Yue’s Protection

Masashi, Mai, and Yue appear at the entrance of the villa.

It's got a completely while-grey design. Walking through the entrance they see the living room and the kitchen on the ground floor with stairs leading to the next floor.

"We'll be staying on the second floor. That's the place with the master bedroom and another one for Yue. There's one extra guest room that I built just cause."

Mai looks around and sees a luxurious island kitchen with all kinds of appliances.

"Every single one of those things is a mana-powered artifact. I didn't change the base designs of most of the things since we're used to the earth stuff. There's no real difference from the earth stuff for now."

The living room has a large TV with a home theater system. Masashi also applied his hoarding habits to data and cataloged all of the content that was on the various streaming services libraries on his server that was in his inventory.

The basement also had two levels. The upper level had a storage room where Masashi set up the personal server along with Masashi's workshop where he could tinker with the artifacts and make new things.

The floor even lower was restricted and was only accessible by Masashi and Mai since it was made with specific intents that Yue was not ready to see.

They could regularly have movie nights here. At the back of the villa was a large glass entrance leading to a large backyard pool.

The dinner table was set up on the veranda with a view of the pool.

There's a staircase that leads both down to the basement and up to the bedrooms. There are three bedrooms in the place. The master bedroom for Mai and Masashi and the one beside it for Yue.

The last room on this floor was on the opposite side and was left as a guest room if they ever had someone staying with them.

There was a beautiful balcony that connected both the Master bedroom and Yue's bedroom. It was also facing the pool area to give them a good view.

"So how do you like it? I hope it suits your tastes."

Masashi asks Mai, who's looking around the place.

"I like it very much!" She says, and then she adds, "And I like the people in it even more."

She looks and both Masashi and Yue.

"Come on I'll show you guys the last room."

There was another floor above that was dedicated to Masashi's game room with all kinds of games. The place was his arcade. He had all kinds of nostalgia-inducing games and consoles here.

"This place may look simple for now but everything in here is an artifact that I made using creation magic. I even changed up the circuits in the electronics to be run using mana."

"Yeah, yeah. You're a big-shot genius engineer. I know." Mai smirks at Masashi.

Masashi just ignores Mai's snarky remark and continued, "For now the enchantments are the best that I could make since I don't have access to the other ancient magics. There are some basic self-cleaning, and self-maintenance enchantments.

"I didn't bother to add any defense stuff since this place is inside the inner world of which we are in full control. I left enough leeway to add more enchantments in the place later on after I get the different ancient magic."

"This place sounds amazing," Yue remarked looking at the view from the balcony of the master bedroom.

"I'm glad you like it."

The trio spends another hour exploring the place before looking around at the stuff that Masashi made.

…

"We have two options now. One: We follow along with the plot as it goes. That means clearing the Labyrinths after Hajime Nagumo, the so-called protagonist of this story. It serves no purpose other than the fact that we won't run into any unexpected things. I know the plot and hence I know everything that'll happen.

"Option Two: We steamroll the plot and go at our own pace to take care of the things that we need, get the ancient magic, and bail on this world." Masashi was talking to Mai and Yue about what they'll be doing in the future.

"I prefer the second option. But I still want to ask for both of your opinions." Masashi continued.

The two girls are deep in thought for a few seconds before Mai asks, "Is there any heavy danger to the second option?"

"To my knowledge, no. Even now, the only person who poses even a bit of a threat to us is Ehit, everyone else is inconsequential."

"I see, and can he find us?"

"You and me? Nope. But Yue? Yeah."

Yue perks her head up, "What? Why only me?"

"…Well we both have a skill that allows us to evade the gaze of people like Ehit whose senses can cover the whole realm." Masashi simplifies [Conceal] as much as he can.

"So Yue can't go around freely in Tortus?" Mai asks Masashi.

"Yeah. She has to stay in the inner world while we go out."

"I see." Yue gets a sad look on her face since she was quite eager to look around Tortus and see how everything's changed.

