“Lion—” A figure of crimson, dazzling as open flame, tore through the afternoon bustle of the street.
Along with the girl’s spirited shout, that sun-bright blossom came hurtling like a starving tiger at the youngest sister of the Familia, who happened to be standing alone on the road.
Unfortunately, the elf lady who had been successfully ambushed by a friend only a short while ago clearly had no intention of tripping over the same stone twice.
Having anticipated it, the blonde elf slid a light step to the side, every motion true to the name Gale, slipping past those outstretched arms by a hair’s breadth with perfect grace.
In the same motion her gloved, slender hands came forward smooth as running water and planted the paper bag in her arms — still breathing out its tempting aroma of fried potato — squarely into the attacker’s embrace.
“It’s rare to see you out here on your own, Lion.” [Crimson Blossom] Alise Lovell, LV3 adventurer and captain of the Astrea Familia, showed not a trace of embarrassment at her failed ambush.
She simply hugged the paper bag tighter and swept the street with curious, bright red eyes.
“Speaking of which, isn’t today the day Adi from the Ganesha Familia joins us for the joint patrol?
Where’s that clingy, adorable, absolutely transcendent beauty who’s just like me?” “…I genuinely can’t tell whether you’re praising Adi or bragging about yourself.” “Alise.
Adi has already been here.” Ryuu let out a quiet sigh, lifted a finger, and pointed with a perfectly flat expression at the cartoon-printed paper bag in Alise’s arms.
“That’s what she left behind.” “…Eh?” Alise blinked.
For a full three seconds her gaze traveled back and forth between the Jyaga Maru Kun in her arms and Ryuu’s finger.
Then, as though she had just grasped something of world-shaking importance, the captain of the Familia of justice sucked in a sharp breath, her face contorting into the most theatrical horror imaginable.
“Wh—what—!!
Without any of us knowing, she secretly mastered transformation magic this advanced?!
Turning from an adventurer graced with a blessing into the most beloved Jyaga Maru Kun in all of Orario…” “Adi Varma, what a terrifying child—” “…Alise.” Confronted with her disgraceful captain, who was putting on this melodrama in broad daylight while clutching a bag of fried potato balls, the blonde elf pressed a hand to her forehead and sighed.
Nothing new.
Emotional state stable.
“Those are the Jyaga Maru Kun Adi bought to treat us.
Please stop saying things in the middle of the street that invite misunderstanding.” “Ahaha, I knew it~ If the world lost a beauty like Adi, all of Orario would be in tears.” Knowing exactly when to stop, Alise dropped the grief-stricken face in an instant and put her bright, breezy smile back on.
She fished a Jyaga Maru Kun out of the bag, tossed it into her mouth, and asked around her chewing, “So, jokes aside.
Lion, if Adi came by, then where did she run off to?” “She said something urgent had come up inside her Familia, so she went on ahead.” Ryuu recalled the hurried figure of her friend’s back as she left, and her brows drew together slightly.
“What’s strange, though, is that the direction she took wasn’t toward the Ganesha Familia’s home base.
It was toward the Dungeon.” “The Dungeon?” At that word, the carefree look on Alise’s face gave way to a rare flicker of trouble.
She scratched at her long fiery-red hair and sighed with a touch of resignation.
“That makes tracking her down a whole lot more of a headache.” “Tracking her down?
Alise, did you come all the way out here because you have urgent business with Adi?” Ryuu had picked out the crux of her captain’s words at once.
“No, I’m not the one who wants her.” Alise spread her hands, a wry, faintly sympathetic smile on her lips.
“It’s that girl’s big sister.
Captain Shakti Varma, the [Elephant Staff] of the Ganesha Familia, is turning the whole city upside down rounding people up.” “The Ganesha Familia, top to bottom, is just about going out of its mind right now.” “Five days from now, every last member of the Ganesha Familia is setting out on a large-scale [Expedition].” “And on top of that, it’s the first time the Guild has handed the Ganesha Familia a special mission directly — one that’s compulsory.” —————— The deeper Adi descended into the Dungeon, the more clearly she felt the wrongness rising from far beneath her feet.
She heard monsters roaring.
She felt faint tremors traveling up through the passage from below.
Half wondering whether her senses were playing tricks on her, the girl knitted her slender blue brows.
There was no mistaking it.
