And so it went. The sun hung at the zenith, and in the rear courtyard of the Twilight Manor, the crisp clang of blade against blade had scarcely paused all morning.
Even into the afternoon, the mess hall of the [Loki Familia] stayed unusually lively.
After all, to feed this pack of over-energetic newcomers, Loki had painfully sprung for six whole tables of meat.
Over lunch, Tendou Kisara had planted herself down right beside Riveria without the slightest ceremony, tray in hand, eating while she picked the elf's brain about the finer points of dealing with a Mage. Amou Kirukiru and Tione, meanwhile, had nearly come to blows over the table itself in their scramble for the last cut of roast earth-dragon steak, and only Haimer splitting it in two — one half each — had finally put the matter to rest.
As for Koharu, she'd downed a single bowl of soup and left it at that.
The break was barely over before training resumed on the grounds.
All afternoon, Koharu hurled slash after frenzied slash at Ais.
But after that one dazzling [Cloud Radiance] earlier that morning, Ais had already taken Koharu's measure.
Each time Koharu abandoned her guard for a killing overhead cut, Ais would sweep it aside with the flat of the Sword of Despair, precise every time, and use the momentum to rap the pommel or the spine of the blade against Koharu's ribs or shoulder — a measured blow, neither light nor heavy, enough to drop her briefly to the ground.
Beaten back again and again, she climbed to her feet again and again and came on once more.
Until the sun slid westward, and the autumn breeze gave way, little by little, to the cool of evening.
"Bang!"
With one last dull impact, Koharu staggered back several steps and dropped hard onto her backside.
She dragged in ragged breaths, sweat sliding off her short golden hair to spot the flagstones, and the freshly wrapped bandages at the webs of her thumbs had bled through into faint red blooms once more.
"That's enough for today."
Ais let her sword tip drop toward the ground and turned her head to glance around.
At the edges of the grounds, the others' training had all but wound down as well.
Amou Kirukiru was rubbing an arm mottled with bruises, trading threats back and forth with Tione.
At Ais's words, Koharu braced her blade tip against the ground and hauled herself up on it.
Enduring the dull ache in her hands, she walked over to the bench off to the side.
She snatched up the towel draped across it and scrubbed roughly at her face.
Just as she pulled it away —
— a set of very soft footsteps came to a halt in front of the bench.
Koharu looked up, her ringed eyes narrowing warily.
Ais stood before her.
In both hands she held out that slender silver-white blade — the Sword of Despair — leveled flat and thrust straight out, right under Koharu's nose.
Koharu stared at the sword, then at Ais's lovely face, empty of any flicker of expression, and went utterly blank.
"What?" Koharu frowned, her tone far from friendly.
"Won the match, so now you come flaunting your weapon? You think I'm the kind of sore lo—"
"Touch it."
Ais pushed the blade forward a touch more, until it nearly brushed the tip of Koharu's nose.
Koharu's mouth twitched.
Still — meeting the strange, stubborn light in Ais's golden eyes, Koharu finally raised a hand and laid it lightly along the spine of the Sword of Despair.
The sword seemed to be breathing.
"This is—" Koharu snatched her hand back, her eyes locked hard on Ais.
"Lord Haimer reforged it for me," Ais explained flatly, her gaze falling to her own blade.
"It has a living quality now."
With that, Ais lowered her lashes and looked at Koharu.
"I've watched you. Your blade has only one purpose — to kill."
Koharu's face darkened. To disparage her blade was the gravest insult you could offer a martial fanatic.
Her hand tightened on the hilt of Weeping Blood at her waist before she was even aware of it.
Ais paid no mind to the temper rising in Koharu and simply went on at her own pace.
"I used to be just like you."
"But now I understand — someone who knows nothing but killing, the moment they lose the thing they mean to kill, loses all direction."
"The same way a person, once killed, simply dies."
It sounded rather like stating the obvious. Koharu raised an eyebrow at it.
Ais only tilted her head and kept looking at her.
"That Yakumaru Jigen-ryu of yours."
"It packs every ounce of explosive force into the single instant the blade leaves the sheath."
"That drives every nerve and muscle in your body to a locked, snapping-taut limit."
"But if you could add this — a sense of rhythm synced to the weapon's breathing—"
As she spoke, Ais tapped the blade twice with a finger.
"When you draw, don't just rigidly force the power out."
"Feel instead every node of the blade's breath."
"Let the bursting force, at the very moment it peaks, keep a margin to catch its breath — like a step drawn back."
