Monsters at the Gate
Ssssssshhhhhh—!
Simon was washing up in the bathroom. Steam billowed through the room, carrying the faint fragrance of soap.
Behind him, Lethe sat on the bed with her back turned and a sulky pout on her face.
...Isn't the sound carrying a little too well in here?
The bathroom wall was glass, and Simon was stark naked, but mercifully the fog inside blurred him down to a vague silhouette.
Before long, the water shut off, followed by the sound of someone changing into fresh clothes.
"Ah, I feel human again."
Simon stepped out of the bathroom, toweling his wet hair.
"The water pressure's great and it stays warm. Feels like the Kizen bathhouse."
"......."
Lethe pressed a hand to her forehead. She trembled, wrestling with something deep inside herself, until at last she sprang to her feet with a strangled shriek.
"Re-remember this! If you try anything weird, I swear—!"
"...I won't."
So her trust in him really was still rock bottom, huh.
Lethe shot him one long, venomous glare, then snatched up her clothes and towel and dove into the bathroom.
Sssssshhhhh—
The sound of running water soon followed.
Simon was absently scrubbing his hair with the towel when his mouth suddenly went dry.
A single pane of thin glass was all that separated them. One room apart.
It would have been stranger not to be tense.
"Don't look over here, you perv!"
"...I'm not looking."
Then came Lethe bending at the waist to strip off her clothes. The soft whisper of fabric sliding over skin cut through the rush of the water and wormed its way into his ears.
Beyond the condensation clouding the glass, her silhouette began to take shape.
"......."
Simon let out a long sigh and found himself deep in contemplation of this building's architecture.
Why on earth was the bathroom walled in glass? And why did the bathroom door have no lock of any kind, just swinging open and shut at will?
What could the architect possibly have intended?
It was all beyond anything Simon's common sense could explain.
Woomph!
A Holy Shield unfurled itself in front of the bathroom.
Woomph! Woomph! Woomph! Woomph! Woomph!
In moments, the entire bathroom was buried under layer upon layer of holy barriers.
"What's all this?"
"Rather than trust your conscience, I'll trust my own skills!"
Only after erecting all of that did Lethe finally relax and start her shower.
"Haaah."
Freshly showered and changed into a clean robe, Lethe sat on the sofa, rolling a wine glass in her fingers, her cheeks faintly flushed.
She spun the glass with practiced ease before bringing the rim to her lips. The vivid red liquid slid past her lips and down her throat.
"Mmm, that's the stuff~"
She stretched with a look of pure contentment, sinking deep into the backrest with an utterly shameless groan.
"Tired, huh?"
Simon was laying the damp towels out to dry beside her.
"Don't even get me started."
Her eyes closed, she rolled the wine glass between her fingers in slow circles.
"Who knew becoming a Saintess meant being called to that many places and studying that much? They even classify a person's smiles into twenty-five different types, can you believe it?"
"...Seriously?"
"Something about how you have to produce the right smile for the occasion. The servants drill it into me. 'Holy Maiden, today is the Holy Communion, so you must restrict yourself to the repertoire between the seventh smile and the fourteenth.'"
Simon prided himself on having received plenty of grueling etiquette training from Richard, but just listening to that made his skin crawl.
"I don't know much about the Holy Federation, so I'm hardly in a position to judge, but... is all that really necessary?"
"Of course it isn't!"
Lethe shouted, suddenly worked up.
"It's nothing but hollow pageantry! Half the people doing the teaching probably can't even tell one smile from another, honestly! Between you and me, doesn't it make you wonder about those old fossils pushing all this stuff? 'Back in our day, we went through all of it too~. Now it's your turn to suffer!'"
"Haha! That sounds like a pretty twisted theory."
"Nothing else explains it, I swear."
A glass of wine after a refreshing shower.
Lethe was clearly in high spirits, chattering away nonstop. And given everything that had happened that morning, Simon happily played along with her rambling.
"Welp, playtime's over, then."
Rising from her seat, she lightly tapped her own forehead.
A brush of white magic swept the tipsiness away, and her rosy cheeks returned to their usual pale shade.
"Let's get started."
"Started on what?"
She turned around and began rummaging through a bag set on the table.
"What do you think? You're not sleeping tonight."
"?!"
Simon's face went up in flames.
For a moment, his gaze lingered on her.
