Chapter 22: I Saved Everyone

Reinhard rushed back toward the restaurant with the device still glowing in his hand.

His enhanced hearing picked up the dining room long before he reached it, forks scraping plates, glasses clinking, and people laughing. None of them knew what was about to happen.

He burst through the back door. Maki and Lily were in the middle of an argument, Yuna was quietly finishing her plate, and Emily had a forkful of pie halfway to her mouth. All four of them turned toward him.

"Reinhard?" Emily’s eyes widened.

He didn’t answer. His eyes had already gone past her, to a faint red light blinking beneath the table where the three men had been sitting.

"GET DOWN!"

A blinding flash erupted, and Reinhard’s hand swept forward.

[Space Tear.]

A dark rift split open in front of the table and spread until it swallowed most of the explosion, and for one strange second, everything went silent.

Reinhard’s eyes lit up. Hah. I’m incredible...

BOOM!

The space around the rift twisted violently. The explosion was simply too big. Most of it vanished into the tear, but what was left slammed into the restaurant. Windows blew outward, part of the wall burst into the street, and tables and chairs went flying as people screamed.

Reinhard’s eyes swept the room, and he found all four of them on the floor with their arms over their heads, Emily, Maki, Lily, and Yuna. They were alive, and he let out a breath.

Then the building shook, and a deep crack spread across one of the support beams. This is going to come down.

"Everyone, get outside!"

The dining room erupted into motion. Maki grabbed Emily’s wheelchair while Lily pushed from the other side. "Move! Move!"

"Reinhard!" Emily called.

"I’ll be right behind you!"

Yuna didn’t move. She was staring at the ceiling.

CRACK!

A section of the roof broke loose, and Yuna threw both hands upward as her eyes flared crimson with sun shape markings. An invisible force burst above her, and the falling roof stopped in midair.

Reinhard stared. "Since when can you do that?"

"Since always," Yuna said through gritted teeth. "You never asked."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "That’s fair."

"Everyone, get out!" Yuna shouted, her arms trembling.

People poured through the exits while Reinhard stayed behind, clearing debris for anyone trapped inside. He shoved a fallen table aside and waved a family near the kitchen past him, then lifted a collapsed beam and hurled it away.

One by one, the last of the people escaped, and although Yuna’s breathing had turned ragged, she kept the roof up.

"When did you become an Awakener?!" Lily shouted from the doorway.

Reinhard glanced over. Maki, Lily, and Emily were still standing at the entrance instead of getting clear.

"Is that why you kept asking me what people could do with mana?" Yuna asked.

Maki’s expression changed as everything clicked into place. "How did none of us notice?"

Emily smiled, her eyes moving from Reinhard to the golden glow around her sister. "And it’s an amazing power."

Reinhard looked at them. "You’re really focused on this right now?"

"You just used black space magic to swallow a bomb," Lily said. "And Yuna is holding up a building with her mind. I think we’re allowed to be curious!"

Reinhard smiled. "Fair enough. Now get across the street."

They finally went, and then he heard footsteps behind him.

He turned. The tall man from the alley was standing in the wreckage, blood running down the side of his face, a small glowing sphere in one hand.

Reinhard narrowed his eyes. "Seriously? I knocked you out very professionally."

The man grinned through bloody teeth. "Let’s see you save everyone twice."

He threw the sphere straight at Yuna, and Reinhard’s hand snapped open.

[Space Tear.]

A dark rift opened between them, and Reinhard expected the sphere to disappear into it. Instead, something came out. A massive wall of fire and force burst from the rift and slammed into the sphere.

BOOM!

The restaurant shook, and Reinhard stared at the rift. The first explosion hadn’t disappeared at all. It had been sitting on the other side, waiting for a door to open.

He didn’t have time to think about it, because Danger Intuition was screaming. The explosion wasn’t the real threat. The sphere was, and something about it was deeply wrong.

"Yuna!"

He lunged forward, tore open another rift, and grabbed her around the waist.

"What...?"

"Hold on!"

He pulled her into the tear, and for a fraction of a second, there was nothing but darkness. Then another rift opened several meters away, and they tumbled out onto the pavement.

Reinhard twisted in midair and landed on his back, keeping Yuna pressed against his chest.

BOOM!

The restaurant exploded. The whole building burst outward in a storm of glass and stone, and Reinhard threw an arm over Yuna’s head as rubble crashed down around them.

Then everything went quiet.

He slowly lifted his head. The restaurant was gone, leaving only a half-collapsed shell with smoke pouring into the night sky. He looked down, and Yuna was still in his arms.

