"Haah…" Raul, who moments ago had been pouring everything he had into holding the line, dragged in ragged breaths and sighed, misery all over his face.
His whole body sagged.
They had prepared for this battle, and still the struggle just now had ended in a defeat far too wretched to look at. It made no difference whether it was the front rank's three-shield fine-steel formation, a wall of solid iron by any measure, or Alicia's trump card in the rear — her magic, Dust of Hail.
In front of those girls, all of it might as well have been made of paper.
"Captain…" Raul looked up at Finn, bitterness written across his crumpling face.
"We blew it."
"The Second String's honor… we threw every scrap of it away."
Raul kept his head down, unwilling to lift his eyes and meet Finn's gaze.
He knew how much his captain expected of him. In private, Finn had planted the idea more than once of grooming him as a successor, and had handed him command of the Second String without a moment's doubt.
And now he had led them to a loss without so much as a chance to hit back.
He would have dug a crack in the ground on the spot and crawled into it.
It was too humiliating.
By contrast.
Finn's expression was remarkably calm, without a shadow of disappointment in it.
"It's all right, Raul."
Finn came to stand in front of him and rested a hand lightly on his shoulder.
"Against Lord Haimer's children, you held out that long and got that far. That's more than good enough."
"After all, you can't measure Lord Haimer's children by the common sense of the Lower World."
Finn finished with a helpless, wry smile.
He raised his head, letting his gaze travel past the drooping members of the Second String to the girls across the field, still perfectly at ease.
"As things stand, Lord Haimer's Familia has taken the road of extreme elitism. They don't have the numbers, so they can't fill the gap in large-scale corps warfare."
"Even so…"
Finn paused.
"Their overall combat strength is already enough to make every faction in this city look twice."
Coming from the mouth of the "Braver", an assessment like that carried real weight.
While the Second String's morale sank and every one of them hung their heads,
Haimer walked over to his own girls.
"Excellent work."
He was not stingy with his praise.
"Faced with the Second String's well-drilled formation, not one of you panicked."
"You found exactly the right seam to crack them open, and your suppressing fire meshed perfectly with the cuts through their line."
"You won this duel, so the seats on the deep-level expedition we agreed on beforehand belong to you by right."
"All of you have the rest of the day off. Go celebrate properly."
"Yesss!"
Nomura Satori was the first to cheer.
Having settled his own children,
Haimer turned on his heel and walked straight over to Raul and the other members of the [Loki Familia] Second String.
Watching him come.
Raul and the rest felt their necks pulling down into their shoulders.
After all.
Days earlier, Loki had let something slip.
This mild, well-mannered Lord Haimer was a dread god of calamity, one whose name alone had struck terror into all ten thousand deities of the Heavens!
He had opened the God War with his own hands.
And he was the madman who had killed a great god in front of every deity watching!
"L-Lord Haimer."
The thought made Raul swallow hard. Cold sweat beaded at his temple, and his body went rigid.
"There's no need to hang your head like that."
Haimer stopped in front of him.
"As the commander on the front line, when the situation broke open without warning and you saw that Amaha meant to smash through on raw strength alone, you gave the order to link shields immediately."
Haimer picked out the high points of Raul's command.
"A seasoned opening move, with no room left for hesitation."
"And especially after Amaha broke your three heavy shield-bearers. With a fatal hole torn open right down the middle, you gave up the command position on your own initiative, took up a one-handed sword and threw yourself into the front rank to plug the gap. That reaction was razor-sharp."
Haimer met Raul's startled eyes and delivered his verdict.
"It's plain enough. As a commander, you're a man who carries his responsibility."
"And beyond that."
His gaze swept over Anakity, Alicia and the others.
"I also saw how you conducted yourselves as the Second String of [Loki Familia]."
"You lost today. But the bond each of you has with the others shows in everything you did. You were fighting for each other."
Praise like that, out of the mouth of a god of calamity.
Raul, head still bowed, went perfectly still.
Wind stirred his messy, spiky hair.
For an ordinary man like Raul, who always mocked himself as a jack of all trades and master of none,
saddled with the ridiculous alias "Extraordinary Commoner", life had meant living in the shadow of the dazzling monsters of the top tier.
