Chapter 191: Smells So Good
"If this is all you've got, you're a real disappointment." Kalpas stood wreathed in flames, looking over the three of them, and honestly — he was disappointed.
Setting aside the Herrscher of the Void over there, the Herrscher of Flame and the Herrscher of Thunder were simply not up to par. The Herrscher of Flame at least worked reasonably well as part of a combo.
But her grasp of her Authority and her overall combat power fell short. That soft, toothless fire — how could anyone call that fire?
And the Herrscher of Thunder talked a big game but couldn't back it up with her fists. Her Authority usage was even worse than the Herrscher of Flame's. Fighting her was so dull he could barely bring himself to stay engaged.
Kiana and Mei exchanged a glance. Kiana immediately helped Mei to her feet, stepped in front of her, and let flames coil around her own body.
Then she took a deep breath and slammed both palms together with tremendous force. A massive shockwave of fire erupted from the point of impact and surged toward Kalpas.
"Nowhere near enough." Kalpas didn't even bother stepping forward. The flames at his side condensed into a massive fireball that smashed head-on into Kiana's shockwave and obliterated it.
Kiana's eyes sharpened. She took another deep breath, extended her hand, and let the flames of her Authority pool in her palm — meeting Kalpas's fire head-on in a direct collision.
The blazing infernos merged and dissolved into each other. The fire on Kiana's body surged dramatically, as if it had just been fed fresh fuel. Seeing this, Kalpas raised an eyebrow beneath his mask.
"Now that's a little interesting. But defense alone won't solve anything. Come on — attack me. Use your fire." Kalpas stayed where he was, watching Kiana.
"You came here seeking strength, didn't you? Come and defeat me. Prove it to me. If you can't even beat me, don't even think about what comes after."
Kalpas crossed his arms and looked at the three of them. He bore no real hostility toward them — he wasn't genuinely angry over what Mei had said earlier, either.
He couldn't be bothered getting worked up over a bunch of kids. But if they couldn't even take him down, they had no business facing the dangers ahead.
"What a pain." Sirin frowned, snapped her fingers, and launched several Lance of the Void straight at Kalpas. His eyes flashed — an explosive burst of flame erupted and shattered every last one by force.
"Come. Prove it to me." Kalpas leapt into the air and launched himself directly at Mei.
"You're worth killing!"
— The Hall —
"Isn't Teacher Himeko going inside to join everyone else?" Irene rested her chin in her hand and watched Himeko browsing the liquor cabinet.
"That's someone else's booze, you know."
"Obviously. I don't need you to tell me that." Himeko rolled her eyes and stared at the impressive spread of bottles before her, clicking her tongue in amazement. Lots of labels she'd never heard of.
Well, of course — this was the Previous Era. Unfamiliar brands were only natural. But judging by the packaging alone, these were definitely quality drinks.
Still, her gaze wasn't only on the liquor cabinet. It also kept drifting to Irene, who was currently cradled in Elysia's arms. How to put it — Irene wasn't exactly towering at six feet, but she was around 170cm or so.
And yet the pink-haired girl who was doing the cradling looked no taller than 160-something? Being held like that struck Himeko as oddly backwards. And just what was the relationship between those two, anyway?
"You're more than welcome to have a drink, you know." Elysia smiled, keeping Irene nestled in her arms. She'd wanted to get properly acquainted with all the other lovely young women too — after all, they were all Herrschers who fought for humanity, and she wanted to get her hands on every single one of them.
But it was a real shame. Irene had shooed them all off into the Realm to go play with the others. So she had no choice but to make do with Irene as a substitute.
Lucky for her, Irene was being cooperative. Though she couldn't quite put her finger on why, Irene's scent had been growing more and more pleasant — no, it wasn't just the scent, it was more like some kind of pull, an attraction that kept intensifying.
Elysia absently nuzzled against Irene's back. If before, her fondness had stemmed from Irene being the first Herrscher-linked-to-humanity she'd encountered, combined with Irene's pleasant personality —
Plus saving Pardofelis, and the two little Doctors, and the borrowed warmth from Rin's feelings toward her — then what Elysia felt now was something altogether more personal.
Before, it had been like a universal +100% approval bonus for all the Flame-Chasers, plus an extra +100% on top of that from the Herrscher of Origin's special affinity. But now? It was like her entire being was drawing Elysia in.
Like a cat discovering catnip. Her personal multiplier had long since blown past +100% — it was barreling toward +1000%.