"If you can just hold on to that half a breath—"
"—then perhaps, once your first cut misses, you won't be left so utterly at a loss."
For Ais — a wooden thing who normally couldn't squeeze out a complete sentence in half a day — stringing together a speech this long was nothing short of unprecedented.
Having finished, Ais fell silent and stood quietly where she was.
Koharu stood there too.
Granted, if she really could hold on to that faint, breath-catching pause at the very instant [Cloud Radiance] burst through the sound barrier, it truly might improve things…
And she'd only just tasted the physical transformation of Rank Sublimation.
With God's Grace, she genuinely could pull it off now.
But…
Watching Ais, Koharu's expression shifted through several changes.
"Hmph." Koharu crossed her arms and lifted her chin.
"You lecturing me on how to do my job?"
"No." Not the slightest awareness that she was being provoked crossed Ais's face; she blinked with total sincerity. "I'm only saying what I feel about it."
That blunt, unwitting straight jab — Koharu felt something clog up in her chest. She very nearly choked on the spot on that defenseless bit of plain truth.
Talking with someone this utterly incapable of sarcasm, this impossible to read, was frankly more exhausting than killing a hundred men.
"Forget it! What a load of nonsense — who wants to hear your lousy feelings anyway!"
With that, Koharu shot a vicious glare at the deadly-serious Ais, swung her arm hard, snatched up her black blade one-handed, and rose to leave — unwilling to spare the woman so much as one more look to the face.
Her footsteps slapped sharply against the flagstones.
But she'd gone only a few dozen meters before her stride stopped short.
Leaving Ais with a view of her back.
Then a stiff, sulky line came drifting back on the evening wind.
"Training continues tomorrow."
"You… keep coming to be my opponent."
That said, Koharu quickened her pace without a backward glance and strode off toward where the rest of the Haimer Familia were resting.
Ais stood where she was, watching Koharu's hurried, retreating back, and a scattering of light brightened in her golden eyes.
Then she gave the Sword of Despair a light spin in her hand and slid it back into the sheath at her waist.
"Mm." A soft, faint answer, meant for no ears but her own, drifted from her lips.
Then she turned and walked toward Riveria, waiting for her beneath a pillar on the far side.
This exchange — one that looked like a falling-out yet was in truth a mutual acknowledgment — had been heard, every word of it, by two figures standing on the second-floor balcony.
Gareth stroked his thick, bushy beard and let out a hearty little chuckle. "Now that's a rare sight."
"Not often you catch the girl going out of her way to strike up a conversation with someone."
"And pouring her heart out, no less, to talk over the knack of putting force behind a blade."
"That Lady Koharu Lord Haimer went to the trouble of bringing along today really has stirred back some of the drive Ais hasn't shown in ages."
"A good thing, that. Just like Lord Haimer said — it's competition that gives you the drive to climb."
Finn rested both hands on the railing before him and turned his head slightly.
Then, as if something had come back to him, Finn lowered his voice and asked his old comrade beside him,
"Come to think of it — after that opening form of Lady Koharu's…"
"The slash speed of a Lv.1, and even a Lv.5 couldn't be sure of dodging it."
"So what do you reckon — when the duel comes in a few days…"
"what are the odds Lord Haimer's brood beats our Second Company?"
At that, Gareth's smile faded.
As a dwarf warrior who'd clawed his way through the Dungeon for the better part of his life, he ran the girls' performance on the training grounds that day carefully back through his mind.
He sighed, and gave his answer with a touch of helplessness. "My take?"
"Ninety percent, at the very least."
Ninety percent. Coming from one of the three pillars of the Loki Familia, that was already a blunt verdict indeed.
After all, the Second Company's lineup — Raul, Anakity and the rest — were honest, genuine Lv.4s.
And yet here they were, thoroughly outmatched in the head-to-head crucible of a training bout by a handful of young newcomers who'd received their Grace only recently — not one of them even a full month in.
Finn caught it in the tone of the old partner he'd fought beside for over a decade — that note of a senior, faced with a new generation of monsters, driven to complete and utter submission.
Finn gave a helpless shrug of his own, a wry smile touching his lips.
"Only a ten percent chance, then…"
"For you to say a thing like that — I have to admit, this Familia of Lord Haimer's really is a pack of monsters through and through."
"In that case…" "all we can do is wish Raul and the others luck — hope they hold out on the field a while longer when the time comes, and don't lose too miserably."
Finn and Gareth exchanged a glance, then turned their eyes to the distant sky, slowly staining red with the sunset.
