We Just Beat It Down and That's the End of It, Right? (2)

“I did it... I got it!”

With a final crash, the girl brought down the rocky wall inside the dungeon. She let out a delighted cry, picked up an ore-like object glowing with a faint white light, and held it high above her head.

“Ooh, I wonder what you found?”

“Ugh, that voice...?!”

At the sound of Parna’s voice, the girl jolted, then slowly turned around with a stiff, creaking motion.

“So you were here again today. What happened to work?”

“Um... I slipped away during my break... Um, why are you here, Parna-san?”

“We were short-staffed, so I got assigned to today’s tour. But I figured you’d be here again. You usually slip away around lunchtime to come here.”

With a knowing smile, Parna leaned in close to Alice, almost looming over her. Alice averted her wide, youthful eyes, unchanged from three years ago, as cold sweat beaded on her face.

“Honestly, you used to be so much sweeter and more earnest. Now even your personality’s changed along with your looks... It makes your big sister sad. Did I raise you wrong?”

“I-I haven’t changed at all! And this is important work!”

Alice puffed out her cheeks as if protesting Parna, who sighed with a hand to her forehead.

Compared with three years ago, Alice was two heads taller. Perhaps she had simply been a late bloomer. By the time she turned sixteen, not only had she grown taller, but her figure had filled out, transforming her into a fine young woman who was no longer treated like a child wherever she went.

She still wore the ribbon Mirror had given her to hide the horns growing from the back of her head. With her beautiful features retaining a trace of their old innocence, she smiled at people in the casino every day, and, just as before, she had plenty of ardent fans.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll hear your excuses once we’re back in town. David told me to bring you back while I was at it. You should be a little more aware that you’re the casino’s poster girl... And that includes what you wear.”

As she spoke, Parna gave Alice’s outfit a disapproving sidelong glance. Alice still preferred clothes that were easy to move in, just as she had before. She wore a short-sleeved adventurer’s shirt with a light jacket over it, along with shorts and a waist pouch strapped around her hips to carry her things. She was dressed in the revealing style favored by adventurers who took on the role of thieves.

“What happened to the clothes I bought you the other day?”

“They’re hard to move around in, and I don’t really like them... I mean, um, look! I’d feel bad if I got them dirty, Parna-san!”

“Sigh... Well, fine. Just don’t make everyone worry too much, okay? The Ancient Cave is still a dangerous place.”

“I’m fine. I’m a demonkin, and besides, I can fight just fine now.”

As she spoke, Alice flexed her arm with a determined little grunt. Parna looked utterly exasperated at the sight.

In fact, Alice had reached level 118, growing strong enough to rival Rex and Kururu as they had been.

Demonkin levels rise automatically as their bodies grow. Conversely, they can’t raise their levels themselves, but when you consider that Alice had gone from level 23 to this in just three years, it’s almost enough to make you feel foolish for trying to grow stronger through your own efforts.

“Monsters aren’t the only things that might attack you, you know? You were kidnapped by one of your rabid fans once, and that was quite an ordeal.”

Two years ago, Alice was kidnapped by a devoted fan who had visited the casino. Fortunately, the kidnapper had acted out of an excess of affection, and Alice wasn’t harmed. The incident was resolved in less than half a day thanks to David, Takako, and Menou, who were all terrifyingly furious.

But ever since that incident, Parna had feared that someone like her former self might appear. She decided she needed to become strong enough to protect Alice, no matter what.

That was what had led to Parna’s current level.

“If anything, the person who had a harder time wasn’t me, but the one who kidnapped me... But I guess you’re right. You never know what might happen. Sorry for worrying you, Parna-san.”

“Well, I understand how stifling it is to live with someone watching over you all the time. You’ve gotten stronger lately, so I’ve been a little more lenient, but you’ve been sneaking off without permission way too much. ...I don’t mind if you sneak off, but next time, tell someone before you go, okay?”

Parna sighed as she spoke, then ruffled Alice’s hair. Parna knew better than anyone how dangerous the thoughts people might harbor could be. Alice sincerely regretted worrying her, but she was also happy that Parna cared enough to worry so much. “Okay,” she replied with a smile.

“Come to think of it, you said you found something earlier... What did you find?”

“Oh, this? It’s a spawn block! It’s a super-rare item, freshly made and not yet capable of spawning monsters! I finally found one!”

Alice thrust the faintly glowing ore in front of Parna, showing it off with a “Ta-da!”

A spawn block was originally a stone that absorbed demonkin magic and used it to create monsters. But a newly made spawn block had different properties: it absorbed demonkin magic and transformed it into something else, something harmless.

The white cloth wrapped around Alice’s horns was also made from spawn block material. It was thanks to that that Alice could go about her daily life without releasing magic into the area around her.

“So you’ve been sneaking off to look for something like that all this time. Why not just buy one instead of searching for it yourself?”

“I can’t! They’re expensive, and I don’t have that much allowance! Even though they’ve started circulating more widely because of the increased interaction with demonkin, they’re still really hard to find, so one costs two gold!”

“Huh... That’s pretty expensive. I never looked into it, so I had no idea. So what are you planning to do with it? Sell it? You said this was work, so are you planning to make money from it?”

“No. I’m going to use this to make an accessory to wrap around my horns. Something cool and cute that demonkin would want to wear.”

Seeing Alice’s bashful smile, Parna instantly understood what she meant.

“Because it’s their dream?”

“Yeah. It’s my dream, too.”

“Well, that certainly counts as important work.”

Even now that humans and demonkin were interacting more frequently, not every demonkin wore cloth made from spawn block material to suppress their magic. In fact, most of them didn’t.

There were various reasons. Some simply couldn’t afford it because it was too expensive, while others argued that they didn’t see why they should have to wrap themselves in a completely unimaginative piece of cloth just for humans.

For demonkin like that, Alice was working to develop accessories that were easier to wear than the existing cloth-like items, helping bring about a world where humans and demonkin could live together without discrimination.