"If you can still say the same thing after drinking this, then I'll hear you out."
Against the deepening orange-red of the setting sun.
Onigawara Rin and Inaba Tsukuyo stood shoulder to shoulder at the entrance of the alley.
Each gripped the hilt of their respective blades — [Black Crow] and [White Heron].
Blade tips angled toward the rough, uneven flagstones below, the metal edges catching the last of the evening light in cold, pale flashes.
The members of the Soma Familia who had spent years scraping along the bottom rungs of Orario may have been pitifully weak in an actual fight — but their ears for street intelligence were another matter entirely.
After all, for the past several days, the rumor had been making the rounds in every tavern in the city: the newcomers of the Haimer Familia had torn straight through the twelfth floor of the Dungeon on their very first day and ripped a Hellhound apart with their bare hands.
And the descriptions of their two leaders had spread along with it — one a petite girl with short black hair and a Hannya mask worn at an angle across her face; the other a girl with long silver hair that fell to her waist, who kept her eyes permanently closed.
The identifying features were far too distinctive. Anyone who had glanced at a Guild notice board or caught a snippet of tavern gossip could place them at a single glance.
"It's — it's those monsters from the Haimer Familia!"
One of the men, clutching a length of rusted iron bar, felt his pupils contract sharply. His legs moved before his mind could stop them — one involuntary step backward, until his spine met the damp brick of the alley wall with a dull thud.
The shaved-headed man at the front watched his companion flinch and ground his teeth, forcing himself to hold his nerve.
He tightened his grip on the short blade at his hip — its edge already worn to a curl in places — and stepped half a pace forward, trying to drag his voice up from somewhere and invoke the unwritten code of conduct that governed disputes between Familias in Orario.
"Don't push your luck!"
"Last time on East Main Street, you people stuck your noses in where they didn't belong — because of you, our guys got hauled off by the Ganesha Familia's patrol guards, and they're still sitting in a jail cell right now!"
"The Guild has standing rules — outsiders are absolutely forbidden from interfering in the internal affairs of another Familia!"
"This ugly little runt is one of ours — we discipline our own people, and that has nothing to do with you!"
"Don't think that just because you've made a name for yourselves in the Dungeon lately, you can run roughshod over this whole city. No matter how strong you are, you can't just go around trampling the unspoken rules that every Familia in Orario has agreed to live by!"
The shaved-headed man bellowed all of this at full volume, hunting for some kind of moral high ground to stand on — all while his calves shook uncontrollably beneath the tatty leather of his greaves.
Faced with this lengthy invocation of unwritten rules and customs.
Onigawara Rin didn't even bother opening her mouth to respond.
The only reply she offered was the sound of her wooden sandal slamming down onto the flagstone.
Crack.
The stone tile beneath her foot exploded outward in a starburst of cracks, grey fragments scattering in every direction and pinging off the alley walls.
In the same instant, her small frame erupted with a tremendous burst of kinetic force, and she launched herself forward at terrifying speed — directly at the cluster of Soma Familia members.
That velocity — the kind that compressed space itself — was something entirely beyond the reflexes of these low-rung adventurers who topped out somewhere around the Lv.1 threshold and had spent their careers bullying support workers.
"Wha —"
The shaved-headed man's pupils had barely begun to contract. He hadn't even managed to lift the arm holding his blade halfway into a defensive position.
Onigawara Rin was already in his face.
[Black Crow], blade and scabbard together, was held horizontally in her grip. Carried by the enormous momentum of her short-range charge, she drove it upward from below — straight into the shaved-headed man's stomach.
"Urgh—!"
A wretched, retching sound tore out of him.
The man's face crumpled in on itself with pain, his features twisting grotesquely as bile sprayed from his mouth. His feet left the ground entirely, his body arching backward, and he was launched rearward — nearly two and a half meters — crashing into a stack of old wooden crates.
The crates couldn't take the impact. They collapsed on the spot, shattered planks raining down with a cascading clatter, burying him completely beneath the debris, with only his two legs protruding from the wreckage, twitching without purpose.
The two men flanking him saw this and let out panicked cries, raising their short swords and spiked wooden clubs, attempting to converge on Rin from left and right.
