The rich, mellow scent of liquor hung thick in the air.
"Gulp."
The sound of Loki's throat working was unmistakably loud.
It was only natural. Back in the Heavens, the gods had sampled every manner of intoxicating nectar to while away the endless, tedious ages — and Loki's palate had long since been ruined for anything ordinary.
But even so, now that this bottle of divine wine — brewed from the materials of the Lower World — had been set before her, the craving it roused in her stomach was nothing short of vicious.
She swallowed hard. Her gaze lingered on that crystalline bottle for several long seconds before she slid a glance toward Haimer, standing ahead of her, and in the end swallowed back the words that had risen to her lips.
After all, Loki knew that today she was only here as a supporting player. This was Haimer's moment.
Not far away, Chanis stood with his eyes blown wide behind his spectacle lenses.
Utter disbelief written across every feature.
Because he had recognised that bottle the instant he laid eyes on it.
That bottle of divine wine — at the highest possible purity — had been locked away by him in the deepest recess of his underground private vault.
The vault had iron doors on the outside, guards posted around the clock, and could only be passed through if he came in person.
How in the world had this Pallum — who spent her days trailing behind adventurers picking through the junk others threw away, a creature anyone might kick aside without a second thought — managed to get inside?!
And what made Chanis's scalp crawl even more:
The moment Lili walked through the door, without a single moment's hesitation, she had walked straight up and handed the bottle to this wicked god — the one whose name alone was enough to make half of Orario fall back a step.
That thought darkened Chanis's expression to something truly ugly.
Because he had been scheming in the shadows for some time, working toward absolute control over Lili.
He had learned from Soma long ago that this Pallum girl, raised from infancy within Soma Familia, had awakened an exceedingly rare transformation magic — 『Cinderella』.
If he could keep her firmly in his grip, he could use that magic to move stolen goods through the black market, to conduct dealings with the unsavoury elements of the Ikelos Familia — even to lure monsters with rational minds down inside the Dungeon.
With a disguise ability like that, everything could be done without anyone ever being the wiser.
The reason he had deliberately set her exit fee at the outrageous sum of ten million Valis was precisely to seal off every road out of Soma Familia for good, and to ensure she remained his personal money-making instrument for as long as he needed her.
But never — not in his wildest imaginings — had Chanis anticipated this.
The new patron Lili had found was the main god of Haimer Familia himself.
The thought made Chanis's lips part and his face go an ugly, congested red.
He wanted to shout — to accuse Lili of stealing Familia property and have the members around him seize her by force.
But reason poured over him like a bucket of ice water.
He could not make a sound. Not a single one.
Because the backing Lili had found was a god who had openly defied the Guild's own rules, marched monsters up from the Dungeon in plain sight onto the streets above, and forced every divine being in the Lower World to step aside.
He himself was no more than a Lv. 2 who didn't even dare venture to the front lines. That god could crush him with the crook of a finger.
He absolutely could not provoke him.
This humiliation — he had no choice but to swallow it, grind it to powder between his teeth, and let it sink quietly into his gut.
With that thought, Chanis clenched his fists until his knuckles ached, his fingernails digging into his palms, and forced himself to compose his face into something blank and expressionless, holding his silence.
Soma, who had been crouching beside the great brewing vat all this while with an air of complete dissolution about him, slowly turned his head when that devastatingly pure fragrance reached him — his clouded eyes, devoid of their usual light, reflected the image of Lili: drenched in blood, her entire body trembling.
"You..."
Soma recognised Lili, of course.
A child whose parents had died in the Dungeon, an orphan he himself had spoon-fed through infancy with his own hands.
And he recognised what she had been cradling in her arms a moment ago.
Divine wine of that concentration was the crystallisation of all his painstaking labour.
Pull the stopper, let even one small sip pass the lips, and even the most battle-hardened, iron-willed Lv. 1 adventurer would be reduced in an instant to a slave of their own desire.
Haimer leaned down and took the bottle from Lili's blood-soaked hands.
He looked at her — shaking all over, her lower lip bitten to bloody ribbons by her own teeth, her small face drained white as bone.
"It hurts, doesn't it?"
Haimer spoke — testing whether her mind was still with her.
Lili's whole body trembled.
"...Yes."
"Good."
At that, Haimer gave a quiet nod and placed his hand over the wooden stopper of the bottle.
A gentle application of force.
"Pop."
The stopper came free.
And the moment it did, the fierce, concentrated fumes that had been sealed within the bottle flooded the entire space of the brewery in an instant.
Loki, standing further back, drew a sharp involuntary breath, a flush of heady intoxication spreading rapidly across her cheeks.
Chanis's pupils contracted violently, and despite himself he took one small step forward, reaching — before he ground his teeth, wrenched his raised foot back, and held himself still.
Even Soma couldn't help straightening to his full height, his gaze fixed unblinking on the scene before him.
"Drink it," Haimer said.
And with that, he tilted his wrist slightly and held the open bottle out toward Lili.
Every pair of eyes in the brewery converged on this single moment.
Inside his head, Chanis was screaming.
Drink it! Drink it now! No one in the Lower World can hold out against wine of this purity!
