By the time the man and the raven had finished beating each other up...
Loki flapped over to the far corner of the tea table, putting some distance between itself and Heracles. With spirals for eyes, it tilted its chin toward Ryo and said, "Oh, right. There's another clause in Ouroboros's terms. Once the mission is complete, Taurus is to be temporarily entrusted to Kalki for three months."
"It looks like that's probably the window in which the Savior will awaken the power of his Another Cosmology."
Heracles snorted. The claw marks on his face were already beginning to fade. "Hand Taurus over to Kalki for three months? Hah. It may not be long, but who knows what kind of accidents could happen in that time."
Loki added, "The worst-case scenario is simply that, after the mission is completed, some unexpected incident causes the Sun Authority we're supposed to receive as payment to go 'temporarily' missing.... Nah, there's a pretty good chance it'll go missing. Kalki may be important, but merely protecting him isn't enough to justify using a Sun Authority as payment."
"So..." Ryo's brow furrowed deeply. "Ouroboros might abandon Kalki?"
Abandon Kalki.
To anyone who knew how important Kalki was, that might have sounded utterly absurd.
But Ryo couldn't help considering the possibility.
He didn't believe Ouroboros's higher-ups were unaware that their organization had double agents within it.
The fact that they had so precisely selected Heracles, Loki, and Ryo for this mission made it obvious that they knew exactly who the three of them really were.
And now they were putting those three obvious moles in charge of protecting the extremely important Kalki.
No matter how he looked at it, it resembled an attempt to settle accounts.
After all, if the mission failed and Kalki disappeared, none of the three of them would get away unscathed.
The risks involved were obvious.
"You're not going to accept the mission?" Heracles looked at Ryo with some surprise. "But Arcadia can't avoid getting involved. Kalki is part of your Grand Alliance right now, after all."
Ryo answered with a question of his own. "If I already know a three-digit-level brawl is destined to break out on the divine war battlefield, why would I use the lives of my Alliance members as supporting characters in someone else's show?"
"So what if we lose to Greece and have to pay a huge amount of compensation? Do you think I can't afford to lose?" Ryo gave a confident laugh.
But in reality, he absolutely couldn't afford to lose.
Arcadia's foundations were far too thin. It might be able to scrape together enough gold, but there was no way it could afford the other valuable resources.
Still, that didn't mean Ryo lacked a solution.
At worst, he could surrender to Hera during the divine war and dump the entire compensation bill on the Queen of Heaven.
Hera would surely be more than happy to cooperate with him in a little game of moving things from the left hand to the right.
In return, the divine war would end immediately, and Arcadia Alliance would exist in name only. At that point, it would be difficult for the Heavenly Army's and Ouroboros's struggle over Kalki to affect him at all.
"..."
Heracles fell silent.
The great hero had apparently never even considered the option of admitting defeat, so he genuinely hadn't expected Ryo to pull something like this.
Losing the divine war might be embarrassing, but avoiding a three-digit-level conflict was worth it.
In a sense, it wasn't even a bad trade.
"Hoho, I didn't expect you to actually have the nerve to pull that." Loki flapped its wings and cackled. "I bet the Queen never imagined you'd use something like this to dodge her arrangements."
"Wait a second. Whose arrangements did you just say these were?!" Ryo's expression changed as he pressed Loki for an answer.
Loki, however, gave him a strange look. "Is there another Queen in Little Garden?"
Queen Halloween's arrangement?
She sent me to protect Kalki?
No... Maybe she wants me to protect the mission from failing...
Ryo frowned deeply at the thought, then sighed. "I've changed my mind."
"What?"
Loki froze and raised a wing to the side of its head.
Ryo said calmly, "I'm taking the mission."
"Uh..." Loki stared at him in complete disbelief.
In the end, Ryo accepted Ouroboros's protection mission.
After discussing with Heracles and Loki when they would gather to formally begin the assignment, the three went their separate ways.
Of course, accepting the job didn't mean Ryo intended to do it properly.
On one side was the Heavenly Army, which had looked after him on several occasions.
On the other was Kalki, someone he knew but whose position was fundamentally opposed to his own.
Any idiot could figure out which side Ryo would choose to help.
And Heracles and Loki were actually of the same mind.
As blatant "undercover agents," it was obvious whom the three of them would choose between the Heavenly Army and Ouroboros.
Ryo didn't believe Ouroboros's leadership could possibly fail to understand that.
Or rather, he didn't believe Queen Halloween was unaware of it.
"Is that what she wants? To force me to take a side?" Ryo asked himself.
As his strength had continued to grow, more and more information about him had spread throughout the lower layers.
As a former enemy and now his superior, Ouroboros naturally possessed a complete dossier on him.
They had probably investigated everything, even the incident when he had first arrived in Little Garden, recovered from his injuries in Arcadia, and then spent two months bedridden after being caught up in Ouroboros's unprovoked attack on Arcadia.
Normally, someone like him, who had such deep grudges against Ouroboros, would never be heavily relied upon.
Krishna's purpose in recruiting him had been more about keeping him stable and preventing him from causing trouble.
Ryo understood that.
Ouroboros understood that.
The Queen understood it even better.
But despite knowing all this, she had still arranged for him to take this mission.
"Is this to give the Heavenly Army an explanation? Or did something happen with Kalki that made Ouroboros decide to abandon him? ...Is there some hidden angle here that I don't know about?" Ryo frowned.
After thinking it over, he shook his head. "I'm missing far too much information. Without enough intelligence to work from, there's no way I can figure out what those ancient monsters are thinking."
With that in mind, Ryo sighed and decided to handle the matter in his own way.
He returned to Arcadia's headquarters, shut himself inside his private room, and wrote a letter by hand.
Then, right there in the room, he began preparing a prayer ritual.
The ritual was directed toward the goddess who symbolized the End.
{Ouroboros has assigned me to protect Kalki. The time limit is fifteen days.}
After placing the letter containing those words into the ritual, Ryo watched it burst into flames without any wind touching it.
While waiting for a response, he repeated the ritual four more times.
The recipients were Shakyamuni (The Buddha), Queen Halloween, Kurma, and even Krishna.
As the four letters went up in flames, Ryo gradually relaxed.
"Now, every two-digit existence should know I'm going to protect Kalki, right?"
What was the safest way to make it out of a dangerous undercover operation alive?
Simple. Turn the covert mission into an ambassador's official visit abroad.
Ryo refused to believe that, with many two-digit powers watching, some shameless two-digit bastard would still dare to screw him over right in front of everyone.
.
.
.