Onigawara Rin pivoted on her right heel.
Her body slid sideways to dodge the short sword swinging down from the left. Simultaneously, she raised her left hand and drove a precise knife-hand strike into the side of that man's neck.
A clean crack of displaced vertebrae rang out in the narrow alley. The man's eyes rolled back, his body going limp as a rag doll and collapsing to the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
The man on the right, swinging the spiked club, fared no differently.
Without even turning her head, Rin read his position from instinct alone, raised her right leg backward, and drove her heel squarely into the side of his knee.
Crack.
The knee joint buckled in a direction knees were never meant to go. The man let out a screech of agony and hit the ground, clutching his ruined leg and writhing.
The whole thing happened in seconds. The front line had been obliterated.
Meanwhile.
A lanky man with a goatee, who had seen his opening, had circled around to Inaba Tsukuyo's left flank.
Both hands raised high, he swung a thick wooden club studded with rusted iron nails directly down toward Inaba Tsukuyo's shoulder — which appeared, from all outward signs, completely unguarded.
Inaba Tsukuyo kept her eyes closed. She simply tilted her head very slightly.
A gentle breeze stirred her silver hair. Her body glided a half-step to the right with unhurried ease.
The nail-studded club screamed through the air and passed within a hair's breadth of the red-and-white sleeve of her shrine maiden's robe, slamming into empty flagstone with a resounding crack that left the goateed man's hands ringing with numbing force.
In the precise instant the club struck the ground.
Inaba Tsukuyo's right hand took hold of [White Heron] by the middle of its hilt.
Her wrist flicked.
The white lacquered tip of the scabbard drove upward from below with perfect precision — directly into the goateed man's chin.
The force traveled up through his jaw, upper teeth and lower teeth meeting with violent, sudden impact. Several yellowed, browning teeth, along with a spray of saliva, flew from his mouth.
The goateed man didn't even manage a sound. The world went black, and he toppled straight backward, flat on his back against the stone, unconscious before he hit the ground.
…
Scarcely a dozen breaths from start to finish.
Of the nine men who had come at them with such blustering confidence, five were already sprawled across the damp floor of the alley, completely out of the fight.
The remaining three had already been broken by the sheer one-sided brutality of it. The colour drained completely from their faces. Whatever crude weapons they'd been carrying clattered from their fingers to the ground. Their knees went soft beneath them, and they stumbled steadily backward, every trace of willingness to fight snuffed out entirely.
But in the chaos of it all.
A lean, gangly man who had been posted at the far end of the alley as a lookout had, from the very beginning, stayed hidden behind a heap of reeking garbage sacks and never emerged.
Watching the front completely collapse, he gripped a short blade of rusty, notched iron.
Moving with painstaking quiet, pressing himself flat against the shadow of the wall, he slipped around without a sound to the blind spot directly behind Inaba Tsukuyo.
Inaba Tsukuyo had just dealt with the goateed man, and was — from his perspective — standing with her back fully turned to him.
The lookout clenched his teeth, raised the rusted iron blade in both hands, lunged forward two heavy steps, and drove it straight at Inaba Tsukuyo's back.
This entire scene was playing out in clear and perfect view of Lili, lying in the corner of the alley close enough to see everything.
Lili's face was a map of bruises. She had already fallen deep into despair.
She had endured years of beatings from these members of her own Familia. She had long since learned to bow her head and not fight back.
But when she saw this.
The timid little Pallum girl's chestnut eyes flew wide open.
From somewhere she didn't know, she found the strength to push through the screaming pain in her ribs and force herself upright. Her throat opened, and the warning tore out of her.
"Watch out — behind you!!"
But in truth, the warning wasn't needed at all.
Inaba Tsukuyo's profoundly enhanced senses — and the [Mind's Eye] she had gained upon reaching Lv.2 — had mapped the attacker's exact position in her mind the moment his foot first lifted to take that initial step.
However.
Inaba Tsukuyo had no intention of turning to block the attack herself.
Because.
Whoosh —
A sharp gust of parting air.
A long, lean right leg clad in black high-durability combat trousers swung around the corner from the blind angle and connected squarely with the ambusher's cheek.
BOOM.
The blunt, thunderous crack of impact detonated in the tight confines of the alley.
