Goddess Descent (4)
The sound of labored breathing filled the air as Selena clutched her stomach, blood bubbling from her lips. Beside her, Dismuke pressed down on the wound with desperate urgency and shouted.
“Dana Berbeia! Doctor, I beg you! Please heal her!”
I quickly supported Dana and brought her over, channeling mana into her body as we moved. A brilliant flash erupted—Paah!—as she examined Selena’s external injuries before placing a hand on her lower abdomen.
“The internal organs are slightly damaged. Bring a stretcher, lay her on a bed, and make sure she rests.”
“But the city… with everything that’s happening right now… how can we possibly…”
“If she doesn’t stay still, there will be complications. You still need to produce an heir, don’t you?”
Selena froze for a moment, then gave a bitter smile.
“You sound… exactly like my mother…”
With those words, her strength seemed to drain away, and she fell silent. Dismuke immediately began barking orders at the other servants.
“Bring a stretcher! Quickly!”
Veronica watched the scene for a moment before approaching me.
“……My beloved. Did you see the state of the city on your way here?”
“It’s crawling with them everywhere. Luckily, they don’t seem to be on the level of the ones we fought last time, but beating them one-on-one would be impossible unless you’re at least Mithril Class. These fuckers are no joke.”
Or you’d need an advantage in compatibility like Dana did. ‘Still, considering the difference in power, the one we fought on Garden Island must have been from the warrior class.’ It had been able to create shields and swords out of ice mana, so that assessment was probably accurate. Creatures of that caliber weren’t common. Though eventually, something stronger would surely appear.
“This isn’t even a proper dimensional connection or summoning. It’s pure negligence. It’s no different from punching a hole between worlds and then abandoning it.”
Veronica stared at the lord’s mansion with clear disgust. When it came to spatial magic, she was far more qualified than I was—even without my eye-based cheat.
“Can you close it?”
“……It will be impossible. As irresponsible as it is, the scale is that of a true great magic. I’m not even sure killing the caster would undo it.”
Fuck.
If Veronica was saying this, things were seriously screwed. ‘……Should we just get the hell out of Romania?’
If we could just protect ourselves, the kingdom’s army or the enforcers would swarm in and figure something out. I really didn’t want to think this was the beginning of the world’s end. But there was no way I could abandon Tirsi either.
As I stood there, a sickening unease creeping up from my feet, Selena—who was being carried away on the stretcher—gestured toward me. Swish. Swish. Speaking seemed too difficult because of her injury, so she used her own blood to write on my wrist.
I read the word and jerked my head up.
“The Janus Church!”
Janus was the god of doors and guardianship. And “doors” carried a wide variety of complex symbolic meanings. It made sense. The front gate you saw when heading to work and the elevator door you saw on the way home weren’t the same thing at all. A door simultaneously symbolized both “entering” and “exiting,” while also acting as a powerful guardian by controlling that opening and closing. Like a gym teacher standing guard at a high school gate. A two-headed gym teacher, to be exact. Is this guy trying to get struck by divine punishment or what?
“If there’s a priest from the Janus Church, they might be able to close that rift!”
Even if the rift was chaotic, the fact that living beings were passing through it made it a kind of “door.” And since doors could be opened and closed, they were doors. If those self-proclaimed elite door specialists couldn’t even manage that, they’d be a disgrace to their title.
“The Janus Church? But even if they showed up, one or two people won’t be enough to close something that big,” Dana pointed out, frowning like she hated to rain on my parade. She wasn’t wrong. There didn’t seem to be a major Janus temple in Renapolis.
“Then we’ll just have to bring more. In that case, we should request reinforcements from that ridiculously huge temple in Lucregens—”
“—E-excuse me!”
At that moment, Catherine—who had been standing at a distance—came running over and shouted. No, looking closely, it wasn’t Catherine. It was her older sister, Audrey. Her younger sister had been short on sleep, so they’d switched shifts that morning.
“The Janus Church’s Punitive Executor is in the city… right now!”
“What? For real?”
That pale bastard? I pictured Signatio—white from head to toe—and asked again. Audrey, apparently misunderstanding something, whispered in a small voice.
“I’ve been keeping an eye on her… just in case she was chasing us…! She’s definitely still in Renapolis…!”
“I see. Thanks.”
And you really don’t have to keep adding “yo” at the end of every sentence.
I felt a spark of hope at this unexpected good news. She had seemed somewhat reasonable when we spoke, and while it might be an overestimation, among the people I’d met so far, she was easily in the top five in terms of skill. Whether it was dealing with the Yotun or closing the rift, she would more than earn her keep.
“Pardon me!!”
I was about to go looking for her immediately, but that plan had to be put on hold for a moment. A large crowd of people suddenly burst through the mansion gates and poured inside.
Haha. The situation must be urgent. What kind of work speed is this? It’s faster than a part-timer trying to close up shop ten minutes before closing time.
“W-what is the meaning of this?! Forcing open the door to my master’s estate—”
“It’s an emergency. Deal with it.”
