The air hung heavy. Two gazes collided in midair.
Amou Kirukiru sat on the long sofa, slender legs crossed, black hair spilling over her shoulders like a waterfall.
A faint smirk rested at the corner of her mouth as she looked Koharu Narukami up and down without the slightest attempt to hide it.
Koharu Narukami stood ramrod straight, and beneath her deep purple half-short hair, her eyes held a cold that cut to the bone.
Her arms were folded across her chest, and in that stance lay the quiet promise of drawing the weapon at her waist.
The pressure the two of them were deliberately putting out was enough on its own to empty the rest area for ten paces in every direction.
The adventurers who normally loved to hold forth inside the Guild had all shrunk back to the edges of the hall.
Even the dullest rookie could feel the danger coming off these two girls.
Especially after learning that one of them was the rumored "Calamity God's Cursed Weapon."
And the other was the monster who had trampled over common sense to reach Lv.3 in a mere three days.
Nobody wanted to court that kind of bad luck.
Behind the counter, the Guild employee with pink hair and pink eyes, Misha Flott, tugged at Eina's sleeve.
"Hey, Eina, are they about to start swinging right here in the Guild hall?"
Misha kept her voice down to almost nothing.
Eina's scalp had gone numb as well.
As a senior advisor at the Guild, she liked to think she had weathered a few storms in her time, but this was a first.
"Both of Lord Haimer's children... each one more ridiculously strong than the last." Eina swallowed hard.
"If they come to blows in here, this whole half of the rest area is going to be written off."
As the exclusive advisor to the Haimer Familia, Eina knew she had a duty to protect the reputation of the familia in her charge. She couldn't let them start something.
Above all, she couldn't let them make trouble for Haimer.
With that thought she braced herself and started to come out from behind the safety of the counter to break it up.
And right then.
A woman's voice, brimming with indignation and imperious temper, rang out beside her.
"You two, that's enough!"
Hestia came marching over, black hair in twin tails, puffed up with anger.
Her fair, adorable cheeks bulged like two squirrels stuffed full of pine nuts, and the blue ribbon swung between her arms in time with her hurried strides.
From the moment she left the manor that morning to the moment she reached the Guild, Hestia's mood had been sitting in a miserable trough. She had sworn last night that she would never speak to Haimer again. Then she got up at dawn and saw Marie and Miss Rei coming out of the master bedroom.
And Haimer coming out of another room with Tsukuyo and Lili.
It left Hestia so furious that she ate one roll less at breakfast.
And now she found two of Haimer's most warlike subordinates glaring each other down in the middle of the Guild hall.
Hestia poured every drop of that pent-up jealousy straight into this moment.
"Do you two know where you are? This is the Guild!"
"Squaring off like a pair of fighting cocks in front of everyone. Do you want to be a joke? Whose face are you throwing away?"
"Haimer is Orario's newly appointed Constable!"
"You belong to his familia, and you're posturing like street brawlers where the whole world can watch."
"Do you want to put on a show for all those gawking rats?"
"It's his face that gets dragged through the mud in the end!"
The hall went quiet.
The adventurers traded glances.
After all, on the surface Hestia was the one shamelessly hanging her own familia's sign around her neck while freeloading off the Haimer Familia. That was the freshest gossip in all of Orario.
Everyone had assumed she was just there to cadge meals and drift along. But now, when she truly lost her temper and laid into someone,
the sheer weight of one of the three great Virgin Goddesses of the Heavens, together with the temper ground into her by hundreds of millions of years of friendship with Haimer,
showed through in that instant as genuine, undeniable authority.
It was the assurance of someone who had sat at the top for ages and seen every grand occasion the divine realm had to offer.
Hearing Hestia speak, the others who had been watching from a little way off realized this had gone too far. When a goddess starts hauling out the moral high ground, the matter is settled.
Hearing Hestia speak, the few standing further back hurriedly exchanged looks.
Little Hiruko and Enju went over at once and tugged at the hem of Koharu's clothes.
Seeing that, Amou Kirukiru let her provoking smile fade.
She shrugged, stood, and smoothed a wrinkle out of her hem as though none of it mattered.
"Don't misunderstand, Goddess Hestia. This was nothing more than a little wholesome confirmation of strength between colleagues. There aren't many places at Kami-sama's side, after all, so the rules have to be laid out clearly."
"In that case, this small amusement will simply have to wait for the training ground later."
Kirukiru's words were offhand, but her hostility toward Koharu hadn't dimmed in the slightest. Koharu heard her without a flicker crossing that taut, coldly beautiful face. She only gave a cold snort. She turned straight around, and the right hand that had been resting on her blade came down with the motion and slid into her trouser pocket.
Deep purple strands cut a crisp arc through the air. "Anytime." She dropped the flat words behind her and kept walking.
Only then did the atmosphere in the hall finally let go.
Behind the counter, Eina and Misha slumped back at the same moment, hands pressed to their chests, letting out one long breath.
The two looked at each other, their eyes full of the heavy relief of survivors. That had been close. "Hmph! That's more like it!"