The bones of the ambusher's face shifted and deformed under the terrible explosive force, his jaw visibly dislocating to one side.
His entire body left the ground and traveled horizontally — parallel to the flagstones — rocketing across the alley toward the opposite wall.
He spun twice in mid-air, smashed through a cluster of old wooden barrels stacked against the wall, and finally struck the brickwork at the base of the wall back-first. His head lolled to one side, and he stopped moving entirely.
Deep red blood poured freely from his split forehead and shattered nose, seeping into every crack between the flagstones beneath him.
Amou Kirukiru brought her right leg back smoothly and touched down, straightening to her full height.
Against the slant of late afternoon sun cutting into the alley.
She rolled her neck with casual indifference — a faint, dry crackle of bones adjusting.
…
Then.
Amou Kirukiru swept those long, narrow eyes coldly across the Soma Familia members groaning on the ground.
After that, her gaze drifted downward — settling on Lili, crumpled against the alley wall.
She looked at this Pallum girl: clothes in tatters, face caked in dirt and dried blood, a sprawl of heavy packs and scattered tools lying all around her.
Amou Kirukiru's brow lifted very slightly. A look of unconcealed contempt settled into her expression.
"I thought the two of you had dropped everything and gone sprinting into this alley because you'd found something that might at least give me a decent warm-up."
Amou Kirukiru turned her head toward Onigawara Rin, who had already sheathed her blade and fully stood down from combat mode, her voice carrying a flat note of boredom.
"After all that fuss — the two of you made this much of a production out of it — for this one little Pallum?"
During the few days she had spent in the Lower World, Amou Kirukiru's remarkable adaptability had given her a thorough working knowledge of the common races she encountered daily on the streets of Orario.
She shifted her gaze back to Lili, eyes moving from the girl's thin limbs all the way up to her hunched, trembling shoulders.
"Weak."
"Doesn't even have the strength to fight back."
"Something this utterly powerless — trampled underfoot and exploited in a city built on violence? Isn't that just the way things naturally go?"
Amou Kirukiru's words were blunt as a hammer, with nothing to soften them — a pure, unvarnished expression of the might-makes-right worldview she had internalized to the bone.
Hearing this verdict delivered without a flicker of mercy.
Lili, lying on the ground, felt her chestnut eyes — dulled by years of suffering and oppression — go marginally wider.
Her hands rested at her sides. She clenched them tight. Her nails bit into her palms.
She wanted to shout back. She wanted to say she hadn't chosen this, that she wanted to expose the darkness of the Soma Familia for what it was.
But.
The words churned in her throat, rolling back and forth — and not a single one would come out.
Because what Kirukiru had said was the truth.
In Orario, the Dungeon City, a low-ranked supporter like her — someone who couldn't fight, who survived by scraping together scraps and copper coins through trickery and scavenging off monster carcasses — was, by the nature of this world, the most pitiable creature at the very bottom of the pyramid.
She truly had no power whatsoever to resist violence like this.
If these people hadn't stepped in, the only outcome waiting for her today would have been broken limbs, followed by being dumped in a drainage ditch to fend for herself.
She couldn't even summon any anger toward Amou Kirukiru.
All she could do was squeeze her fists tighter and turn all that rage inward — at herself, for being this helpless, this powerless, this easy to break.
*
Onigawara Rin, seeing this, stepped forward two paces and planted herself between Amou Kirukiru and Lili — not quite tall enough to look Kirukiru level in the eye, but unwavering all the same, meeting her gaze without a flinch.
"Stop projecting your heartless law-of-the-jungle philosophy onto everyone else."
Onigawara Rin lifted her chin and held Amou Kirukiru's gaze without yielding an inch.
"Kami-sama taught us last night."
"The strength He gave us — strength beyond what ordinary people could ever hope to reach — wasn't given so that we could look away from injustice by calculating whether it's worth the trouble."
"If we possess this power, and still choose to stand aside and do nothing — to watch the weak be crushed, and simply let it happen —"
"Then that is the greatest desecration possible of the Divine Blood Kami-sama poured into us."
"We act on what our hearts tell us. We don't need to factor in whatever stupid unspoken rules Orario runs on."
