The Last Place Hero's Return

Red warning lights flashed relentlessly, and an announcement rang all over the academy.

[This is an emergency announcement. All cadets currently remaining on campus are instructed to evacuate immediately to the main building auditorium. We repeat: all cadets currently remaining on campus must proceed at once to the main building auditorium.]

Panic immediately set in, and the cadets’ screams echoed throughout the entire academy.

“Eeeeeek!”

“H-how did the demons get here?”

“S-someone save me!”

Hearing those cries of terror, Bishop Jordan, the demon in charge of the vanguard in this war, let out an exhilarated sigh. “Hah! Nothing gets the heart racing quite like the screams of little brats.”

Jordan’s lips curled into a wide grin as he watched the fleeing cadets shrieking and stumbling away in panic. When the Archbishop of Ruin had declared war against the heroes, Jordan had volunteered to lead the vanguard without hesitation. It wasn’t because of any deep loyalty to Amon. In fact, among the bishops, Jordan’s loyalty to Amon ranked among the lowest. Yet he had eagerly stepped forward. It was for one simple reason.

Jordan panted excitedly as he wiped the drool from the corner of his mouth. “Haa!Haa!Heh!Hehehe. I can barely hold it in.”

Normally, the stronger a demon became, the better they were able to control the destructive impulses caused by the Demon God’s soul stigmata. Jordan, however, was the complete opposite. The urge to destroy burned through his soul like wildfire. Right now, he wanted nothing more than to grab one of those fleeing brats and unleash utter violence upon them.

First, I’ll cut off their legs so they can’t run. Then snap their arms. After that, I’ll slowly slice open their belly and pull out their organs one by one. Just imagining it made Jordan tremble with delight.

But it was not the time yet. He forced down the boiling impulse and scanned the surroundings with sharp eyes. His role as the vanguard leader wasn’t simply to charge in and revel in slaughter.

It looked like the attack had caught the academy completely unawares. If they had anticipated the war, they would have evacuated the cadets in advance. Yet, even at a glance, he could see over a hundred cadets fleeing desperately.

There was no way those so-called heroes would use the cadets as bait. Still, he hadn’t dismissed that possibility entirely. Before the attack, he had dispatched subordinates to each nation to investigate the situation of key figures and forces.

Pope Marianne; the Sword of the Holy Empire, Johan Basilio; the Falling Petal Sword, Khalid Han; and most importantly, the Empress, Camellia Padsha—all of them were currently in their respective capitals. The demons had confirmed that.

So, only one Master was left in the Academy: Lionel Ryu, the Thunder God. And dealing with a single Master wouldn’t be difficult for the demons. Of course, the professors of the Hero Academy were formidable fighters in their own right. But compared to the demonic forces Jordan had brought with him, they were insignificant.

Moreover, the demons had already sealed off all the Warp Gates in Valhalla City, so the academy would be unable to get reinforcements that way. They had also confirmed beforehand that no other Warp Gates were present within the academy. After all, Warp Gates couldn’t be built overnight. There was no variable there.

Even the Empress would need time to reach the Hero Academy without using a Warp Gate. In other words, at this moment, the Hero Academy was exactly what it seemed—a rat trapped in a cage.

Jordan turned his head and looked back at his subordinates. “Well then.”

His unit consisted solely of demons with exceptionally powerful, destructive impulses. Among their own kind, they were feared and avoided, known as the “Red Ruin.” Now those demons were panting with excitement, anticipating the slaughter that was about to begin. There was not the slightest trace of fear or tension about the coming battle.

Satisfied, Jordan grinned and drew his weapon. “It’s time for slaughter.”

With a roar of excitement, the demons charged toward the fleeing cadets, but before they could reach them, the professors stepped in their path.

“Hold them back until the cadets finish evacuating!”

“You filthy creatures! How dare demons set foot in this sacred academy!”

The demons and professors clashed. The ground itself screamed as superhumans bearing soul stigmata collided in battle. True to the reputation of Jordan’s vanguard, the feared Red Ruin, the demons rampaged wildly, unleashing violent dark mana.

“Hahahahaha!”

“Yes! This is it!”

“How long has it been since we’ve had a real fight?”

The professors fought desperately to hold them back, but the relentless assault of the demons drove them back helplessly.

“Ghk! Cough!”

“D-don’t let them break through— Ugh!”

“Damn it!”

The academy’s instructors were among the strongest heroes in existence. Yet even they could not stop Jordan’s vanguard.

Jane, a professor overseeing the third-year cadets of the Mage Division, anxiously bit her lip. “Damn it! Where’s Professor Kane?”

“H-he’s near the main building!” someone replied.

“Tch!”

If only Professor Kane, or perhaps Professor Bastion or Professor Bianca, had been here. Those three were among the strongest of the faculty. But with only the professors currently present, holding the demons off long enough for the cadets to escape would be nearly impossible.

Just as Jane began to consider retreating, a familiar shout rang out, and a massive figure burst onto the battlefield. “Uraaaaaaah!”

“B-Berald? What the hell are you doing here, you idiot?” Jane asked.

“I’ve come to lend my strength!”

“How could you possibly...?”