Having taken command of the room, Hestia felt at least some of the morning's stifled anger vent out of her.
She waved the Holy Emperor over and led the way.
"Since the Ability updates and the status rating business here are all settled,"
"let's go!" Hestia's stride was brisk and decisive.
"Our business with the Guild is done. Following Haimer's arrangement, we head to Loki's place next."
And with that, Hestia led the girls off toward the Twilight Manor.
At the same time.
Northeast Main Street, the construction site of the new base.
Haimer, with Tsukuyo and Lili in tow, had made this the first stop of the day. Before long, even from a distance,
the outer walls of the new base had clearly taken shape.
What stood before them was an imposing complex that had already grown into most of its final form.
Grey-white stone walls seven or eight meters high had been closed into a full circuit, and the iron bolts of the main gate were installed.
Inside, the courtyard was broad, and the training ground, the council hall, the independent workshop district and the skeleton of the main building all stood upright.
At a glance, the pace alone deserved to be called miraculous. A full eighty-five percent was done. Another two days for the last of the interior plastering, cleaning and finishing, and they could move straight in.
And none of it would have happened without the goddess who had been riding herd on the whole site.
"You lot over there, put some speed into it!"
"This granite isn't stacked at the gate for people to admire. Before sundown today every last block goes to the annex foundation in the back courtyard!"
"Do you hear me?" A woman's voice, full-throated and carrying real authority, came from one corner of the front yard. The three of them followed the sound. Beside a heap of thick timber frames stacked every which way,
stood a short-haired goddess whose presence filled the space even in the middle of a chaotic worksite.
It was Hephaestus.
Her neck-length hair was dusted with white lime powder.
A smear of black ash sat on one cheek.
Her right eye was covered as always by that signature black eyepatch.
She wore a long-sleeved white shirt whose original color was no longer identifiable, the cuffs rolled high, baring forearms drawn tight with muscle from years at the anvil.
Below that, straight-legged black trousers and a pair of hard-wearing leather boots that reached the middle of her thighs.
She was dressed no differently from a bricklaying foreman, without a trace of the luxury of the owner of a shop on Babel Tower's upper floors. And yet she stood there,
and the natural edge of a master smith, combined with the innate nobility of a god,
still kept the workers hauling brick and raising walls from daring to breathe too loudly.
To Hephaestus's right,
stood a tall, evenly built black-haired woman with healthy light brown skin.
This was Tsubaki, smithing captain of the Hephaestus Familia.
She hadn't even changed into clothes fit for going out.
She still wore the red and white hakama she favored while holed up at the forge.
The collar hung open, and the sturdy white cloth wound around her chest was stretched to bursting.
Apparently she had been dragged out of bed too early to supervise, because at the moment she was patting her palm against her mouth through a long yawn, without the least concern for how it looked.
It was the corner of Hephaestus's eye that caught the outsiders coming in first.
When she turned her head and saw Haimer and his group walking through the unfinished courtyard gate,
the parchment blueprint in her hand stopped moving.
Her brow arched. Before she could get a word of complaint out,
Tsubaki dropped her hand, broke into a broad, white-toothed laugh and waved her arm hard in Haimer's direction. "Well, well! Look who's here!"
"Constable Lord Haimer actually found time to come inspect his own new base again?"
Tsubaki grinned wide, waving at him with easy, careless familiarity.
Haimer stepped forward at the teasing, smiling and nodding.
"That's right. Hephaestus, Miss Tsubaki." "Judging by how bright you both look, you worked straight through the night again, didn't you?" "I really do owe you my thanks."
"If the two of you weren't here, I doubt this project could have been pushed this fast or built this solidly, even if I'd doubled the funding."
Every word of it was sincere.
He and Hephaestus were among the very few old friends he still had from the Heavens, and there was no need to play games with her. And yet, hearing him thank her so plainly,
"Save the sweet talk."
Hephaestus pressed the back of her hand to the small of her back and ran her gaze over him twice, and only after she was satisfied that he hadn't picked up any new injuries did she speak, with a barb in her voice.
"I'm telling you, Haimer."
"You barely settle down before you're off running around again."
"The day before yesterday you took this pack of children and put down that enormous riot in the underground district, made enough noise to shake heaven and earth."
"And this morning, instead of lying down at home and recovering, you come out here to eat sand?"
Hephaestus scolded him without mercy.
It sounded like pure disdain, but the genuine worry underneath it was impossible to disguise.
Standing behind Haimer, Tsukuyo let her fingers play lightly over her sword.
Blind as she was, in a quiet and delicate situation like this her ear for sound and mood was especially sharp.
The unspoken meaning buried in Lady Hephaestus's complaint...
was almost identical to the caring Lady Hestia had radiated last night in the middle of her tantrum.
As for Lili, tucked away at the very back,
she had both hands clutching the edge of the tattered crimson cloak at her chin, her small mouth slightly open, her head swimming.
Could it be that in the Heavens, the goddesses who felt something unusual for Kami-sama...
weren't limited to Lady Hestia alone?