Onigawara Rin delivered every word of Haimer's declaration back at Amou Kirukiru, without softening a syllable.
Hearing Rin invoke Haimer's teaching.
Amou Kirukiru pursed her lips, unfolded the arms she'd had crossed over her chest, and gave a supremely indifferent shrug.
"Say whatever you like."
"Either way, this bunch wasn't even good enough to count as a warm-up. Absolute trash."
"Since you'd already started fighting by the time I got there, I'll chalk it up as a pre-dinner stroll. Nothing more."
Just as that brief standoff between the two of them wound down.
The sound of rapid footsteps came clattering from the mouth of the alley.
"Hey, you lot! What's the meaning of this — you were all walking along perfectly fine and then you just dropped everything and ran off without waiting for me!"
With that loud complaint as her fanfare.
Hestia came puffing into the alley, a bulging paper bag full of new clothes dangling from each hand, forehead glistening with sweat and chest heaving for breath.
Behind Hestia came Kikakujou Mary, Hanasaka Warabi — and the others who had just changed into their new clothes: the Holy Emperor, Tendou Kisara, and Aihara Enju, each loaded down with bags and parcels of their own, hurrying after her.
They had barely made it through the alley entrance.
Hestia's eyes went perfectly round.
She took in the scene: men lying all across the ground, heads cracked and faces bloodied, most of them out cold — and Lili huddled against the wall, covered in blood and mud.
Hestia hurriedly set her bags down on the nearest relatively clean stretch of flagstone.
"What — what happened here?! How did people end up like this all of a sudden?!"
Hestia's face was a picture of bewilderment.
"Please don't worry, Hestia-sama."
Onigawara Rin immediately moved to explain.
"We only dealt with a few bullies who were throwing their weight around."
"Once we get back, we'll report everything to Kami-sama ourselves, from start to finish. We absolutely won't let this little brawl cause any trouble for you or the base."
Hearing Onigawara Rin take such sweeping responsibility.
Hestia opened her mouth, then closed it. She knew perfectly well she couldn't talk sense into any of these girls — they followed Haimer's lead and acted entirely on their own judgment, consequences be damned. All she could do was let out a long, helpless sigh.
"Honestly — every single one of you does exactly as you please. You've all been thoroughly spoiled by that Haimer."
But complaints aside.
The fundamental kindness at the core of Hestia's nature asserted itself as it always did.
Her eyes moved to the wretched figure of Lili in the corner, and the worry in her expression shifted at once into something warmer and more tender.
"She's going to be alright, isn't she?"
At this, Aihara Enju came rushing over to Lili's side, visibly anxious.
Inaba Tsukuyo held her hand hovering a little above Lili's shoulder, carefully reading her condition.
"Breathing is stable. Heartrate is elevated but still regular. No damage to the internal organs."
Inaba Tsukuyo gave her quiet report.
"However, there is extensive visible surface abrasion across her skin, pronounced swelling at multiple joints, and severe bruising across the face from repeated impacts. If it isn't treated promptly, she will develop a high fever by tomorrow."
"Allow me to look."
At that moment.
The Holy Emperor set down the box of clothing she had been carrying.
She walked forward with measured, unhurried steps and crouched down beside Inaba Tsukuyo, right there in front of Lili.
Even as the hem of her brand-new, pale-moonlight-white premium coat dropped to the ground and soaked up the filthy, foul-smelling puddle water and mud beneath her, she didn't spare it a second thought.
Looking at the injuries covering Lili's body — and at those frightened, flinching eyes.
A wave of deep, heartfelt compassion rose in the Holy Emperor's pale moonlight-coloured eyes.
Of course it did.
Whether it was the Cursed Children of the G-404 world, who had faced brutal persecution at human hands since the day they were born.
Or Lili, here and now, surviving at the very bottom of society and enduring mistreatment every single day.
These small lives carrying undeserved suffering always found a way directly to the heart she had awakened — the one with the skill known as [Compassion for All].
And so.
The Holy Emperor reached out a pale hand and held it gently, hovering about ten centimetres above Lili's arm — the one that had swollen into a great purplish-black bruise.
"Let there be built, a paradise where no one weeps."
『Gensokyo』
As the brief chant faded.
