“Yeah, that should be manageable. That’s why I chose you.” When I said that, Rulitora placed the bowl down, then knelt before me and bowed his head respectfully. “Thank you so much, Sir Touya. I, Rulitora, pledge my loyalty to you!”
“Thanks, Rulitora. I’m a total amateur when it comes to adventuring and fighting, so I’ll be counting on you.”
“Yes sir!”
It had been even more effective than I was hoping – now he sounded more like my subordinate, rather than my ally. But he’d always acted like a proper raver from the start, so I wasn’t really worried. We hadn’t known each other for very long, but I could already tell he was a very sincere person. I was happy to accept Rulitora’s demeanor, since it meant that I had found myself a trustworthy ally.
“But finding a third party member is going to be even harder now,” the temple elder said. “An average warrior will only serve as a nuisance to a powerhouse like that. You’re going to have to think of a new approach.”
“...Are you serious?”
Those with skills aside from fighting probably went down completely different career paths, unless they were extremely curious about the adventuring lifestyle. It made perfect sense.
“Um... I’m sorry?” Rulitora stammered.
“No, Rulitora, you don’t need to apologize for anything.”
I had the temple elder make a status card for Rulitora. His was light purple, and he was already at Level 29, a whole level higher than the temple elder.
My card was green, but the temple elder’s was also purple. According to him, colors went in this order: green, blue, purple, red, orange, then, when someone surpassed human boundaries and got to Level 50 or above, their cards turned gold permanently. Not even the temple elder had ever seen a gold card, but legend claimed that the first sacred king had possessed one.
Instead of automatic updates, status cards had to be updated manually at a temple. It cost quite a bit to get a new card issued, but simply updating was cheap. Some nobles created status cards for newborn babies and updated them every year in order to celebrate their growth.
On Rulitora’s status card, I could see that he had hardly any MP, but his other stats were pretty high. His HP, STR, and VIT were all even higher than the temple elder’s, but his TEC was the highest. He had average MEN for a Level 29 person, but it certainly wasn’t low. According to the temple elder, Rulitora had a standard warrior build, and his scores were all impressive.
With that in mind, I understood how instead of lining another average warrior up beside him, simply letting Rulitora swing his glaive around like a madman would allow him to unleash his full power as my front line. I could let Rulitora take the front and line another person up next to me, but in that scenario I’d need to get stronger myself, or I’d end up dragging my partner down.
Also, I still hadn’t mustered up enough courage to ask for a female raver to bathe with me. I could have just looked for a non-warrior party member, but I’d still need to ask them if they’d be okay with bathing together. And if I could do that, then I wouldn’t have needed to purchase a raver to begin with.
In other words, I had taken a huge leap back from my bathtime dreams.
The next several days went peacefully, without any big incidents. The one piece of noteworthy news was that Natsuki Kannami, who had gone undefeated in his search for party members, had finally been bested by the kingdom’s greatest military leader, an elderly old general. Natsuki Kannami had asked the old general to train him then and there. The old man agreed, passed on his inheritance to his son, and joined Natsuki’s party as a means of ‘retiring.’ It sounded so dramatic – painfully melodramatic, that is. I wondered if Natsuki’s status card had turned blue already. Apparently, they’d both decided there weren’t any more strong people in this kingdom, and had already departed. I felt like Rulitora would be powerful enough to take them on, but I guess they hadn’t taken a look at the raver market – in a way, Rulitora and I had both been very lucky.
I was doing pretty well, too, aside from finding party members, that is. Rulitora had taken part in my training with the temple elder, and I’d learned how to use a basic light-elemental cleric spell called Summon Light Spirit. It summoned a spherical light spirit which could be used to attack enemies. It wasn’t what I had imagined – but that was my problem. I needed to be able to heal with my cleric magic, or there would be no point in having it, so I learned another spell: Healing Light. This was a basic healing spell, and could heal any wound that the caster could touch. As long as I managed to successfully summon the spirit at the start, I’m sure I’d be able to get used to the rest with time.
