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

Uriel was quiet for a moment, then composed himself.

"Because that… has already been taken care of."

Lumina blinked. Her expression cracked, just slightly, in a way that was very obviously involuntary.

"Re— resolved?"

She stepped half a pace forward, her boot heel striking the tile with a short, sharp sound. A thin layer of dread had crept into her voice — the kind that comes from fearing something already happened that you didn't know about.

"Are you and the Witch alright?!"

"We're fine." Uriel lifted his chin. His tone was steady, carrying the faintest edge of something almost like pride. "Don't underestimate the Witch's strength."

He meant it, too. That part wasn't a lie.

The so-called 'dangerous presence' was Galatina herself. That particular answer he would take to his grave. But 'the dangerous presence has been dealt with' — Which, from a certain angle, wasn't even a lie.

He kept his face perfectly still.

The three of them didn't say anything.

If before the silence had been overloaded processing, this one was something closer to impact. Something had landed.

Kira dropped her head, her fringe falling across most of her face, teeth pressing into her lip. Fenria's ears drooped. Her tail sank slowly until the tip was tracing light circles against the tile. Lumina stayed where she was, eyes settling into something quieter and deeper.

The gap is enormous.

All three of them had landed on the same thought at the same time.

Then Lumina raised her head. Her gaze dropped briefly to her own hand, which curled into a slow fist. Then she looked across at Tian.

At least I got one thing right.

The Magical Girl Brigade had stayed separate — a parallel organization, not absorbed into the Witch Brigade. No lines crossed. That call had been correct.

She exhaled, quietly grateful, and straightened back up.

Uriel scratched the back of his head and changed course, breaking the silence.

"Anyway— the Curse Cult. What did you actually find out?"

Lumina snapped back to attention. The weight from a moment ago folded away and she was back in report mode, standing straight.

"After arriving in the capital, we followed a trail of activity back to this area. They've had their eyes on this academy — their movement patterns, their outer perimeter positions, all of it left enough traces to track. They've been planning something."

Her eyes moved, settling on Uriel's face.

"Scribe, you and the Witch must have seen through their operation in advance and infiltrated the academy to wait for the right moment to dismantle it. That's correct, isn't it."

The word 'correct' at the end was technically a question. The tone of voice treating it as one was not.

Uriel's mouth twitched once.

"The plan she's describing" and "what was actually going through my head" may differ by a fairly significant margin.

"Well…" He stalled, then steered. "Is that what brought you three here specifically?"

Lumina nodded, expression grave.

"Yes. Though we came with only three. The rest of our members are still developing — inside this kind of barrier, their output would be severely limited. Bringing them would have created more problems than it solved."

She paused, her gaze moving briefly across Uriel's face.

"The three of us still struggle to cast within it. But on pure technique alone, we can still fight."

As she said it, her hand tightened. The knuckles pulled in with the kind of quiet certainty you only get from having put things into the ground before.

Beside her, Fenria and Kira were already on their feet — almost simultaneously, without a glance exchanged between them. Pure reflex. The same instinct running through both of them.

Fenria's tail lifted in the same motion as she stood. Kira swept her fringe back from her face with one clean gesture.

Neither of them said a word. They just stood there, and the difference between this and five minutes ago, when they were draped over Tian like large affectionate animals, was stark enough to be almost funny.

Uriel looked at them. His gaze stopped on Kira.

Something had been sitting in the back of his mind and it finally surfaced.

Kira. That shot had hit her. The same attack that had dropped every black-coated operative below like a marionette losing its strings — and Kira had walked away with a bump on her head, climbed a building, and yelled Lady Witch at the top of her lungs.

Oh.

He quietly activated the Observer. The lines of mana flared briefly at the edge of his vision, and light surfaced across all three of them.

Lumina's was— what color was that? Yellow. Gold? No, it threaded through with red and something closer to violet.

Kira and Fenria: white-silver with a blue cast, like moonlight. And noticeably brighter than the Headmaster's.

He let his gaze drift off to some indefinite point in the distance — a roof tile catching light at its edge, hard to tell if it was porcelain or slate.

Hold on. That's not Silver and Gold. That's looking more like Mithril and Orichalcum. Need a second look.

He looked again. Cold sweat, slow.

Yeah. That's not Silver and Gold.

What. How. Are they on some kind of permanent EXP multiplier? They were barely behind me when we last saw each other.

And what does that make me.

The Observer couldn't self-assess. Rough estimation was the best he could do.

Somewhere in the thirties or forties, probably? Maybe?

He ran back through his combat experience across the last three years. He could count them on one hand.

He kept his face steady. There was a faint twinge of something that was technically humility, but not very much of it.

Tian spoke up then, in the same register she'd use to mention the weather.

"Watch yourselves in there. The barrier's interference makes it easy to misjudge things."

All three of them nodded. In perfect sync, no deliberation, the kind that lived in the muscle.

Then Tian turned to look at Uriel across the length of the roof.

"How's it coming along? What's the plan?"

Uriel remembered the notebook.

It was still behind his back, still open, his thumb still holding the pencil against the half-finished sketch.

He picked the pencil back up, roughed in the legs quickly — no shading, feet reduced to a rough half-circle and left there. Direction established. Details later.

He looked up at the three of them.

Showing them the drawings felt a bit awkward.

He scratched the side of his face. But there wasn't a good reason to hide them, either.

He flipped to the sketch pages and held the notebook up toward Tian.

"Take a look. Which one do you like?"

Three sketches.

The first: a wide-brimmed hat over layered skirts that fell to the knee, both hat brim and hem studded with star-shaped details. Ornate, elaborate, the textbook version of a storybook witch from Uriel's memory.

