It was almost surreal. One day, the heirs of all the major factions had actually joined forces to gang up on someone far weaker than themselves.
As several figures standing in the shadows saw Cid appear, they began stepping forward one after another, each wearing a mask to hide their identity.
But even with their faces concealed, Cid could still judge from the presence they failed to hide that the people before him were most likely the children of the major factions.
Judging by the youthful energy unique to their generation, quite a few of them were probably students at the same school as him.
Taking a step back, Cid casually glanced behind him.
Yep. Just as he had expected, two people were already standing at the entrance he had used to come in.
"You're Cid Kagenou, right?"
The one in the red mask was obviously the leader. Looking at Cid, he asked the question in a tone that sounded like he was just going through the motions.
"No. My name is Suzuki Hope. I'm an exchange student from the Kingdom of Midgar in World Number Three, and I'm from a branch family of Duke Hope!"
Without even seeming to think, Cid fired off the answer with absolute certainty.
"Huh?"
Apparently thrown off by how firm and natural he sounded, everyone in front of him froze and looked at each other.
"Did we... get the wrong guy?"
The red-masked man looked at the blue-haired man beside him and asked hesitantly.
The blue-haired man did not answer. He simply took a photo out of his pocket, unfolded it, looked at Cid, looked at the picture, and then said angrily,
"That's Cid Kagenou himself. He's messing with us."
What? If you already had a photo, then why even ask?!
Cid complained inwardly, but on the surface he maintained his gentle smile.
"So you really dared to play us."
Realizing he had been fooled, the red-masked man shouted and swung a fist at Cid.
"Wait, wait..."
Cid hurriedly tried to call a stop, and surprisingly, the red mask actually obeyed and stopped.
"What? You got something to say?"
With an awkward laugh, Cid gave a couple of dry coughs.
"I'd just like to ask whether there's some misunderstanding between us. Why are we fighting and killing the moment we meet?"
"?"
Hearing that, the red mask and the blue-haired man exchanged a confused glance.
"You're one of Rias's Peerage Members, right?"
"I used to be. Now I'm basically just one in name only."
"...You're one of Rias's men, right?"
"It's just a simple employer-employee relationship. Boss Rias has already lined up a job for me after graduation."
"Then there's no problem. You're exactly who we're here to beat."
After getting that answer, the red-masked man slapped his hand and magic began to surge over it.
"Mm..."
No, seriously, what happened here? Why do I deserve a beating just because I work under Rias now? Wasn't this supposed to be a premium job?
Just as Cid was left speechless by a conversation that had given him absolutely no useful information, he suddenly felt a tug at his clothes from beside him.
"What is it?"
Without turning his head, Cid already knew who it was. On this island, there was only one person who could give him such a clear sense of being watched: the black Gothic Lolita girl who had been following him around the whole time, Ophis.
"Want a snake?"
Holding a "snake" in her hand, Ophis offered it to Cid, recommending it to him like a salesperson.
"Eat this, and you'll be able to beat these people."
Cid twitched at the brow. For some reason, he had the distinct feeling that Ophis was trying to take advantage of the situation.
"Ah, I don't think I need..."
"Don't worry, I won't beat you to death. Take my punch!"
Before Cid could finish, the red-masked man let out a shout and smashed a punch at him, packed with powerful magic.
A faint touch came from behind him. Ophis had apparently seen that his situation was urgent and was pushing her snake on him even harder.
The fist drew closer and closer, and the pressure from the touch at his side also grew stronger. Cid, meanwhile, fell into thought.
This was a real crisis. The red-masked man's attack had already exceeded the defensive limit Cid was supposed to have on the surface. If he took this hit, along with the follow-up combo behind it, then by all logic he would have to spend several days in the hospital.
Going to the hospital was not unacceptable in itself. It might even be a good chance to focus on training. The problem was that he had not brought any blood packs with him, so if he wanted to bleed, he would have to blow himself open for real.
And that created another problem. Cid had absolute confidence in his concealment skills, so much confidence that he believed no one in the world could see through his true strength. But he was not confident he could fake wounds in front of one of the top five strongest beings in the world.
