CH 103

“What are you going to do now, master?”

I tell them Hikari and the others left the city before me. They’re not here anymore, so I need to explain that before I can go into the rooms they were using. This wouldn’t be a problem if I just stored everything in the Item Box, but handing them fresh clothes every day would be a hassle too.

Of course, Leila and the others end up going into the rooms to grab the clothes to hand them to me. To be more precise, they stop me from going in there myself. Leila’s smile is a bit scary when her eyes don’t smile…

I should probably make an item bag just for this.

“I get that you came here to get their clothes, but that means they left without even taking a change of clothes with them.”

“No, these are the clothes they wear when they go around the city. I keep the clothes used for traveling in the Item Box, so I gave them to them.”

Although Mia is sporting her slave look right now, so she probably won’t need them so soon.

Hm… It doesn’t feel right to let people see her like that, but giving her preferential treatment will just attract attention…

As we talk, we hear violent knocks on the door. When it’s opened, Dan comes in with a bright red face.

Everyone except me is surprised to see him act so rough, but there’s still more to come.

He asks me what have I done, while grabbing me by the collar. His face is too close. He’s pretty tall.

None of that matters, but I’m relatively calm and thinking about that sort of thing because I knew this was coming. If we met face to face that is.

I’m actually surprised that he found the time to come here in the middle of all that confusion.

“H-how dare you show your face here? I told you, I asked you! And you… You…”

He’s breathing rapidly and his face is bright red, and he keeps letting his anger show until he eventually releases me and sits on an empty chair.

“F-father! What is going on!?”

Yor complains about her father’s sudden behavior, after the shock wears off.

Dan then hangs his head with an exhausted expression on his face, and everyone is silenced by the strange mood in the air.

Dan then raises his head, and speaks with a weak sounding voice.

“Miss Mia… Miss Mia is dead. No, we killed her…”

He puts his face in his hands, and sobs.

Everyone is speechless. They just look on, dumbfounded.

I hear a thud.

I turn to look, and see Yuri has fallen from the sofa she was sitting on. Her body is shaking a little, and her breathing sounds strange. Is it like hyperventilating?

I hold her, and rub her back to try to calm her while making magic energy flow into her.

She calms herself after a while, but she has tears in her eyes, and her face is pale.

Yor calls someone to take her to her room, and Loux also accompanies her.

Dan looks on with a blank look in his eyes, like his mind is not really here.

“Father, what happened? Miss Mia… Was Killed…?”

“Yes, it looks like you didn’t hear about it. And judging by Yuri’s reaction, neither did she.”

Dan plainly explains everything that happened today.

Leila and the others are shocked, sad, heap abuse, and in the end, cry.

Silence fills the air, as does a suffocatingly heavy mood.

“Sora, don’t you have anything to say!?”

Yells Leila with tears in her eyes.

“He trusted you and… And… What do you have to say!?”

Everyone’s eyes focus on me. All of their stares seem weak,

Leila is angry at me because I’m not shedding a tear, no, because I don’t even look sad.

I open my mouth, but then look at Dan and stop. I’m sure they wouldn’t tell anyone, but there could be an information leak somehow. There’s such a thing as truth serum in my world, and Dark Magic could be used to hypnotize people into telling others what they want to know.

I don’t need to say anything, not when I consider the risk. They can just hate me.

There’s going to be a time when I will talk to them about this, but it’s not now.

“It might have been possible to save her if we killed random people, but I’m sure Mia wouldn’t have wanted that.”

I lie, and no one objects.

“And isn’t the church responsible for her death? They got tricked by a demon and danced to his tune. Isn’t that why no one believed her and tried to save her?”

My criticisms are valid, even if Mia is actually still alive.

She was taken by the church as a child, and spent over half her life working for its sake. I don’t know how Mia felt during that time, but to me, having my freedom and my personal will taken away isn’t that different from being a slave, if you want to be ugly about it. Although there might be some values dissonance with this world.

Dan says nothing in response. When she walked up there to be executed, no one defended her. Not the cardinals, not the priests. Everyone believed it was the word of the goddess, and no one doubted it for a second.

I’m the one who provoked the crowd, but they could have done something before that.

In a way, this demon’s plan was very thorough. It was probably man-made, but he let that stampede happen and give credence to that supposed message of the goddess.

It’s possible that their thoughts were guided and manipulated by this demon, but there’s no way to know for sure at this point.

I look at everyone’s sad faces, and think about my plans starting tomorrow.