A Sleepless Night

Kazusa-chan seemed to grasp the situation immediately from my words.

She wrapped her arms around Rei-kun to keep him from moving and shuffled backward on the bed.

Good. She was calm.

If she'd panicked and they'd scattered, protecting them both while fighting would have been incredibly difficult.

As long as they stayed still behind me, all I had to do was keep the man from getting past me and drive him off.

"Kazusa, throw me my sword."

"Got it. Rei, don't move."

"O-okay…"

I could tell from the presence behind me that Kazusa-chan had gone to retrieve my sword.

I'd been feeling that subduing him barehanded would be tough.

The man noticed what she was doing, clicked his tongue, and made his move.

He didn't come straight at me. Instead, he leaped toward the side wall.

He was going to bypass me and go after the two of them directly.

Chasing after the man wouldn't let me catch him.

So I ran toward Kazusa-chan instead.

"Here!"

Kazusa-chan had just grabbed my sword and tossed it to me.

I caught it.

The man was already closing in on Kazusa-chan, and there was no time to draw the blade from its scabbard.

I raised the sheathed sword as it was.

It felt right in my hand. I was definitely better with a weapon.

I saw the man throw his dagger at Rei-kun and Kazusa-chan and redirected my swing toward it.

I knocked the dagger away with a full sweep and turned to face the approaching man.

At some point, he'd drawn a pair of oddly-shaped elliptical swords, one in each hand.

When he swung them, the blades seemed to blur.

I'd suspected the unusual shape served a purpose, and it seemed to be one that affected vision.

While my eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, it was still hard to see.

Combined with the dim conditions, his swords seemed to vanish entirely.

I gave up trying to track the blades and focused on watching his movements instead.

That told me the direction and timing of each swing.

I was truly grateful for my good eyesight.

I deflected every strike.

The unusual shape of his swords threw off my timing slightly on the parries, but compared to monster attacks, this was still easier to read.

By deflecting hard, I threw off his balance.

It also helped that the swords wielded by the Crocodile Monster I'd fought before had been similar.

He apparently hadn't expected me to deflect everything. For the first time, an opening appeared in his guard.

If I wound up for a full swing, he would likely dodge it.

To land a hit, I needed to attack with maximum speed.

I charged.

One step, two steps, and on the third I launched myself forward, thrusting the sword in my right hand.

The sheathed blade connected with his chest as though drawn in.

The momentum-laden strike sent him flying.

But the impact felt light.

He'd probably pulled back at the last instant before it connected.

I gave chase for a follow-up.

The man crashed into a partition and went down with it.

I tried to bring my sword down on his face, but it wasn't to be.

The moment he hit the floor, he threw up a smokescreen, and my vision was completely blocked.

The last thing I saw was his figure escaping through the window.

I'd managed to drive him off, but I hadn't learned his identity or who had sent him.

For the time being, it was safe to consider us out of danger.

I lit a candle to secure some light.

"Oh, the window's broken. That jerk!"

After the man was gone, Kazusa-chan checked the window and was furious.

He must have cut through it when he broke in.

When I looked closer, the area around the lock had been neatly cut out.

That was how he'd disengaged the lock, opened the window, and gotten in.

Once we were back, asking Finn-san about it might tell us something.

For tonight, we decided to let only Rei-kun sleep while Kazusa-chan and I stayed up.

There was no guarantee another attack wouldn't come, and both of us were used to keeping watch through the night.

"Here, this'll warm you up."

Kazusa-chan prepared some hot milk. I brought the cup to my lips and took a sip.

It was hot enough to almost burn, and the warmth gradually unraveled my tension.

"It's good."

"Glad to hear it."

Kazusa-chan said that and drank her own.

For a little while, we huddled close together and sipped our hot milk.

"Thank you. You saved us again."

"I was pretty startled, though."

"Fair enough. I wonder if it was those guys who hired him. I thought they were suspicious, but I never imagined they'd go this far."

"I'm not sure. He got away, so we couldn't get any information out of him."

"We should probably leave this place."

"Yeah. I think so too. Let's pack only the essentials and leave tomorrow."

Today we'd managed, but we couldn't stay here forever.

"Man. I'd just thought I'd finally found a place to live, even if it was a dump like this."

Kazusa-chan sighed as she said that.

I understood how she felt.

But after something like this, we had to prioritize our safety.

Kazusa-chan understood that perfectly well too.

"I think we can get a room at an inn for cheap. I'm pretty sure that person has connections."

Master had a reserved inn.

It would be far safer than here.

I might get scolded for saying things on my own, but if I said I'd brought customers, I could probably work something out.

"Hmm. Yeah. No point agonizing over it. Trouble's just part of life. The thing I can't figure out is why they're so fixated on this place. I don't know what they're planning, but hiring someone to kill us just to get their hands on it isn't normal."

"That's true. This is an old church, right?"

"Yeah. I'd gotten a chunk of money and was looking for a place to rent, and that's when I heard about this one. It was supposedly empty before I moved in, but…"

Was an old church really worth going that far for?

The deity enshrined here wasn't the Sun God; apparently it was some kind of agricultural god.

It was curious, but the safety of these two came first.

I decided we'd head to Kassad together tomorrow.

Kazusa-chan agreed.

We settled on packing up once Rei-kun was awake and then heading out.

The valuables were apparently all in this room. I'd watch Rei-kun while she packed everything up.

When I glanced out the window, the moon was full.

"Huh?"

"What is it?"

Kazusa-chan made a puzzled noise, so I called out and went over.

It was near where the man had crashed into the partition. The impact had broken through the floorboards.

I'd like to think that wasn't my fault.

"Sorry, this…"

"That's not it."

I'd thought she was going to complain about the floor, but that wasn't it.

Kazusa-chan held the candlelight over the floor. There was something beneath the boards.

I reached in. It was a bag.

It was sealed shut.

"What do you think this is? Should we open it?"

"Yeah."

Curiosity got the better of us, and we broke the seal.

Inside were dried granules of some kind.

They looked like they might be seeds from a plant.

"What is this?"

"I don't know. They're dried out."

I sniffed at them. The smell was strange, and I thought I could sense a bitterness in my mouth. Not a pleasant smell at all.