There.
Sanjouno Haruhime knelt on the tatami.
A single Magic Stone lamp in the corner of the room gave off a weak yellow glow, stretching her slender shadow out long across the floor.
She tilted her head back a little.
Through the half-open lattice window, she stared blankly at the "emerald sun of magic" blazing up in the direction of Babel Tower.
Her legs were pressed together, tucked obediently against the thin cushion.
Pure white cotton slouch socks bunched loose and careless around her ankles.
She had been shut inside this room for most of the night, and the uproar outside left her unable to sit still; the socks were already half-soaked through with cold sweat.
The cool fabric clung tight to the wheat-gold arches of her feet, tracing the delicate line of each ankle.
The air in the room was clean — none of the sharp powder-and-rouge stink of an ordinary brothel lane, only the faint scent of a Far Eastern girl's thin sweat.
Sanjouno Haruhime's fluffy golden fox tail shifted along the floor.
As the light outside flickered, the furred tip curled up and brushed the woven edge of the tatami.
Green light came through the wooden lattice and fell across her face. Such a warm light it was.
In the instant that glow washed over her, every ache she had earned during the day for failing the madam's brutal standards began, without a sound, to fade.
As if a pair of great invisible hands had gently smoothed the hurt away.
Sanjouno Haruhime blinked her wet green eyes, lost.
She looked up at the emerald sun that had risen out of nothing, biting her lower lip, not daring to make a single sound.
Old stories out of the Far East came surging up through her memory.
As a child she had read picture books by the dozen, hero legends of every kind.
Those books had knights in golden armor, brave heroes striking the heads from evil dragons.
But nowhere in those yellowed pages had anyone been written who could cast a spell bright enough to light the whole night sky over Orario like this.
This blazing light, rising past Babel Tower.
Was it a hero, come to save people?
And if it truly was a hero out of legend…
would eyes that noble hold room for a corner of the world as filthy as this one?
Would they come to save a girl in the Pleasure Quarter, branded a whore, without even the strength left to resist?
At that thought, the light went out of her eyes.
The brighter the radiance outside the window, the deeper the shadows inside the room.
She buried her face in her knees, and behind her the tail curled into a ball and wound tight around her calves.
She did not dare hope.
The more she wished for it, the more she feared it was only a dream that would vanish between one breath and the next.
And it was not only inside that shut-away room.
Aisha, her great falchion Zaga in hand, was leaping across the uneven rooftops of the Pleasure Quarter, hurrying toward the building where Sanjouno Haruhime was kept — and she felt the enormous wrongness of that magic in her own flesh.
She stopped dead.
Aisha looked down and ran a hand over her left side.
The buried ache left there by Captain Frunyi's mad torture — payment for shattering the Killing Stone against Ishtar's will to protect Sanjouno Haruhime — had vanished without a trace.
She gripped the hilt tight, her gaze cutting through the dark toward Babel Tower.
"Who in the world cast this? Magic covering a range that absurd…" Aisha muttered to herself.
She was out in the remote Southeast District.
Even here the wave had reached her, and the healing had taken hold.
Amazon that she was, with no head for the deeper theory of magic, she still understood exactly what this was: a miracle that would make even the gods turn and stare.
At that same moment. The top floor of the Temple of the Divine Courtesan.
Night wind stirred the heavy crimson drapes.
Crack!
With an ear-splitting burst of shattering glass, a crystal goblet still half full of top-vintage crimson wine smashed against a stone pillar carved with intricate patterns.
Clear shards and red wine sprayed in all directions.
The wine slid down the elegant contours of the carving in slow trickles, thick as blood freshly spilled.
Ishtar stood planted at the railing.
She glared at the green sun on the far horizon that had stolen the eyes of the entire city, her chest heaving.
The goddess who ruled the Pleasure Quarter had clearly already guessed who had made a spectacle this appalling.
Who else but that newly appointed Constable, that vicious god who observed no limits at all, could be sitting on a card that turned the sky to cloud with one hand and to rain with the other?
"What is this supposed to be?!" Ishtar flipped the table over.
"He's been in the Lower World less than half a year! What right does he have to hold this many hidden cards?!"
