The room had grown cold. Three pairs of eyes gleamed sharply in the dim light, all fixed on me.

I swallowed hard as the atmosphere around me turned hostile. “Everyone, calm down. Professor Baldwin was just joking.”

“Joking? That was a joke?”

“You mean you weren’t with Professor Baldwin?”

I replied, “Well, that’s...”

I was with her, technically speaking.

“See! I knew it! You were together!” Iris shouted.

Professor Baldwin lifted the corner of her lips in a teasing smile. “Settle down, Iris. We were together, yeah. We merely engaged in a bit of intense physical activity, sweating, groaning, maybe a few screams here and there.”

Iris narrowed her eyes. “Let’s keep the jokes to a minimum, Professor.”

“Oh my, did I get caught?”

“No matter how much Dale likes women, he’s not the kind of person to fool around with a professor in the middle of a war.”

Professor Baldwin chuckled, tipping back her glass of strong whiskey. “Fufu. Agreed.”

“So, what exactly happened between you two?” she asked.

“Dale and I fought against the Archbishop of Beasts, who had infiltrated the Abyss,” explained Professor Baldwin.

Iris’s and Yurina’s eyes widened in shock.

“What?”

“W-what did you say?”

Their eyes trembled with disbelief.

“Is-is that really true?”

“The Abyss, that’s the place, isn’t it? The one sealed beneath the Hero Academy, where the Demon God is imprisoned. We learned that no one can enter because of the barrier.”

Professor Baldwin let out a dry, bitter smile, as if recalling her past. “We don’t know how the Archbishop managed to reach the Abyss. Dale was the one who noticed his absence during the battle and pursued him.”

Yurina and Iris both nodded as they recalled the battle.

“Now that you mention it, we saw only the beast legion during the attack. The Archbishop himself never appeared.”

“And there weren’t any especially powerful monsters, either.”

Laneige asked in a trembling voice, “S-so, what happened then? Dale, you didn’t get hurt, did you?”

Her tone was fragile, like that of a frightened animal, but her eyes burned with a dangerous gleam. I could practically feel her murderous intent ready to grind the Archbishop into dust if he had hurt me.

“Fufu. Don’t worry. He wasn’t seriously injured,” Professor Baldwin replied.

“S-so, he was injured, then?” Laneige asked.

“Well, it’s not like you can take down an Archbishop without a scratch, right?”

She bit her nails anxiously, her leg twitching with irritation. “I mean. That’s true, but... S-so, what happened to the Archbishop?”

“I killed him,” I replied.

Laneige’s face fell with disappointment. “I see.”

I softly sighed. I had already told her before that I couldn’t die. Since Laneige could lose control of her powers if her emotions broke, I had explained to her privately about my Blessing of Resurrection. If she ever saw me die in front of her, the shock alone could send her Blessing of Frost into a deadly rampage. In short, she knew I couldn’t die, no matter how badly I was injured. Yet, she still reacted like that.

I looked at her with a complicated expression. While I appreciated her concern, truly, she was like a ticking time bomb. It was hard to be entirely grateful when she could explode at any moment. I had to find a way for Laneige to control her blessing.

I was sipping my drink when Professor Baldwin called out to me. “Dale...”

“Yes?”

She had been glancing at her Hero Watch, but now turned toward me with a grim expression. “May I have a word with you in private?”

I nodded and followed her out of the cafeteria’s main building.

I asked, “What’s wrong?”

Her tone was low and heavy. “We have a problem. You remember the Bishop of Depravity, Serpente?”

“Yes.”

She was the subordinate of Mephisto. After I had captured her, the professor and I sent her to the demon detention center in Valhalla City.

“She escaped,” Professor Baldwin said.

What? Escaped? I thought, surprised.

“More precisely, someone attacked the demon detention center during the war and broke her out,” she added.

My expression hardened. “I see.”

Someone raided the detention center during the war and rescued Serpente? It wasn’t hard to guess who this someone could be.

“Was it Mephisto?” I asked.

“Nothing’s been confirmed yet, but all signs point that way.”

Mephisto had personally attacked the detention center just to free Serpente, a mere pawn he could discard at any time?

“Wait.”

A memory flashed through my mind. When I was interrogating Jackal, he had said that he descended into the Abyss using a method Mephisto taught him.

I muttered, “In that case, could it be that Mephisto taught Jackal how to enter the Abyss so that he could free Serpente from the demon detention center?”

