While Leon's home overflowed with festive noise and warmth, the other corners of Orario weren't exactly quiet either.
It was that same cold hall, built entirely of rough stone walls. Along them, rows of torches burned with effort, barely pushing the pervasive darkness back into a flickering, dim amber.
A series of dull, heavy impacts boomed through the sealed space like the roar of a caged beast. A figure stood on the stone platform up front, venting fury in a frenzy, fists and kicks recklessly destroying everything within reach that could be broken.
Valletta glared wide-eyed, the bloodshot threads spreading like a spiderweb, the madness and rage churning within nearly spilling over.
"Finn... Finn! Finn!!!"
"Damn it! That lowly Pallum bastard!!!"
A sharp breath hissed through her teeth as one more punch slammed into the stone wall, abruptly wrenching the still-unhealed, vicious wound on her arm. The pain shot through her, and she sucked in a cold breath, her movements freezing on the spot.
"Fuck!"
"Damn it!"
She cursed under her breath, breathing hard, her chest heaving violently.
Below, rows of figures cowered like startled quail, shoulders hunched, heads bowed low, not daring to so much as breathe. The firelight cast twisted, swaying shadows across their trembling backs, and in the dead silence there was only the occasional faint crackle of burning oil.
"Th-that... Lady Valletta..."
At last, an executive with a knife scar across his forehead and a grim face steeled himself and stepped forward, his voice pressed extremely low, as if afraid of disturbing something:
"We... lost a great deal of supplies and manpower this time. What... what do we do next?"
"What do we do?"
Valletta whipped her head around, her dangerous glare carving into the executive's face, an expression that looked ready to skin him alive:
"Less than half a day! Hundreds dead!"
"Even a few hundred pigs couldn't be slaughtered that fast, could they? Let alone cannon fodder?????"
Her voice was hoarse, every word ground out from between her teeth:
"What can I say. What more is there for me to say?"
"A bunch of... useless trash!!!"
No one dared answer.
The entire hall sank into an even deeper dead silence, with only the faint sound of the torches burning on the walls, and Valletta's suppressed, heavy, unsteady breathing colliding and echoing between the cold stone walls.
"Hee hee..."
In that suffocating stillness, a voice light enough to be almost eerie suddenly drifted out from a shadowy corner.
"Little Valletta, don't be so angry~"
"It was just one tiny little failure. No need to take it so much to heart."
Valletta slowly turned her head, the corner of her eye catching the figure that "drifted" out of the gloom of the side chamber, and her lips pulled into a cold curve:
"Oh, if it isn't our esteemed [Death God], Lord Thanatos. Aren't you usually holed up in the deepest depths, fiddling with your little studies of death and souls all day? What's got you in the mood to wander over to my place today?"
Her words were laced with barbs, plainly unhappy that Thanatos had come at a time like this.
"What... heard I took a big loss and made a special trip over to gloat?"
She pulled her gaze back, gave her stinging arm a careless shake as though she didn't care in the least, and dropped onto the stone chair, sneering:
"Then go right ahead and laugh."
"Doesn't bother me."
Thanatos only smiled at this without a care. He raised a hand and pushed back his wide hood, revealing a head of strange, thick, long purple hair, and a face gone unnaturally pale from too long out of the sun.
Dark lipstick was painted on his lips, standing out all the more starkly against that sickly pallor. All of it together sketched out an inhuman, uncanny aura that belonged to a [Death God].
"Heh heh, I'm not that idle." His voice was soft, carrying a detached, lazy quality. "I've still got piles of work backed up. Where would I find the time to come watch someone make a fool of themselves on purpose?"
He "drifted" half a step closer, his gaze landing on the defiant profile of Valletta's face, his tone a little airy as he cut straight to the point without any dithering:
"I came because I want to hear your thoughts on a fellow countrywoman of mine, Demeter, and that familia of hers."
At that, Valletta's eyes narrowed, and she quickly recalled the one who'd created that "winter wonderland," directly costing her over a hundred combatants and serving as one of the chief culprits behind the failure of this operation.
"Demeter Familia, huh..."
The Death God Thanatos shrugged carelessly and spread his hands:
"Yeah, I can't quite explain it myself. By the time I took notice of her, her familia had already... become a bit off."
He paused, his voice still feather-light, yet carrying a faint, hard-to-detect gloom:
"Half a year ago, I used some connections to contact an outside assassin organization and hired a few people. On the principle that less trouble is better than more, and given Demeter's importance to Orario's overall stability... my original plan was to clip her wings first, then step in personally and give her a dignified exit."
"Heh heh..."
He suddenly let out a soft laugh, his gaze turning toward Valletta with a teasing edge:
"Little Valletta, guess what? Those assassins actually failed."
Valletta lifted her eyelids expressionlessly:
"What level were the assassins?"
"Hmm... let me think." Thanatos made a show of pondering, tapping his pale chin lightly with a fingertip. "When that colleague of mine up in heaven wrote to tell me, I think it said..."
"Two Lv.3 squad captains, give or take, leading some Lv.2 elites, plus a whole pile of Lv.1... cannon fodder, I suppose?"
"Lv.3? Haha..."
Valletta let out a short, mocking cold laugh from her throat, as if she'd heard something absurd.
"Lv.3 and they thought they could take out Demeter Familia's lot?"
"Hilarious."
...
...
Leon had long anticipated that after this move, Evilus's attention toward them was bound to rise, but that didn't really matter. A lunatic like Valletta would naturally have someone "taller" to deal with her.
What he should be focusing on now was his familia's own development.
After more than a month of being forged through "Baptism mode," along with everyone's individual and cooperative performance in the actual combat of this attack, he needed to sum up the strengths and weaknesses in it as soon as possible and make adjustments.
On top of that, there were the gains from this operation to inventory and consolidate, and... how to position Lydia within the familia.
She was unlike everyone else in the familia.
Before joining, Lydia had been nothing but a princess who never set foot outside, who'd spent years cloistered deep within the royal palace.
Forget fighting monsters, even asking her to kill a chicken or catch a single rat would probably be too much for her. As for having her head straight down into the Dungeon to explore with everyone, that really would be asking too much of her.
"So, you're choosing to hold down the home base, the same as that Dea Saint?"
"Mm."
Leon stroked his chin thoughtfully, and recalling Lydia's special skill from that holy royal bloodline, a thought flashed through his mind...
Isn't this basically a human-shaped "fountain"?
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