The light pouring down from that green sun brought her no healing warmth at all.
It landed like a ringing slap across her face instead, grinding her dignity as a goddess into the dirt.
Only moments ago she had been calculating how much gold to throw at Evilus to have that flock of girls around Haimer finished off.
But against wide-area healing magic on this scale, every last one of those schemes was flattened out of existence.
The man had to be cheating!
The chaos she had paid a fortune to arrange had turned into one colossal joke for the whole city to laugh at.
Teeth grinding, Ishtar rounded on the few battle-courtesans behind the drapes — the ones Freya had charmed not long before — and roared.
"Go tell Frunyi! Seal every exit out of the Pleasure Quarter, right now!"
"Any outsider who so much as tries to come near, chop them into pieces and feed them to the dogs!"
Samira and the others flinched at the shout, and none of them dared meet Ishtar's eyes; they hurried out to carry the order.
"On the night of the full moon, the rite goes ahead as planned!"
"I will see Sanjouno Haruhime lying on that altar!"
Once Samira and the rest were gone, Ishtar screamed it at the night sky.
This was the last card she had been holding, the one she had planned around for so long.
All she had to do was seal Sanjouno Haruhime's soul — the soul that could force a level up — into the Killing Stone before things got any worse, and her entire Familia's core strength would rise a full tier.
Then even against Freya!
Even against her, Ishtar would have the standing to meet her head-on!
All of it would belong to her, sooner or later!
Fury blazed in Ishtar's eyes.
And yet.
Take that gaze across the wrecked, disordered districts, to the other side of the city.
On a street corner along Orario's South Main Street, beside an opulent carriage.
The commoners in the street had long since fled for shelter, or stood dazed in the healing light.
Freya, though, stood beside the carriage in a black cloak.
Night wind moved through her long silver waterfall of hair.
One arm folded across her chest, she watched the spectacle over Babel Tower with genuine interest.
Ottar stood behind her.
"Wide-area magic on that level…"
"Counted as a personal feat, it is more than enough to stand as an exploit beyond his own level."
As the Lv.7 standing at the absolute summit of Orario, Ottar gave the most objective appraisal there was.
Freya listened, and a faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. She nodded slightly, unsurprised.
"Indeed."
"What a beautiful light."
At that same moment.
Outside an alley off Northwest Avenue.
Lefiya, true-blooded elf that she was, stood by a low wall with her arms and legs gone weak, her deep blue eyes stretched wide with shock.
Riveria and Alicia, who had been helping the city guard evacuate civilians, both stopped what they were doing.
Across the better part of a district, the two exchanged a look.
Each saw the same tremor of awe in the other's eyes.
Forbidden-spell-tier magic, unleashed by a single person, on a scale wide enough to blanket the city.
Even Riveria, long known as the "Nine Hell", even with the divine weapon 『Magna Alfs』 in her hands, its head set with the highest grade of magic gem — she knew the truth of it.
Unless she truly hardened her heart, drained every drop of her life force in an instant and burned her soul away for mana, she would never in this lifetime touch even the outer edge of that realm of power.
This was not a spell any inhabitant of the Lower World could reach.
And yet.
No matter how vast the miracle, it comes to an end.
As the caster's mana bled away at a violent rate, the "emerald sun" coiled above Orario finally burned through its fuel and broke apart into scattering motes of light.
But its afterglow came down like a fine spring rain, brushing silently over every last corner of the earth.
Within the space of a few breaths, the wounded were whole.
Not one of them was left with a crippling injury waiting to surface — even the stamina they had spent came flooding back.
The surviving commoners rose from the rubble, unable to believe any of it.
They touched chests that had been bleeding out moments before. They touched legs that were sound and unbroken.
Their knees gave way, and one after another they sank down onto streets strewn with wreckage.
Palms pressed together, they bowed their heads toward Babel Tower in gratitude, and from the crowd rose the faint, choked sound of prayer.
And while the whole city was still soaking in the relief of having survived.
The next second.
"Kreeeee—"
High overhead.
A soaring eagle cry pierced the clouds and tore the night open.
