Taming The Villainesses novel Chapter 433

Elga’s blue eyes were swallowed by flames. Watching her figure blaze up in the midst of a massive explosion made all the blood in my body seem to freeze and sink.

“Elga!”

I shouted with all my strength. But no answer came back.

I hastily moved my feet and rushed toward the roaring flames. The tongues of fire, flickering like the tongues of devils, licked at my cheeks and skin, searingly hot, but this was no time to care about things like that.

━Grrrrrrr!!!

At that moment, a great roar rang out. Turning my head, I saw the wyvern that had crushed Narmee’s golem stretching out its claws toward me.

Was this its scheme all along?

To attack Elga to provoke me, then strike at the opening it created? I was briefly astonished that a wyvern could possess such intelligence.

“Asura’s Sword.”

Srrng.

A massive sword fell from the sky and cleaved the dragon’s torso cleanly in two. Turning my head, I saw Ayra, gasping for breath.

━Grrrrr...

The wyvern had been killed by Ayra’s magic. But by now, whether the creature lived or died was irrelevant. What mattered to me was Elga.

I scrambled forward, searching through the blazing fire for Elga. But I could not find her figure anywhere.

Had she already burned away to nothing?

All I could see through my panicked eyes were rainbow-colored bubbles. Watching them sizzle and pop as they melted in the dragon’s flames made fury well up inside me.

“Ah—!”

Unable to hold back my emotions, I let out a scream. If only I had hesitated a little less. If only I had fought with my full strength from the very beginning to bring down the wyvern.

No, if only I had never come to this city—

Regrets flooded my mind one after another.

And then, ringing faintly in my ears, came the voice of a man.

━Do not rely on magic. Power gained too easily will betray you just as easily.

Had it come true, his words? Had my magic ultimately failed to fulfill its role when it mattered most? What was certain was that I could no longer see those blue eyes, nor the flowing golden hair.

I would never again feel that warmth.

Elga, who seemed rough around the edges but inside was gentler than anyone.

━Hey, Teo.

The thought that I would never again hear that voice calling me so lightly left me unable to come to my senses.

Was this my punishment? For reaching greedily toward things I had not been given, even after already possessing happiness?

If I had known it would come to this...

I collapsed among the flames, curling up as small as I could, trying desperately to feel whatever warmth of Elga might still remain here.

But there was nothing to be felt.

She was gone, truly gone.

An unbearable sadness consumed me.

It was the first time I realized that when humans experience overwhelming sorrow, they cannot even speak, cannot even cry; they simply stop breathing.

Ssk.

It was then that someone grabbed my shoulder. Lifting my head, I saw Mirna, gazing at me with an expression of deep anguish.

“Sir Teo, look over there. Right now—something strange is happening...”

Mirna pointed at something. She seemed to be saying more, but I couldn’t clearly hear it in my current state. However, I could vaguely sense what she meant.

Ssk, sssk.

In this city of Gargarta, which we had thought abandoned and fallen, one by one, strange shadows were beginning to waver into view. They looked almost like mirages, or perhaps like thin mist.

━The dragon has fallen.

━The third one. It’s the third dragon to fall.

They even spoke.

Seeing this, Mirna turned to me and said,

“They seem like spiritual bodies. Perhaps they are the spirits that dwell within Gargarta.”

“Spirits...”

But so what?

Even if bizarre shadows appeared and spoke, the dead Elga would not return.

“Hey, Teo.”

At that moment, a voice that sounded oddly familiar reached my ears.

Whipping my head around, I saw the blurred figure of Elga, shimmering faintly by a distant building. Those blue eyes, that fluttering golden hair — it was unmistakably Elga.

It was Mirna who cried out first.

“Lady Leones has already appeared as a spirit!”

At that, Elga wrinkled her brow sharply.

“What are you talking about? Saying that to someone who's perfectly alive. Anyway, what about the dragon—”

Pop—!

I sprinted toward Elga with all my might and threw my arms around her waist. She looked bewildered at being so suddenly embraced, muttering, “What the—what's going on?” but—

Before long, she gently patted my head, saying, “Why are you so worked up.” From her came the familiar scent of apples, a warm, stirring fragrance.

And from that warmth came a sense of vibrant life. How could a being radiating such life be nothing but a spirit? Tears nearly welled up in my eyes.

At that moment, Elga spoke.

“You all look like you’ve seen a ghost. What, you thought I got hit by that fireball and died?”

Ssk.

At the sound of her voice, I lifted my face from where I had buried it against her chest and asked,

“Then—you’re alive?”

“As if I’d die just from getting grazed by a wyvern’s breath.”

Wobble.

As she spoke, a thin coating over Elga’s face melted away, making her blurred figure become sharper and more solid.

Could that have been my fairy bubble coating?

Elga scratched her cheek awkwardly.

“I don’t really know what happened either. When I came to, I was inside that building. Everything around me had changed all of a sudden. Teo, wasn’t it you?”

Elga said that when the fireball came flying, she had felt her body suddenly lift off the ground, and when she regained her senses, she was lying near some building.

So she hadn’t been hit by the fire at all. Listening to her, it sounded almost like she had teleported, and I couldn't help but feel suspicious.

“I didn’t do it. Maybe Lady Ayra?”

When I asked, Ayra also shook her head.

“Instantaneous space transfer? I can't do anything like that.”

Apparently not. If neither I nor Ayra did it, then was there someone else among us with the power to instantly move Elga's body?

At that moment, Narmee raised her hand energetically.