Bofuri (The Strongest Shield Of Tensura)-Chapter 115 - One Hundred And Fifteen

The silence that followed had a particular quality to it.

"You are asking," Hinata said, her voice very quiet, "what happens if I fail."

She held his gaze for a moment that stretched slightly past comfort.

"I would suggest," she said, "that you find something more productive to concern yourself with. Because that is not a question that requires an answer."

Louis regarded her without expression.

"I don’t fail twice against the same enemy," she continued, each word placed with the precision of a blade finding its mark. "Certainly not against one I have already fully assessed. The first engagement was conducted under false intelligence, with an incomplete understanding of his abilities, and still came closer than anything the church has managed against a monster of his tier in recent memory. The second engagement will not share those conditions." A beat. "Plan for success, Louis. The contingency you’re asking about is not a realistic scenario."

Another silence. Then Louis, very mildly, inclined his head.

"Very well," he said. It was not agreement exactly.

He lifted his tea again. "There is one more matter."

Hinata waited.

"I spoke recently with a merchant who passed through the western provinces. A well-traveled man. Reliable, as these things go." Louis’s eyes drifted briefly to the window, then back to her. "He mentioned, in passing, that the general understanding among those who follow Tempest’s affairs is that the church’s interest in eliminating Rimuru Tempest is not entirely doctrinal in nature." He paused. "Apparently there are those who believe the chief knight of the imperial guard has a personal stake in the matter. That someone of significance to her died in connection with that nation."

The candlelight moved, just slightly, as something shifted in the airless room.

Hinata looked at Louis with the same composed, unreadable expression she had maintained for the entirety of their conversation.

"Merchants talk," she said.

"They do," Louis agreed pleasantly. "It is one of their more useful qualities." He tilted his head, just fractionally. "I raise it not as an accusation. Personal motivations are not inherently a liability. In the right circumstances they sharpen focus considerably." His pale eyes held hers. "I raise it because a campaign driven in part by personal investment requires the person leading it to be honest with themselves about where their judgment ends and their grief begins. Those are not always the same place."

The word landed in the room the way Louis likely intended it to, quietly, without ceremony, directly into the space where she kept things she didn’t discuss.

Hinata was silent for exactly one breath.

"My judgment," she said, "has never failed this institution."

"No," Louis said. "It hasn’t." He set his cup down with a small, final sound. "See that it doesn’t begin now."

Hinata rose from the chair without another word. She crossed the room, her footsteps quiet and even on the stone floor, and pulled the door open.

"Hinata."

She stopped.

"She wants to see you."

---

The deeper you went into the sanctum, the quieter it became. The sounds of the church, footsteps, voices, the distant rhythm of training in the outer courtyards, fell away by degrees until there was nothing left but the soft sound of her own movement through air that felt older than the stone surrounding it.

Most of the church’s inhabitants never came this far. They didn’t need to. The god of Lubelius existed, for the vast majority of her faithful, as doctrine and architecture and the particular quality of light through stained glass. A presence felt rather than encountered. Something to be believed in rather than spoken to.

Hinata had spoken to her many times.

She stopped outside a door that was neither plain nor ornate, simply old, its dark wood worn smooth by centuries of passing hands. No guards here either. None were necessary.

She did not knock.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside.

---

The chamber was small by the standards of the sanctum, which meant it was still larger than most rooms Hinata had occupied in her life. A low fire burned in the hearth along the far wall, its light warm and unsteady, casting long shadows across the shelves of books and the pale stone floor. The narrow windows here faced west, and through them the last of the afternoon sun was bleeding slowly out of the sky, leaving behind a bruised and darkening blue.

Luminous Valentine sat curled in a high-backed chair beside the fire, her legs tucked beneath her with an ease that looked entirely at odds with the millennia behind her eyes. She was small in the way that very old and very powerful things sometimes were, as though her form had been chosen for its precision rather than its impressiveness. Silver hair caught the firelight. Her eyes, one deep crimson, one pale as winter sky, lifted from the book in her lap as Hinata entered.

"There you are," she said.

Her voice was not what people expected, those few who ever heard it directly. They expected something ancient and resonant, something that carried the weight of divine authority in every syllable. What they got, in moments like this one, was something considerably warmer. Considerably more human.

Hinata crossed the room and stood before her, spine straight, hands folded.

"You wanted to see me," she said.

Luminous tilted her head, a small gesture of mild reproach. "I did. Sit down, Hinata. You’re making the room feel formal."

"The room is fine."

"The room," Luminous said pleasantly, "is too spacious for you to stand so far away. Sit."

A beat. Then Hinata sat, settling into the chair across from her.

Luminous watched her with those mismatched eyes, her expression somewhere between fond and amused as it often was when Hinata was being particularly herself.

"How was the meeting?" she asked.

"Productive," Hinata said.

"Mm." Luminous turned a page in her book without looking at it. "Louis tells me you’ve been preoccupied lately. More than usual."

"Louis tells you a great deal."

