Still, by now Tione's mind had clearly drifted somewhere far away.
She was letting her imagination run wild.
Their captain, the man who was always so strict and self-controlled.
What if he really did take one big mouthful of that liquor, the stuff rumored strong enough to lay a god out cold? And then...
The Pallum captain, tipsy, an inviting flush rising in his cheeks, staggering, too unsteady to even stand up straight.
And then, dizzy as he was, he would simply tip over and settle into her arms.
That scene! Just picturing it!
"Hisss... haaa... hisss... haaa!"
The more Tione thought about it, the more the corners of her mouth pulled apart on their own, and a creepy hissing breath escaped her.
And then a string of glistening drool slid down her chin and dripped, in plain view of everyone.
"Hey! Hey! Snap out of it, you lovesick idiot!"
Tiona had been standing right there watching her own sister make a spectacle of herself, and she'd had enough. Gooseflesh crawled up her arms.
She stuck out a finger and jabbed it hard into the small of Tione's back.
"Ow!"
That finally jolted Tione upright.
The rosy little dream in her head shattered, and she came back to herself all at once.
She scrubbed the drool off the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, flustered, then darted guilty looks around.
Luckily, Finn had already turned away. He was standing face to face with Haimer, discussing something, and did not seem to have glanced this way even once.
Only then did she pat her chest, still rattled, and let out a long breath.
Then she turned her face and shot a murderous glare at Tiona for ruining her moment.
"What are you yelling about! Quit stirring up trouble!" Tione blustered, as stubborn as ever, arguing back like she had every right to.
"I'm worried about the captain, that's all! What if the wine they bring back is too strong and it ruins that precious constitution of his?"
"You call that worry? That's an ulterior motive if I've ever heard one!"
Tiona folded her arms and pursed her lips.
She tore straight through her sister's clumsy lie without an ounce of mercy.
"Like anybody here can't hear the gears turning in your head!"
Elsewhere.
The dust on the open-air training ground had not settled yet.
A breeze blew across it. Ais held the [Sword of Despair] in both hands, the blade Haimer had melted down and reforged, her chest rising and falling a little from the intensity of the sparring.
A few strands of golden hair clung damply to her forehead, flushed from the exertion.
Just a moment ago, when she turned her head, her gaze had slipped through a gap in the layered hedges at the edge of the training ground and caught, at once, the tall, lean figure walking down the trellised corridor. It was Haimer.
He had obviously finished his work at the forge and changed clothes.
Gone was the crisp, straight-cut long robe he always favored. He wore only a coat thrown loosely over his broad shoulders, carrying the easy, unwound look of a man just done with hard labor.
Light flared in Ais's clear eyes the instant she saw him.
With one clean, decisive motion, she slid the keen blade precisely into the black sheath at her waist. Then she set those long legs moving and strode over to meet him.
"Lord Haimer."
Ais stopped a few steps in front of him.
"Mm." Haimer halted, looked at her, and a smile touched his face. "It seems your bout with Koharu went quite well today," he said warmly.
While the two of them were trading greetings, Koharu Narukami was pouring sweat.
After all, that fight had been a brutal one.
However monstrous her talent, and however much days of fighting above her level had just hauled her up to a Lv.3 foundation, standing toe to toe with the 'Sword Princess,' who had long since reached Lv.5, was another matter.
The physical drain alone was more than enough to leave her wrung out.
"Kami-sama!"
Koharu darted to Haimer's side in a few quick steps.
He looked at her and reached into the pocket of his coat.
He drew out a soft, clean white handkerchief and held it out to her.
"Well done. Go wipe the sweat off your face," Haimer told her.
But Koharu Narukami took the handkerchief readily enough and made no move at all to use it.
Instead she tipped her chin up, her eyes fixed on the big hand that was already drawing back after passing the cloth over.
The meaning in that stare could not have been plainer.
Haimer gave a private, resigned sigh.
All he could do was humor his yandere Swordsman and lift the hand he had just lowered.
He rested it lightly on her dark purple half-short hair, sweat-plastered to her scalp, and pressed down along the grain of it.
Then he ruffled it hard, twice.
"Your progress really is astonishing."
"When tomorrow's duel comes, put everything you've learned into it."
At last, praise with real weight behind it.
A smug smile finally bloomed at the corner of Koharu's mouth.