Even he thought of himself as filler on the roster, a man with no strong point at all.
And now.
Coaching, in person, from a god whose standards were higher than anyone's.
A sting rose in Raul's nose.
"I can't thank you enough, Lord Haimer!"
He straightened up at once and bent into a full ninety-degree bow, both hands clenched into fists.
The gloom of a moment ago was swept clean off him.
Back straight, he was his honest, dependable self again.
Watching from behind, Anakity let out a quiet breath of relief.
"All right, all right, enough with the sentimental routine."
Except.
Before Raul and the others could even wipe their faces and formally thank Haimer for the chance to challenge him and see the gap for themselves,
Loki launched herself down from the stands.
Both feet hit the ground with a solid thud, kicking up dust.
And then—
Red hair in its usual tangle,
Loki plowed headlong into the cluster of girls of the [Loki Familia] Second String, heedless of anything and everyone!
"Oh, my poor little Anaki!"
"And Alicia! Little Line! You're breaking my heart here!"
Loki's eyes lit up, excitement all over her face as her arm swung out in a nimble arc.
With the ease of long practice she went for the soft waist under Alicia's close-fitting mage robe, ready to haul her in.
"So you lost! Failure's the mother of success!"
"Come on, come on, don't hold it in — cry it all out in your patron goddess's arms!"
Shameless words like that.
Alicia was a forest elf of the traditional sort. Already low over the defeat, and still warm with gratitude for Haimer's praise a moment before, she burned scarlet to the roots of her long, pointed ears.
Ambushed in public by her own patron goddess's wandering hands, out to help herself to a good grope.
She would have none of it.
"Lady Loki! P-please, mind where we are!"
Alicia scrambled half a step back.
Her staff came up crosswise in front of her chest, and Loki's grasping embrace missed her by a hair.
Anakity stood off to one side.
Faced with her goddess's signature performance, she rolled her eyes enormously, and even her cat tail curled up in disdain.
Then she greased her heels.
Anakity shrank down and slipped away through a gap without a second's hesitation.
The dodge was so practiced that Loki's other hand, already reaching to scoop someone up, closed on nothing but air.
That left only poor Line, the healer and the slowest runner, clutching her wand in bewilderment as Loki swept her straight into her arms.
"H-help…"
Line was past the point of tears.
Watching all this,
Raul and the rest of the [Loki Familia] Second String traded awkward looks.
As for Finn and Riveria, standing further off,
they each put a hand to their forehead, fingers pressing hard at throbbing temples, and laughed one bitter laugh after another.
After all.
What was a person supposed to make of this?
Their patron deity was a goddess herself, and still she made a habit of helping herself to pretty girls with no line she wouldn't cross. Everyone who lived year-round in the Twilight Manor had suffered plenty for it.
Still.
This shameful little habit was one thing when it stayed inside their own manor — there you could write it off.
But here, in an open duel arena, in front of outsiders from another Familia—
Lady Loki was still as unrestrained as ever, and no closer to mending her ways!
It was mortifying past bearing, and every member of [Loki Familia] present felt their faces burning, their dignity about to slide right off.
Though.
For Loki, who back in the Heavens had practically shared a pair of trousers with Haimer,
her reputation had gone rotten in the eyes of the gods a long, long time ago.
So a trivial thing like appearances hardly troubled her.
"Well, well. Looks like things are lively over here today."
At that very moment.
Just as the farce was escalating,
a crisp, brisk woman's voice carried clearly across the ground.
Everyone turned toward the sound.
And there—
Hephaestus came walking unhurriedly out of the shade in her short leather boots.
The same as ever, unshakeable as ever.
Today she wore, as always, a plain white collared shirt without a single unnecessary ornament,
and over it that dark red leather waistcoat she had owned for years.
A long, wide belt buckled across the middle, cinching in the lean, powerful waist that belongs to a blacksmith and no one else.
Sunlight fell on her fierce red hair and made her look thoroughly alive.
Only at her right eye, the eyepatch of thick black leather that covered her secret had yet to come off.
