And with that.
The instant those words left Haimer's mouth—
The griffin lowered its huge, plume-covered eagle head and nuzzled his palm, letting out a low cry.
Then it gave a nod.
Its wings snapped down!
The downbeat tore a hard whirlwind across the courtyard!
That enormous body ripped free of the ground!
In the space of a breath it had buried itself in the brightening clouds of dawn, dwindling to a black speck and then to nothing at all.
Haimer drew his gaze back down.
He gathered up the still-unconscious Holy Emperor, carried her to the master bedroom and pushed the door open.
Thanks to the Divine Blood sigils, Mary Kikakujou and Rei were both sleeping peacefully now, the color returned to their faces.
Haimer laid the Holy Emperor gently in the empty space on the bed, tucked the edge of the silk quilt in around her, and slipped back out of the room.
And now.
After the better part of a night spent putting out fires—
The sky over Orario had gone fully bright.
The blazes in the streets and alleys had long since been doused; only a few blackened roof beams still leaked thin ribbons of white smoke.
"L-Lord Haimer." Catching sight of him, Shakti saluted at once.
"The riot has been fully suppressed."
Haimer nodded.
"Then the rats who were hoarding monsters. You've found them?"
"Yes. Every one of them is on this list."
"Then go and take them."
"If the rank and file resist, put them down where they stand. That is the authority the Constable grants your guardsman corps."
"As for the gods who make trouble."
"Only a god can handle a god, true."
"But you may restrain Them in my name."
"And if They dare resist, drag Them before me yourselves."
In the Lower World, only gods could deal with gods.
"Understood!"
"The task will be carried out!"
Hearing all this, Shakti's respect for Haimer climbed another notch.
After all, for a commander of guardsmen who had spent years hemmed in by endless procedure and unable to actually settle anything, having a dread god at her back made the work go down remarkably smooth.
And so.
The morning breeze wound through street and alley.
The uproar of the frenzied monsters had been declared over for good.
A night of terror and rescue work had left collapsed houses to rebuild and cratered roads to fill.
Even so, the sun of a new day rose right on schedule.
A paper-girl from some small Familia was already jogging the flagstones, large and small, with a big cloth sack slung over her shoulder.
"Extra! Extra!"
The bright child's voice rang off the street corners.
"The Constable has issued an emergency decree — any faction caught harboring smuggled Dungeon monsters will have its assets seized and confiscated entire! Every coin goes to paying the monster-disaster bounties and repairing the city!"
"Extra! Extra!"
The little girl waved the fresh-printed sheets, and passersby crowded in around her.
"Every adventurer who cut down a rioting monster and took its [Magic Stone] may present proof at the Guild and exchange it for Valis! They also qualify for an arms reservation voucher — in the days to come, the Guild will supply weapons and equipment forged by the hand of the patron god of the [Haimer Familia] himself!"
In a single stroke, the heavy, sunken mood over the city lifted.
After parting from Haimer.
The guardsmen of the [Ganesha Familia] that Shakti had brought split into detachments and went straight to work, kicking in the compound gates of every cancerous Familia on the list.
As it turned out, second- and third-rate adventurers who swaggered around on ordinary days amounted to little more than two whacks from the flat of a blade once they were facing guardsmen carrying the Constable's writ.
A few tried to draw steel and fight back. The guardsmen wasted no words.
One blow to the face, a broken nose, and they were dragged off.
Round after round of sweeps and seizures followed.
Great leather chests packed with Valis coin, cellars heaped with unregistered Magic Stones, rare medicinal reagents and smuggling ledgers by the armload — it all came streaming out of one mansion after another.
After all.
Keeping monsters in secret and letting them ravage the entire Labyrinth City was about as vile as it got.
And so.
This fire did not only scorch the rats in the dark.
Even Orario's two great mountains — the [Loki Familia] and the [Freya Familia] — could not, by the letter of the rules, escape the inspection process.
That said.
Because of Haimer's relationship with them.
And because the [Loki Familia] and [Freya Familia] were the two strongest Familias in the Labyrinth City—
The guardsmen handled those two searches with every possible courtesy.