He had never fought Ophis, but as long as she possessed the most basic level of perception expected from a Dragon God class existence, then there was no way he could blow up his own HP bar and bluff his way through it like he had at the Underworld arena.
In other words, the moment the red-masked man's attack landed on Cid, Ophis would immediately realize how strong he really was. What would happen after that, Cid could not predict, but no matter how he thought about it, it could not possibly lead to anything good.
"Haa..."
Poke, poke...
Ophis's finger sped up as she poked at Cid, and he could already feel the gust of wind from the incoming punch.
At that critical moment, Cid's eyes sharpened, and he reached a hand toward Ophis.
Seeing that, Ophis revealed a strange smile. She thought Cid had made up his mind, that he was finally going to join her side, absorb the snake's power, and turn the tables on the people in front of him.
But in the very next second, Ophis froze.
Slipping past the hand Ophis was using to offer the "snake," Cid reached behind her, shoved the utterly bewildered Ophis in front of himself, and used her as a shield against the red-masked man's attack.
"Whoa!"
That move stunned everyone present. The red-masked man desperately pulled back his strength, and only barely managed to stop his fist before it slammed into Ophis's face.
"Do you even know what you're doing?"
"Isn't that girl your companion? Is this how you treat your own companion?"
"You piece of trash. If I hadn't stopped in time, with how small and frail your companion is, I would've killed her with one punch."
Faced with everyone's outrage, Cid put on a shameless expression, kept Ophis in front of him, and hid behind her.
"Sorry, but Ophis and I are not companions. We haven't even known each other for an hour, and besides..."
Do you believe me if I say that if your punch landed, Ophis would be perfectly fine, and you'd be the one getting half-killed by the recoil?
Cid did not say the second half out loud. Looking at how furious the masked men were, he knew that even if he did say it, they would only treat it as an attempt to scare them.
"You filthy scum. If you've got any guts, stop hiding behind a little girl. If you're really a man, come out here and fight us one-on-one."
Hearing that, Cid nodded in full agreement.
"Right. I am scum, which is exactly why I'm not going out there to fight you one-on-one.
If you want to fight me, you'll have to step over Ophis's corpse first."
That only made the masked men even angrier. The red-masked man outright started cursing at him.
"I have never seen anyone this shameless!"
Standing in front of Cid with a blank, doll-like expression, facing the furious crowd of masked men head-on, Ophis blinked. Only now did she seem to understand what was happening.
She looked at the masked men in front of her, then turned to Cid.
"Are they troubling you? Become my subordinate, and I'll kill them for you."
"Uh..."
Hearing that, Cid froze. He stared silently into Ophis's pure, innocent eyes.
He had only wanted to use Ophis a little to get himself out of this situation. He did not actually feel much killing intent toward the masked men in front of him.
And he had no doubt that a child as innocent as Ophis would really do it. Innocent did not mean kind.
A child's worldview is still undeveloped. In their understanding, there is no real concept of right or wrong. They only know that doing one thing gets them scolded, while doing another gets them rewarded.
Ignorant, innocent children can treat the lives of small animals as toys for their own amusement, because they do not think of themselves as doing evil. To them, they are just playing.
Ophis was exactly that kind of child. A child with no concept of good or evil, no one capable of disciplining her, and the power of the strongest being in the world.
That was the conclusion Cid reached after locking eyes with Ophis and seeing the childlike innocence in the depths of her eyes, and after noticing how utterly indifferent she was to the pedestrians around them.
Cid was willing to bet that Ophis would not even experience any real emotional reaction to the masked men trying to attack her, because in her eyes, they were not attacking her at all.
It was like Cid's own perception. Unless he deliberately focused on someone, he did not even register their existence, because there was no need to care.
The hostility, killing intent, and fighting spirit of his enemies did not matter, because none of those enemies posed any threat to him.
Ophis did not care about the masked men's attacks because, to her, they were not attacks. How could something that could not even break her defenses count as an attack? They were just a bunch of bugs.
Whether it was Ophis or Cid, on the level of pure instinct alone, both already treated everyone else as insects. Even the top fifteen in the world were, at most, just mosquitoes to them.