After all, monopolizing Kami-sama and earning the highest grade of his attention was, aside from the pursuit of slaughter, one of the greatest goals she had brought with her into this world.
Meanwhile, Ais, who had been standing quietly off to the side, had also seen that hand settle on Koharu's head.
Just as she was turning something over in her mind...
The next second, Tiona, who had wandered over to see what the fuss was about, got a good look at it too.
Maybe it was simple curiosity, a wish to try it herself, but Tiona pivoted on her heel and pushed right in.
"Pat me too! Lord Haimer!"
The moment those words were out, Loki, who had been standing to one side with her hands on her hips working on Finn, rolled her eyes over in a flash.
A wicked grin spread across her face. She rubbed her palms together and reached a greedy claw toward Tiona's head.
"My, my!"
"This is the first time we've ever seen Tiona come pushing up to someone on her own!"
"Since you want to be praised that badly, we'll just have to grit our teeth and indulge you, as your greatest and most adorable goddess!"
But at those words, Tiona sprang back a full step with startling speed and dodged Loki's sneaky hand clean.
"If it's Loki, then no thanks!"
"Loki's never had an honest bone in her body!"
"You don't have one shred of the holy air a god is supposed to have, you know?"
Tiona sketched shapes in the air with her hands.
"Lord Haimer is the one who's like a real god!"
That merciless comparison, delivered without a hint of pity...
It punched clean through Loki's chest, blow after blow.
Ten thousand points of critical damage, landed.
And so, the next second, one of the two patron deities of Orario's greatest factions...
Loki's legs folded and she went down with a thud, both knees on the hard bluestone paving, both hands braced against the ground.
Driven into an abyss of defeat she could not climb out of, she lay there muttering her lamentations.
Watching all of this, Finn managed only a helpless smile. Then his face turned serious, and he called over Raul, the leader of the [Loki Familia] Second Corps.
"Raul."
Finn raised a hand and beckoned.
He summoned the ever-earnest Raul to stand in front of him.
"Go pick out a few sharp, dependable hands."
"Go to the storehouse in the back courtyard and take the two sturdiest flatbed carts, the ones with the iron plating."
"Take your men and go down to the Southeast Main Street area right now."
"Call on the [Soma Familia] first, then the big estate of the [Dionysus Familia]."
"Just those two places."
Raul listened, assuming they were being sent to buy some hard-to-find supplies, and nodded quickly as he pulled out his notebook.
"When you meet the one in charge at each house," Finn went on, "tell them this comes from our Loki and from Lord Haimer both."
"We'd like some Divine Wine from them."
"D-Divine Wine?!"
Ka-thunk!
Raul's whole balance tipped, his legs nearly buckling under him. He came within a hair of dropping to his knees right there in front of his direct superior and captain.
"C-c-captain!"
"Are you having a laugh at my expense?!"
"Go... go and just ask Lord Soma for his Divine Wine, straight out?"
"And then go to Lord Dionysus on top of that?"
"Those two houses guard the wine under their roofs like it's worth more than their own eyeballs and their own lives put together!"
"Even the little they put out for sale now and then is strictly limited!"
Raul kept waving both hands. "Captain!"
"We just roll two big carts onto their turf, bold as brass, and announce we're there to haul off their wine..."
"Won't they take us for bandits come to clean out their vaults?"
"You think they'll give us so much as a decent look?"
Raul's honest face had screwed itself into a bitter knot.
If there hadn't been other people watching, he'd have thrown himself at Finn's leg and started wailing on the spot.
Finn listened to the whole string of complaints and had to fight down a laugh, then really did shake his head. He reached out and patted Raul's shoulder twice.
"Don't be afraid. Steady yourself."
"You have to understand that today the situation is entirely different."
"I can guarantee it."
"The moment you invoke Lord Haimer's name..."
"They'll only dare to meet you with smiles."
"You'll all have a very easy time of it."
Finn said it as though it were already carved in stone.
Raul forced his hammering heart to settle, but his palms would not stop sweating.
A retreat drum kept beating away inside him all the same.
But what could he do?
Orders were orders, immovable as a mountain.
Since their uncannily prescient Pallum captain had given a guarantee that firm...
Then no matter how much nerve he could scrape together, all that was left was to swallow the bitterness, stiffen his neck, and take the order.
With that settled, Raul hurried off to round up a few friends from the [Loki Familia] Second Corps.
