Chapter 14: 12 – Descent of the Spirit queen [2]

Glenn's attack connected, but he didn't stop there. Quickly grabbing more Chaos, he continued pummeling the Death's will to death. Before he could catch his breath, he heard a 2 shouts.

""Behind you!""

One was the all-too familiar annoying voice of Kevin, and the other was surprisingly Annie's voice. Seeing no reason to ignore them, Glenn dodged out of the way—just in time to avoid a scythe tearing his body in half.

The blonde boy from before didn't idle either. Gripping the katana in his hand, he slashed at the back of the Death's will's knee and kicked it past Glenn—generating a booming shockwave as he did so.

'Strong...,' thought Glenn as he stared wordlessly at the blonde boy, 'he has to be at least a 3rd-tier awakener. Judging by the fact that he's using a sword, he's likely a knight.'

Unlike Glenn, who was relieved that he didn't have to protect deadweights, the boy marched right up toward him with a frown.

"You!" He shouted as he jabbing his index finger at Glenn's chest. "You ruined everything! Dirty murderer!"

'...?'

Seeing Glenn's confusion, he elaborated. "This is a trial designed by the Gods to give me yet another beautiful woman! Now you've ruined it all! Not just that, you're a murderer!"

'...Is he actually retarded?'

Glenn tilted his head to give Annie a questioning look, but she merely shrugged her shoulders, hinting that she didn't know what was going on either.

The boy was less than pleased with Glenn's gesture. Taking a small step to the right to block Glenn's view of Annie, he shouted with his frown deepened even further. "Do not lay eyes on my woman, vile creature!"

"Huh... okay," Glenn backed off without resistance. He only wanted Annie to be indebted to him for his own gains anyway; in no way did he sign up for death with this, to put it lightly, "unique individual."

Suddenly, Annie walked up toward the boy and placed a hand on his shoulder. However, it wasn't an affectionate pat like one would have expected. Instead, she squeezed his shoulder tightly. "Who did you call "your woman?""

'Her voice's cold. Is this really the same girl I saw on the train?'

It would make sense for a princess to act timidly to make her opponents, physical or political, to drop their guard. However, it didn't make sense that she decided to drop the act now of all time. 

'I guess being stuck in the Abyss really got to her. Unless... she was tricking her brother?'

"Do you have to be suspicious of everything?" Kevin suddenly spoke up.

Glenn frowned and said in a whisper inaudible to Annie and the boy, "You can read my mind?"

"Of course I can! Well, only surface level thoughts and thoughts that you want me to hear. You can communicate me using that method, by the way. Unless of course you want people to think that you like mumbling to yourself."

'Noted.'

Casting Kevin out of his mind, Glenn fell into thoughts again.

Aside from the obvious fact that they were now in the Abyss, the only thing which differentiated the train incident from this was the absence of Hugh. But...

'It's not my problem anyway. Political bullshit can go fuck itself.'

Unlike Glenn, the boy's expression softened as soon as he heard Annie's voice. Ignoring the deep-in-thought Glenn and turning around to meet eyes with Annie, he gently held her hand and removed it from his shoulder. Kneeling down and kissing her hand, he said, "Of course you, my lady. The Gods have given you to me... or they would have, if it wasn't for a certain murderer's intervention."

Annie's face briefly scrunched up in disgust, but Glenn could tell that it wasn't directed toward him and instead, toward the blonde. 

Catching her expression, the blonde boy sighed, "I guess that introductions are needed." Standing up and clearing his throat, he spoke with a solemn voice, "I am Hiro Tanaki, a summoned, and most importantly, one of the two Heroes of this era."

A summoned... a human from another world... that was indeed a rare sight, but it wasn't what caused Glenn and Annie to stiffen in surprise. Instead, it was the claim of being a Hero.

'W-What?' Glenn thought as he recovered from his shock.

However, he quickly calmed down. This "Hiro" guy could well have been lying straight to Annie's face. Although it was publicly known that the Heroes had been found, Joseph Persuv Cetial had picked up both the Hero native to this world and the summoned Hero, and blocked any information about how they looked like, preventing anyone from recognizing them. Even the most skilled information broker could not tell who they were if they waltzed straight into the broker's base. 

Well, people with high political positions like Annie would have definitely seen a portrait of the Heroes at the very least, but that was fortunate since she could expose his lies here; in fact, Glenn was very sure that Annie was going to slap Hiro in the face for lying to her any second now that he wore an irritating smirk on his face. There was absolutely no way he could encounter the very person that he had to overcome to conquer the Abyss first here—

"Oh, that explains why you look so familiar. I've seen you in the portrait the alliance leader sent before," Annie said, but her tone was still low. It was obvious that she didn't like him claiming her to by his woman, Hero or not.

'Crap.'

Of course the fucking princess of Arline empire had to pour cold water over Glenn's smug smile. Now came the important question: should he kill the Hero here to make his goal of conquering the Abyss first much easier? After all, this was the Abyss, no one could connect him back to Hiro's death.

But after literally a split second of thinking about it, Glenn felt that he wanted to strangle his past self for having even came up with that! Sure, maybe he could take the Hero on, but he wasn't so sure if Annie, Arline empire's princess, would sit by and let him do so. Not to mention, Ander could find him at any moment, and he was very sure that he would not hesitate to apprehend him, holder of the Chaos arts or not.

