When Isagi woke up that morning, he found his bed crowded with people again.
He had a nagging feeling he'd had an unusually strange dream the night before.
Groggy as he was, he couldn't remember most of it.
Just fragments, jumbled together — and near the end, he'd somehow dreamed about Ryuu-senpai, and then done all sorts of... things.
Surely not, he thought.
Why would he dream about something like that?
After all, last night before falling asleep...
Isagi could still feel it now — the slender, warm press of Ryuu-senpai's body beside him under the covers.
Silence again.
Isagi could tell the others were awake too — Ais, both goddesses, and everyone else — including whatever plump, piglet-looking thing was currently nestled in the arms of a certain golden-haired beauty of a goddess.
What even was that thing?
Why was it giving off such a strange whiff of Arcanum?
Isagi, being no fool, quietly slipped out from under the blankets, put on his best I-know-nothing face, and stepped right past the girls and goddesses to make his way to the bathroom to wash up.
By the time he came back, sure enough, everyone else had cleared out — only Ryuu-senpai was still there, dozing groggily under the covers.
Isagi pressed his lips together, annoyed. What exactly had happened last night?
He couldn't just pretend nothing had happened, could he?
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
"Damn it!"
The Goddess of Beauty, having successfully "escaped" from the boy's room, clenched her small fists as she and Ais went over the events of the previous night together.
Though "going over" was generous.
In truth it was just Aphrodite, the fool, grinding her teeth and vowing she'd get her payback.
The Love Goddess had lost face in a big way this time.
"If nothing else works, I'll just have to bring out the secret weapon!"
Watching the golden-haired goddess in front of her puff up in that adorable, indignant way, Ais couldn't shake a certain sense of "danger."
Still, for now, the two of them were teammates.
So, next...
They didn't linger too long at the Elf inn tucked deep in the mountains.
The following afternoon,
Isagi and the others boarded the carriage once more, ready to continue on toward the Magic Kingdom.
It had only been a small detour.
Only — Isagi noticed that while Ais and Aphrodite genuinely seemed to act as if nothing had happened, Artemis was acting rather strange.
She kept avoiding him.
Every so often she'd shoot him a glare, and every so often she'd ask, out of nowhere, whether he remembered anything from the dream.
Isagi, of course, remembered very little.
But Artemis seemed to remember it all quite clearly — maybe because she was a goddess?
He didn't really understand it either.
And so the days passed, until about a week or so later,
after much stopping and starting, they finally arrived at the capital of the Magic Kingdom — [Altena].
From a distance,
they could already see the massive fleet of airships floating above the city like clouds.
Like many ancient nations and cities, Altena had towering walls — even more exaggerated, it seemed, than Orario's. As a city that had endured since ancient times, its nation's name may have changed more than once, but its existence had never wavered.
Legend had it
that Altena had once been one of the very few "strongholds" on the continent never overrun by Monsters.
The people had relied on this enormous city to launch their counterattack, eventually pushing the front lines back to the Great Pit — to "Orario."
That had happened in an era even further back than a thousand years ago.
An age when Heroes were born one after another.
The weathered, ancient walls still bore countless visible pockmarks of grayish-white, and beyond that, densely packed openings large and small — in ancient times, each one had been a firing port for heavy ballistae or magic arrows.
And atop the walls, massive magic-cannons still stood.
Though ravaged by the ages and now mostly there for tourists to "view," they still struck an awe-inspiring sight from a distance.
They entered the city easily enough under disguised identities.
It was just past sunset.
The scorching daylight was giving way to cool, quiet dusk, the ashen sky lighting up with the glow of countless lamps across the city, until it seemed almost to merge with the stars overhead.
Past the city gates lay a moat nearly a hundred meters wide.
A broad bridge connected to the city streets beyond. Unlike the Magic Stone lamps of other cities, every light in the Magic Kingdom ran on "magitech" — powered by magic gems at their core, casting a deep blue glow.
Compared to the warm orange-and-white glow that gave Orario its cozy feel,
the deep blue lights here truly sparkled like stars, dazzling and almost blinding to look at.
