The Five Principal Clans had suffered losses that would take generations to repair. The Inner Sanctuary, the spiritual and physical heart of their ancestral pride, was no longer a sprawling estate of trees, it was a cratered wasteland.
While the supernatural world began to vibrate with the news of a fallen god, Jay was far removed from the politics.
As Jay finally opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was a dark wooden roof illuminated by the glistening morning light. Every muscle in his body felt stiff, as if he had been turned to stone and only recently reclaimed his flesh.
'Since when did I come home…?'
His memories were a blurred montage of Amaterasu's amber eyes, the scorching heat of white flames, and the eventual retreat of the Shinto gods. After that, there was only a vast darkness as he fell unconscious.
He realized he wasn't wearing a shirt. Bandages were wrapped tightly around his torso, smelling faintly of fresh linen and Lavinia's cooling magic, but there is another smell of iris on top of that.
And as he tried to shift, he felt a weight beside him. A soft, rhythmic breathing and the undeniable sensation of warm skin pressed against his side.
To his surprise, sleeping soundly beside him was Lavinia. She wore a revealing, almost translucent black nightgown that did little to hide the voluptuous curves of her body. Her blonde hair was a messy halo across the pillow, and her arm was draped over his hans.
Jay felt a sudden surge of hormones. He was, after all, a boy in the middle of puberty, and having a beautiful young woman just two or three years older pressed against him in a bed was a situation his biology wasn't prepared to ignore.
'Ah, shit… calm down.'
He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. He was a master of control, he had learned to regulate his mana flow under the threat of death and manipulate the very fabric of space. Controlling a bit of teenage lust should have been a piece of cake.
Yeah, no. It is not that easy. But Jay able to manage it.
Feeling Jay's movement, Lavinia stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open slowly, her blue eyes misty with sleep.
"You've awaked already?" she murmured in a sleepy, almost inaudible tone.
"Good morning, Lavi…" Jay said softly, deciding it was best for his mind to completely ignore why she was in his bed.
"Mowning," Lavinia answered with a wide yawn, stretching like a cat.
Growing up in the orphanage, Jay had often slept in cramped quarters shared with other children, both boys and girls. To him, the act of sharing a bed wasn't inherently sexual, it was a lingering habit of seeking warmth and safety.
He didn't mind her presence, even if the safety part was currently being challenged by her choice of sleepwear.
"You need more rest, Illya-kun," she said, her voice regaining its clarity.
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Is it still hurts? Your back?" Her fingers reached out, tracing the edge of the bandages near his ribs.
"Thanks to you, it's manageable."
Hearing that, a small, knowing smirk played on Lavinia's lips. "Thanks to you, we all still lived."
Jay's eyes began to drift around the room, searching the nightstand and the dresser. Lavinia tilted her head, watching his gaze. "What are you looking for?"
"My watch…"
Lavinia remembered. She sat up, the thin straps of her gown slipping slightly as she reached for the desk. "Is this the one?"
Jay nodded as she handed it to him. He took it with a reverence.
"Yeah… Thank you."
Lavinia pouted slightly, her curiosity getting the better of her. "That is one expensive watch... Did someone important give it to you?"
Jay clicked the strap around his wrist before opened his wardrobe and pulling on a clean shirt.
"Yeah… it's like a lucky charm." He answered.
"Hmmm~"
" Glenda gave it to me, actually." Jay said.
Lavinia's eyes widened, and a warm knowing smile spread across her face.
As Jay stood up to head for the door, Lavinia's expression turned pensive. "Can I…"
"Um?" Jay paused, hand on the doorknob.
"Nevermind," she shook her head, looking at her lap.
Jay looked at her for a moment, reading the hesitation in her shoulders. He realized what she wanted to ask.
"You want to meet her... Glenda?"
Lavinia's eyes brightened with a sudden, fragile hope. She nodded slowly.
"Then let's meet her later, after all of this is done," Jay promised.
"Yes... thank you, Illya-kun." Lavinia smiled.
The morning proceeded with a domestic peace that felt surreal given the carnage of the previous week. Jay took over the kitchen, cooking a simple chicken soup. The same recipe Sister Andrea and Elena used to make at the orphanage whenever they had a bit of spare money to spend on some meat.
Lavinia insisted on helping, though she mostly spent the time watching him with an amused expression.
Between sips of soup, Lavinia updated him on the aftermath.
"Only two deceased from the Five Principal Clans," she explained. "And ironically, both were killed by Susanoo's own stray lightning. And since it's not mainly Grigori nor Grauzauberer fault that the Inner Sanctuary even destroyed, it seems like they didn't pursue it further."
Jay assumed they were simply afraid after witnessing that display, unwilling to push things any further. Before, they had acted recklessly, lacking any real understanding of just how powerful the Grigori and the Three Longinus wielders truly were. Now that ignorance was gone.
With that realization came hesitation, and with hesitation came restraint. For the first time, violence was no longer their immediate answer. And because of that, Azazel's task of settling the matter through diplomacy had become far easier than it ever would have been before.
Though, Jay still need to be careful with Amaterasu. I doesn't seems like she will let him go just like that after killing her brother.
In the afternoon, they moved to the veranda. The air was cool, the scent of rain lingering in the distance. Jay sat with a cup of black tea and some biscuits Lavinia had baked during the afternoon. On the table before him lay the spoils of war.
