Chapter 92: A Toast to Love!
By the time Shirazawa woke up again, dusk was already fast approaching. Ariel and the others had headed out to the city outskirts for training and hadn't returned yet.
Inside the room, Sael, who had been left behind to protect the duo, pulled out a selection of rather suggestive clothes and tried to get Shiro to try them on. Unsurprisingly, Shiro shut down the idea with absolute seriousness. She had always preferred simple, modest attire. Even though Sael harbored no malice and was purely indulging a hobby, Shiro genuinely disliked wearing anything too exposing. She needed to maintain her dignity, her elegance, her regal, aloof image... In short, she loved plain clothes and detested exposure.
"..." Sael shrugged helplessly, eventually switching to a long-sleeved dress for her to wear.
Sitting in front of the vanity mirror, Shiro looked at her reflection, a trace of anxiety flitting between her brows. She had also been trying to channel the divine power inside her body, but the results were thoroughly disappointing. She had spent hours focusing, yet couldn't detect even a single microscopic trace of energy. Without active mental capacity, she simply couldn't perceive any source of power. Going from one to two was simple, but going from zero to one was harder than ascending to heaven.
Shiro knitted her elegant brows; she desperately needed to reclaim her strength as quickly as possible, whether it was to face the impending hurdles on their journey or to eventually scheme a counterattack against that wretched D.
"Shiro," Shirazawa called out softly. His voice was exceptionally gentle, seemingly carrying a peculiar charm.
When it came to noticing Shirazawa waking up, nobody was more ecstatic than Sael. "Brother~ wear~" She eagerly handed over the skimpy outfit she had originally tailored for Shiro, her eyes gleaming with profound hope, showing just how exceptionally confident she was in her newly crafted masterpiece.
"..." Staring at the garments in front of him, Shirazawa was entirely speechless. What in the absolute hell was a camisole combined with a micro-miniskirt? Is it remotely appropriate for a grown man to wear this?
Ultimately, Sael tucked the clothes away with a face full of immense disappointment, leaving them for her own future wardrobe. Shirazawa silently grumbled a bit before putting on a long white dress identical to Shiro's. *Look, I don't have a cross-dressing fetish. This is entirely for the sake of camouflage and safety. Yes, exactly. Safety first.*
Watching this entire scene unfold from the sidelines, Shiro couldn't help but burst into quiet amusement. She stood up with a soft smile and took Shirazawa's hand, leading him out of the room. Little Sael quietly trailed behind them, flawlessly executing her role as a bodyguard.
Downstairs in the dining room.
Under the crude, vulgar gazes of the local adventurers, Shirazawa ordered a massive spread of gourmet delicacies. Because Shiro was wearing her hood, the absolute focus of the entire room converged entirely on Shirazawa's face.
"Damn, what a stunning woman."
"Such a shame she's a total ironing board."
"Yeah, flat as a board and absolutely no curves from behind either. Tsk, what a waste of a gorgeous face."
Hearing the crude commentary rippling through the tavern, the veins on Shirazawa's forehead aggressively pulsed. *Son of a bitches, every last one of you better remember this day. The moment I reclaim my strength, you're all dead meat.*
"Hehehe~" Shiro secretly covered her mouth, taking immense delight in his misery. A clad-in-a-dress Shirazawa possessed a beauty that far surpassed his past self. Not only did he easily captivate the rough adventurers, but even Shiro found him incredibly pretty to look at.
"Shiro, care for... a small sip of wheat beer?" Shirazawa's eyes flashed with a highly calculating, mischievous light. While Ariel and the others were away, he needed to trigger her awakening immediately to prevent any further complications down the road.
"Mmm..." Shiro hesitated. She couldn't shake the feeling that Shirazawa was up to no good. *Is he deliberately trying to make me look ridiculous in public? Yeah, that must be it. Ab-so-lutely not!* She instantly shook her head in refusal; making an absolute fool of herself from being blindingly drunk would be mortifying.
"It's totally fine, just one sip. A single tiny sip won't hurt." Shirazawa used a deeply coaxing tone as he raised the wooden mug, bringing it right up to her cherry-blossom lips. He knew her exact tolerance level: a single sip was a one-way ticket to blackout city; there was absolutely no way her system could withstand the alcohol.
At this exact moment, Shirazawa felt like an absolute demon. However, for the ultimate sake of getting Shiro to awaken her divinity, he was entirely willing to sacrifice his moral code.
Shiro: "???" *Aze has changed. He used to be so sweet, he was never this wicked before.* Still, it was just a tiny sip, so it shouldn't cause a massive disaster, right?
Right as she was about to part her lips to take a taste, a thunderous roar erupted from the entrance.
