Chapter 65
“My adorable apprentice, Ren.”
As she lightly tapped my shoulder with the long, silver rod in her hand,
the little girl called me by my real name, which I had never told anyone.
At the sight of her, looking exactly like a miniature version of my master,
“Peep, peeeep….”
The first thing I did was—
“…Huh?”
“Why is that?”
I stretched out my leg and clamped my claws around Huey’s ankle,
“What? What grabbed my ankle… Whoaaaaah!!”
“Master!?”
I yanked him toward me, swung him at the little girl before me, and fled outside the tavern.
-Crash!
Then I kicked down and broke the tavern door,
and the moment I got outside,
“Peeyaaak―!!”
-Flap!
At the fastest speed I could manage,
I flapped my wings hard and took to the sky.
“Hic! Hic!”
As I flew upward, desperately trying to calm my trembling body,
-Tap.
“Peep―!?”
Suddenly, I felt a chill against my back.
…It was an extremely familiar sensation.
“The moment you see your master, lofty as the heavens, you attack and flee? You’ve picked up some bad habits.”
At the voice that came from above my head,
I forgot even to flap my wings as I turned around.
“Let’s start with just one hit.”
The last thing I saw was my master’s derisive smile.
-Crack―!
The impact at the crown of my head knocked me unconscious.
* *
“Ugh, that startled me. Seriously.”
“Are you all right, Master?”
Huey had accidentally broken the table and been thrown toward the little girl,
but he recalled how she had caught him one-handed despite her small frame.
“I’m all right for now, but….”
He shuddered once at the strangely chilling feeling.
“Honestly, what a handful of an apprentice.”
“Bwee….”
A little while later,
holding one of Ren’s legs, the little girl lightly bounced down from the sky,
and Huey watched her, Ren letting out bizarre noises.
“Um….”
Huey cautiously addressed her with a bewildered expression.
“Hm? Oh, excuse me. My name is Martha.”
Only then did she seem to notice Huey.
The little girl, Martha, introduced herself.
“That useless apprentice of mine sure has caused you trouble.”
After habitually tapping her shoulder with the thin silver rod as long as her forearm,
the little girl, Martha, tossed Ren toward Huey with her other hand.
“Whoa!”
Huey caught the flying Ren, handed him to Luciella, and quietly checked Ren’s condition,
“…He’s completely out of it.”
“Indeed. I’ll take care of him.”
“Please do.”
Huey watched Luciella head toward the inn with Ren for a moment,
“You’re Huey, right?”
“…How do you know my name?”
He took a wary step back as Martha scratched her head with the rod in her hand, calling him by a name he had never told her.
“Ah, don’t be so wary. I heard it from another apprentice.”
From Ren’s transformation into a harpy to everything involving Huey and Luciella,
I heard it all from my apprentice.
“Another… apprentice?”
“Yeah. We’ve already met, remember? In the desert.”
As he watched Martha hand a handful of money to the tavern owner, who had rushed out at the sudden commotion,
Huey was stunned by a fact he had never expected.
No wonder.
Among those they had met in the desert, the people who could have known that Ren’s appearance had changed
numbered only two.
“Could it be…!”
“Yeah. Sion. I took him on as an apprentice not long ago.”
She added that, unlike her first apprentice, it was nice that Sion listened well.
“Then are Mr. Sion and Ms. Chloe in this city too?”
“No. I had some other business, so I left them for a while. I’m on my way to rejoin them now.”
By then, Martha had moved to a deserted alley and continued talking.
“That aside, you followed me this far without a shred of caution.”
“Pardon?”
Before Huey had any chance to react to Martha’s sudden remark,
-Whoosh!
with a sound of something slicing through the air, Huey’s field of vision flipped.
“…Huh?”
In the instant he blinked, before he could even realize that he was lying on the ground,
a sharp killing intent pressed against the nape of his neck.
“Did you let your guard down just because I’m Ren’s master?”
Martha was already holding a long spear,
looking down at Huey with a cold expression.
“Or because I’m in the form of a little girl?”
“Um, why are you doing this….”
“Answer me.”
Sweating coldly at Martha’s appearance, Huey searched for a way out of the situation,
“How far have you gone with Ren?”
“…Huh?”
At Martha’s follow-up question,
Huey stared at her with a dumbfounded expression, as though he had lost the ability to speak.
“I’m asking how far you went with my precious Ren!”
Martha shouted, now looking close to tears.
“I-I think there’s been some misunderstanding….”
“What misunderstanding! Chloe told me everything! She said you were looking at Ren with lecherous eyes!”
“…Urk.”
Since it wasn’t exactly false,
Huey turned his gaze away from Martha,
“I finally found a child who was exactly my type and was waiting for the day I could harvest him, only for him to turn into a girl, and now some punk like you—!”
Immediately afterward, upon hearing Martha’s voice,
Huey forgot that a spearhead was pressed against his neck and looked at Martha again before speaking.
“Wait, don’t tell me the reason you took Ren in as an apprentice was…!”
“…Gasp.”
