episode_0098

000

Passing through the underground dimension gate, the place the group arrived at was the rest area of the old school building that they were using as a temporary base.

The furniture was overturned here and there, and there were traces of drawers being searched.

This was because Lyla had come here, searched the place once, and left.

However, she felt the strong magical power surging up from the basement of the old school building and hurriedly headed that way.

She sensed the pillar of blue flame that Beatrice shot up and infiltrated the catacombs.

The reason Cleon listened to the elders’ stories in the Monad’s coffin and laughed.

The darkest place is under the lamp; this is exactly what that saying refers to.

The catacombs – the entrance to the underground tomb where the cursed room exists, and its structure.

It was very close to the basement of the old school building.

And yet they couldn’t find each other.

It was nothing short of a farce.

The dimension gate, hastily opened and with unstable coordinates, writhed in the air, tearing space like the mouth of a giant snake.

One by one, it spits out the group.

Beatrice falls on top of Cleon, and Sasha falls on top of her.

Lyla then spins in the air as if flying and lands lightly on the ground.

“Lyla…”

“The running away is over, Sasha. Let’s go back to the mansion.”

Lyla reaches out her hand to Sasha, who is looking at her with guilt-ridden eyes. Sasha hesitates and clenches her fist tightly.

“Not yet, I can’t. Until everything is back to normal…”

“…Then explain it properly. Kuon is so worried about you that she’s lying in bed sick.”

At Lyla’s urging, Sasha nods carefully.

“Um, well. It’s okay to explain, but…”

“First, get off of me…”

The voices of Beatrice and Cleon, who are pinned under Sasha.

Lyla went in front of Cleon’s face and slammed her staff down with a thud.

Then, a chain of magical power flowing along the floor fixed Cleon’s arms and legs to the ground.

“Until the story is over. I’ll keep your body restrained. Chief of the Execution Department.”

“P, please wait! Cleon is not the chief of the Execution Department!”

“What are you talking about? I fought this guy directly in the city.”

At Sasha’s words, Lyla waves her hand as if telling her not to say foolish things, but Sasha quietly gets off of Beatrice.

“I’ll explain. Everything I know…”

At Sasha’s words, Lyla nods and puts away her staff, waiting for Sasha’s next story.

Meanwhile, Beatrice gets off of Cleon and goes near his head.

“Senior, are you okay?”

“Yeah… It’s a little bit annoying that I can’t move my body. I’m glad Lyla didn’t suddenly throw a fireball like last time… And, it seems like she doesn’t recognize you either.”

At Cleon’s words, Beatrice smiles bitterly and nods.

“It must be the influence of the memory manipulation. She probably forgot about my existence.”

“…Are you okay?”

Beatrice closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them and looks at Lyla, who is listening to Sasha’s story.

Then, with a slightly affectionate expression, she clenches her fist tightly and places it on her chest.

“I’m okay. Because we can restore everything to its original state and reunite with joyful hearts.”

001

After hearing the explanation from Sasha, Lyla looks down at Cleon with a momentarily confused face.

Still lying face down on the floor, Cleon feels her gaze and raises his head to meet Lyla’s eyes.

Lyla’s face turns red, and she turns her head away.

That makes sense; according to the explanation she heard from Sasha, she and this man…

Lyla presses her lips together tightly and seems to be contemplating, then snaps her fingers and releases the restraining magic that was binding Cleon.

As the chains of illusion disappear, Cleon gets up and speaks to Lyla.

“Are you going to believe me now?”

“Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I believe you, it’s that I believe Sasha. That child can’t lie.”

“Can I get up now?”

Iona, who had been quietly watching the situation in sword form, comes out of Cleon’s hand and returns to human form as the story seems to be going well.

“Iona… You too?”

“I’m also a half-blood of a holy sword and a human. The Demiurge’s ability is specialized for humans.”

At those words, Lyla closed her mouth for a moment, then sat down on the sofa next to her.

She looked exhausted and pale, as if she was thinking about something.

“You… Cleon, was it?”

“Yeah.”

Cleon feels a sense of déjà vu at Lyla’s slightly sharp question.

A year ago, when Lyla, who had just come to the city of Elesia from the academy, finished greeting Albein and turned her gaze to him.

Lyla, who didn’t seem to have any interest in Cleon, spoke with cold eyes.

The first words Lyla said were the ones she just said.

At that time, Cleon thought it was because he was a member of the Black Magic Clan, but.

