Chapter 24
**CHAPTER TITLE: The Perfect Woman (3)**
It was a pleasant day with exactly one Mass per week. I should have been enjoying a leisurely afternoon tea after breakfast, but instead I was preparing for sewer cleanup.
“Should I head out this early?”
“Given how much ground we need to cover, it’s better to start now. We’ll wrap up before the sun rises tomorrow.”
Closed sewers meant I couldn’t use grenades, so the only things I packed were my **Horizon** and the shotgun.
“Don’t forget the training even if I’m not here.”
“Uh… yeah, right!”
“If that bastard shows up at the cathedral, you could still blast his face with the rifle.”
I probably should have done it right there yesterday, but he was still a protected asset and I had no clear evidence, so I couldn’t.
“If it looks dangerous, head to Sister Bella.”
Leona could handle it, but once her crazy side woke up she’d turn the whole area into a wasteland. I couldn’t recommend it.
“I can do it alone!”
She struck a pose with both arms raised, looking ridiculous, but she probably had the strength to bend rebar easily.
Except…
“Take off that gut first and talk.”
“W-what? It has nothing to do with it!”
“What’s one of the emergency protocols for a priest and novice nun in danger?”
“U-uh, move fast, set up a defense line or escape. We always have to consider it, and we need at least two escape routes.”
She kept a hand subtly over her belly while she said it, which tugged at my heart. Still, there was nothing I could do.
I hadn’t seen a single fat vampire this whole time.
“No snacks from now on.”
“W-what are you even talking about?! And it’s clearly because of the blood!”
“Ban. If you get hungry for snacks, I’ll hunt every day and bring you animal blood instead.”
“I won’t eat any…”
Her obsession with even one drop of my blood was starting to scare me.
Whenever it was, the nun order would definitely file a complaint. Before that, I was going to make that chubby pink rabbit’s hips tighter and faster.
* * *
This was the first time I’d entered the city in my exorcist priest form since the first day.
A few shopkeepers who recognized me from the police station yesterday bowed their heads cautiously when I passed.
“G-good morning, sir!”
“Why are you here?”
“The guards all ran away, and yesterday things got messy…”
The only person guarding the police station door was a timid bear guy who wasn’t even tall.
“Hm. That’s understandable. Good work.”
“Yes, sir!”
The outside still looked like some shady brothel, but inside it had at least the feel of a police station now.
At the center stood a sprawling map of Babylenia’s sewers.
“Sheriff?”
“Over there…”
The half-dead man pointed to a sheriff’s office that had been blown in half overnight.
How the hell did he not want to enter the sewers even once?
“Hey.”
*thud, thud*
“Hiik! I’m not tasty!”
He barely tapped my shoulder, yet he jumped up and raised his hands as if in a fight.
“Since you don’t want to eat, just tell me the result.”
“T-t-that way.”
Babylenia was bigger than the empire’s capital, so the sewer tunnels stretched like a labyrinth from some forgotten legend.
“Why is the academy side empty?”
“There’s a massive purification facility there. It runs from the entire city, gets purified at the academy, and then flows back into the river.”
They must have chosen the underground academy because they could staff it with mages who controlled the rolling purification gear.
Given the decent water quality, the facility itself probably wasn’t the problem.
“Look at the state of this city. From the very beginning of construction they must have built secret passages and all that, right?”
“According to the records, the church and the imperial palace directly oversaw construction at the time, so they weren’t allowed to do anything like that.”
If they could have, they probably would have.
“So where do you think the criminal might be?”
“City Hall side.”
“Why?”
“It’s probably because living under the puppet mayor isn’t exactly the best feeling…”
All the organizations that controlled Babylenia were connected. Anyone who escaped the mayor had to make deals with outside forces.
“Any personal motive?”
“About thirty percent personal, seventy percent sure.”
If they were cooperating directly, even under the puppet mayor it would be easy to get inside information.
“I like it. How long ago was the sewer actually touched?”
Don’t avoid eye contact and answer me, you bastard!
* * *
“What the hell are these crazy bastards doing to the sewers!”
Even in the capital where the main branch and the imperial palace are, sewers get cleaned regularly. How long had these things been left untouched?
*boom! boom!*
“Grrraaah!”
“Shut up!”
I shot the shotgun at the pile of half-dead bodies, but it did nothing.
“Hah.”
I didn’t really feel like using the **Horizon** because it was overkill, but to clean up the wall of unbreakable bodies I had no choice.
*clank*
I holstered the shotgun and pulled the **Horizon** with its heavy grip.
“Whew.”
I deliberately emptied the magazine. No bullets needed for what I was about to do.
What filled the empty chamber was not gunpowder but fire and a lance meant to pierce the enemy.
“Douse yourself in rest.”
*Kwaaah!*
A line of flames pierced straight through the wall of corpses.
“Fuaaaah!”
The fire spread in an instant, devouring hundreds of bodies and endless pollution around them.
*chiiik*
Heat radiated from the **Horizon** made of black-gold iron.
It was rare steel that absorbed holy power, but I used it anyway because it didn’t nullify my flames.
“Hah.”
I would have loved to just burn the entire city’s filth, but that would have torched half the city. So I pulled the fire back using light.
