We took them to the fire altar we had discovered. The fire stone was shaped like a stone pillar, and stood a little above two stutos tall. If he wanted something bigger, this was the best we could offer. We couldn’t transport the stove that had the godly heat setting outside the room, so I decided to introduce them to this one instead. To be completely blunt, I thought the counters in the kitchen would be too tall for the ketolts.
“Ooh, look at all this...” Pardoe exclaimed, impressed as he saw the weapons and armor we had lined up in the garden area.
“There are a few more items here with spells cast on them. Inside the building, too. Well, I’ll ask you to take a look at them later.”
“Purrfect!” Pardoe replied, raising a paw to the sky. He was even more motivated now.
And then we finally walked past the heaps of equipment and arrived at the fire altar.
“M-my goodness...!”
“A fire stone of this size...?!”
The ketolts were almost breathless at the sight. They could appreciate how large the stone was even more than we could, since they used it as part of their trade.
Pardoe immediately began inspecting the altar. Shakova and Mark assisted him, both with serious looks on their faces. Crissa looked on at a distance along with the rest of us.
The fire stone pillar that stood atop the altar was about half a stuto in diameter. The pedestal itself was about one stuto tall. In front of it was a shallow box that reminded me of a donation box.
“Meow, I see...”
Pardoe stood up slowly and went into his workshop, then came back carrying a burlap sack with black stones inside. The black stones looked like charcoal at a glance, but they were actually fire stones that had lost their spiritual power. They were used as mediums to transfer the heat from the fire stones to the metal as thoroughly as possible.
Pardoe spread the contents of the bag out inside the box. A metal item was supposed to be buried among the stones, so they had been smashed to about the size of pebbles and filled the inside of the box. It reminded me of how sweet potatoes were roasted, but I kept that to myself.
“There’s a connection between the fire stone and the box. So if we do this...” Pardoe pointed at the fire stone pillar, chanted something, and then the pillar started glowing.
Rium, who was standing next to me, explained that it was a basic spell using craftsman magic. It allowed the caster to control how much spiritual energy they drew from the fire stone, and was a basic yet vital spell.
At the same time, I felt as if my energy was being sucked out of me. I see, so the source of that stone pillar’s power wasn’t the fire spirits, but my own MP. It was putting a bigger toll on me compared to the other facilities we used inside the Unlimited Bath. Nothing I couldn’t handle, though. My MP had grown more than enough to handle this.
Just as Pardoe said, the fire stone and the box were connected, and the black stones inside the box started glowing red as they gave off heat. Pardoe gave a firm nod at the amount of heat being produced, though the power source was my MP and not the fire stone. Maybe his craftsman magic let him know how much heat was being produced, too.
“...Alright! This will do!”
“Mark, start the preparations! Bring all of our tools in here!”
“Y-yes, Father!”
The blacksmiths busily began their work.
“Rulitora, help them carry their things inside.”
“Understood.”
They quickly set up their tools with Rulitora’s help. I could still feel my MP being sucked away in the meantime, but the sensation was similar to when I used cleric magic. It felt like the times I used spirit summoning spells, but it didn’t feel quite like light or earth magic. Was this what drawing power from the fire spirits felt like? So even though it was my MP, the fire stone pillar was still using the power of fire spirits somehow. In that case, this would be good practice for learning fire-type cleric magic. I could practice spells from my new textbook as long as I made sure to not use too much MP. We could also leave the weapons and armor we didn’t know what to do with to the blacksmiths. I looked over at Clena and the rest.
“We’ll be making this smithy our base for now.”
“I suppose we could call it that, since it seems like you won’t be moving for a while.”
I couldn’t help that. I should just make use of the time to practice my cleric magic.
“Well, I’ll keep you company. I wanted to read the books we picked up from Hadesopolis, too.”
Oh yeah, we still had those. What had happened 500 years ago? What had been erased from history? The key to unlocking the mysteries might lie in those books.
Even if we can’t go outside, the next few days should be anything but boring, I thought as I stared at the lively garden.
I saw another dream that night. Just like before, I couldn’t tell if I was standing or lying down. I might have been floating in the sky or buried underground. However, I didn’t feel the pain or suffocation I had felt last time.
Rakti was clinging to my back. Standing in front of me was a woman wearing a pure white dress, her blonde hair tied in a high ponytail. Was Rakti trying to hide from her?
This time, I knew who she was. The Goddess of Light. I had noticed she was tall before, but she may have been even taller than me. She looked angry, but she wasn’t reprimanding Rakti like she had been doing last time. Perhaps because I was in between them now.
The other woman with wavy green hair must have been the Goddess of Earth. She was standing next to the Goddess of Light, trying to calm her down. She was pretty big, too. Not just her height, which seemed even taller than the Goddess of Light, but a certain part of her body covered almost all of her face from my point of view. I might have started praying to her on instinct if I could move. I couldn’t see her face now, but I imagined it had a very gentle expression. She had such a serene air about her.
I only started noticing now, but she was wearing a pretty racy dress. The skirt was composed of two sashes about a third of a stuto wide each, decorated with a tribal-looking pattern. The front of her dress was rather revealing, and the slits ran far up her legs. I could spot hints of her tanned skin peeking out from underneath.