Considering that everything was to take Albein back to the academy, Lyla was not a sociable person who could give a friendly look to a man who seemed like he would be an obstacle no matter how you looked at it.

Of course, Lyla’s attitude was clearly different from that time.

Unlike back then, when she was half-turned and only sent the end of her eyes to him.

She was sitting properly, looking at him, face to face.

Her eyes contained hesitation, fear, doubt, and a bit of shame.

“…The fact that you were living with me in my mansion. I understand. So it’s clear that a lot of contradictions disappear in the current situation.”

“That’s a relief.”

“It’s not a relief! Th, that means. Me, you and I…”

At Cleon’s words, Lyla shouts back, then hesitates with a smaller voice, facing the index fingers of both hands together.

She rolls her eyes from side to side, becoming careful in choosing the next word to take out.

Her face turns red, and cold sweat runs down her back.

She felt a strange tension and a rapidly rising heartbeat.

Seeing this, Beatrice, Sasha, and Iona, who were somehow embarrassed themselves, also swallowed hard and paid attention to Lyla’s next words and actions.

Lyla Flamewatch, the person in question, took a deep breath once, then.

She carefully speaks to Cleon.

“You and I, are, were, lovers…?”

“No.”

At Cleon’s immediate answer, all the women in that place staggered as if they had lost their energy.

“S, Sasha!! You! Did you lie to me!?”

Lyla immediately gets up and snaps at Sasha, but Sasha shakes her head quickly.

“Wait, Sasha didn’t lie.”

Cleon defends Sasha, who is sitting next to him, scolding Lyla as if telling her not to harass her.

“It’s more of a problem that it’s not a lie! I, I’ve mixed bodies with you several times… and you’re not lovers! What kind of human trash are you!?”

“C, calm down, Lyla. You don’t have to be lovers to mix bodies, right?”

Looking at Iona, who is pouring oil on the fire, speaking from the side to Lyla, Lyla speaks as if she is dumbfounded.

“That’s because you guys aren’t the people involved!”

At Lyla’s shout, Sasha, Bea, and Iona become quiet.

“… …Eh? Wait a minute. Really? All the women here are with this one man?”

“I’m the least among the people here, but it’s still not a small number of times.”

Iona nods and smiles with a ‘hmph’.

“I, it’s twice a week… I think. When we were living in the mansion, it was a shift system…”

Sasha hesitates and shows two fingers.

“Me, I’ve been doing it once a day lately.”

Beatrice speaks as if she is ashamed of her promiscuous sex life.

“Die. Enemy of women.”

And Lyla’s malediction towards Cleon as a finishing touch.

Cleon couldn’t refute anything, so he had no choice but to quietly accept the malediction.

Cleon quietly thought that surely the day would come when he would be stabbed by a woman.

“…You also helped to create Innis. Then.”

“You have great reasoning skills.”

Lyla crosses her arms, turns her head, and speaks primly.

“Stop complimenting me. It’s simple elimination… Homunculus generation requires human male semen, but I don’t remember buying any of that. To be provided with a man’s semen. There’s no way I would ask someone else for that.”

“That’s right. A few months ago, she was a sexual knowledge weakling who thought that a man had to have intercourse to produce semen.”

At Cleon’s words, Lyla flinches greatly, widens her eyes, and looks at Cleon with a shocked face.

“That’s wrong! It’s wrong! No, it’s not wrong…! I know it too! Fellatio! Or paizuri! Or masturbation!”

“Isn’t it not good for public sentiment for a grown lady to say such words out loud? Lyla.”

At Iona’s words, Lyla finally reached the limit of her shame and puffed out her cheeks greatly, sitting back down on the sofa.

“Now, now. Lyla is a pure child. She poured all her energy into research, so she had no interest in romance or anything like that. There was no one around to tell her either.”

“That’s right! That’s it. You know it well. Have we met before?”

Lyla listens to Beatrice’s words, which defend her, and points at her with her finger, affirming her words.

However, at those words, Beatrice only said, “I wonder,” and quietly closed her eyes, showing a somewhat lonely smile.

“…That’s enough about me…! The important thing is what we’re going to do now.”

Lyla changes the subject as if trying to avoid becoming the target of ridicule any longer.

The others also nodded with serious expressions at the story.

“First of all, the clearest goal is to undo the mental rewriting of the Demiurge that is creating the current academy.”

“Brainwashing being carried out by an ancient demon…. It’s another large-scale story.”

At Beatrice’s words, Lyla sighs and puts her hand on her forehead.