As the sun sank fully away, night settled over Orario.
The southeastern corner of Orario. — The Pleasure Quarter.
Within the Temple of the Divine Courtesan at the very heart of the Pleasure Quarter.
A great engraved brass censer set upon the floor spilled out an endless stream of dark violet smoke, laced with a heady, intoxicating scent.
Ishtar, one of the goddesses of beauty—
[Character Profile — Ishtar. CV: Honda Takako. The patron goddess of the [Ishtar Familia]. Said to be that other goddess of beauty, spoken of as standing shoulder to shoulder with Freya, the very incarnation of beauty in the labyrinth city. She possesses a voluptuous, sensual allure, and her desires carry turmoil into the city.]
—was reclining just then upon a broad couch draped in red velvet.
"Is it all arranged?" Ishtar's voice was husky.
On the flagstone floor, two steps out from the couch, knelt the [Ishtar Familia]'s "Fair Heroine," Aisha Belka.
Her right leg was bent, one knee to the ground, her head bowed, long black hair curtaining the side of her face.
She was in the midst of reporting to Ishtar where she lounged on the couch.
"Lady Ishtar, the Evilus remnants we brought in have marched through the nights these past days, and they've all now secretly reached the designated position and stand ready."
"Only…" Aisha paused.
"You've hit a snag?" Ishtar's amethyst eyes opened.
"Yes." Aisha bowed her head again. "Those blood-on-the-blade types have caught wind of the Haimer Familia's fearsome name too."
"Their leader just sent word."
"He says… the targets are, after all, members of the Haimer Familia — that newly appointed Constable who can kill freely in Orario these days. The fee they agreed on before, they now want tripled, or they walk."
"Crash—!"
The moment the words were out, Ishtar flew into a rage, her right hand clenching hard.
Then, without a shred of restraint, she hurled the exquisite golden goblet in her grip — brimming with wine — smashing it against the hard stone wall.
The magnificent gold cup crumpled and warped on impact, and the costly wine it held sprayed everywhere and ran down. Red as blood.
"Triple?!"
"These reckless wretches dare to loot a burning house too!"
Ishtar sat upright, her exquisite features twisting into something savage.
But curse as she might, she truly had no other choice now. As things stood, she'd been driven to the edge of a cliff.
If she didn't secure the strength to fight back, and fast, then once the other side came knocking, everything she'd built — all she'd poured her heart into across Orario and the whole Lower World — would be finished, every bit of it.
That was something she could never, ever tolerate.
"Give it to them!" Ishtar ground her back teeth, forcing the decision out through them one word at a time.
"Never mind triple! Even if they jack up the price later — five times, give it to them! Just let them take the money and do the job right!"
"Understood." Aisha held her one-knee kneel.
She hesitated a full few seconds before asking the question she cared about most, the one buried deepest in her chest.
"Lady Ishtar, Sanjouno Haruhime's ritual…" "when do we move on it?"
"Wait." On this question, Ishtar drew a deep breath, let her tensed body ease, and settled lazily back against the velvet cushions once more.
The corners of her vividly rouged lips slowly drew apart to reveal a cold smile.
"I'm not paying those sewer hyenas to eat for free."
"Didn't the papers say the Haimer Familia and the Loki Familia set the terms — beat the Loki Familia's Second Company to win the right to join the First Company's expedition into the deep floors?"
"The moment they beat the Loki Familia's Second Company, they're bound to plunge straight down into the Dungeon on expedition with the First Company."
"Set those sewer hyenas to plant a great store of high-powered explosives on the designated floor."
"Then, once Haimer and that pack of insufferably arrogant whelps of his leave Orario and descend deep into the Dungeon with the Loki Familia,"
"we simply detonate the charges."
Ishtar's lips curled with satisfaction.
"Even if the blast doesn't kill them — set off a wide span of the Dungeon's rock strata and the Dungeon itself will react."
"A monster rampage."
"With a crisis of that scale striking their own Familia, neither he nor Loki will have any attention to spare for what's happening on the surface."
"And then we hold the ritual outright, and offer Sanjouno Haruhime up as a sacrifice to the Killing Stone!"
"But—" "the whole thing hinges on not a single link in the chain going wrong in the meantime."
"Aisha. Do you understand?"
With that, Ishtar shot a glare at Aisha where she remained.
"…As you command." A patron god's order left no room for haggling.
Aisha answered woodenly, then rose and strode out of the chamber.
The heavy, ornate brass doors swung shut behind her.