I had so much to thank her for. I had been saved by earth spirit summoning multiple times since receiving the blessing in Ceresopolis. As I thought that, the Goddess of Earth came up to me with a cheery smile and patted my head. She was bending down toward me, and her giant breasts swaying close to my face made me blush.
The Goddess of Light suddenly became angry again. Rakti cowered behind my back even more. She must have been frightened and trying to hide behind me. It didn’t help a bit though, and the Goddess of Light continued scowling in my direction. It looked like she was angry at me, not Rakti. Maybe she was telling me to use more light magic and appreciate her more. She was rather modest compared to the Goddess of Earth—closer to Rakti than anyone else, but she probably wasn’t upset about that.
Her face grew red as I thought that and she got even more angry, but I didn’t think it was related. Hopefully.
There was one more girl in my dream this time. She was hugging my shoulders next to me, laughing at the Goddess of Light and Earth in a lively fashion.
Yes, she was the Goddess of Fire. Her hair reached slightly past her shoulders and looked a little scruffy, as if she had combed through it with just her fingers. She was wearing a tropical-looking dress, similar to a bikini and a pareo. She was showing the most skin out of all of the goddesses here. On that note, she was bigger than the Goddess of Light and smaller than the Goddess of Earth.
She was petting Rakti’s head, hugging the both of us, and basically doing whatever she wanted to. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but she had a hearty smile on her face. She hugged me while sticking her tongue out at the Goddess of Light.
I remembered my Unlimited Bath and started to understand what the Goddess of Fire might have been thinking during the upgrade. She was protecti
ng me the same way the Goddess of Earth was. She wanted to guard me against the clash between the light and darkness blessings. Maybe she was able to protect me more than the Goddess of Earth could, since I had received the blessing at her head temple. That would explain why she was so close now.
She was also the reason why we could start tailoring my magic eater armor. I had just received her blessing, but it was helping me a lot already.
I couldn’t voice my thoughts, but I tried to look at her in a way that expressed my gratitude. Maybe I got through to her, because her eyes starting sparkling and she gave me a bear hug with a giant smile on her face. She pushed me into her supple breasts, and while I couldn’t feel anything at the moment, I could imagine their softness and a smile formed on my face. The Goddess of Light looked even more fearsome after seeing us like that, but it was probably unrelated... or at least I wanted to think it was.
Should I tell Haruno about this feast of goddesses the next time I send her a message? I thought as my mind faded from consciousness.
Spring Bath – Harunon’s Crime Report
Athenapolis—the nation of the wise. The nation was currently struck by a presence that had gained notoriety all the way from the intellectuals of the ecclesia to the ravers in the streets. That was the Hero of the Temple of the Goddess of Light, or Hero of the Goddess for short—Haruno Shinonome.
She was still periodically going out with the Goddess of Light pilgrims to subjugate monsters, showing everyone that “hero” wasn’t just a word tacked onto her name. On top of that, she was so beautiful that it was rumored she might have been an incarnation of the Goddess herself. She was both gorgeous and lived up to her name, so it was no wonder that she had become the talk of the town.
“Sigh...” The famed Haruno was currently standing by a window in a mansion located in the outskirts of Athenapolis, wrought with ennui. She was happy to hear about her reputation in the city, but that alone wasn’t enough to keep her spirits up all the time. She was a bit embarrassed about being treated like a goddess, but that wasn’t it either.
It all started with the recent message Touya had sent her. Touya, her loved one, had defeated a demon general. That was a huge achievement for a hero. Sera and the three pilgrim knights—Lumis, Rin, and Sandra—were all as happy to hear the news as if the accomplishment was their own, to say nothing of Haruno. However, the other news that came with it had delivered a huge shock to the girls. Information on Hadesopolis, the fact that there was a sixth goddess called the Goddess of Darkness, the truth behind the battle between the first sacred king and the demon lord, the fact that the first sacred king had sealed the Goddess of Darkness on accident, which created the void... All of this information had been covered up. It was all too much for followers of the Goddess of Light.
The demon lord was a human who had also been summoned from Haruno’s world, and his name was Oda Nobunaga. The Goddess of Darkness was the goddess of all demi-humans, and demons were only a subcategory of demi-humans. After the Goddess of Darkness was sealed, the sacred family and the temple of light took over the nations of demi-humans.
All that information was so far from what they thought they knew about the battle between the first sacred king and the demon lord. Every last bit of information blew away what common sense they had. You could even say that these followers of the Goddess of Light were having an identity crisis.
It had been so much of a shock that Sera and the others no longer had a trace of the vigor they normally had. Rin, who was usually full of energy, was now moping. For Haruno, who wasn’t a follower, seeing her friends like that gave her just as much of a shock.