The instant she swallowed one mouthful, she would become the same as those wretches outside — the ones sprawled in the mud, whimpering and grovelling for another drop!
No matter how powerful Haimer was, he couldn't possibly want a raving, mindless wreck!
Lili stared hard at the bottle held out before her.
The bewitching fragrance of the divine wine seeped into every crack and crevice, driving straight to the heart.
In that single instant, countless images burst through Lili's mind.
The days and nights in the Dungeon when other adventurers used her as bait and left her behind, watching helplessly as the monsters drew closer.
The back alleys where Soma Familia members pinned her to the ground and beat her, the helplessness of watching the Valis she had scraped together with such painstaking effort get ripped away.
And then — yesterday, on East Main Street, those few girls, drenched in blood but powerful beyond measure, who had reached their hands out to her though she was caked head to toe in mud.
— That brilliant white figure who had cast a spell and healed her wounds.
She wanted to live.
She did not want to be a worm anyone could crush underfoot whenever they pleased, did not want to keep living the kind of life where she could be abandoned or wrung dry at a moment's notice.
She wanted strength.
With that thought —
Lili reached out both hands, still faintly trembling, still smeared with blood.
She gripped the bottle tight.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tilted her head back.
And poured the divine wine straight down her throat in one great, desperate swallow.
The divine wine hit.
In a single instant —
An impact beyond all measure drove itself directly into her heart!
Lili's vision blurred into nothing in the space of a breath.
The world around her — the cracked stone floor of the dilapidated brewery, the god nearby, the captain in the distance — everything began to recede with terrifying speed.
The world before her eyes flooded with infinite ecstasy.
She saw mountains of Valis, piled to the sky.
She saw a sanctuary where no one would ever hurt her again. She saw herself dressed in clean clothes, running in the sunlight.
All she had to do was let go.
Release that one taut, fraying nerve she had kept strung tight for so long, surrender her soul to this bottle —
And she would never have to suffer again. Never have to be beaten again.
A small sound —
The bottle slipped from Lili's completely slack fingers.
Hit the floor.
Shattered.
The remaining divine wine sprayed outward in all directions.
Under the wine's influence, Lili's face had gone a deep, burning red. Her body began to sway. Those chestnut-brown eyes slowly lost their focus, going hollow and faraway — and the corners of her mouth even began to curl upward into a vacant, blissful smile, the look of someone lost entirely in a dream.
Chanis felt a surge of wild, savage elation.
She'd failed, just as he knew she would!
No one in this world could resist the pull of divine wine at this purity!
Soma watched, and the faint thread of expectation that had still been there in his eyes vanished in an instant.
Just as he thought.
No child of the Lower World could break through that particular chain.
Just as everyone present was convinced the outcome had already been decided — at the very moment Lili's body tilted all the way forward and she was about to crash to the filthy, mud-soaked floor —
"No..."
A faint, threadlike murmur forced its way out from between Lili's mangled lips.
"Kami-sama..."
Lili's face was burning red. The eyes that had gone hollow strained, with enormous effort, to find their focus once more — and reflected in them was the face of Haimer, watching her.
"Lili... still..."
"...Did Lili... make it?"
Mixed with the blood seeping from her tongue, Lili's voice was barely coherent, coming in broken fragments.
That voice made Loki blink, the cup she had been holding suspended halfway to her lips, frozen in the air.
Because a Lv. 1 Pallum who had swallowed Soma's divine wine and still retained enough of her mind to speak — that was a miracle enough to make even the gods stare.
"You can't be... serious..."
At the sight of it, Chanis's face convulsed violently.
He stared at Lili with the look of a man who had seen a ghost walking abroad in broad daylight.
Because no one alive knew better than he did what was in that bottle.
How could a Pallum who went half-starved for years and spent her days being used as bait swallow a full mouthful of divine wine and not be reduced to a drooling idiot?
Soma's long-numbed mind, for the first time in memory, found something approaching clarity in this moment.
How many years had it been.
He had brewed this wine in the Lower World with the intention of finding a soul that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the gods — and all he had ever witnessed in return was crowd after crowd of people prostrating themselves before desire like shambling, hollow things.
He had given up on the children of the Lower World completely long ago, which was why he had allowed Chanis to do as he pleased unchecked.
But now, this miracle was happening — alive and undeniable — right in front of him.
And yet.
She seemed about to slip away from him forever.
Haimer looked at Lili.
Her forehead was slicked with a fine, cold sweat.
"Yes," Haimer said quietly, crouching down to meet her eyes level with his own, and gave a small nod.
"From today, you are my child."
At those words, the taut string that had been strung tight inside Lili for as long as she could remember finally, completely, snapped. The tears she had been holding back flooded from her eyes without any further restraint, and she lurched forward, burying her face in Haimer's chest, and wept out every year of grievance she had ever swallowed, loudly, without holding back at all.
Haimer paid no mind to the blood staining his clothes. He shifted his arm naturally and lifted Lili gently up from the floor.
She weighed almost nothing.
His other hand settled on Lili's back as it heaved with sobs, patting it softly, rhythmically.
And then.
