"So, Meili, any luck?"
Gojo had barely arrived before Felt came storming over, radiating the energy of someone ready to chew him out. He didn't give her the chance. Before she could get a word in, he turned to Meili.
"B-Big Bro."
She flinched at being addressed, then lifted her head stiffly, offering a weak smile.
"N-Not yet." She swallowed. "But give me a little more time and I promise I'll find something right away... just please don't make me study like Lady Felt. Please."
Her small face crumpled as she spoke, the picture of genuine despair. Clearly, anything resembling education was a fate worse than death for this kid.
"No worries, no worries."
To her surprise, Gojo showed no sign of irritation. He just waved a hand, grinning.
"If you haven't found anything, forget it. We're heading back."
"Huh?"
"What do you mean, 'forget it'? Did you send us out here just to waste our time?" Felt marched up and hammered her small fist against his side. Zero force behind it, but the message was clear enough.
"Felt, if you say something nice to me right now, I might just have a surprise for you."
"A surprise?" Her eyes narrowed. "What are you up to this time?"
She studied him, suspicion written across every feature.
"Wait. Did you find the Witch Cult on your way here?"
It was the only explanation that made sense. He'd been gone far too long for a simple errand. Something must have held him up.
"Nope."
Blunt as a hammer.
"Then what took so long..."
"Ran into a Mabeast that wasn't exactly friendly. Slowed things down a bit." He shrugged. "But I think you'll find it interesting."
"A Mabeast?" Felt scoffed. "The only one who'd care about that is Meili. Unless the thing's made of Holy Gold Coins, I couldn't be less interested..."
She was still talking when Gojo's grin widened.
"The White Whale."
A beat.
"One of the Three Great Mabeasts. That White Whale."
The words landed like a thunderclap. Every person present went still.
The group ranged from Reinhard van Astrea, scion of the kingdom's most storied knightly house, to Felt, who'd grown up picking pockets in the slums. Background didn't matter. Everyone knew that name. In all the years the White Whale had roamed, it had wandered freely across borders, leaving devastation and death tolls no one could accurately count. In every nation on the continent, those two words carried the weight of a natural disaster.
"What?!"
Felt's voice pitched high enough to crack glass. She stared at Gojo, wide-eyed, then immediately began patting him down, checking every inch.
"Relax. Not a scratch on me."
He said it with an easy laugh, and Felt let out a long breath.
"Good. That's... good."
"Gojo, did you encounter the White Whale near the Flugel Tree?" Reinhard's voice cut through, low and serious.
"That's right."
The knight's expression hardened. He turned to Felt.
"Lady Felt, I'd like to take my leave for a moment."
"What's wrong?"
Felt hadn't caught up yet, but Gojo already knew what was running through Reinhard's mind. Years ago, his father had shirked his duty, forcing his grandmother to face the White Whale alone. She never came back. For the Astrea family, the creature wasn't just a monster. It was a blood debt. Now that its location had fallen into his lap, there was no version of Reinhard, public or private, that would let it slip away.
"Hold on, hold on." Gojo raised both hands. "Reinhard, I know what you're thinking, but there's no rush. The whale isn't going anywhere."
Felt looked between the two of them like they were speaking in code.
"What do you mean it isn't going anywhere? What are you two talking about?"
"Nothing complicated, really." Gojo pushed his sunglasses up and smiled. "On my way to pick up Subaru and Betty, the White Whale happened to be attacking them. So, you know, I played with it a little."
He held up his thumb and index finger, a tiny gap between them. Just a little.
"And then?"
"Then it turned out to be kind of fragile. Accidentally killed it."
"Accidentally killed it?!"
Her voice could have shattered a window.
"Yeah. The body's still lying out there." He scratched his cheek. "Betty mentioned that something like the White Whale carries a bounty, so I figured we'd come get you all, deal with the carcass first, and go after the Witch Cult after."
By the time he finished, Felt had gone blank. Completely frozen.
It lasted about two seconds.
Then her face split into wild, uncontainable joy. She grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and shook him like she was trying to rattle coins out of a piggy bank.
"You killed the White Whale?!"
"You actually killed the White Whale?!"
She kept repeating it, shaking him harder each time, until Subaru and Betty both nodded in confirmation. The moment they did, she launched herself into the air with a whoop.
"Yes!"
"Come on, it's not that big a deal."
"You have no idea! It's the White Whale! The White Whale!" She was practically vibrating. "Even growing up in the slums, I heard about how terrifying that thing was. Forget the Sin Archbishops, in some ways even they don't compare! And you just... killed it? Do you have any idea how much bounty money that is? Hahahaha!"
She threw her head back and laughed, all restraint abandoned.
"Sorry, Reinhard. Looks like I'm going to have to disappoint you."
Ignoring the money-obsessed gremlin, Gojo turned to the knight.
"Not at all. I should be thanking you." Reinhard shook his head, his tone sincere.
The Astrea family's wounds were old, and the scandal surrounding them had been anything but secret at the time. It was no surprise Gojo knew.
"If not for you, I might have gone my entire life without ever encountering the White Whale. The fact that you were able to kill it..."
"Hey, let's not get into who owes who."
Gojo bumped his elbow against Reinhard's side, teasing.
"We're friends and partners, right?"
Reinhard blinked, caught off guard for just a moment. Then a warm smile spread across his face.