A mass of soft green radiance bloomed from the Holy Emperor's palm, expanding outward swiftly and wrapping itself around every inch of Lili's small, frail body.
— An area-of-effect healing spell, designed specifically to target units identified by the caster as allied.
Focused at this close range upon a single target, the healing output multiplied severalfold.
In only a few breaths.
The livid, ugly bruises covering Lili's body began fading at a visible pace, retreating before the eye.
The abraded, bleeding skin drew itself closed, fresh pink new skin growing in its place.
Even the deep-seated ache that had settled into her very bones dissolved entirely under the soothing green light, as if it had never been.
"This... this is magic..."
Lili stared blankly at the soft green luminescence enveloping her body, and felt the strength that had seemed gone forever flooding back through her. Her lips trembled faintly.
Coming back to herself, Lili quickly shrank back, both hands raised to her chest in a protective gesture, looking at the Holy Emperor before her with wide, wary eyes.
"I'm sorry... I don't have any money on me right now..."
"Lili can't afford to pay for healing magic this advanced... not in Valis..."
Because, in Lili's experience of the world, there was no such thing as a free meal. Every time a healer cast a spell, the fee was ruinous.
But.
Hearing those small, self-deprecating words.
Something ached in the Holy Emperor's chest.
Without a moment's hesitation, she leaned forward and opened her arms, drawing the mud-caked Lili gently against her.
The fabric of the coat pressed against Lili's threadbare clothes.
"It doesn't matter. You don't need to pay."
"It's over now. You're safe."
The Holy Emperor patted Lili softly on the back, her voice soft and steady all at once.
Held in that warmth.
Lili's mind went completely blank. She sat there, rigid and utterly lost, unable to move.
At this point, Onigawara Rin looked around at their surroundings, then looked at the mud-soaked Lili.
"Either way, this is no place to have any sort of conversation."
"We'll bring her back to the manor first — let her get cleaned up, and then she can decide for herself whether she wants to stay or go."
Onigawara Rin made the call.
Kikakujou Mary nodded.
Tendou Kisara, as a matter of course, reached down and picked up Lili's enormous, heavy pack with one hand, swinging it easily onto her shoulder.
And so.
Still in a daze, Lili found herself with Inaba Tsukuyo holding one hand and the Holy Emperor holding the other, being led out of the dim alley and into the evening air, walking in the direction of the upscale residential district.
Elsewhere.
The sun had begun its tilt toward the west.
Not far ahead of Haimer.
The massive structure of the Guild headquarters had come into view.
At that moment, two figures happened to emerge from its entrance.
On the left walked Shakti Varma, captain of the Ganesha Familia — still wearing the same crisp, form-fitting leather armour from the morning, the look on her face carrying the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from dealing with things beyond one's patience.
On the right walked Guild President Royman Mardeel.
When Royman's eyes swept idly across the street corner and landed on Haimer standing in the crowd, the expression on his face performed an immediate one-hundred-and-eighty degree transformation.
The faint irritation that had been plastered across his features from whatever business he'd been conducting with Shakti dissolved instantly, replaced by a smile so warm and ingratiating it practically dripped.
He even broke into a stride — three steps compressed into two — moving with a nimbleness utterly at odds with his considerable bulk, and closing the distance to Haimer in no time at all.
"Oh my! Haimer-sama! To run into you here of all places — what an extraordinary honour!"
Shakti, for her part, rolled her eyes inwardly, stepped forward with composed efficiency, came to a stop, and placed her right fist over her left chest in a crisp, formal knight's salute.
"Quite the coincidence, seeing the two of you coming out of the Guild together."
"But since we're here — about the matter I raised with Ganesha today, has there been any word?"
Watching Royman's manner — even more obsequious than the day before — it was obvious he had already received his orders and instructions directly from Ouranos.
Haimer regarded him with a look of mild, interested amusement and cut straight to the point.
"Of course! Please rest easy, Haimer-sama! Regarding what you requested — the Guild has approved it in full, across the board!"
"All the relevant paperwork has been processed and completed."
"The finest construction Familia in Orario is standing by and ready — they can move in first thing tomorrow morning and begin work immediately, guaranteed to carry out the renovations exactly as you specified!"
____
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