They ended up following Sera’s suggestion to only report that Touya had defeated a demon general and hide the findings on Hadesopolis for the time being. They felt wrong about keeping it a secret, but every one of the pilgrims agreed that giving the temple all that information might put Touya at risk. After all, he was the one who revealed the secrets that the sacred family and the temple of light had covered up, and was also taking the Goddess of Darkness along with him. Fortunately, news had recently spread that a hero of the sacred family, Natsu Kannami, had defeated a demon general. It wouldn’t seem odd for them to report the news without all the extra information.
“It just isn’t working...”
“What’s the matter?”
“N-no, it’s nothing.”
They were currently riding horseback on the road home from battling monsters in the neighboring village. Haruno let her thoughts slip, but quickly diverted the topic after a party member noticed.
Haruno had many worries, but her activities as a hero of the goddess wasn’t one of them. She had already reached level 19. She was only one level away from become a first-class party member at level 20. Haruno wondered if she was gaining levels too quickly, but that was just the effect of the blessing from the Goddess of Light.
She had also discovered that her gift, the Unlimited Reflection, proved extremely strong in battle. The power blocked any and all magic from affecting her unless she consciously willed it. The fire that monsters breathed was included in that, and it didn’t affect Haruno one bit. On the other hand, she’d have to concentrate to have healing spells work on her, but she’d also be shielded from any surprise attacks without even thinking about it.
She was also worried, as a girl of her age would be, about how physical stats such as STR and VIT were the only ones increasing on her status card. Her sword had been feeling lighter in her hands lately, but she concluded that it was just her imagination after pinching her arm to check.
In any case, Haruno had gotten used to fighting monsters after all the time she’d spent subjugating them. When they had first started traveling, Haruno had been so afraid of taking lives that she cried to Sera a few times, but she had gotten past that now. She wanted to return the favor to Sera by saying something to her now, but she couldn’t think of anything worthwhile. In the end, she had murmured that things weren’t working, vexed that she could do nothing but listen.
After they finished cleaning up and returned to the mansion, Sera welcomed them back wearing a robe. It wasn’t a cleric robe, but a loose and thin one that looked like pajamas. She almost looked like a sheltered princess wearing it.
“Lady Haruno, a message has arrived from Sir Touya.”
“Really?!”
Haruno hurriedly stepped down from her horse and rushed over to Sera after hearing the news. She realized what she was doing a moment later and turned around, but it went without saying that the pilgrims were all giggling at her. Haruno tried to cover her blushing face.
The pilgrims went their separate ways after that, and Haruno, Sera, and Lumis were left to go to Sera’s room. Sera’s room was stylish and had a bed, table, and dresser. The holy tool used to transmit messages was sitting on the table.
Haruno was the only one who could read the message, so she did so by herself first. Even though they were just regularly scheduled letters, she was a little embarrassed since it was mainly Touya reporting his life to her.
This message explained that they had reached Hephaestusopolis, where Touya had received a goddess’ blessing. He wrote that they’d be staying in the city for a while to repair their damaged armor after their battle against the demon general, get new armor, practice magic, and study documents they had collected. Though the thing that caught Haruno’s eye the most was the cat-shaped ketolts.
“There seems to be no problem... Oh, that may be a problem depending on the person.”
“What is?”
“The fact that he is collecting blessings from other goddesses. Is that alright?”
“The arch-cleric in the first sacred king’s party had been blessed by five goddesses, but that was not a common case...”
Sera averted her eyes and hesitated from completing her answer to Haruno’s question. The pilgrims eyed each other, looking a little dubious.
“Um... what do you mean by depending on the person?”
�
��I think he’s doing amazing, he reminds me of San Pilaca.”
“Though those were arguments on both sides of San Pilaca’s case at the time, too...”
Rin, Lumis, and Sandra spoke in turn. All three of them didn’t mind, but apparently some people might. Touya had already been blessed by the Goddess of Earth, but no one had paid that any mind before. That was because the ceremony hadn’t been conducted at the head temple.
“According to how he described the new Unlimited Bath in his message, he hasn’t lost the Goddess of Light’s blessing...” Sera said, but it still seemed like she was being evasive.
“So some people might assume he threw away his blessing from the Goddess of Light if they didn’t know that,” Haruno added, and Sera nodded awkwardly in response.
“Actually, I did some research while all of you were out.”
“On what?”
“On the human conquest of the demi-human nations over the past 500 years.”
“...Did it really happen?”
Sera lowered her head sorrowfully at Haruno’s question. Everyone could guess what that expression meant. The takeover really did happen—which provided evidence that the story about the Goddess of Darkness was true, as well.
“Which nation could it possibly have been...?”
“That was actually... this nation, Athenapolis.”
“...Huh?”
“Yes, Athenapolis used to be a nation of demi-humans.”
Everyone looked bewildered at the statement. The current Athenapolis was governed by the senate, but according to Sera’s research, it was a nation of demi-humans until about 300 years ago. Demons were a subcategory of demi-humans, but people back then might have thought of demi-humans as a subcategory of demons.
“I’ll ask just in case, but what kind of demi-humans lived there?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t find out that much...”
Sera’s answer was completely expected, in a way. The fact that demi-human nations had been taken over was concealed information, so it was no surprise that information on its past residents was nowhere to be found.
The Chaotic Stone Sauna Page 6
