Shifu liked taking a break in the changing room.
The lazy feeling of her heated body felt nice.
"Yeah, this is great. Baths like this are the best."
They had discussed a lot in the bath. They had advanced their understanding a fair bit and Sumeragi seemed to have done better than during any of the other rollbacks.
The time immediately following a bath was a really relaxing time.
She was wearing a yukata and she would not put back on her new style uniform until she had stopped sweating. Besides, this was inside a barrier that only Shinto-connected people could enter. Tooru would wait to leave the men"s bath until she was ready, so she felt getting some rest here was best.
Meanwhile, the idiot was standing in front of the installed fan with the front of her yukata open.
"Ahhhhhhhh, this feels greaaaaaat!"
Kuwajiri gave her a look while handing a bottle of fruit milk to Shifu.
"We still aren"t done for today, but thanks for everything, Shifu-senpai."
"No, no, no. You"ve been working hard since this morning too."
"No, I was only causing everyone else trouble with my mistake."
Kuwajiri also carried a bottle of fruit milk to yukatwearing Senpai-chan.
"Thank you for everything. I apologize for all the trouble today."
"Oh, thank you."
"Eh!? Hey! What about me!? Where"s mine!?"
"I really should have given you one first and foremost, but you"re so much of a nuisance it outweighs anything I could do, so I stopped caring."
"Waiiiiiiiiiiit! What could be more of a nuisance than being given an unwanted s.e.x change!?"
Shifu was pretty sure the idiot"s reflection in the mirror was the answer there, but Senpai-chan tried to calm them down and Kuwajiri sighed.
…Kuwajiri-chan has learned how to show deference to Senpai-chan.
Kuwajiri"s extreme shyness and caution around others could be one of her best traits and one of her worst traits.
Not wanting other people to just use you for your wisdom was an important thing for a wisdom G.o.d. In mythology, excess wisdom tended to lead to ruin.
"Hey, Yomoji-chan, did you ever get into any trouble from excess knowledge?"
"Hm, gooood question. Back wheeeen I had a bit of a temper, I caught an adolescent couple doing dirty things in my garden because they had some exceeeess knowledge, so I had a snake bite the guy in the diiiiick. I thiiiink it was after that my believers starrrrted hiding their crotches."
"You hate your believers, don"t you? I don"t see any other explanation."
"No, nooo. It"s called fanserrrrvice."
That was a monotheistic G.o.d for you.
Then Senpai walked over.
"Thank you for everything today. …Looks like the bath worked for you."
"Yeah, the baths here are great. I"ve been hooked on them since I first came here. They remind me of home."
"Hm? Does Norse mythology have a bath culture?"
"Eh!? For real!? What"re some good Norse bath stories!? Teacher"s not letting you get away with this!"
"We have a teacher now?"
It seemed weird for a human to be forming opinions about the G.o.ds" worldview, but that was just how things were now.
And Kuwajiri answered Senpai-chan"s question.
"The Norse mythology we come from does mention the existence of baths."
"Oh, I"ve heard about that. Scandinavia"s known for its saunas, right? Those steam baths or whatever where you warm yourself up, jump in a lake, and go "whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"."
Kuwajiri and Shifu exchanged a glance at that.
After a moment, the corner of Shifu"s lips curled up.
"No, it"s not that."
Shifu found this topic a little amusing.
"Saunas are a part of Finnish culture."
"Finnish…"
"As in Finland. West of the Soviet Union and east of Sweden."
"Did you actually think that explanation was good enough for me!? Don"t make fun of me!"
Sumeragi made a silly face as she protested, so Kuwajiri gave a look of displeasure that appeared to be a new addition to her repertoire.
"Well, to keep it simple, Finland is a part of Scandinavia, but the Finns who lived in its southern region had a mythology known as the Kalevala that is distinct from Norse mythology."
"Anyway, the Kalevala includes a guardian deity of saunas and the sauna culture spread to the rest of Scandinavia from Finland."
"And in the politics between G.o.ds, the Kalevala group really tries to screw us Norse G.o.ds over when it comes to the right to use saunas."
