Chapter 336 - Gifter

“Halt-sama…. What in the world are you planning to do?”

I was preparing to give Akari my other present in the middle of the night when Tina suddenly called out to me.

“Akari believes in Santa, so I’m going there to give her a little gift.”

“Santa, is it?”

“Ah, Santa is the equivalent to this world’s Gifter. Akari believes that the Gifter exists. She’s already 16, but I thought it might be nice if she gets a present from the Gifter even just once.”

“...Oh, then are you going to pretend to be the Gifter, Halt-sama?”

“Yup! My Gifter is Tina, so I’m planning to be the Gifter to Akari in turn.”

“Eh, me? Ah, what do you mean?”

Hm? Does Tina think I hadn’t realized it yet?

Oh well, I guess that’s fine.

“Anyway, I’m going to Akari’s room to sneak her present in, so you go to sleep first.”

“I see. I understand. However, Halt-sama… What are you wearing?”

I was clad in a red robe trimmed with white fur and my head was covered in a red nightcap.

I tried to create the right ambiance, so I made them myself.

And yup, I also prepared a huge gift sack.

I used mind reading to check Akari’s wish and prepared it accordingly, before putting it inside the sack.

“Santa looks like this in our world.”

The Gifter was an existence that bestows gifts to good little children — that’s the only information I got about that person, so I didn’t know what get-up I should wear.

And so, I decided to pattern my clothes to the global appearance of Santa Claus in my previous world.

“How should I say it… Uhm, Halt-sama looks absolutely suspicious.”

Tina’s eyes were cold.

Yup, I understood how she felt.

If people didn’t know who Santa was and what he looked like, they would definitely find this outfit suspicious.

I had no intention of letting Akari see me, but now that I think about it, it might not be a good idea if the rest of the family also saw me wearing this. The difficulty level of this mission hiked up a notch.

“It’ll be fine, nobody will see me. Okay, gotta go!”

I started to move toward Akari’s room.

—***—

It was already deep into the night so I managed to come to Akari’s room without teleporting.

The entire mansion was brimming with my mana, so I would know right away if somebody would go out of their room to the hallway.

Nobody woke up, fortunately.

By the way, there were many traps laid out within the mansion in case outsiders tried to break in.

It would be troublesome if somebody spilled blood within the mansion, so the traps I set weren’t that dangerous. If they detected mana other than the ones I registered, the trap would teleport that person somewhere far away.

Approximately a thousand traps were set up to ensure that the burglar would be caught wherever he was in this big mansion.

Even if someone were to break into this mansion, it would be absolutely impossible for them to move through the mansion.

How about entering through the window?

Of course, that was already taken care of.

When Father prepared this mansion, the windows installed were ordinary glass in a wooden frame. In the first place, there was an extremely low chance that burglars would break in, given that the mansion was built within the grounds of Ifrus Academy of Magic.

However, I already made myself an enemy of Evil God, so there wasn’t any guarantee that monsters and other minions of the deity wouldn’t come. It would be better to make the mansion more resistant to beings other than people, so I fortified it immensely.

I poured mana into wood and metal and [Blackened] them.

The blackened wooden bough became so hard that it could even break orichalcum.

And so, I [Blackened] all the window sills within the mansion.

I also poured mana into the glasses to make them more durable.

It could probably easily withstand Youko’s laser beam, which was one tail's worth of mana.

Also, I crafted the windows so that only members of my family would be able to open and close them; it would be impossible for any monster or majin to sneak through the window.

In other words, even if the Gifter did exist in this world, there was no way he or she would be able to bring presents to my family.

And so, there’s no other option but for me to be Akari’s Gifter.

The traps don’t work on me, so I could freely roam around the mansion in the middle of the night, obviously.

Alright, let’s enter Akari’s room.

The problem was, Akari was a hero, so a surprise attack would definitely fail.

She would immediately wake up if somebody tried to approach her while she was sleeping. The stronger the opponent approached her, the greater the distance required to wake her up, so she would open her eyes even if the other party was still far from her.

By the way, the gauge for power would be the level.

I’m Level 1, so even if I were close enough to touch her, Akari wouldn’t notice.

Normal Level 1 people wouldn’t be able to hurt Hero Akari, who was already Level 300.

However, she was constantly protected by a thin magical barrier, so it would be absolutely impossible for any Level 1 to touch her.

Well, it’s not like I’m gonna attack Akari, so there was no reason for me to touch her. There shouldn’t be any problem with that, then.

I just need to place the gift under her pillow without her noticing and call it a day.

Unnoticed — there’s another problem with that.

Tet, who took on the appearance of a black cat, was Bastet, a deity in Akari's and my former world, and she had been transmigrated into this world together with Akari.

Akari had an excellent ability to detect her enemies, but Tet was far superior to her.

Every single creature in this world has mana, to a greater or lesser extent.

Tina and Tet, having excellent mana perception, could perfectly sense a person’s movements even without looking at them.

If I move, it would be a given that my mana would also move, so Tet would be able to sense that I was approaching just by that.

That’s why I didn’t want Tet to discover me.

And so, I adjusted the amount of mana released within the mansion as well as the mana within me, then I blended myself into the mana spread throughout the place.

Thanks to this trick, I proved that I could even fool Tina’s magic detection ability.

I’ve already come this far using this trick, so Tet probably hasn’t discovered me yet… I wish.

Alright, I had to open the door next.