"So, to put it simply — you came all the way here just to borrow a forge."
Hephaestus finished listening to Haimer's explanation.
Her gaze drifted to the enormous iron chest that Bete was currently hauling beside them, and a flicker of understanding crossed her eyes.
"And what's inside the box — that's the high-grade haul you swindled out of Loki?"
"Lending you the forge isn't out of the question."
"The rumors about the two of us are already flying all over Orario anyway. Adding 'she lent him her workshop' to the pile isn't going to make things any worse." Hephaestus lowered the hand she'd been pressing to her temple.
"But..."
Hephaestus's tone shifted. Her gaze settled on Haimer's face, and something complicated crept into her voice.
"That Hestia."
"She's living with you now, isn't she?"
As one of the very few gods in all of Orario who had quietly and steadily looked out for Hestia over the years, Hephaestus's relationship with her could only be described as something between a mother and a friend.
In short: a perpetually fussing old mother hen.
"That girl has always had a talent for latching onto any opening she can find — the moment anything happens, she starts wheedling and throwing tantrums. Not a shred of dignity."
"You've taken her in, but don't let her run wild. You have to put your foot down when she needs it. Otherwise she'll never grow up, and she'll just freeload off you forever, eating your food and doing absolutely nothing."
Hephaestus rattled on and on, every word dripping with the particular exasperation of someone who had watched a hopeless case refuse to improve for far too long.
"That said, when all is said and done..."
Something seemed to surface in her memory. The corner of Hephaestus's mouth curved — just barely — in a rare, small smile.
"Back in the Heavens, the one who looked out for her the most was always you."
Hearing that, Haimer let out a helpless sigh.
"What choice did I have? Every time some god started pestering her up there, she'd come running straight to my temple to complain — and then she'd just... stay. No matter how many times I tried to chase her out."
"I wouldn't call it spoiling her."
"I just thought that compared to all those other gods spending their days scheming and putting on airs, at least her brand of blissful obliviousness was easier on the eyes."
"Besides."
"If we're talking about who really spoils her — since Hestia came down to the Lower World, that title belongs to you."
"Managing what she eats, where she sleeps, cleaning up every mess she makes. You're practically her mother." Haimer tacked on the observation without a care in the world.
Struck squarely by that needle-sharp assessment, Hephaestus turned her head to the side with a look of mild discomfort.
"Alright, enough of that. Stop running your mouth."
"Come with me."
"If you intend to forge with deep-layer materials—"
"The furnaces out front won't run hot enough to handle what's in that box."
With that, Hephaestus turned and walked deeper into the communal forging area.
Haimer fell into step behind her.
Loki, seeing this, shoved her hands into her pockets and swaggered along after Haimer.
Led by Hephaestus, the group wound their way through the labyrinthine corridors of the Hephaestus Familia's headquarters.
With every step deeper, the temperature climbed.
The air turned searingly dry.
Even breathing came with a scorching edge.
At last.
At the end of the corridor, a massive copper door came into view.
Elaborate patterns were carved across its entire surface.
This place.
Was the Hephaestus Familia's forbidden ground.
— Hephaestus's private forge.
Hephaestus stepped up to the door.
She pressed her palm into a recessed groove at the center of the copper door.
A deep, grinding metal groan rang out. The great door slowly parted on either side, and a wave of heat — far more ferocious than anything in the hallway — slammed into them head-on.
"Go on in."
Hephaestus stepped inside first.
Haimer followed immediately behind.
Loki made to cross the threshold alongside them.
But.
Hephaestus, who had only just walked ahead, suddenly stopped and looked back over her shoulder at Loki.
"What do you think you're doing following us in?"
"You don't know the first thing about smithing."
"Aw, come on!" Loki shamelessly wedged herself forward, both hands gripping the door frame, absolutely determined not to let Hephaestus shut her out.
"I'm just curious, that's all!"
"Those are our Familia's treasures he's got in there! Don't I have a right to personally supervise him at the anvil? What if he ruins them!"
"Besides, I swear I won't cause any trouble — can't I just stand quietly in the corner and watch?"
As she talked, Loki nimbly squeezed herself through the gap between the door frame and the door.
She darted straight to a corner of Hephaestus's forge, found a stone platform that looked marginally less scorching than the rest, sat herself down, and planted her feet with the energy of someone who had absolutely no intention of leaving.
Hephaestus stared at the uninvited guest who had barged her way in and made herself comfortable, wearing an expression of pure, resigned speechlessness.
"Suit yourself."
Hephaestus simply couldn't be bothered to argue.
And so, with all three gods having dragged the enormous iron chest into the forge —
BOOM.
The copper door swung shut with a heavy clang, sealing everything inside.
From that point on.