"You absolute bastard, what the hell do you think you're doing to Shiro?!"
Accompanied by Ariel's furiously high-pitched screech, the Demon Lord forcefully sprinted into the dining room and delivered a ferocious kick straight toward Shirazawa.
"Eh?"
"Wait, it's not what you think–"
*BANG!*
Completely lacking the reflexes to dodge, Shirazawa took the brunt of the kick squarely in the chest, flying backward and slamming flat onto the floorboards. Ariel aggressively stomped her foot right onto his sternum, glaring down at him with puffed-up, outraged cheeks. "Spit it out! What were you trying to pull just now?!"
The moment she walked in, she had witnessed Shirazawa leaning over Shiro like a textbook street thug, wearing a profoundly shady expression. He was definitely plotting something foul.
At this point, Shirazawa was entirely stripped of any viable defense. He couldn't exactly look her in the eye and explain that a simple sip of alcohol would instantly restore Shiro's cataclysmic baseline strength. A concept that absurd was fundamentally impossible to explain. Even if he chose to tell Ariel the absolute truth, would she actually believe it? The answer was a resounding no. *Drinking alcohol can unlock godhood? Who are you trying to scam?!*
Even if she did somehow buy into the logic, how on earth was he supposed to explain the source of his information? Blame it on a secret tip from D? Stop joking around. Shiro had undoubtedly overheard the contents of that late-night phone call, which was exactly why she had been throwing a quiet tantrum. After so many days, he wasn't dense enough to miss that connection. On top of that, D had made it explicitly clear during the call that these trigger mechanisms were entirely unique to the individual. If even the supreme Evil God didn't know the exact details, where did this newly ascended novice god obtain such precise intelligence?
*Dammit, of all the times to return, they just had to walk through the door at this exact second.*
"Cough, cough!" Shirazawa coughed violently a few times, speaking with immense, dramatic difficulty. "It was... a beautiful, tragic romance that caused me to plunge into the abyss... For Shiro's sake, I have... completely surrendered to my inner darkness."
"Huh?" Ariel's face went entirely blank. *What kind of bizarre narrative is this?* "A romance... caused your moral downfall?" She stared down at him with deep suspicion. "Brother, are you genuinely certain you aren't pulling my leg right now?" She wasn't buying a single syllable. Men never uttered a single word of truth when cornered.
"The heavens and earth can bear witness to my devotion~!"
"Officer! I swear I am a thoroughly upstanding, law-abiding citizen!"
"Uh..." Ariel's mouth twitched with absolute violence, suddenly overcoming a raging urge to beat Shirazawa to a pulp. "This brand of garbage rhetoric meant to swindle naive young girls might work flawlessly on a total blockhead like Sophia, but I am absolutely not falling for it. Am I right, Shiro?"
Ariel turned her head toward the side, fully intending to seek validation from the girl. Instead, she witnessed an entirely baffling sight–
A massive cloud of visible steam was aggressively erupting from the top of Shiro's head, her expression completely dazed and woozy.
"Hmm?" Ariel blinked rapidly. This specific reaction was... "Shiro, are you alright?" She hurriedly reached out to support her, her voice laced with immense panic.
"Lo... Love... It is indeed... true love..." Shiro's cheeks flushed a spectacular shade of crimson, murmuring in a thoroughly slurred, incoherent stammer. Her rational mind had completely dissolved, leaving her entirely lost in a beautiful, intoxicating wonderland.
Ariel was thoroughly dumbfounded. Staring at Shiro's bright red face, a bizarre sensation of impending doom welled up deep within her heart. "This girl is completely beyond saving..."
"Hehehe..."
The current Shiro behaved exactly like her textbook drunken self. Ariel instinctively looked down at the table. "Wait... Where did the alcohol go?"
"Oh crap!!"
An unspeakable, terrifying premonition simultaneously gripped everyone's hearts–especially Merazophis, who was watching the drama from the side. His neck suddenly began throbbing with a phantom, agonizing ache.
"To celebrate the absolute grandeur of our magnificent love... BOTTOMS UP!!"
Shiro aggressively grabbed the wooden mug, single-handedly kicked the entire dining table clear across the room, flipping it entirely over, and threw her head back to violently chug the contents down her throat with an aura of unmitigated, heroic bravado.
*BOOM!*
As the liquid cascaded down her throat, it felt like scorching, molten lava searing through every microscopic inch of her flesh, instantly sending a violent surge of adrenaline through her entire circulatory system. Shiro's entire frame trembled intensely, feeling as though her very soul had broken free from its mortal vessel in that singular fraction of a second, soaring straight past the highest heavens.
"Hahaha! SPECTACULAR!!"
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