Lilli chose silence. The room fell into dead stillness.
Only the occasional breath of night wind came in from outside, squeezing through the gap of an unlatched window, drawing out a faint, keening moan.
"This is the most pitiable thing about you."
Haimer sighed at the sight of it, his gaze settling once more on Lilli's face — still carrying the last traces of childhood softness.
"You carry a treasure inside you, yet you've always believed yourself to be nothing more than a beggar scrabbling for copper coins in a mud puddle.
"Drink this, and if you can still say the same thing afterwards, I'll listen to what you have to say."
Lilli looked up in bewilderment, her chestnut eyes brimming with confusion.
"A treasure?"
Lilli repeated it on instinct, her hands clenching tight around the edge of the bedsheet.
"That transformation magic of yours — 『Cinderella』."
Haimer's gaze sharpened, driving straight to the bottom of Lilli's eyes.
"What have you been treating that magic as?"
"A circus trick for swindling a few rookie adventurers out of their short swords and bucklers?"
"Or a sneaking tool for running errands for Chanis, slipping into filthy taverns to steal worthless gossip?"
"In the hands of someone who doesn't know how to use it, that's nothing but a rusted, notched chopping blade.
"But in the hands of someone with wit, a magic that can perfectly disguise physique, voice — even racial traits — is a razor edge that can dismantle an entire large Familia without a single drop of blood being shed."
"You don't even need to become anyone in particular. All you need is a blind spot in someone's line of sight, and the one part of the magic that alters your voice.
"Mimic Chanis's voice — in the corridors of the compound late at night, or around the corners that the lower-ranking members are certain to pass — and let something slip, offhandedly, to someone within earshot."
"Say that tomorrow, the Divine Wine rations for such-and-such bottom-rung adventurers are going to be cut entirely, because the Magic Stones they've been handing over lately are too poor in quality, and you plan to take that Divine Wine to the black market for a much bigger profit."
Lilli understood perfectly what Divine Wine meant to those bottom-rung adventurers in the Soma Familia.
It was life itself. It was poison. It was something more necessary than air and water.
"It doesn't take much.
"All you need is for a few men already half-mad from withdrawal — their reason fraying at the very edge of collapse — to happen to overhear it."
"Care to guess?"
Haimer leaned forward, his eyes fixed on Lilli.
"Whether Chanis's door would end up being smashed to splinters by those maniacs who'd lost all reason.
"Whether those men who'd sell anything for a drop of Divine Wine would draw their weapons and turn the captain who lords it over them every day into a mortal enemy."
"And that's only one move."
Haimer settled back in his seat and crossed one leg over the other.
"Sow discord. Plant false evidence. Spread misinformation. Incite factional bloodshed…
"You could have been turning the world upside down from the shadows — yet instead you've been trudging dutifully up to the upper floors of the Dungeon every single day to scrabble with Goblins over copper coins, taking whatever wretched Valis you scraped together to fill a hole that can never be filled, and getting cornered in alleyways by thugs without a brain between them and beaten to a pulp with no way to fight back.
"You are not truly weak.
"You simply see yourself as weak!"
"B-But…" Lilli began, stuttering.
"If… if they found out I'd done something like that… the Chanis people would never let Lilli go… they'd tie Lilli to a pillar in the basement, whip her with thorned flails, give her nothing to eat, not even water to drink… she'd be beaten to death…"
Lilli's teeth clattered against each other, making a rattling sound.
The bodily memory of years of abuse awoke in her, and she curled herself inward, searching for even the smallest fragment of safety.
Haimer looked at this girl whose courage had been beaten out of her.
He did not raise his voice to rebuke her. He did not let contempt show on his face.
Instead he crossed to the bedside and brought himself level with Lilli's gaze. Haimer reached out, cupping Lilli's face — drained of all colour by the terror roiling inside her — in both hands.
Lilli flinched on instinct, a flash of fright crossing her chestnut eyes, a thin film of tears gathering at their rims.
"Given that you're so afraid of the consequences of resistance —
"— has it ever occurred to you that even without doing any of that, you still wouldn't have been spared a single beating?"
