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

"High-intensity mana attacks are the only thing that can break through!" The Knight commander's knuckles whitened around his sword grip. The blue mana wrapped around his blade had faded to a thin, flickering layer. At most, he had two explosive strikes left. But he couldn't retreat. Behind him was the residential district.

He gritted his teeth and charged the demon head-on.

Blue sword light collided with a gray arm the size of a tree trunk. The shockwave blew out windows along both sides of the street.

A gash split the demon's shoulder, carving down nearly to the chest.

The torn flesh writhed before knitting itself back together. The wound sealed itself before their eyes.

It was healing faster than they could hurt it.

The vice-commander tried flanking. A palm swat sent him airborne. Two younger knights pushed forward to replace him. One exchange and they were stumbling backward. "Normal weapons don't work at all!"

"Keep stalling!" The commander forced the words through clenched teeth. Tendons stood out along his sword arm.

The demon's ram-like horns reflected the moonlight with a dull sheen. Every step fractured the cobblestones into spiderweb patterns.

Then it stopped.

As if sensing the threat from above.

The demon slowly raised its head.

---

Mid-air.

Fenria's voice tore through the wind resistance as she plummeted. "Big sis, that's the thing? This is what we needed all three of us for?"

Lumina didn't look back. The wind swallowed parts of her voice, but her tone remained as casual as if she were chatting over tea. "The Scribe probably knew about its regeneration. That's why he wants us to resolve it in one strike."

"Oh, got it!"

On the opposite side, Kira descended in silence. Wind whipped her bangs into chaos. She glanced down at the demon once, then—like she'd completed a checklist item—calmly looked away.

"Then we don't give it a single chance to regenerate."

Lumina nodded slightly.

---

A slender figure dropped straight from the sky. Fabric snapped in the air. Landing: silent.

Green shoulder-length hair lifted in the night wind. Elven ears emerged from the strands, tips faintly translucent. The hem of her dark short coat still floated mid-fall when she raised her eyes the instant her boots touched ground. Pale green irises, cold as jade soaked in ice water.

"Pointless," she said.

The Knight commander turned toward her, opening his mouth to ask for identification.

Lumina didn't give him time to form the question.

"If you lack the firepower to obliterate it instantly, stand down. You're just in the way." Her tone carried faint derision. "You're wasting your time."

Before the sentence finished—before the commander could summon his outrage—two sonic booms cracked overhead.

Two figures landed on either side of her.

Fenria's landing was heavier, a three-point impact that cratered the cobblestones, absorbing the kinetic force like a compressed spring. Kira landed on the other side, straight as a stake driven into earth. Deep blue hair lifted and fell in the air current. Bangs covered half her face. The visible eye held no expression. She tilted her head toward Lumina. Lumina gave a slight nod.

All three raised their hands.

No verbal cue. No hand signal. No visible coordination. Just three people performing the exact same motion in the exact same instant—right arm raised, palm facing the demon, left hand gripping the right wrist.

Mana flowed between them like three tributaries merging into one river. Three streams of light braided together, converging into a single point before their formation, and then—

The beam detonated.

A pillar of light several feet in diameter erupted from their position, swallowing the demon whole. Combined magic, concentrated release.

The beam punched through the demon's body and kept going, carving diagonally into the night sky, carving a brilliant white arc across the night sky above the capital. The entire city could see it. From the western slums to the eastern noble district, from the north gate walls to the south gate station—every person still awake lifted their head and watched the light that looked like it intended to rip the sky in half.

The demon no longer existed.

Erased at the physical level. Everything the beam touched decomposed into invisible particles. Not even ash remained. Only a smooth, arc-shaped cut remained in the ground where stone and earth had been sheared away in a clean layer.

The Knight commander stood where he was. The hand gripping his sword still trembled.

He'd met elves before. Hell, he'd even seen the long-lived elf from the hero's party, generations back. Elves were rare in the capital, but not absent.

But he had never seen an elf look at someone like that. The expression that grouped him and the demon into the same category of nuisance, then dealt with both in passing. He wasn't even sure she'd actually looked at him directly.

Knights gathered around him, quietly asking what adventurer team that was, what rank they held.

The commander didn't answer.

He watched the three figures vanish across the rooftops, a single thought looping through his head.

They'd better be registered adventurers.

Estella had been about to leap down from the rooftop toward the commander's street when the beam punched into the sky. Her step faltered. One boot rested on the edge of the eave. A few loose tiles rolled off the sole.

Powerful combination technique.

That wasn't an attack normal adventurers could produce. She'd seen combination magic plenty of times. The Adventurer's Guild even had squads that specialized in combo training.

But fusing three people's mana that cleanly—no loss, no phase conflict—meant these three didn't just know each other inside and out. They had coordination that transcended standard practice.

She quickly assessed the beam's force output. All three were probably just past level fifty. Individually, she'd only need to exert some effort.

Together, though—that was a different story.

Who are they?

A hazy memory surfaced. Years ago, flipping through old mission reports in the guild archive.

Three-person squad. The report hadn't listed names. Just said they called themselves Magical Girls.

Unremarkable on paper. A string of Gold and Orichalcum commissions.

---

At the far end of the street, three figures emerged from the dissipating smoke.

An elf. A beastkin. A human girl.

The elf in the center turned her head. Pale green eyes locked onto Estella's gaze across a hundred meters of open air.

No greeting. No introduction. No acknowledgment.

Just her lips moving.

"Too slow."

Then all three turned in unison, leaping onto the rooftop to the right of the street. Boots struck tiles with brief, sharp cracks. The three silhouettes paused under the moonlight, then vanished over the ridgeline, melting seamlessly into the capital's shadows.

Leaving Estella standing on the rooftop, the night wind tugging at her coat, processing the sheer absurdity of what she'd just witnessed.

---

Estella snapped out of it and vaulted onto the roof, staring at the direction they'd disappeared.

Two seconds. She hesitated for only two seconds.

Chase them. At her speed, she could catch any rooftop target within five blocks. But who were they? Why did they appear right after Seraphina's abduction? And why did it feel like they'd been waiting specifically for her?

The knight order was still down there. The demon threat was neutralized, but wounded needed transport, the scene needed lockdown, and someone had to clean up the mess left by that light-show crater.

More importantly—she pressed a hand to the note tucked in her chest pocket.

First Academy. Underground. Seraphina's still waiting.

Even for someone of her experience, tonight's tangled situation was overwhelming. She couldn't tell enemy from ally anymore.

"Tch."

She dropped back to ground level.

She landed and launched herself forward without a second thought. First Academy. Seraphina was still waiting.

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