In the corridor, once she'd left the chamber, Aisha's steps gradually slowed, until at last she simply stopped.
She turned her head and glanced at the sealed metal door, an unusual complexity showing in her eyes.
For someone like her, pity ought to have been a luxury of an emotion. And yet.
The moment she thought of that renard girl — forever trembling in some corner, and yet still cradling a hero's dream — a dull ache stirred within Aisha.
Aisha rubbed hard at her throbbing brow.
These past years had been like living in hell.
For the sake of that little renard girl, she had used her standing in the [Ishtar Familia] to drive off the vile customers time and again, more times than she could count.
She had even, several years back, to buy time against Ishtar's sacrifice, gone so far as to concoct a clumsy pretext — picking a deliberate fight and, in the confusion, shattering the massive Killing Stone that had been assembled with such difficulty at the time.
The price of enraging a patron god had been savage.
The goddess Ishtar had not only used [Charm] on her, breaking her spirit so she could never again defy her orders,
but had later had her dragged straight into the dungeon cells, where that twisted toad of a woman, Frunyi, strung her up with a barbed, poisoned whip and tortured her alive for three days and three nights.
Skin split, flesh tore, blood ran everywhere.
Even now — even after she'd drawn on the Familia's resources for a full recovery under the highest grade of healing magic — the old wounds still ached faintly whenever the weather turned gray and wet.
This was all she could do.
Now the Killing Stone had been gathered anew, complete once more.
And Ishtar had handed down an ultimatum to everyone, Aisha included: not one person was to make a single mistake.
The life left to that little renard girl in this world could now be counted only in days.
"Haah…" At the thought, in the darkness, came Aisha's sigh — brimming with deep helplessness, weariness, and powerlessness.
Aisha turned her head aside. Her fringe fell forward, hiding most of her face.
The light in the corridor was too dim to make out her expression.
She pulled herself together, her pace much quicker now, and walked straight for the end of the corridor, her figure soon vanishing into the deeper passage on the far side.
As it happened, not long after Aisha had gone — a dozen or so seconds later — the door to the chamber where the goddess Ishtar sat was pushed open once more.
This time, though, the one shoving through was, naturally, no lithe and shapely battle-courtesan.
Rather, a hulking body of over two meters squeezed its way in.
The shadow at the doorframe swelled several times over in an instant, blotting out the candlelight spilling in from outside.
A pair of frog-like, bulging eyes glinted with a murky, dull-yellow light.
She wore a green vest, the fabric stretched taut and bulging by the flesh beneath, as though the threads might snap the next second.
The pink sash at her waist cinched into her belly, forcing the fat out in stacked, stomach-turning rolls of heavy folds.
The newcomer was none other than the captain of the [Ishtar Familia], the Lv.5 "Man-Killer," Frunyi Jamil!
On catching sight of the goddess Ishtar, Frunyi strode into the room.
Her thick, heavy lips split wide to bare a row of yellowed teeth.
With the same motion, she kicked aside the wreckage of the smashed gold cup Ishtar had hurled to the floor moments before.
The gold rolled across the stone tiles with a clinking, clattering ring.
"Lady Ishtar." Frunyi spoke slowly, a note of gloating in her voice.
"That fool Aisha — when she came out of here just now, her face was ashen. Looks to me like she's got a whole belly full of resentment over your decision to sacrifice Sanjouno Haruhime!"
Because she had always fancied herself possessed of supreme beauty — enough to bewitch any man who laid eyes on her, beauty she reckoned surpassed even a goddess's — she had doused herself in a whole medley of perfumes.
That thick, pungent reek rushed straight at the red velvet couch.
As Frunyi drew near, Ishtar — reclined on the soft cushions — felt the corner of her eye twitch, and the instant that acrid smell hit her, she raised a hand at once and pinched the sides of her nose shut between a scarlet-lacquered forefinger and thumb.
But the smothering stench was simply too choking; even with her nose plugged, it seemed to worm its way in through the very pores of her skin.
Though the urge to retch was already churning up inside her, Ishtar had no choice now but to swallow her disgust and hold steady the poise befitting a patron god.
She shifted on the couch and adjusted the way she sat.
The orange-red shawl draped over her shoulders slipped down a stretch, baring a slender collarbone and a broad sweep of skin.
"How long were you standing at that door, eavesdropping?"
Ishtar knotted her brows, her eyes sweeping over Frunyi, her thin lips parting and closing slowly.
