“Goddess, why are you in my room?!”
Dio pushed open the wooden door to the room Demeter had assigned him, fully intending to get some much-needed rest.
Instead, he found the goddess lying comfortably on her side across his bed!
She wore a thin silk nightgown, one elbow propped against the pillow while her other hand scrolled through a manga on the smartphone he had given her.
Her posture was so relaxed that she looked completely at home.
Dio froze in the doorway, head tilted in utter confusion as he stared at the uninvited goddess.
“Because this is my room, of course.
Why wouldn’t I be here?”
Demeter did not even look up from the screen.
She spoke as though Dio were the intruder rather than the other way around.
“Wasn’t this the room you gave me?”
Dio stepped inside and glanced around.
The room was small but clean and neatly furnished, with a wooden bed, a desk, and a wardrobe.
Through the window, he could see the flowers and herbs growing in the Familia’s courtyard.
He distinctly remembered Demeter handing him the key half an hour ago with a cheerful smile and said, ‘This will be your little home from now on.’
“That’s right,” Demeter replied.
“Which means we’ll be living together.”
She finally lowered the phone and looked up at him with the sort of smile that immediately made Dio uneasy.
“Aren’t you happy?”
Dio stared at her.
The thin silk nightgown revealed just enough beneath the dim glow of the oil lamp to emphasize every generous curve of her figure.
Combined with the playful amusement in her eyes, the sight immediately sent his thoughts wandering somewhere they absolutely should not go.
He swallowed.
‘No.
No, no, no!’
He shook his head furiously inside his own mind.
This was a goddess.
This was Demeter.
She might not have been as openly dangerous as Freya in the original story, but she was certainly no harmless fool.
More importantly, she was obviously teasing him.
If he actually let his face betray what he was thinking, there was no telling how she might torment him afterward.
Dio raised a hand and slapped himself across the face.
The sharp crack echoed through the quiet room.
Heat flared across his cheek, but the pain immediately cleared his head and scattered every inappropriate thought.
“Seriously, Goddess, what are you trying to do?”
He held his reddened cheek and stared at her helplessly.
A flicker of admiration passed through Demeter’s eyes when she saw how decisively he had brought himself back under control.
The boy had far more restraint than she had expected.
Most mortals would have lost their heads if a goddess appeared before them in a nightgown and announced that they would be sharing a room.
Dio had been briefly distracted, but he had immediately used pain to shock himself back to his senses.
That level of self-control was rare among the children of the Lower World.
She might have respected him for it, but that did not mean she intended to stop teasing him.
“I’m keeping an eye on you, obviously.
I can’t let you escape!”
Her smile was sweet enough to be deeply unsettling.
“You’re the precious little traveler from another world I worked so hard to catch.
What am I supposed to do if you slip away while I’m asleep?”
“Escape?
Where would I even go?”
Dio rolled his eyes.
“I don’t know my way around, I don’t have any money, and the only reason I can understand anyone is because of my Skill.
If I ran away now, I probably wouldn’t survive three days.”
“You never know.”
Demeter gently wagged one slender finger.
“What if your Dimensional Gate suddenly becomes available again?
You might wake up in the middle of the night, open it, and disappear before I even notice.
Then all my effort would have been wasted.”
Dio opened his mouth to argue, only to realize that her concern was not entirely unreasonable.
He really did possess the Dimensional Gate, and its cooldown lasted thirty days.
He had only used it earlier that day, but once those thirty days passed, Demeter had no guarantee he would not flee the first chance he got.
From her perspective, watching him closely made perfect sense.
“Fine.
Then how are we dividing the room?”
Dio sighed in resignation.
“Do you really need to ask?”
Demeter patted the mattress beneath her as though the answer should have been obvious.
“You sleep on the floor, and I sleep in the bed.
A goddess can hardly be expected to sleep on bare floorboards.”
Dio stared at her in silence.
‘Of course.’
The corner of his mouth twitched, but he could not be bothered to argue.
Having a roof over his head in Orario was already more than he could have hoped for.
He would not have to sleep in an alley or crawl into the sewers for shelter.
Besides, Demeter was a goddess who had accepted a suspicious stranger from another world into her Familia and agreed to protect his secrets.
Compared to that, surrendering the bed was hardly worth complaining about.
“Fine, fine.”
Following Demeter’s directions, Dio retrieved a spare mattress and bedding from a cabinet in the corner, then began arranging them on the floor.
As he worked, he tried to look on the bright side.
Things could have been much worse.
He had somewhere to sleep, even if it was the floor.
He had a room, even if he had to share it with a goddess.
He would also have food, even if Demeter was currently paying for everything.
Once the bedding was ready, Dio checked the backpack and weapons he had placed against the wall.
Only after confirming that everything remained untouched did he finally relax.
“By the way, Goddess.”
He turned toward Demeter, who had already resumed reading manga on the phone.
“Are you seriously planning to sleep in the same room as me every night?
Won’t the other members of your Familia think that’s strange?”
“What is there to find strange?”
Demeter did not bother looking up.
“I’m their goddess.
What I say goes.
Besides, I would be far more worried if a newcomer like you slept alone.
This way, if you start doing anything suspicious in the middle of the night, I can stop you immediately.”
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
Dio muttered weakly.
Demeter looked up and smiled brightly.
“A boy from another world with a Skill like [Slaanesh].
Isn’t that description vivid enough?”
Dio decided not to respond.
At this rate, she was going to irritate him to death before the Dungeon ever got the chance.
He removed his outer clothing, leaving only a thin undershirt, then climbed beneath the blankets he had spread across the floor and wrapped himself tightly inside them.
The floor was hard, but the bedding was thick enough to make it tolerable.
The entire day had been overwhelming!
He had emerged from the Dimensional Gate inside Demeter’s bathroom, been caught on the spot, forced into joining her Familia, discovered his ridiculous Magic and Skill, and then negotiated an agreement with a goddess who seemed determined to keep him under constant supervision.
His emotions had been dragged from one extreme to another so many times that he still had not fully recovered.
Still, whatever else had happened, he was safe for the moment.
Dio closed his eyes and felt the tension slowly leave his body.
From the bed came the faint sound of Demeter tapping and swiping across the phone, occasionally accompanied by a quiet gasp of surprise whenever she reached an especially exciting part of the story.
Dio ignored her and gradually sank into sleep.
He was exhausted.
Using the Dimensional Gate had drained him physically, while Demeter had nearly frightened years off his life several times in a single day.
Add in their tense negotiation over leaving this world, and both his body and mind had reached their limit.
Before long, his breathing became slow and even as he fell into a deep sleep.
What Dio did not realize was that the Magic known as [Dreamwalker] had activated on its own.
Deep within his consciousness, a gentle light began to gather and swirl, like a seed quietly sprouting in the darkness.
It grew brighter, slowly shaping the vague outline of an entirely new world.
Dio was drawn toward it without ever waking, sinking into a dream he had neither created nor expected.
Something was waiting for him there.
Or perhaps someone.
On the bed, Demeter finally lowered the phone and turned her gaze toward Dio who’s already fast asleep on the floor.
A thoughtful smile appeared on her lips.
“[Dreamwalker] activated on its own…?”
Her voice was barely more than a whisper as her eyes grew serious.