Chapter 440: You Forgot Something

Luca closed his eyes and connected to one of his Luca’s back in the elf village square, where the village had gathered to play a game of volleyball.

Leona was mid-serve, both hands cupped, and the ball went drifting across the net with all the aggression of a falling leaf.

Ivy on the other side knocked it back. Selma missed it entirely and laughed.

"Pass it! Pass it!"

"Yours—yours—"

"Beautiful! Beautiful shot!"

Luca, the water-carrier and the one whose only job was to make sure nobody tripped raised his head.

"Hey. Quick question."

"Mm?" Leona looked over, flushed and smiling.

"You know those vines. The ones hanging around the house. With the writing on them."

"Oh." Her expression softened, pleased that he’d noticed. "The wishes vines. Yes. Why?"

"If a person, not saying who, just hypothetically happened to break one of them." Luca said, in the most casual tone he could possibly manage. "It’d be fine, right? It’s just a plant. It wouldn’t be a big deal. It’s just a vine, and—"

The reaction was immediate and explosive.

"WHAT?!"

"DON’T YOU DARE!"

"LUCA, IF YOU BREAK A WISHING VINE, I SWEAR I WILL BREAK YOU!"

The entire village erupted in panic. His wives abandoned their volleyball game and surrounded him, their faces contorted with horror.

"That’s the worst thing you could possibly do!"

"The spirits will curse you forever!"

"Don’t even think about it, husband!"

"I’ll raise this child on my own if you do something so foolish!"

Leona rushed forward, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"Luca, listen to me. This is not a joke. Wishing vines are sacred. You must never, ever break one. Do you understand?"

Luna nodded vigorously. "Even if someone else wrote it, if your name is on it, breaking it affects you too! The wish won’t come true!"

Lulu bounced over, her pregnant belly swaying.

"I broke one of my own wishing vines once, and the next day I fell off a tree and broke my hand! I wanted to have wings like a chicken, but instead I just got a broken arm!"

Even Nyx, who Luca had hoped might be more level-headed, shook her head sternly.

"Don’t even think about it, Hero. I have limits, and this is one of them."

She patted her swollen stomach.

"In pivotal moments like this, breaking something that holds promises could lead to terrible karma. So don’t you dare try anything."

Luca looked around at all of them.

Every single elf wore the same expression of fear, horror, and absolute determination.

They would not allow him to break those vines. Not under any circumstances!

"If you do." Nyx added sternly. "I assure you, you will be sleeping outside for the rest of your life."

Luca retreated.

His consciousness returned to the present, and he looked at Mavis with distress.

"T-This is cheating, Mavis. Pure, unadulterated cheating! You’re using my wives against me! How could you?! This is worse than any human connivance!"

Mavis beamed.

"Oh, you praise me too much. To be compared to a human’s shamelessness is truly an honor!"

She puffed out her chest with pride before haughtily asking,

"So, how does it feel, Dummy Hero? How does it feel to be taken down by the great Mavis? To be trapped and unable to do anything at all?"

She leaned in close.

"And don’t even try to dismantle the net yourself. I made it so that even if you try to break it roughly, the vines will just break. Then your wives will know what you did."

Luca deflated and Mavis seeing his defeated expression, felt a surge of pure, triumphant joy.

She had done it. She had actually done it. She had captured the Hero—not once, but twice!

She was already imagining going around the village, showing off her achievement, telling everyone how she had outsmarted the legendary Hero.

But then Luca smirked.

It was the smirk of someone who had just realized something his opponent had missed.

Mavis felt a chill run down her spine.

"W-What?" She demanded. "Why are you looking at me like that? That’s not the face you’re supposed to have right now!"

Luca looked up at her, his eyes meeting hers.

"Do you really think this net can contain me?"

"Of course it can!" Mavis insisted. "You literally can’t break out of it without breaking the vines!"

"True." Luca admitted. "I can’t break the vines."

He paused.

"But that doesn’t mean I can’t escape."

Mavis frowned. "What are you talking about? The only way out is to break the net!"

"Is it?"

"Yes! I made it myself! I know how it works!"