"He works so hard, doesn’t he?" Luminous said, her tone cold beneath the warmth. She closed the book and set it aside, giving Hinata her full attention. "I hear you’ve been fixated on a monster village in the Jura Forest. The one that’s been making noise lately."

Hinata’s expression shifted, not dramatically, just a slight tightening around the eyes.

"It’s not a village," she said.

Luminous raised an eyebrow. "No?"

"No." The word came out with a flatness that carried its own weight. "Tempest is a functioning nation. Paved roads, trade agreements, diplomatic recognition from Dwargon, a standing military with named officers of significant individual strength." She paused. "It is not a village. It has never been a village. Anyone who has been reporting it to you as a village has been giving you inadequate intelligence."

Luminous studied her for a moment. "Wow, they really annoyed you." The mismatched eyes held a quiet warmth that Hinata did not quite look directly at. "All right. Not a village. Tell me what it is."

Hinata told her. Concisely, the way she did everything. Tempest’s structure, its alliances, the failed crusader campaign, the letter, her plan. She did not editorialize. She did not emphasize. She laid the facts in a clean line and left them there for Luminous to assess.

When she finished, the fire had burned a little lower.

Luminous was quiet for a moment, her gaze drifting toward the hearth. The light moved across her face, alternately illuminating and shadowing the features that looked so young and were so profoundly not.

"And the other one," she said.

Hinata looked at her. "The other one."

"The eastern nation. Maple Tree." Luminous’s eyes came back to her. "You didn’t mention it."

"It isn’t the immediate concern."

"Humor me."

Another pause. Shorter this time.

"Her name is Kaede Honjou," Hinata said. "Human. Summoned by Falmuth three years ago. She survived a Disintegration and built an empire in eastern Jura. Named tens of thousands of monsters. Vassalized six human kingdoms. Fought Demon Lord Milim Nava." A beat. "Has a demon retainer of considerable power who intervened in my engagement with Rimuru Tempest and chose to withdraw rather than press the advantage."

Luminous listened to all of this without interrupting. When Hinata finished she was quiet for a moment, her expression thoughtful.

"There is something else," Luminous said. "Something I wanted to tell you before you do whatever it is you’re planning."

Hinata waited.

"I’ve been feeling something in the east," Luminous said, her voice quieter now, stripped of its lighter register. "For some time. I didn’t pay it much attention at first. The Jura Forest produces odd resonances. It always has." She paused. "But it has been growing. And recently it has become difficult to ignore."

She looked at Hinata directly.

"There is a power in the eastern forest," she said, "that is comparable to Veldora’s."

The fire popped softly in the hearth.

Hinata was still for a moment. "Comparable to Veldora’s," she repeated.

"In scale, yes. Not identical in nature. It feels different. Less like a storm and more like..." Luminous paused, searching for a word with the slight, uncharacteristic hesitation of someone reaching for a description that didn’t quite exist yet. "Depth. Like something very deep that has not yet decided how far it intends to surface." Her mismatched eyes held Hinata’s. "I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s connected to this Maple Tree or to something else entirely. But it is there and it is significant and I thought you should know before you march into that forest."

The silence that followed was a different kind from the ones that had preceded it. Not the silence of professional restraint or careful phrasing. Something quieter and less comfortable.

Hinata processed it the way she processed everything, without visible disruption, filing it into the architecture of her understanding and adjusting what needed adjusting.

"It won’t change the plan," she said.

"I didn’t expect it would," Luminous said. The warmth had come back into her voice, but it was carrying something else now, something it didn’t usually carry when she spoke to Hinata.

She unfolded her legs from beneath her and leaned forward slightly, her elbows resting on her knees, bringing herself closer to Hinata’s eye level in a way that was deliberate and unhurried.

"I want you to come back to me," she said simply. "In one piece." The mismatched eyes were very steady. "You are the finest thing this church has produced in several centuries, Hinata. I will not have you thrown away on a monster village that turned out to be something larger than expected."

Hinata looked at her.

"It’s not a village," she said.

Luminous let out a breath that was almost, not quite, a laugh. The firelight caught the edge of it, the brief loosening of something that was usually held very still.

"No," she said. "It isn’t." She leaned back into her chair, her expression returning to its usual composed warmth. "Come back alive. That’s all I’m asking."

Hinata rose from the chair, straightening to her full height.

"I intend to," she said.

"Hinata."

She stopped. She did not turn.

"When this is over," Luminous said behind her, her voice light again, almost casual, "come and sit with me for an evening."

A brief silence.

"We’ll see," Hinata said.

She pulled the door open and stepped through, and the warmth of the fire disappeared behind her as it swung shut.

She stood in the corridor for a moment, alone in the darkening evening light, the last of the sun gone from the narrow windows now, the hallway lit only by the low burn of wall sconces spaced at long intervals along the pale stone.

She had a plan to write.

She turned and walked, her footsteps quiet and even on the pale stone floor, the darkness deepening steadily around her, and did not look back.