As Tooru"s wording there suggested, there had been some fighting over that.
"Anyway, there"s also a G.o.d of saunas in the Soviet Union, or Russia I guess we should call it, so there was a lot of argument over it all. I wonder if they"re still going at it?"
"Does that mean you all can"t take baths?"
"No, no. It doesn"t mean that."
She continued with a "you see".
"We have a bit of a point in common with Shinto…or rather, j.a.pan."
"What is it?"
She pointed down in response to that.
"The baths. We also commonly used the kind of bath you soak in."
"That is correct," agreed Kuwajiri.
"Our mythology is commonly thought of as the stories pa.s.sed down by the people of Scandinavia, but it did not actually cover that entire region. It also faded away from the mainland due to migration and the spread of Christianity. So do you know where it primarily remained and was ultimately recorded?"
"Some distant land?"
"j.a.pan!?"
"I"m impressed you can shout a wrong answer quite so loudly and confidently."
She was right.
Norse mythology had been pa.s.sed down and survived in a place a fair distance from the mainland.
"The answer is Iceland. Norse mythology survived there from before the arrival of Christianity and that became one portion of what our mythology is based on."
And…
"Iceland has plenty of volcanic activity, so it is as much of a hot spring country as j.a.pan, if not more so. Snorri, the Icelandic politician who gathered our stories, loved hot springs so much he even built an open-air hot spring for his own home."
"Whew! An open-air bath for your own home! Now that"s luxury!"
"W-wouldn"t it be cold?"
"No, no, no. Thanks to geothermal energy and the ocean currents, Iceland is actually a warm region for Scandinavia."
"It has an average temperature of 11 degrees during the summer, but the average temperature during the winter does not fall below freezing in the cities. And the lowest it gets during the winter is just below -2 degrees, so there is not much temperature variance there."
"U-um, what"s the average temperature in Watarishima?"
"Watarishima?"
"That means Hokkaido. Hokkaido"s average summer temperature in lower-lat.i.tude Sapporo is over 22 degrees and the average winter temperature is below -3 degrees. The lowest temperature is about -7 degrees."
"j.a.pan has regions colder than the home of Norse mythology?"
"Well, j.a.pan is quite long from north to south."
But she had to say something else too.
"Snorri, the compiler of Norse mythology, did visit Norway for negotiations. Norway is also quite long from north to south and has similar differences to j.a.pan, but its capital of Oslo has an average summer temperature of over 18 degrees and an average winter temperature of about -3 degrees."
"I was picturing it all as being a lot colder."
"There is a warm current nearby, so it is warmer than other regions at a similar lat.i.tude."
What did that mean?
She explained as one of the Norse G.o.ds.
"Also, Europe as a whole was in a warm period from the 10th to 14th centuries, so the Norse mythology gathered in Snorri"s Edda is thought to have been a little warmer even than that."
"Well, G.o.ds like me traveled long distances and there was a ton of eating and drinking of meat and mead, so you get the impression it happened in fertile lands instead of snow. They might have been snowed in during the winters, but it wasn"t all like that. In fact, most of it wasn"t."
"Looking at Iceland in particular, they have white nights, but no polar nights. However, the climate is very windy and the lower pressure systems cause a lot of volatility, so it never stays sunny for long. You can think of that as the harsh side of the climate. They even say you can experience all four seasons in a single day there."
"Wow… And I just thought it was a land of ice and snow."
"I do sometimes wonder if people picture it like the arctic."
"To get back on topic, a lot of places there do not get below freezing even during the winter, so open-air hot springs are entirely reasonable. They are not restricted to indoor saunas to avoid freezing. Norse mythology even equates not taking baths with filthiness, so we interpret that as cleanliness being standard for us."
"I always pictured the Vikings and Germanic tribes as being a lot wilder than that."
"Oh, they"re pretty wild. But anyway."
Shifu looked back toward the bath.
"That kind of good example helps improve our image, but it also means we"re allowed to go to places like this."
Raidou sighed while watching Shifu"s conversation with the others via Revelation Board.
They had set up a ping pong table in the men"s changing room and Yomoji and Balancer were playing.
