Anyway, the Cult's to Blame
Three days after the Imperial Alliance's Platinum Conference.
It was the tenth day since Rostov had lost the power of the Holy Ark.
"Treasure chests, coming through!"
Lupin pulled up in front of the Adventurers' Guild's Rostov branch at the head of a convoy of trucks, the sort that had only just begun to spread across the continent. The beds were loaded with heavy safes—fifty of them, by a rough count, and then some.
Klein hopped down and unloaded the crates with brisk efficiency even in those trailing, frilly clothes, and she must have looked cute enough, and pitiful enough, that people who hadn't the faintest idea she was a Shrine Maiden came swarming in to help. Pressing snacks on her and telling her to try a little of this and that was merely a bonus.
Klein, of course, watched them all with open suspicion, put nothing in her mouth, and ducked straight behind Lupin's back.
The crowd was just as afraid of Lupin, so they seemed to have decided she made a perfectly serviceable shield.
Yegor took one look at the crates stacked in the guild courtyard and went pale.
"What in the world is all this."
"I cleaned out every mafia den my master tipped me off about, and this is what came spilling out. I was flying around with the pigeon, click-click-click, opening them without a break, and they still wouldn't end. I basically lived there for a week, I'm telling you."
The explanation involved draping herself in a wing-robe and soaring alongside the pigeon, all thanks to Pinpin, her Rank XI lockpick—but it sat several dimensions above anything Yegor could follow. Of everything Lupin had just said, the only word he actually recognized was pigeon.
"Anyway, it's all yours. Take it and hand it out to your little siblings."
"Uh. Right.... Thank you. Really."
One way or another, Yegor came into an enormous quantity of gold.
Mindful of the eyes on him, he returned about half of it to Rostov and shipped the rest to Avignon, where his younger siblings were. For days afterward, that was all anyone at the guild could talk about.
"Such an upright soul. Out there crushing the mafia without taking a single coin."
"Thanks to that, the Republic's crime rate has plummeted. I hear what's left of the mafia is fleeing the country as we speak."
...Not exactly.
Lupin did pocket a gold bar or two for operating funds. And if something else struck her as necessary, she helped herself to that without a flicker of guilt. She already seemed to have claimed a few relics along the way.
Still, it was true that the mafia had gone quiet because of her. Unwilling to lose the treasures they had so carefully hoarded, they were scrambling over one another to get out of Rostov. It was a current running entirely contrary to the Republic Assembly's prediction—that with the Holy Ark gone and public order collapsing, the syndicates would only run wilder.
On top of that, word of a shake-up in the Rounds kept drifting through.
"I heard the lowest seat of the Rounds is getting replaced?"
"Huh? Then what about Ekaterina?"
"According to a source I trust, the Platinum Conference already decided to expel her. Word's everywhere that Miss Lupin is the one taking that seat."
Yegor, listening, could only snort.
The Rounds? For someone too busy hunting treasure chests? Station her in a post like that and she would wander off in every direction, probably wrecking international affairs while she was at it. He doubted, to begin with, that Lupin would even accept a seat like that if it were dropped in her lap.
He was sitting in a corner of the guild, letting the talk wash over him and watching Vatslava throw herself into mixing cocktails, when—
"...Huh. What's the Golden Poison Flower doing here."
At the words Golden Poison Flower, Yegor's body reacted faster than it ever had.
He vaulted the table and bolted for the back door—and caught on something. His body hit the floor in a full spread-eagle with a heavy thud. Face mashed into the boards, he howled his frustration into the wood.
"...Mmmph."
Golden Poison Flower: the nickname they had hung on her in Cheonghwa. Emelin, growing more beautiful by the day and yet untouchable by anyone, muttered as she worked the hook of her halberd free of his shirt.
"Little brother. I didn't come to catch you, so calm down."
The reassurance did nothing. Yegor snapped back into a ready stance at once and opened the distance so he could run the moment he needed to.
Emelin shrugged, as if resigning herself. She would have to get to the point, or this standoff was never going to end.
"Believe me or don't. Suit yourself. I'm only passing on His Majesty's words exactly as he spoke them, so listen well."
Find the newly risen Apostle of the Calamity Star, and he would be granted the life on the run he had always wanted.