"Not long." Frunyi lumbered forward on heavy steps, halting about three paces in front of the couch, and gave a careless shrug of those shoulders piled with slabs of fat. "Just happened to catch that bitch Aisha slinking out like a whipped dog, all the soul gone out of her, that's all."
With that, Frunyi's great mouth split into a grin.
"However high that one usually holds her tail, that's just how wretched she looked just now."
"And Lady Ishtar, from the state of her coming out — that Aisha's still fretting over that little fox we've got locked up in the cage."
"Something that obvious — do I really need you making a special trip to point it out to me?"
At that, Ishtar's hand shot out and slammed down hard on the little wooden table beside her that held the wine jug, the blow jolting several glistening purple grapes off it to roll onto the carpet.
"It's been years!" "Her urge to protect that little fox has long since been carved plain as day into that sour face of hers!"
Ishtar clenched her teeth.
"If it weren't for the fact that, back then, she actually dared to trade on the scrap of leniency I showed her — dared to shatter the Killing Stone at the critical moment!"
"If I hadn't spared her on account of combat strength barely worth keeping around…"
"I'd have had her skinned alive long ago and hung from the highest spire of the Temple of the Divine Courtesan to dry in the wind for three whole months!"
"Yes, quite so." Frunyi chimed in, her yellow toad-eyes rolling twice as she tilted that fat head.
Two fingers, thick as little radishes, pinched together against each other.
"Truth be told, when it comes to that whipping I gave her back then, even now, thinking back on it, I feel like I never got quite enough."
As if savoring the memory of some rare delicacy, Frunyi licked her lips.
"Strung her up a full three days and three nights back then."
"Flogged her till there wasn't a patch of unbroken skin on her — and still couldn't beat that foul temper out of her."
"A tough bone to gnaw, that one."
"Enough." Ishtar raised a gold-braceleted arm and pressed it down, cutting off Frunyi's reverie of cruelty.
"Frunyi, I've no time right now for the private grudges you lot carry among yourselves."
Ishtar's tone hardened.
"However much longer this thorn called Aisha stays lodged in the flesh — it no longer matters."
"What's urgent, the one thing that matters most, is only this—"
"Keep a close watch on Sanjouno Haruhime for me."
"The moment Sanjouno Haruhime is successfully offered to that Killing Stone,"
"my Familia will instantly gain a whole batch of Lv.3 and Lv.4 fighters who can be raised a full rank on the spot!"
Ishtar fixed her gaze on Frunyi.
"Even you, as captain,"
"could, with the ritual's boost, reach the threshold of that Lv.6 you've dreamed of night and day!"
Lv.6! At that word — the threshold that had stubbornly barred her for so many years now had, at last, a hope of being crossed.
The look on Frunyi's face was one of boundless excitement.
Above all — once she leveled up to Lv.6, when that day came,
she could grind under her heel every last one of those men who ordinarily looked down their noses at her, who even scorned her!
Not only that — she could haul every adventurer who fancied themselves a fine fighter, human or elf or beastfolk alike, into her private underground torture chamber.
Pump them mercilessly full of the most potent aphrodisiac, then straddle them and listen as they wailed themselves to death under the torment of the drug taking hold.
The images alone were enough to set her breathing heavy.
"Wonderful! Wonderful, Lady Ishtar!"
Frunyi took a great step forward, her huge bulk pressing a couple of inches closer to the red velvet couch again.
Seeing Frunyi loom in once more, Ishtar shrank hastily deeper into the cushions and threw up her gold-ringed right hand, palm out, to bar the way before her.
"Stop." Ishtar cut in to halt her.
"Get that drool of yours under control before it spills, and don't go dripping it all over my priceless carpet."
Ishtar settled back firmly against the red cushions.
"Since you know Aisha's mind so well,"
"then over these next few days, you keep your eyes locked on her for me!"
"If she dares, at this critical juncture before the sacrifice, go making eyes at anyone in secret, or shows the faintest sign of meaning to obstruct the ritual from the shadows…"
At that, Ishtar's voice broke off with a vicious pause.
She extended one slender finger, raised it slowly to her own throat, and mimed a clean, decisive horizontal slash.
"Kill her."
"Before the ritual is safely underway, I will not allow a single reckless moth flitting about to ruin my grand design."
"No matter who it is!"
"Leave it to me, Lady Ishtar!"
"If she so much as stirs the slightest breath of wind,"
"I'll see to it personally — twist her limbs one by one into twists of fried dough."
"And then string her up again, just like before, and flog her good and hard—"
"Hahaha." At the thought, Frunyi's mouth split wide and she burst into loud, excited laughter.
____
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