A massive griffin Xenos beat its broad wings, whipping up a cloud of dust from the ground.
On its back it carried two figures, spiraling slowly down from the highest point of Babel Tower along the line of the updraft, toward the upper-class residential district.
Even with Haimer using 『Gensokyo』 to heal her, the exhaustion of the backlash left her struggling to lift so much as a finger.
She had no choice but to let Haimer hold her.
His right arm circled her waist, and his broad black coat blocked the night wind for her.
Feeling the god she looked up to treat her with such care, the Holy Emperor felt heat rise in her cheeks.
Like a white dove that had found a harbor out of the wind, she rested her head against Haimer's chest and let her eyes drift shut, utterly at peace.
And so.
The unrest in Orario was slowly settling toward quiet.
But.
Among the broken walls and ruined houses, countless busy figures still moved.
Monsters that down in the Dungeon meant nothing but danger.
Every one of them now wore a bright red strip of cloth tied around its body.
Dragging away heavy slabs of stone, digging open the mounds of earth that had buried people alive, beating out the last flames on collapsed houses.
There was even a spot on East Street, in front of a caved-in wooden house.
The stone dragon Grosse, more than five meters long, had his enormous body folded awkwardly down beside a heap of broken rock.
His hard gray-black scales were smeared all over with lime dust.
That huge dragon head hung low.
A pair of eyes the size of brass bells stared fixedly at a small figure wedged in the gap between two fractured stone pillars.
Dragon breath jetted from his nostrils and stirred the sand on the ground.
The oppressive weight of a colossus like Grosse was not lost on anyone.
The commoners, still shaken from the monster riot, went white to the lips and pressed themselves into both ends of the alley, huddled together and trembling as they watched a deep-floor dragon with at least Lv.5 combat strength.
Terrified that all this rescue work had left it hungry, and that any second now it would open those saw-toothed jaws, crush the stone slab in one bite and swallow a living person whole.
Grosse paid no attention at all to the wary stares around him.
He only looked, long and hard, at the small figure hiding in the crack between the stones.
Then he slowly extended a sharp foreclaw that could split steel.
He drew the claw tips in, keeping the cutting edges clear, and worked his way in through the gap in the rubble, a little at a time.
Stone ground against stone as the pieces were pushed aside.
Soon Grosse's claw hooked something gently out of the rising dust.
A stuffed bear, flattened by a fallen roof beam.
Against a dragon's claw, the thing looked like nothing at all.
A grubby little toy no bigger than a grown man's palm, its cloth washed pale, streaked with several black smears of ash, a crude patch sewn crooked along one seam.
This monstrous creature had strained with everything it had, and what it had teased out with the very tip of a claw, so delicately, was a toy coming apart at the seams.
The small figure hiding in the dark, narrow crevice gave a sudden shiver.
She was a little girl, no more than seven or eight.
She wore a dress covered in patches, stone grit sitting in her hair, streaks of gray-black grime across her face.
At the sound, she gathered her courage, clawed at the broken stones and climbed out of the cramped hole where she had sheltered.
With a human cub that close, Grosse's huge body went faintly rigid.
Then he noticed the girl staring at the fraying toy in his claw.
Grosse hesitated a moment, then closed half a meter of distance on his own and came to stand in front of her.
His bulk laid a shadow over her.
The sight of him stepping forward broke the few adventurers at the mouth of the alley into a cold sweat; veins stood out on the hands gripping their hilts, ready to charge in and snatch the child back at any second.
But then.
"For you."
The Common Tongue came out of Grosse's mouth clumsy and ill-fitting.
He turned the dragon claw palm-up and held it open in midair.
The dirty stuffed bear lay quietly in the center of that claw, offered back with enormous care.
The girl tipped her head up at Grosse.
The raw pressure of a real monster had her shaking from head to foot, her thin shoulders trembling without pause.
After all.
In these years up on the surface, even children who belonged to no adventurer had been drilled by the grown-ups times beyond counting; they knew from infancy how savage the monsters of the Labyrinth were.
It was the fear bred into humans for their natural predator.
But.
When the girl's eyes settled on that all-too-familiar stuffed bear in Grosse's palm.