How strange. She hadn't felt like this the last time she'd seen Irene. Oh well — no point overthinking it. What was the point of pondering things when you could just cuddle with a lovely girl?
Hehe. Irene smells so good~
A short distance away, Theresa and Cecilia were chatting on the other side of the room. Cecilia had already filled Theresa in on her situation.
Theresa could only respond with heartfelt regret, along with the deep emotion and excitement of being reunited after so long — and she had laid out everything she herself had been doing in return.
Of course, while she talked, Theresa kept glancing over at Irene, still nestled in Elysia's embrace: "Honestly — I haven't even gotten to hold Irene that much myself."
Though Irene had held her like that before.
"Theresa — do you have feelings for Irene?" Cecilia noticed Theresa's gaze constantly drifting back to Irene and smiled knowingly. As a married woman, she knew that look all too well.
So the Theresa from the other world had eventually found her place after all, it seemed.
"It's not like that..." Hearing Cecilia's words, Theresa denied it immediately. "I just think Irene is wonderful, that's all. Truly. And Irene has done so much for us, and we haven't done anything to help her back..."
"Alright, enough with the excuses." Cecilia gave Theresa a pat on the head. "I'm a married woman. I can read the signs."
Cecilia patted Theresa on the back with the confidence of someone who'd been through it all — though truth be told, she was something of a novice herself. She'd been the one swept off her feet by Siegfried, and quite easily at that.
Not that it stopped her from playing the seasoned elder now. Still, she did genuinely think Irene was a good person. If Theresa truly wanted to settle down with someone, Irene was a fine choice.
Finding someone you were compatible with was hard these days, and for Valkyries it was even harder. You had to take your chances when they came. As for it being between two women —
Well, fate was fate. Inevitable. Especially for Valkyries — all the more so, and perfectly normal.
Situations like Cecilia's were actually the rare exception. The vast majority of the time, people kept it all internalized. In fact, if she remembered correctly —
Schicksal HQ even had a church dedicated specifically to that sort of thing, funded personally by the Overseer himself. Say what you would about the Overseer — clearly a bit odd, always sticking his nose in — but it did say something.
Everyone had long since come to regard it as perfectly ordinary.
So Cecilia was all for it, wholeheartedly.
"Would you like me to put in a good word for you with Irene?" Cecilia leaned in close to Theresa's ear and whispered. "Someone as wonderful as Irene doesn't come along very often."
After all, she herself had been saved by Irene — so she had a bit of a soft spot there. But setting that aside and looking at it objectively: Irene was tall, beautiful, strong, and you basically never had to worry about losing her.
The Herrscher of Death — as someone who had once wielded the Divine Key connected to that Authority, the Abyss Flower, Cecilia understood better than anyone just how staggering that Herrscher's vitality truly was.
Dying would be almost impossible for her.
"Mmmph!" A faint wisp of steam rose from the top of Theresa's head. The blush on her face looked ready to overflow entirely. Cecilia just smiled and patted Theresa's head again.
And at that moment, a violent blast of heat erupted from the portal.
"This little brat is yours, isn't she?" Kalpas strode out through the portal, flames still flickering across his body, dragging what appeared to be an unconscious Mei. He looked directly at Irene.
Another wave of disturbance followed from the portal. Kiana and Sirin emerged — clearly they'd taken a beating too, though not badly enough to be knocked out cold like Mei.
"What happened to you all? Did you trigger an overload reaction?" Irene stared at Mei's soot-covered face. "You were just supposed to be training — how did it get this intense? Don't tell me... did Mei say something?"
She'd given them a reminder, hadn't she — don't go poking at sore spots. It shouldn't have gone this way. Mei had no particular trauma tied to this awakening; it had been a completely normal emergence of her Authority, with no pressing urgency driving it.
There was no desperate thirst for answers pushing her either. So how had this Mei managed to step on a landmine anyway? Or was stepping on landmines somehow part of the Herrscher of Thunder's Authority?
That would be a bit too on the nose.
"I merely showed the little brat the size of the gap between us." Kalpas tossed Mei with a casual flick of his wrist, the flames on his body gradually dying down.
"Oh, is that so?" Irene caught Mei, slipped free of Elysia's embrace, settled down to one side, and began channeling her Authority to treat Mei. Fortunately, Kalpas had exercised restraint — she was only knocked out, with no serious injuries to speak of.
Even so, Irene looked at Kalpas. He wore his mask, but through the Bodhi imprint she could sense the faint ember of irritation still burning somewhere on him.