Along the way,
they saw "magic-guided puppets" maintaining order — each one a suit of bronze-yellow knight's armor wielding a long halberd, said to possess strength close to a Lv. 2 adventurer.
The Magic Kingdom could already mass-produce things like these.
It reminded Isagi that Miss Fels and Miss Asfi also had similar "magic-guided puppets" of their own — though theirs were more accurately "golems," being much bigger and heavier, with strength somewhere around Lv. 4.
That said — whether puppet or golem, these things only matched the theoretical Stats of an adventurer at that level; they had no Skills, no magic, and no real technique to speak of.
In practice they were no match for an actual adventurer of that rank — they could only bully weaker opponents through sheer numbers.
As they moved further into the main streets,
Isagi spotted more and more strange little curiosities.
First and foremost were the many well-dressed, obviously wealthy people carrying mechanical little dogs or cats in their arms — another magitech product, much like pets, but with a bit of combat ability, just enough to handle the occasional Monster roaming outside that had degenerated to below even Lv. 1.
Beyond that,
the countless shops lining the streets were dazzling enough on their own just to glance at.
Before long,
using Miss Riveria's "letter of introduction," the carriage was soon rerouted into what amounted to an "Elf district" within the city.
The relationship between the Elves and the Magic Kingdom was a delicate one.
At first,
the Elves had looked down on the magitech humans tinkered with, even regarding magic-craftsmen and witches as something heretical.
But Monster attacks had quickly dissolved that prejudice.
Elves had no choice but to fight alongside humans, and in the process, some of them naturally came around to magitech, even joining in the research themselves.
Eventually, a rather traditional Elf community had taken root right here in Altena.
Rumor had it that this community still retained a considerable degree of self-governance.
The carriage rattled along and eventually came to a stop in front of the inn Miss Riveria had recommended.
Everything around them was unusually quiet.
The air carried a faint scent of flowers, along with the aroma of coffee.
Isagi honestly couldn't understand it.
Why did Elves love coffee so much — was it because they stayed up late so often?
In Orario, plenty of coffee shops were run by Elves, and most had excellent reputations — apparently, if the coffee wasn't good, it would shame their entire race back home. That was what Lefiya had said, and it had left Isagi rather stunned at the time.
The Elf who came out to receive them at the inn was an old woman.
She wore fine robes, but with a cloak and hood over them, as if she too had come quietly, without drawing attention.
"Greetings, guests from Orario. This old woman's name is Aryas. Come find me if you need anything, no matter how small."
She was the one in charge of this Elf district.
Isagi greeted her with the utmost courtesy, sensing that Miss Riveria's letter of introduction had done its work here as well.
After all, as a member of the Elf royal family, her words carried considerable weight.
The old elf arranged a quiet, secluded room for their group, and even had the entire inn cleared out for them, to avoid "too many ears."
"As for your plans, we won't get involved, and we don't want to know. But if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask — you can reach me anytime through the inn's front desk."
"Understood. Thank you for your trouble."
After seeing the old woman off,
Isagi returned to the room, and looking at the girls and goddesses now sitting properly around the dining table, decided it was time to talk business.
The "special mission" that had brought them to the Magic Kingdom
had, on the surface, one goal:
to rescue the god Hermes, currently held captive by Odin, the ruling deity of this nation.
This traveler god had long served as Orario's "diplomat." He and his Familia usually handled most of the requests that took them beyond the city to other nations.
He also served as a kind of "secret channel" through which other nations communicated with Orario.
For that reason,
Hermes always seemed to have his fingers in everything — always able to get his hands on all sorts of things, and always somehow privy to all sorts of information.
Though Asfi found her own god's carefree, unpredictable manner an endless headache — a reputation notable even by Orario's standards —
he did genuinely have real "strength," and when it counted, he could be surprisingly reliable.
Asfi closed her eyes,
as if drifting back to some distant memory.
Previously, when the Hermes Familia had come to the Magic Kingdom to conduct the Guild's "diplomatic negotiations," even Asfi only knew the broad strokes of what had happened.
Odin, this great god, claimed to possess a "secret weapon" capable of killing the Black Dragon — but the price was that at least half of all life on the continent would vanish.