*pat, pat*
Witches’ familiars moved through the paths where the corpses had disappeared.
I followed the complex tunnels using the familiars’ eyes, heading toward City Hall.
It was the first time I’d left someone alone at lunch, but I hoped they were doing okay.
* * *
The cathedral was silent. No Mass, and with no urgent chores, it felt empty.
The exorcist priest I needed to ask around was nowhere to be found, and the novice nun moved carefully, as if something was troubling her.
*shuk*
As I keep saying, the cathedral was now empty except for Luna.
“Hurray…”
*creep, creep*
Since the stamina training Dante gave me was already finished, guilt-free Luna sneaked into his room.
The security looked sloppy, but the real danger was the trap in the hidden space, so the runes on the door were a big warning.
*hehe*
I felt guilty but happy, so as soon as I entered I did a full circle.
Dante’s eyes were too sharp; I couldn’t touch anything without thinking.
*sniff, sniff*
The faint sweat scent mixed with the ever-rough night blood residue. Just that was enough to give me the energy to spend the day working hard.
“Hmm-hmm. Sun God, today I committed sins and I’m sorry.”
I fled to my daily routine after an absurd self-confession.
“……”
After she left.
Bella, who had been magically stuck to the ceiling, dropped down.
*sniff, sniff*
I even sniffed my own nose, but since nothing smelled off I felt pointless disappointment.
I hadn’t planned to come in this deep at first, but after seeing Luna sneak in I moved.
Even if I got caught, I had a perfect sacrifice to blame, so I had no reason to hesitate.
*pat, pat*
I gave the bed a light squeeze.
Thanks to the magic that remembered its original state, restoring it was easy.
*thud*
“It’s so hard…”
It was firmer than the dormitory bed and nothing like the one from the duke’s mansion.
But the comfort that was missing from both beds came flooding in and pulled her toward ecstasy.
“Danger…”
Bella jumped up in a hurry and restored the bed to its original state.
It was just an ordinary bed, but it looked like an inescapable ant hell.
*shlur*
I floated through the air without making a sound and slipped out.
I exited through the window, walked back to the main gate, and stood there like a visitor who had just arrived, smoothing my clothes.
“Hm?”
The detection magic that never stopped was triggered, so I turned my head.
As I climbed the small hill leading to the cathedral, a green head appeared in my field of vision.
“Well, well. It’s Hellsing’s young miss.”
A green head looked at me. Alestar’s eyes were strange.
For him, Luna was still the woman he wanted most, but if she weren’t there, Bella might have been the target.
Her superhuman magical talent, her clean personality after removing her human flaws.
A human who was inhuman, a paradoxical charm that tickled his heart.
“I’ll be the only visitor to the cathedral today.”
“Hehe. It’s a cathedral, how could that be? Especially since you’re not even a church official…”
“I decided that.”
The way he said it cut off made him instinctively back away.
His height was clearly shorter than mine, but a feeling of unprecedented crisis gripped him.
“Who are you?”
Luna peeked out from outside when she heard the commotion.
She froze when she saw Alestar’s face, but when she noticed the small golden cat blocking his path, fear didn’t show.
“S-Sister Bella! Welcome!”
“Yeah, I’m here. Let’s go in.”
She grabbed my hand and dragged me inside. Alestar couldn’t open the cathedral door.
The future tower master was supposed to be respected, but in front of Bella he was just an ordinary guy at noon.
“Thank you. I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t like the way that guy looks.”
“I don’t like him either. And this is really soft.”
“Hiik! D-don’t touch me! It tickles!”
“Since I helped you, this is the reward.”
* * *
*Kwaduk* The feeling of shattering a skull with a fist was perfectly transmitted.
“Hiik!”
“T-that bastard is what?!”
There were guys making drugs who had come through the corpses. Since tying them up was annoying, I was about to just walk past, but they attacked first?
I’ve seen people dragged away as women around here. I tried asking if any of them could be used as informants, but it seemed they hadn’t felt genuine.
*boom!* I made a clear path and shot the drug guy in the forehead straight.
“I-I saw it!” He really showed sincerity with action.
“Tell me everything.”
“Uh… when exactly?”
“W-what?”
“Oh, I’ve survived a long time so I’ve seen a lot… haha.”
“Any sightings between the last two days?”
“I’ve seen a few. H-but he didn’t die, right?”
The path of the guy carrying a woman was, as expected, near City Hall. The problem was that recent cannibal monsters had appeared in that area, so everyone was probably dead.
“T-the woman’s meat is soft, isn’t it? Maybe he fed it to a monster and just passed by…”
“How do you know the woman’s meat is soft?”
“That’s… damn it!”
*boom!* I shot the fleeing guy’s back with the **Horizon** and finished off the rest.
*thud, thud*
“Hm?” While the blood scent from the corpses was being eaten by the sewer smell, I heard the sound of something massive moving. I was puzzled that I couldn’t hear heavy movement in such a narrow place, but the moment the owner appeared in my field of vision.
“Khhuu…”
“What…?”
A bipedal frame that could switch to all fours for a charge at any moment, slightly larger than a burly man’s build but with different muscle density. A grotesque face where the face of an ox and a human were mixed.
“Muoooooo!”