So Irene looked down at Mei in her arms — the girl who was very obviously still faking unconsciousness — and flicked her on the forehead. "Alright, out with it," she said with weary exasperation. "What did you do?"
"Um..." Caught out, Mei turned her face away with a sheepish expression. "Irene-nee... can we not talk about it?"
"What do you think?" Irene looked at her with warm amusement, then gently helped Mei sit up. "Kalpas is actually a very gentle person. If you hadn't done something, why would you have ended up like this?"
"I really don't see the gentle part." Mei gave a strange look toward Kalpas, who had found himself a spot to lean against and was standing there with all the energy of someone who had already checked out of the conversation.
But since Irene-nee had asked so directly, she couldn't keep hiding it any longer. She told them everything — how they'd met Kalpas, the remark she'd blurted out mid-fight without thinking, and everything that had happened after.
"You really are something else. Is stepping on landmines actually part of the Herrscher of Thunder's Authority?" Irene gave Mei a pat on the head and settled her properly. Beside them, Kiana came over, looked Mei up and down, and let out a quiet breath of relief.
"Sorry, Mei. I couldn't protect you."
"Please. You were the first one sent flying." Sirin looked at Kiana and rolled her eyes. She herself had come out of it the least injured — unsurprisingly, since when the Herrscher of the Void decided to run, there wasn't much Kalpas could do to stop her.
So Sirin had only a few surface scratches, plus whatever unavoidable damage she'd taken from Kalpas's wide-area attacks.
"I really didn't expect the gap to be that huge." Kiana scratched the back of her head. She'd figured that with an Authority, she'd at least be somewhere in S-Rank Valkyrie territory.
Turns out she still got demolished. But even so, this fight had deepened her understanding of fire by a whole level. And toward the end, she'd actually started to hit her stride — fighting harder the longer it went.
She'd even begun to control the flames on Kalpas's body, drawing them to herself so they couldn't harm her. The problem was, being immune to Kalpas's fire didn't mean she could actually beat Kalpas.
His hand-to-hand combat was nothing to dismiss either. And honestly, Kiana had never been particularly strong in martial arts — her half-baked Gun Kata was completely useless against him.
The physical edge her Kaslana bloodline gave her was equally worthless in this matchup. So naturally, she'd gotten thoroughly pummeled by Kalpas's military-style close-quarters combat.
Still — it had felt genuinely exhilarating. Kiana felt like she'd found a real teacher. If she could absorb everything Kalpas knew about manipulating flame, her grasp of her own Authority would reach a whole new level.
Now that she understood how wide the gap truly was, Kiana felt a new urgency settling over her. The Elysian Realm — Irene had told her. This was the graveyard of those who had not become heroes.
Why hadn't they become heroes? Because they had failed to lead civilization past Finality. And someone as powerful as Kalpas had failed to do it. So what did that mean for them? They couldn't even beat Kalpas — which meant they couldn't beat Finality.
If it came to that, everything they cherished, everything they loved, would be swept away to nothing. Kiana couldn't accept that. So she had to get stronger.
"Kalpas really is a very gentle person~" Elysia drifted over and smiled at Mei, whose expression had gone completely skeptical, then reached into her dress and produced a book, holding it out.
"I believe this book will teach Miss Mei how to have perfectly normal conversations with Kalpas."
Mei took the book and looked down at the title. A flood of question marks practically materialized above her head — not for any complicated reason, just because the book in her hands, One Hundred Questions About Kalpas's Mask: From Beginner to Expert, looked absolutely nothing like a legitimate guide to friendly conversation.
"Miss Elysia, this..." Mei stared at the book in her hands, unable to decide whether to open it or not. After all, the subject of the book was standing right there.
"I'm sure Miss Mei will find it very useful~" Elysia gave Mei a playful wink. "Kalpas is actually quite shy, you know. I really don't want Miss Mei or anyone else getting the wrong impression of him."
Nearby, Irene quietly moved to position herself between Kalpas and Elysia upon hearing those words. Not that Elysia couldn't handle Kalpas — even if he actually did get fired up and got into it with her, nothing catastrophic would happen.
But it would definitely make a scene in front of Bronya and Mei, and there'd probably be some collateral damage too.
Fortunately, Kalpas merely tilted his head in their direction, then looked away again. He'd known Elysia's personality for far too long to let it get to him.
"I guess..." Mei looked at Elysia's sincere, bright smile and could only sigh and drop her gaze to the book in her hands. And that was when she noticed a detail she'd overlooked before.
Specifically, the author.
"Author: Elysia?"
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