"That is my honor."
"All right!" Gojo clapped his hands together. "So that's the situation. And now, ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for our lovely Lady Betty, who will be using her exquisite Yin Attribute magic to teleport us all back."
He started clapping before anyone else could react.
Betty shot him a withering look and muttered under her breath.
"I'm a Spirit, not an Earth Dragon. Why do I have to keep doing this?"
Complaining aside, her hands were already moving. Within moments, a rift tore open in the air before them.
"Let's go!"
They filed through one after another. Several jumps later, the group emerged beneath the Flugel Tree.
The area was unrecognizable.
The merchant camp was gone. The usual bustle, the carts and tents, all of it had vanished. Even the vegetation had been stripped away. Not a shrub, not a sizable rock remained. Everything had been blasted clean by the aftershock of Gojo's fight.
"Over there."
He pointed into the distance, and every head turned in unison.
There it was. A massive, ruined hulk sprawled across the earth. The ground around it had turned a deep, ugly red, soaked through with blood that pooled wide enough to reflect the sky. The stench of iron hung thick in the air.
"That's the White Whale?"
Felt sprinted toward it, breathless with shock.
"It's... huge." Meili blinked, stunned into simplicity.
She'd heard stories through every channel imaginable. Everyone had. But standing before the real thing was something no amount of secondhand accounts could prepare a person for. The sheer physical mass of the creature crushed every expectation flat.
They gathered around the carcass. Subaru stepped closer and ran his hand along the surface of the whale's hide. The fine hairs that covered its body, each one designed to massively reinforce its defenses, were nearly as thick as his forearm. The scale of the thing was almost obscene.
"Ugh, it reeks." Felt pinched her nose, her tone dripping with disgust. But her eyes were sparkling.
Smell was just smell. Temporary. Ignorable. The thing lying in front of her, on the other hand, might as well have been sculpted from Holy Gold Coins. The previous Sword Saint herself hadn't been able to defeat this creature and had died trying. Thinking of it that way felt a little wrong, but it only proved how extraordinary the White Whale truly was.
Once they brought it back, or even just had the Kingdom send someone to verify the kill, Felt couldn't begin to calculate how many Holy Gold Coins would come rolling in.
"But how are we supposed to transport something this big?"
Meili tilted her head up at the carcass, asking the question everyone had been avoiding.
Silence.
"Don't look at me."
Betty recoiled from the wall of expectant stares.
"This one barely has any Mana left. The teleportation alone was pushing it. Moving a carcass this size? I could work myself to death and it still wouldn't budge. There is no teleporting the White Whale back to the Royal Capital."
Disappointment rippled across every face. But it made sense. Even a Great Spirit specializing in Yin Attribute magic had limits. If she could move something this massive, she could just as easily warp entire armies.
"Our best option is to return to the Royal Capital and contact the Knight Order," Reinhard said after a moment's thought. "Have them send a team to retrieve it."
"Guess that's the only way."
"Betty, take Reinhard and Felt back to the capital to report..."
"That won't be necessary." Reinhard smiled at Betty, who was already bristling. "I'll take Lady Felt myself. It won't take long."
"You're going to run there?"
"Maybe I should just take you," Gojo offered.
"Something like that. I can run along the clouds, which saves a good deal of time." Reinhard paused. "Though I'd need you to get me up there first, Gojo, if you wouldn't mind."
At his speed, a straight line through the sky would be fast enough.
"The clouds, huh?"
Gojo's expression shifted to something distinctly uncomfortable.
Reinhard caught it. His gaze drifted upward on instinct. Under the shadow of the great tree, he hadn't thought to look before. Now that he did...
There wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Not one. The entire canopy had been scoured clean.
"The technique might have been a touch too powerful..."
"I understand. Like what happened in the Royal Capital?"
Reinhard nodded, filling in the rest without needing to be told.
"Bingo."
Gojo gave a thumbs-up. Reinhard had absolutely no idea what the word meant but accepted it gracefully.
"No problem. I'll carry you partway."
He grabbed Reinhard and Felt, one in each hand, and launched skyward. His Cursed Energy reserves were still healthy, and strictly speaking, he had nothing else to do. But why exert himself when he could pass the baton? Let Reinhard handle the legwork. A little rest never hurt anyone.
"Reinhard, you're supposed to be the strongest in the kingdom. Isn't not being able to fly kind of embarrassing?"
Dangling from Gojo's grip like a kitten held by the scruff, Felt was not pleased. If Reinhard had been the one carrying her, he'd have managed it with at least a shred of dignity. This was just humiliating.
"I'll work on it," Reinhard said, perfectly earnest.
They hung there side by side, blinking at each other, and the image was so absurd that Gojo couldn't hold it in. A snort of laughter escaped.
"Felt, don't be unreasonable."
"That said, Reinhard, if you're serious about learning flight magic, I could introduce you to Roswaal. He and I go back a bit."
"I appreciate it, Gojo, but I have no talent for magic."
A faint note of regret colored his voice.
"Then how exactly do you plan to 'work on it'? My method definitely wouldn't suit you."
"That's all right. There's always more than one path forward."
He smiled, calm and certain, as if the answer had been clear to him for a long time.
"Well then, good luck, Reinhard! And remember, a knight never breaks his word."
Felt winked, her grin sharp with mischief.
...
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