“YOUNG LADY! RUN AWA-hghr…!”

“…!”

“…!”

Kierul and Aku’s copy froze mid-practice dance completely taken aback.

The scream… that desperate shout cut short… wasn’t that the voice of the untrustworthy coachman…?

As the master-attendant pair looked towards the window in shock – despite the late hour an unknown light source was making it brighter by the second…

“AKU, dodg…!”

“…”

*shove*

Kierul’s eyes widened as thanks to her inborn heat vision skill she recognized what was coming and grabbed the masked boy copy’s shoulders but instead of getting away with her, Aku’s copy violently pushed her aside.

*CRACK* *WHOOOOOOOOO*

Less than a heartbeat later the window broke apart and a fire spell burst in, engulfing the masked attendant in a cone of fire upon contact.

*THUNK* *THUNK*

Before he or Kierul trying to get back up managed to do anything against that, the fire spell was followed by two water spears that pierced and nailed Aku’s copy to the opposite wall as the flames were burning away his body.

The copy purposefully made with the least spiritual energy possible turned into a thin silver mist that floated away, leaving the red-haired girl all alone with the unknown assailant.

“…**…!”

Kierul cursed under her breath, clenching her fists in anger, biting her lips so hard she drew blood.

“Who dares to attack ME?!”

She growled, pushing herself to stand up and rushing to the door.

*creak*

“!!!”

But someone was faster than she was and opened the door from the other side. A tall young man with red hair and a body glowing with powerful fire enchantments.

“Good evening~”

The young man snickered nastily and the next moment he was already holding Kierul up by her slender neck.

“HGHN…!”

The red-haired girl’s legs lost contact with the floor and she had to grab onto the attacker’s arm to not get choked out immediately.

“My poor stupid little sister… you have become quite cheeky haven’t you?”

The young man scoffed, enjoying the pained expression of the younger girl completely at his mercy.

“If you just stayed put and played along, I was considering letting you live, maybe even making you my concubine or something…”

“A what…?! Urtervia, you **ing bastard you can’t be seriou-ugh…?!”

The young red-haired man breathed out speaking words of regret with an extremely creepy expression which made Kierul tense up and growl in fury.

“Shhh-shhh-shh~ Shush, little sister. Can’t you understand what’s going on? Your perfect attendant had it enough with you, revolted, raped you, and then set fire to your house to get rid of the evidence~!”

Urtervia strengthened his grip on his young sister’s throat and hushed her unable to hold back triumphant tones from creeping their way into his voice.

With her throat getting crushed, Kierul could only respond with a hateful glare.

“Tsk. Come on, we don’t have much time, I want to see that proud face of yours twist in despair! What? Do I have to desecrate the body of your little frie… huh…?”

Urtervia clicked his tongue annoyed about the reaction of his little sister and turned towards the wall where Aku’s copy had been pinned to before – and then he became speechless at the sight of the charred wall with no actual body anywhere in sight…

“…so it was just a copy? Oh, well, nothing changes. I enlisted the help of some really powerful magicians just for today. Aku will not be a problem… and even if he somehow survives, he still will make for a splendid scapegoat. Now then…”

The young man scoffed but ended up shrugging his shoulders before grabbing onto his younger sister’s pajama shirt.

“Time to plant some evidence~”

He snickered with the most disgusting perverse smile plastered over his face.

|…this is… how it ends…|

Kierul gritted her teeth feeling the fabric of her clothes be torn apart.

———-

*CRACK* *BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM*

The sky broke apart into a hollow void above Aku’s head and fragments of reality were falling down to the ground like a crystal rain.

In that situation, the masked attendant could only take a step back and gaze upon the might of the attack that had caused such unimaginable damage.

*WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH*

Before Aku could truly wrap his head around what was possibly going on something came out of the void behind the cracks, a massive shadow flapped its four wings, two scaly ones and two feathery sending shockwaves through the air almost uprooting the few trees that managed to grew up high on the mountain’s peak.

“Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! See Nexivroh?! I told you that something as insignificant as the erasure of one dimension will not be a bother! It wasn’t my first time, timeline hopping after all~!”

“?!?!?!”

Aku picked up on the voice coming from above without any trouble as the speaker wasn’t trying to be conspicuous or anything. Still, the laughter that sounded just like a dog’s barks and the tomboyish but definitely feminine voice that followed it didn’t quite seem to be coming from the throat and mouth of the enormous four-winged dragon that made its way through the hole in the sky.

The shocked black-haired boy focused on his law of Pisces and sent out his astral projection up to scout ahead.

What he found was that someone was actually riding on top of the dragon’s head.

No… not really riding.

A young woman with deep-blue skin and long hair the color of coagulating blood was standing on top of the dragon’s head, wearing simple hunting gear while holding a worn-out ornamental baseball bat across her shoulders, grinning as she proudly took n the view.

“Princess Strawberry, where are we? I do not recognize this land…”

𝞸𝚟𝓵xt.𝐜𝗈𝓂

“?!!????”

The next thing that happened made Aku almost have a heart attack – the four-winged dragon actually spoke, and its bellowing voice was so deep it churned the boy’s insides despite the distance between them.

“I am not that sure, actually… I said it wasn’t my first time hopping timelines, but the last one ended so abruptly that I couldn’t really make any preparations. We are on the same planet and in roughly the same time period as the last one. That one I’m certain of.”

The blue-skinned woman tilted her head before sniffing the air and saying words that made Aku even more confused and cautious of her and her dragon.

“Is that so? Maybe we should ask that human who hunted a lesser draconid below us? He doesn’t seem to be running away so a conversation should be possible.”

“!!!!!”

The dragon bellowed and Aku who thought that he was safe hiding his presence and staying quiet felt his heart drop.

Maybe it was his instance, or maybe it was one of the passive effects of the law of Leo, but the masked boy could tell that he is no match for either the monster or the young woman with blue skin.

…and honestly, the woman with the baseball bat was making him feel a lot more worried – to not said terrified – than the massive dragon…

*RUMBLE*

Nonetheless, the four-winged dragon landed… although a more correct description would be ‘dropped’ and its sheer weight caused the entire mountain to tremble but neither it nor the blu-skinned woman on its head seemed to be affected by the impact of the sudden descent.

“…”

Aku gulped down his saliva and waited, tensing up from cautiousness…

The house-sized wyvern’s corpse looked laughably tiny in comparison to the beast from the hole in the sky…

…hole that was slowly closing up on its own, by the way…

“Good evening, little guy. Say. What date it is and what part of which kingdom or country are we at?”

The blue-skinned woman sat down cross-legged on her dragon’s head and asked lightheartedly as if she and the masked boy were already acquaintances.

Aku hesitated, but he answered her… unfortunately it seemed that she didn’t like something about the information he shared with her.

“…Mountains at the border of the Kingdom of Bellcephora…? This doesn’t make sense. Nexivroh shouldn’t you be having trouble staying alive with all the poisonous mana in the air?”

The woman glanced down and tapped her dragon’s forehead with her foot.

“I am also confused about it, princess… It really feels like there is mana in the air but… it doesn’t seem to be actively fighting the star power…”

The dragon bellowed in consternation.

“Of course, mana isn’t poisonous for the star power users. How would I be alive if it was any other way?”

Aku straightened his back and pointed out with a serious voice.

He was fairly certain that he would lose against the pair in a combat situation, but that didn’t mean that he was going to prostrate himself in front of them.

“Haa?! Is that so? I see! It must be the difference between the dimensions! That’s so nice~! Hey, little guy, what is it about your mask? Is it some sort of tradition amongst your people or just a random fad? Should I get a mask like that if I would like to blend in?”

The blue-skinned woman cheered happily before tilting her head and motioning at the boy with her chin.