Shaking her head slowly, Professor Baldwin murmured, “I don’t know, but if that hypothesis is true...”

I finished the sentence for her. “Then it was a double bait.”

We had assumed Jackal used the beast legion as bait to descend into the Abyss. But what if Jackal himself was the bait all along?

Professor Baldwin looked at me. “I don’t understand. Why go so far just to save a subordinate? Even if she’s a Bishop, to an Archbishop, she’s nothing more than a disposable pawn.”

“I don’t know either.”

I couldn’t wrap my head around it. We had interrogated Serpente extensively, but she hadn’t known much about Mephisto at all. Yes, just as Professor Baldwin had said, she was merely a piece on the board, meant to be used and discarded. Yet, he had gone as far as to use another Archbishop just to save her. That wasn’t just burning down your house to kill a flea; it was burning down an entire city.

Professor Baldwin suddenly said, “I’m sorry.”

“Huh? What for?”

Her face darkened. “You had captured that demon and entrusted her to me. But I lost her because of my carelessness.”

“Ah! This isn’t your fault, Professor Baldwin,” I replied.

Even if she had been cautious, there was no way she could have prevented this. After all, whoever did this had used an Archbishop as bait.

She said, “But still...”

“Even if I had known Jackal was the bait, I would’ve gone after him first.”

Between Serpente and Jackal, there was no need to even compare who was the greater threat.

The gloom on Professor Baldwin’s face lifted, replaced with a mischievous smirk. “Hmm. So, Iris was right after all.”

“Sorry?”

“You’re far too naughty for your own good.”

What the hell does that even mean? I thought.

She sighed. “Anyway, now the whole thing with Mephisto has become even more of a mystery.”

“Agreed.”

To go this far just to save a subordinate. I let out a deep sigh and looked up at the sky. No matter how hard I searched my past-life memories, I couldn’t grasp what Mephisto was after or what exactly he was planning.

The academy was alive with festive cheer, but the sky above was slowly fading into darkness.

***

Inside an abandoned building in Valhalla City, a man wearing a white mask sat motionless in the pitch-black dark.

He stroked his chin, speaking in a low voice. “Hm. What was your purpose?”

The one he spoke to, a handsome man with white hair and a golden monocle, kept his lips tightly sealed. Beside him lay a pale-haired woman, unconscious and worn out. These two were the Archbishop of Corruption, Mephisto, and his subordinate, Serpente.

Mephisto gently lifted Serpente into his arms and laid her on an old bed in the corner. The masked man leaned back casually, watching him with detached amusement.

“As I recall, I told you to use the chaos as a chance to bring back Laneige Maram,” said the man.

Mephisto didn’t say anything.

“Do you plan to keep quiet?” the man asked.

Mephisto finally spoke. “My prediction was off.”

“Off?”

“Laneige Maram joined the battle.”

She was supposed to stay hidden at the academy with the lower-year cadets, but somehow, she ended up on the battlefield, right in the middle of the fight against the beast legion.

“With the academy’s professors and Lionel Ryu present, there was no way to extract her,” Mephisto explained.

A quiet laugh slipped through the mask. “I see. So, you decided to rescue your subordinate instead? Well, from my perspective, it looks like that was your plan all along.”

Mephisto said nothing, his face expressionless.

“Ah, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It won’t disrupt the plan anyway.” The masked man rose from his chair and glanced at Serpente lying on the bed. “Let me ask you one thing.”

“Go ahead.”

“What’s your relationship with her, exactly? You two don’t seem particularly close.”

Mephisto kept quiet.

The masked man chuckled, shoulders shaking. “Still not going to answer, huh? In any case, you’d better be careful.”

“Careful?”

“Having someone precious to you. Sometimes, that’s the most fatal weakness of all.”

A flash of killing intent flickered in Mephisto’s eyes. “If you so much as touch Serpente...”

The masked man raised both hands in mock surrender, grinning behind his mask. “Oh dear. Now that’s scary. Relax. I have no intention of harming your beloved subordinate.”

Despite those words, even through the mask, Mephisto could feel the man smiling.

“Not yet, anyway,” the man added.

Mephisto clenched his fist until his knuckles cracked, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood.

The masked man’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “How interesting! Risking your life for a mere subordinate.”

He leaned forward slightly, voice full of intrigue. “That’s not very demon-like of you.”

Turning away, Mephisto said in a low, cold voice, “And you are hardly acting like a hero.”