Star, Please Let Me Be a Righteous Thief Again Today
Lupin took one look at where the Holy Ark stood, and her heart sank.
"You're kidding me. It was hidden somewhere this obvious?"
She had pictured a chamber you could reach only by following a spiral stair deep underground, then threading a maze of traps. Not even close. It sat a short walk from the building where the two of them had been fighting moments ago—a place Lupin herself had already visited once, back when she was hunting Abandoned Chests. A great bell tower. Beside it, a grand cathedral. One floor down, planted square in the open, a dazzling gold coffer some two and a half feet long. A treasure chest exactly the right size to gather into her arms had been waiting, desperate, for Lupin to come and find it.
"There's no reason to hide it. If anything, it's easier to guard when you leave it somewhere visible..."
"Then what are those knight-order idiots doing, if they're not watching something this important?"
"So long as the Royal Blood is protected, even if the Holy Ark itself gets taken..."
"Oh. Right. Yeah."
And yet the prime minister was, at that very moment, slung across Lupin's back. Guarding him? Guard him how?
...These bastards are useless.
"The so-called knights can't even protect the one sovereign they serve. Should I slap on a red beret and flip the whole lot of them?"
Lupin had never been a ranger drill instructor, though brutal training had once come close to getting her killed by one. Still, tearing into the knight order would be a hassle. There was no reason for her to do a job that belonged to the prime minister, or to Dmitri.
She shook the thought off and carefully lowered the prime minister into a corner of the Holy Ark's repository.
Click. Click.
Moving far more slowly than usual, Lupin approached the Ark. Saliva pooled thick in her mouth and slid down her throat in greedy gulps. At last she could touch it—the coffer blazing with gold. Inscrutable ancient letters and sigils were set into the front and the sides in square panels, and the lid sat slightly larger than the body, shaped almost like a coffin. Fit the thing with carrying poles and you could honestly believe it had been built to hold a corpse, or someone's remains. For now it was fixed fast atop an altar at about waist height. Whether "roots" was the right word was debatable, but blue stems—looking expensive enough that ripping them free might pay—ran from the Holy Ark down toward the floor.
"I'm sorry. I wanted to find you sooner."
I really kept you waiting...!
Lupin stroked the Ark over every face of it, like a mother at last reunited with a lost child—petting the golden shell, then sweeping her hands along the wings of the two angels ornamenting the lid. She went on warming the coffer with her body heat until the gold was faintly sticky, and only then managed to collect herself.
"You wouldn't happen to know how to get inside, would you?"
She put the question to Klein rather than wake the unconscious prime minister. To repeat: procedure and process had never felt more like a chore.
"I'm not certain..."
"So you do know."
"......"
"Show me first. I'll copy you."
Klein had realized something. An apostle's eyes did not flash only when she was using aura. From the moment the Holy Ark filled Lupin's vision, her irises had kept radiating an uncanny light. This was someone who used to barely meet another person's eyes. And now? Every time she stared straight into Klein's and that baleful gleam flickered, Klein shrank without meaning to.
"From what I remember... that is... the Royal Blood's blood..."
"Hey."
Lupin had not even said anything yet, and Klein was already spooked and flailing.
"N-no! I don't mean we're squeezing someone's blood out just to move the Ark. We really do need the blood...!"
"Funny little treasure chest. How much are we talking?"
"A single drop is enough."
At that, Lupin picked at the scab just beginning to set on the prime minister's forehead. A drop of blood soon rested on Klein's palm.
"You put it... like this..."
The side of the Holy Ark opened with a clunk, and Klein wedged her head in, grunting with the effort. Lupin was watching, fascinated, for whatever came next—when Klein, already half inside the chest, vanished. Even Lupin's eyes could not track it. She had, quite literally, ceased to exist.
Startled, Lupin shoved her own head into the Ark.
"Don't tell me that damn brat actually ran—"
A flat little backside appeared out of nowhere. A hard pelvis shoved, and Lupin was driven back out of the Ark. Being pinned under a woman's rear was the sort of scene she had seen in some romantic comedy, and she was not particularly pleased about it. She simply did not care for a body this childlike. If she had to name a preference, Vatslava was far more her type.
Lupin snorted—a huff that meant move, you're in the way.
Klein shot upright, startled by the rush of heat.
"Wh-what were you doing?!"
"Thought you'd run. I was about to go in and grab you."
"Running around in here doesn't mean anything. You'd just wander an endless space until you starved..."
Lupin eyed the drop of blood on Klein's finger, still not dry, and asked.
"They said if you go in without Royal Blood, you wander forever. So how did you get back out?"
"I went in with the drop on me. Royal Blood. The blood itself is the tool you need to enter, and the tool you need to find the way. ...Wait. Did you want me trapped in there?"
In other words, there had never been any need to drag the prime minister—the one actually carrying the Royal Blood—inside with them. The corner of Lupin's mouth twitched. She could feel it: the road to every Holy Ark ahead had just become much, much easier. Courtesy would have her ask the imperial houses of each nation, of course. But if they refused with righteous fury, she could always sneak in while they slept and draw a few drops with a needle...
Lupin basked in the thought alone, face rapt with bliss. Klein, reading the room from beside her, ventured a question.
"Anyway. Could Klein... maybe head out soon...?"
