On top of that, the Earth Mother had tons of followers. If they were mobilized en masse, the unpopular sun god didn’t stand a chance. That was why they reached out to me, their sworn enemy, thinking I might give them a tiny advantage.
“So let your sufferer fight them. You’ve got someone here in town, right?”
“That’s true,” Samantha admitted. I’d just been guessing.
“Who is it? An adventurer?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“But we’ve been through so much together,” I said. “Let’s not keep secrets.”
“Oh, are you joining us?”
“If I were going to team up with you people, it’d be much easier to join the Earth Mother to wipe you out instead.”
“That won’t work.” The crayfish head swung back and forth. “Their ambition is to make all humanity and fairyfolk around the world into their believers.”
Fairyfolk was a term for all the non-human races. That included dwarves like Dez, elves, and brownies. Nearly all of them counted fairies as their ancestors, hence the name. Because they were intelligent and not considered monsters, they had certain “human” rights.
“You guys are pretty much the same, aren’t you?”
“At least the Sun God allows us to have our individuality.”
“Despite destroying the town with a monster stampede?”
“It was a necessary sacrifice…though it’s unfortunate that the number of monsters spawning hasn’t gone down that much.”
So they hadn’t gotten the results they wanted, but causing the stampede itself was considered a good thing. That was Samantha’s read on the situation…and the arrogant sun god’s as well, I presumed. The evil bastards.
“How many people do you think died in that event? I can’t trust you.”
“It’s partially your fault, too,” she said with tones of pity. “If you had simply reformed, your soul would be enjoying the grace of paradise. Instead, you resisted, and now you will undergo horrific, unfair torment in the underworld.”
Someone, praise my sense of restraint that I didn’t pound this monstrous creature’s head right on the spot. We were speaking the same language, but I barely understood a thing she said.
“We will have the Astral Crystal. None of your hopes or her hopes will come true. It’s too late to regret your choice.”
“You seem to think you’ve already won,” I noted.
“We will.”
I snorted. “Yes, I’m always on the losing side. I never see eye-with-eye with those who try to pick the winning horse.”
“…I see. I suppose that’s that.”
Samantha stood up. Our talks had fallen through. I reached for my pocket—it was time for action. But Samantha just vanished behind the counter curtain again. I could see the smoke erupt from her mouth by her silhouette. Once again, smoke billowed out through the cracks of the curtain. Everything went white.
“Shit!”
I took out the temporary sun and intoned the spell, then hurled a fist at the shape beyond the curtain of smoke. The next moment, my lethal punch was enveloped in something soft. There was a dark shadow beyond the white curtain. Its silhouette was now human.
My breath stopped in my throat.
This fist had broken rocks and taken the lives of thousands of monsters. It was now trapped in a small, soft palm. I tried to pull it away, but it felt like it was trapped in a vise.
Just from a slender woman’s hand.
“What did I tell you? We’re only talking today.”
Samantha peeked her human face around the side of the curtain, along with a bare shoulder. She let go of my hand, turned around, and began to change into her clothes.
I couldn’t strike. The temporary sun, shining behind my back, cast a shadow on the table. Stunned, I lowered my fist, and it smashed the chair I’d been sitting in to pieces.
“I’ll add the cost of the chair to your tab,” said Samantha, stepping out from behind the curtain now that she was fully dressed again. “And that’s all I had to talk about. It was fun.”
She hurried around, opening the windows and putting out the sign again.
“I’m going to open for business now. I’ve got to make up for what I’ve lost today.”
“You’re not going to fight?”
“My revelation was to recruit and organize the preachers and sufferers. Fighting is outside my range of expertise.”
“Not your expertise? After you killed Donald?”
“That was actually Randy’s mission. I was just there for support. I had business with the Earth Mother that had me in the area, that’s all.”
If you were there just for support, you should have cheered and shaken your ass, not gotten involved, dammit.
She pushed aside the pieces of the broken chair without much interest, then washed out the cup I’d been drinking from at the counter.
“Would you like to stay and drink? I can give you one more on the house.”
“No, thanks.”
Attacking an unreadable opponent just made it a certainty that she would give me my comeuppance later. There was no need to rush. She’d exposed her weakness for me to see. There would be plenty of other moves to play.
I was just walking to the door when Samantha called out, “Oh yes, I forgot one thing.”
When I turned back, there was a smile on her face.
“Tell the princess knight that she’d be better off never copying us again.”
I held my breath. Was she referring to the power Arwin used during the stampede? Samantha wasn’t in town at the time, but if she was managing the preachers and sufferers, then she would have been overseeing the stampede from somewhere.
“This is an honest warning to you. No matter the aptitude you may have, a person who hasn’t received a baptism will only suffer when attempting to use the power of a preacher.”
It didn’t sound like an idle threat to me. That was a power that could wipe out the monsters that trampled all over the city. Of course it would come at a considerable cost.