The sorcerer was waiting at the clearing.

Adele was about to nag at the sight of an adult with nothing to do, but held herself back. It was because he prepared meals on time.

Adele simply shook her head and said to Vincent.

“I realized something very important this time.”

“What is it?”

Vincent asked carefully. Could it be something related to his father? It was true that he felt tense because of what had just happened.

Why was it his fault that the prince had gone quiet? He had wanted to stand up to his father, but his body had frozen completely and he could not get the words out.

He had shown the most pathetic side of himself to the very person he absolutely did not want to see it. How shameful must it have looked.

She might dismiss him, saying his training was showing no results. When his thoughts reached that point, sweat began to gather in Vincent’s palms.

He could no longer imagine a world without her. He had finally found the one good thing in this world.

But the words that came from Adele’s mouth were entirely unexpected.

“It is the fact that my aesthetic sense is not exactly ordinary. I genuinely thought Jane would like it.”

Vincent, who had been listening seriously, faltered. It had nothing to do with his father.

No, before that…… what did she say?

So Charles was truly Adele’s ideal type? It was all too confusing and shocking.

“Is that the kind of person Adele likes? Is that why you used that method?”

“Well, perfectly developed muscles are not something you get to see easily. I thought the librarian would change her mind if she saw the muscles.”

The sorcerer, who had likewise been listening seriously, flinched.

That bizarre method had come from this little one’s head? How many times now had he found himself wondering what her true identity was?

Adele paid no attention to their expressions and got to the point.

“Let us leave it at that. It is time to focus on training.”

At the mention of training after such a long while, Vincent’s eyes sparkled and he nodded. It seemed he was not going to be dismissed after all.

He had no idea what would become of him if he were abandoned like this.

“We should move on to the next level soon. You need to at least be able to break through a wall before I can call you my subordinate anywhere.”

Adele clenched her fist sharply and took a threatening stance.

“If the duke acts badly again like earlier, you show him even greater force.”

“Miss Adele, that is…… I think it would be too much for our young master. Above all, it would not be good for a child’s emotional development either.”

The sorcerer said that and let out a deep sigh. To think that in all his years of living, words like ‘a child’s emotional development’ would come out of his own mouth.

Was it just his imagination that he was gradually becoming an ordinary human being?

The feeling of losing his own identity. It was not particularly pleasant.

Vincent, on the other hand, shook his head vigorously.

“No! I can do it!”

“Of course you can.”

Adele ignored the sorcerer’s words and patted her remarkable student’s head.

No matter how little talent one had, having met a teacher as outstanding as herself, surely anything was possible.

Vincent seemed to believe the same, as his motivation burned bright.

His attitude was truly completely different from when they had first met.

‘A swordsman with a sunshine-like personality might not be far off at all.’

In the short span of about a month, Vincent had changed greatly.

She had prevented his first wrongdoing, so it may have been a natural result, but the pride she felt was impossible to hide.

All the more reason to teach him with even greater enthusiasm.

“All right. The stance goes like this.”

Adele clenched her fist tightly and took her stance, just as she had when she had gone at Charles. Starting light.

When her fist cut through the air, a cool, gentle breeze arose. It was a pleasant wind.

And when she brought that fist down.

“What is that?”

Once again, a marble appeared before the three of them.

“Is that not the one from before?”

The strange marble that seemed out of place with reality.

Adele opened the hand she had clenched into a fist and stared at the marble.

Looking at it again, it was indeed the same marble she had seen before. Wherever it had suddenly appeared from.

However, this time its size was unlike anything before. It was large enough that a young child like Adele or Vincent could not even lift it.

It was not a living creature, yet it resembled a monster that had greedily devoured something and returned.

The sorcerer’s eyes sparkled at the mysterious object that had appeared again.

“I keep saying that strange things only happen when I am around Miss Adele.”

He walked toward the marble that had suddenly appeared with excited steps.

But Adele stepped in front of the sorcerer and blocked his path.

“Wait. Stop.”

The moment Adele finished speaking, the golden marble began to glow. Soon, wind began to fill the clearing completely.

“Wh, what? The atmosphere has suddenly gone strange.”

“Adele, are you all right?”

A wind even fiercer than the gust from before gathered around the marble at its center. It was strong enough that even the dull-sensed Adele could feel it.

‘This is different somehow.’

It was a force even more powerful than the marble she had gathered her strength to shatter.

