When Rimuru finally drifted back to consciousness, the world was quiet.
He felt soft cotton beneath him. He was lying quietly in a bed.
What... happened?
[Analysis: The sewer system was insufficient to evade the Burial Agency's grid search. During the evasion protocol, your muscular tissue suffered catastrophic failure. I lost motor control of the physical vessel.]
So...
[At that critical juncture, I was forced to seek sanctuary with the local populace. Fortunately, I gambled correctly.]
...You know that puts them in extreme danger. We already lived through this once in Italy.
[Primary Directive: Survival of the Host. All other variables are secondary.]
"..." Rimuru let out a long, exhausted sigh. Fine. If I can move, we leave now. They'll be searching door-to-door soon.
"They won't search here."
A voice, slightly cold and entirely devoid of emotion, broke the silence.
Rimuru startled. The sheer flatness of the tone instantly reminded him of Alice Kuonji.
He turned his head.
Sitting in a chair beside the bed was a woman. She had long, silver-white hair, delicate features that rivaled a German princess, and an eyepatch covering her right eye.
She was also wearing a nun's habit.
And, to Rimuru's absolute, brain-breaking bewilderment... she was heavily pregnant.
Rimuru opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He stared at the silver hair, the eyepatch, the habit, and the swelling stomach, his mind entirely blank.
"Are you... a nun?"
"Yes." She nodded calmly, adjusting the folds of her black habit. "Which is exactly why they will not search this place."
"But… why would a nun save me?" Rimuru murmured, his mind still spinning. "The Church… the Executors… they're hunting me."
"…"
She didn't answer immediately. She just sat there, her single visible eye resting quietly on his disguised, average-looking face.
After a long, agonizing silence, she slowly shook her head.
"Because you are without sin."
I am… without sin?
…
London. The Clock Tower.
Inside the sprawling, silent expanse of the Grand Library, Professor Rimuru Tempest sat at an oak table, methodically flipping through a towering stack of ancient tomes.
A sudden flutter of wings broke the silence. A semi-transparent white dove, woven entirely from magical threads, swooped down from the vaulted ceiling and landed on the table beside him. It was a basic Familiar Magecraft, elementary, but incredibly versatile for modifications.
"What's the word?" Rimuru asked quietly, not even looking up from his reading.
The white dove cocked its head, its magical sensors sweeping over the chaotic, disorganized piles of books surrounding Rimuru. Through the familiar, May's voice echoed in his mind, tight with worry.
"We finally got a message back from Aoko."
"Oh? What did the Human Rocket Launcher have to say?"
After the incident where she blew up the Gaiusling family's hunting grounds, little Erol had bounced right back to her lawless, adorable self, mostly because she had Rimuru and May acting as impenetrable political shields.
Aoko Aozaki, however, hadn't been so lucky. She was formally ordered to vacate London within forty-eight hours and was permanently banned from ever setting foot on Clock Tower grounds again.
To a Magician, a restraining order from the Association meant absolutely nothing. But in Aoko's own words: "Why would I ever want to come back to a place full of stuck-up, boring snobs anyway?"
Given the extreme sensitivity of Rimuru's situation, the fact that a Lord of the Clock Tower was currently battling a Dead Apostle's Vampiric Impulse, May couldn't risk a direct magical transmission to Aoko, who was currently backpacking her way back across Japan. It was too easy for the Burial Agency or rival Lords to intercept.
Instead, May had used their old, encrypted relay method. She sent the message to Alice Kuonji first, who then used her specialized, highly secure Blue Robin familiar to track Aoko down.
It caused a significant delay in communication, but it guaranteed absolute secrecy.
Rimuru had deliberately kept the true severity of his situation, the rotting wound on his heart, the lethal hunt in Europe, and his clash with the Black Princess, hidden from his friends.
He didn't want to drag May, Aoko, or Alice into the apocalyptic crossfire between the Church and the Twenty-Seven Ancestors.
But looking through the eyes of her dove, May felt her anxiety spike.
Rimuru was usually meticulous. His workspace was always perfectly organized; every book he referenced was neatly stacked and aligned.
Right now, his desk looked like a war zone.
He was masking his panic well behind that calm, professorial facade, but the chaotic sprawl of open texts betrayed the truth. He was desperate. Time was running out.
"Aoko said that her brain isn't exactly wired for dispelling high-tier curses," May relayed, her voice heavy.
"And curses paid for with immortal life force are incredibly difficult to unravel by simply rewinding or adjusting the timeline. Especially… your timeline."
"…Ah. Right. I almost forgot. She can't peer through the fog surrounding my existence." Rimuru let out a dry, helpless chuckle. "Well, at least the muscle-brain knows her own intellectual limits…"
"But she said she's willing to try!" May cut in sharply, ignoring Rimuru's attempt at forced levity. "She said you just need to find an excuse to travel to Japan…"
"There's no need."
Rimuru's hand paused over a page. He slowly closed the book.
"Instead of traveling all the way to the Far East on a gamble, I'm putting my faith in a more localized solution."
"A localized solution?! You found a cure?"
"I found a lead," Rimuru corrected gently. He tapped the cover of the book he had just finished.
It was titled: The Dukes of Cornwall: A Lineage of Myth.
May's dove tilted its head in confusion. It scanned the surrounding titles: A History of Far Eastern Magecraft, A Comprehensive Study on Homunculi by the Einzberns, The Conquests of Iskandar…
Mixed in with the historical texts were incredibly dense, specialized academic papers from the Department of Spiritual Evocation: The Mechanics of Spirit Origin Breakthrough, Theoretical Papers on Noble Phantasms and Relic Catalysts.
"Are you… researching the Holy Grail War?" May asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"Something like that." Rimuru shook his head. He reached into the chaotic pile and pulled out a beautifully bound, ancient text, sliding it directly in front of the dove.
The Legend of the Faerie Realm: Avalon.
"Avalon…" May murmured.
….
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