"Yes, the mission came first!"
Although Theresa liked the scenery before her, she had not forgotten her mission. Resolving the Honkai energy incident was the top priority.
The four crossed the torii gate at the entrance. Before them lay a front courtyard of more than a hundred square meters, filled with all sorts of things—quite a few stone statues and large wooden barrels whose purpose was unknown.
All around the courtyard and at the entrance to the shrine's front hall stood many small fox statues, each two or three feet tall.
This was not one of those tiny shrines smaller than a hundred square meters. Its grounds were much larger than an ordinary school's, with seven or eight different buildings. Naturally, the closest one was the front hall.
However, the front hall's doors appeared to be shut. Himeko and the others approached and tried pushing them, but they would not budge.
"Is anyone there?"
"Is anyone inside?"
Theresa knocked on the doors and shouted loudly inside.
But after calling for quite a while, there was no response. Still, with things being so dangerous now... even if someone was here, they might already have run into trouble.
"It won't open. It's locked. It doesn't seem like there's anyone here either. What do we do now?"
Theresa gave up calling out and turned to Himeko.
"No choice. We'll have to force it open..."
After several seconds of silence, they could not think of any other way. But simply turning around and leaving was impossible, so all that remained was to break down the doors.
"Force it open? Smash it down?"
Theresa picked up Judah.
"Actually, there's no need to go through all that trouble. I can open a portal and take us directly inside the temple."
Seeing Judah in Theresa's hands, Sirin