The deep golden marble, close to orange, seemed unwilling to repeat its previous failure, and was generating an even stronger wind.

“A, Adele.”

Vincent instinctively grabbed Adele’s sleeve. But it was not out of unconditional fear as it had been before.

A wordless desire not to lose Adele stirred within him.

He held onto Adele and pulled her behind him to hide her. He had a nagging feeling that the marble was going to swallow Adele whole.

Adele understood Vincent’s anxiety.

That was how different this marble was.

An energy that had not been felt from the countless marbles in the strange space she had visited, nor from the marble that had tried to drag her away not long ago, was now visible in this one.

It was a powerful emotion.

‘Hostility.’

Toward whom?

After thinking it over carefully, Adele concluded that the target was herself.

It was because she had finally begun to understand, at least a little, what the marble’s purpose was. The marble clearly appeared whenever the predetermined flow was disrupted.

Whatever had happened in the meantime to make it grow this large, thinking of Charles alone made it certain.

Charles and Jane had been a pair that was never meant to come together in the first place.

Through Adele’s intervention, the overall flow of the story was changing.

‘Things have changed on Rohide’s side too.’

Of course, it had been appearing for quite a while now for some reason.

Even so, it was true that many things had changed centered around her. In a direction different from the original story.

So the one toward whom the marble was now showing such fierce hostility was herself. For she was the person who least belonged in this place.

If that marble swallowed her, what would happen?

Would she simply disappear and that would be the end of it?

Holding that question in mind, as Adele tried to take a step forward, her wrist was firmly grabbed.

It was a feeble yet desperate grip.

“Adele. Don’t go.”

Vincent pleaded earnestly as he watched her try to move.

What did this child know, to be looking at her with such desperate eyes? Was it an instinctive fear?

“It is all right. I am not going anywhere.”

At Adele’s reassurance, Vincent seemed to calm down slightly, but his eyes still rolled with unease. The force in the small hand showed no sign of letting go.

Meanwhile, the sorcerer took a step closer to the marble, which was emanating an otherworldly energy.

“Why has it appeared again?”

The marble showed strangely no reaction at all. Other than generating an even fiercer wind than before.

Magic related to weather was never something simple.

To suddenly change the surrounding weather to this extent, it had to be the work of a sorcerer great enough to be a match for himself.

But in all his years of living, he had never encountered a being equal to himself.

If not that, then it would have to be some kind of transcendent existence.

‘……A transcendent existence?’

The sorcerer slowly nodded his head at the hypothesis that had flashed through his mind.

It was at that moment.

“Ugh!”

For some reason, the strength of the wind grew to the point where it was difficult to approach the marble.

It was a force that pushed back strongly. The sorcerer barely managed to hold his ground by casting a spell, and also protected the children.

But that magic did not work on Adele.

“No! Adele!”

Vincent poured every ounce of his strength into not letting go of Adele. But he could not withstand the force of the marble pulling Adele in.

In the end, the hand holding Adele slipped away.

“Miss Adele!”

Adele was pulled straight toward the marble. Even the sorcerer’s magic was useless.

As Adele drew closer, the ground where the marble had been disappeared. In that state, it swallowed her whole. In the end, she alone was sucked into the marble.

The sorcerer could tell.

This was that invisible wall from before.

Beyond the ground that was now completely blocked off by physical means, Adele was sleeping in a state of complete calm. It was the first time he had ever seen such a quiet Adele.

The moment the marble swallowed Adele, the wind stopped.

The sky also cleared up completely, as though nothing had happened.

The weather had changed so entirely that only the broken branches and countless fragments scattered around seemed to testify to what had just occurred moments ago.

When the wind that had been pushing them back stopped, Vincent immediately ran forward.

He then pounded hard on the now-transparent ground in an attempt to break through it. But the ground did not so much as tremble.

Seeing this, the sorcerer stopped Vincent with a regretful expression.

“It is no use.”

“No! This cannot be!”

Vincent did not give up.

‘Adele had clearly smashed a marble like this to pieces before, so why!’

Vincent refused to give up and kept pounding, pounding on the invisible ground. Like someone who did not know it was impossible.

“Adele!”

It was a cry that was close to a wail.

Vincent kept striking the ground without even noticing that his fists were swelling red.

In the meantime, Adele was gradually growing more distant.

She appeared to have already lost consciousness, and Vincent’s voice did not seem to be reaching her ears.

“Please! Open your eyes!”

And so Adele sank deeper and deeper into the abyss.