Her snow-white hair still damp with water, the robe wrapped just barely around her figure, and...
Thwack!
A book came flying at his face and Simon toppled backward onto the bed. Lethe was glaring down at him with ice in her eyes.
"Hey! Keep your eyes to yourself! You trying to die for real?!"
Simon groaned and picked up the object that had smacked into his face.
"What's this?"
"...A notebook. For teaching the kids."
Simon flipped through the pages with a rustle.
Blank. Every single one.
"Keep this in mind. Our stated reason for visiting Eskyle Village is not an investigation into 'evil.' We're going there to teach the children. We're teachers, got it?"
"Well, yeah."
"So from this moment on, we prepare like our lives depend on it. The villagers need to see us as competent and professional. It's a closed-off village, so their guard against outsiders will be sky-high. One whiff of anything suspicious and we're thrown right out."
She had a point.
Lethe started hurling play supplies onto the bed one after another.
"The bag Lady Israfil gave us—she really did think of everything."
She pulled out a coloring book and waved it at him. Simon's interest finally piqued, he began sorting through the supplies as well.
"Hmm. I'll need to draft a detailed curriculum. What to teach the children, how to structure each lesson."
"Exactly! So—have you ever taught kids before? Or, well, taught anyone at all, even if they weren't kids?"
Simon shook his head, and the hopeful light in Lethe's eyes died as her lips pushed into a pout.
"Useless. Completely useless."
"Sorry about that. And what about you? Ever taught kids?"
"Plenty."
Tap.
She set a Continental-language textbook on the table as she went on.
"I grew up in a cathedral that took in orphans, remember. We were short-staffed, so once I got a little older, I was put in charge of teaching and wrangling the little ones."
"...Oh. Right."
"Less chatting, more preparing."
And so the two of them threw together their lesson plans in a rush. Lethe prepared coloring exercises and lessons on the Continental alphabet.
"Have you decided what you're teaching?"
"How about Divine Beast Studies?"
Lethe's brow furrowed as if to ask what nonsense he was spouting.
"Divine Beast Studies? For kids who can't even summon divinity yet?"
"The idea is training that raises their divine aptitude while they run around and play with divine beasts that radiate holy power."
"...Oh?"
It was a better idea than she'd expected—color bloomed in Lethe's face.
"Then what about the divine beasts themselves? Pulling Ran out to play with the kids would be a bit dangerous, no?"
"I have divine beasts too. Three or so..."
Simon was in the middle of explaining his lesson plan when—
BOOOOOOM!
An explosion tore through the night outside the window.
"?!"
Simon and Lethe shot to their feet. Bang! Bang! More detonations rolled across the city in quick succession.
"What's going on?"
Simon was the first to throw open the window and look out.
Chaos. The city's people were screaming and running for their lives.
"Run! Keep running!"
"Head toward the assembly hall!"
The quiet town had descended into pandemonium. Even the city guard had poured out to shepherd civilians toward shelter.
"What's happening?!"
Lethe shouted as she burst out of the inn.
"Monsters from the mountain range are attacking! Some have already breached the defensive line and entered the city!"
a guard answered, his face grim.
"Monsters that lived comfortably in the mountains, attacking a village out of nowhere? Why?"
The guard glanced sidelong at Lethe, evidently deciding she was someone of high standing, and answered readily enough.
"Th-they must be fleeing the extreme cold, miss! The cold has grown so savage that even the monsters of the mountain range can't endure it any longer—"
"Got it. Thanks for the intel."
Lethe cut him off and whipped her head around. Simon was already preparing to move, having read the situation.
"Akalion!"
From Simon's holy subspace burst Akalion, the bear-shaped divine beast.
Simon immediately funneled divinity into him, swelling his bulk, then vaulted onto his back.
"Lethe!"
Without a word, Lethe grabbed Simon's outstretched hand and climbed up behind him.
"Hold on tight. Let's move, Akalion!"
-Uoooooong!
Akalion thundered down the village alleys on massive paws. The fleeing townsfolk startled and scrambled out of the way on either side.
"Ah! So that's the divine beast!"
Lethe, arms wrapped around Simon's waist, looked Akalion over.
"The one that got taken from one of our Efnel students."
Simon flinched and turned to look back at her.
"...You know them?"
"We just know each other through connections. Nothing more."
