INTERLUDE ONE

Lambeth Palace in London was originally a building designed to be the official residence of the English Puritan archbishop. Though its grounds were currently open as a sightseeing spot, unauthorized access to the inside of the building proper was forbidden, while all information was carefully sealed.

Put simply, nobody knew what the inside was like.

“Its existence is rife with mystery and intrigue” was the best anyone could guess from only viewing the historic-feeling exterior. If there was an English Puritan disciple conscious to some extent about status, influence, and the like, then they would know this palace was worthy of being called the end goal, somewhere the term throne could be used without it being an overstatement.

The building, with which normal people had no business and thus didn’t consider its absolute privacy as suspicious, had a magical defense field stretched around it stronger than Buckingham Palace, where the queen resided. Those who needed VIP security were one thing, but even the gardeners and cleaners were all familiar with the highest level of close-combat anti-intruder magic, and everything—from the positions of pillars to the patterns on the wallpaper to the amount of light the western-style illumination gave off—had magical significance; it all functioned as a singular trap. Considering the palace itself was one large structure, the planners had designed it in an attempt to prevent any and all conventional intrusion attempts, as far-fetched a claim as that seemed. The clergymen and Iron Maidens sarcastically referred to it as the Nailed Bedroom.

At that moment, Lambeth Palace was veiled in midnight silence.

About nine hours separated Japan from England.

Despite less personnel present than during the day, the actual security level had shot up. And yet, this “invisible state of alert” went unnoticed. And inside…

…The archbishop Laura Stuart was in the bathroom.

“Hmm-hmm-hm-hmm-hmm-hmmm. ”

If the people who aspired to Lambeth Palace and imagined it as a high-class place were to look at that space, filled with light and echoing only with the sound of Laura’s humming, they would have been petrified.

It was a bathroom, yes—but it was an enormous one, twenty meters square. However, it wasn’t set up like a big communal bath. Instead, there were dozens of bathtubs packed tightly in the room.

Additionally, each tub had functions that absolutely reeked of the science side, whether they were electronic features, negative air ionization, jet stream massage, and so on.

It made sense. All the baths were symbols of the English Puritan rapport with Academy City and had been given to Laura as midyear and year-end gifts.

Right now, Laura was pulling her habit skirt up, sitting on the edge of the jet stream bathtub, dipping only her legs into the water.

She had a tub that was like a washbasin for her feet specifically, but she seemed to particularly like putting her feet in this jet stream.

Her golden locks, twice as long as she was tall, dripped with water. It had gotten to the point where it looked like a wet spiderweb, but she was planning to do her hair later, so it wasn’t a problem. In any event, washing her feet came first.

Mmm…It just fills me with happiness! Now then, after my foot massage, I will use the sparky electric bath over there and warm my body…

As Laura Stuart continued to relieve the day’s exhaustion…

…suddenly, without knocking, almost kicking down the door, Stiyl Magnus flew in.

“Archbishop!!”

Sporting red-dyed hair, a cigarette in his mouth, ten silver rings on his fingers, a bar code tattoo under his right eye and giving off a mixed smell of both perfume and nicotine was a mental, shouting priest.

Laura’s entire body lurched in surprise. Though she was only washing her feet, she was in the middle of pulling up her skirt, exposing her bare legs. She frantically tried to push the hem back down, but the sudden motion caused her hips to slip off the tub’s edge and tumble into it.

A crashing wave’s splash echoed through the room.

Stiyl, holding a report in one hand, didn’t stop to mind what had just happened. “Are the things written in this report true?! I know you didn’t let your bonehead skills leak onto the paper again. The archbishop can change the world at a single word, so you need to…Stop making bubbles and complaining and answer me, please! You’re the one who wrote this, are you not?!”

The bubbling wasn’t actually coming from her trying to speak—the jet stream was suffocating her. But from Stiyl’s point of view, she was just a woman acting merrily after falling in the tub with her legs up in an M shape and her panties on full display.

Laura pulled her face out of the stream with a crsshh!! “Wh-wha-what are you doing suddenly entering a lady’s bathroom with your shoes on, Stiyl?! Y-you know you may be a clergyman and all— No, wait, it’s precisely because thou art a clergyman that—”

“Shut. Up. And. Answer. Me!!”

“No, don’t, Stiyl!! If you put your flame sword in the water, you’ll boil my bath!!”

Laura half-stumbled, half-rolled her way out of the bathtub. A moment later, not only did it boil, but it also actually went up in a minor water vapor explosion. The archbishop had fallen to her knees on the sodden floor, mouth wide open and breathing heavily, her superlong hair clinging to her like a cocoon and giving her the appearance of a monster.