But that little gesture left Raul and the others staring, eyes wide.
Mouths open far enough to fit a fist.
He had seen for himself how freely the gods behaved down in the Lower World.
Loki, the patron goddess of his own Familia above all, was a creature with not one godlike quality about her. But this — laying hands on the patron deity of another faction, stroking him without a shred of hesitation in front of a hundred-odd people — that he really had never seen.
This from the fool who had let a courtesan bewitch him out of his senses, sunk everything he owned into her, then quietly dipped into the Familia's expedition funds, nearly gotten himself expelled, and who still carried that debt on his back and was grinding away to pay it off.
Anakity, standing beside him, was handling it no better.
Her tail swept restlessly across the ground.
As far as she knew, Lady Demeter was the goddess who oversaw the running of nearly every farmstead around Orario.
True, she always put on the gentle, big-sisterly manner with everyone she met. If someone got hurt, she would fuss over them.
But Lady Demeter had never once pressed herself against a male god of her own accord.
Watching the scene up in the stands, Anakity's brows knit tight.
And that was not all. Second row of the stands.
Mikoto's and Chigusa's cheeks had gone red enough to drip blood as they stammered.
"The gods out in the wider world..."
"Is this really how they carry on with one another? This... shameless?"
Yamato Mikoto had been raised in a traditional Far Eastern shrine of Takemikazuchi.
The first half of her life had made her conservative to the bone.
The old propriety that forbade men and women even to pass things hand to hand was the yardstick she measured her conduct by.
And now, in the plain light of day, she had walked straight into a scene like this.
Mikoto felt her entire understanding of the world teetering with every slide of that finger.
Compared with all this fuss from the young adventurers,
Riveria, seated dead center in the stands, kept her composure on her wooden chair. She only lifted a hand, pinched the bridge of her nose between long fingers, and kneaded hard.
"So the rumors out of the Heavens weren't exaggerated in the slightest."
Riveria drew in a long, deep breath.
She pulled her gaze away from Demeter's shameless cheek-to-cheek performance.
Riveria shook her head. The reserve bred into elven royalty left her recoiling from any such public airing of feeling.
Off to the left of the stands, Asfi, keeping to her own observer's vantage, reached up and adjusted the metal-framed glasses on her nose.
"Lord Hermes." Asfi turned to the god at her side. "Lady Demeter's behavior just now — that degree of familiarity. Is it not well past what's reasonable?"
She ransacked her vocabulary for a word that would pin it down.
"Threw you, didn't it?"
Hermes, seated beside her, laughed under his breath. He raised his right hand, fingers finding the brim of that signature folded feather hat with practiced ease, and tugged it down hard.
The wide brim dropped a wedge of shadow that covered the complicated things churning in his eyes, leaving only the upward curl of his mouth on show.
"It's perfectly normal."
Hermes turned to meet Asfi's puzzled stare.
"You people down here in the Lower World naturally know nothing about the absurd history of the Heavens these last few hundred million years."
He extended one finger toward Haimer, with Demeter still pressed against him.
"You have to understand, Asfi." Hermes's voice stretched long and slow.
"That man was the towering mountain every last one of them longed to conquer — countless goddesses, and no small crowd of gods besides."
His finger drew a circle in the air and came to rest pointing toward Demeter.
"And Demeter has long since counted, openly and without argument, as one of Haimer's old flames."
An old flame?
Hearing those words drop so lightly from her own patron god's mouth, Asfi's face twitched twice before she could stop it. Explosive divine gossip, this.
"A goddess, fine, I could accept that..."
Asfi's voice dropped low, and something like horror crept into her eyes.
"But the gods? Lord Hermes — surely you haven't also—"
She never finished.
Hermes's expression went blank with shock, then slid into open panic.
"Stop, stop, stop!"
He crossed both arms in front of his chest into an enormous X and shook his head like a rattle-drum.
"My tastes are perfectly ordinary, thank you. Don't go pinning that on me!"
Then, meeting the skeptical look his own captain gave him for protesting quite so hard, Hermes coughed twice to cover the awkwardness. "In any case, the gods want to conquer Haimer too, but for reasons on an entirely different level."
"Though to this day, not one of them has ever managed it."
"Which makes it nothing more than speculation among the gods."
Hermes left it there, deliberately vague.
Then he rose, spread his arms and stretched his stiff back until his joints popped. "Anyway. Now that we've seen what these newcomers of [Haimer Familia] are really made of—"
He raised a hand and beat the dust off his clothes.
"—let's not overstay our welcome. Time to pull out while the pulling's good."
"Sticking around to watch a bloodbath of goddesses fighting over territory..."
Hermes twisted his mouth. "That's dangerous. If those flames spread to us, it'd be no laughing matter. Not one of the women who stay near that man is easy to handle."
Asfi accepted the order with a nod.
God and follower took the stone stair along the rim of the stands at a brisk clip, melted into the shadow of the buildings behind, and with a few quick turns were gone.
At that same moment, Shakti, standing in a corner down at ground level, had witnessed the same scene up on the platform.
She glanced at the direction Hermes had withdrawn in and made her decision at once.
