Reincarnated Without a Cheat, I Adopted the Former Hero as My Mom

The last light of sunset slanted through the gap in the curtains, laying a long amber stripe across the floor.

Uriel sat at his desk. The notebook was spread open, the half-finished operational flowchart buried under a graveyard of cross-outs and revisions. He set the pen down and rubbed his jaw.

He needed to leak the intel.

Finding Seraphina could not stay a Brigade-only secret.

The Knight Order needed to know. Estella needed to know. The only way to survive this was to churn the water until nobody could see the bottom.

If the Brigade moved alone, every eye in the capital would snap toward them the moment the cult cell collapsed. How did you find her? Why were you faster than the Royal Knights and the kingdom's top-ranked adventurer? Mishandle those questions, and the fallout would dwarf the cult itself.

But the channel, the volume, and the timing of the leak all required precision.

He would wait for Lumina or Kira to report in and assign it then.

The pen spun twice between his fingers and clattered to the floor.

The doorknob turned at the exact same moment.

Tian pushed through the door, carrying a long parcel wrapped in dark oilpaper. Roughly a meter and twenty centimeters, bound with two loops of hemp cord, the handle padded with a strip of soft cloth. She had changed out of her at-home mother attire into a student uniform with a light jacket layered over it.

"Got it." She set the parcel on the desk, untied the cord, and peeled back the paper.

A longsword rested quietly in the dark wrapping.

The blade was slender, the silver edge throwing a cool blue tint under the indoor light. The guard was a strange hybrid of crossguard and basket hilt, split half and half. The grip was wrapped in dark leather, the pommel set with a thumbnail-sized transparent mana crystal. Honestly, it was a ceremonial piece dressed up as a weapon. Form over function, by design.

Tian's fingers hovered above the blade without touching it.

"The blacksmith said he forged it exactly to your specifications, down to the millimeter." She looked up at him, eyes practically sparkling. "He called it his finest work of the year."

Uriel stood and walked to the desk. He did not reach for it. He just studied it.

Beautiful.

"It is yours," he said.

Tian blinked.

"The Witch's sword." Uriel nudged the oilpaper toward her. "Take it."

Tian wrapped her hand around the grip. The leather seated perfectly against her palm. She lifted the blade, letting the tip drift downward, then tilted her wrist to let the light run along the edge.

Her expression began to melt.

This was not her usual smile. It was deeper, the corners of her mouth impossible to pin down, warmth radiating from the edges of her eyes like something inside her had been lit from within.

For a mother, nothing hit harder than a gift from her child.

"It is so beautiful." She held the sword flat at eye level, her voice turning soft and sweet. "Is this filigree on the guard silver wire? Did you draw this design yourself? The detail must have taken forever. And the grip color matches the Witch uniform perfectly. You thought of everything."

She turned the blade over with ceremonial care.

"There are hidden engravings on the edge too. This pattern—is this a simplified Holy Sword runic inscription? You even accounted for that. I am so moved."

She rotated it back to the hilt.

"The crystal is set perfectly. Not too large, not too small. The craftsmanship is wonderful, but the designer is my Little Uri. You considered every detail for me."

Uriel stood there, taking a full broadside of rapid-fire compliments that made the tips of his ears burn. Most of those details, he had barely touched. A vague instruction here, a mumbled note there. The blacksmith had done the actual work. He planted his hand flat on the notebook and cleared his throat.

"If you keep praising me, I will never finish this script."

Tian cradled the sword against her chest and tilted her head. "Then how about—"

"Go make dinner."

Tian laid the sword back into the oilpaper with meticulous care and turned toward the balcony that doubled as a kitchen. Halfway there, she glanced over her shoulder.

"Well. I will make something delicious for Little Uri."

The sharp rhythm of a cleaver on a cutting board followed. Oil crackled in a pan. The scent drifting through the doorway shifted slowly from seared meat to the deep, caramelized sweetness of honey-glazed pork roast.

Uriel sat back down at the desk and added a final stroke to the bottom line of his flowchart. His mind had already wandered elsewhere. How did she keep smuggling raw ingredients out of the Academy's cafeteria storeroom and somehow turn them into restaurant-quality meals?

The light outside faded. The silhouette of the old tree beyond the window dissolved into blue-gray dusk. A scatter of lamps flickered on in the windows across the street.

A near-silent click came from the window. The frame eased inward from the outside.

Kira slipped through.

She landed on the sill, her deep blue hair still carrying the chill of the evening air. Her bangs covered half her face, and the one visible eye gleamed with the sharp focus of someone running at full operational tempo.

She steadied herself. Then she froze entirely, as if someone had hit a pause button on her body.

Directly opposite the window sat a chair. A cheap, splintering wooden tavern stool, the surface scuffed with age and ale stains. The kind you found at the grimiest roadside inns.

The Witch sat in that chair, back to the window, posture still and regal. The newly retrieved longsword rested across her lap, the blade catching the warm lamplight.