They were doing so without their extra "powers".
The manifestation of Auth Spells and authority was generally banned in this Divine World, but what situations did not fall under that "generally" banner was up to the individual to decide. There were a lot of stories about G.o.ds being killed in an accident or a.s.sa.s.sinated, so if they could not resist those things, the Divine World would simply become a place where G.o.ds were restricted.
That was why Balancer did not take issue with a certain level of authority usage.
But the two playing ping pong were not using any of that.
Yomoji was. .h.i.tting the ball with surprisingly minimal movements and Balancer was moving all over the place to use themselves as a racket.
"Who would win if you used your absurdities and Balancer used their full processing power?"
"Back when I had a temper, proooobably meeee. I would split the sea and land preeeetty reguarly."
Raidou wanted to say it was weird to evolve through ping pong, but he had heard that the AI from the Earth Age had acquired countermeasures for all sorts of things while gaining general knowledge. They could probably do just about anything.
"Does that mean you"re holding back right now?"
"What are you doing now?"
began Balancer while chasing the ball. "So you sayyyy."
Looking at it, Balancer was right.
They were good at making cuts and they almost ever missed, but…
"What is?"
"So feelings can lead to self-destruction, huh?"
said Balancer. "Like how they"re allllways yelling in anime and manga to psyyyyche themselves up."
"So if you think of the positive feelings as the things that blow away the negative feelings restricting you, then you can say that feelings are drawing out your true skill power."
Balancer yelled, but they failed to reach the ball that hit the edge of the ping pong table.
"If yelling didn"t work, I guess we know that was the limit of your skill."
Raidou nodded at that and then made a comment.
"I feel like we"ve gotten a lot closer today."
Raidou was willing to bet Balancer had not spoken about this before either.
Given their position, this was fairly meaningless for an AI who had lived for so long.
Raidou could guess why he had been told these things.
…Because of our relationship or for socialization, I guess.
The G.o.ds like him had been created by the AIs like Balancer, but they were more like "recreations" than artificial creations.
They were "plausible" beings based on the existing information and the concept laws that had been selected and extracted, plus they had been given memories based on a simulation that filled in the gaps in the records from the Earth Age. They had initially been given a virtual manifestation and, if there were no problems there and they were a good fit for the current situation, they were given a real manifestation.
Due to that, they had a political connection with the AIs as their creators, but they also had more ordinary relationships like with Balancer.
Balancer could generally summon the G.o.ds at will because Balancer was the manufacturer and the G.o.ds were the products.
They were beings prepared for the terraforming.
Their extreme individuality made it hard for them to join together and they had essentially become autonomous. Long ago, they had fought with Balancer over their rights and their relationship had even grown quite stormy for a while.
"The DC"s activity sure has you fl.u.s.tered for a supposed parent."
"IIII am honorrrred."
"When does something warrant your intervention?"
Balancer hit the ball and Yomoji caught it with a back dash.
The ball returned, but…
A strong back spin changed the ball"s path. It moved back toward Yomoji.
Balancer could not reach it in time, so the ball left the table and fell to the floor.
"Heh heh heh. Yourrrr specs might be highhhh, but that does not h.e.l.lllp you here."
"Does this mean not even you can read your opponent"s mind?"
"So it"s like how, when considering your move in shogi, it"s easier and safer to think through all the possible paths that move and your opponent"s response could lead to, instead of trying to guess what your opponent will choose?"
Balancer suddenly looked to the Revelation Board displaying the lively conversation in the women"s bath.
"So you figure out all the possible options and then a.s.sume the "impossible" could happen too, huh?"
That sounded tricky. How much of a constant companion was despair for that AI?
On the other hand…
"It isn"t often that Shifu can let loose like this. I think things are going pretty well right now."
"Yeah, she generally acts as the mediator for the girls, so she might relax, but she never completely lets her guard down. Especially when I"m not with her."
So what did this mean?
She was letting loose in a way she had not back home.
Of course, that was probably because the factional conflicts from back home were nowhere to be found here. There were no largescale battles and, while they did have to get the terraforming done, they were more like supervisors here.