She bit down on bloodless lips, held back the urge to turn and run, and made herself take one small step forward.
In the dead silence.
She stretched out one small hand caked in dust.
Across the empty air she took the stuffed toy and clutched it hard against her chest.
"Thank you…"
Holding the bear, the girl burst into tears; they ran down through the dirt and smeared her cheeks.
Her small child's voice came thick and stuffy.
"Thank you… mister monster."
"This is the only present my mama gave me before she went far away… When everything came down just now, I thought I'd never find it again."
She hiccupped, wiped at her eyes, and held the toy bear tight.
Thank you?
The instant those two words reached him, Grosse's body locked up.
Something seemed to crack across that hard face.
It was the first time since the day he was born.
The first time he had heard, clear and unmistakable, the sound of thanks from the mouth of a surface dweller — those greedy creatures so full of prejudice in his eyes — without a trace of disgust mixed into it.
For as long as they could remember, down in the Dungeon they had been shunned by ordinary monsters and marked as prey by adventurers, hated and hunted.
They could only hide in dark corners like rats that must never see the light, carrying the weight of a fate that would never know the sun.
And here, now, on this desolate street corner, two simple words had smashed all of it to pieces.
Facing this small, trembling life, Grosse suddenly had no idea where to put his own limbs.
He did not dare move those huge, sharp claws at all, afraid that one clumsy lift of a hand would frighten her all over again.
"Where is your mother?"
Grosse had been silent for a good dozen seconds and more, as if trying to assemble a suitable set of words, and in the end all he forced out was that, stiff and blunt.
The girl hugged the battered stuffed bear. Tears still stood in her eyes, but her face was very calm as she shook her head.
"The Kami-sama at the orphanage said Mama went somewhere very far away to look for Papa, and that when I'm grown up and understand things, I'll get to see them."
Somewhere very far away. An orphan, then…
Grosse had lived for centuries; he knew a beautiful lie told to a child when he heard one.
He fell into a long silence.
He lowered his head a little and looked at the claw he had just pulled out of the muddy water and broken stone.
Then he looked at the girl's eyes, wet with tears as they were.
And it seemed he finally understood why Haimer had sent them out to help.
Prejudice might be as thick as a city wall, but the children had not yet been sealed in behind it.
All it took was digging out one breach.
What was planted today would take root sooner or later.
So long as these newborn children were willing to put away sword and blade and stop driving them out, then the fantasy of the Xenos living on the surface would have a crack through which to root and break the soil.
"That day will come."
Grosse said it softly.
Then he beat those broad wings and drove back into the thick of the night, off to the next burning ruin where someone was waiting to be saved.
And so.
Time slipped away bit by bit, until at last the sky went pale along the horizon.
The harsh glare of the fires dimmed under bucket after bucket of water, and the sound of running feet finally came to a stop.
That long, chaotic night, after the emerald healing light had swept over all of Orario, was drawing at last toward its end.
The Haimer mansion.
On the bluestone paving outside the courtyard gate.
Dark red blood ran along the seams between the tiles and gathered into thick, sticky pools.
The Gulliver Brothers, in full-face heavy metal helms, stood in a neat row at the gate and shook the clotted blood off their weapons.
Their eyes swept the empty street, and only once they were certain that no blind straggler was left to try forcing its way into this god's mansion did they let themselves relax a little.
A powerful rush of air came down from above.
The Gulliver Brothers looked up.
Haimer sat astride a griffin's back, the unconscious Holy Emperor gathered in his arms, descending slowly over the open courtyard at the center of the mansion.
"Looks like the Lord has finished his business."
"Come to think of it, that emerald sun of mana just now must have been the Lord's work."
"Or was it the girl in the Lord's arms?" the Gulliver Brothers murmured.
Then, inside the mansion.
Haimer swung down off the griffin's back with the Holy Emperor in his arms, raised a hand and patted the griffin's feather-covered neck twice.
"All right, Miss Griffin."
"I can look after her by myself now. Go join up with Grosse and the rest of the main group before it gets fully light."
"Today's outing doesn't mean you can settle on the surface for good just yet — but I promise you, that day is only a few more days off."
____
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