"Some crooked merchant probably hoodwinked him into buying it as high-grade incense."
"But with a little processing, this stuff makes a special lure powder. Works wonders on the monsters in the Dungeon, so I have to finish with it before dawn."
Hestia looked at Haimer's profile, at that absolute focus, then at the stone he was scraping into powder. Something clawed at her insides like a cat. She set her teeth.
"Then... I'll stay and help too!"
Hestia thrust out her chest, refusing to be brushed aside.
"It's just grinding a rock. I am a goddess, after all-"
She never got to finish.
Haimer stood and simply extended his index finger.
The long finger planted itself against Hestia's forehead without ceremony and pushed her a good half-meter back toward the study door.
"Pass."
Haimer went on poking at her head as he spoke. "Unless you want this stone to kick in without warning and break that vow you swore as a Virgin Goddess to stay chaste for life, be a good girl and go to bed early."
"I've got a lot to get through tonight, so I won't be coming back to the room to sleep."
"Wagh! I'm not here to make trouble! Did you forget everything I said today-"
Forehead still under his finger, Hestia kept squirming, but she had no answer for Haimer's strength, and she was shoved and herded out into the corridor.
"Bang."
The redwood door shut in her face without mercy.
Hestia stood in the corridor clutching her white pillow, glaring at the closed door.
The wall lamps down the hall gave off a dim yellow glow that stretched her small shadow long across the floor.
"Insufferable!"
Hestia stamped her foot and slammed the pillow to the floor with a muffled thud.
And just then, voices came from the stairwell at the far end of the corridor.
Kikakujou Mary and Rei came up together.
The two of them had soaked a while longer in the bath and traded a few private confidences, so they were coming out very late.
The moment they rounded the corner of the second-floor landing, they spotted Hestia in navy pajamas, hugging an oversized pillow and muttering to herself in front of the study door.
"What's so fascinating about grinding a lousy rock! And that Wallen-something-kun, too - of everything he could have sent, he sends a weird thing like that!"
Hestia complained, grinding her heel into the pillow on the floor.
Kikakujou Mary raised an eyebrow and walked over.
"What's wrong, Lady Hestia?"
Hestia jumped, turned, saw who it was, and deflated like a punctured ball.
"Who else but Haimer."
She pursed her lips and looked at the study door, a trace of resentment lingering in her eyes.
"He's shut himself in the study fiddling with that stupid rock. Says he's going to grind it all night. Then he decided I was in the way and threw me out."
"All night?" Rei's ears caught the word, and worry flickered through her blue eyes.
"Kami-sama has been dealing with one thing after another for days now. Can his body really take staying up like this?"
"Who knows with him."
Hestia pouted, picked the pillow back up and beat the dust off it.
"Once he digs his heels in, nothing anyone says gets through. Fine. I'm going to bed myself. He can do as he likes."
With that, Hestia spun around in a huff, slippers slapping the boards as she marched off to the master bedroom and shut the door with a bang - as though she had long since decided the master bedroom was her room.
The corridor went quiet again.
Rei stayed where she stood, though, her gaze resting on that closed study door, and murmured under her breath.
"If Kami-sama really is going to stay up all night, he's bound to get thirsty."
Kikakujou Mary, standing beside her, took in every bit of Rei's reaction.
Watching Miss Rei - so plainly worried, yet so cowed by the question of her birth that she never dared step forward - stirred a complicated mix of feelings in Mary.
Truthfully, next to an opponent as aggressive as Amou Kirukiru, someone like Rei, careful about everything, weighing it over and over before she even dared show concern, was the sort of rival in love it was impossible to raise any guard against.
After all - lovers who could never be together because of birth, able to convey their feelings only through quiet, stolen glances.
A setup like that carried more than a little of the tragic romance novels she used to devour.
At that thought, Mary let out a soft sigh and reached over to pat Rei on the shoulder.
"If it bothers you that much, why not brew a pot of tea and take it in to Kami-sama yourself, Miss Rei?" Mary suggested.
