The intensity of his humiliation had triggered a limit off. Of all the…!
Ever so surely, the zooming boy grew smaller and smaller in her sights.
“—Unleashed beam of light, limbs of the holy tree. You are the master archer. Loose your arrows, fairy archers. Pierce, arrow of accuracy!!” It was the fastest she’d ever cast a spell in her entire life.
“Lefiya, no! What the hell are you thinking—?!”
“You’re gonna kill him!!”
“He’ll burn right up!!”
The other guards shouted as they began to catch up with her.
The magic she was currently weaving was easily at a Level 5 with the pure, unadulterated rage built up behind it, and what was worse, it was a homing spell. It would kill him instantly.
The demi-human girls tried desperately to save the Level-2 white rabbit from a swift and certain death. They clung to her waist, her shoulders, her back in an attempt to restrain her, just in time for her to watch the boy disappear completely into the trees in front of her.
“WUUUUAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHH!!”
The roar that ripped its way out of her lungs echoed throughout the entire forest.
“That damn brat saw Miss Aiz and the others in the bath!”
“I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill him, I’m gonna kill hiiiiim!!”
News of Bell’s peeping incident spread across the camp like wildfire.
The men and women of Loki Familia instantly took up arms, glaring at him with bloodred rage. They had a new monster to kill. Even those still bedridden from poison rose to their feet like bloodthirsty zombies, driven by their unbridled fury.
The camp was roaring with battle cries as the adventurers readied themselves for war.
“What the hell?…Somethin’ happen while I was away?” Tsubaki mused, having just returned from hunting. Even she was thrown for a loop by the murderous aura occupying the camp.
“I’d quite like to know myself…” Riveria closed her eyes, massaging her temple.
“Night” had fallen on the Dungeon.
Even as the light of the crystals faded and a curtain of darkness blanketed the campsite, its inhabitants were wide awake, fueled by their thirst for blood. The sight of all those ferocious visages in the flickering light of the magic-stone lanterns was enough to make Hestia and the other visitors gulp in fear.
“Bell’s really done it this time…”
“He is a man, after all…”
Welf and Tsubaki murmured quietly among themselves once they’d gotten wind of what had happened.
“What the hell were you thinking, Hermes? Egging Bell on like that?!”
“C-calm down, Hestia. My pride as a god wouldn’t allow me to lead Bell down any path aside from that of righteousness…”
Meanwhile, Hermes was currently being restrained in another corner of the camp.
Asfi had sensed right away that it was him lurking up in the trees with Bell, and she’d gone after him at once, leaving him no time to escape. Her ogre-like interrogation powers—the same that had earned her the alias Perseus—quickly drew out the unsavory scheme of her patron deity. Bell, himself, had attempted to thwart it, but it had ultimately led to the boy’s participation and untimely fall into the pool itself.
“Don’t imply Bell actually wanted to go along with your sick plan!” Hestia shot back, her twin pigtails flying as she delivered a sharp smack! to Hermes’s oh-so-innocently smiling face. “I just knew something felt off about this whole thing…!” she continued, positively bristling. She hadn’t been able to wrap her head around how on earth her weak-willed follower could have performed such an audacious act, but it all made sense now.
“Any last words, Hermes?”
“—To peep is to love, Hestia!”
“Oh, go rot in hell!”
“GrrrrrrruuuuuAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHH!!”
Asfi’s punishment fell swift and sure. The honor of her familia was at stake.
Hestia and the rest of Loki Familia could only shudder in horror as the woman inflicted a terrifying beating, her face red with shame and anger.
“So it was nothing but gods stirring up trouble after all.”
“Really? Then Little Argonaut wasn’t actually coming to hang out with us?”
“So…where did he go?” Aiz mused, turning her gaze away from Tione, Tiona, and the currently tortured Hermes to survey the campsite.
Bell had yet to return from his run out of the forest, his location currently unknown.
No one at the camp had seen him since he’d left.
As late as it was now, Aiz couldn’t help but worry…though that thought was forgotten for a moment when a figure suddenly appeared from the direction of the seventeenth-floor passageway.
“Yeesh! The hell is all this racket?!”
“Hm? Oh! Bete!”
The werewolf scowled as he took in the sight of his strangely murderous familia members and the suffering screams of one unlucky god. A backpack stuffed full of vials hung from his right shoulder.
He’d just returned from the surface with all the antivenin he could find.
“Geez, you’re late! We’ve been wastin’ away here!”
“I’d like to see you make the trip, huh, you damn ingrate!”
“Captaaaaaaaain! Bete’s back!”
“Oh, uh…welcome back…”
Almost instantly, the pestilential atmosphere of the camp turned to flurried confusion as everyone rushed to heal the afflicted.
Vials of antivenin passed from hand to hand before being rushed to tents to be administered to their bedridden companions. The moment the rather vile-smelling purplish liquid touched their tongues, their panting gasps and raspy breaths stilled, eliciting cries of joy from the too few overworked healers. Everyone in the camp began clasping their hands in relief at the improved condition of their peers.
“Thank god! Everyone’s gonna be all right!…Guess ol’ Grumpy Wolf really can pull through every now and then.”
