"Alice..."

Looking at the unyielding determination written across Alice’s face, Lily found the words of persuasion dying in her throat.

To most people, Alice was still just a child—hardly at an age to grasp the true weight of responsibility.

Yet, conversely, Lily understood better than anyone how impossible it was to turn back once you truly resolved yourself to a path. It was exactly how she had felt when she joined the Fubuki-sama Group.

Alice was undoubtedly the same. At a time like this, no matter what anyone said, her mind wouldn’t be changed.

"I understand... Alice, you have to be careful..." Lily could only lower her head in defeat.

"Don’t worry, Lily."

Seeing the girl’s downcast look, Alice offered her a bright smile. "Rest assured! As a hero, Alice will definitely return in triumphant victory!"

Perhaps her expression was simply too certain and confident, or perhaps it was just what Lily desperately needed to hear, but Lily felt her anxiety ease slightly.

"Yeah! Just don’t push yourself too hard, Alice!"

Their exchange wasn’t particularly difficult for the person on the other end of the line to overhear. Seeing that the conversation had finally wrapped up, the dispatcher spoke up again.

"Trains can no longer reach M-City. Hero, head to the highest point near your location. A helicopter will be there to pick you up."

"Alice needs to rush over at maximum speed!" the girl countered immediately, declining the offer. "Please give Alice the shortest route!"

"You’re going to run there...? Well, alright..."

The dispatcher was caught off guard for a fraction of a second, but remembering that Alice was a robot, the reasoning clicked.

Come to think of it, this kid is a robot... even though she doesn’t sound like a machine at all during conversations... Is she really not a cyborg?

"The route map has been sent to your phone alongside this call. You can view it by opening the hero app. But do you really not need to worry about your energy supply?" the dispatcher asked while explaining the logistics.

"No need to worry! Lily, Alice will be right back!"

After answering the dispatcher and giving Lily one last reassurance, Alice hoisted the massive, multi-hundred-pound ’Sword of Light’ onto her shoulder and leapt into the air.

A single bound was all it took for her to clear dozens of stories, leaving the buildings beneath her feet. She glanced at the route map, memorizing it instantly, and began rocketing across the cityscape, leaping seamlessly from building to building.

So fast!

Watching Alice’s real-time location via the app’s signal, the dispatcher’s eyes widened in sheer astonishment.

This speed far surpassed any A-Class hero he knew. Each movement—each leap—covered roughly eight hundred meters, and a single jump lasted a mere second.

She was already outpacing commercial airliners several times over. Even with the brief pauses between jumps, no passenger plane could ever compare. Was she really fine without worrying about her power supply?

In reality, strictly speaking of jumping, this was already pushing Alice close to her absolute limit. If she weren’t carrying the Sword of Light on her back, she could have accelerated even further, but there was no room for ’what-ifs.’

Relying on a velocity that left airplanes in the dust, Alice quickly reached the battlefield of M-City.

From the outskirts, M-City still looked like a forest of towering skyscrapers, but the reality was that several blocks had already been reduced to a wasteland of rubble.

A few heroes lay helplessly amid the ruined buildings; the only ones still capable of moving were three A-Class heroes, all dripping with sweat.

Facing them was a tiger-headed monster. Standing three meters tall with a massive, muscular human frame, its entire body was covered in thick, coarse fur.

"Weak! Pathetic!"

A savage cruelty flashed in its reddish-brown eyes. Under the combined assault of the three A-Class heroes, the tiger monster hadn’t yielded an inch of ground.

Instead, it had pinned them down so hard they could barely lift their heads. Now, it had finally seized upon a flaw in their uncoordinated teamwork.

"This is bad!"

A-Class Rank 27: Smile Man.

He was dressed in his usual red bodysuit, complete with gold boots and gloves. It was a bizarre outfit, made even more eccentric by the golden smiley face emblazoned across his chest and the golden briefs worn on the outside.

While he usually wore a look that could easily make others smile or burst into laughter, Smile Man couldn’t bring himself to smile right now.

Due to a lapse in their coordination, he hadn’t managed to reposition in time, leaving Lightning Max—who was supposed to be resetting his stance—in a perilous situation where he could no longer hold the line.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the tiger monster sent Lightning Max flying with a single punch, violently tearing a hole right through their defensive shell.

"You’re next!" The tiger monster locked its eyes onto Smile Man with ecstatic glee.

"Damn it!" Standing to the side, Spring Mustachio naturally realized how dire the situation had become. He wanted to take advantage of the monster’s focus on Smile Man to inflict some damage of his own.

Even if it didn’t completely turn the tide of battle, he at least couldn’t let the other two take a beating for nothing.

But his movement only caused the tiger monster to split its mouth into a wide grin.

No! I’m the target!

Spring Mustachio realized a moment too late that he had left himself completely wide open to attack, but it was already impossible to adjust his posture in time—

"Light, heed my call—!!!!!"

BOOM—

A blinding blue-white radiance consumed their entire field of vision, the sudden, overwhelming glare causing their retinas to ache in discomfort.

The pillar of light whipped up a ferocious gale, carrying a searing energy that nearly blew Spring Mustachio right off his feet.

As the column of light gradually dissipated, the scene before them finally came back into focus.

The already ruined building looked as though a massive chunk had been violently hollowed out yet again. Residual streaks of bright yellow and charred black bore testament to the scorching heat of the blast.

Smile Man instinctively looked down through the freshly carved hole. Some dozen floors below, a massive, charred figure lay flat on the ground, its status between life and death entirely unknown.

"W-what just happened?"

Smile Man stood frozen in a daze. "Did... did an S-Class hero show up?"

Good question. Spring Mustachio wanted to know the answer too.

"Are—you—guys—okay—?!"

A youthful, high-spirited voice echoed from a distance, drawing rapidly closer. The two instinctively whipped their heads toward the sound, just in time to see a petite figure crashing through a broken window.

It was a girl with long, black hair that cascaded all the way down to the floor.

Her innocent, resolute smile and adorably delicate facial features made an instant first impression.

However, their eyes were quickly drawn to the overlapping, mismatched square hairpins atop her head, and the colossal white energy cannon gripped in her hands—a weapon that stood taller than the girl herself.

It seemed the devastating attack from just moments ago had come from this very weapon.

"...And you are?"

"Greetings! I am the hero who has come to support you, Alice!" The black-haired girl offered them a cheerful greeting and a smile.

"Alice..." A name they had never heard before. Was ’hero’ a self-proclaimed title, or her actual hero alias?

Though the previous strike had been delivered by a weapon, both men had watched this girl burst through a fourteenth-story window with their own eyes, carrying a firearm that was clearly anything but light.

She hardly seemed like a nobody.

The relaxed atmosphere between the three didn’t last long. Just as the two heroes were about to press Alice for more information, a tremendous cracking sound erupted from right beneath their feet.

When the three turned around, the silhouette of the tiger monster materialized once more on their floor.

"How dare you ambush me! You’ve got a lot of nerve!!"

--+--

T/N: If you want advance Chapters, you can find it at [email protected]/AspenTL