Haimer looked quietly into Lilli's eyes.
The words landed, and the room plunged instantly into silence.
Lilli stopped struggling.
The tears pooled at her eyelids broke free with a soft sound and fell, striking the back of Haimer's hand.
Yes.
She had been compliant for so many years.
Trying desperately to earn money. To steal. To deceive. And what had it gotten her? Today, in that very alleyway, she had been shoved into the mud and kicked by members of her own Familia.
The pain of those blows against her body was still vivid when she recalled it now.
Old bruises on her body had been joined by new ones, without interruption, not once.
Yielding bought no mercy. Weakness only invited more unbridled cruelty.
Either way, it was going to be a beating — so why not try biting through the other person's throat?
At that thought, Lilli lowered her head.
Silence spread between the two of them.
"Of course."
Haimer released his hands.
"Everything I said just now — I only meant to show you one possible way in which you have the capacity to resist.
"But I have no real intention of sending you to deal with the Soma Familia."
Lilli looked up, her face full of bewilderment.
"After all, that would be making a mountain out of a molehill.
"A third-rate Familia kept running on cheap alcohol — even its captain is nothing more than a Lv. 2 adventurer. If I genuinely wanted to move against them, there are far more direct and effective methods at my disposal."
"However.
"Things have come to this, and much has been said.
"You must cut the chain around your own neck with your own hands before you have any right to stand here."
Lilli swallowed a mouthful of dry air.
"How… how does Lilli prove herself?"
"Tomorrow."
Haimer gave his answer.
"I will take you directly to Soma."
At the sound of that name, Lilli's body gave a violent shudder.
That deity who had granted her his grace — and who now turned a blind eye to every hardship she endured.
"And then?" Lilli's voice came out slightly strained.
"Right there in front of him."
Haimer kept his eyes on Lilli.
"You will drink the highest-purity Divine Wine of his brewing."
"Prove to me that your desperate will to live can defeat a desire capable of bringing even a god to his knees."
Drink the Divine Wine!
Lilli felt as if someone had seized her heart and crushed it in their fist.
— The poison universally acknowledged across all of Orario.
Even a high-ranking adventurer who let a single drop touch their lips might become a slave to Divine Wine for life, their entire being ruled by that transcendent flavour, their very soul twisted out of shape.
She had grown up inside the Soma Familia from childhood and had seen, far too many times, the maniacs who would kneel on the ground and lick the dirt for the chance at one mouthful of Divine Wine.
Those people had been stripped of every shred of dignity — some had even been willing to swallow filth, all for a single drop of dregs.
Her own parents, too, had become so consumed by Divine Wine that in a state of complete destitution they had gone charging into the Dungeon in a frenzy, and met their end in the jaws and claws of monsters.
Go and face that thing?
And drink it down?
This was ten thousand times more terrifying than being asked to assassinate Chanis!
She couldn't do it.
Absolutely impossible!
Fear swiftly swallowed Lilli's eyes whole; her breathing turned ragged, her chest heaving violently.
Haimer saw the refusal in the depths of her eyes with perfect clarity.
He did not press her for an immediate answer.
"This is a gamble."
"But think it through carefully.
"Win, and you wash every last speck of mud from your body and trade it for a chance to breathe freely in the sunlight.
"Lose, and you go on living exactly the life you've been living — nothing changes."
"I'm giving you one night to think it over.
"If you'd rather go on being a worm that anyone can crush underfoot at any moment, leave this manor quietly first thing tomorrow morning.
"I won't stop you. Neither will they."
"But if you want to seize this chance to turn everything around, be waiting for me in the ground-floor hall when the sun rises tomorrow."
With that.
Click.
The lock turned.
Haimer pulled the door open and stepped through.
The door did not close all the way — a gap was left.
His footsteps faded gradually down the corridor and finally disappeared at the head of the staircase.
And so.
Only Lilli remained in the room.
She stared fixedly at that slightly-ajar wooden door, unable to tear her gaze away.
Flee?