"Reinhard...?"

"You okay?"

"I think so." She paused. "Your elbow is in my ribs."

He moved it. "Better?"

"Better."

Reinhard let out a long breath. Emily, Maki, Lily, and Yuna were all safe, and the people from the restaurant were shaken and covered in dust, but alive. He had saved everyone.

Sirens filled the street as Aurileus Security vehicles screeched to a stop, and officers rushed toward the crowd, shouting for everyone to stay back and calling for medical teams.

Reinhard helped Yuna up and brushed the dust off his coat, and then one of the scanners began to beep.

"Wait," an officer said, staring at the screen. "There’s a residual magic signature." He turned the scanner toward Reinhard. "That man."

Every officer on the street looked at him.

Reinhard raised an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Sir, please stay where you are."

Two officers approached, and the lead officer studied him carefully. "The magical signature is coming from you."

Reinhard glanced at the ruins.

Of course it was. He had opened several Space Tears inside that restaurant, and the leftover mana was probably everywhere.

"Were you involved in the explosion?"

"No."

"Did you activate a magical ability inside the restaurant?"

"Yes."

"What ability?"

Before Reinhard could answer, a woman stepped out of the crowd. "He saved us."

Then everyone started talking at once. People shouted that they had seen him stop the explosion and get everyone out, a father called out that Reinhard had saved his daughter, and someone insisted they all would have died if he hadn’t done something.

"That’s our hero!" someone yelled from the back, and the word spread through the street until the whole crowd was saying it.

Reinhard stared at them, and for once, he didn’t have a joke ready. These people didn’t know about the System, his investments, or the abilities he had gathered.

They had only seen him move when the bomb went off and then go back into a collapsing building to save the people trapped inside. To them, that was enough.

The lead officer lowered his hand slightly. "We still need a statement."

Reinhard shrugged. "Sure."

"What happened?"

"I saw a light under a table. Something felt wrong, so I used my power."

"And that stopped the explosion?"

"I guess so."

The officer frowned. "That doesn’t explain the second magical discharge."

"The building was collapsing, so I used it again."

"You opened multiple spatial distortions?"

"Something like that."

The officer clearly wanted more, but before he could keep going, people from the crowd stepped between them, insisting that Reinhard had already explained what happened and telling the officers to leave him alone. More people gathered around him, some standing at his side and others placing themselves between him and the officers.

Yuna looked at them in surprise, and Emily watched quietly from her wheelchair.

Lily stared at Reinhard. "Wow. You have fans now."

"Of course I have fans," Reinhard said, brushing dust from his hair. "Have you seen me?"

Maki sighed. "Well, he’s got the arrogance down."

Lily burst out laughing.

The officers exchanged looks. They couldn’t exactly drag away the man an entire street had just declared a hero. Finally, the lead officer lowered his scanner. "All right. We’ll take a full statement later. Please don’t leave the area until the initial investigation is finished."

"Fine."

Reinhard walked straight to Emily, crouched beside her wheelchair, and checked her arms, shoulders, and hands before meeting her eyes. "Are you okay? Nothing hurts?"

"No. I’m fine." She hesitated, then smiled faintly. "You came back."

He smiled. "Of course I did."

Emily looked past him at the ruins. "You saved everyone."

Reinhard glanced at the crowd. "Apparently."

He still wasn’t sure what to do with the attention. Twenty minutes ago, he had been following three men who wanted to take his wife, and now complete strangers were calling him a hero.

Emily kept looking at him.

"What?" he asked.

She shook her head, and her smile widened. "Nothing. I’m just glad you’re okay."

His expression softened. "I’m fine."

Then Emily lifted something from her lap. It was a slightly dented plate with half a slice of pie on it. "Also," she said, "I saved your pie."

Reinhard stared. "You grabbed the pie while a building was collapsing?"

"You said you’d be right behind us."

He looked at the plate. "There’s only half left."

"I got hungry while I was waiting."

Lily covered her mouth, and Maki turned away with her shoulders shaking.

Reinhard stared at his wife for another second, and then he started laughing, really laughing. There he was, crouched in the middle of a street full of rubble and sirens, while his wife held out half a slice of pie as if nothing unusual had happened.

A familiar blue window appeared in front of him.

[Investment Objective Completed.]

[A-Grade Investment Successful.]

[Calculating Returns...]

Reinhard took the plate from Emily, still grinning. After everything that had happened tonight, this was the part he had been waiting for.