Luca shook his head.

"You’re forgetting something, Mavis. Something very basic."

"What? What am I forgetting?"

Luca just chuckled and...snapped his fingers.

FWOOM!

A flash of blue light burst from the middle of the net and Luca vanished from the spot!

Mavis stared at the empty crater in the grass.

Then a voice, warm and cheerful, spoke from just behind her shoulder.

"Yoohoo—over here, Mavis. Look behind you!"

She whirled.

There he was. Luca, standing perfectly at ease three paces behind her, dusting a bit of soil off his sleeve, with his hands clasped behind his back.

Mavis opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Her eyes went from the empty net, to Luca, to the empty net, to Luca.

"You—" Her voice cracked. "You have portals."

"I have portals."

"You have portals." She pressed both hands to her head. "You have portals and I forgot. I completely forgot! The—" She gestured wildly at him, at the sky, at the universe in general "—the most obvious thing in the entire world, the thing you do all the time, the thing you literally used to bring the elders their new legs yesterday, and I—" She turned in a slow circle, absolutely aghast. "I forgot. How could I forget?"

"I don’t know." Luca was enjoying this thoroughly. "You tell me."

"Because I was too focused!" She burst out, hopping in a full circle of frustration. "Because I was so happy about the net and the statues and how clever I was that I—ugh!" She stamped a small hoof. "You’re cheating. You’re cheating right now. Cheating!"

"Am I?"

"Yes! The rest of the world doesn’t have mana! Nothing works out here, and you’re over there snapping your fingers and disappearing into thin air

"The only reason I could escape at all is because you forgot the most basic thing about your opponent. If you’d just kept your sword out and pointed it at me, all my abilities would have been negated. I’d have been a plain mortal man in a net and you’d have actually held me."

He reached out and poked her forehead.

"But you didn’t. Because you were so busy celebrating that you stopped thinking."

He ruffled her short, silver-white hair.

"So take it as a lesson. No matter how grand your plan is, no matter how many brilliant pieces go into it, there’s always a chance it’s going to fail somewhere you weren’t looking. It’s the small things. The obvious things. The things you assume you’ll never forget."

His hand came away, leaving her hair in absolute disarray. "That’s where you lose."

Mavis stood there, hair sticking straight up in eleven directions. Until finally—

"You want me to take my sword out?" She said through her teeth. "Fine. I’ll take my sword out!"

She turned, marched to the rack beside the door, and pulled a blade off its hooks. It came free with a ringing shing—a short, heavy smith’s sword, beautiful work, obviously her own.

"Dummy Hero!" She roared and came at him.

Luca ducked under it, sidestepping easily.

"Mavis—"

"Shut up and stay still!"

Another swing. He dodged.

"You’re proving my point, you know—" He ducked again. "—you’re doing exactly what you accused the others of. Mindlessly swinging a sword around."

"I don’t CARE!"

She lunged. He stepped sideways. She kept coming, tail high, hooves biting into the grass.

"I’m going to hit you, Dummy Hero! I have to! I can’t live this day down! If I don’t hit you at least once, I’ll literally die of embarrassment right here in my yard!"

She swung. He ducked behind a pedestal.

She swung again. He dodged around the elf bust.

She swung a third time, and Luca slipped away behind the vampire, then the dragonkin, then the lamia, keeping the naked metal figures of half the continent’s women between himself and the small, furious pony screaming at him from behind.

"COME OUT FROM BEHIND THOSE! WHO EVEN PUT THOSE THERE?!"

"You put those there—"

"SHUT UUUP!"

Mavis was out for blood. She wanted to chop something off this man and hold it up in front of the village as proof that she had, at least once in her life, drawn blood from the strongest being on the continent.

Luca couldn’t even blame her. Honest to the gods, if he had to spend an afternoon in a room with himself, he would probably want to take a swing too.

Still. That didn’t mean he wanted to lose an arm.

So he got an idea.

He ducked under her next wild swing, pivoted on his heel, and scooped the discarded net off the grass.

Before Mavis could react, he whipped it up and over—and it came down around her perfectly, settling over her shoulders.