They sent a few female officers already on friendly terms to knock on the gates of the [Loki Familia] and [Freya Familia] compounds, and not one of them overstepped.
It should have been a tidy, painless bit of paperwork for everyone involved.
Who could have guessed Loki wouldn't change her nature one bit.
She agreed to the search cheerfully enough — and then turned right around in the courtyard and started pawing at several well-figured female guardsmen, groping and cajoling, going so far as to promise she could put in a word for them with the Constable.
Half an hour later, Shakti received her subordinates' formal complaint on a street corner, a black line crawling down her forehead.
Lady Loki, it said, had seized them by the hands and refused to let go, promising room and board if they'd convert, until the terrified inspection team bolted out the door.
Reading the letter, Shakti rubbed her throbbing temples, entirely out of words.
Still.
For all that the guardsmen moved through the great factions' compounds without obstruction—
When they reached the [Pleasure Quarter], they finally hit iron.
Shakti led a column of elite guardsmen into the district with a stony face.
And ran headlong into the hardest nail of the whole assignment.
The Pleasure Quarter!
Ishtar sat sprawled at her ease on a soft palanquin borne by several powerfully built Amazons, that gorgeous, sultry face on full display, blocking the entrance to the quarter.
A dozen-odd Amazon warriors with battle markings inked across their skin stood in a line before her, broad sabers raised.
Faced with Ganesha's summons—
Ishtar looked down from her perch, pipe in hand, and didn't so much as lift an eyelid, offering nothing but a lazy string of excuses.
The Pleasure Quarter, she said, was sacred private property and inviolable. Not a shred of face for the guardsmen.
The air went sharp with Gunpowder.
Shakti's spear tip dipped toward the ground. "Lady Ishtar, this is the highest decree of the new Constable. Please cooperate with the investigation!"
"Decree?"
"Without my permission, no one sets half a foot on this street."
"Even an order from the Guild doesn't buy anything here!"
"This flower district has always been our place of business."
"You want to march a hundred grown men in here, trample down my threshold and scare off my customers? Do I look like some stray god you can wave away on the roadside?" Ishtar sniffed coldly, putting on every ounce of airs, ready to keep pouring out her arrogance as a goddess of beauty.
"As one of the few goddesses of beauty in the Heavens, of course you're no stray god."
A voice, gentle on its surface and freezing underneath, cut through the deadlocked crowd.
Shakti's guardsmen split down the middle and made way.
—Haimer.
And behind him.
Onigawara Rin, Tsukuyo Inaba and the rest.
After a full night of killing, the murderous air hanging off the girls as they took their places nearly scorched the sky.
"Ishtar." Haimer stopped walking and raised his eyes to the goddess on the palanquin, his voice flat.
"The title of Constable was passed two days ago by a show of hands — Ouranos, who founded this city of Orario, and every god of Orario besides, all in agreement."
"They extended me that courtesy, so I've taken the trouble of doing the work."
"Even if you rounded up a few of the gods under your skirts and voted against it at the time."
"The title is mine now. I've accepted it."
"So when you block this gate, are you generously confessing to me that you've been standing with Evilus — the ones set against every god in Orario — all along?"
The accusation came down like a millstone.
Ishtar's expression stiffened for an instant, her coquettish smile freezing into something ugly.
She stared him down, back teeth grinding audibly, that carefully painted face twitching.
Naturally she didn't dare let the name Evilus be hung on her in public.
If she kept up the hard resistance now, the whole reeking accusation — sheltering Evilus, engineering the riot — would be nailed to her skull today and never come off!
Haimer would only have to move his lips, and by tomorrow her Ishtar Familia would be facing the combined armies of all Orario.
"You can go in."
"A few skulking rats with their heads tucked in, that's all. The Pleasure Quarter has always kept to the rules."
"You want to search? Fine."
"But I will not have several hundred of you tramping onto my ground like an invading army!"
"Only women go in!"
"Agreed."
Haimer gave a small shrug, letting her bluster stand without calling it what it was.
He tilted his head, and Shakti at once picked out several of her most capable female guardsmen; the rest of the force formed up outside to await orders.
And so.
The heavy gates groaned open.
