Chapter 9: Divine Wine Has Nothing on the Real Thing.
...
"Please, adventurer — take me back to the surface. That treacherous snake cut my legs from behind, I can't move on my own. I'll find a way to repay you, I promise—"
"Repayment from the Soma Familia."
Kihara's tone was pleasantly neutral. "I'll pass."
Liliruca's brown eyes contracted to pinpoints.
He knew. He already knew she was Soma Familia.
Which means... he knew we were following him the whole time. He led us down to the fifth floor deliberately.
She pivoted without missing a beat, letting her voice crack appropriately.
"L-Lili is just a supporter — they forced me to come along. If I didn't do what they said, they'd hurt me — they always hurt me when I don't listen — please, I'm begging you—"
"Lili? Liliruca?"
"Ah—" She froze. "...Y-yes. That's me."
She'd deliberately smeared her face with dungeon grime before the operation specifically to obscure her appearance. He'd identified her anyway, from a single sentence, without hesitation.
Kihara looked at her for a moment, then appeared to internally revise whatever conclusion he'd been reaching. He produced a healing potion from his storage, helped her drink it, and began wrapping her legs with practiced efficiency.
"...Adventurer?"
Liliruca couldn't make sense of what was happening. Ten seconds ago she'd been certain that being identified meant dying. Instead, she was being bandaged.
"That should hold for now. The wound won't close completely, but it won't get infected either."
He turned around and crouched down in a clear invitation. Liliruca stared at the offered back for a moment, then let him take her weight.
As he carried her toward the exit to the fourth floor, he let his gaze drift sideways for just a moment — long enough to register the mine elevator standing beside the passage, its indicator lights quietly active.
He kept the satisfaction off his face.
Picked up a strategist, unlocked the mine elevator, and she even helped put my name around Orario without being asked. He considered this. Maybe the Soma Familia deserves some kind of special recognition. Most reliable enemy I've ever had.
Liliruca rode in silence on his back, watching the nape of his neck.
Her right hand drifted to the small knife strapped to her thigh. Came to rest on the handle. Didn't close.
You hate adventurers. You've always hated adventurers. Kill him, hide, use the potion to patch your legs up enough to walk, go back to the Familia, claim the reward. More divine wine next month.
And he's probably just performing. Waiting until you're somewhere more convenient to dump you in a monster room and watch.
Her fingers stayed loose around the handle. The warmth of his back pressed through the fabric. Something about the rhythm of being carried — the steadiness of it, the complete absence of tension in his posture — kept her hand from closing.
She moved it away.
One more time, she thought.
I'll trust someone one more time.
The decision released something in her chest. She closed her eyes, breathed in the scent of him — unreasonably steadying, like something that had never been in her life before — and let her weight settle fully against his back.
After they surfaced, Kihara asked for the Soma Familia's address and found the place in the slum district without difficulty. The adventurers loitering outside the gate had the specific quality of people whose relationship with hygiene had become adversarial, and smelled accordingly.
"Where's Soma? I need to see him."
The nearest one lifted his eyelids with visible effort. "Soma-sama doesn't see outsiders. Wine purchases go through the captain."
"I'm here to arrange a divine transfer for the girl on my back."
"Transfer? That won't come cheap."
"I know. Get your captain."
Kihara produced a coin pouch and tossed it over without looking. The adventurer caught it, and the glazed expression vanished immediately.
"Why didn't you lead with that! Right this way—"
He was already moving, with the energy of someone who had remembered what motivation felt like.
"Adventurer—" Liliruca began.
Kihara stopped her with a slight gesture.
"Quiet. Stay still and pretend to be unconscious."
"...Understood."
Zanis had not expected the afternoon to develop this way. The target he'd sent people to quietly eliminate had not only survived, but walked through his front gate carrying one of his injured members and asking for a transfer negotiation. He composed himself, left his office, and arrived at the table wearing the warmest expression in his considerable repertoire.
"If it isn't the famous Kihara from the duelling grounds! What an honour — your presence genuinely elevates the Soma Familia's humble—"
"Skip it. I want to arrange her transfer. Name your price."
"Ah — forgive me, I have to ask first — how exactly did you come across her?"
"Found her on the fifth floor. Heard screaming, followed it, found her with the bodies of her party. Brought her out."
Those idiots actually followed him to the fifth floor, Zanis thought, with a very specific variety of contempt. Completely useless to the end. He let none of it reach his face.
"I see. How extraordinarily compassionate of you." He glanced at the still-motionless Liliruca, and arranged his expression into something that suggested the next words cost him personally. "As captain, I do have to consider her wellbeing. I couldn't simply ignore her wishes in a matter like—"
"Save the performance. I like the look of her and I want to take her home. Give me a number before I change my mind."
"Since you put it that way — one million falis."
"Done."
"...What."
Zanis came back to himself only when the coin pouch landed in his hands. He didn't need to count it. His instincts around money were precise enough to read the weight — exactly one million falis. And he immediately understood that he had dramatically underpriced himself, and that this realisation had arrived too late to be useful.
Before he could recalculate, Kihara met his eyes with an expression that was entirely pleasant and contained something beneath the pleasantness that suggested genuine consequences.
"Don't try to revise the number. Unless the million is suddenly optional."
"Of course not — of course not." Zanis smiled broadly. "Soma-sama is in the building to the right. I'll instruct the gate guard to let you through."
Kihara nodded once and carried Liliruca toward the low-roofed structure from which the smell of fermentation radiated in warm, insistent waves.
"Captain." One of the nearby members leaned in. "Will Soma-sama actually agree to the transfer?"
Zanis smoothed down the front of his jacket.
"Not my problem. I only sold him an audience. I never promised results."
"Brilliant, Captain."
He allowed himself a small, private smile, and turned toward the guard who'd facilitated the introduction. "Good work today. I'll consider a slightly larger wine allocation next month — assuming your payment comes through on time."
"Thank you, Captain! Thank you!"
The interior of the brewing room was dense with the smell of fermenting grain, barrels stacked in every available space. Seated among them, wearing a simple white robe and radiating the particular melancholy of someone who had decided long ago that the world outside this room wasn't worth engaging with, was the god Soma.
He spoke without looking up. The words were so quiet they almost didn't make it across the room.
"What."
"I'm here to arrange Liliruca's transfer."
"No."
"Why?"
Soma didn't explain. Instead, he extended one hand, a cup balanced in his fingers.
"Drink this. Then I'll agree."
The Liliruca who had been performing unconsciousness with professional commitment snapped her eyes open. Her breathing went uneven. She stared at the cup with the expression of someone watching the only thing they'd ever wanted held just within reach, the word divine wine forming on her lips over and over without sound.
Kihara took the cup and drained it in a single motion.
The effect was immediate — a wave of sensation that moved through him from the inside out, cleaner and more total than anything he'd felt before, reaching places that didn't have names and lighting them up.
Soma watched him with the patient certainty of someone who already knew the outcome.
Then Kihara turned his head to the side and spat the remaining wine in his mouth onto the floor. He made a face that suggested mild disappointment.
"That's it? Honestly — Akane and Rikka leave me in a better state than that."
Soma stared at him.
"...What."
...
Thank you for reading.