As such, he opted to keep quiet and observe the situation.

Unaware of the fact that someone had been plotting for his death right next to him, Hiro smiled. "That's right, my lady. I'm the summoned Hero. I fight monsters and murderers alike." 

Glenn knew that the "murderer" part referred to him. But...

'Why is he keep calling me a murderer? I only killed a Death's will. Don't tell me... he was there at the Bloody night?'

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Glenn couldn't help but shudder upon thinking that. His fist subconsciously clenched, and his muscles tensed.

Unaware of the fact that Glenn was on the verge of breakdown, Hiro turned his back toward Annie.

"But I'm afraid I must part with you temporarily. For you see, I am a Hero, and being one comes with certain benefits. I can see how many people a living creature has killed." He briefly glanced at Glenn in disdain. "Setting aside the number of people that the snowy-haired fiend killed, the Death's will that I defeated only had one life. The other one, however, had a few hundred."

Glenn heaved a very audible sigh of relief.

'Good. He only know how many I killed. It would have been a complete nightmare if he was somehow present at the Bloody night. It would prove that the whole alliance is my enemy...'

Hiro leisurely walked past Glenn as if he wasn't even a threat at all. Pointing his sword toward the Death's wills that were lying limp on the ground, he shouted, "Rise, monster! There's no use pretending; I will cut you down as many time as I need to protect my woman."

But even after a minute had passed, the monster didn't move. It was then that Glenn burst into laughter. "Pffft! Sorry, I should have said it sooner, but that Death's will isn't going to get up ever again."

As if waiting for Glenn's cue, abyssal black tendrils protruded from the ground and wrapped themselves around the Death's wills, pulling their corpses into the sandy white floor.

Hiro stood still in silence, his face slowly flushing red in either embarrassment or anger, or maybe a mixture of both. Whatever the case was, he was planning to make trouble for Glenn.

"Y-You! You could have told me that sooner!"

"I could," Glenn nodded, refusing to elaborate any further.

"You— I— Arghhh! Whatever!" Hiro's sword was not pointed toward Glenn. "Killing a Death's will that had hundreds of lives with merely fists, you definitely used forbidden magic! Tell me, did you use ACL?"

Glenn flinched. He had ACL, but he never used it, at least not anywhere near Ander or anyone other than his dad, really. But he eventually figured out what Hiro was talking about; he was just sprouting bullshit to justify his would-be attack on Glenn, and he just so happened to correctly guess that Glenn had ACL by dumb luck.

Unfortunately for Glenn, he flinched, and that was enough for Hiro.

"You flinched! So you really are a demon!"

"Wait, me flinching doesn't mean anything!"

Hearing this, Hiro sheathed his sword. Before Glenn could heave a sigh of relief, however, he shouted, 

"Die! [Quick flash]!"

A crisp clicking sound rand out as bright white light exploded from inside Hiro's scabbard. His similarly glowing blade was unsheathed and slashed toward Glenn at inhuman speed. 

Watching the horizontal white streak of light that spelt certain death flying toward him, Glenn reflexively grabbed Annie and used her as a shield. Fortunately for both Glenn and Annie, the white light disappeared only inches away from them, though only because Hiro deliberately cancelled his attack.

With cold sweats running down his forehead, Glenn stuttered, "D-Don't make any moves if you don't want her to die!"

"Tsk tsk, very knight-like, newbie." Kevin clicked his tongue as he shook his head disapprovingly.

'Can you shut up? I almost died there! And did you really expect me to fight a Hero?!'

Now, Glenn was glad that he didn't make the decision to pick a fight with the Hero earlier, however futile it was considering the current situation.

Hiro was, of course, gritting his teeth in anger. "Let her go!"

Justifiably fuming, Annie hissed, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Keeping myself alive," Glenn whispered so that only Annie could hear him, "You see how psychopathic he is, right? I don't have any ACL inside me, and he nearly killed just because I have killed people!"

Annie's face softened. "Yeah, I suppose you're correct. But it doesn't mean you can just grab me like that!"

"J-Just cooperate with me for once and play the damsel in distress, okay? I'll pay you and Hugh back later."

Annie thought for a bit and then nodded. "But what are you going to do when we get out though, assuming that we can escape the Abyss at all."

"Don't worry, I have... connections. I'll be fine as long as you testify that I didn't do anything to you. Please, even if the Hero tells people that I'm mindcontrolling you or whatever, just do it!"

Annie sighed and cleared her throat. "Ehem, Hero! Save me from t—"

But she suddenly halted her sentence and stared at the space behind Hiro, mouth agape. "M-M—"

Similarly, Glenn followed Annie's gaze with the color drained from his face. "Crap. Why now..." 

Blissfully unaware of what was behind him, Hiro tilted his head in confusion. "What?"

In response, Glenn merely grabbed Annie's arm and retreated as fast as possible. 

Before he could say anything, Hiro felt a presence sneaking up on him. He turned around and stared straight into the thing that made Annie and Glenn react that way.

"A-Abyssal guardian!"

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