On the left was Ame-no-Murakumo. The Cloud-Gathering Sword was slightly curved, forged of a pale silver steel that seemed to hold a perpetually drifting mist within its reflection. Archaic Shinto runes etched into the metal glowed with a soft, cold light reminiscent of a full moon.
On the right was Ame-no-Habakiri. The Heaven-Severing Sword was a jet-black katana with a blade so thin it seemed to disappear when viewed from certain angles. It reflected absolutely nothing. Its guard was angular and jagged, the hilt wrapped in a deep crimson cord etched with ancient divine sigils.
"Those two swords..." Lavinia whispered, leaning in to look at them.
"Yeah. They were Susanoo's. Well, they're mine now," Jay said. He ran a finger along the hilt of Habakiri. He found its weight perfect. Its divine property, which is the ability to bypass space and time for an instantaneous hit was a literal cheat code and it's fits with the way he fight.
'That's one absurdly broken ability', Jay thought, '... but the counter is simple. Just be faster than my swing.'
Susanoo was exactly that. He was fast, too fast. So fast that the only times the blade could truly reach him were in moments of surprise, or in that single fatal instant when he took just a fraction too long while activating his final attack.
'And it fuses with the black flame,' he noted. The Blackfyre mode, as he mentally dubbed it, was a terrifying combination, it was the same combination he used to cleave Susanoo in the final moments.
Well, that was true if he ignored the other benefits. Simply wielding the sword sent his physical capabilities through the roof, pushing him far beyond normal human limits. Even his mana reserves were somehow tripled, which, depending on how one looked at it, might have been the greater gain of all.
Lavinia beside her meanwhile focused her attention to the silver blade.
"Those runes, they're different from any other Shinto runes that i've known," Lavinia said as she inspected the faintly glowing markings etched into Murakumo's silver blade.
"Yeah, if I remember correctly," Jay replied. "Susanoo found the blade inside Yamata-no-Orochi's tail. And since Orochi itself is something far older than him, it's probably tied to a primordial naturally occurring calamity. Something closer to the concept of storms itself. That's why the runes aren't technically Shinto in origin, nor derived from it."
The silver sword was something else entirely as Jay closed his fingers around its hilt. There was no physical enchantment to it like Habakiri, he feels no reinforcement of the body, no enhancement to mana reserves. Yet the difference between wielding Habakiri and Murakumo was unmistakable.
While Habakiri was a composed, indifferent partner, Murakumo felt like a wild horse. There was turbulence within the steel. A chaotic energy that pushed back against his will, restless and untamed, as if the blade itself refused to be mastered.
'It was going to take time to control this beast.' He thought.
He sighed and stored both weapons back into his pocket dimension.
"Woah, the biscuits are already gone..." Lavinia laughed, noticing the empty plate. "I'm going to get more."
She headed back toward the kitchen, but just as she crossed the threshold, the front bell rang.
'Hm? A visitor? That's rare.' She thought.
Lavinia, still holding a plate of freshly baked biscuits, walked toward the front door.
"Wait…"
She paused for a fraction of a second, then opened it.
Two men stood outside.
The first was a young man with short black hair and piercing blue eyes. He wore an unusual blend of attire. A Japanese gakuran neatly fitted to his frame, yet over it hung elements of ancient Chinese hanfu, the fabric tied casually at his waist, combining tradition and modernity.
The second was also young, with black hair and spectacles. A mage-style robe draped over his uniform, the same Gakuran that the first man wore, and a feathered cape rested on his shoulders.
"Hoo~," the first man mused, eyes gleaming with amusement.
"So the Godslayer and the Ice Princess of Grauzauberer live together. Now this is what I call killing two birds with one stone."
At the mention of those titles, Lavinia's faint smile vanished.
Her gaze sharpened as she assessed the two figures before her. They are both human without a doubt. And yet, the pressure they exuded was unmistakable. Dense. Refined. Dangerous.
'A Longinus wielder…' She realized.
Before she could speak, footsteps echoed behind her.
Jay emerged from the hallway, dressed casually in baggy gray sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt, completely at odds with the tension gathering at the doorstep.
"Who is it, Lavi?"
He hadn't activated his domain so he hadn't sensed them beforehand. Maybe leaving it off all the time wasn't such a great idea after all.
Jay's eyes shifted to the two men as he came to stand beside Lavinia.
"Is there something you need?" he asked calmly.
The handsome man in front stepped forward slightly, smiling as though meeting an old friend.
"It's an honor to finally meet the Godslayer," he said.
"My name is Cao Cao, descendant of the great Cao Cao, Cao Mengde as recorded in the Records of the Three Kingdoms."
As he spoke, golden light flared in his hand.
A spear materialized, ornate and unmistakably powerful. Its dark blue shaft was longer than that of ordinary spears, wrapped in spiraling golden decorations shaped like arrowheads, twisting upward in a double-helix pattern. Near the top, the design culminated in a hollow white circle, partially filled by a cross that never quite completed itself. Beneath it rested a small silver stump with four protrusions, two on each side like restrained wings.
The spear's tip was silver, elongated, and lethal.
"And we are from the Hero Faction."
Jay and Lavinia exchanged a glance.
"…Hero?" Jay repeated, eyebrow twitching.