Under the wary stares of the Amazons lining both sides—
Haimer led the girls straight past Ishtar's palanquin, brushing by within arm's reach.
Ishtar had backed down!
That fact struck a deep wound in the pride of the battle courtesans, arrogant and domineering for so many years.
Frunyi Jamil most of all.
She stood there gripping her massive war axe, eyes locked on Haimer and refusing to let go.
Confronted with a face like his—
Frunyi, who had always had a particular appetite for beautiful men, was openly drooling.
But.
She hadn't managed to hide the venom in it quickly enough.
Tsukuyo and Koharu, who happened to be passing right in front of her, came to a halt.
Koharu turned her face a fraction to the side.
Those emotionless, swirl-marked eyes drifted over the mountain of flesh in one weightless glance.
Then her wrist rolled by the barest degree, and the hilt of the black blade gave off the faintest click.
"—"
Frunyi froze solid!
A chill like being dropped into a bottomless pit of snakes shot straight up through the crown of her skull!
Her instincts howled the alarm: move one more inch and she'd be sliced into several hundred pieces inside a single second!
That she, a Lv.5, could be cowed by the killing intent radiating off two sisters — one Lv.1 and one Lv.2—
Frunyi could only let out a sullen, cold snort.
Now then.
The women could go deep into the Pleasure Quarter.
But the Pleasure Quarter was one of the few places in Orario the disaster hadn't touched at all.
The buildings on the surface, the ones that entertained officials and nobles, were never going to cough up much in the way of hard evidence.
They pressed into the heart of the district.
Brothel after brothel.
Carved beams, painted rafters, red lanterns hung high.
Even at this closed hour the cloying reek of powder and perfume hit like a slap.
Onigawara Rin, Warabi Hanasaka and the others had certainly never laid eyes on anything this nakedly indecent.
On the second-floor galleries to either side, no small number of Amazon courtesans in nothing but a wisp of gauze draped themselves over the railings, sizing the newcomers up with shameless, teasing eyes.
And so.
With Ishtar personally shadowing them step for step—
Haimer came at last to the Divine Courtesans' Tower.
"Turn up anything valuable, Lord Constable?"
Ishtar stood at one end of a folding screen.
Watching him come up empty, she bit down on her vermilion lower lip, pushing down the swell of satisfaction, and needled him with a question she already knew the answer to.
Haimer brushed a finger through the ash in an incense burner.
He shook his head, thoroughly bored.
"Nothing worth a thing."
With that, he turned and led Shakti back out the door.
Leaving Ishtar standing there, her face going livid all over again.
She'd thought she might claw back a round in this shadow-war, but Haimer's utter indifference — exactly as it had been up in the Heavens — only proved that he still didn't consider her worth noticing!
The more she thought about it—
The angrier she got, the malice in her eyes thickening.
"Just you wait!"
Ishtar clenched her fists, grinding her teeth.
But Haimer genuinely didn't care.
After all.
He knew perfectly well that Ishtar would never leave a scrap of evidence lying around for him.
Which was why.
At this very moment.
Haimer had another method in play.
At the far western edge of the Pleasure Quarter.
Exactly according to plan. Inside the hidden mouth of an old cistern half full of stagnant, stinking water, right up against the rubble on the outskirts!
While the entire locked-down district had its attention nailed to the great search—
Lili had already shrunk her body smaller still with the magic 『Cinderella』, and slipped through that unguarded sluice gate!
Lili was in!
At the same time.
Along the route the girls took as they split up to search the quarter—
Onigawara Rin, Mary Kikakujou, Warabi Hanasaka and the others, well-raised and innocent girls all, were suffering something close to torture.
The sweet, rank incense hanging in the air, the unspeakable postures depicted in the paintings along the walls, even the strange implements half-glimpsed through gaps in the partitions — every bit of it set their faces burning.
"This… this filthy pit of a place is actually a business run by a god?"
Onigawara Rin dropped her voice behind her mask, fighting the urge to crush her sword hilt outright, muttering and grousing, wanting nothing more than to be gone.
But the words reached Aisha, who was escorting them.
The tall, full-figured Amazon heroine wasn't offended in the least. If anything, she leaned down deliberately as she passed them, one corner of her mouth curling into a sultry smile.