Out in the corridor beyond the door, only Ais and Tsubaki remained — Tsubaki leaning against the wall, watching the spectacle with idle amusement.
Tsubaki laced her fingers behind her head and let out a lazy yawn.
The distinctive ahoge sticking up from her long hair bobbed with the motion.
The atmosphere settled into an oddly quiet lull.
Bete scratched irritably at his short gray hair, his face a mask of open annoyance.
His wolf ears twitched in agitation.
"What the hell is this!"
Bete glared at the firmly shut copper door and drove a kick into the base of the wall beside it.
"I get dragged out of bed first thing in the morning to play pack mule hauling this damn box, and now I'm supposed to just stand around twiddling my thumbs?"
"Who knows how long they're going to be messing around in there!"
"Meh~"
"Gods doing god things — not really our business, is it." Tsubaki had her hands pillowed behind her head, utterly unbothered.
"Well, since the delivery's done, I'd better get back to it."
"I've got a whole stack of mid-layer weapon orders I need to get out. I'm not going to stand around burning daylight with you two — honestly, I'm run ragged every single day."
"You're on your own."
With that, Tsubaki glanced at the two Loki Familia heavyweights beside her, then turned on her heel and strolled off down the corridor in the opposite direction with her characteristic easy gait.
That left just Bete and Ais.
Bete had zero desire to spend another second in this sweltering place.
"Hey, Ais."
Forcing down his irritation, Bete turned his head toward Ais, who had been standing quietly the entire time, and spoke in his characteristically blunt manner.
"I'm heading back to the [Twilight Manor]. It's too damn hot in this hellhole. You coming or not?"
"No."
At Bete's words, Ais turned her head.
Her golden eyes rested calmly on the tightly shut copper door.
Then she gave a small, quiet shake of her head.
"I want to stay here for now."
She said nothing more.
Ais paid no mind to the baffled look on Bete's face.
She simply walked over to the side of the corridor.
She scanned the wall, then, with characteristic tidiness, settled herself into a corner that looked reasonably clean.
She pressed her legs together.
Sat down.
Arms wrapped around her knees, she drew them to her chest.
And rested her chin on top of them.
"Fine, do whatever you want!"
Bete's eye gave a sharp twitch at the sight. He gritted his teeth, spun on his heel, and stormed out of the corridor without looking back.
. .
Meanwhile.
On the other side of the wall.
Inside the forbidden forge.
Searing heat was already spreading through every inch of the air.
The massive furnace built from refractory brick radiated a red glow that brooked no approach.
Haimer walked to the broad black iron workbench.
He set the iron chest down on it with a heavy thud.
No time wasted on atmosphere.
He reached out.
Two crisp clicks — he snapped the latches open without ceremony and lifted the lid.
Inside lay everything he had looted from Loki's treasury earlier.
Hephaestus stood to one side.
She watched as Loki — apparently having decided that a sealed, sacred forge was no different from any other room — bounced around without a care: clambering up on things one moment, picking up a smithing hammer to examine it the next, squinting at the blueprints pinned to the walls.
At some point she'd even produced a pair of tongs from gods-knew-where and was waving them through the air in dramatic gestures.
She was also humming some unidentifiable little tune.
Inside the forge, the only sound louder than the roar of the furnace was the noise Loki was generating.
And so.
When Hephaestus saw Loki making a move toward the bellows lever on the furnace, she drew a deep breath of scorching forge air — and finally reached her limit.
"Loki!"
"Just what in the world do you think you came in here to do?!"
"Aw, I just thought maybe I could lend a hand somehow!" Loki replied without a trace of shame, and helped herself to a nearby pair of iron tongs, which she then rapped against the black iron workbench with great self-importance.
Hephaestus stared at her, utterly devoid of words.
Haimer, for his part, didn't bother engaging with Loki's excuses.
He walked straight to a dedicated display stand at the far end of the forge.
Resting there, quietly, was a weapon.
Specifically: the Divine Weapon he had used as the bargaining chip with Hephaestus a few days prior — the one that had secured full board and lodging for his entire Familia, along with all their initial equipment, in a single trade.
Haimer reached out and lifted the sword from the weapon rack.
The blade, which had been dim and lightless until a moment ago, responded the instant it made contact with his palm.
The dense sacred inscriptions etched across its surface ignited, flickering with a faint, deep crimson light.
A terrible, bone-deep pressure began to seep through the scorching air of the forge — cold and suffocating in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
Loki, who had been waving the tongs through the air in mid-gesture, felt it.
She turned her head.
The moment her eyes landed on the Divine Weapon glowing with shifting inscriptions in Haimer's hand, her eyelids gave a sharp, involuntary jolt.
Very smoothly, Loki set the iron tongs down.
