"Punishment?"
Hearing this, the maid with the graceful figure froze for a moment.
Then, she began to laugh.
The enchantingly beautiful woman walked before the boy, carefully studying the face of the Director who claimed he was going to settle accounts with her.
His handsome face looked as if it had been sculpted by a master artist; his features were exquisite, and his eyelashes were so thick and long they were almost girlish. A captivating heroism flowed from his brow, and the crimson light peeking from his narrowed eyes burned like a fierce flame.
Because of the Divinity within his Composite Saint Graph, his body had been optimized.
Although Divinity was once jokingly called a "debuff" in the world of FGO, that was merely a jest. The enhancements that Divinity bestowed upon a person were terrifying.
Take Achilles for example: unless an attack possessed truly explosive power that directly surpassed the limit of his Noble Phantasm, "Andreias Amarantos," any strike without Divinity would feel like little more than a scratch. Then there was the strongest defensive system in the Type-Moon world—Anti-Purge Defensive Noble Phantasms. Against such a defense, one without Divinity could only hope to break through by applying overwhelming brute force.
Divinity itself was one of the highest-tier cheat codes in the Moon World.
Those who possessed it were inherently more perfect than ordinary humans; this was an immutable fact. This perfection was reflected not only in power, but in appearance as well.
In the time he was gone, he's gotten even better looking, thought the maid, whose affection level for Li Zihan had always been high due to their similar personalities and his appearance being perfectly suited to her tastes.
If only he were a bit younger, he would be flawless.
To be honest, Miss Rita, who was a perverted lolicon and shotacon, had a strong suspicion that she would have fallen in love at first sight if she had met the Director in his childhood.
What a shame. He was all grown up now.
Rita felt a pang of regret.
"And what sort of punishment would that be?" The maid licked her vibrant lips, genuinely curious about what kind of stunt he would try to pull.
An illicit affair with my shota superior... how incredibly thrilling.
Watching Rita, whose reaction was startlingly similar to Aozaki Touko's, the corner of Li Zihan's eye began to twitch.
Something was wrong with this woman. Very wrong!
"Could it be that Lord Director wishes to use this as a pretext to do... those sorts of things to me?" A slight smile bloomed on the maid's lips, finding the boy's reaction utterly adorable.
She put on a look of great distress.
"If that's the case, Lady Durandal would be quite troubled."
Hey, hey, hey! Stop making lewd jokes out of nowhere!
Li Zihan's mouth twitched, feeling as though the people around him never seemed to act according to their established personas. And what did this have to do with Durandal, anyway?
As if reading his mind, the Scum Maid, who seemed to be letting herself go completely, continued her vulgar banter without a blush or a flutter of her heart.
"After all, the Director's office isn't stocked with... protective equipment, is it?"
"Doing... certain things without any protective measures makes it very easy to get pregnant. And if I were to get pregnant, I'd have to resign from the Immortal Blades."
"Lady Durandal would have quite a headache if she were to suddenly lose her adjutant, wouldn't she?"
The girl with ash-blonde, shoulder-length hair reached up and tapped her own vibrant lips, her expression growing ever more troubled.
Just as she loved to tease Durandal and Theresa, it seemed her latest target was Li Zihan. This woman's way of expressing affection was truly bizarre. And deeply deserving of a censor's bleep.
"Hey—Rita. Are you provoking me?"
Feeling as though he was being toyed with, Li Zihan narrowed his eyes. This woman... with all this repeated teasing, did she take him for some passive herbivore?
He certainly wasn't fond of perverted stalkers. But, as long as they weren't on the same level of crazy as Touko, he was still willing to take a bite.
"I am merely speaking my honest thoughts," Miss Rita said with a curtsy, a cheerful smile playing on her lips. She seemed to thoroughly enjoy the feeling of toying with others.
Hearing this, Li Zihan's eyes narrowed further.
"Hey, hey. Provoking a carnivorous-type man can lead to some painful consequences."
The boy, whose power far surpassed that of Rita—an S-rank Valkyrie punching bag—rose to his feet. He stared intently into Miss Rita's wine-red eyes and spoke with grave seriousness.
"Oh, I am well aware," the maid replied with a soft smile. She clearly knew the Director was an absolute carnivore who would genuinely act if provoked too far. She then raised a hand and pointed toward the corridor.
Kiana had just left via that hallway a few moments ago. Right now, she probably hadn't gotten far.
"However, I imagine that if you were to do something to me in here... and it caused me to make any... peculiar noises... Miss Kiana would surely hear them, wouldn't she?"
Li Zihan had just expended a great deal of effort to get Kiana to begrudgingly accept his harem plans. If she were to find out that the moment they parted, her lover was already getting involved with the maid at his side... she would absolutely explode on the spot.
"I have my phone with me. A single text is all it would take to notify Miss Kiana, you know." The maid, who was clearly getting addicted to this sort of teasing, sounded more and more cheerful. "You would find yourself in quite the predicament then, wouldn't you?"
Huu... As if he'd been underestimated, Li Zihan let out a long breath.
"Hey, hey, hey, Sister Tazi. What makes you think that if I didn't want it to, something like a phone signal could possibly get out?"
"You aren't carrying Jizo Mitama today, are you?" Miss Rita smiled faintly, having noticed that a certain someone had left both Jizo Mitama and Fenghuang Down to charge in the Honkai furnace for the sake of the Artificial Herrscher Project.
"Besides, your spatial transfer ability cannot lock onto things outside your range of perception, correct?"
She's really done her homework. This woman must have been planning to mess with me for more than a day or two.
The boy, forced to admit that most of his abilities were indeed sealed away, looked at the profoundly deserving-of-a-bleep Scum Maid and sighed.
Seeing the Director seemingly admit defeat, the smile on Miss Rita's face receded. There was a limit to teasing. Pushing past that limit would be unwise. It was time to pull back.
And then—
The boy who had just been sighing began to laugh.
To Miss Rita, that smile was truly chilling.
"Rita, do you think something like an electromagnetic wave can be transmitted... from another world?"
The boy, one of the few mages in the Moon World capable of deploying a Reality Marble, smiled faintly.
And then—
The landscape of his heart began to overwrite reality.