Chapter 457: Kouhei Faction In Italy

Hina was sitting outside a restaurant in Italy, casually eating her breakfast while watching the people passing by on the street.

Of course, she was not in Italy because she had suddenly decided to become a tourist.

There was an actual reason for her being here.

The Kouhei Faction had recently received information about an incident involving an individual they had been trying to locate for quite some time. The information itself was far from conclusive, and there was a fairly good chance that the person they were looking for had absolutely nothing to do with what had happened.

Still, even a small possibility was worth investigating under their current circumstances.

The Kouhei Faction was already spread out across different areas, with several of its members searching for clues that might eventually lead them toward the person they were after. They were not expecting to immediately find their target simply by following one piece of information, but they had reached the point where they could not afford to ignore even the most questionable leads.

As far as they knew, this particular person might have some idea about what could be done regarding Kozue’s condition.

That alone made the search important.

Kozue had been frozen in time through Ruri’s power, which had effectively prevented her condition from worsening in the ordinary sense. However, being frozen in time did not mean that Kozue was actually okay. Her condition was being maintained through an ability rather than genuinely treated, and everyone involved understood that relying on that solution forever was impossible.

Ruri could keep Kozue frozen in time, but that did not magically solve the problem that had caused her condition in the first place.

Keeping someone in suspended animation forever was hardly a solution that anyone would want to call permanent.

Eventually, they needed something better.

That was why they were searching for this person.

The problem was that their information was frustratingly vague, and they had no guarantee that their investigation in Italy would actually lead anywhere. They could spend days searching through different locations and questioning people only to discover that the person they were after had never even been there.

Still, giving up was not an option.

While Hina was sitting there and enjoying her breakfast, she found herself staring toward an establishment located not too far away from the restaurant.

It was a church.

Hina narrowed her eyes slightly as she looked at it.

Under ordinary circumstances, a demon like her would have had absolutely no reason to approach a church voluntarily. Churches were generally not the sort of places where demons could casually stroll inside, introduce themselves, and ask whether anyone happened to know something useful.

That would have been a rather terrible approach, even by her standards.

However, they were currently investigating a possible connection involving a fallen angel, so the church was one of the places where information might naturally exist.

She had to at least check.

Besides, Hina was not exactly inexperienced when it came to dealing with dangerous situations. She knew how to keep herself from attracting unnecessary attention, and she had no intention of walking inside and announcing that she was a primordial succubus who had come looking for information.

That would have been remarkably stupid.

After finishing her breakfast, Hina remained seated for a little while longer, casually observing the surroundings and making sure that she had not attracted any unwanted attention. She eventually stood up from her seat and left a tip before stepping away from the restaurant.

She walked toward the church for a short while and gathered whatever information she could without making herself suspicious.

The investigation did not produce nearly as much information as she would have liked.

Still, she managed to get enough.

Once she was finished, Hina returned to the hotel where the Kouhei Faction had been staying.

KS Grand Hotel.

The hotel was one of the Sarushima family’s businesses in the human world, and it had turned out to be an extremely convenient place for the group to stay while they continued their investigation.

Demons maintaining businesses in the human world was hardly unusual.

In fact, there were quite a few reasons for them to do so.

Having businesses in human society gave demons access to resources that would otherwise be difficult to obtain, while also providing them with places where they could operate without constantly drawing attention to themselves. Money, information, transportation, supplies, accommodations, and various other resources could all be acquired much more easily if they had established themselves properly within human society.

For demons who frequently interacted with humans, having businesses like hotels was simply practical.

Yuuna, however, still had absolutely no idea what the "KS" in KS Grand Hotel stood for.

She had assumed that it probably had something to do with her father’s name.

Her father did not exactly have the greatest naming sense in the world.

Considering some of the other things he had named over the years, Yuuna had already learned that trying to understand his thought process could become an unnecessarily exhausting activity.

The Kouhei Faction had received permission from Kazuhiro to stay at the hotel for as long as they needed, which was particularly helpful.

There was just one inconvenient detail.

They still had school.

Fortunately, the hotel had a teleportation circle prepared for exactly this kind of situation.

Once their classes were finished, they could simply return to the teleportation circle and immediately travel back to the hotel. They did not have to spend hours on a plane, sit through airport security, or deal with the general misery that came with long-distance travel.

The convenience was almost unfair.

The only genuinely strange part was the time difference.

Since the school they attended was located on the other side of the world, their classes could end near the end of their day, and yet when they returned to Italy, it could still be morning.

It was a bizarre experience.

One moment they would be looking at the end of the school day, thinking about going home and possibly getting some rest, and then they would step through the teleportation circle and suddenly find themselves somewhere that looked as though the day had barely started.

Their bodies could adapt, but their sense of time certainly did not appreciate it.

Seeing the end of the day and then suddenly arriving somewhere where the sun was still relatively high could be surprisingly jarring. Human beings were generally accustomed to the idea that morning came before afternoon and afternoon came before night, so casually jumping backward across time zones was bound to mess with one’s perception.

Eventually, they would probably stop caring.

Still, constantly doing it could become exhausting.

Their sleep schedules could become completely fucked if they were careless, and eventually they might not even be able to distinguish between night and day properly.

Fortunately, they were demons.

Demons did not require rest in quite the same way humans did, which made their current situation considerably easier to manage. They could function for much longer periods without sleeping, and while that did not mean they were completely immune to exhaustion, they were certainly better equipped for this kind of ridiculous schedule than ordinary humans would have been.

At least they had that going for them.

There was also another matter and that was Via.

Fortunately, Via did not seem to be planning to make any moves against them anytime soon.

He had not done anything recently, and as far as Yuuna knew, there was even a possibility that Via had already returned to wherever he had originally come from.

That possibility was certainly reassuring.

However, nobody in the Kouhei Faction was foolish enough to assume that everything was suddenly safe just because Via had stopped moving.

The absence of an attack did not necessarily mean the absence of danger.

They still needed to remain cautious.

After completing her investigation, Hina finally returned to their room at the hotel.

The others were already there, waiting to hear what she had found.

Hina entered the room and looked around before speaking.

"I think the church has some information," Hina said, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. "Unfortunately, I couldn’t get much more without making myself suspicious, so I decided that it would be better to leave before someone started wondering why I was asking so many questions."

That was probably the right decision.

There was only so much information Hina could obtain before people started noticing that her questions were becoming rather specific.

She continued speaking after a brief pause.

"It seems that we were right about a fallen angel having come here and causing quite a bit of havoc," Hina explained. "The information I found seems to line up with what we heard from the news, so at least that part appears to be accurate."

The reason they had come to Italy in the first place was connected to a news report about a sudden explosion.

The explosion itself had been powerful enough to attract attention, but the cause remained unclear. The authorities had not been able to provide a satisfying explanation, and there were still several unanswered questions surrounding the incident.

One detail had particularly caught the attention of the Kouhei Faction.

A priest had died during the incident.

That alone would not necessarily have been enough to establish a connection with the person they were looking for, but combined with the other information they had gathered, it became difficult to simply dismiss.

Kouhei immediately felt that the person they were searching for might have been there.

He could not prove it.

He could not exactly probe the entire incident and magically uncover the truth either.

Still, he had a certain feeling about it.

It was not the sort of certainty that could be written down as evidence, but Kouhei had learned to pay attention to his instincts, especially after everything that had happened to him.