Got Myself a New Outfit!

Scratch, scratch—

I lay sprawled across the bed, rolling a pen between my fingers.

"Mmm, good."

There were still three Evil-aligned cardinals left to root out. I jotted the names down on the note and handed it over to Alicia.

"Angel, who are these people?"

Alicia tilted her head.

"I can sense those who need to repent, remember? Just like before the purification altar. These three give off the same presence that Infantry Palace cardinal did."

"Ah... truly, you are an angel. I'll investigate them at once!"

Gratitude shining on her face, Alicia accepted the kill list and swept out of the room. I glanced around. Nobody here. No one would dare barge into Alicia's room in the Saintess's Palace uninvited.

With the cleanup out of the way, my next task was already decided. I pulled up my status window.

As all true gamers know, gacha is all about timing!

How about right now? I jabbed the enhancement button without hesitation.

Ding-ding-ding-diiing!

A cheerful chime rang out as golden script scattered through the air.

After the halo, now the vestment. And once again, something completely unexpected had come out of it. The moment I read the text floating on the status window, a sense of foreboding washed over me.

So it auto-transforms when things get dangerous, and I can also swap into it whenever I like. But hold on—wouldn't a "vestment" normally mean something like a priest's robe? You know, the thing Buddhist monks wear? I'd never in my life heard of a vestment called Black Lotus Gothic.

Well, I'd find out by checking.

"Equip Black Lotus Gothic."

I declared it loudly and without shame.

Whoooosh—

A pitch-black, translucent lotus blossom bloomed upward and wrapped itself around my body. My priest robes scattered into motes of pure white, and in their place black fabric coiled around me out of thin air.

This. This is a magical girl transformation, isn't it.

Poof—

After a process so theatrically excessive it bordered on self-degradation, the transformation finished, and I stood before the full-length mirror.

A black gothic lolita dress trimmed with frills. An adorable little hat perched on my head. Platform shoes. A harness garter ring squeezing my thighs.

This is... a vestment?

As if answering my unspoken doubt, the system curtly appended its explanatory text.

"Ah... right."

I'd forgotten. This was an eroge, wasn't it. A world where common sense was strictly forbidden. I was in the middle of letting out a long, deep sigh when—

BANG!

The door flew open.

"Eep?!"

I flinched before I could help it.

"Angel! The joint investigation with the Holy Radiance Inquisition has been decided... Oh."

Alicia froze dead in the doorway. Her blue eyes went perfectly round. Her gaze traveled slowly from the top of my head down to my toes, then climbed back up again.

"...Um."

What excuse could I possibly offer here?

"My, my... it suits you beautifully, Angel. So this is your taste?"

"It is not."

I denied it instantly.

"You should have told me sooner. If I'd known you loved such pretty clothes... You're a girl too, Angel. I truly failed to understand a maiden's heart."

Alicia's cheeks flushed a deep crimson. Something told me she was running some extremely dangerous imaginings through her head.

"It's one of my abilities. Besides, I'm an adult, you know?"

My body might be flat as a board, but I'd aged plenty enough.

I dismissed the vestment. Whoosh— this time, without any fanfare, my original clothes returned.

"Is it a sacred art of Celestial Zenith? It feels like an entirely different system—your abilities truly are... mysterious, Angel."

"Not a sacred art. It's something I picked up along the way. And it's really not my taste."

"Hmm, is that so."

Alicia had evidently misunderstood on a fundamental level. I could plainly see her inner fantasies careening off in a very unhealthy direction.

It is genuinely not my taste, you know. I actually preferred this sort of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠modest priest robe far more.

"The Inquisition is stepping in?"

I casually steered the topic away.

"Yes. We'll be raiding the three cardinals' secret storehouses this evening. I'll be directing the operation myself."

"Shall I help?"

"No. I only held back at the All Saints Palace—in a cardinal's personal domain, I can handle it alone. Leave it to me. I'll be back before dawn."

"Understood."

"You can sleep by yourself, can't you?"

"I'm an adult, you know."

"Heheh. I'll be off, then."

Alicia left the room with a soft smile.

Click.

The door shut, and silence settled in.

"..."

I flopped face-down onto the bed and buried my face in the fluffy pillow.

It'll be fine, right? As long as Alicia doesn't come back hauling armfuls of frilly girly clothes... I shook my head side to side, shaking off the stray thought. That wasn't what mattered right now.

Three Evil-aligned cardinals remaining. What did they get up to in the game again? I rifled through my memories.

In the original route where Alicia falls, the All Saints Palace gets razed to the ground, so the individual cardinals never really got the spotlight. With a few exceptions, almost all of them had their heads caved in by Alicia, after all.

Her combat power doesn't seem to change much before or after the fall, anyway—I'm sure she'll manage on her own.

I checked the calendar beside the bed. The main story would kick off in roughly a month.

"I wonder if there'll be a protagonist."

If the main-story protagonist went around solving everything on their own thanks to foreknowledge of the plot, I could just spend my days on dessert tours and call it a life. But if there wasn't one?

Then I'd have to shoulder the protagonist's role myself, wouldn't I.

The protagonist's default name was... Ruan, wasn't it?

Ruan, buddy, couldn't you handle things for me? Leave saving the world to you, yeah?

That was the hope, but my gut told me otherwise. The main-story protagonist probably wouldn't exist. Even the name "Ruan" wasn't fixed—players could change it freely whenever they liked. His face, likewise, was always hidden in shadow.

Eroge games do that all the time for immersion. His backstory amounted to nothing more than "a mercenary," never properly explored.

