Chapter 7
The tree the bandit had flown into toppled over with a thunderous roar before long.
-Crack… RUMBLE!
Whew, I wonder if that guy's still alive.
This is why I didn't want to get involved.
“Oh, he's alive.”
One of the two things that had improved, at least, after I became this body was my eyesight.
Fortunately, I spotted the distant bandit still alive and writhing.
The other was obviously the strength in these legs.
Gaining one extra joint had increased my kicking power to an absurd degree.
The problem was that I had never used this joint in my life, so I couldn't control my strength.
“It's not like I wanted to turn him into that, either?”
After knocking out the other six bandits, I spoke to the two who kept looking back and forth between the bandit who had flown away and me.
I told you he would die.
“…Next time, be a little more precise with your wording.”
“I agree.”
Even the most seriously injured one—the guy I had kicked—wasn't in any danger of dying.
After gathering the unconscious bandits in one place and leaving them there, I spoke to the two who were complaining to me while we organized our luggage.
“What kind of confidence did you have to just let that one go?”
What would he have done if I really had been too weak to defend myself?
As I complained, I sensed something from the direction Huey was standing in, something I had encountered before.
Something similar to mana, but with a different quality.
I turned my head toward where Huey was standing.
“That's the kind of confidence I'm talking about.”
-Zzt!
When Huey pulled a sheet of yellow paper covered in unintelligible red symbols from inside his clothes,
white electricity appeared in an instant and surrounded me as though protecting me.
It definitely wasn't something a bunch of bandits could handle.
What was this called again…?
“Taoist arts…?”
“Oh, you know it?”
Even so, I had spent ten years working as a mercenary.
Surely I knew at least that much.
“It's the technique used by the people who live in the Demon Realm to the west.”
There are places in this world called demon realms.
Places with landscapes far removed from ordinary nature.
Places where phenomena occur that cannot be understood according to this world's common sense.
We call such a world beyond reason a demon realm.
And one such demon realm…
A place filled with threatening monsters and ferocious beasts,
was home to a small country inhabited by people who could not use mana innately but wielded wondrous techniques instead.
I couldn't remember the country's name, but I had once fought alongside someone who said he came from there, so I knew the place well enough.
Come to think of it, Huey's clothes were styled after that region, too.
“What, you came from there?”
I asked Huey while watching the yellow paper gradually turn to ash and disappear from the top down, even though it hadn't caught fire.
“I did spend four years there, at least.”
“I see.”
“Master. I'm finished cleaning up.”
“Good work. Shall we talk while we walk?”
Lucy was glaring at us with an expression that clearly showed her displeasure at having to clean up alone while we chatted among ourselves.
As though we'd planned it, Huey and I both looked away from Lucy and began walking briskly.
“Come to think of it, I have something I'm curious about regarding Ren, too.”
“Hm?”
By the time the place where we had left the bandits had disappeared from view,
Lucy opened her mouth while looking at me.
“Your legs seem incredibly sturdy.”
“Oh, these? I don't know why, but they are.”
I had learned that thanks to the slave traders who had chased after me in a frenzy to capture me and even swung swords at me in their frustration.
“Ordinary weapons can't even scratch them.”
“Oh.”
“But I can still feel pain properly, so don't try hitting them just because you're curious.”
“Tch.”
…Were you thinking of hitting me?
Somehow, she'd only brought it up after pondering it for quite a while.
Anyway, my legs were sturdy, but my sense of pain was no different from when I had been human, so I had no desire to do something like that again. It hurt.
“We should be able to see it soon.”
After walking for quite some time, with the sun high overhead,
I looked ahead at Huey's words and saw a fairly large city in the distance, complete with a gate.
“So, what's the plan going forward?”
I was going to do nothing but follow along like a sack of luggage anyway.
But I was curious all the same.
“Since it's a large city, we should stay for a while, gather information, and earn some money.”
“We ran out of money buying a mountain of spices a few days ago.”
…Come to think of it, I only had the two gold coins I'd kept in my bag as emergency funds.
“By the way, Ren.”
“Hm?”
“You can prove your identity, right?”
“If even you can, despite being from another world, I don't see why I couldn't.”
With the Adventurer's Guild's backing, getting one made was easy enough. That's all there was to it.
Choosing to work with the Adventurer's Guild really had been an excellent decision.
The gate was just ahead, so I should take it out in advance.
“Here.”
I pulled out the adventurer registration card the captain had gotten newly issued for me through the Adventurer's Guild.
It was in a small, plaque-shaped case fashioned into a necklace, which I always kept tucked between my breasts.
“Cough!”
“…Huh.”
Huey hurriedly turned his head away and coughed awkwardly, while Lucy stared downward with a vacant expression.
What was wrong with them?
“Hey, don't you have any sense of shame?”
When I looked at him in bafflement, unable to understand what had suddenly happened, Huey said that to me.
What the hell was he talking about?
“What are you talking about?”
Making such a fuss over taking a necklace out from between my breasts.