Along with everything else —
The shattered bottle on the floor, its contents now freed from all constraint, sent the mellow, dense fragrance spreading rapidly outward on the moving air, pouring through the great doors of the brewery and flooding into the courtyard beyond.
It took no more than ten or so seconds.
From outside the brewery, the courtyard erupted into a chaos of stumbling, lurching footsteps and the dull thuds of bodies colliding with heavy objects.
"Wine! That's the smell of divine wine!"
"It's inside! Get in there! Get in there! It's mine!"
A horde of Soma Familia members — ragged clothes, hollow faces — threw themselves bodily against the brewery's heavy iron-banded wooden doors and burst them open.
Their eyes were bloodshot, their nostrils flaring rapidly, and they threw themselves toward the puddle of divine wine pooled across the floor.
Those at the back grabbed fistfuls of hair from those ahead of them, hauling them aside, and within seconds the whole mass of them had degenerated into a brawling, writhing heap.
Behind this mob of howling, frenzied lower-ranked members —
A man walked in. Broad and powerfully built, with a thick, heavy beard.
— The vice-captain of Soma Familia. Lv. 2.
— Chandra Isht.
"My apologies."
"I did my best to hold them back, but the moment they caught a whiff of it, there was no stopping them."
Chandra cast one glance at the members scrabbling across the floor for every last drop, then turned his head and looked at Lili — still cradled in Haimer's arms, still weeping.
The reason Lili had been able to carry the divine wine all the way out of the vault and arrive here in one piece —
Was entirely thanks to him.
Chanis, standing to one side, took in the scene of utter chaos — and when Chandra walked in, the rigid mask that had been stretched across his face twitched several times in quick succession.
"So it was you after all?!"
"Chandra!"
Chanis turned on Chandra.
"You helped her break into the vault and steal the divine wine?"
"And what if I did."
Chandra's face was perfectly calm in the face of the accusation.
"Punish me if you like. I'll hand over the vice-captain's position, and first thing tomorrow morning I'll go to the Guild and apply for a change of Familia. I'm done with this festering place."
"You think this is somewhere you can just walk in and out of as you please?!"
Chanis's jaw clenched hard at that.
He was the captain.
Even if he was helpless against a god — that didn't mean he had lost all power here.
"Chanis."
But just as Chanis was drawing himself up to exercise that authority and order the guards to restrain Chandra —
Soma, who had been standing beside the great brewing vat all this time, silently watching the members on the floor tear at each other over half a smear of wine — suddenly spoke.
"Soma-sama."
The instant Soma's voice broke the silence, Chanis snapped around with an expression of righteous indignation.
"This traitor — I'll have the guards drag him—"
No one could have expected Soma to cut him off cleanly, without a moment's hesitation.
"You are relieved of your position."
"From this day forward, Chandra is the captain of Soma Familia."
The instant those words landed, the expression on Chanis's face froze solid.
His mouth fell open. Several long seconds passed before the full force of what had been said hit him and he snapped back to himself.
"So-Soma-sama... you can't be... serious?"
"He is..."
"I told you," Soma said. "Be quiet."
"The mess that was allowed to build up — that is partly my responsibility as well."
"It is time to clean it up."
At the sudden force behind Soma's voice, Chanis's eyes went wide. His body began to shake. His legs buckled under him and he crumpled straight down, collapsing onto the floor in a sitting heap.
He stared at Soma's back. Then at Chandra standing nearby — who had gone still with surprise for only a moment before breaking into a broad, easy grin.
In that instant, he understood everything.
It was over for him.
...
Haimer watched all of this in quiet silence.
Then lowered his gaze to the Lili in his arms.
The searing pain in her tongue, the emotional release of everything she had held inside, and the mental shock of that one mouthful of divine wine — together they had stripped Lili of every last scrap of strength she had left. She had drifted into an exhausted, unconscious sleep.
"Lili will be all right, won't she."
Soma looked at Lili.
Haimer raised his eyes and gave Soma a brief, steady look.
"She'll be fine."
"I didn't expect you hadn't yet reached the point of being truly past all saving."
"Let's go, Loki."
With that, Haimer turned and walked away.
Loki, hearing this, pushed herself up from where she had settled, dusted off her hands, and fell in behind him.
"Haimer."
At the very moment Haimer was about to step through the brewery doors —
Soma turned around and called after him.
"You're leaving just like that?"
"You went to all the trouble of coming here — was it really only to take this child away?"
"... Don't you intend to strip me of my Divine Power?"
Soma's voice carried a note of puzzlement.
"Put away those tedious suspicions, Soma."
Haimer shifted his hold slightly to settle Lili more comfortably.
"I came for no reason other than this child."
"And today, she proved it to me through her own actions."
"She is worthy of being my child."
Nothing more was said.
Haimer made no further pause, and stepped out of the brewery.
As he passed the puddle of spilled divine wine pooled across the floor, Loki clicked her tongue with heartfelt regret and muttered under her breath:
"Didn't even get a proper taste."
Then she turned back and gave Soma a cheerful wave.
"Oi, Soma!"
"Remember to send a few barrels over sometime!"
With that, Loki let out a little laugh, and followed Haimer out of the brewery.