Lethe went on with a bored expression.
"Besides, she knows it'd be humiliating, so she keeps her mouth shut about it. Imagine—a divine beast abandoning her and choosing a necromancer! If word reached the Efnel higher-ups, she'd have been expelled on the spot."
"...Ahem. If I ever run into her, tell her I'm sorry."
Lethe scrunched up her face as if he'd said something absurd.
"There's nothing to apologize for. No one can interfere with a divine beast's choice. Honestly, the funnier joke is her rushing things and trying to handle a divine beast that never chose her in the first place."
By then, Akalion had reached the scene.
The village's volunteer militia was locked in combat with the monsters.
The enemy: White Goblins. A goblin variant covered in snow-white fur with brown eyes.
"They're—it's breaking through!"
"Block it with your bodies if you have to!"
The militiamen were holding one corner of a collapsed fence, but the goblins' assault was overwhelming.
"Get clear of there!"
Simon shouted.
"Wh-who—? Gwahk!"
The militiamen scrambled aside in alarm, and Akalion charged in with his enormous bulk, slamming into the monsters.
With a bone-shaking crash, goblins went flying in every direction. Akalion snorted steam and roared.
"A... a bear?"
"It's a divine beast! A priest has come!"
Whether the militia cheered or not, Lethe gave Simon's shoulder a light tap and slid down from Akalion's back.
"I'll handle the defense."
"Leave the offense to me."
Lethe sprinted straight for the fence, while Simon led Akalion charging into the White Goblins.
Shing!
Simon drew a longsword from his subspace, poured divinity down its blade, and swung. Every time the white sword traced an arc, a monster burst apart in a spray of blood.
It's a shame I'm stuck using divinity alone!
Within the Holy Federation, Jet-Black was sealed away, and Chaos took far too long to prepare.
Simon scrawled a magic circle across the flat of the blade, seized the hilt in both hands, and brought it around in one powerful sweep.
FWAAAAAANG!
A fan-shaped blade of divinity shot out along the path of his swing, cleaving five goblins apart in a single stroke. Cheers erupted from the militiamen all around.
Meanwhile, Lethe had run to the fence and set about repairing the crumbling section first.
⟨ Holy Enchant ⟩
FLASH!
Every fence in the city flooded with brilliant white light.
-Kegege!
The monsters mid-charge against the fences slammed to a halt, their assault stopped dead.
With no other choice, they tried to clamber over the fence—but Lethe raised her arm as if to say they could try all they liked.
⟨ Great Wall ⟩
GRUUUUMBLE!
Centered on the fence, a towering barrier of divinity rose skyward. The eyes of the militiamen manning the fence went wide as saucers.
"A-am I seeing things right now?"
In the blink of an eye, the pathetic little fence had become a majestic fortress wall encircling the entire city.
Simon and Lethe's intervention turned the tide in an instant.
Lethe's support abilities in particular were dazzling to behold.
⟨ Mass Heal ⟩
White light shimmered across the bodies of the wounded crying out in pain everywhere. Their injuries closed in the blink of an eye.
"M-my wounds are healed!"
"Let's go!"
Mass healing followed by mass blessings—Lethe healed and empowered the militiamen, who otherwise would have been no real force at all, and sent them back into the fight.
Their newfound strength and speed lit a fire in the militia too. Monsters dropped left and right with every swing of their blades.
"Push them back!"
The battle had turned. Lethe was sprinting across the field when, at the perfect moment, Simon came riding up on Akalion.
"Grab on!"
Lethe clamped onto Simon's hand. He hauled her up with a strong pull, and she twisted around and settled lightly into the seat behind him.
"This section's fully sealed. We'll ride along the wall and plug every breach the monsters try to make as we go!"
"Got it."
Simon and Lethe swept across the battlefield without pause. The city was large, and so were the stretches that needed defending.
But the next area they reached held far, far more monsters than the first. The defensive line had long since collapsed, and the monsters were pouring over the fence.
The surviving militiamen were fighting a desperate street battle, but at this rate they'd be wiped out.
"Picking them off one by one would take forever. We'll have to hit them all at once."
She swept her arm, opening her holy subspace.
Simon's eyes gleamed.
So now she's bringing out the White Dragon, Ran?
He couldn't help wondering just how much she'd grown all this time.