Putting himself in her place, Cid did not even think Ophis would be angry that he had used her as a shield. In her eyes, what he had done was probably just part of playing with her.
She might not understand what was fun about it, but because she wanted Cid to become her subordinate, Ophis would not hold it against him even if she did not find it interesting.
That was right. After Ophis had spent the whole trip repeatedly inviting him to become her subordinate, even someone as dense as Cid would have figured it out by now. Some flaw must have appeared in his perfect disguise, and Ophis had noticed something was off.
But Ophis probably still had not discovered his true strength. At most, the flaw he had exposed had only caught her attention and made her interested in him.
"There's no need to play fair with this kind of despicable scum. Everyone, attack together. Separate this lowlife piece of trash from the little girl first, then beat this bastard into the hospital."
Just as Cid was thinking all this, the man in the red mask seemed to have finally snapped. He shouted to everyone around him, then charged straight at Cid himself.
Seeing the red-masked man's attack closing in, Cid instinctively turned to dodge, but at that moment, a pulling force spread across his whole body.
Looking ahead, he saw the masked young man with blue hair standing to one side, with a mysterious magic formation glowing in front of him.
"Bang!"
A magic bullet shot in even faster from the entrance to the alley, slammed into the red-masked man, and interrupted his attack.
"I heard there was a fight here. Nice. Mind if I join too?"
A white-haired man in a black coat walked in through the alley entrance with a bright, sunny smile on his face.
"If you don't want trouble, then stay out of this."
Sensing the pressure coming off the newcomer, the blue-haired man warned him, hoping he would take the hint and leave. Instead, what answered him was a magic bullet flying straight at his face.
"If you can cause me a little trouble, I'd be delighted."
Shrugging, the white-haired man strode forward, and an enormous amount of magic burst out from his body.
Feeling themselves being targeted, the masked men exchanged glances. They knew this fight was unavoidable now, so they stopped hesitating and each unleashed their own magic attacks.
They admitted that the other man's magic and presence were strong, but there were many of them and only one of him. In a numbers fight, the advantage was theirs.
"You picked the wrong place to play hero."
"Get him. Show him what happens."
As they spoke, the masked men coordinated with each other and launched powerful attacks. Several of the ones who were clearly close-combat types rushed in for hand-to-hand combat as well.
...
"Guh..."
The red-masked man let out a scream, trembling as he doubled over and dropped to his knees.
Another heavy kick slammed into his head, and this time he was completely finished.
Now the masked men were sprawled all over the ground in a messy heap, while the white-haired man stretched his body as if he had just finished warming up. Then he turned, looked straight at Cid, and walked directly over to him.
"Vali, you're here."
The first to speak was Ophis, whom Cid had been using as a shield. Seeing Vali approach, Ophis calmly raised a hand in greeting.
"Mm."
After answering, Vali shifted his gaze to Cid, whose face was full of awkwardness, and looked at him with clear interest in his eyes.
"And you are?"
"Hello, I'm Cid. Just a student."
Vali did not say anything. He simply looked Cid up and down in silence.
"You know Ophis, right? Well, here's the thing. I saw her on the street looking like she was lost, so I brought her along to try and find someone who knew her."
With a dry laugh, Cid skipped over a tiny bit of the process and tried to smooth it over.
"Oh? Then thanks for that."
"No need, no need. Since I found someone who knows her, I won't disturb you any longer. I'll be going now."
Under Vali's probing gaze, Cid quickly turned and left.
...
"Is he the Red Dragon Emperor?"
Staring at Cid's departing back, Vali suddenly asked Ophis.
"No."
"Hm? Then what's with this...?"
"I think he has great potential and talent. I want him to join us so we can defeat Great Red."
Hearing that, Vali was genuinely surprised and immediately turned to look at Ophis.
"Now I'm really curious how talented he is. For someone to make you say that... I think this is the first time you've ever reacted so strongly to someone."
"Very high. In the future, he will become stronger than you. No, as strong as me."
"Huh? You're serious? He looked weak."
"Mm. Definitely. He gives me a feeling very similar to Great Red."
Ophis nodded, and a strange light flickered through her eyes.