Kira's gaze locked onto the chair. Her eyes narrowed by a fraction. 

Such a mundane, worthless object, yet the Witch sits upon it with the gravity of a throne... Is this the realm of transcending the material?

Kira tore her eyes from the Witch's silhouette and opened her mouth, ready to detonate.

Uriel stepped out from the wall.

He was not in his loungewear anymore. He had changed into a dark outfit befitting the Scribe. Side lighting carved his features into sharp, clean lines. He walked to the Witch's chair, turned his head toward Kira, and spoke.

"Tonight belongs to the Witch."

His voice was half a register lower, the tempo slower, the endings clipped and deliberate. None of the usual lazy exasperation.

Kira's body reacted before her brain could catch up. Her knees pressed together, her calves brushed involuntarily, and her center of gravity pitched forward by several degrees.

Her lips moved twice, producing a breathy whisper. The mouth shape looked like so cool, but her vocal cords completely failed to fire. Her eyes burned as if someone had lit twin pilot flames inside her pupils.

She drifted forward as if pulled by invisible wires, closing the distance until she stood directly in front of him, chin tilted up, lips still failing to produce a coherent sentence. Her right hand rose on its own, fingers slightly spread, reaching toward his sleeve.

Uriel's eyelid twitched. He recognized the animation. This was the pre-cast stance for a full breakdown.

"Kira."

His voice was not loud, but it carried the full weight of command.

"The mission comes first."

Kira's hand froze in midair. After a beat, she straightened her spine, retracted her arm, and drew a deep breath. Then she spoke.

"Yes. Everything for tonight's operation is ready according to plan. The Brigade has been split into three teams. One is watching the Knight Order headquarters. No unusual movements so far. Another is keeping watch on the Adventurer's Guild. Estella is still assembling personnel; search vector has not converged on the First Academy. Unit three holds the perimeter around the stronghold. Cult night shift rotation confirmed. Garrison strength estimated at eight to ten. We kept one team in reserve in case something goes wrong. That's all."

Uriel caught maybe four keywords. Knight Order. Adventurer's Guild. Estella. Shift rotation. The rest of the words hit him like a bucket of water dumped from a rooftop, splashing everywhere, nothing retained.

He let the silence sit for a long moment.

"Slower. One more time."

Kira blinked. Then she pushed her bangs aside.

"My apologies." Her voice returned to a human cadence. "I was a bit uncomposed. Once more."

This time she kept her delivery within the parameters of normal speech. "Deployment for tonight. The Brigade is in three squads. One on the Knight Order, one on the Adventurer's Guild, one holding the cult stronghold perimeter. A reserve unit is standing by for rapid support. The Order has no unusual movements. Estella is still gathering forces at the Guild, and her search direction has not shifted toward the Academy. The stronghold's night shift schedule is confirmed, roughly eight to ten guards. End of report."

Uriel nodded. That one landed clean.

Kira finished, paused, then continued.

"One additional item." Her pace stayed measured, but the light in her eye burned brighter than during the tactical briefing. "To flush out the cult's embedded assets, I took the initiative and leaked the Seraphina intel to both the Knight Order and the Adventurer's Guild."

Uriel raised one eyebrow.

That was exactly what he had been sitting at his desk trying to solve. How to get the word out. He had planned to assign it to Kira or Lumina, plant a false lead or disguise it as a civilian sighting. And Kira had already done it.

That is a problem. I still have not figured out the Estella counterplay.

For a brief window, he panicked internally.

But he could not show it. The Scribe does not panic.

And as long as the Witch was on the board, everything would work out.

He did the math. Kira's stated objective was to flush out cult moles. His own objective was to churn the water. Different motives, identical outcome. The intel was out. The Order and the Guild would converge on the First Academy tonight. The battlefield would drown in fog of war. And chaos always favored the side with fewer troops.

She had also saved him the trouble of assigning it.

"Very good." A thread of genuine satisfaction leaked into his tone. "I was planning to assign that task to you. I did not expect you to have already completed it."

Kira said nothing. But her shoulders lifted half an inch, her fingers curled tight against her sides, and her ears flushed translucent red from lobe to tip.

The Scribe's mind truly runs deeper than I thought! He accounted for this step as well! And he was going to entrust it to me!

In the middle of Kira's internal monologue, a hand extended from the direction of the wooden tavern stool.

The Witch remained facing away, perfectly still. But her right arm reached out from the side of the chair, four fingers curled into a fist, thumb extended straight up. A single, deliberate thumbs-up. No turning around. No sound. The arc of her arm carried a solemnity that was absolutely incompatible with the cheap, plastic chair she was sitting on.

Uriel reached over and tapped her hand.

"Alright, Witch. Time to move out."

The Witch rose from the patio chair, the cold-gleaming longsword in hand, her silhouette radiating the stillness of a mountain before a storm.

Then she turned her head slightly, lowered her voice, and spoke.

"Little Uri, the honey-glazed pork roast is still in the pot. If you get hungry, help yourself. Be careful, it is hot."

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