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Before sunset, Yukinari and the others had left the Schillings mansion and returned to the sanctuary. Despite the imposing name, the sanctuary was not some huge stone building. It was on the large side, but it was just a house. It had been built for Yukinari, who now protected Friedland in lieu of an erdgod. Yukinari wasn’t always completely comfortable using the term “sanctuary,” but it seemed to make the most sense to the townspeople, so he went along with it.
“This has gotten to be a serious pain,” he muttered, sitting in a space known as the audience hall.
Yukinari had actually gone to interrogate Angela again before returning to the sanctuary. This time, to help avoid getting agitated, he had brought Veronika and Fiona with him, but the outcome had been the same.
Angela seemed to have grasped that insulting Yukinari himself was less effective than demeaning Jirina, and she had resumed her provocations. At length Yukinari had found himself unable to control himself again, but Veronika had stopped him when it appeared he might do the girl harm. It was a failure on his part. He had been right, though, to avoid bringing Dasa along. There was a good chance she would have simply left Angela with a Magnum bullet in her. Not just for insulting Dasa’s older sister, but for upsetting Yukinari as well.
Obviously, killing Angela wouldn’t get them anywhere. Even doing her any physical harm would be meaningless. Finally, Yukinari decided to suspend his interrogation for the time being, to give all of them a day or two.
“The question is how the Church—how the Missionary Order—is going to move against us.”
The thought reminded him that he didn’t have time to waste. The battle with Angela’s forces meant Yukinari and his allies had become proper enemies of the Missionary Order. They hadn’t utterly annihilated the two missionary units that attacked them, so there were survivors who could have, and presumably had, reported that Friedland had taken hostile action toward the True Church of Harris. It was possible that even Church headquarters already knew.
What was he supposed to do now?
Initially, Yukinari had hoped to get information from Angela about the city of Aldreil, where her forces had been based. He’d assumed she would know something useful, since Arlen Lansdowne, another missionary knight, had informed him of the surprising fact that the girl Angela was a vice captain with a civilizing expedition despite her youth.
If possible, he wanted to rescue Veronika’s companions who were being held in Aldreil. That was his first thought.
Yukinari had made several simple weapons, Durandalls and Derrringers, but the people of Friedland were still essentially amateurs when it came to making war. There was a group of men, a sort of community watch that served to protect the town from threats both internal and external, but they functioned mainly in an emergency capacity. Once upon a time, the town had been under the protection of the erdgod, leaving them now with few defenses against any vicious animals in the surrounding area. The community watch was no more than a sort of police force; it was certainly not an army prepared for battle.
If they were going to have to fight the Missionary Order, it would certainly be invaluable to have people on their side who fought for a living.
In this world, after the capital’s wars of unification, there had been no major conflicts for decades, centuries even. However, territorial skirmishes among local lords continued unabated, and that, he’d heard, often meant employment for mercenaries.
Yukinari had considered the possibility of attacking Aldreil in order to rescue Veronika’s mercenary friends. But he balked at the notion that after being so careful to fight only defensive battles, he would now deliberately attack another city.
Attacking was just another way of saying you were going there deliberately to kill people. Yes, of course there were cases where treachery opened the town’s gates bloodlessly, or an army’s sheer numbers so overwhelmed the opponent that they simply surrendered. But Yukinari, and Friedland, hardly had the strength for such things at that moment.
An effective attack against Aldreil—in other words, one that produced the fewest number of casualties on both sides—would hinge on information Angela could give him. But...
“She can’t be pretending... can she?”
Surely she wasn’t just pretending to have an unusual sexual fetish just to avoid being tortured. Especially not because she herself didn’t seem to realize what she was doing. Veronika had been right; Angela had a masochistic streak. Even if she had a pretext that allowed her not to think too hard about it: the belief that she was faithfully and fearlessly resisting Yukinari, the Church’s enemy, even as he held her captive.
But she had so clearly wanted him to slap her again. At least, it had looked that way to him. That was why she had tried so hard to anger him.
What a frustrating person to deal with. He could try torturing her, but it would only bring her pleasure. There were, of course, ways of inflicting so much pain that it would overwhelm even the most twisted desires, but Yukinari didn’t know how to go about it. What if he hurt her too much and killed her? Then everything would be lost. He also wasn’t sure if Angela was eager to be struck by anyone, or just Yukinari.
He supposed that it would be possible to figure out the answer to that question, but it bothered him that he should have to indulge his enemy’s fetish so much. Torture was supposed to be torture, but it could so easily turn into something she enjoyed. How absurd.
Yukinari sighed loudly.
A voice responded. “What is the matter?” A strange-looking girl peeked into the living area.
“Ulrike...”
The girl’s face was perfectly normal; indeed, she was adorable. She lacked nothing in cuteness. But her hair was green like new leaves, and on her head she had horns. There were two on top of her head and two toward the front. The two in front stuck out almost like the horns on a traditional Japanese demon, but the two behind split into several branches, giving an odd sense of volume. It gave her otherwise sweet face a certain intimidation factor.
It all made sense, more or less.
This girl was a god—or rather, the terminal of one.