It wasn't as if I'd taken off my clothes in front of everyone.
“…Never mind. Lucy, let's stop looking and go. You'll grow someday, too.”
I'm the one who should be baffled here.
After patting Lucy on the back as she stared at me blankly with one hand over her chest, Huey moved ahead.
No, seriously, what was that?
“Master.”
“Hm?”
As I stood there dumbfounded, watching Huey,
Lucy, who had been staring at her own chest beside me, called out to Huey and ran after him.
“Drop dead.”
“Ghk!”
“Pfft! Serves you right.”
Lucy ran forward with a furious expression, then kicked the back of Huey's knee and knocked him over.
She unfastened the coffin from her back, pinned his lower half beneath it, and mounted him. The sight made me laugh aloud in satisfaction.
“Hey, hey! Don't laugh—help me!”
“Huh? What are you saying? I can't hear you.”
“Die! Die!”
“Ack! Ow! I'm sorry! I was wrong! Ow! You hit bone!!”
Since he was asking for it, I decided to let him get beaten up a little.
That tiny fist really packed a punch.
-CRUNCH!
Not long afterward, Lucy swung her fist hard, apparently intending to finish things,
but Huey bent his head to dodge it, probably acting on instinct.
“…Master. Did you just dodge that?”
“W-wait… listen to me. If that hits, I'll really die…!”
As Lucy's fist smashed into the ground and buried itself there, Huey, seeing the corner of her eye twitch, hurriedly began making excuses.
Before Huey could finish, Lucy grabbed his head with both hands.
“Hmph!”
-BANG!
“Guh!”
She grabbed his head, forced him to look at her, and then slammed his head into hers.
Whew, what a sound. I wonder if he's still alive.
“If you say something like that one more time, you'd better be prepared to face the consequences.”
“Ghk… I'm sorry….”
Apparently still alive somehow, Huey staggered to his feet with a huge bump on his forehead, while Lucy warned him in a chilling voice.
“You alive?”
I watched Lucy walk ahead with her cheeks puffed out, apparently still not finished being angry, then asked Huey, whose face had swollen to roughly twice its normal size.
“Would helping me really have hurt…?”
“That wasn't asking me to rescue you. You were asking me to get beaten up with you.”
“…Tsk.”
I knew because my master had done it to me so often.
If you teased a flat-chested woman about her breasts, you could really end up dead.
“Why do you keep choosing things that get you beaten up?”
When I asked why he would say things he didn't need to say and get beaten up for it, the answer I received was rather unexpected.
“She resembles my little sister.”
“Your little sister?”
“Not in appearance. It's just… when I look at her, I think of my little sister.”
He said he kept teasing Lucy because looking at her reminded him of his younger sister back home.
Huey said that with a bitter smile.
“Family, huh.”
I could almost understand it, yet it was a world impossibly distant from me.
“Anyway, let's go. She's making a fuss up ahead for us to hurry.”
I brushed it off vaguely and moved on.
Lucy really was standing there glaring at us as though she might eat us alive.
“…Yeah.”
“I'm going on ahead!”
Perhaps he had noticed, because Huey seemed about to say something.
I deliberately didn't listen and ran toward Lucy.
“We've only known each other for a day, but you two seem to have gotten pretty close already.”
When I came up beside her, Lucy sneered with an expression that suggested she disliked something about it.
“What, jealous?”
“N―o―o?”
Her face was scrunched up, and her voice was exaggerated.
She was jealous after all.
“Really? I was thinking I might cover you with my wings once if you were jealous.”
The moment I finished speaking, Lucy, who had been walking away from me, stopped.
“…R-really?”
She stared at my wings with trembling eyes.
Of course. Even I had to admit these wings were irresistible. How could she hold back?
“Yeah. Really.”
I knew perfectly well that she and Huey had stared at me with burning eyes last night while I lay beneath my wings like a blanket.
Of course, I had no intention of covering some male bastard with them.
Lucy stared at my wings for a while, then glanced back at Huey, who was stumbling along behind us.
She opened her mouth in a small voice.
“…Let's make a deal.”
“Hm?”
Apparently, she couldn't bring herself to say she was jealous even if she died.
So Lucy proposed a deal to me.
“From now on, I'll carry Ren's luggage, too.”
…That was tempting.
“Isn't handling your bag every time a hassle?”
“It is definitely annoying.”
Since I had no hands, opening and closing my bag every time was a nuisance.
“I'll do that, too…!”
She really wanted to try covering me with my wings that badly.
Seeing Lucy approach me with an expression that was now closer to pleading than negotiation, I chuckled.
“All right, then. Put that down.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
-THUD!
Lucy practically threw the coffin onto the ground, then I walked around behind her.
“Then, shall I?”
“Yes!”
I wrapped her in my wings like a hug.
“Gasp.”
“How is it?”
The moment I wrapped her in my wings, Lucy's face melted.
“This is paradise….”
I'm telling you, this is incredible.