Color flooded back into Yegor's face.
"That's... true?"
"When have you ever seen His Majesty lie? Find the Apostle, and this miserable game of tag between you and me is finally over."
The suspicion hadn't entirely faded, but Yegor knew Emelin was not the sort to invoke the Emperor just to lure him into dropping his guard.
"...I see. All right."
As it happened, there was already one Apostle candidate at his side. Under ordinary circumstances, treating a friend like a walking bomb would have sat badly with him—but leave Lupin alone even now and she was a bomb liable to ignite on her own. So be it. The best he could do was keep assisting her as he always had, and help her judge things so she didn't do something that defied all common sense.
Grim rumors might swirl that she would bring about the end of humanity, but all of it was exaggeration passed from mouth to mouth. There was even research suggesting that shunning an Apostle of the Calamity Star that way only made the scale of the disaster larger....
Yegor had sunk into that thought for a while when he noticed Emelin, having delivered everything she came to say, still showed no sign of leaving.
"What are you doing. You're not going?"
"Listen to you. You finally see your big sister after all this time, and you want to send me off just like that? Let's at least eat together."
"If you want to watch me make myself sick and get carted out, be my guest."
Emelin's face fell hard.
"Haaah. My one and only little brother.... It feels like yesterday you used to come running, delighted, whenever your big sister stripped you down and scrubbed you, and now you've gone all brooding and won't listen to a word I say."
"Just how long ago are we talking...."
"So which of the two is it?"
Tap, tap. She nudged his forearm with her elbow, and Yegor's expression turned uglier than it ever had. Sensing she had found a thread to pull, Emelin tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"It's not exactly common, you hauling two women around. At first even I thought, has this boy finally lost his mind over women? I figured you'd picked up something rotten in the Cheonghwa Empire and were out to practice the way of three wives and four concubines."
Three wives and four concubines. Roughly speaking, three lawful wives and four mistresses. In modern terms, building a harem of beauties.
"That ridiculous misunderstanding...."
"But think about it. They're both quite the beauties, aren't they? This big sister isn't unaware of how high your standards are. And their maternal qualities are excellent besides, so I thought, ah, I'm finally getting a glimpse of your taste."
"Th-that's not it!"
"Oh? So your real taste is small chests? You're only dragging those two around to keep stray women from swarming you? Those two would be sad to hear it."
"Ghk—! That's not it! Those two are...!"
After that, Yegor had to spend a full two hours doing nothing but explain the situation. Emelin pressed him again and again, but in the end she had no choice but to accept the boring truth. Having been all fired up over fresh gossip, she muttered, thoroughly sour.
"Still. You never can tell with people, you know? Right now you're all keeping a proper distance of your own accord, but who knows when you might suddenly get close. You're a man and women in your prime, aren't you? Accidents where bodies get tangled happen more often than you'd—"
"Nonsense."
"Always mind the contraception. A bastard is a headache the moment they're born, but that doesn't mean you can kill a perfectly healthy child in its mother's—"
"Enough!!"
Meanwhile, at the Prime Minister's residence.
"Prime Minister, are you joking? Why did you take Geburah back on your own authority?"
Ekaterina, Twelfth Seat of the Rounds, back from vacation a full twelve days after the incident, was laying down threats in front of the Prime Minister. The cause was the loss of Geburah, the aura she had carried—the one that let her control people. The way she found out was absurd in itself. She had been trying to pick up a woman at her resort, same as always, and someone had given her the stink-eye, muttering about what kind of pervert this was. That was what tipped her off.
"Ekaterina, calm yourself first. Have you perhaps not heard the news?"
She snarled and raked a hand through her razor-cut bob until it stood in wild tufts, and the gold cornflower badge marking her as one of the Rounds dangled precariously from her chest.
"News? What news? The news that you're putting up some other Round in my place?"
"Not that. News concerning the Republic's Holy Ark."
"Holy Ark? Never heard of it."
The Prime Minister and Dmitri, Speaker of the Assembly, were dumbfounded. They had sent secret telegrams any number of times, and Ekaterina had pretended not to hear a single one—only to show up out of nowhere, furious, demanding to know why her Sephira aura had been taken from her.