Berald was a third-year cadet who could barely cast any magic beyond a simple Mana Bullet. How could someone like him stop an army of demons like this? As Jane reached out urgently toward the charging Berald, Berald slammed his foot into the ground.

“O’ earth, roar! SEISMIC STOOOOOOOOOOOORM!” he shouted.

The earth shuddered violently, splitting apart with a sharp crack as if a hammer had smashed against glass. Hundreds of tons of soil surged forward like a massive tidal wave, crashing down upon the demons. The colossal surge of earth swept backward Jordan’s vanguard, which had been pressing forward like a pack of ravenous beasts.

Berald turned back toward Jane and flashed a wide grin, giving her a proud thumbs-up. “Hoho! Well, what do you think? That’s the magic you taught me, Professor!”

She stared at the torn landscape with a stunned expression. “No. What the hell is that?”

I never taught you anything like that, you bastard, she thought.

From the devastated, overturned ground, she couldn’t sense even the slightest trace of mana. It meant that the land had been flipped over, and a tidal wave of hundreds of tons of earth had been created through nothing but pure physical force.

She was stunned. “How in the world?”

A small woman walked past the frozen Jane, who still stood there in a daze, and said, “You really don’t have to try so hard to understand it.”

“You’re... Cadet Sophia, aren’t you?” Jane asked.

“I’m not a cadet anymore, technically.” Sophia let out a soft snort of laughter and pointed her staff toward the demons who had been swept away. “This area’s dangerous, so you should step back.”

“Step back?”

Did a cadet, well, technically not a cadet, just tell a professor to step back? Jane looked at Sophia in disbelief.

Sophia shrugged and began chanting. “You might get caught up in it.”

Then, with a deafening roar akin to thunder striking the earth, everything around them rose into the sky. Trees along the roadside were ripped out by their roots and floated in midair. Chunks of stone drifted upward like balloons, climbing higher and higher into the sky.

Jane was no stranger to gravity magic. But magic on this absurd scale was something she had never witnessed in all her years as a professor. “What in the...”

This was the magic of someone who just graduated from the academy? It was impossible. Both the refinement and sheer destructive force of the spell were at a level normally displayed by only heroes approaching the rank of Master.

If the sight was shocking even to their allies, how terrifying would it be from the demons’ perspective? The demons, who had been rampaging like starving beasts moments earlier, scattered in every direction to avoid the rain of falling stones.

“What the...”

“AAAGH!”

“D-dodge it!”

Jordan roared at his fleeing subordinates. “What kind of pathetic display is this?”

He stretched out his hand toward the falling boulders. Lightning formed from black flames exploded outward, blasting the falling stones away. “So what if they’ve got a bit of skill? They’re still just a pair of brats! Keep pressing forward!”

“Yes, sir!”

At Jordan’s command, the vanguard charged once again toward Berald and Sophia. The professors finally snapped out of their daze and rushed back into the battlefield. The battle tightened once more, both sides clashing fiercely.

Jordan frowned irritably. The resistance he had expected to crush easily was proving far more stubborn than anticipated. Tch. Damn it. We don’t have time to waste here.

Leaving a portion of the vanguard behind, he changed direction and moved toward the academy’s main building. Doing so meant he wouldn’t be able to capture any fleeing cadets along the way to use as hostages or kill as an example, but it would allow him to reach the main building faster and more safely.

There was no need to rush the slaughter. After all, they would all eventually gather in the main auditorium. Once every hero within the academy had been driven toward the main building, the real massacre could begin.

However, just as Jordan and part of the vanguard took a detour toward the main building, a beautiful silver-haired woman stepped alone into their path. Her hair shimmered like strands woven from moonlight.

“Hm? A cadet?” Jordan muttered.

She was wearing a cadet’s uniform, though, for some reason, it was the male cadet’s uniform. Still, that meant she was one of the academy’s cadets. Jordan suddenly recalled hearing that Hector’s unit had lost to some cadets before.

When Jordan had first heard that report, he had clutched his stomach and laughed hysterically. Yet, he hadn’t dismissed it as simply Hector’s stupidity. Hector was one of the few powerful demons who had received the Ember of Ruin from Amon, just like Jordan himself.

If cadets had managed to defeat someone like that, they couldn’t be ordinary. That was why he had already gathered detailed information about them. They were Dale Han, whom even Lord Amon warned them to be cautious of; Iris, the Saintess; Camilla, the successor of the Sword of the Holy Empire; Morris Jin, son of the Falling Petal Sword; and Yuren Helios, descendant of the Knight of the Sun, Reynald Helios.

However, none of them was described as a silver-haired female cadet. It meant the cadet standing before him had probably taken the wrong path while evacuating.

With a twisted grin curling across his lips, Jordan slowly stepped toward the silver-haired cadet. “My blood was already itching for a fight. You’ll make perfect entertainment.”

* * *

The plan itself was simple: hold the demons off while gradually retreating, drawing them toward the main auditorium, then activate the Warp Gate to evacuate the cadets while simultaneously summoning reinforcement forces from each nation to the academy. It wasn’t a complicated strategy at all; rather, it was just a straightforward operation. However, for some reason, the demons’ vanguard showed no sign of arriving at the main building.

“Why aren’t they coming?” I wondered.

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