The rain came down in sheets, with no sign of letting up.
But even weather like this couldn't dampen the citizens' enthusiasm.
Leon and the others arrived at Northwest Main Street, and they hadn't been walking long before a bustling sea of people came into view up ahead.
"Leon, over here!"
Following the call, his eye landed immediately on that dazzling, breathtakingly beautiful goddess... Demeter.
Leon murmured something to Jeanne beside him, then led the group over.
"Long time no see, Demeter."
Coming up to the goddess, Leon greeted her with a smile.
"Hmm?"
Hearing Leon address her by name alone, with none of the usual deferential suffixes like "Lady" or the like, Demeter narrowed her eyes ever so slightly in a dangerous way. Then the smile on her flawless face bloomed even more dazzlingly.
"Come with me!"
She grabbed Leon's hand without giving him a chance to protest and pulled him straight toward the center of the event grounds.
Faced with the goddess's forwardness, Leon shrugged and spread his hands at the bespectacled beauty holding the umbrella beside her, Persephone, and even threw in a slightly provocative look for good measure before falling in step behind Demeter with a beaming grin.
A vein bulged visibly on Persephone's smooth forehead, and her face went stone cold in an instant.
Her gaze locked onto Leon's retreating back like a pair of icicles, and her mind flashed through no less than a thousand different ways to "discipline" the brat.
"Uh, Persephone, calm down."
"You... you know what Leon's like. He's always like that. Don't take him seriously!"
Watching Persephone's body trembling slightly with rage, Rose hurried over to soothe her.
The moment she opened her mouth, however, the corners of Persephone's lips slowly curled into a cold, alluring arc.
"Heh... heh... heh... It's been a while, and Leon's gotten cocky, hasn't he?"
"Hmph hmph hmph... Looks like it's about time to give him a little something special. A bit of love from his big sister."
With that, she elegantly pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with slender fingers, then stalked after him in her over-the-knee boots, each crisp click of her heels carrying a distinct sense of pressure.
Catching the "special attention" reserved for Leon in those words, Rose, Jeanne, Kureha, and the rest exchanged uneasy glances.
Only Laurier, who didn't think about anything and acted purely on instinct, rolled her eyes mischievously and sidled up between the three of them, lowering her voice.
"Big sister Jeanne, big sister Rose, big sister Kureha..."
"Don't you all think... it's a little weird?"
"Like... isn't big sister Persephone's attitude toward our team leader... maybe a bit too special?"
"It's so suspicious."
The speaker meant nothing by it, but the listeners caught every word.
The instant Laurier finished, the eyes of all three women sharpened.
"..."
Laurier's face stiffened and she tugged anxiously at Aura's sleeve.
"Aura, did... did I say something wrong? Why are all three of them looking so scary?"
Aura had a list of comebacks queued up, but didn't know where to start.
In the end she just sighed and pulled Laurier along by the wrist.
Eyes open, mouth shut, Aura. Up ahead is a war zone.
...
The center of the event "venue."
Demeter hurried back, dragging Leon along with her.
Seeing that the citizens were still lined up in orderly queues waiting to receive food just as they had been when she left, she let out a relieved breath.
"Thank goodness, no major chaos broke out. Otherwise, we'd have a real problem on our hands."
Leon stood beside her, silently holding the umbrella over the goddess.
Looking out through the misty curtain of rain at the queue stretching as far as the eye could see, he was honestly a little shaken.
It wasn't that he was sheltered.
But across two lifetimes, a relief operation handing out emergency rations on this kind of scale... honestly, this was Leon's first time seeing anything like it.
"Demeter, Orario's supposed to be a thriving city, isn't it? How are there so many citizens in need of relief?"
"Even with Evilus stirring up trouble, this seems excessive."
He added jokingly.
"Don't tell me all the homeless folks from the Daedalus Street district came running over here for a free meal?"
Demeter watched the Order Faction adventurers maintaining order and distributing food in a smooth, methodical manner. Hearing Leon's question, she pressed her lips together, her gaze drifting toward Babel.
She was silent for a long while before slowly pulling her eyes back, letting out a soft, somber sigh.
"The Orario of the past was nothing like what you see now."
"In the previous era, this city was full of life and energy, bustling beyond belief. The streets teemed with people gathered from every corner of the world. Its prosperity far surpassed what it is today. It was, without question, the center of the world."
"But everything... changed completely on that one day, eight years ago."
Demeter said no more after that.
Leon understood.
The turning point of it all traced back to that final battle against the three world-level quests.
Two superpower familias that had stood at the very pinnacle of Orario for over a thousand years had collapsed in the span of a moment.
The disaster had come so suddenly, and so completely.
Whether gods, adventurers, or anyone else, when they first heard the news, every one of them thought they were dreaming.
No one could have imagined that those two familias, which had loomed over the lower world for a millennium, would vanish so quietly into the dust of the city's history.
It hadn't been any drawn-out war. Just an instant.
"..."
Even today, even their names had become an unspeakable taboo in this city.
People said a fish's memory lasted only seven seconds.
In Leon's view, in this city named for adventure, the speed at which people forgot wasn't far behind.
For some reason, a certain line came to mind.
"And what, sir, do you find so amusing?"
Mid-sneer at all these short-memoried people, Leon felt a tug at his sleeve.
"Hm? What is it?"
He turned to find Rose looking past him, joined by Jeanne and the others, all of them eyeing something across the plaza. Before any of them said a word, Leon followed their gazes and spotted the familiar faces.
"Ah, Astraea's allies of justice."
Jeanne shot him a sidelong look and muttered under her breath.
"What allies of justice. Why is it that whenever you say that phrase, it never sounds like a compliment?"
?
Has Jeanne spent enough time around me that she can vaguely guess at the references in some of my jokes now?
"Eh? Mr. Leon, allies of justice sounds amazing, doesn't it? Why does big sister Jeanne say... that it isn't a compliment when you say it?"
Laurier and Aura looked confused.
Seeing that they weren't urgently needed for anything at the moment, Leon took up a spot against a wall and, while continuing his duties as the goddess's escort, began telling them the cautionary tale of a certain redheaded boy who'd wanted, more than anything else, to become a hero of justice.
...
...
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