Even Lady Hephaestus, famous for being so lost in smithing that she had no interest in men, once she stood in front of Lord Haimer...
turned into what, exactly? Into a housewife nagging her husband for coming home late?
Haimer could only wear a helpless smile, and he picked up the thread at exactly the right moment.
"But you know my situation. It simply isn't time for me to sit down and rest yet."
"There are more people under me every day, and all sorts of loose ends need me to look into them and settle them myself."
"That's exactly why I had to come out today. If you and Miss Tsubaki weren't overseeing this in person, I genuinely wouldn't sleep well."
"So, from the look of it, another two days or so before it's handed over and ready to occupy?"
"At least you know it's trouble."
Hephaestus rolled her eye. "It's about there. The bulk of it is finished."
"Two more days. Once we scrape off all the cement spatter inside and do a final round of plastering and cleanup, you can basically buy your furniture and move in."
"But," she added, "drop the polite noises."
"I already knew this back in the Heavens. You never travel a long way without absolute business."
"Say it straight. What do you need from me this time?"
Hephaestus spread her hands, pulled her gaze away and went right to the point. She knew him far too well. In the Heavens Haimer never called on anyone without an agenda, and coming down to the Lower World hadn't changed that habit by a hair.
"As they say, no one knows me like you do, Hephaestus."
Haimer shrugged with a smile and turned half sideways,
revealing Lili, who had been trailing behind him like a little tail.
"Coming to check the progress on the new base today really was only along the way. The main reason I'm here is to borrow a favor from you."
His eyes turned serious.
"Hephaestus, a while back I made a rather large wager with Loki over a real engagement."
"These girls who just joined me are going down to the deep floors before long to settle an expedition contest against Loki's Second Corps, properly and in the open."
"It's the battle that decides whether they can hold their footing in Orario." "So." Haimer patted Lili's shoulder.
"Before that happens, I intend to take up the hammer myself and forge a custom weapon, made to measure, for this child who serves as my core commander." "Look at her."
"That old-model crossbow at the small of her back, in a place like the deep floors,"
"would fall apart before it ever punched through the hardened outer keratin of those abyssal monsters."
"On top of that, I promised the adventurers in this city who helped me that I'd make good on a batch of custom gear as their payment before the month is out."
"Counting the days, the schedule is tight."
"So, until my own little workshop at the new base is finished,"
"I'd like to be shameless and borrow the furnaces at your Varka's Red Chamber for a few days."
"And if you'd let me pick out a batch of decent raw ore from your private stores while I'm at it, that would be pulling a man out of the fire entirely."
The words landed. Hephaestus froze mid-motion.
And not only her.
Tsubaki's head snapped around as well. Though what each of them had latched onto was not the same thing at all.
"Hold on. You're going to get down and swing the hammer yourself again?!" Hephaestus wanted nothing more than to grab the hammer beside her and crack Haimer's skull open to see what was packed inside. "You just finished handling that mess and now you're rushing off to stand at a forge and be roasted. Do you honestly think you can go on never getting tired, the way you did in the Heavens?"
She was angry enough that her expression had slipped entirely out of her control.
Haimer watched her reaction and stayed patient. "Don't worry." "I know exactly where the red line on my body is."
"And you know this too. Ordinary forge fire does very little to me."
"Besides, in this Lower World, yours is the only place where I could borrow a fire with any peace of mind."
"Apart from the handful of old friends from the Heavens I can actually talk to, who else could offer me a forge worth looking at?" "All right, all right, all right!" "Stop, stop!" The moment he said it,
it was like a basin of water thrown over red-hot coals.
The whole bellyful of scolding Hephaestus still had loaded jammed in her throat, and she crossly cut off the sappy lines Haimer looked ready to deliver, the kind that raised goosebumps on anyone within earshot. After all,
given her personality, she could not bring herself to look pleased with Tsubaki standing right there. And so, to cover her own fluster,
"I can't be bothered with your business! If you want to wreck your own body, go right ahead!"
Hephaestus turned her back on him impatiently, not looking around, waving him off with put-on distaste as she gave orders to the snickering Tsubaki behind her.
"Tsubaki! Take this man back to the Red Chamber!"
"I have to ride herd on this disaster all day. Where would I find time for you two?" There was a thread of sulkiness in her voice.
Tsubaki, meanwhile, watched the whole scene from behind.
She threw Haimer a look from her one remaining eye, propped both hands behind her head, struck a lazy pose and burst out laughing, teeth flashing.
"Fine by me." "If Lady Hephaestus says so."
"Lord Haimer, I'd wager your time in the Heavens taught you Lady Hephaestus inside and out."
"This habit of hers, saying the exact opposite of what she means, really does flare up worst whenever she runs into you."
"Tsubaki!" At that, Hephaestus went scarlet with fury.
"Nobody's going to mistake you for a mute if you keep your mouth shut!" "Yes, yes, yes~" "Tsubaki was terribly, dreadfully in the wrong~ Order received, obeying at once~"
____
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