Rei went rigid and whipped her head around, her blue eyes full of helpless panic.
"I- I can't. I can't even hold a cup steady..."
She looked down at the pair of wings that stood in place of her arms, and her voice sank away.
Mary folded her arms.
"How do you know you can't if you've never tried? Come on, to the kitchen. I'll teach you, Miss Rei."
Rei tried to beg off, but Mary steered her by the shoulders down the stairs.
In the kitchen on the manor's ground floor the stove fire had already burned out, and only the Magic Stone lamps gave off their soft light.
Mary dug a tray out of the cupboard, along with a white porcelain tea set and a small jar of flower tea meant to keep one alert.
"Watch closely."
As she spoke, Mary set water to boil, warmed the pot, and measured out the leaves with practiced ease.
"The water doesn't need to be very hot. Seventy degrees is plenty for this kind of flower tea."
Rei stood to one side, eyes fixed on every movement Mary made, terrified of missing a single detail.
Hot water went into the pot, the pale yellow tea turning in slow circles inside as a clean floral fragrance spread through the room.
Mary set the pot and two empty cups squarely on the tray.
"There."
She turned to Rei. "Now it's your turn."
Rei swallowed and stepped up to the counter, nerves showing in every line of her.
She spread her wings tentatively, easing the tips down onto either side of the tray.
"Slowly. Hold the balance."
Mary coached from beside her.
Rei bit down and put a little strength into her wings.
The tray wobbled up off the tabletop.
"Ah!"
The water sloshed, Rei flinched at the motion, and the tray nearly went over.
"Don't panic."
Mary had been watching the whole time; her hand shot out ahead of the fall and caught the rim of the tray's base where it had tipped, holding it steady.
"Mind how the weight sits on the feather tips. Tea is liquid - one big movement and the balance shifts."
The two of them wrestled with it in the kitchen for a good fifteen minutes before Rei finally got a passable grasp of carrying a tray with her wings.
The posture looked awkward, and she had to walk with extra care, but at least the tea would stay in the pot.
"Thank you, Miss Mary." Rei held the tray and thanked her, cheeks red.
Mary only waved a hand.
"Come on, I'll go up with you. Wouldn't want you slipping on the stairs, Miss Rei."
And so the two of them climbed back up to the second floor.
The night had deepened. The corridor was hushed, with only a thin bar of light showing beneath the study door.
Rei carried the tray, each step taken as though the floor might give way.
Mary walked at her side, her gaze on Miss Rei's profile, faintly flushed with nerves, and sighed to herself.
Did this count as saddling herself with a troublesome rival in love? Buying herself grief for nothing?
Mary smiled at her own expense.
Still, watching Rei try so hard, she found she didn't mind it. This was fine too.
And Kami-sama was never destined to belong to only one of them.
At that thought, Mary let the matter go.
But when they stopped in front of the study door, Rei let out a small sigh anyway.
With both wings occupied holding the tray, she had no way to free a hand to knock. All she could do was turn her head and look at Mary with pleading eyes.
Mary saw it and gave in.
"Knock, knock, knock."
But after the knocking, the two of them waited outside the door for nearly a full half minute.
Not a sound of the expected answer came from inside the study.
"Kami-sama?"
Mary tried calling out.
Still nothing.
"Could it be that... after handling so many things one after another, Kami-sama was simply too tired and fell asleep without noticing?"
Rei offered the guess in a small voice.
Mary's brows drew together at once.
It didn't add up.
Kami-sama had thrown Lady Hestia out barely half an hour ago. There was no possible way he had fallen so deeply asleep so fast that a knock wouldn't reach him.
So she took hold of the handle and pressed it gently down.
"Click."
The lock hadn't been thrown. The door swung open a crack.
Light from inside the study spilled out across the corridor.
The two of them pushed it wider and stepped carefully in.
Haimer was not asleep.
He sat behind the desk with his back to the door, a bright Magic Stone lamp burning beside him, his whole attention on the desktop. A carving knife in one hand, he was easing the scraped powder into a specially made little vial.