The outfit was simple and efficient, ideal for working in.
But the get-up never changed, not in ten thousand years, and it left a person wondering just how many hundred identical sets hung in Hephaestus's wardrobe.
Right now.
A few rolls of yellowed parchment blueprints were tucked carelessly in her hand,
and a finely made brass measuring rule was wedged against her right wrist.
"Lady Hephaestus?"
Tsubaki had been at the very front of the stands, arms folded, enjoying the show.
At her goddess's voice, surprise flickered across her face.
Then—
Tsubaki, captain that she was, bent her knees.
One hand braced on the meter-and-a-half hardwood railing, she cleared it in a light, half-turning vault,
and landed square on the brick and stone of the arena floor.
She strode over and stopped in front of Hephaestus.
Blinking her one exposed eye and rubbing her chin with a finger, Tsubaki asked, "Lady Hephaestus, what brings you over at a time like this?"
"This morning, before you set out for the outer-ring ruins, weren't you grumbling at me?"
Tsubaki put on her goddess's stern tone on purpose.
"'Lord Haimer's new base has to be nailed down today, we grind the construction out, we push the schedule' — wasn't that it?"
Tsubaki tilted her head, the stray tuft of hair on her crown swaying with it.
"So how come you're already off paying visits?"
"Why do you think."
Hephaestus smacked the brass rule against her left palm with a crisp crack and let out a long sigh.
Over Tsubaki's shoulder she lifted her eyes and gave Haimer a nod by way of greeting.
"By the plan, I was supposed to spend several days drawing up the interior zoning layouts."
Hephaestus rubbed at her red hair.
"By my calculations, the early phase over at Haimer's new base was about to move into bulk procurement and on-site furnishing."
"Solid-timber single beds and soft furnishings enough for more than a hundred people to live on. Every stove, every piece of cookware, all the fiddly little details of daily life…"
The volume of work was enormous, and maddeningly fine-grained.
As the chief designer of the whole thing, Hephaestus saw to every last item herself, and her head had swollen a size for it.
"And look how it turned out…"
Hephaestus pursed her lips.
"Before I could even get back to the drafting table on site and start itemizing a purchase list that would have swallowed a million Valis at the very least—"
At that point,
Hephaestus, thoroughly out of patience, raised the metal rule.
With its flat tip she pointed, straight over everyone's heads and without the slightest ceremony, at the lady financier seated dead center at the top of the stands.
"That crowd of lesser goddesses Demeter sent out had already rolled onto the outer-ring site in a grand procession, pushing a dozen-odd double-harness wagons in a row."
"Walnut vanities, velvet mattresses, spoons beaten out of pure silver, cloud-silk cotton padding for stuffing the gaps and keeping the cold out."
"The entire decoration plan, every last piece of soft furnishing — they took the whole lot off my hands and hauled it into storage."
Hephaestus spread her hands.
"So at this point, the entire interior schedule for Haimer's new base has been handed over to that procurement group of theirs. They've got all of it."
"Which is how I finally scraped together the time to wander over and see how the fighting was going here."
The words landed.
And with the brass rule pointing the way,
every gaze in the arena, after a beat of stunned silence, swung around as one toward the seat of honor at the top of the stands.
All of it settling on the goddess of agriculture in her flowing, classical gown — Demeter.
An interception bought with deep pockets and deeper calculation. She had spared no expense.
With all those probing, astonished stares fixed on her,
Demeter showed not a trace of embarrassment.
She smiled instead, sweet and unhurried.
and took her time straightening her gown.
Once the creases that long sitting in the chair had pressed into the expensive velvet hem were smoothed away,
Demeter lifted the lace-trimmed lower edge lightly in both hands, black silk gloves between skin and fabric.
She rose and came down from the stands.
"Hephaestus, you're putting it far too strongly."
"Interception? Hardly. Buying up those goods took a few words to open the right doors at the merchant guilds. It cost my sisters no effort at all."
As Demeter spoke,
she raised her lace-gloved fingers with perfect naturalness to half-cover full lips painted a rich rose red.
