himself be led by a one-sided threat, everything would proceed exactly as Roilnia wished.
Since Roilnia wanted something from Ben, Ben had to demand something in return on equal terms.
Though he was apprehensive that Roilnia might flip the table if things didn’t go her way, it was better to try something than to do nothing at all.
This was the conclusion Ben had reached for the moment.
He was not given the luxury of determining if it was the best choice or the worst.
“Say it.”
A very thin, virtual pane of glass formed between Ben and Roilnia, trembling as if it might shatter.
It was a membrane of tension—if either of them touched it wrong, it would instantly break with a great crash.
It also served as a measure of their opposing, tense auras.
The moment the balance of either side broke, the other’s momentum would flood in like a tide.
Ben stood up to Roilnia’s pressure and spoke without fear.
“Bark like ten thousand tails. If you bark, I might not refuse to do it.”
“……”
The woman gave a cold, faint laugh.
“Wasn’t that similar?”
Then, she shut her mouth and looked at Ben with narrowed eyes.
When he met her gaze squarely without backing down, a wicked red frenzy seemed to bore into him.
Roilnia slowly scrutinized Ben from head to toe.
It was the look of someone assessing how to butcher a livestock brought to the slaughterhouse, starting from where to cut.
First, she wanted to pluck out those green eyes that were so irritating.
Since the first time she saw him, she had disliked his eyes, which were stubbornly lifted, not knowing their place.
As the words he uttered overlapped with the image of Haimar Eilec, Roilnia felt a familiar contempt.
A feeling she had only ever felt for one man, and now, to a mere Guide, to one of those utterly disgusting kind—how dare he?
“You—”
Roilnia couldn’t contain her temper and haphazardly threw the Pinka she was holding aside.
“You are truly annoying.”
Immediately after, the ground beneath Ben’s feet gave way.
