Chapter 67: Prelude to Expedition

The heavy golden doors slammed shut behind them, cutting off the radiant glow of the throne room.

The silence in the wide, vaulted hallway was broken only by the rhythmic click of their boots against polished white marble. Imperial guards stationed along the corridor stood rigid like statues, not daring to meet the eyes of the two S-Class heroes.

Ayanokoji walked with his hands still buried in his pockets, his posture loose and unbothered. Beside him, Miyuki held her staff with both hands, her knuckles pale against the polished wood. Her shoulders were tense, and her gaze remained glued to the floor.

"You took an unnecessary risk back there," Ayanokoji spoke, breaking the silence. His voice was completely flat, without a trace of scolding or sympathy. "Speaking out against a goddess in her own court achieves nothing practical. If anything, it only lowers our standing."

Miyuki stopped walking, biting her lower lip. "I couldn’t just keep quiet, Ayanokoji. Every time I see Lady Viona smile so casually, it sickens me."

Ayanokoji paused a few paces ahead and turned around, looking at her with dull, half-lidded eyes. "Why are you so fixated on that American?"

"His name is John," she murmured, looking up at him with troubled eyes.

"Names don’t change reality," Ayanokoji said plainly, leaning against a white marble pillar. "The Goddess wasn’t wrong. An E-rank in this world is effectively an average human. No high mana capacity, no unique skill, no accelerated growth rate. In a realm overrun by monsters and demons, someone like that is a liability. Keeping him in the capital or sending him to the frontlines would have produced the exact same result: his death, likely while dragging others down with him."

"That doesn’t make it right!" Miyuki’s voice shook, though she kept it low to avoid drawing attention from the guards. "He didn’t ask to be here! He was dragged across dimensions by pure bad luck. And instead of helping him find a way to live, she threw him into an active dungeon like trash!"

Ayanokoji let out a faint breath through his nose. "In war, discarding dead weight is standard protocol. You’re viewing this through the lens of modern morality. It doesn’t apply here."

"I know the world changed, but our hearts shouldn’t," Miyuki said, stepping closer to him. Her expression turned dead serious, an edge of fear creeping beneath her anger. "Don’t you see the bigger picture, Ayanokoji? If she can casually discard a human life just because his initial stats were low, what’s stopping her from doing the exact same thing to us once we’ve outlived our usefulness?"

She looked toward the grand double doors at the end of the hall, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper.

"Right now, she smiles at us, feeds us luxury, and praises our levels because we are useful weapons against the Demon Lord and the Wallachian Empire. But what happens when the war is over? What happens if our stats stop growing, or if one of us gets permanently crippled? Will she smile and throw us away, too?"

Ayanokoji stared at her, his face as unreadable as stone.

The logic in her words wasn’t flawed. A ruler who discards subordinates without hesitation is inherently untrustworthy. But to him, the emotional weight she attached to it was irrelevant.

"It doesn’t matter," Ayanokoji replied simply, pushing off the pillar.

Miyuki blinked, stunned by his indifference. "How can you say it doesn’t matter?!"

"Because worrying about hypothetical betrayals doesn’t change what we have to do right now," he said, turning back toward the exit. "Whether she’s a benevolent deity or a callous tyrant is secondary. My objective has never changed since day one. I follow orders, clear the obstacles, defeat whatever needs to be defeated, and get sent home. That’s it."

He didn’t care about John Smith. He didn’t care about the Holy Solarian Empire, its conflicts with Wallachia, or even the grand crusade against the Demon Lord. To him, the levels, the silver spear on his back, and the battalion waiting at the harbor were just tools to fulfill a contract.

"I don’t care about her intentions, Miyuki. And you shouldn’t waste your energy on them either," Ayanokoji added over his shoulder, his pace steady and calm. "Save your focus for the western sea. If an entire imperial fleet vanished without a trace, whatever killed them won’t care about your morals."

Miyuki stared at his retreating back, letting out a heavy, quiet sigh. She adjusted her grip on her staff and hurried to catch up.

"You really are hopeless, you know that?" she muttered, walking beside him. "What if she was lying about us going back to our world once this is done?"

"And you’re jumping to conclusions," Ayanokoji said, not breaking his stride.

Miyuki frowned, glancing sideways at his calm profile. "Conclusions? Ayanokoji, it’s a reasonable fear based on how she already acted."

"It’s still merely a guess," he replied, his voice level and devoid of emotion. "You’re building an entire scenario out of paranoia. The Goddess explicitly stated the conditions from the start: defeat the Demon Lord, and we will be granted a way back to our world. His core, his demise—whatever mechanism she requires—is one of the key ingredients to open the gateway home."

"And you just take her word for it?" Miyuki challenged softly, keeping her voice pitched low beneath the vaulted ceilings. "After seeing how little value she places on a human life?"

"Taking her word for it has nothing to do with trust," Ayanokoji said plainly. "It’s a matter of sequence. Right now, the Demon Lord is alive, which means the condition hasn’t been met. Whether she is honest or deceitful is a variable I can’t test yet. I’ll only know for sure that she lied to us if the Demon Lord is dead and we still aren’t sent back home."

Miyuki stopped in her tracks, staring at him in disbelief. "And what then? If she betrays us after the fight, we’ll be exhausted, maybe even injured, and she’s an actual goddess in her own divine domain! It’ll be too late!"

Ayanokoji paused a few steps ahead, half-turning his head. His dull, dark eyes met hers without a ripple of anxiety.

"If that happens, then the nature of the obstacle simply changes from the Demon Lord to the Goddess," he stated, as casually as if he were discussing a minor change in the weather. "Until then, speculating about her betrayal only wastes mental bandwidth and creates unnecessary hesitation on the battlefield. The priority remains the same: raise our stats, eliminate the targets in front of us, and reach the finish line."

Miyuki let out a slow, defeated breath, clutching her wooden staff against her chest. She looked down at the marble floor, shaking her head.

"You really reduce everything to cold equations, don’t you?"

"It keeps things simple," Ayanokoji said, turning back toward the grand exit that led out to the courtyards. "Now keep moving. If we’re late to the harbor, Belis will waste even more of our time lecturing us."