“Heh. Well, at any rate, we can rest easy for now.”
Tiona and Tione exchanged smiles as they watched their female companions grin in their sleep in blessed relief from the pain. Even Hestia and the rest of her party lent a hand to hasten the healing efforts.
“Good work from you, Bete. You really saved us.”
“Yer clothes are an unsightly mess. Ye gods, lad! Did ye not stop for even a moment’s rest?”
Riveria and Gareth both chuckled as they turned their attention toward the werewolf, who simply growled in return. “Aw, can it, you old fogies. Finn, I’m hittin’ the sack!”
Bete didn’t even throw them a second glance as he stormed into one of the tents.
“No worries. Get some rest…and thank you, Bete.” Finn folded his arms, offering a mixture of sympathy and appreciation as he watched Bete collapse onto one of the beds.
The stifling cloud of gloom that had been permeating the entirety of Loki Familia’s camp since they’d arrived finally began to dissipate.
“…Hey, um, Lefiya?”
“…”
Despite the sudden excitement overtaking the campsite, Lefiya didn’t seem to have noticed, simply tending to the sick in silence by herself in one of the tents.
Aiz called out to her as she passed by with another handful of antivenin but received no response. The group of hume-bunny girls Lefiya was currently administering the medication to shuddered.
Why does this feel…familiar…? Aiz thought to herself, cold sweat dribbling down her temple as she felt the dark miasma surrounding the elven maiden.
There was something foreboding about this. Like the calm before the storm.
…He still hasn’t come back.
They’d already finished administering the rest of the antivenin, and a sense of peace had befallen the campsite.
Aiz let her gaze travel toward the darkened ceiling, which was hidden behind a shroud of leaves and branches.
This time belonged to the mons
ters of the forest. The darker it became, the harder it was to see and the greater the danger. A danger that was all the more real for a lone upper-class adventurer who’d only just reached Level 2. Perhaps he was already lost, roaming the forest aimlessly in search of a way out.
Aiz knew sending out a search party now was both reckless and pointless. The forest was too vast and the boy far too small…and yet. As suppertime approached, she couldn’t help but worry that she should be out there searching for him.
“Thank you so much, Miss Lyu!”
“No worries. I’ll take my leave now.”
—It was then that it happened.
The moment Aiz turned in the direction of the waterfall pool, Bell and another adventurer appeared from among the trees.
It was someone Aiz was sure she’d seen before…someone from the rescue party, wearing a mask.
At dinner the night before, yes. Aiz was sure she’d seen them talking to Bell. They’d come together with Hestia and the others, an enigma enshrouded in that hood and long cape they never seemed to remove. Even now, their face was concealed. The slim frame adorned in shorts and long boots beneath lightweight battle clothes, however, appeared decidedly female.
Identity aside, it would seem as if this girl had located the wandering Bell and brought him home.
After exchanging what appeared to be a few words with the boy, she returned silently to the forest.
Aiz let out a sigh of relief.
No sooner had the breath passed her lips, however, than the bedraggled Bell started his way toward her with a sigh of his own, gaze rising to meet hers…and their eyes locked.
“Ah.”
“Oh.”
They verbalized in unison.
Twin blushes rose to their faces, almost as though they were looking in a mirror.
The scene from only a few hours earlier replayed in both their minds. The thought of him seeing her naked was enough to make Aiz’s cheeks radiate heat; meanwhile, the thought of seeing Aiz naked was enough to make Bell’s face glow red up to his ears.
“…I, uh…erm…”
She squirmed, rubbing her hands together as her eyes dropped to her feet.
This loss of composure wasn’t like her. She was so flustered, she couldn’t even look Bell in the face. She’d never felt like this before. Not only her cheeks but her whole body burned, every celch of her skin turning a fierce, fiery scarlet.
The boy was the same.
Even more rattled than Aiz, he was sweating enough to form a salty lake beneath his feet, until suddenly—he threw himself forward onto the ground, lying prostrate.
“I’m…I’m so sorrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!” he screamed.
It was a shameless apology from every ounce of his being.
Aiz was stunned into silence. Quickly she attempted to put a stop to the full-bodied apology. The boy’s head was already bleeding from having hit the ground a little too hard.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” he continued somewhat deliriously as Aiz pulled him up and onto his feet with a wobble. Red still stained his cheeks, and he lowered his head so that his white bangs hid his eyes.
The sight of his continued shame was enough to bring the flush back to her own cheeks.
“It’s…it’s fine…really…okay?” she assured him, voice sisterly.
“O-okay…” Bell croaked, his head drooping.
And so they stood there, blushing violently, facing each other but unable to even glance up.
Time passed slowly after that.
Bell made his rounds, apologizing to each and every one of the girls who’d been present in the bathing pool. One by one. With the utmost civility. And fervently.
He spent so long on his knees, it was a surprise he didn’t dig himself a hole, and at the sight of him throwing himself on the ground again and again in Far Eastern prostration, none of the girls could stay mad at him for long. When they additionally took into account the extenuating circumstances involving a certain god who’d instigated the entire affair, there was no way they could punish him beyond a harshly worded warning.