"The Pleasure Quarter is where adventurers come looking for love and a good time. It's only natural little girls like you can't stomach it."
Aisha teased them without a shred of restraint.
"And our patron, Lady Ishtar, is a goddess of beauty who can charm even gods right into her hands."
"You girls had better be careful."
"Who knows — some night that absurdly good-looking god of yours might get charmed straight into our patron's bed, and never manage to climb back out."
"You—!"
For girls just tasting their first feelings, that line was boiling oil poured into a powder keg.
Onigawara Rin flushed scarlet with rage on the spot.
"Kami-sama would never look twice at a filthy—" Lun didn't get the rest out.
Tendou Kisara, walking ahead of her, caught her by the wrist and choked the fight-starting words off cold.
But even with their mouths shut, the girls had been thoroughly rattled. Their steps quickened, hurrying two paces to close the gap, eager to get back to their own god's side and draw a little safety from it.
Only Tsukuyo Inaba, moving somewhere in the middle of the group, was untouched.
Her eyes stayed lightly closed, undisturbed by any of it.
She turned her blind face a fraction, the shell of one ear twitching faintly toward the distant west.
Then a quiet smile settled at the corner of her mouth as she filed away the sound she'd caught — the sound that meant Lili's infiltration had succeeded.
And so.
A full day of hauling in the net, the hours turning over beneath busy feet.
The last of the sunset finally spilled across the rooftops of the North Main Street upscale residential district.
Inside the hall.
Shakti stood at the side of a long, broad table, delivering the final accounting to Haimer.
The numbers on the thick parchment were staggering.
"My lord, the seizures were extraordinarily rich. By the data sheets laid out here, the unregistered Valis currency and high-purity Magic Stone assets alone… converted at current market prices, come to nearly five point four billion Valis. That could match half a year of the Guild's accumulated output."
Shakti presented the entire haul, fully expecting that Haimer, who had schemed so hard to drag all this buried wealth into the light, would show some satisfaction at such a shocking result.
"The goods don't matter."
"This mess spread far and wide. The fact that your guardsman corps took no new losses during the sweeps is, on the whole, not a bad outcome."
"As for that sum of money."
"Exactly as the notice said earlier."
"All of it goes to the Guild treasury. As for how everything that was rotting in the dark should be used to fill the holes this storm tore in the buildings and the bounty accounts — I trust Royman's head will work that out properly."
Haimer pushed the parchment scroll back across the table toward Shakti.
He simply had no interest in that kind of thing.
Royman was greedy, yes, and a coward besides — but when it came to wanting the peaceful arrangement that kept him in the Guild Master's chair to last as long as possible, he was hungrier for it than anyone.
With the reputation Haimer now carried, Royman could borrow another few sets of guts and still not dare quietly pocket dirty money earmarked for relief and reconstruction.
In that case.
There was no harm in treating Royman as his own steward.
Whatever he needed, Royman would deliver without a word of argument.
Ouranos, after all, had washed his hands of managing Orario's affairs entirely.
"On that note — we owe a great deal to you for sending the Xenos out to help, Lord Haimer."
"Without them, with the defensive strength we'd originally planned on, the casualties would have been impossible to hold down…"
Speaking of it—
Shakti's gratitude toward Haimer was entirely genuine.
In the past, even a monster disturbance only slightly larger than usual would keep Orario in an uproar for days and nights on end, with the various factions bickering and passing the blame for months afterward.
Yet today, in the span of a single day, an abscess that had festered for years had been cut out and the Labyrinth City hauled back onto its proper course.
Haimer's arrival deserved no small share of the credit.
"It's nothing more than mutual benefit," he said. "With a chance like this, I doubt Grosse and the others wanted to miss it either."
"Then what are your next arrangements for them, Lord Haimer?"
"Let them fall back to the Hidden Village for now, to rest and regroup."
"Call it giving the people on the surface a little room to adjust."
"The day they can truly live under the sunlight won't take many more sunrises to arrive."
As Haimer's words fell.
At that very moment.
Before the Dungeon entrance beneath Babel Tower.
The guardsmen on watch had already cleared a path for Grosse and the other Xenos returning below.
____
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