Still, once those three evil cardinals were dealt with, there'd be nothing left to do in the Holy Radiance Empire for the moment. I'd just head to the starting point and look around.

Roll, roll.

I wriggled over and dragged a sheet of paper from beside the bed.

Scratch, scratch—

I wrote down everything I could remember.

The heroine rescued in Bern was one of this game's core heroines. Luise, the blind Sword Saint. A monstrously powerful character born with the legendary trait Sword Saint.

For reference, trait grades were divided into Common, Rare, Heroic, and Legendary. This game's sole Mythic trait, Buddha Punch, was a glitch of sorts that couldn't be obtained through any normal route, so it didn't count. Meaning Legendary was the practical ceiling.

Among all recruitable companions, Luise was the only character who came with a Legendary trait from the very start. Granted, at first she was weak enough to lose to back-alley thugs. She walked with nothing but a battered cane to lean on, and being a country girl, she'd never so much as held a sword. She didn't even know she had the makings of a Sword Saint herself.

Raising her was easy, too. Just humor her feelings while progressing through the story, and her sword heart would awaken on its own—then sword aura, then sword force, and by the final act she'd deploy her very own domain, the Sword Realm.

"In the original, her eyes got healed with an Elixir."

There was a salvation event late in the game where an endgame-crafted Elixir restored Luise's blinded eyes. That was the moment her affection rating maxed out at a full 100.

Scrolling down my status window, I checked the Great Origin Buddha Icon section.

4. Miracle (Costs 108 Votive Power)

※ Only low-grade Miracles can be manifested at your current stage.

The Great Origin Buddha Icon's Miracle. Would a genuine miracle be enough to fix blindness? The trouble was, Elisé's blindness was less an affliction and more a curse of heaven brought on by talent far too immense. Even in the original, nothing short of an Elixir-grade remedy could resolve it.

An event that would max out her affection in one stroke... I doubted a low-grade Miracle could manage that. However much of an overpowered cheat Buddha Punch was, when it came to story progression there were usually certain unwritten rules.

Burn 108 Votive Power—power I had no idea when I'd finish accumulating—on something I wasn't even sure about?

"Hmmmmm..."

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I hugged both knees to my chest and brooded.

Come to think of it, this is infuriating. Would it kill you to explain things a little more clearly, huh? Huh?!

Yah! Yah!

I punched away at the holographic window with all my might, but my tiny, delicate fists did nothing but pierce empty air.

I wonder when Alicia's getting back. "I'm bored..." Maybe I should have just swallowed my pride and tagged along. Our Saintess's room was pointlessly vast and pointlessly quiet.

Roll, roll.

After a few more turns on the plush mattress, my body was starting to feel heavy. The desserts from that Star Whale confectionery I'd eaten earlier floated lazily through my mind. What were the famous sweets of the Bern Kingdom, again...? The game never went that deep. A kingdom in decline—did it even have proper desserts left?

"Yawwwn."

I pulled up a translucent window before my eyes.

Twelve Votive Power had piled up in the meantime. Alicia was doing her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠part, then.

When we got to Bern, I'd have to survey every last confectionery. No, no. Find the original protagonist first, then find Luise. What was I supposed to do after that again...

The thread of my thoughts kept snapping clean apart. The constellation patterns carved into the ceiling seemed to spin round and round. Since I was a man of iron will, I really needed to state clearly that Black Lotus Gothic was not my taste...

Click.

The door opened with the utmost caution. The Alicia who slipped into the room looked quite different from the one who had left. Her golden hair hung in disarray, and her face was etched with exhaustion.

The Lust Demon Palace. The Gandharva Palace. The Makara Palace. Sacred relics imbued with the power of evil gods had been unearthed from the three cardinals' secret storehouses. The cardinals themselves, naturally, had been subdued—their limbs and tendons severed, bound without mercy, and buried in the depths of the Holy Radiance Inquisition's underground cells.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

In the process, one of the twelve spires symbolizing the Holy City had collapsed entirely. That an immense amount of blood had been spilled went without saying.

And the killing intent that still lingered unstirred in Alicia's eyes—the moment she looked toward the bed—melted away like spring snow.

"...Ah."

On the bed lay Nirvana, half her face buried in a pillow. A pen lay toppled beside her, as if she'd been writing something. One sheet of paper was crumpled beneath her cheek, while another trailed off into a long line of barely legible scrawl.

The ink had smudged. She'd evidently lost her battle with sleep and drifted off mid-sentence.

"How can anyone be this adorable?"

Alicia's cheeks flushed pink.

Softly, softly.

Those slightly puffed, pillowy cheeks. Those dainty lips that smacked faintly in sleep. Afraid that even so much as a touch might bruise them, Alicia could only wiggle her fingers helplessly in the air—until, at last, she reached out with exquisite care and gently brushed aside a lock of black hair that had fallen across the sleeping face.

"Mmnh... strawberry..."

Had she liked the dessert she ate this afternoon that much?

"Heheh."

Alicia finally couldn't hold back her laughter. With a fingertip, she gave Nirvana's cheek the very gentlest of presses. At the soft, yielding sensation, a fullness of heart swelled up in her that she could have traded for nothing in this world.

She carefully wiped away the ink smudge on the cheek, then tidied up around the bed. Watching Nirvana sleep, Alicia whispered in the smallest of voices.

"My angel."

She pressed a careful kiss to Nirvana's forehead.

'If it is what my angel desires, I will make it all come true.'

So she murmured inwardly, gazing at the plan written on that note.

'Even if I must bring the entire continent to its knees.'

An unspeakable devotion—and fanaticism—took root in her blue eyes.