She pressed both hands flat against her thighs, found the stone stool farthest from the furnace, and sat down on it like a perfectly well-behaved guest.
The very picture of someone who knew exactly when to stop pushing their luck.
Hephaestus rubbed at her faintly throbbing temple and looked at the sword in Haimer's hand, and the defeat in her voice was unmistakably that of a master craftsperson confronting something she could not explain.
"The structure of this Divine Weapon you forged — the arrangement of the sacred inscriptions."
"I pulled all-nighters for days on end and still couldn't work out what you'd done."
"I even broke down the ether flow pathways inside it."
"And found that the physical properties of the [Orichalcum] itself have been forcibly altered by the inscriptions you carved into it. Just what kind of function did those inscriptions give it?"
Hephaestus's tone carried genuine incomprehension.
"Ah, that."
Haimer gave the blade a casual once-over.
His fingertip swept along the edge, and the restless crimson light instantly settled.
"This sword does one thing: any target killed by it has their soul directly extracted and shattered — converted into sustenance that feeds the sword's own strength."
"The soul is obliterated completely. No reincarnation. No return to the cycle of rebirth."
"But the total annihilation of a soul is what allows the sword to grow."
The moment those words fell.
The furnace fire crackled and popped in the silence.
The expressions on both Loki's and Hephaestus's faces went rigid.
Just what in the world had this man built down here in the Lower World?!
---
[Support Character Stats — [Swimsuit Joker] Loki ★★★★★★ / Proficiency 60/60 / Next: 0 / Limit Break +528 / HP: D 159 / MP: E 119 / STR: 204 (+0) / END: 204 (+0) / DEX: 251 (+0) / AGI: 334 (+0) / MAG: 195 (+0) / PDEF: 119 (+0) / MATK: ? (+0)]
---
Loki's seat had barely had time to warm before she decisively bounced to her feet from the stone stool.
"So, um..."
Loki raised her right hand, her gaze drifting evasively toward the door.
"I just realized this temperature isn't doing my delicate skin any favors."
"On reflection, I think I'll wait out in the corridor."
"And now that I think about it, my Ais is out there waiting for me — I really should go keep an eye on her!"
With that, Loki turned and made a beeline for the copper door.
However.
Before she could take two steps.
The collar at the back of her neck went abruptly taut.
She lurched to a dead stop on the spot.
"Why the rush?"
Haimer had caught the back of Loki's white short jacket in one hand and simply hauled her back.
With his other hand, he calmly returned the Divine Weapon to its display stand.
"Didn't you just say you wanted to see if there was anything you could help with?"
"Well, you're already here."
"I'm going to need help processing those deep-layer ores in a moment — there's no way the two of us can get through all of it in a single day."
"Deep-layer materials take a lot of steps. To finish this in one day, even Hephaestus and I together are going to have our hands full."
"Since you're already inside."
"Stay and pitch in."
"B-but I don't know how to do any of this..."
"Doesn't matter — Hephaestus and I will teach you."
Hearing that, Loki turned her head stiffly and looked at Haimer's perfectly composed, perfectly unreadable smile — and her eye gave a violent twitch.
Well. She'd walked right into that one.
"Alright, stop looking like you're heading to the gallows."
"Go work that lever over there and keep the furnace temperature steady."
With that, Haimer released her, turned around without a backward glance, and walked straight to the workbench to begin sorting the materials from the iron chest by type.
Loki, however reluctant she felt in every fiber of her being, had no choice but to resign herself to her fate and trudge over to the bellows.
And so the bellows began to work, and the furnace fire roared upward with a mighty surge.
Hephaestus stepped up alongside them and hefted a heavy hammer.
"Deep-layer materials have an extremely high purity. You need maximum heat to soften them — watch the temperature carefully."
"OK."
And so, three figures set to work inside the sealed, sweltering forge.
*
Meanwhile, elsewhere.
The upscale residential district at the north end of the main boulevard.
The Haimer Familia estate — first-floor great hall.
The broad obsidian round table was an absolute disaster zone, piled high with empty plates.
"Burp."
Hestia was draped across the ironwood vine sofa in a posture that could only be described as completely undignified.
Her two signature black twintails drooped limply over the backrest on either side.
She pressed a hand to her stomach — which had acquired a distinctly noticeable roundness — the white fabric of her thin sleeping gown pulled taut across it in a visible curve.
As an outlet for her resentment over Loki spiriting Haimer away first thing in the morning.
Hestia had, through sheer force of indignant will, consumed three times her usual breakfast portion today.
"I can't eat another bite... I really, truly cannot eat another bite..."
Twintails are the best, aren't they...
____
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🔥 New history: COTE: Confessing to Sakayanagi From the Start
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