Thank you,@Jordan D'souza, for joining the memberships.
I'm truly grateful.
Bonus(1/1)
Chapter 41: Getting Cornered by Beautiful Girls.
.....
Morning light was just beginning to reach Orario's rooftops when Kihara finished washing up and moved to head out — Ryuu was waiting, and the Evilus investigation had been making real progress.
He opened the door.
Aiz was standing on the other side, expression neutral, eyes direct.
"Kihara. I need you to help me train."
"...What?"
"If you agree, I'll let you touch my breastplate after every session."
"Keep your voice down — why are you saying that on a public doorstep—"
"Because I want to get stronger."
"I understand, but I'm in the middle of something important right now—"
Without a word, Aiz produced a large coin pouch and pressed it into his arms.
"Two million falis. If that's insufficient—" a brief pause "—I can find other ways to compensate."
The phrasing invited interpretation. Kihara's gaze moved briefly across her figure, and something at the end of his nose developed an itch.
"The thing I'm doing really is important though..."
Thud.
Aiz's palm landed against the wall beside his head. She rose onto her toes and brought her face level with his, gold eyes reading his expression with the focused attention she normally reserved for dungeon navigation.
"I'll go into the dungeon and earn the money myself. I can support you. That isn't a problem."
"I think there may be a misunderstanding somewhere in this conversation."
"I'm serious."
She noticed something caught in the hair near his right ear — a brown strand that wasn't his — and reached up to remove it.
"Kihara? Aiz? What is happening right now?!"
Ryuu had arrived to find this scene waiting for her. She stood in the doorway taking it in — Aiz, a wall slam, Kihara holding a coin pouch — and the words kept man, gigolo, domineering sword princess falls for commoner cycled through her mind in rapid succession.
Some impulse she couldn't fully account for sent her forward. She pushed between them, slapped her own hand against the wall on Kihara's other side, and shoved another pouch into his arms from the opposite direction.
"Three million falis. You are not going anywhere with Aiz. We're not finished yet."
"Ryuu, Kihara is important to me. Can you let me have him?"
"Excuse me? He's important to me too — and we've been making real progress these past few days. Why would I hand him over?"
Aiz registered that her training coach was about to be redirected elsewhere. The soft focus in her eyes sharpened to something that had decided on an outcome.
"You really won't yield?"
To Ryuu, this translated as: you won't pause the Evilus investigation? She answered on that assumption without hesitation.
"Our business is considerably more urgent than yours. If anyone should step aside, it's you."
Kihara, currently sandwiched between two simultaneous wall-slams delivered by two extremely capable women, said nothing. There was a sensation at the top of his skull — a gaze arriving from above, carrying the specific temperature of something about to go very wrong.
[Hehehe~ Confessions at the front door first thing in the morning, followed by immediate discovery by the girlfriend — this is exactly the kind of delicious chaos I live for~]
[You had better actually be enjoying this, because you're going to help me find a way out of it. Come on, Shinobu — deploy that impossible brain of yours.]
[Hmph~ You haven't made me doughnuts in almost two weeks. Experience the consequences of neglecting your soulmate.]
"You two—"
The second-floor window opened. Hestia stepped through it.
From the second floor.
Gods who had descended to the lower world were physically equivalent to ordinary humans in terms of durability. A fall from that height, without someone to catch her, had a reasonable probability of ending the visit to the lower world early and permanently.
Kihara didn't think about it. He pushed Aiz and Ryuu gently aside, returned both coin pouches, and positioned himself below the window in the same motion. Hestia landed in his arms.
"See? Neither of you — he caught me. I'm the one he—"
She gave up trying to finish the sentence through the smile that had taken over her face and wound both arms around his neck. Then she pressed her face into him to prevent anyone from seeing the expression.
"Mmph. You're all so loud this early..."
Lili appeared in the doorway, blinking, hair still pressed flat from sleep, pouting at the assembled chaos.
"Can this not happen inside like normal people?"
Three conversations later, the misunderstanding resolved itself.
Aiz had wanted combat training. Ryuu had wanted Kihara to continue helping her investigate something that posed a threat to Orario. Neither of them had been proposing anything the other had assumed.
Lili surveyed the wreckage with the calm of someone who has seen worse.
"There was no need for any of this. Miss Ryuu's business will take half the day at most — Miss Aiz can have the other half. Problem solved."
"What about our time with Kihara-kun?"
"Lady Hestia. You have had Lord Kihara to yourself for three consecutive nights.
Perhaps moderate the complaint."
"I was just sleeping next to him — it's not like I was doing what you do, going in there and immediately—"
Kihara and Lili both looked at her.
Two large question marks hung in the air.
Hestia processed the sentence she had just finished out loud, and her complexion achieved a red that had no precedent in her recent history. She launched herself off Kihara's lap as though the surface had become hostile.
"I said nothing — I'm going back to sleep — do not talk to me—"
She was inside and up the stairs before the door had finished closing.
The misunderstanding handled, Kihara left with Ryuu. Aiz turned to go as well — she wanted to return to the Familia and prepare for the afternoon session.
Lili stopped her with a question she hadn't expected.
"Miss Aiz — I've been curious about your weapon lately. Would you tell me about it?"
"Of course."
Aiz settled onto the sofa without suspicion, accepted the tea Lili produced, and described the sword in her usual methodical way — an indestructible first-class arm, its particular properties, how it had been made.
Lili's eyes moved across her while she talked. Height, proportion, the precise way she held her shoulders, the exact rhythm of her speech. All of it went into careful storage.
Hehehe. Lord Kihara's face when he sees this is going to be absolutely worth it.
Meanwhile, the investigation had reached its conclusion.
Kihara and Ryuu tracked the poaching Familia's movements and found what was at the end of them. The Evilus remnants had a plan: during the Monster Festival being hosted by the Ganesha Familia — an event designed to showcase domesticated monsters and demonstrate the possibility of human-monster coexistence, almost certainly organised under Ouranos's direction — they intended to create chaos.
The captured Xenos blood would be brought into the dungeon during the event, triggering a monster surge. The Ganesha Familia's personnel would be concentrated inside the city managing the festival crowds. The dungeon exit would be under-watched.
Monsters rampaging inside the city.
Monsters pouring out of the dungeon simultaneously. A two-front disaster — and for a remnant faction whose stated purpose was destruction and disorder, even a high civilian body count would constitute success.
The reason the poaching Familia had been struggling to obtain Xenos blood was that Kihara had told the Xenos to stay in their territory the moment he noticed the increased activity in the area. The remnants were reduced to searching the dungeon's upper and middle floors for any newly spawned Xenos, trying to keep the plan viable.
They were running out of time, and they knew it.
...
Thank you for reading.