Laughing softly, trailing a faint sweet breeze, she came right up to Haimer and pressed close.
She let the impressive weight of her upper body tip deliberately forward, the fabric drawing out an unmistakable curve.
And there, in full view of everyone, she wrapped both arms around Haimer's, easy and intimate as breathing!
At that distance,
a heady fragrance rose off her, like sunflowers just coming open.
A divine scent that belonged to a goddess alone.
It slid down the strands of golden hair hanging beside Demeter's earlobe and poured, on the breeze, straight into Haimer's nose.
She was practically handing out favors in front of the whole world.
From a far corner of the stands, Hermes let out a sharp whistle.
"Oho. Looks like Demeter's package doesn't stop at the furniture — she wants herself gift-wrapped and delivered along with it."
Hermes tugged his hat brim low and grinned.
"How did you move this fast?"
Haimer accepted it all without fuss.
Someone had come running of her own accord with fistfuls of gold to cover his costs and clean up after him.
He had no reason to push a good thing away. He was rather more curious about how the work had been done so quickly.
"It's simply the matter we discussed and settled after the Denatus."
Demeter lowered her lids, long lashes throwing shadows on her cheeks.
She blinked, eyes swimming with inviting light.
and leaned a little further into Haimer.
"After all, over this last stretch of time."
"Everyone in Orario, high and low — those dozens of hard-pressed factions, large and small — none of them are blind."
"You went through them like a thunderstorm with Miss Koharu at your side, cutting down a great many of the big bloodsuckers who had been seizing whatever they pleased in Orario for years."
Demeter seized the opening to heap praise on Haimer's record of purging tumors like Apollo.
"It's thanks to those thunderbolt methods."
"All those sisters of mine with small Familias, scraping to survive under crushing taxes, finally got the noose off their necks and a precious chance to breathe and turn their fortunes around."
"So you see."
"When one has received a kindness, one naturally looks for a way to repay it."
Demeter raised a hand and smoothed a loose strand of hair by her ear, the smile at the corner of her mouth deepening.
"Two days ago, once the confiscations had settled and the dust had cleared."
"I sent out invitations from my farm manor in the southern district and gathered together all those in the city who can never afford fine cloth."
"We held an afternoon tea. Nothing but idle talk and open hearts."
Demeter's voice held to its usual unhurried steadiness.
"Back in the Heavens, every one of them had been sheltered by you, one way or another, because of who you are. And now that Haimer is Orario's new Constable."
"Over their tea, my sisters happened to catch wind of a rumor…"
"They say Haimer has a plan."
"That he intends to sink an enormous sum into that barren western stretch of the outer ring."
"And build a new base sprawling enough to house and shelter a thousand people."
Demeter paused.
"None of us are the sort to forget a debt."
"Trace it back to the root, and before the God War broke out in the Heavens, quite a few in that circle were minor goddesses at the very bottom who quietly received a helping hand from Lord Haimer — one he never even meant to give."
"And all these years, my sisters have carried their gratitude and admiration for you with nowhere to release it, having no standing that would allow it."
"Now, at long last, there is a chance to help Haimer."
Demeter's eyes burned.
"So word went around, we talked it all through, and every one of them was desperate to lend Lord Haimer even the smallest scrap of their strength."
"Those with money gave money. Those with hands gave labor."
"All of them terrified that half a step behind and the debt would never reach you at all."
"And so…"
"I volunteered along with the rest of them."
"In these matters we took the liberty of deciding things in advance, hoping to do our part at Haimer's new base."
Not a seam showed anywhere in the account.
It gave Haimer, the impartial and selfless Constable, every bit of face he could want,
and it neatly wrapped her alliance of goddesses in the language of humble gratitude from below, leaving no ground whatsoever on which anyone could object.
Her words went down as smooth as honey.
And so.
Having finished all that lovely, ceremonial talk,
the earth mother, who presides over agriculture, over grain, and over maternal love,
decided to take it one step further.
Without the slightest hesitation, she released Haimer's arm from her embrace,
climbed an inch higher along it,
and laid her fingers flat on his chest, stroking once as she went. The gesture could not have been more suggestive.
____
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