Vol 5 (Before) - Chapter 10

Nom.

‘Eric’s missing?’

Nomnom.

‘We just met a while ago, right? Ah, no, it’s not like I met him because I wanted to. It’s actually the worst memory I have. But, I never imagined this would happen.’

Nomnomnom.

‘But why? Did something happen? Right after he left Kami-sama’s room? Mari and Sofie did say Filth appeared, but…’

The priests already requested help from the deities of the Shrine to deal with the Filth.

But there are no deities left in the Shrine — even if they were to say that, there were still deities who actively involved themselves with humans.

Adoracion-sama is someone like a spearhead of the group, and Lufure-sama is one of deities who frequently appeared to humans in a sense.

And there’s one more, a deity quite famous in the Shrine.

She was Lufure-sama’s twin little sister — Soleil-sama, the Goddess of Darkness.

Soleil-sama is completely different from Adoracion-sama’s awe-inspiring and cool-headed persona, and even from Lufure-sama’s rambunctious attitude.

She’s clearly an ally of the humans, which is something quite rare for the deities of this Shrine.

Of course, just like the other deities, she doesn’t use her powers indiscriminately, nor does she meddle in the affairs of the humans — however, the impression she gave was that she would be the first and foremost to help in dangerous times like this.

She’s particularly caring towards the young priests of the shrine. In fact, she also had bad reputation among the saintesses because she preferred to meet new priests while ignoring her own saintess.

‘Guy magnet’, ‘flirt’, ‘handsy on newcomer priests’ — those were the words I used to hear whenever the other saintesses badmouthed her back when I was still training to be a saintess — anyway, that doesn’t matter now.

At any rate, that Soleil-sama was the one who dealt with the Filth that appeared within the Shrine. And the words she said after purifying the filth was —

‘Only a miniscule portion of the filth had been purified. If things go on like this, the entire Shrine will be swallowed in filth.’ — what did she mean by that?

With this incident as catalyst, the priests decided to search for the origin, clamoring that ‘the filth should have a root cause!’.

In reality, even if the Filth had been purified, Eric and the other priests remained missing. ‘If we find the source of filth, we’ll find those people’ — the priests insisted so.

‘Source. The origin of filth…’

I didn’t want to think about it, but my mind kept on worrying endlessly about it.

That’s because —

“— san.”

Because… ‘it’s only a miniscule a portion’, she said.

The Filth that had appeared was far stronger than the one we encountered, and yet it was just a miniscule a portion, a teeny tiny bit. For that to be a small portion, then the entirety must be unimaginably huge. Considering that, what comes to mind is —

“Eleanor-san!”

“Hyoaahh!”

It was just sinking into me when my thoughts were suddenly interrupted by somebody calling me, making me shriek with a weird sound.

I looked up in surprise, only to find an immensely, unbelievably gorgeous guy staring at me with narrowed eyes.

“Hyoaahh?”

Mr. Handsome tilted his head, perplexed.

His smooth golden hair swayed with the movement, and it was dazzlingly bright in this dark shaded room.

“What preoccupies you so that you’re in a daze?”

We were still in Kami-sama’s room.

My faint hope that things would be back to normal after a night didn’t come true at all.

Kami-sama was in his human form today too, and right now, he’s chuckling at me without any inkling that my heart was about to burst out as I clutched my chest.