Cleon quietly watched the scene, thinking that she would get wrinkles at a young age.

“What’s the plan?”

“We need to retrieve the factor that Rail stole from me and use that factor.”

“If that’s the case, can’t you do anything with the factor you have now? You have a larger amount, right?”

At Lyla’s question, Beatrice quietly shakes her head.

“I can’t use the factor. I simply have it.”

“It’s a matter of capacity as a vessel. But if that’s the case, what are you going to do when you get it back?”

“That… I have something in mind.”

She said that and turned her head towards Cleon.

“…Me?”

“Yes, that’s right. Senior seemed to have a high compatibility rate with the Demiurge’s factor. Every time I mixed bodies with Senior, I felt the factors inside me stabilizing.”

At Beatrice’s words, Cleon makes a face that he doesn’t understand well, but first nods as if he understands.

“What about passing the factor on to this man right now and forcibly undoing the brainwashing?”

“That’s also difficult. The Demiurge is basically stronger with the power to do ‘evil’. If I pass all 80% of what’s left to Senior, there’s a possibility that Senior will go on a rampage. But even so, it’s impossible to undo this mental rewriting. If they rewrite it again, Rail’s will will eventually be reflected even more strongly.”

“Well, it’s kind of difficult.”

At Sasha’s words, Iona answers.

“You can think of it simply. The more you use bad power for bad things, the better the efficiency. Even if you try to use bad power for good things, the efficiency is bad.”

“Aha.”

“Well, you can think of it that way.”

Sasha and Cleon shake their heads vertically as if they understood Iona’s explanation. Next up was the worrisome keyword that came up during the conversation with the Black Scripture.

“What is the ‘vessel of God’? Do you know, Bea?”

At Cleon’s question, Beatrice shakes her head a little heavily.

“No, I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of it. Maybe it’s a word related to divinity…”

“I’ve never heard of it either.”

When Bea and Lyla said that, Iona quietly started to tell the story she knew.

“The vessel of God is one of the concepts of the Order of the Holy Guardian. There’s an atmosphere in this academy that rejects the Order of the Holy Guardian, so it wouldn’t be strange if related knowledge hasn’t come in.”

“Order of the Holy Guardian.”

When that story came up, Lyla thought of Kuon, who was resting at home right now.

She was a little worried about how Kuon would react if she told her what happened today.

“It’s not a widely known doctrine. The Trinity Guardian, which the Order of the Holy Guardian considers to be the center of divinity. Among the ‘Saintess’, ‘Hero’, and ‘Holy Sword’. The Saintess and the Hero are considered to be blessed with blessings from God and to have a noble destiny, so they are called ‘vessels of God’ by the clergy.”

“Then. Are they aiming for the Hero or the Saintess?”

Lyla, who suddenly came to her senses at Cleon’s words, jumped up from her seat.

“Wait a minute. There are no Heroes in the academy right now, and there is only one person who has been recognized as a Saintess by the Order of the Holy Guardian.”

“…Could it be.”

Cleon also realizes what Lyla is talking about and gets up from his seat.

As Iona said, the academy doesn’t have a good relationship with the Order of the Holy Guardian.

The entrance of Heroes holding holy swords passed down in their families, such as Aruru, is allowed, but it is a very special case.

Therefore, neither the ‘Saintess’ nor the ‘Hero’ basically stay inside the academy very often.

Except for one person at the moment.

“Kuon…! Their purpose – the vessel of God was talking about Kuon!”

Lyla and Cleon both frown as if they’ve been had, and quickly prepare to return to the mansion with Sasha.

“I see why the Mian Sorcerer, who was moving under the instructions of the Black Scripture, was aiming for Albein… Maybe he was the first target.”

Cleon nodded as if he understood now.

“What are they going to do with the vessel of God in their hands?”

“…I don’t know. Even if it’s a vessel of God, it’s uncertain whether they can accept the power of the Demiurge and use it…”

Beatrice answers Cleon’s question with a apologetic expression.

“Open the dimension gate, everyone prepare!”

When Lyla quickly finishes chanting, a dimension gate leading to her mansion appears in front of the group.

And – the scene that is seen when you quickly pass through it is.

“Cough… Hack…!”

Rail is rolling on the floor, spitting blood from his mouth.

Standing in front of such Rail, looking down at him, is Kuon, who is different from her usual self.

With a sacred halo, the symbol of miracles, floating above her head, she is looking down at the sinner with a expressionless face.