Dismuke looked ready to protest the curt reply, but his mouth snapped shut. Probably because among the dozens of people who had rushed in, many were dressed in clothes befitting nobility. Likely the nobles and their escorts. They had probably been on their way to confront Diabolo about the stolen auction items. How did I know? Because the person at the front was Minerva auntie, that’s how, goddammit.
“No need for explanations. Looking at the state of the lord’s mansion, it’s clear those people are the main cause of this disaster. Therefore, among the influential figures of Renapolis excluding the nobles, I was told the head of the Hermeion Guild holds the highest authority.”
The lord of Lucregens—the one with the eyepatch, prosthetic arm, and prosthetic leg, the full triple-PC-handicap course—spoke while scanning the crowd. Both Audrey and I flinched guiltily. We knew this wasn’t the time, but old thief habits died hard.
“Where is the guild’s representative?”
She spoke with ten times more seriousness than when she had been chasing us. If I hit this auntie, even the emperor would call me a piece of trash for assaulting a disabled person. But that kind of human logic based on morality wouldn’t work at all on the Yotun, who were essentially juvenile offenders in a physical sense. The nobles and their guards all wore various expressions, but not a single one of them was smiling positively.
“T-the guild leader should currently be at the trading company.”
“……Understood. Then a proxy? There must be someone in charge of the estate.”
“The young lady… was just carried to her bed.”
“You mean she collapsed? What happened—”
Minerva, who had been speaking with the butler, seemed quite agitated. As she tried to ask for details, she finally noticed the Yotun corpse that looked like it had been beaten to a pulp, deep-fried, and then stripped of its batter—leaving it looking like a sad tonkatsu.
“……Oh?”
She let out a small sound of admiration, then immediately zeroed in on the people in the crowd who looked like they’d been rolling around in bloodstained clothes—the ones who had clearly been fighting. In other words, us.
“I won’t waste words. Will you cooperate? Or will you tuck your tails between your legs like cowards and run?”
Wow, what a stylish way to ask a question. Just thinking about the hard work your subordinates in the territory have been doing fills me with unstoppable sympathy for them, ma’am. But if there’s one universal truth in this world, it’s that the most advantageous fight is a gang-up. Running away here would be ridiculous. I’m the kind of bastard who flips the table and draws his sword when a game goes to shit. How could I just leave and not worry about the consequences?
“It would be an honor to help.”
“A pleasant answer. However, there will be rewards. Assuming I fulfill my duty and survive, that is.”
Was that a joke? Should I laugh? WA! Where the hell did my belly button go?! Unfortunately, Minerva was quite beautiful, so she didn’t possess the talent of a gag-woman who could make people laugh with just a straight face. Therefore, I couldn’t laugh at that terrifying joke either.
“Prepare for battle and gather. We will reorganize here briefly and then depart immediately.”
After that short but heavy exchange, Minerva went off to discuss something else. I asked one of the people who didn’t look like a noble.
“Are all of you participating in the fight as well?”
“What? Ah, no. We just ended up here by chance. I don’t think we’ll actually fight.”
Yeah, figured as much. Even if they had to abandon the auction items, their lives came first. And if things went well, they’d come running later, stroking their beards and saying, “Ahem! So where is my stolen auction item?” These sons of bitches. Still, it was typical noble behavior, so I wasn’t particularly disappointed. The one-eyed-and-limbed auntie duo were the real weirdos.
‘Fine. While you run away, at least try to aggro the Yotun a bit, you pathetic bastards.’ I prayed for their valiant efforts. It wasn’t a curse. I was praying that they wouldn’t get hurt and would draw plenty of aggro while contributing. If anything, that sounded more like a blessing. Let’s go with that.
Anyway, while offering that prayer, I glared at the mansion. Veronica had said this was merely “opening the other world.” If that was true, then even this extreme chaos of Yotun—or frost giants—pouring out was all part of Diabolo’s plan!
‘……I’m also worried that Tirsi hasn’t made any moves at all.’
When I didn’t know the full story, I thought maybe she was considering marrying her kidnapper. But the opponent was a kidnapper, a honorary viscount in name only, and Diabolo—whose backers looked extremely shady. I didn’t think Tirsi had such terrible taste in men. Though when I remembered her joking that I was handsome, it was clear she had serious flaws in both aesthetics and sense of humor.
Even stripping away the jokes, if it was the Tirsi I knew, she would have done something by now. She could be calculating when it came to her own benefit, but she wasn’t the type to gamble with other people’s lives. If she were helping with an incident like this, she might have already committed suicide out of guilt. Something must have happened to her as well.
With that thought, I turned around. My wives were preparing to follow as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“Hey. If I told you not to follow, would you really not come?”
“Hmph. The worry you’re feeling right now is exactly what we feel every single time you disappear alone.”
It was Veronica who spoke, but the other three seemed to agree completely. The criminal Norde, who couldn’t even drink the poison of guilt, simply nodded. ‘Well, there’s no guarantee this place is safe either.’
It was simple. I just had to thoroughly crush that Diabolo bastard, protect my wives, and rescue Tirsi. Goddamn, that’s so fucking straightforward.