"Dummy Hero!" Mavis shrieked, thrashing under the vines. "What are you doing? Do you really think this little net is going to stop me?"

She let out a laugh.

"I’ll just cut my way out and then I’ll cut you into pieces!"

"Are you sure?"

She froze.

Luca was standing a few paces away with both hands folded behind his back, watching her with an expression of serene, unhurried curiosity.

"W-What are you talking about? Why wouldn’t I cut it?"

Luca’s smile widened.

"I mean...I know you’re not actually an elf. And I know you don’t really believe in all those old superstitions about magical threads and spiritual connections. You’re a woman of science, after all. A rational thinker."

Mavis nodded slowly, uncertain where this was going.

"But..." Luca’s voice dropped to something almost conspiratorial. "You also wrote all those lines, didn’t you? About the health of my future children? About my wives? About the prosperity that would come to the family that honored those threads?"

The color drained from Mavis’s face.

"Those lines were..." She swallowed hard. "Those were just..."

"Just what?" Luca tilted his head. "Just superstition? Just meaningless words from a primitive culture?" He gestured at the net. "Then you shouldn’t have any problem cutting through it. Go ahead."

Mavis’s hand tightened on her sword.

She wanted to say it was nonsense. She wanted to declare that she was beyond such primitive beliefs, that her scientific mind rejected all forms of superstition.

She was Mavis, the one who looked down on everyone else for their foolish traditions.

But...

But what if she was wrong?

What if there was something to those old beliefs? What if cutting through the net actually carried consequences?

She couldn’t risk it.

She just...couldn’t.

The sword lowered. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She let out a long, defeated sigh.

"You..." She looked up at Luca with a glare that could have melted steel. "You truly are the most shameless person I have ever met. I thought I was good at manipulation, but you...you’re on an entirely different level."

Luca simply bowed his head in mock humility. "I’ll take that as a compliment."

"It wasn’t one!"

"I know. That’s why I’m taking it as one anyway."

Mavis’s eye twitched. She made a mental note to study this man. To learn his techniques, his tricks, his complete lack of shame, so that she could become a more capable opponent in the future.

If she was going to defeat him, she needed to think like him!

It was a terrifying prospect, but also an exciting one.

Luca, meanwhile, had begun circling around her, examining her tiny form with obvious amusement as the net had caught her in a rather adorable way.

Her tail was sticking out through one of the holes, lashing back and forth with barely contained fury, and her ears were twitching with irritation.

"Anyway." He said, poking her side and earning a fresh glare. "The reason I came over here isn’t just to annoy you."

"No?" She snapped. "Could have fooled me."

"I actually need your help with something."

Her arms crossed over her chest—or tried to, given the net restricting her movement.

"And why exactly would I help you? You’ve done nothing but bully me since the moment we met."

Luca’s expression shifted, becoming slightly more serious.

"It’s to help your fellow villagers. They need you right now."

The smugness drained out of it all at once, replaced by something sharper, more alert.

"What happened?" She demanded. "Is something wrong? Did one of those idiots do something stupid and get hurt? It was Sela, wasn’t it? It’s always Sela—"

"Relax. Nobody’s dying." Luca held up both hands. "And I’m not going to pretend your people aren’t a headstrong bunch. Yesterday I watched forty of them charge me one at a time and every single one of them got back up afterward, but they’ve got strong bodies to match their strong heads. They’ll be fine."

He paused. "It’s just a small issue. Riley, specifically."

Mavis’s brow furrowed. "Riley?"

Before she could press further, Luca’s gaze drifted past her shoulder to the workshop behind them and something in his eyes changed into something much more interested.

"But you know what, we can talk about that in a second. First—" He stepped around her. "I want a tour."

"What?"

"Your workshop." He was already moving toward the door as he said it, drawn in like a moth toward flame. "I know there’s good things in there. There has to be. I also saw the water wheel, and I want to know what it’s doing, and I have questions, and honestly I’ve been thinking about your work ever since yesterday, so if you don’t mind—"

"NOOOOOO!"