Lying on his back, Allen stared up at a familiar ceiling.
It wasn’t the most becoming way to relax, but he didn’t care. This was the first time in nearly half a year that he’d been home, after all. No one could take the right to laze around away from him. Doubly so when he was home alone.
“But man, this one turned out to be such a mess.”
It was arguable how many events really were part of this one larger incident, but for Allen’s money, the start of the adventure had been when he’d gotten back from the empire and Akira had brought Chloe along with her.
From there, he’d scoped out the demon stronghold to the south, he’d helped the Amazons in Mylène’s homeland, and when he’d thought everything was settled, Riese and Noel had been kidnapped.
Only after a lot of twists and turns had he ended up at the Cathedral. He’d thought the hard part was over, only to find it was just beginning. But once the hierophant had been defeated, he and his friends had been ready to put the whole thing behind them. Everyone—Anriette, Mylène, Akira, Noel—was ready to leave the Cathedral...except Riese.
“The Church is going to be thrown into disarray,” she said to the others, “so we should do what we can to help.”
True, the Church was due for some difficult times ahead. They had already been struggling with losing the archbishop as their de facto leader and had yet to replace him. The hierophant had been the only reason things were chugging along as normal, and that was no longer the case.
Worse still, Allen had vanished the hierophant’s body into thin air, so they wouldn’t even be able to confirm his death—only label him missing. He might already have been a mostly absentee leader, but there was a world of difference between “not present” and “not alive.” Any attempts to continue business as usual would be a temporary fix that would collapse pretty quickly.
There was also proof that the Cathedral had been attacked. Maybe it could be glossed over, since there were so few people there to begin with, but Akira’s magic would be hard to ignore. A bolt of lightning that left a gigantic hole in the ceiling? In a highly visible spot? With what were probably dozens of eyewitnesses? “The Cathedral was attacked, and the hierophant has gone missing!” How could they not expect people to panic if that was all they had to go on?
Riese believed that she bore at least a little bit of the responsibility, so she wanted to help. No one knew why, since her only role had been getting kidnapped. But the mastermind behind that kidnapping was no longer around to shoulder the blame, and it wasn’t like an evil leader should damn all members of the Church. While they had cooperated with the demons, as a whole, they still served large swaths of people through services like their blessing ceremonies.
The choice not to let the Church spiral out of control was a smart one, even if Riese’s motivations lay more in a desire not to cause trouble for those who would be caught in the fallout. Not only was it the righteous thing to do, but everyone present knew how hardheaded Riese could be. They knew she would stay behind all alone if they didn’t agree to lend a hand, so they grudgingly stuck around.
That said, it only took around a month. Losing the top two members of an organization was bad, of course, but they hadn’t been the only leaders. So long as they could iron out the succession process without incident, the new brass would figure it out.
Obviously, Allen’s group couldn’t do anything in the public eye. They weren’t Church affiliates, so they instead helped rebuild the Cathedral or snooped around hidden rooms for important documents, sending the decent ones to the new leaders and the shady ones away.
The chaos was far from over, but the Church was stabilizing, and with the rest of the restoration best left to its constituents, Allen took the opportunity to finally go home.
But as soon as he got back to his remote town, yet another annoyance had popped up—though this one was his own fault, in a way...
Lying on his bed and reminiscing, Allen sighed. “I wonder if things would’ve been different if I hadn’t stopped by the guild.”
As soon as he’d returned, he had thought, Oh, right. I asked the guild to handle all the reports. I wonder how that’s going.
To sate his curiosity, he’d decided to stop by before heading home—a grievous mistake. They’d taken him in, and he’d suffered a barrage of questions grilling him about how he’d discovered two demon strongholds.
“If only I’d just gone home. Then I would’ve at least gotten a breather. I guess it didn’t change much in the end, though.”
No matter how much they interrogated him, Allen had nothing to share. They really should have been asking Akira those questions, but they’d split up a while ago at this point: Akira had already headed off on her next adventure. Call her lucky if you will, but Allen had a hunch that she’d known trouble was waiting for her and had fled early.
