Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 149: That’s Fair...

Things had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. Mitsuki was pregnant.

[Great... And now I can’t let anything happen to her.] I internally sighed, feeling another headache throb behind my eyes while the silence inside the shrine stretched thin, pulling taut until it felt like it might actually snap.

The relaxing scent of sandalwood incense hung in the air, doing absolutely nothing to mask the suffocating tension in the room.

Mitsuki stood across from me. Her posture went completely rigid as her dark eyes narrowed into tiny slits of pure judgment.

She processed the sheer audacity of my existence, taking a slow, deep breath before she let it out through her teeth in a sharp hiss.

"Why are you even here then?" she asked, keeping her voice tight and dangerously controlled. "Why didn’t you rush straight to the capital to report your findings? Please tell me you at least sent a Thunderbird..."

I held back a scoff, keeping my face entirely blank, watching the faint tremor in her shoulders.

[Trust me, hauling ass back to the capital and saying ’fuck this quest’ was right at the top of my to-do list. Right under ’don’t get murdered by a psychotic doomsday terror cult’.]

I hadn’t originally planned on dragging her into this mess. But after shoving my kukri into Aralath’s skull, I knew I had poked a very large, very dangerous bear.

The problem was, I hadn’t been entirely sure if I had made a permanent enemy out of Entropy yet.

Aralath could have just been a disposable edgy weirdo.

But then again, I wasn’t wired to bet my life on best-case scenarios.

So, preparing for the worst, I went snooping on a hunch.

And that hunch paid off a little too well. I confirmed their presence, tracked down their hidden base of operations, and pinned down their probable corporate front. It was a massive win for my intelligence gathering.

The downside was the getting caught part.

Slipping inside the nexus had triggered the outsiders inside the Nexus. I had managed to sprint my way out of their domain’s range, but I had no idea if the cultists holed up in the cave were alarmed.

[If they didn’t notice, then things are still somewhat stable. It’s just a matter of whether they want my head for killing Aralath. Standard revenge stuff...]

But if they did notice?

That flipped the entire board.

If they knew I was there, then they had been absolutely watching me since then.

They were tracking my movements through the forest, waiting to see my next steps, and checking to see if I’d lead them straight to my handlers.

With the intel I carried now, I was a massive liability. I became a wild variable that they simply couldn’t afford to leave running around.

Leaving straight for Shinkotsu would have been the ultimate rookie mistake. It would have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that I understood exactly what I had seen.

I let out a slow sigh, shifting my weight to lean slightly against the wooden pillar beside me.

I needed to play this right, twisting my deductions just enough to suit my purpose.

"I have reason to believe that I was detected there and being followed," I said, keeping my tone perfectly flat. "... If I had straight-up left for Shinkotsu, they would’ve probably made their move on the road, and I’d be dead. So I came here and told you all this. And that Thunderbird would easily get captured."

I paused, letting the quiet hang for a heavy second before I delivered the punchline.

"By telling you all this, I now have a better chance at survival."

"How?" Mitsuki asked as she furrowed her brows.

And the next second, her eyes widened.

I saw the realization finally crash into her, draining the color from her face.

By dumping this information in her lap, knowing full well I was probably being followed, I hadn’t just sought refuge. I had weaponized her.

And if Iron Vanguard truly had nothing to do with Entropy, I had weaponized them too.

The whole situation was now also her problem just as much as it is mine.

If the Hollow Cinder Mine wasn’t actually an Entropy front, every single person here could expect a raid tonight simply because I was standing in the room, having disclosed to Mitsuki all my findings.

I had also dragged the crosshairs directly onto the wife of Iron Vanguard’s leader.

As far as she knew, a cult could be right here in her own shadow, watching and listening to this entire conversation.

Mitsuki spun around sharply as soon as that thought hit her. Her sandals scuffed against the polished floorboards as she stared at the familiar walls of her own shrine, treating the sacred space like a loaded trap.

She scanned the room, eyes darting frantically into every shadowed corner and dark alcove. She actively searched for the faint distortion of concealment magic, staring at the wooden rafters, the spaces behind the paper screens, and the dark gap beneath the main altar.

Every flicker of mana lamps trickled into her peripheral vision, making the shadows dance and mock her rising panic.

Every creak of the wooden floorboards sent a visible shiver down her spine.

Her breath hitched in her chest as she stared at a shadow in the corner that seemed just a fraction too dark.

But nothing moved. Just this quiet rustle of the wind outside the paper walls.

But the paranoia had already taken root.

She slowly turned back to face me. Her knuckles were stark white as she clenched her fists tightly at her sides.

She still firmly believed the Iron Vanguard had absolutely nothing to do with Entropy.

And now, I hadn’t just trapped her in my mess, I had dragged her entire family into the crossfire.

If word got out that the Vanguard was now a potential target for the world’s largest terror outfit, the fallout would be catastrophic.

Just thinking about it, Mitsuki vibrated with pure, unadulterated fury.

She had offered me a place to talk, a shred of basic trust, and I had used it to staple a massive target to her back.

Mitsuki closed the distance between us with slow, deliberate steps, each footfall sounding painfully loud in the quiet room.

She didn’t yell. She didn’t curse at me. She just stopped right in my personal space, looking me dead in the eye with a glare that burned with quiet hatred.

I didn’t flinch. I just watched her, keeping my expression perfectly blank as I waited for the inevitable reaction.

And it didn’t come in words.

-Smack-!

A resounding slap echoed through the room, snapping my head to the side from the sheer force of it.

I tasted a sharp tang of copper on my tongue as the stinging heat radiated across my face.

[Yeah. That’s fair...]

I didn’t raise a hand to rub my jaw. I didn’t offer a snarky comeback or try to defend my actions.

I just slowly turned my head back, letting the red mark blossom on my cheek, and said, "Now... this whole thing can go four ways...."