Yanked out of the daydream, Lupin stared at her without expression. No sense of timing at all. Just reaches in and scrambles a person's dream. Still better than earlier, when she had been yapping and showing off. Now she kept glancing around, eyes rolling, and somehow that made her look almost normal. Strange, how that worked. After all, she had found the Holy Ark and even shown how to go in and come back out. In front of a treasure chest, Lupin was infinitely generous.
...So the real problem is just the cult and its leader?
What did that cult leader even do? Keep hunting Holy Arks, and they would meet eventually, wouldn't they? When they did, she would pound him into paste, then torture out of him exactly how a person ends up with tastes like that. Going to find him herself would be a pain. Leave him be, and it would nag at her. More than anything, the Holy Ark was right in front of her, and desire came first. This was far too precious a moment to spend worrying.
"Hey."
"W-why are you looking at me like that? It's unsettling..."
Lupin giggled and mussed Klein's hair.
"I've decided. Your sentence is going to have to wait a little."
"Sen... tence?"
Klein's eyes, which ought to have stayed half-lidded, blew wide enough to show the whites—proof she was terrified. Lupin, meanwhile, was smiling. The corners of her mouth were a breath away from her ears.
"Just letting you go makes me nervous about what comes after. But keeping you close makes me nervous you'll stick a knife in my throat when I'm not looking."
Eyes huge, Klein waved both hands frantically.
"K-keep me close—what does that even mean, all of a sudden? I-I'm never getting tangled up with Lupin again. Do you think I'm insane?"
"Really? And how am I supposed to be sure? I let you go, and you show up tomorrow dragging all your little friends along. How would I know?"
"I mean it. I... I wasn't planning anything like that."
"Which is exactly why it's hard to believe you. Oh, I know. If you're coming anyway, bring your cult leader. Let's finish this properly."
"Nngh."
That was the one situation Klein most wanted to avoid. While she scrambled for an excuse, struck dead center, Lupin's mouth ran on like a fish that had found water—ruinously, without pause.
"Bad guys always run the same routine. They go around doing evil and still act like they're the loyal ones. How dare you touch our shrine maiden! How dare you stain our cult's name! How dare you lay a hand on our Klein! How dare you hurt my cute little sister! They'll come pouring in from every corner of the country, single file, every last one of them pinned with some chuuni skull-and-star."
Just imagining it was exhausting. She absolutely could not let that happen. If she was going to call them, she had to call all of them at once and smash all of them at once. And so Lupin, who could not afford to have her chest-looting interrupted, came up with a scheme.
"But what if, right here, Klein became my slave?"
Klein!
She left a little beat, waiting for the callback—but there was no way Klein would know a bit that had only ever been popular back in Lupin's homeland.
"......Muh? What?"
"I'll be confiscating that Plainclothes Sword for a while. Change your clothes. Toss the veil, too. How about it?"
The sword would not be returned. Off with the shrine maiden vestments and the veil. She was telling Klein to quit the cult and quit the martial path—which was to say, she was offering to keep her close. It was an absurd demand. Klein wanted nothing more than to be done with Lupin. She needed to get back fast, report all of this to the Heavenly Sovereign, and put a Calamity Star alert out across the cult. A slave? What slave?
"Wh-why would Klein have to do that?"
"I've taken a bit of an interest in your cult leader. Trouble is, I don't know where he's hiding, and going to look is a hassle. It'd be nice if he came to me on his own, but he won't show up for an ordinary provocation, will he? Classic cult-leader trait: an ass so heavy it won't get off the floor."
Lupin slapped her own sturdy backside.
"So. If you're being worked as my slave, how's the cult leader going to feel? What?! My Klein!—and then he comes charging in to take you back. Doesn't he?"
Lupin knew the wicked stolen-lover genre to a suspicious degree. She had never lived it herself. Wander the comic sites meant for adults long enough, and you pick these things up naturally.
"So. What do you say? You in, or you out?"
Klein shook her head hard, pouring every ounce of no into the gesture. But those violet eyes flashed, thick with the power of the stars, and her body curled in on itself again of its own accord. No strange compulsion was actually binding her. It was only that Klein, her aura entirely spent, had to read every mood with desperate care if she wanted to live—because only then could she return to the cult and deliver the truth.
Lupin, however, had made up her mind long ago. Klein was not going back to the cult.
"You were free to come. You are not free to leave."
A hand she had deliberately emptied of strength clapped the side of Klein's head. A moment later the unconscious girl was tossed down beside the Holy Ark without ceremony. Lupin summoned the King Pigeon and hummed under her breath.
"Say—would it be all right if you kept watch on one person? Nonstop?"
"It would not be a difficult matter. The aura consumed will, however, grow in proportion to the time I am summoned. I shall aid you only so far as it does not become a burden."
"Ah, well. A burden. From now on you only need to help while I'm asleep. I'm going inside the Holy Ark first, so until then, just keep an eye on her."
Growing impatient, Lupin stole a drop of the blood beading on the prime minister's forehead and stood before the Ark. Her face had gone somewhat stiff. A short sigh slipped out of her. Not even the day she went to interview at the black company she would then endure for three years had wound her this tight. Back then she had not really been thinking at all—less nervous than blindly certain that earning money would make her gaming life more fun. But Lupin was an adult now. An adult who understood the joy, the fury, the sorrow, and the delight sealed inside a single treasure chest. Which was why standing before a new chest always, inevitably, made her tense.