The second: a red-and-white knight's ensemble, breastplate over the chest, a wide sash at the waist, a prominent crest pinned to the side. Short skirt and tall boots, giving off an undeniable knight-commander vibe. Anyone who had ever consumed a fantasy story would take one look and immediately think: Vice-Captain.

The third: black and white, double-breasted long military coat. Folded collar, epaulettes, high slit at the hem. Clean and controlled — no excess ornament anywhere. But the shoulder-to-waist ratio, the angle of the coat’s spread, the way the collar would frame the neck — every detail had been worked out with care.

Tian hadn't even responded yet.

"SCRIBE!!"

Kira went off first, barely catching herself before she physically grabbed the notebook. Her eyes were doing something that shouldn't have been physically possible.

"You can draw?!"

Uriel's face remained neutral.

"Just rough sketches."

"Just rough—"

The look she gave him said she didn't buy it but wasn't going to argue. Her eyes fell back to the page, did a fast circuit, and landed on the first one.

"This one for me! The skirt is so cute, and the star details — you could just picture them catching the light when you walk, like it's actually raining stars…"

She leaned in, fingers hovering a centimeter above the paper, not quite daring to touch it.

Fenria pressed in over Kira's shoulder, ears flicking forward, eyes moving quickly across all three. Then they landed on the second one.

"This one."

Two words. The same way she made every decision. No explanation offered or needed.

Lumina said nothing. But the way her attention settled on the third sketch made her preference perfectly legible.

The three of them crowded around the notebook, heads nearly touching, opinions flying in low murmurs. Whispered opinions. The pressure of other people's favorites.

Uriel leaned back slightly, shoulder blades finding the cold edge of the wall behind him. He looked down at the three sketches again, gaze resting finally on the third.

I like the third one. It's got weight. Presence. The closest thing to what I've always imagined.

If she picks either of the other two, I'm making the case for this one. Why does this situation feel familiar.

He shifted his eyes to Tian.

Tian took the notebook with both hands, careful with the pages curling in the wind.

First one. She looked.

Second one. She looked.

Third one. She looked, and held it a beat longer than the others. Then flipped back to compare, and came back.

"The third one."

YES!

Uriel's soul let out a soundless, highly dignified cheer. He kept his face perfectly deadpan, refusing to let his mouth twitch. But his right hand, resting on his knee, quietly clenched into a fist of pure triumph.

"Why?" His voice came out level, betraying only the faintest fraction of warmth at the very end.

Tian flipped back to the third page with the diligence of a student called on in class.

"Mm— it looks a bit like the one we chose together before?"

Uriel launched another extremely dignified internal cheer. Also held it there. He'd almost forgotten — they had talked about this, sometime after middle school graduation.

Mom. I love you.

He looked away, bringing his fist up in front of his mouth, cleared his throat once. Used the back of his hand to brush his nose, quick. The corner of his mouth was doing something he couldn't completely control.

"Alright. Third one, then."

Now came the actual problem. The sketch was settled. But a sketch couldn't be worn. The academy was still sealed inside the barrier, the path was still full of bodies in black — finding a tailor was obviously out of the question.

Uriel frowned, thinking, and glanced at the three girls.

"Here's what we do — go hit up the drama club. Fabric, props, whatever they've got. Piece something together as close to this as you can manage."

Before any of them could answer.

"No need."

Tian looked down at her own hand. A thin layer of mana spread across the back of it — silver-white, the texture of moonlight diluted to roughly one-tenth strength across the skin. She wasn't using Quintessence—that would have rewritten the whole coat at once. This was just Mana, compressed so finely it mimicked the effect.

The glow spread from the back of her hand to her wrist, curled in through the cuff of her sleeve and kept going. Shoulder seam. Collar. Sleeve edge. Hem. Everywhere it touched, the fabric rearranged itself — color first, then texture, then shape — the light passing through each change the way moonlight passes through water, unhurried, leaving something different behind.

A real transformation, right in front of them. Running start to finish in under three seconds.

What she was wearing now was the third sketch, pulled off the page. Black and white, fitted at the waist, folded collar, high slit at the side. The epaulettes were off by a fraction, but the overall shape matched the drawing with an accuracy that shouldn't have been achievable.

Uriel stared for a full three seconds. Complete blankness behind his eyes.

"…What is that technique. I want to learn that."

Kira was already halfway across the rooftop toward her, eyes doing something not entirely describable as having a physical upper limit.

Tian glanced at her, palm already beginning to lift.

"Stop. Stop stop stop." Uriel put his hand up. "This isn't magic class."

Kira swallowed the question back down, retreated half a step, and looked genuinely bereft.

Uriel refocused on Tian, a slight furrow between his brows.

"That has to be running on continuous mana upkeep. We still don't have a clear read on the situation — conserve where you can. If something comes up—"

"My little Uri is such a worrywart."

Tian cut across him, voice wrapped in something warm and unhurried.

"It's sweet."

She made a fist, bent her elbow, gave her wrist the smallest upward flick. The kind of gesture that said look how strong I am, completely unprompted. With the short hair and the boys' uniform still underneath the coat, it landed somewhere between endearing and absolutely ridiculous.

Uriel was quiet for one second.

Teenage face. Flexing. Full confidence that the flex is warranted, and not wrong about that.

"You're right that mana coverage needs upkeep," Tian said, dropping her hand back to her side, voice returning to its usual register. "But…"

"Holding this for ten years or so would be no problem at all."

Uriel's mouth moved.

"…Ten."

"Ten years?"

Interesting unit of measurement to use for a skill duration.