Mai doesn't like Yue's sad face and asks Masashi, "Can't you make an artifact and imbue [Conceal] into it?"

"That is an option but it's extremely inefficient. Yue can't be away from us for even a minute. One of us would need to imbue the ability into the artifact every minute for it to work."

"It's better than her staying alone in the inner world. I love this place but Yue should get to go around and see Tortus with us too."

Yue just looks between Masashi and Mai with a warm feeling.

"It's fine, guys. You don't have to work so hard for me. I'll stay inside so that I don't cause you trouble. I'll be staying with you guys for the nights anyway."

"No Yue, it's fine. I've already made the artifact that conceals you from Ehit's gaze. I was planning to wait before I could make it better and more efficient before giving it to you."

Masashi brings out a necklace with a completely black chain and a pendant in the shape of a bat.

The chain was made of Azantium, the densest mineral in Masashi's repertoire currently, and the pendant was made from solidified mana that Masashi poured into a vessel for a month to make and inscribed some runes on it that could hold the ability.

"That's a batman necklace," Mai comments, looking at the necklace.

"Wrong genre Mai."

"Here you go, Yue. Wear this on your neck at all times. I'll be able to infuse [Conceal] into the pendant just by touching you so it's not going to be that much of an inconvenience."

Yue puts it on.

"Thank you." Her face which used to be expressionless has a lovely smile right now that melts Mai and Masashi's hearts.

They both smile at her and Mai says, "All right now, back to the plan. What do we do?"

"We might as well do our own thing. We can clear the Reisen Labyrinth next since that's where the teleportation circle here leads.

"After that, the straight route takes us through the Divine Mountain, yes that's the place that we were summoned at. Ironically one of the bases of the enemies of god is right below the major theocracy of the world.

"Then we have the Grand Gruen Volcano. After which we have the Sunken Ruins of Melusine. Both of those Labyrinths are pretty close to each other."

"The second last one is the Frost Caverns of Schnee. That's in the demon territory but only at the borders so it won't be a problem.

"Lastly we'd have to make a detour through the Divine Mountain to the Haltina Labyrinth that's in the Sea of Trees. It's the closest to the Reisen Labyrinth but it can only be cleared the last since it requires proof of clearing the other Labyrinths before it can be accessed.

"Any questions?"

"Not really. It's been months since I've had a real fight. Let's go to the labyrinth quickly." Mai says excitedly like a battle maniac.

Masashi gives her a pity-filled look and says, "You're gonna regret saying that."

"What? Why?"

"You'll find out when we get to that place."

Mai gets an ominous feeling about that labyrinth.

"Come on, I'll set up the gate. It was honestly a pain to make."

Masashi went to the empty area in front of the waterfall in Orcus's Labyrinth and placed an arch made of a mana-conducting material there. That material had another special property, it conducted Tantric energy very well.

He made that material himself after many tests. He called Tantrium for lack of a better term. He didn't want to put too much thought into it.

Using creation magic Masashi imbued an anchor for the inner world into the gate that he had placed there.

It was a one-way gate for someone to come from the inner world to here since if anyone was trapped they could go to the inner world and come here easily.

He had already given a bracelet that he made for the same purpose to Yue.

She could use it to enter or exit the inner world at will. It was even encoded to her mana so that no one but her was able to use the bracelet to enter the inner world.

The only thing was that Yue's exit point was encoded to Masashi's exit point.

When Masashi leaves Tortus to go to the inner world, he leaves an anchor to come back to. Yue is only able to use that anchor to appear in Tortus since Masashi isn't able to make the bracelet create its anchor, as that would require space magic.

Masashi especially added a failsafe such that even if Ehit got the bracelet, he wouldn't be able to use it as it would explode if any changes were detected in Yue's mana.

It wouldn't harm Yue as she could regenerate so Masashi didn't worry.

After activating the gate Masashi went to the third floor of the mansion with Mai and Yue to leave this place.