If she slipped out right now, tomorrow would be a new day.
She could keep transforming into other people, eking out a miserable existence in the dark corners of this city.
Going to the upper floors of the Dungeon every day to steal a few short swords, living a life of hiding and running.
Maybe some day an adventurer who saw through her disguise would cut her head off with a single stroke.
But that, at least, was the way of life she had always known.
And yet — drinking the Divine Wine… that would mean losing herself all over again!
She'd become the same pitiable monster as her parents!
At that thought, Lilli buried her face between her hands, fingers raking through her chestnut hair, pulling hard enough that her scalp ached.
Time trickled past, moment by moment.
The light of the Magic Stone lamp illuminated the small guest room in a steady, unwavering glow.
Lilli released her hands and looked around.
A soft, large bed. Clean sheets. An elegantly carved wooden wardrobe in the corner of the wall. Air that still carried the faint lingering fragrance of flowers.
This was the warmest, cleanest place she had ever been in as far back as memory could reach.
No sour stench of cheap ale.
No drunken shouting and beating from the lower-ranking members.
The bed was soft enough to make her want to sink into it and never wake up.
The more she clung to this warmth, the louder Haimer's words echoed through her mind.
— You carry a treasure inside you, yet you've always believed yourself to be nothing more than a beggar scrabbling for copper coins in a mud puddle.
Yes.
When you got down to it, Chanis was nothing but a Lv. 2 piece of trash who didn't even dare venture to the middle floors of the Dungeon.
If she didn't even have this much courage to resist —
Then she would always be that supporter who deserved nothing better than to be beaten in the mud. She would always carry that ten-million-Valis debt on her back, living and dying without ever seeing the light.
If she didn't seize this chance now.
Her life was truly finished.
At that thought.
Lilli leapt off the bed in a single motion, not even stopping to put her shoes on.
Bare feet against the wooden floorboards, she walked quickly to the door.
Pulled it open in one swift movement.
The corridor was empty.
Only the door at the far end — the one belonging to the master bedroom — was shut tight.
Lilli drew a deep breath and ran down the stairs toward the ground floor.
On the ground floor, the Magic Stone climate system was still running quietly.
Beneath the crystal chandelier that scattered its soft radiance throughout the hall.
Haimer had not returned to his room to rest.
He was seated at the wide obsidian round table in the hall, a handsomely bound book with an ancient cover held in one hand, reading it by the light of the lamp.
His slender fingers turned the pages at a measured pace, his expression calm.
At the faint sound of movement on the staircase, Haimer did not look up — he simply turned another page.
Lilli ran down the stairs, crossed the living area with its heavy carpet, and came to a stop in front of the round table.
She was breathing hard from having run so fast, her chest rising and falling in rapid, sharp waves.
"Kami-sama."
Lilli spoke up directly.
No flattering honorifics — her voice still carried a faint, slight tremor, but it was unnervingly clear.
Haimer finally moved his gaze from the book.
It settled on this small Pallum girl standing there in her oversized white nightgown, bare feet against the floor.
"Made up your mind?"
"Lilli has made up her mind."
Lilli clenched both fists until her fingernails drove deep into her palms, sending a sharp, stinging pain through them.
"Lilli doesn't want to keep living every day getting beaten and living in fear. Lilli wants to stay here!"
"Tomorrow, Lilli will go and meet Soma. Lilli will try to drink that wine and prove it to you!"
Lilli raised her head and met Haimer's scrutinising gaze head-on.
At that.
Haimer closed the book in his hands. Tossed it carelessly onto the surface of the obsidian table.
Book and tabletop met with a light, flat crack.
He looked at this girl who had already shown the resolve to burn her boats, and his expression didn't shift much.
"Let me correct you on one point."
Haimer rose to his feet and fixed his eyes on Lilli's.
"In this world, 'try' is an excuse — a retreat path held in reserve for failure."
"Then Lilli can do it!"
Without flinching away, Lilli met Haimer's black eyes directly for the first time of her own accord, bit down hard, and gave a firm, resolute nod.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting in The Long Dark with My Waifus
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