The Prime Minister leaned toward Dmitri and whispered, low enough that the fuming Ekaterina wouldn't catch it.
"As I thought. We should have forced the Sword Emperor onto the Rounds back then, whatever it took."
"He refused so stubbornly there was no other choice...."
"So. When did you say Lupin would arrive?"
"Soon. Though... shouldn't we be stepping outside before long?"
The palace where the party had been held was still under reconstruction, and they could hardly afford to ruin yet another building. Given Lupin's temperament, she was not about to sit still if someone came at her—so if the two of them were going to clash, better they clash outdoors.
The Prime Minister tried to steer them there.
"How about we finish the talk over a drink. We're buried in the aftermath ourselves, but this is an important conversation, so I've had a separate room prepared."
"A formal seat doesn't suit me, so just do it here. Why would I go moving anywhere. Give me the result and nothing else. What happens to my place in the Rounds. What happens to the Sephira aura."
The two men grew anxious. There was no clean way out, and explaining the situation before Lupin arrived seemed the lesser evil. Dmitri cleared his throat several times, then spoke.
"As for your expulsion from the Rounds, we know nothing of it. No formal letter has even arrived. We'll only know once the Golden Conference opens in two days. You'll be attending that yourself, won't you?"
"If you're pretending not to know when you do, I won't let it slide."
"If you knew what Rostov's standing is within the Alliance, you couldn't talk like that. The Cult damaged the Holy Ark and the power of the stars was lost—what little voice we had is about to vanish as it is."
At this Golden Conference, Rostov's authority being downgraded from imperial rank to kingdom rank was as good as decided. Just like Astranor, the land of the elves; Kragmoln, the land of the dwarves; or Dongbaek, whose strength had withered under the demonkin invasion.
At the news that the Holy Ark had been damaged, Ekaterina's brow creased. Tall for a woman, she let her sharp gaze fall from above onto the foreheads of the Prime Minister and Dmitri.
"That happened? You should have told me ages ago."
This, from the woman who had pretended not to hear every secret dispatch? The Prime Minister barely checked Dmitri, who was about to snap, with a shoulder. He himself, though, had anger climbing to the crown of his head, and was only just holding it down with reason.
"If not for one adventurer's help, every noble here—Dmitri included—would have been slaughtered. I wonder if you even know that."
Royal Blood could make contact with a Fragment of the Stars, and thereby manage and bestow a Sephira's aura. Grant that aura as a special privilege to a Round possessed of overwhelming martial power, and the Round protected the nation in return. But Ekaterina had neglected her duty to defend the state, and on top of that had been busy spending the Sephira's aura on her own appetites. She was so formidable that the Prime Minister had spent all this time bottling his resentment, hoping she would restrain herself.
But now? Now Lupin stood behind him. Word was also circulating that Ekaterina would be cast out of the Rounds. So what reason was there to be afraid?
"If you are expelled from the Rounds, consider that there was due cause, and accept it."
The Prime Minister, who had always shown her respect, coming out with that made even Ekaterina flinch. It lasted only a moment. With her privileges and even her qualification as a Round about to be stripped away, she had no one left she felt obliged to defer to.
"You want to try me right now? You think that just because Geburah is gone, my own aura has vanished too, and you dare crawl up at me without fear?"
It was right then that the racket of women's voices came in—from outside the third-floor window of the palace where the three of them stood locked in confrontation.
"There! Move! Out of the way!"
"Kyaaaaaah!!"
Crash—thud—a tumbling clatter. Two people came arrowing in and, still on their original trajectory, slammed into Ekaterina and rolled three times across the floor. In the tumble, the cornflower badge at her chest was knocked free and wedged itself under a wardrobe.
Klein, reduced to the ham in a human sandwich, muttered with unfocused, hollow eyes.
"Never... flying with Lupin... again...."
"Oof. Two-person flight really isn't easy. Sorry about that."
Lupin, occupying the top layer of the sandwich, said it while shaking out her disheveled hair and putting it back in order.
"I'm sorry. You underneath—you must have been startled, right? Still, we lived because you caught us. My knees and my face were about to get scraped clean off."
The bottom layer. Ekaterina, pinned under both of them, shouted through clenched teeth.
"You crazy bitches, daring to use me like a mat...!"