As captain of [Ganesha Familia], her duty was to keep order, not to tour the private lives of gods.
There was nothing left to gain by lingering; she had to get back to headquarters and give Lord Ganesha a full account, down to the last detail.
So Shakti waved decisively at the two members of the guardsman squad keeping order on the field and signed for a withdrawal. Screened by the pillars beneath the stands, the three figures slipped quietly away as well.
Before long, one wave of spectators had cleared out of the grounds, taking some of the noise with them.
But over the dueling stage, the air plunged straight to freezing. The chill poured off a single row of girls standing shoulder to shoulder.
The girls of [Haimer Familia] stood lined up in a row.
From Onigawara Rin to Amou Kirukiru, from Inaba Tsukuyo to Mary Kikakujou, on down to Tendou Kisara and Aihara Enju.
Every one of them had been doused with ice water to the core.
Until now!
Whether it was last night's war over who shared his bed, or the daily petty maneuvering over who got to pour his tea,
these sheltered girls had aimed every scheme and every guard they raised at the sisters inside their own Familia, girls they knew inside and out. At the very most you could add that loud, blustering goddess with no Familia of her own, Hestia.
But now!
Their eyes locked onto a point a few steps ahead of them.
Lady Demeter's figure was even more outrageous than Hestia's, mature curves laid bare by the fitted long dress. Worse still, every movement she made was steeped in the effortless ease that only a grown woman commanded.
The fingers that climbed an arm and settled on a chest. The glance thrown out heavy with allure. The few light words that closed the distance in a heartbeat.
That silver tongue. That knack for seizing the golden position at Kami-sama's side without leaving a single fingerprint behind. She had beaten them from the hair on their heads down to their heels.
Inaba Tsukuyo's fingers tightened around the pale wooden scabbard of her long blade, White Egret.
Her eyes were shut, yet the picture her Mind's Eye fed back stung far worse than anything ordinary sight could deliver.
"So that's how it is..."
"There is a Lady Demeter out there, bolder even than Lady Hestia..."
"This is a true rival!"
Alarm bells shrieked through Tsukuyo.
The roar never became sound, and yet it detonated in every one of the girls at the same instant.
Mary Kikakujou ground her back teeth to splinters. Onigawara Rin clenched her fists. Amou Kirukiru put away that manic grin, and her eyes turned dangerous.
Their gazes crossed in midair, quiet and perfectly understood.
Five minutes ago this had been a loose pack tearing at one another for a place in Lord Haimer's affections.
But now—
Under the vast threat of an enemy invading from outside, the dozen-odd girls had fused, as never before, into an unbreakable united front.
Even the rhythm of their breathing fell into step, and a hostility solid enough to touch rolled toward Demeter like an airtight wall.
Feeling the waves of thick, needle-sharp killing intent rising from below,
Demeter showed not a flicker of alarm. The smile stayed where it was, the curve of her lips unchanged by so much as a degree.
She let her fingers slide from Haimer's chest as though it were the most natural thing in the world, without a trace of reluctance — and yet the touch left a thousand lingering threads behind. She raised a hand and tucked a strand of golden hair back behind her ear, baring a pale lobe hung with a pearl earring.
Then Demeter turned around.
From her higher ground she cast the girls below a sweet, disarming smile.
"Speaking of which, all that exercise must have left you girls tired."
Her voice ran smooth as silk.
"Why not come along and see the new stronghold? There are all sorts of surprises waiting over there."
The invitation landed light as a feather, and yet with iron confidence behind it — because she knew Haimer would go.
Haimer's gaze swept over that flawless smile of hers, and he nodded.
He did, after all, need to check on the progress of the new stronghold that would house a thousand people before he left the city. It was the precondition for taking in the Cursed Children.
"In that case, let's all go and have a look."
Haimer sighed to himself. He had certainly noticed the powder keg behind him, hot enough to set the air alight, but he let it be and simply extended the invitation to his own girls.
…
Their Kami-sama had spoken.
Naturally, not one of them had any intention of backing off. To lose their nerve now would be to hand the ground over for nothing.
The girls adjusted their footing at once, spreading into a protective formation without a word between them, and tucked in behind Haimer, matching him step for step.
A few paces out of the arena, wind whistled through the pillars of the corridor.
Onigawara Rin stopped walking.
She glanced left and right, her gaze cutting past a few Loki Familia support staff still filing out, and landed on Yamato Mikoto and Hitachi Chigusa, who were about to disperse along with the crowd.
"Do you two want to come with us?"
Onigawara Rin raised her voice, and the clear sound rang down the passage.
"The walk out to the outer ring is perfect for it — we can go over what we've each learned from different schools of swordsmanship in detail."
She held out the olive branch with real warmth.
The invitation left Mikoto and Chigusa, who had been on the verge of slipping away, wide-eyed and nailed to the spot.
"Are you sure? Truly?"
Mikoto spun around to face Onigawara Rin and bent ninety degrees at the waist.
When she lifted her head, her eyes shone with a joy she could not hold back — sheer worship for the other girl's overwhelming skill at arms.
These were fighters who had just carved apart a formation of First-Class adventurers in a head-on clash, on pure blade work alone.
