What was this about?
Suddenly, a chilling, ominous feeling ran down my spine, and my eyes flew open against my will.
It was an absurdly powerful sense of foreboding, strong enough to ignore even the heavy sleeping medicine meant to lessen the aftereffects of the regeneration potion.
What on earth was going on?
"Puhah!"
Unable to bear it any longer, I got out of the recovery device on my own, even though it wasn't time yet.
Having come out of the device, I looked like a drowned rat, soaked to the bone.
Still, since I was already out, I activated my mana circuits and circulated mana through my body to check how much I had recovered so far.
After roughly diagnosing myself, I came to one conclusion.
"Still one arm, one eye, and the lungs and stomach, I guess."
I was about 80 percent recovered, more or less.
At this level, as long as I didn't overdo it... no, even if I pushed myself a little, I wasn't in a state where I'd drop dead on the spot.
Then a day or two away from home should be fine.
For now, it would be better to figure out the source of this sudden ominous feeling.
Only after that was resolved could I go back to sleep or continue recovering.
"Haa."
I let out a long sigh, then roughly dried myself with the towel Naza had prepared for me and put on the fresh clothes laid out nearby.
Even as I dressed, the lingering fatigue and the aching pain in my body from the treatment continued to torment me.
Leaving behind the irritation and laziness that welled up from that, I stepped out of the Blue Pharmacy.
Fortunately, there was no one in the shop, so there was no doctor to stop me or nag at me, which made leaving easy.
"Honestly, what the hell happened now?"
The moment I stepped outside, an unusually noisy street greeted me.
Curious, I sat down on a terrace at a nearby cafe, ordered a cup of coffee, and listened in on the conversations of the people out on the street to catch up on what had happened.
"Hey, did you hear?"
"Yeah, you mean that conflict? Of course I heard."
Conflict, huh.
So that was the cause of all this commotion after all.
"It had been quiet for a while, too."
Some idiot Familia must have been showing off their strength for no good reason again.
Even so.
Starting trouble inside the city?
If they were going to do it, they should at least have done a better job of not getting caught.
Unless they were outsiders.
I didn't know which bunch of idiots it was, but the penalty was probably going to be pretty steep.
"Well, I guess it's got nothing to do with me."
Thinking that way with complete peace of mind, I took a sip of the coffee that had just been brought out for me at that very moment.
"Wasn't it Hestia Familia? That 'Little Rookie' one?"
"Yeah, that's right. I heard some Apollo Familia guys were chasing after them earlier."
Puhut!
So shocked that blackish-red breath burst violently out of my mouth.
Wait, blackish-red?
Ah, crap.
I coughed up a little blood too.
Right, my body really wasn't in good shape—no, wait.
Forget that trivial detail, what did you just say?
Apollo Familia and Hestia Familia?
The two sides are in conflict?
Right now, Lady Hestia and Bell are being chased?
What the hell is this, some kind of joke?
What in the world happened in the few days I was asleep!?
"Cough! Cough! W-what the hell...?"
Flustered, I didn't even think to wipe the coffee that had spilled around my mouth.
And in that state, I carefully listened to the conversations around me.
Sure enough, as expected.
Probably because it was such a rare, eventful disturbance.
Bit by bit, the information drifting through the streets began to gather around me as well.
"Seems Apollo Familia picked a fight with Hestia Familia first. You know, there've been all kinds of bad rumors about that god's tastes."
"Ah, that? Man, even if he's a god, that's just... what a disgusting thing to do."
"Then was it because of that Little Rookie? Geez, that's rough. He looked pretty young, too."
"So? What happened? Somebody tell me what came after that!"
"I am Ganesha!"
"Yes, yes. You're making my head spin, so let's go back home first, Lord Ganesha."
Hmm, first I'll ignore that elephant guy.
In short, if I roughly organized what I'd heard, it came down to this.
God Apollo targeted Bell.
So he deliberately used his followers to pick a fight.
And as a result, just a little while ago, Lady Hestia got swept up in it too and was attacked by them.
In the end, the abandoned church used as the goddess's Familia home had already been smashed to pieces.
I didn't know where the two of them had gone after that.
But at some point, the goddess had apparently been unable to endure the repeated attacks and, in a fit of anger, accepted a War Game.
That concluded the situation so far.
"Magika yo."
I slapped my forehead with my palm and let out a sigh.
No wonder I'd woken up so abruptly from that strange sense of foreboding.
"Haa, so it's been about four days since we got back from the expedition."
I never imagined something this ridiculous would happen in just those few short days.
This is going too far, you damn goddesses of fate.
If you're just laughing it up up there, then that's the end of it for you.
"More importantly... I need to figure out where the two of them are first."
Just as I made that judgment and was about to stand up from my seat.
"Huh? Wait a second?"
Something felt off.
It was like something had been left out somewhere between the beginning, middle, and end.
What was it?
What was this nagging feeling?
I fell into thought for a moment and spent some time worrying over it.
Then I remembered one fact.
"Lady Hestia knows where my shop is."
Then, in an emergency, she would definitely have headed to the Guild or my shop as her first refuge.
I had told her before to come there if anything ever happened to her place of residence.
And yet, if their whereabouts still hadn't been confirmed?
That obviously meant they weren't at either of those places.
But at the very least, they should have come to my shop once while fleeing.
If things had really gone that way...
"No wa—?"
The ominous feeling that had forcibly woken me earlier.
A similar sensation flashed through my mind just then.
I hurriedly moved, ignoring the pain in my body.
All the while, I prayed desperately that I was wrong.
That it absolutely wasn't true.
That reality couldn't possibly be that cruel.
With that hope, I prayed and prayed again.
"I-it'll be fine. I even put up a b-barrier just in case."
As I said, no matter how much better Orario's public safety was than other cities, it still couldn't compare to modern Earth.
There weren't CCTV cameras installed all over the streets like there were there.
So, in preparation for emergencies, I had already set up another permanent barrier at the surface shop, separate from the one in the underground workshop.
And although that barrier was weaker than the workshop's, it could still easily repel anyone up to Level 2 even if I wasn't there.
That was more than enough for petty thieves.
And that meant...
"Ah."
If I wasn't inside the shop.
It also meant it couldn't do anything beyond that.
And Apollo Familia was a mid-tier Familia recognized even here in Orario.
There was no doubt they had members above Level 2, and plenty of mages assigned to artillery support as well.
If those guys clashed with the surface barrier... well, the result was obvious without even looking.
"Aaaah..."
And that result was this.
I... without even realizing it, sank down to the ground.
My legs suddenly lost all strength.
It was pathetic, but there was nothing I could do.
All the way here, I had prayed so hard in my heart.
I had truly... wanted even a little bit of such a convenient development.
"Aaaaaaah..."
And yet this damn reality.
It was completely, utterly out of sync with my expectations.
It seemed to want nothing but a painfully tragic ending.
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"
A mournful scream burst out of my mouth as I sat there collapsed.
Monk's "Scream" had nothing on this.
And before my eyes.
All that remained was the miserable wreckage of my shop on the surface, completely shattered and collapsed.
Just looking at that cursed result made rage surge up from inside me.
"Khuh, kuheek!"
In the end, I couldn't hold back the blood in my chest and spat it out.
Then I collapsed and fainted right there over the pool of blood at my feet, as if following a script already written.
Hah, shibal.
Life really is a piece of sh...
Thud!
Beyond my field of vision, darkness came out to greet me.