His movements were so light that he hadn't registered anyone entering.
Rei carried the tray and slowed her steps as she came closer.
As the distance narrowed, a strange scent hanging in the air worked its way into both their noses.
The first breath of it meant nothing. But soon a thread of feverish heat began to spread quietly through them.
Mary wrinkled her nose and raised a hand without thinking to fan the smell away.
"What is that smell?" she muttered.
Haimer heard the voice. His hands stopped, and he turned around.
The sight of Kikakujou Mary walking in with Rei behind her, tray in her wings, brought him up short.
He capped the vial - more than half full of powder now - and sealed it tight.
"What are you two doing in here?"
"We saw Kami-sama was still working this late, so Miss Rei brewed a pot of tea especially for you." Mary pointed at the tray in Rei's wings.
Rei's wings trembled faintly as she reddened and strained to push the tray toward Haimer's desk.
"L-Lord Haimer, you've been working so long. Please, drink a little tea and wet your throat."
Haimer looked at the wings gripping the tray so laboriously, gold shading into blue, and then at Kikakujou Mary standing beside her.
With a sigh of resignation he half rose, reached out with both hands, and took the heavy tray from her.
"It's late. Thank you for coming all this way - I appreciate it."
As he spoke, Haimer dragged over a cloth and covered the leftover chips of dark red raw gemstone on the desktop, tucking them out of sight.
He had been careless, and he knew it.
To concentrate on grinding out the core layer of powder, and to keep any draft from scattering it, he had kept the windows shut the entire time.
Most of it had gone into the vial, but a fair amount of vapor off the raw gemstone had already collected in the sealed study.
And this was something that drew monsters from a wide radius - and worked just as well as an aphrodisiac on human beings.
Breathing in too much of it directly would be nothing but trouble.
Haimer's eyes swept over both their faces, checking their condition.
Mary seemed to have taken it deeper. Her pale cheeks, and even the skin running down her neck, had already flushed an unnaturally vivid rose.
Rei, by contrast, showed nothing beyond the slight redness her own nerves had put in her face.
Could it be that as a Siren among the Xenos, Rei's constitution carried a high resistance to this sort of thing?
Still - as long as Miss Rei was fine, a reaction as mild as Mary's could be put down with a cold shower or a dose of antidote.
Haimer let out a small breath.
"The residue in here is too thick. It's bad for you. Both of you, out first."
Even so, to head off an accident he had no choice but to chase them out.
And of course, the thing he feared was exactly the thing that came.
The words had barely left his mouth when the small piece of gemstone core beneath the cloth lit up with red light.
Under its influence, Mary's golden eyes swam with moisture; her body went soft and she slid down onto the carpet.
And Rei, who had seemed entirely unaffected, gave a sudden jerk of her wings the instant the red glow rose.
"Crash!"
The freshly poured cup of flower tea went straight over.
Clear tea ran across the desktop and dripped, drop by drop, onto the gemstone core under the cloth.
Water. The one crucial medium for triggering the aphrodisiac gemstone's extreme volatilization in full.
"Hissss-"
As the moisture soaked in, a wisp of pale red smoke curled off the surface.
Red light swallowed the entire study.
Haimer nearly lost it.
"You have got to be kidding me. What are the odds?"
But there was no time to marvel at his luck.
Fortunately, he kept a second contingency plan for exactly this kind of runaway situation.
His left hand yanked open the bottom solid-wood drawer on the left side of the desk and came out with a spare striking flint.
His right hand snatched the scraper off the desktop.
He crossed the two and dragged the edge hard across the stone.
"Skritch!"
A long streak of sparks born of that violent friction drew a bright golden line through the air and drove straight into the heart of the red mist rising off the desk.
Open flame.
On contact -
"Whoom!"
A wall of orange-yellow fire nearly half a meter high boiled up in the study, rolling heat before it.