Tiona and the others weren’t bothered in the least by what had happened, and they simply brushed it off with a laugh. Asfi, on the other hand, actually turned Bell’s apology around, apologizing to him instead. His patron deity, Hestia, toed the border between lunacy and acumen as she gave him one of her thorough sermons, while Hermes, worn to the bone and wheezing softly, simply frightened Bell away with a hoarse hiss.
While the coed “Sword Princess Protection Unit” still had one last riot left in them, Aiz managed to quell it without incident. Even Finn and the other familia leaders could only chuckle in amusement as Bell came to them in heartfelt apology for the trouble he’d caused.
“Hah…” Bell let out what was easily his hundredth sigh as his tour of apologies finally came to an end.
His features were an amalgam of humiliation, guilt, and fatigue. He’d traversed almost the entirety of the campsite, dashing here and there with his portable magic-stone lantern, while the rest of the group readied themselves for dinner. He had nothing equipped save a weapon for his own protection.
Still battling the sense of immorality plaguing his mind, he’d finally nabbed a chance to catch his breath, when—
“”
—the most ominous of presences appeared behind him.
Heart clenching like a vise, he gave a sudden gasp, a wheezy, high-pitched flutelike sound escaping his lips.
He turned around with an almost audible creak, sweat pouring from him, to find his forest fairy standing before him with both hands clenched murderously around her staff.
A pernicious cloud of inky black miasma rested on her shoulders, her face pointed downward in foreboding silence.
Bell couldn’t move.
He’d looked death in the eyes twice already. Once when he’d taken on that minotaur, and again when Goliath had chased him on the seventeenth floor. But neither of those two fiends even came close to eliciting the deep-rooted, carnal fear running through him right now.
His rubellite eyes could almost see a terrifying dragon of magic rearing its head from behind the girl’s back.
Her eyes rose.
“Unforgivable…unforgivable…unforgivable…”
Her normally azure eyes glowed with a surreal, ominous intensity.
Again and again, she continued her mantra, almost like a broken doll, looking very much like some kind of demonic entity.
He’d dirtied her. He’d sullied the immaculate body of her beloved, and the flames of antipathy were already gathering around her like a firestorm.
The staff gripped tightly in her hands let out a shrill, creaking groan.
Time stood still.
Then she seemed to sink—before jerking forward, kicking off the ground with every ounce of mind and spirit she had, and launching toward him at the speed of sound.
“Don’t yoooooooooou mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove!!”
“AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!”
Their grand game had begun anew.
Once more they were in heated chase, the white rabbit wailing in fear as his bloodthirsty fairy assailant ran him down.
The former boasted the leveled-up move speed of a Level 2, but the latter currently possessed the transcendent move speed of a mage driven mad by pure, unadulterated rage.
Her speed was winning, and in the blink of an eye, both pursuer and pursued were free of the camp, disappearing into the forest beyond.
“Hm? Where’s Lefiya?”
“Can’t find her anywhere!”
Tione and Tiona mused from the center of the campsite as they scanned the perimeter in search of the junior elf.
“…?” Aiz, too, let her eyes wander the camp. Dinner was about to begin, and Lefiya was nowhere to be seen.
Now that she was thinking about it, the boy was missing, too…
Cocking her head to the side, she couldn’t help
but wonder where the two had gotten off to.
The forest on the eighteenth floor was enormously vast.
The swath of skyscraping trees spanned the floor from east to west, making up a full fifth of the Under Resort’s total area, and its greenery ran flush with both the sweeping grasslands at the floor’s center and the enclosing walls on its every side. While a variety of fruits and vegetables grew within its verdure, foodstuffs weren’t its only boon—blue crystals, too, sprang forth from its soil, from giant, swordlike formations to the smallest of tiny stones.
Perhaps its most unique trait, however, was its ability to transform into a forest of pure magic as soon as night fell upon the Dungeon.
Supplied with the whimsical light they’d built up during the “daylight” hours, the crystals glowed softly with a kind of subtle elegance, bathing the forest in a hue of blue and giving birth to an eerie, bewitching ambience. While there were, of course, the monsters to worry about, armed with their superior night vision, there were also a surprising number of trip-ups scattered throughout the forest floor, liable to lead to a world of pain for anyone lacking caution. To make matters worse, the number of upper-class adventurers who’d entered the woods and never returned was frighteningly significant, and the fact that their remains had never been found was enough to suggest that some kind of ferocious monster was lurking deep within the trees…at least, that was the story floating around Rivira.
At any rate, the forest at night was very much a dangerous place. Even those acquainted with its byways and thruways could easily lose their bearings at a moment’s notice.
The reason for all this buildup was, of course, to provide transition, because, as one might expect in such a forest—
“…W-we’re lost again.”
“Y-you say that like it’s my fault!”
—Bell and Lefiya were completely and hopelessly lost.
Their game of cat and mouse had ended right smack in the middle of the dark woods, neither one of them realizing just how far they’d come until they had no idea where they were.
Bell’s head hung particularly low, as this was the second time today he’d found himself lost among these trees.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side: Sword Oratoria, Vol. 5 Page 13