I looked down at the ring in my hand. It was heavy, silver, and set with five different colored emeralds. It felt cold against my skin. Inside this small piece of metal was Chistera, the Vampire Lord, the "pervert bat" who had previously wasted my entire bottle of shampoo and spooked the Saintess' party.
"Great," I muttered to myself, slipping the ring into my pocket. "Now I have a direct line to Lilith, and yet the receiver is Chistera. Just what I needed."
I turned back to the counter. Orla was still there, clutching her wrist, staring at her own hand as if it were an otherworldly artefact.
"Orla," I said gently. "Are you alright?"
She looked up at me, her eyes wide and vacant. "The blood…" she whispered, flexing her fingers. "It… it obeyed the pressure. Not the spirit."
She looked at me as her expression fractured. "Everything I know… the fire, the spirits… is it all a lie?"
"Not a lie," I said, grabbing a cloth to wipe down the counter where Lilith had eaten. "Just… a different system. Your system works for you. Mine works for me. We just proved that the parts are compatible, even if the fuel is different."
Before she could respond, a soft tingling echoed from the front door.
My stomach tightened as Lilith's warning echoed in my mind. The third party will come here with their own mother.
I looked at the door. It opened slowly, respectfully.
A familiar figure stepped inside first. Tall, with flowing blonde hair and a white robe adorned with gold ornaments. Aella, the High Priestess of the Elves.
She looked around the shop as her eyes scanned for danger, likely the pressure she might have sensed earlier from Lilith. When her gaze landed on me, unharmed, and then on the shaken but alive Orla, she let out a visible breath of relief.
She stepped aside, holding the door open, and bowed deeply.
"Master," Aella said as her voice filled with admiration. "This is the place."
Master? Don't tell me!
A second figure stepped through the doorway. She was shorter than Aella or maybe even shorter than me, with a build that seemed slighter, almost delicate. But as she crossed the door, the air in the shop changed. It didn't become heavy and suffocating like with Lilith. Instead, it became… fresh.
It was the scent of blooming flowers, of deep forests after a rain, of rich and fertile earth. It washed over the shop, clearing the lingering of Lilith's aura instantly.
She had green hair that seemed to flow and shift like leaves in a gentle breeze. Her eyes were heterochromatic, the left one a vibrant green, the right a piercing yellow. In her hand, she held a wooden staff.
The Goddess Arum.
She stopped in the centre of the room, her mismatched eyes widening slightly as she took in the modern interior, the coffee machine, and finally, me.
"So," a voice said, warm and terrifyingly old. "This is the place that defieth my sister's law."
Sister's law?
"'Koffi'…" She repeated, her voice like a gentle breeze rustling through leaves. "Aella telleth me 'tis a brew of dark bitterness that awakeneth the mind. A posset from seeds."
She looked at me as her mismatched eyes seemed to see right through my skin.
"And thou art the gardener of this strange place."
"I'm Darya," I said, wiping my hands on a cloth. "I'm just a barista. Would you like to try a cup?"
"I would," she smiled, warm and terrifying. "But first, I wish to see the seed. The bean."
I retrieved a jar of coffee beans and placed it on the counter. She didn't open it. She simply placed her hand over the glass. A faint, green light pulsed from her palm…
Wait a second, I have activated the cafe skill. How does she still emit magic?
The shop seemed not to try to crush her, or perhaps the shop's rules were different for a Goddess?
"… Silent," she whispered, her expression unreadable. "It has no song. No spirit. It is… empty matter."
"Yes…as it had been roasted…It should not emit any song, as it doesn't have any spirit inside of it." I said.
"Tis not merely that they are roasted," Arum said, withdrawing her hand as the faint light faded. "Death is part of the song. A fallen leaf still hummeth with the memory of the tree. It still feedeth the earth. But this..."
She looked at the jar with a mixture of pity and fascination. "his is truly silent. 'Tis not dead matter; 'tis severed matter. It existeth without ever having touched the weave of this world."
Fascinating, she knows that these beans aren't from this world.
She raised her eyes to mine, her gaze piercing yet serene.
"Just like thee."
"My sister, Ira," she continued, her voice dropping to a lower and more resonant as the deepest part of the forest. "she weaveth the laws of power. She decreeth that existence must burn with mana, with the 'breath' of the realm. Yet thou… thou art a stone that breatheth. A weed that groweth without soil."
She leaned closer, the scent of rain intensifying. "I look upon thee, Darya, and I see a seed. A seed from a diverse garden, planted in our earth."
Now she knows I am not from this world.
I asked, "How can you use magic in this room and in this state?"
"Magic?" she repeated, her voice a soft and amused rustle. She looked at her own hand, where the faint green light had pulsed.
"I cast no spell, Gardener. I wove no mana into a shape of power. I simply… reached out. I listened to the seed."
She looked around the shop as her mismatched eyes narrowed slightly, tracing the invisible lines of the shop's barrier. "Thy fortress is strong. It barreth the shouting of power, the spells of fire and ice, the crushing weight of my sister's dominance. But it seemeth it does not stop the whisper."
She rested her hand on the counter. "Nature is not a spell, Darya. It is a state of being. Thy walls may stop a storm, but they cannot stop the moss from growing on the stone."
Her expression shifted, the warmth fading into sharper, more ancient curiosity. "However… I feel the wall thou hast built. It is… absolute. Stagnant. A void where the wind cannot blow."
She raised her wooden staff slightly. The air around it began to shimmy, not with a gentle light this time, but with a dense and heavy pressure.
"Let us see," she whispered, "If it can withstand the roots trying to break the foundation."
She didn't cast a spell. She didn't chant. She simply pushed with her staff as she expanded her divine presence, trying to force her reality into the shop's neutral space.
CRACK.
A sound like a splitting tree echoed through the room. In the centre of the air, right between us, reality seemed to fracture. A sharp, spiderweb crack appeared in the empty space, vibrating the tension.
The shop groaned. The floorboards beneath my feet trembled. I gripped the counter. Don't you dare…
However, the shop held back. The invisible pressure of the room, the system, the supervisor, whatever it was, slammed back. It wasn't gravity this time; it was a rejection. A hard snap of reality correcting itself.
SNAP.
The crack in the air vanished instantly. The pressure evaporated.
She stumbled back a single step with her eyes wide. She looked at her staff, then at the empty air where her power had just been erased.
"…It refused me," she breathed, her voice filled with genuine shock. "The earth itself… rejected my root."
She looked at me, her gaze now filled with a new, profound respect and perhaps a hint of suspicion.
"A place that can repel a goddess…" she whispered. "This is no mere building. 'Tis a fortress of a different law entirely.
She lowered her staff, the tension leaving her frame as she accepted the house's rules. She smiled, "Very well, Gardener. The soil is too hard for my roots to break." She moved to the counter, taking the seat Lilith had just vacated. "Now... let us taste this 'Koffi'."