Regardless, he’d managed to weasel his way out of the situation by pinning everything on her, but only enough to land him in another conundrum as they brought him to Margrave Raygraph’s estate. Allen was happy to tell the authorities where the southern stronghold was, but it was in a dangerous uncharted forest...and they had requested that he come with them as a guide for reconnaissance.
Frankly, he didn’t have any reason to obey, but not doing so would leave the margrave’s men to march to their doom. Knowing that would keep him up at night, Allen had given in. He’d been there before and knew how strong the monsters were, so it wasn’t that bad. The hardest part was convincing the margrave’s soldiers to listen to him. From their perspective, he was just some random guy—why should they take orders from him?
But if they went off on their own in that forest, it was plain to see they would die. He’d taken on the request for some peace of mind, so letting them get killed was obviously not an option. Skipping the details, Allen’s efforts to make them listen had led to a one-versus-everyone mock battle...but hey, it got them to obey his orders, so maybe it had been for the best. Even if he couldn’t comprehend why Mylène, Noel, and Anriette had joined the soldiers’ side, causing him even more anxiety.
Allen had eventually managed to safely lead the men through their scouting mission, but for some reason, he’d caught the eye of the margrave. The nobleman kept insisting that he’d introduce Allen to his granddaughter, but that was obviously a path to more headaches, so Allen continuously refused and eventually won out. The last time he saw Margrave Raygraph, the man had looked defeated. Probably a coincidence.
But with all that, a whopping half year had gone by before Allen could once again laze around in his own home.
“Hm, looking back at it like this shows how much really happened. Too much has happened since coming out here, actually...”
Maybe it’s this area? he mused. Moving to the empire wouldn’t be free of issues either, but refusing to leave felt like accepting that all of this hassle was his fate...
“Well, whatever. I’ll think about it later. For now, it’s time to kick back, relax, and—”
“Allen, are you here?! Something terrible has happened!”
Get some rest, he internally finished as Riese ran in, huffing and puffing. He wasn’t about to ignore her, but he had a bit of a nagging thought. Hey, this feels kind of familiar.
“Uh... What’s up, Riese? Did something happen? I thought you were over at Noel’s place.”
Noel had been itching to “make up for lost time,” so Riese had gone with her to keep an eye on her. Anriette had mentioned that she’d never seen Noel work either, so she and Mylène had tagged along. Allen had been confident nothing would go awry with all of them together, but obviously that hadn’t been the case.
“Yes,” Riese said. “Sophie came out of the blue, and Noel’s been kidnapped!”
“Sorry, what? How does that even happen?”
Sophie, as it turned out, was the name of the demon they’d met during the Cathedral episode. She’d vanished back then but reappeared one day just to tell them her name. And it seemed she was fond of them, as she’d continued to drop by to bother them every so often. But since she’d never caused any real issues—and since Allen didn’t really have any bones to pick with her—he’d just kind of shooed her off until now. So how had this happened?
“She was apparently interested in watching Noel work, so she did...until Noel finished one of her blades. Then, Sophie’s eyes started glimmering, and she said, ‘I want one too!’ and whisked Noel away.”
“Oh, I see. Yeah, I can picture that. What about Anriette and Mylène?”
“Anriette is tracking them as we speak. Mylène is guarding and cleaning up Noel’s workshop.”
“And you came to call for me. Gotcha. I think she’ll probably bring Noel back once she’s had her fun, but she is still a demon, so it’s probably best to play it safe.”
Allen got up, and Riese watched him guiltily.
“What’s wrong, Riese?”
“It’s just,” Riese said with an apologetic pause, “you were resting.”
“No, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault someone else did something stupid. Besides, I’m kinda used to it now.”
Allen wasn’t trying to play it off either; the busyness he’d encountered recently really had primed him to feel, at most, a sense of Oh, again? Well, guess I gotta do something.
And frankly, though his life was busy and chaotic and tiring...spending his days being busy and chaotic and tired with his friends wasn’t so bad. Maybe the quiet life he’d longed for was already here.
With that thought in the back of his mind, he shrugged and joined Riese in heading off to yet another incident.