Somewhere ahead of her, a battle was raging at an intensity that had no business existing on the upper floors.
Adi didn’t hesitate, and she didn’t bother trying her luck at the hidden pantry where the two of them had first spoken.
She followed the source of the tremors and headed straight down.
Her instincts told her that at the eye of that storm would be the very fellow she couldn’t stop worrying about.
“But… can a single Goblin really kick up a commotion this big?” As she saw it, a rational Artorias counted as quite strong for a Goblin — but still only a somewhat troublesome monster by upper-floor standards.
And this was nothing the upper floors should be capable of producing, was it???
Carrying that doubt, she pressed downward, and the eerie sights along the way made her heart sink further with every step.
The trip from the third floor to the seventh was completely unobstructed.
Not once did Adi run into a single monster blocking her path.
The interior of the Dungeon, which spat out monsters every hour of every day, was holding an unnatural silence.
As if some enormous invisible hand were working the strings from behind the scenes, deliberately refusing to let anything spawn at this particular moment.
“How strange.” She hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of him yet, but the abnormalities kept multiplying.
Then, before she even reached the floor she was aiming for, the massive commotion from earlier fell silent.
Standing at the mouth of the passage, Adi found herself looking at absolute wreckage.
The air still hung thick with the stench of blood and scorching.
Battle scars covered the crystal-blue walls of the corridor, and the floor was carpeted with magic stone dust that hadn’t fully weathered away.
There was no question about it — this was the site of a savage fight that had ended only moments ago.
By the time she got here, the two sides had long since settled which of them would walk away.
“Looks like I’m too late.” Oddly enough, taking in the leftovers of the battle set Adi somewhat at ease.
This chaotic, formless carnage in front of her plainly couldn’t be Kaguya’s handiwork.
Her friend had been LV3 for a long time now, and her swordsmanship had long since crossed into the realm of the uncanny.
There was no way she would create a mess like this on an upper floor where caution was entirely unnecessary.
An optimistic thought surfaced in Adi’s mind.
She hadn’t passed Kaguya on her way down, after all.
Could it be that Kaguya had never found Mister Artorias, that her investigation had come up empty, and that she was already on her way to the middle floors to collect the rare materials she needed?
However, when the newly relaxed Adi rounded the next corner with no mental preparation whatsoever, the sight that crashed into her vision was one she had never witnessed before in her life.
“Ho ho.
Didn’t expect a convenient ability like this out of you.” “This fluffy texture is honestly addictive.
Why don’t you just quit living in the Dungeon and come be a mascot in our Familia instead?” “Hey, I told you to stop squirming.
A bit more to the left — your ears are blocking my view.” Her friend, the black-haired Far East beauty in the red kimono, Gojouno Kaguya, had a rabbit perched on top of her head.
A white Stitch Rabbit, an ordinary monster native to this floor.
A creature utterly irreconcilable with humankind, sitting brazenly atop the glossy black hair of an LV3 high-ranking adventurer while she toyed with it to her heart’s content.
Kneaded into one shape after another by slim fingers, the white rabbit seemed to have long since abandoned resistance, sighing with a range of expression no ordinary monster ever displayed.
It let those delicate fingers rub gently beneath its jaw, its red eyes quivering every time she picked up the pace, its long ears folding shut together all the way down to the roots.
Somehow, in that blissful gaze, one could read a distinct trace of a creature that had given up on life.
No, no, that wasn’t the point!
That rabbit was Mister Artorias, wasn’t it?
It absolutely had to be Mister Artorias, right?
Why had he turned into a Stitch Rabbit, and why was Kaguya wearing him on her head???
“K-Kaguya-chan?!” Finally recovering her voice, Adi slapped both cheeks hard, trying to force herself calm before she spoke.
“What… what is going on here?!
And this monster is—?” If at all possible, she still wanted to cover for the fact that Artorias existed.
“Yo.
If it isn’t Adi.” Kaguya turned her head lazily at the sound, showing not the slightest fluster at Adi’s arrival.
If anything she pointed up at the rabbit like someone showing off a new pet.
“Relax.
This guy’s already talked with me plenty, and I know you helped him out back on the upper floors.” “So you can drop the act of pretending you’ve never met him.” Hearing that, Adi strode forward and looked the two of them over carefully.