To be taught by masters like that would be the chance of a lifetime for them.
"Wouldn't that be overstepping?"
Timid as always, Chigusa clutched at the cloth on Mikoto's shoulder and hid almost her whole body behind her.
She stole a nervous look at the terrifying presence of the [Haimer Familia] column, her voice pitifully small.
"Overstepping, my foot. You're invited, so come — quit dithering!"
Warabi Hanasaka rolled her eyes enormously at the sight.
Dithering was the one thing she could not stand.
So she strode straight over, reached out with both hands, and clamped onto Mikoto's and Chigusa's wrists.
With the monstrous strength that had exploded out of her ascension to Lv.3, she ignored their yelps and hauled the pair bodily into the group, wedging them right into the middle of the girls' formation.
And so the whole crowd swept out of the Twilight Manor in a great, rolling procession.
They followed the main road of Northwest Avenue, smooth flagstones underfoot, heading for the open derelict belt on Orario's outermost ring.
As the walk went on, the situation grew steadily more brutal.
It was not only Demeter, leaning against Haimer's left shoulder half by accident, the velvet hem of her skirt brushing his trouser leg with every few steps.
Hestia had latched onto his arm like an octopus, terrified of surrendering half an inch of it to anyone else.
Haimer, wedged between them, could only sweat. The pair had sealed him inside a high-pressure barrier that all but shouted "keep away."
Commoners and adventurers along both sides of the street took one look at the formation and did not dare stare at it directly. They bowed their heads, hugged the walls and hurried out of the way, as if a single glance too many would call disaster down on them.
Marching in that arrangement,
the group finally arrived, a quarter of an hour later, at the enormous construction site raised out of the outer-ring ruins.
The moment they passed through the main gate, between two adamantite gateposts that hung high enough to touch the clouds,
Mary Kikakujou tipped her head back.
The sight that filled her eyes scattered most of the jealousy she had been nursing.
"It's huge!"
Mary's eyes went wide, and the exclamation escaped before she could stop it.
It was a ring-shaped, three-tiered castle complex whose footprint was extravagant past all reason.
The design preserved the qualities of an impregnable military fortress — heavy outer walls, towers along them — while the living quarters inside were broad and open to the air.
The scale of the undertaking was frightening.
Sinking foundations several meters deep and raising walls more than ten meters high had alone taken well over a thousand gnome and dwarf contractor crews, drawing steep wages and working day and night without pause.
Great sums of confiscated dirty money had poured in like water. Ouranos, the Guild's highest authority, had waved the project through at every step, and Hephaestus, the finest smith in Orario, had drawn up the plans and inspected the work herself.
At that rate the thing advanced a thousand miles a day. You could watch a colossal fortress rising up out of flat ground with your own eyes.
The group walked inward along the approach road cut beside the wall.
Their eyes followed the red-brick avenue laid out the length of the main route, its neat joints packed with anti-slip grit. At that scale, even the worldly Amou Kirukiru sucked in a sharp breath.
They passed the sorting yard, heaped with precious timbers and neatly cut blocks of stone.
Before anyone could look closely at the castle's defensive layout,
out of the temporary dispatch station on the castle's left side, under its gray waterproof canopy, came several goddesses of small and middling Familias who had been working the site with their own hands. They had heard the commotion outside and hurried out, eager to greet it.
Their hands were coated in dust, some had gray streaks smeared across their faces, and even their hems were filthy with mud.
But the instant they caught sight of Haimer, bright light burst into their eyes and they crowded around him all at once.
"Lord Haimer! You came to see it yourself!"
A minor goddess in charge of cloth supply reached him first. She pulled up in front of him out of breath, undisguised reverence brimming in her eyes, folded both hands over her stomach and bowed ninety degrees.
"The partitioning of the inner-courtyard living quarters is going very smoothly. We're papering it for you with the highest-grade insulating wallpaper — I guarantee not a breath of winter draft will get through." She rattled the report off at speed.
Another goddess, the one managing quarry logistics, shouldered forward to get a word in.
"We're working ourselves to the bone to stay ahead of schedule! The last pass of polishing on the inner walls is already underway, and you'll see the results by tomorrow, guaranteed. We would never hold up anything so important to you, my lord!"
Faced with such heartfelt enthusiasm and drive from these lesser goddesses,
Haimer put on no airs whatsoever.
He nodded to each of them in turn, exhausted to the last one and yet glowing with spirit.
Once he had soothed their excitement and urged them to get some rest,
Haimer lifted his eyes past all the bustling figures to the vast skeleton of the courtyard.
Wide enough, solid enough, and hidden well away from the clamor of the city center.
It was about time, then, to make a trip back to World G-404 and bring over the first group of "Cursed Children."
Still... Haimer turned the matter over in his mind.
Bringing his first group of "Cursed Children" from the Black Bullet world of G-404 into this one was not like the Five Swords, or Miss Holy Emperor and her companions — those were a handful few enough to be written off entirely.
The first group of "Cursed Children" would number a hundred at the very least.
And so — that very afternoon!
The [Ganesha Familia] headquarters, "I Am Ganesha"!