Only then did Martha realize she had misspoken and swallowed hard, but
Huey’s gaze had already changed into one reserved for an utterly irredeemable pervert.
“…That’s a misunderstanding.”
Martha sweated profusely as she belatedly tried to take back what she had said.
“What damn misunderstanding? You pervert―!”
Huey gripped a talisman he had secretly pulled from his sleeve,
then seized the spear pointed at his neck when Martha’s gaze wavered and shouted.
-Crackle!
“Eeeeyaaagh―!”
Martha screamed as a powerful current surged up the spear.
-Thud.
Seeing Martha collapse unconscious, Huey rose to his feet.
“…This is the hero’s master?”
Even after thinking it over again, it was utterly absurd.
After staring briefly at Martha as she writhed, smoke pouring from her mouth, his contempt plain on his face,
“How come there isn’t a single normal person around Ren?”
He roughly wiped away the blood trickling from his nape and started back the way he had come.
“H-heh, gyaaak….”
“Ptooey.”
Of course, before leaving, he didn’t forget to spit once at the fallen Martha.
* *
The next day.
“…….”
After gazing for a moment at the still-dark sky outside the window,
Huey turned around and looked at Martha, the unwelcome visitor who had come looking for him at dawn, his face scrunched up in displeasure.
“Um, um….”
“What is it? More importantly, how did you find my room?”
“Well, I went from inn to inn asking whether they’d seen my big brother who looked like this….”
“…Tsk.”
Huey had suddenly become a piece of trash who had abandoned his little sister in an alley at night,
and clutched the back of his neck as his blood pressure rose.
“There’s nothing to discuss. Please be on your way.”
He tried to shut the door with a swift motion, but
“W-wait!”
“Ghk, what strength…!”
Martha slipped her hand in just before the door closed and forced it open.
In the end, he was forced to allow her to intrude.
“Hoo, hoohoo… Did you think you could overpower the Tyrant Martha with brute force, just because you’re only a Gold-rank adventurer?”
“…I’m calling the authorities.”
“Eek!?”
As he looked at Martha, who had invaded his room and was swaggering around as she pleased, with contempt in his eyes,
Huey prepared to go outside.
“I have nothing to discuss with a pervert.”
“I-I told you, I’m not a pervert!”
And in response to Huey’s reaction,
Martha shouted cautiously, worried that Ren in the next room might wake up.
“Please, just listen to me for a little, just a little…!”
“…….”
She looked as though, if this continued a little longer, she might even grab his ankle and let herself be dragged around by him,
so Huey pressed a hand to his temple, looked up at the ceiling, and let out a deep sigh.
“…I doubt listening will change much.”
Even as he said this, Huey turned back from the door, sat heavily on the bed, and
Martha’s face lit up.
“So, what did you want to talk about? You pointed a spear at my throat not long ago.”
“Th-that… I have a bit of a short temper… Hehehe… Could you let it go?”
Huey couldn’t help wondering whether the girl in front of him, now desperately acting cute and wheedling him, was really the same person who had threatened his life the night before,
and merely looked at Martha with pity instead of answering.
“Ahem, anyway. I misspoke yesterday, but it’s a huge misunderstanding to call me a pervert.”
Puffing out her chest, which was so flat that even a washboard would have looked curvy, and tapping it with her fist,
Martha boldly declared that she was absolutely not the kind of pervert who kidnapped young boys, raised them, and preyed on them sexually.
Huey looked at Martha with cold, dead eyes,
“…So, what’s your type in men?”
Then he smiled brightly and asked Martha.
“Someone younger than me who’s self-conscious about being short, a little rough around the edges, but strong enough to protect me… Gasp.”
Martha answered without thinking, then abruptly froze.
“And why did you force young Ren to be a vegetarian?”
“…….”
Seeing Martha turn her gaze away and sweat profusely,
“It’s obvious even without asking. You did it so he wouldn’t grow taller.”
As though he had decided to throw away even the last shred of courtesy he had left,
Huey clicked his tongue while looking at Martha as though she were something beneath an insect.
Martha decided there was no way to escape the situation as it stood.
After a moment of thought, she took a deep breath.
“…Ehehe.”
With a cute little gesture, she winked at Huey,
“As if you aren’t….”
At Martha’s gesture,
Huey quietly muttered as he reached out and seized Martha’s face.
“Bwep.”
Naturally, he was holding the talisman he had prepared in advance.
“You really are a pervert―!!”
-Bzzzzzt―!!
“Eeeeyaaaghyaaagh―!!”
Unable to contain his anger, he shouted loudly,
then summoned lightning powerful enough to illuminate the room and electrocuted Martha without hesitation.
“Phew, phew….”
Honestly, he had expected her childlike appearance to make him feel repulsed.
But far from feeling any reluctance, he felt so refreshed that this was the first time he had ever used a technique on someone so freely.
“This is ridiculous. Seriously.”
Not wanting to think about what came next,
he tossed the blackened Martha, smoke pouring from her mouth, roughly into the hallway.
“I wonder how Mr. Sion decided to take that thing as his master.”
Huey began his day a little earlier than usual.