Only after confirming that neither was missing an arm or a leg did she pat her chest and let out a long breath.
“You scared me half to death.
I was sure you’d cut Mister Artorias down on the spot without a single word, Kaguya-chan.” “Hah?
I’m not that pigheaded, germ-fearing elf.
What sort of person do you take me for?” “When I found him, this guy was fighting some mysterious Enhanced Species several times his own size.” Kaguya curled her lip in disdain, though her hands never stopped working the rabbit’s fur.
“I’ll admit, at first I really did plan on sending him off to his next life together with that Killer Ant.” Recalling the earlier battle, her eyes turned a shade more serious.
“He was pressed right up against that Enhanced Species, well inside the range of my [Five Lights].
Wiping them both out in one stroke would have been child’s play.” In the end, though, she hadn’t struck.
“But in the way that one moved, I did catch sight of something interesting.” “His form was crude as hell and his technique was a complete disaster, but there was that look in his eyes at the brink — the willingness to stake everything — and the sharpness to turn his surroundings into a kill.” Green as he was, he was genuinely a piece of rough jade worth waiting on.
A smile of appreciation tugged at Kaguya’s mouth.
“That kind of thing isn’t something your run-of-the-mill beast can possess.
It would’ve been a bit of a shame to bury him alongside a monster whose only virtue was its size.” “And more than that — once I actually spoke with him, I found out he’s far more entertaining than I ever imagined.” Remembering his grand declaration about learning her Five Lights, Kaguya felt the corners of her mouth lift again.
“Eh, so something that dangerous happened before I got here.” Having heard her out, Adi looked up at the trembling rabbit on Kaguya’s head, and her gaze grew even gentler.
“Um, Kaguya-chan.
Could you… give Mister Artorias back to me for a little while?
There are some things I’d like to say to him.” “Give him back?
Adi, since when did you become this guy’s guardian?” Kaguya clicked her tongue, but she said nothing further and agreed readily enough.
With one last reluctant squeeze of that soft white fur, the Far East beauty seized the rabbit off her head and tossed it straight at Adi.
“Here.
Catch.” “Waah — Kaguya-chan, be a little gentler!” Adi scrambled to snatch the rabbit out of midair and clutched it to her chest, her face full of concern.
“What’s there to worry about?
He’s not one of those pampered little pets from the surface.” Kaguya folded her arms and stepped back, settling in with the look of someone about to enjoy a show.
“With a body like his, he’d have been fine even if you’d dropped him.” “Even if he doesn’t get injured, it still hurts!” Adi sighed in resignation, then lowered her head toward the fluffy white creature in her arms.
This was the first time she had ever seen Artorias’s transformed shape.
“I had no idea.
Mister Artorias, you can change form?” “Is that magic?
Or an ability you had from the very beginning?” There was a faint, barely detectable excitement in her voice as her fingers brushed lightly over the rabbit’s soft fur.
“When Lion told me Kaguya-chan had taken that request too, I really was worried about you.
I kept imagining you getting sliced clean in half.” “I never dreamed the two of you would get along this well.” It was the first time she had ever seen Kaguya set aside her Yamato Nadeshiko performance in front of someone outside their Familia, that completely unguarded.
“There’s a lot I want to ask, too.
What happened just now.
Whether you’re hurt anywhere.” As she said it, Adi’s gaze began to wander, a faint flush rising in her cheeks, something hard to put into words glimmering in those deep blue eyes.
She fell silent for a moment.
Then, as if resolving herself to something, the girl drew a deep breath and finally gave voice to the true feeling she had been hiding all this time.
“But before any of that — could you… let me touch your rabbit ears first?” The girl’s eyes had locked, unwavering, onto the Stitch Rabbit’s long, snow-white ears.
“?” “Really, just one touch.
Just for a moment, that’s all.” “It’s fine, I’ll be extremely, extremely careful.
I’d never let Mister Artorias have a bad experience.” Watching that expectant face loom larger and larger, and those two hands twitching with barely contained eagerness… The white rabbit clamped tight against her chest snapped its ruby-red eyes wide, long ears shooting upright in alarm.
Artorias, who had held his silence through all of it, frowned.
Something told him this was not going to be simple.
____ 👻🔥Walnut-chan 😉 — DanMachi: But I am a Monster — live on The_Mikudayo 📚 Tired of waiting?
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