The flames devoured the surrounding air, burning away in a heartbeat all the red smoke that hadn't yet spread wide, leaving only the smell of scorching behind.
The whole incident, from the moment it started to the moment the fire smothered it, took a few seconds at most.
And yet.
"ROOOAR!!!"
"What's happening!"
"Why have the monsters in the underground holding cells gone berserk all of a sudden?!"
The night over Orario tore open.
Toward the abandoned clock tower on West Main Street, a giant lizard sheathed in iron-gray scale armor punched through a stone wall. Its barbed tail swept across the wooden stalls along the roadside, splinters flying.
Deep in Daedalus Street, a two-headed wolf that had spent over a month chained by the neck tore free of its collar and threw back both heads in a howl.
These monsters had no business being on the surface.
But ever since the Haimer Familia paraded openly through the city and actually produced two beast adventurers, an undercurrent that could not stand daylight had risen in Orario. Familia after Familia began buying monsters in secret through Evilus, penning them in underground holding cells and quietly taming them to strengthen their fighting power.
As for the monsters kept in those cells, most had been taken alive in the Dungeon and smuggled up by the hands of the Ikelos Familia.
But now every one of them had gone mad.
Even in the wealthy districts where ordinary people lived.
A giant ape covered in silver fur went into a frenzy and smashed clean through the ceiling of its cell.
Rubble flew up out of the ground and into the fountain beside it, throwing water a full three meters into the air.
"All units, attention! First squad! Advance at speed!"
As reports of a large-scale monster riot on the surface came in from street after street, Shakti, out on night patrol, went taut with tension.
The dim yellow halo of the Magic Stone lamps fell at a slant across her clean, even features.
Her teeth were clenched, and the two deep furrows between her brows had knotted themselves into something close to a hard lock - proof enough of how grave this was.
A large-scale monster riot on the surface should not have been possible.
But right now there was no time to work out how it had happened.
Shakti gave her orders on the spot.
A rush of hurried footsteps, and a Chienthrope gendarme came charging out of a narrow alley, out of breath.
"Report! Situation at the bell tower on East Main Street!"
"The patrol just sent an emergency word - they saw a rock-shell manticore over five meters long come out into the open!"
Shakti's expression turned to ice.
"A manticore? That's a middle-floor creature! Which Familia's basement, exactly, did a thing like that crawl out of? Do they have a death wish?"
"The Mars Familia compound, reportedly! The containment they'd rigged up privately burst wide open and they've lost all control of it. They've abandoned every monster they had hidden in the water prison and run for it!"
"Those bastards!"
At that, Shakti drove the butt of her spear down onto the flagstones hard enough to strike sparks, and issued her orders without a moment's delay.
"Pass the word! Every gendarme on garrison duty is to be organized and pulled out for support immediately! Even the ones off rotation tonight - if they can still breathe, they pick up a weapon and assemble now!"
"Second, split off two men and get to Babel Tower at a run!"
"Tell them to activate the emergency protocol at once and seal the entrance to the first floor of the Dungeon for the time being. We cannot let what's down there come pouring up while we're in chaos!"
"Then send your fastest runners, separately - one to the Twilight Manor to notify the Loki Familia, one to Folkvangr for the Freya Familia. Carry my word: if they're willing to lend us people to put down tonight's mess, the Ganesha Familia will settle every loss and every payment in full afterward!"
"Understood!"
"Understood! Going now!" The Chienthrope gendarme nodded quickly, then turned and vanished into the dark streets.
Watching her subordinate's back disappear, Shakti found no calm in her deep blue eyes.
All of it had happened far too abnormally.
After all her years as captain of the gendarmes in Orario, after putting down countless stray monsters that had wandered up out of the Dungeon, she knew the basic habits of Dungeon monsters far too well.
____
👻🔥P-a-t-r-e-o-n: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Natsuki Subaru From Honkai: Star Rail to Re:Zero — new on The_Mikudayo
📚 40 chapters ahead over at Walnut-chan — your support is what pays for the translations
Help us hit our targets:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 free chapter for all