It would be a problem if she got too relaxed, but he knew her instincts were better than that.
Thus, things were going pretty well.
Which meant…
"I wish things could stay like this. …But that depends on what the DC does."
"Tooru, I"m about ready to leave."
He heard a cheerful voice.
This happened pretty much every day, so it was a good thing. Back home, she would sometimes end up lost in thought, but she barely did that here.
That did make him wonder if she had gotten dumber, but he knew he was as guilty as her on that front.
"Okay, let"s leave. We can visit a family restaurant and discuss what to do starting tomorrow."
What was luxury?
"Having plentiful water to use is crucial!"
Bilgamesh knew just how important water was. His home had once had plenty of water, but that was much more limited now. However…
"The baths I knew were simply tubs of ordinary water. I never knew there were baths of heated water."
He looked back toward the white-walled bathhouse and its gender-separated entrances.
The curtain labelled "women" fluttered and his partner stepped out.
"Bil, you talk too loud. I could hear you from inside."
Just like him, his exasperated partner had been soaking in hot water. Her darkish skin had a nice sheen to it.
"How indecent! You must not let others see you looking so suggestive!"
"Calm down. No matter what anyone else thinks, you"re the only one for me."
"I will not let anyone get away with seeing you like this!"
"How are you going to manage that?"
"In accordance with the Code of Hammurabi"s "eye for an eye" principle, I will leer at anyone who dares leer at you."
"Calm down."
"You would command me!?"
"What, don"t like being commanded?"
"I am the king."
"I"m your friend, remember? Although we ended up in this relationship because you seduced me."
"Then you can ask me."
"Please calm down."
"Nhhhh."
"I"ll use Call Bil if you don"t."
"Then I will calm down."
Now it was his partner"s turn to groan.
I hope this works out, thought Ki.
Her partner was so simple - or rather, he had a very straightforward personality. That could be overwhelming yet attractive, but on the other hand, they had a bit of a mission to take care of.
They had to stay calm. So…
"Do you know what we need to do?"
"Yes, wash up and wait here. And then…"
Her partner spoke.
"We must partic.i.p.ate. Even if it must be by force."
"Hm…I feel like that"s only half right."
"Then you correct the other half, Ki."
"It"s weird that you can say stuff like that when you"re the king."
"I can only say it to you."
"Is that so?" she responded.
"Hato really did tell us some weird things, didn"t she?"
They had met up with Shamhat after leaving the school. They had held a strategy meeting and then came here. But…
"Where is Hato?"
"The hot bath really excited her. I got out quickly since I was a little afraid it wouldn"t suit my body"s nature, but then I found someone out here who took an even shorter bath."
"The bath is boring on your own."
"Yes, yes."
She knew that was his way of saying he wanted to be with her. That was a happy thing given what happened in their mythology. If only he were not so overwhelming.
But after holding that pointless exchange, she sensed a presence behind her.
"Shamhat?"
"Shamhat? Are you saying you need a shampoo hat or something?"
Someone gigantic appeared.
"…? What"s going on here?"
In front of the bathhouse, Raidou saw their "opponents".
"Bilgamesh and Enkidu, huh?"
It was a sudden encounter.
This normally could not have happened, but he had noticed them.
And Bilgamesh"s partner Enkidu, who had left the women"s bath, was observing Shifu. As a result…
"Oh, we came out of different barriers after finishing our baths."
Since they were defenseless while bathing, the G.o.ds connected to each mythology were guided to changing rooms and baths in separate dimensions. That of course only applied inside the bathhouse, so it all converged outside.
And on the outside, Shifu was looking at Enkidu.
"Gotten your skin all shiny for your partner?"
"Eh? Well, you could say that."
Immediately after that exchange, the boy in front of Raidou moved.
"Do not speak with my wife."
In an instant, his left hand raced out and seemed to extend. No, there was some distance between the entrances to the women"s and men"s baths and he was trying to fill that gap.
"Then you keep your hands off my wife."
Raidou deflected that hand.
A metallic sound rang out and sparks flew.
When Ki witnessed that sound and light…
…Oh?