The group went around back and, dragging and shoving, hauled out two four-wheeled carts normally used to move crushed Magic Stone scrap.
Then, one after another, they filed out through the tall gates of the Twilight Manor.
So how did things go out there?
All that can be said is this.
Everything that followed bore out every one of Captain Finn's shrewd predictions, right down to the letter.
Raul's party of six strapping young men pulled their little carts, loaded up with nothing so much as their own dread, in the grim mood of condemned men climbing to the block.
Trembling, they came first to the crossroads near the Chaotic District.
Screwing up their courage, they knocked on the weathered gate of the compound currently serving as the [Soma Familia]'s temporary base.
The [Soma Familia] had already been through Soma's swapping out of its captain.
Now the one who had been ordered into the captain's seat, Chandra Ihit, came out to meet them.
Seeing a handful of [Loki Familia] Second Corps members at his door, Chandra Ihit meant at first to put on the arrogance of a master of his own turf.
But then he heard what they had come for.
He sent his own people down to the cellar to start hauling.
He even made a point of pulling Raul aside.
Treading carefully, he fished around with polite small talk for news of how Lili, the girl who had gone to work under Haimer, was getting along.
Then, with one grand sweep of his arm, he handed over a full five enormous oak casks of Divine Wine, free and clear.
The wooden wheels creaked and groaned, pressing ruts into the road for a good long stretch.
And still...
This bunch had not yet digested what had just happened to them.
Raul and the others pressed on without a pause, nerves and all, and shifted to their next stop.
They felt their way to the lavish, towering estate of the [Dionysus Familia] on a side street.
This time it was even more absurd!
When the captain of the [Dionysus Familia], the "Banshee" Filvis Challia, reported that this came from Lord Haimer...
Dionysus, patron god of the [Dionysus Familia], came out to the front gate in person to receive them.
"If Lord Haimer is still willing to taste my craft, then the honor is mine!"
And having said it, Dionysus did not hesitate for a heartbeat.
He not only granted their wish outright, handing over ten heavy solid-wood crates, every one of them stamped and sealed with wax, free of charge.
That still did not seem to satisfy him. On his own initiative, he added more.
He crammed in several large casks of rare delicacies meant specifically to be eaten alongside wine of that caliber.
All of it was top-grade dried fruit of the kind only the gods of the Heavens saw at their most extravagant banquets, along with fine cured cheeses kept sealed away in a special ice room.
And at the last moment, as they were leaving...
The god of peerless beauty, Dionysus, simply stood there in silence, hands clasped behind his back.
He stood in person at the open, ornately carved wrought-iron gate, the smile never leaving his face.
He watched Raul and the others until they had shrunk away down the road.
And so the errand went unbelievably smoothly.
Raul and his men finished the mission they had assumed would be brutal with their mouths hanging open.
On the way back:
"Anakitty, do you think Lord Soma and Lord Dionysus handed it over because Lord Haimer is a Constable?" Raul asked in a low voice, swallowing hard.
"How would I know?" Anakitty's brow furrowed slightly. "But Lord Haimer's weight really is frightening."
"Still, from the look of it, Loki really is going to drink her fill with Lord Haimer tonight."
On the broad lawn of the rear courtyard of the Twilight Manor.
When Raul pushed the fully loaded wine cart in through the iron gate...
"Hoh!"
"You really did haul it back!"
Loki, who had still been sitting cross-legged on the ground rolling about and throwing her tantrum, snapped her narrowed eyes wide open and charged over, mashing her face against the cold iron hoops of a cask and rubbing it hard.
"We knew it! Just borrow this guy Haimer's name and it's a sure hit every time!" Loki roared with laughter, making no effort to hide her bandit act.
"You really don't know how the word shame is spelled."
Hestia planted her hands on her hips and stomped over, puffed up with anger.
"Using Haimer's face to cadge free food and drink! You're a disgrace to us gods!"
"Tch, like you're any better, shortstack. And what do you know anyway? This is called maximizing profit!" Loki tipped her chin up as she shot back.
"Besides, Haimer said with his own mouth that he'd drink with us!"
With that, Loki turned and hollered at Finn, Riveria, Gareth and the rest at the top of her lungs.
"Move it, move it! Get all of this stowed away!"
"Tonight counts as an early rally for the expedition!"
"Tonight, we drink until we drop!"
"Cheers!"
____
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