It took a while for Excalibur Ruler to calm down from its clear excitement, which led to another small problem. Ruler refused to enter any of Junichiro's many expanded pockets and pouches.
Any time he tried to place the sword in one, it vibrated in a rough way that almost made him think it was growling at him. He was honestly shocked at the sheer amount of personality the sword was showing as he couldn't recall it ever being all that important or well used in the canon. The only real use of it that he could recall was Arthur using it on Fenrir. So, for all he knew, this was its normal behavior.
Though he was pretty certain that the proximity of Avalon to the broken piece of Excalibur had something to do with Ruler's attitude. Either way, he'd ended up shape shifting Avalon back into a sheath and placing Ruler inside of it so they both hung from his waist. Only after sheathing Ruler inside of Avalon was he able to outfit the sword with the same type of aura suppression trinket that Avalon sported.
The rest of the underground cathedral was sadly bereft of any further treasures. All the pair found were rotten supplies that had likely once been cloth of some kind, crumbled paper that nothing could be retrieved from, and a dry well. They left the proper entrance unexplored as a quick scan showed it to be filled with various enchantments meant to test anyone trying to get inside of the cathedral.
Several showed they had lethal consequences for failure. With nothing left to explore, they left the way they arrived. Though Junichiro did take the time to fill in the hole he made for their entrance. Leaving it open would have just ruined the cathedral and it was such a nice place that doing so actually felt like a legitimate sin.
Between the flight to the mountains, the search, making the entrance, exploring the cathedral, and returning to the ATV the day was nearly over. With that being the case they retired to the trunk of the ATV for the night.
Junichiro took in the sight before him with a smile. It'd been a few days since he'd snagged Excalibur Ruler for himself and it was currently resting in a secure place within the trunk of the ATV. Avalon, meanwhile, had been relocated to somewhere it couldn't easily be taken from him, his heart.
Thanks to the ability of Avalon to shift into anything he could imagine, Junichiro had made it shift into a mechanical worm, dig its way into his chest, and then transform into a cage around his heart. The process was far from pleasant and rather painful, but the pain didn't last long as Avalon healed the damage it did near instantly.
Now the only way to take Avalon from him, was to overcome it's defensive and regenerative properties to kill him and forcefully take it. Something a god on the level of Apollon was incapable of. On top of that, all his concealing items helped hide the aura of Avalon making it near impossible to detect without stripping him practically naked.
Of course, that didn't mean he couldn't still be captured, held, and tortured into losing his mind and giving it up willingly. Junichiro was fully aware that he was only very powerful defensively. While the abilities such as Transparency and Rapidly would give him some help in a fight, they were nowhere near as powerful as the defensive enchantments and wouldn't help him against much stronger opponents.
For now, secrecy was his best option and only three living beings knew he had Avalon, Mittelt, Azazel, and himself. It would stay that way, for a while at least.
Junichiro glanced to his left where Mittelt was sitting next to him. The two racing style bucket seats of the ATV had been transfigured into a bench seat that allowed them to sit close together cuddled up. It was comfortable, but over the last few days of exploring Britain and seeing all the tourist-y sights, he'd realized that he had no future with Mittelt at all. While he'd been excited to see things like Buckingham Palace, Mittelt had found it all blasé and boring as she'd seen it all before.
Even now, as they cuddled in the air, invisible to everything and everyone below, watching a wonderful display of fireworks in front of Big Ben, she didn't look too excited or enthralled by the display. Junichiro, meanwhile, was having the time of his life as he fulfilled a desire he'd had in both lives and never fulfilled, seeing Big Ben in person.
Oh sure, it probably didn't seem like all that much to some, but to him it was a lot. He'd seen Big Ben in some of his favorite movies, even in animated cartoons, and always wanted to see it in person. He'd never had the money to really travel in his first life, having never even left the East Coast of the United States before his first death. In this life, not only did he have the money to travel, but he could make amazing vehicles to travel and explore in!
This vacation wasn't just about collecting a bunch of powerful artifacts and hoarding them to give him every advantage against his future enemies, it was also about seeing things he'd never seen and experiencing things he'd never experienced.
It was kind of a journey of self discovery type thing, maybe. Even if it wasn't, he had discovered he had very little of a future with Mittelt and thinking about it more deeply, he wasn't surprised.
For one, she was millenia old and he was beginning to realize what that meant for any kind of relationship. Even a millenia from now she would probably still consider him 'young.' For two, her job was to blatantly report everything he did to Azazel. Something he didn't begrudge her as he kept a lot of secrets and only let her know what he wanted her to know. For three, he still planned to join Rias' peerage and he was certain that would ruffle some feathers. Finally, the biggest issue he'd come to realize, he didn't know anyone but Mittelt really.
He'd spent all his time since moving to Kuoh with Mittelt and the occasional visit from Azazel thrown in since the soul eating Yokai thing. He literally had no other friends, not even acquaintances. He liked Mittelt because there was literally no one else in his life for him to like. He'd been so focused on other things that he hadn't realized just how alone and lonely he was.
Dating Mittelt was more a cry for help or an act of desperation than any real feeling of deep affection or attraction. He thought she was a great friend and they had some stuff in common, but it he'd had another other friends, that's all Mittelt would have remained, just a friend.
Which left him in the rather awkward position of needing to break up with her.
…
After the vacation was over.