Humans, Elves, dwarves, Pallum, beastmen... even Beasts, birds, fish, even Monsters.
He said half.
But whether that figure was accurate, no one truly knew — and even if it really was half, that was still—
From a purely rational standpoint, Odin's method was viable.
After all,
if the [Black Dragon] would bring about the world's destruction regardless, then sacrificing roughly half of all life to bring it down seemed, by any calculation, a reasonable trade.
Unless, of course, a [Hero] appeared...
"I'll let Miss Asfi cover the details."
The last time a "negotiation team" had come to the Magic Kingdom, Asfi, as captain of the Hermes Familia, had naturally accompanied her god.
Back then,
it had been Asfi who brought word back to Orario that Hermes had been taken captive.
Along with Odin's "declaration of war" at the time:
[If you're truly a Hero, then prove it to me.]
Asfi recounted, quietly and in full detail, everything that had happened during that earlier trip to the Magic Kingdom, answering the questions the other girls — Isagi included — raised along the way, all the way through to their eventual return to Orario to report the matter to the city.
The Guild's clerks had already compiled a written record, which everyone had read over during the journey.
They all listened as they ate.
Though this was an Elf-run inn, the meal was surprisingly lavish — alongside the vegetables and fruits typical of Elf cuisine, there was plenty of meat, and a large pot of delicious beef curry with rice.
Clearly,
that old elf woman understood exactly what kind of "meat-loving Monsters" adventurers from the city tended to be.
The meeting went on for a long while.
For now,
their stated goal was to rescue the god "Hermes" — but as for how exactly they were supposed to pull that off...
"Doesn't this seem strange to you?"
Ryuu-senpai thought it over carefully before voicing her doubt.
"What does it even mean to 'prove the power of a Hero'? Based on what Isagi's already tried, taking down the Monsters in Dragon Valley and the [Black Dragon] itself requires at least Lv. 9-level strength. No — even Odin should already know that, shouldn't he?"
"Regardless, since Zeus Familia and Hera Familia both failed to bring down the Black Dragon before, any adventurer aiming to succeed where they failed would need to surpass their level by a wide margin."
"Which means Odin surely already knows the new [Hero] would need to be at least Lv. 8 — possibly even higher than Lv. 9."
Prove one's strength?
Bluntly put — did the entire Magic Kingdom even have the means to stop a Lv. 8 or Lv. 9 adventurer?
"The internal strength of the Magic Kingdom, and of the Empire as well, remains a mystery to this day."
Both Asfi and the Guild readily admitted as much.
For a simple reason:
those countries' adventurers never registered with the city, so in practice, even the fact that the warrior country previously had a Lv. 6 adventurer was unknown to the vast majority of Orario's gods — an absolute, closely guarded secret.
In truth, though, the warrior country itself made no attempt to hide this — quite a few of the common people around their nation actually knew that the warrior country had a first-class adventurer.
That was simply the limitation of how information traveled in this era.
"In theory, high-level adventurers outside the city are certainly rare, but they must exist somewhere."
Take Lunoire, for example — she had been a Lv. 4 adventurer in the Empire, though by that nation's standards her strength was hardly considered top-tier.
The Familia she'd once belonged to had even collapsed after its goddess returned to the heavens, and the girl herself hadn't even known what had truly happened at the time.
So it wasn't impossible
that both the Magic Kingdom and the Empire actually did have first-class adventurers of their own — Lv. 5 or even Lv. 6.
Isagi had heard before that a princess from some small nation had once visited Orario for leisure, and among her escort had been a Lv. 5 and a Lv. 4 — solid proof that powerful individuals existed outside the city too.
But Ryuu-senpai had a point.
Even if there really were Lv. 5 or Lv. 6 adventurers out there, so what?
Even Lv. 7...
Compared to where they stood now, the gap in strength was simply too vast.
So then,
given all that, how exactly were they supposed to "prove the power of a Hero"?
As things stood, the Magic Kingdom had nothing that could possibly serve as such proof — if anything, one careless move and he and the girls could level this thousand-year-old ancient city without even trying.
____
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