768 What the hell do you mean you’re going to fight against the gods!? (1/2)

There was indeed a spell that could use a child as the catalyst to help locate a parent. But, it was already difficult enough to locate an ordinary person in real life, not to mention that the goal this time was to find someone who had been spirited away to the gods' realm.

Still, it was worth a try.

Before trying to locate Chiaki's mother in the Realm of Cherry Blossoms, Seiji decided to try locating her in the real world.

Natsuya took a sample of Chiaki's blood and some of her hairs to cast a locating spell. But, as expected, the spell failed.

When all the knight order members arrived, everyone trained in the Domain as usual. After Seiji collected all the Inner World Crystals from everyone, he went into the Domain again with only Natsuya, Shika, and Hitaka.

Seiji and Shika dealt with the monsters within the Domain. Natsuya began to draw a spell formation for spellcasting, while Hitaka stayed by Natsuya's side to guard her. Kazuko watched everything from the air.

As Natsuya incanted, Kazuko suddenly sensed something that caused her to furrow her eyebrows.

Natsuya's spell formation immediately started to glow red. Chiaki's hair and blood, which had been placed in the center of the spell formation, suddenly started glowing with a blinding light before vanishing right in front of everyone's eyes!

Natsuya: ”!?”

She widened her eyes on seeing this unexpected outcome.

”Some existence came here just now,” Kazuko spoke up.

”What was it?” Natsuya looked at Kazuko.

”I could feel something… some type of existence, or some type of power, that suddenly came here.” Kazuko adjusted her eyeglasses. ”That something likely interfered with your spellcasting and then left.”

Some existence had come… Natsuya's expression became serious as she immediately called Seiji over.

”This proves that Chiaki and her mother are indeed somehow connected to the Realm of Cherry Blossoms. My conjecture has been partially proven,” Seiji concluded after hearing this. ”What Kazuko sensed was likely a god or a god's power, or something similar. That existence came here and interfered with the locator spell on Chiaki's mother, destroying Chiaki's hair and blood, most likely to prevent us from finding her, or to give us a warning…”

Seiji felt that a situation might arise, so he had Natsuya and Hitaka leave the Domain while he stayed behind with Shika.

Actually, he also wanted Shika to leave for her own safety so that only he would be at risk, but Shika adamantly refused to leave his side.

Natsuya also wanted to stay behind with her boyfriend, but she knew that following Seiji's arrangement was the logical thing to do.

After Natsuya and Hitaka left the Domain, Seiji and Shika continued fighting the monsters in the Domain.

But, unexpectedly, nothing abnormal happened at all even after clearing out the final boss wave.

That mysterious existence had only prevented them from locating Chiaki's mother… it seemed that was all for now.

However, Seiji had now learned that there was a definite connection between Chiaki's mother and the Realm of Cherry Blossoms.

If using a minor amount of Chiaki's hair and blood for a locator spell attracted a god's attention to the point where it interfered with the spell, what would happen if they used even more hair and blood? Or even ”used” Chiaki herself…

Just thinking about it seemed quite dangerous. Seiji would never do such a thing.

However, Chiaki came up with the idea herself, offering to use herself as bait!

”I want to lure out this god and ask it about my mother.”

”That's too dangerous. Denied.”

”We can try it after we're fully prepared… Won't it be fine as long as we're ready for it?”

”There's a huge problem with that! Even with the best preparations, and even if we can deal with a god, there's no guarantee of your safety,” Seiji told her seriously.

Chiaki fell silent.

”What other method is there, then?” she finally asked in a soft voice after a long silence.

It was now Seiji's turn to fall silent.

”Since there's no other method, then this is the only thing we can do.” Chiaki looked directly at him. ”I'm already being targeted. At this rate, I might vanish just like my mother… rather than waiting for the enemy to make the first move, isn't it better to attack first? Don't you agree?”

What Chiaki said made sense.

Rather than passively waiting for something bad to happen and responding only after danger had already arrived, it would be much better to prepare as much as possible first and then send out a lure.

Seiji looked directly at Chiaki. He knew that she had to be afraid to offer herself as bait, yet she still worked up the courage to face such danger.

Apart from her own courage, this was also because she trusted him completely.