The girl in front of her had to be Shifu. And …
She was clearly delighted.
Delighted that her husband had deflected Bil"s criticizing hand away from her.
"Happy?"
"Of course I am."
"I see," said Ki.
"I"d be happy too if Bil did that for me."
"I see."
She smiled, so Ki…
"Bil, have you calmed down now?"
Raidou saw the boy in front of him nod and say "yes".
…This is a real pain-in-the-a.s.s opponent here.
That much was certain. The warning divine protection spells around Raidou were reacting quite intensely. This opponent had guts because he made no attempt to hide his true name.
Bilgamesh.
A hero from Mesopotamian mythology. A half-G.o.d, half-human king.
He must have been confident. Leaving your true name open like that meant you were willing to accept a fight no matter what your opponent did.
…Just like me!
He had apparently only received a real manifestation recently, but his original divine rank was quite high. He also had a high historical rank. But…
"So how are we going to do this? You"re here for the DC, right? Do you need something?"
"It is true I need something," said Bilgamesh without backing down.
"We know you are hiding a human. I would like to make him my subject."
Kuwajiri was hiding behind the curtain and wall of the women"s bath entrance.
…This came out of nowhere.
These had to be the DC"s inspectors. But…
"What does he mean about making Sumeragi-chan his subject?"
"Well, we are currently treating Sumeragi as the worshiper of the G.o.d we call Senpai. Even if the DC tries to strip us of that authority and make Sumeragi the worshiper of one of their G.o.ds, she still has to agree to it."
So if Sumeragi said no, the DC could not swap out her G.o.d like they wanted.
So what would they do?
"Bilgamesh is half-G.o.d, half-human and a king of the human world, so if Sumeragi becomes his subject, she can be on the DC"s side while still worshiping Senpai-san as her G.o.d."
"But how arrrre they supposed to get her on their siiiide? Can she realllly have something beyond the G.o.d-worrrrshiper thing?"
The answer to Yomoji"s question was simple.
"By using the law. In the Sumer civilization on which Mesopotamian mythology is based, the law was already exercised and governed by theocracy and the code of law. Thus, Bilgamesh can use his law as the king to leave Sumeragi the freedom to worship while also binding or freeing her actions with the law."
But what did that mean?
This is a real pain, thought Kuwajiri.
After all, it had happened so suddenly.
Sumeragi was currently in the changing room having trouble getting her new style uniform back on. Kuwajiri hoped she would be stuck there forever.
…Having Sumeragi walk out now would be the worst.
Their opponent had already stated in no uncertain terms that he wanted Sumeragi under his control.
They had an excuse ready for that, but they would be exceeding their authority here. From the DC"s perspective, the DC was in the right and the Shinto-affiliated group was in the wrong, but…
"Senpai, what should we do?"
"Yeah," replied a voice. From outside the bathhouse.
"I"d like an explanation as to what"s going on."
Something sounded off about that voice. Raidou was not speaking to Kuwajiri or Shifu. He was directing his voice toward the front of the bathhouse. And…
"What"s going on here, New Party Representative Omokane Yatsui!?"
"I thought I could just watch and see how this turned out, but I guess that isn"t happening."
Omokane stepped away from the side of a vending machine on the road out front.
"Omokane!"
"Yes, I"m sure you have a lot of questions, Ki-kun. I set up this situation so I could meet up with Hato-kun without her being on her guard."
This was an extremely interesting situation.
The Mesopotamian G.o.ds and the Norse G.o.ds had met.
She looked across their positioning in front of the bathhouse and spoke.
"A confrontation is unavoidable. And we cannot yet discuss what this means. Quite troublesome, don"t you think?"
"What do you-…?"
"Oh, got a question, Kuwajiri-kouhai? But there is nothing to say beyond what I said."
She repeated herself.
"A confrontation is unavoidable. After all, the result of that confrontation will change what it is that Mesopotamian hero asks of you. Do you get what I mean?"
"Yeah, I think I get it."
The thunder G.o.d scratched his head.
"Whether or not we can explain our reasons, we"re going to be fighting a duel. And if we win, they don"t get to complain, right?"