After increasing my water stock daily, I got a sense for how much MP it sapped from me. Using magic or my gift required MP, and I started to feel mental fatigue after I dropped below 50%. When I dropped down to a third remaining, physical inertia set in. In the beginning, I didn’t know how to pace myself, and often used up so much MP that it left me immobilized. According to the temple elder, in those moments, I had been down to 10% MP remaining.
If someone ever used up all of their MP, it would knock them unconscious, which made it virtually impossible. A good night’s rest was enough to recover MP. Depending on how much was lost, one night might not be enough to recover everything, but it was currently working for me.
In other news, my hose was almost complete. Rubber existed in this world, but if they tried to make it as hard as a Japanese hose, it’d end up too stiff to bend. That might have been perfect for the part that attached to the faucet, but in the end, a craftsman suggested using sea monster intestine covered in skin to create the hose.
‘Sea monster’ was the term they used to refer to all giant monsters that lived in the sea. Their smell wouldn’t pass into the water, and it was durable enough to keep the water from spilling out, so it seemed like I had acquired a first-rate hose. The water skins I had bought the other day were also made out of sea monster skin. Apparently, it was common sense for all travelers to carry two skins: one filled with water, and one filled with alcohol.
Meanwhile, Haruno was in a tough spot. A ton of people had gathered up around her, claiming that they wanted to ‘join the heroine’s party.’ Sons of nobles were spilling into the temple non-stop.
Cosmos was protected by the princess, while the other two heroes had already departed. And since my condition was so ‘special,’ perhaps everyone just thought that Haruno was their last chance. Haruno understood that, so she went out to meet every single person – and refused them all. After seeing how exhausted she was, I suggested having Rulitora give them a skill test to turn them all away, but she refused that as well.
I asked her why, but she just said she had her reasons. Perhaps she merely wanted to get out of this mess on her own. She had enough energy to come to my room and complain every night, so I assumed she was still okay. Actually, I was happy that she had chosen me as her complaint box. Still, there were some pretty tenacious people out there, and things had gotten so bad that Haruno couldn’t even walk outside of the temple in peace.
Thankfully, the temple elder came to her rescue and ordered a group of people known as the Goddess of Light Pilgrims to guard her. It was a group solely composed of women who visited temples in various lands in order to ‘allow the Goddess of Light to borrow female clerics in order to descend to the people,’ and there were even some female temple knights among them. Since their main purpose was to journey around and help people in a world where monsters ran rampant, they had filled the group with the most skilled members of the temple. They had been contacted immediately after Cosmos was attacked, and the nearest faction had just arrived in the nick of time.
The pilgrims who had come to guard Haruno and I and were also some of the party member candidates that the temple had recommended. But since I already had Rulitora and was busy cooping up inside the temple with my training, I just wanted them to focus all their efforts on protecting Haruno. Of course, the Unlimited Bath was still in
the back of my mind. It’d be more than a little difficult to go up to the female temple knights in their prim and proper white uniforms and say: “Please bathe with me.” In the end, Haruno started going out of the city daily with the pilgrims in order to train – partly so that she wouldn’t cause any more trouble for the temple. People treated the Goddess of Light Pilgrims as vessels of the goddess, which meant that they possessed great authority. Angering them meant angering basically everyone else in the vicinity. This rendered the noble families’ sons powerless, which certainly put me at ease.
Several more days passed, until yet another incident occurred. This time, though, it wasn’t a bad incident. While training outside of the city, Haruno had managed to save a girl who had gotten attacked by a group of monsters.
“All I really did was embrace the girl and shiver, though...” Haruno said bashfully, but I still thought she deserved praise simply for not running away.
Sera and the pilgrims were the ones who actually fought the monsters. On top of that, when one of the monsters lunged for Haruno, the one who destroyed it was none other than the girl she had saved.
“Umm... Allow me to introduce my new party member,” Haruno said, then guided in a girl who had been hiding in her shadow.
She was petite, with cocoa-colored hair that came down to her shoulders, and only stood as tall as my chest. She also wore a rough-looking cloak that looked a bit too big for her tiny body.
“Her name is Rium. She can use magic!”
“...I’m Rium. Nice to meet you.”
“Uh, nice to meet you, too, Rium.”
Rium’s self-introduction had been brief, and she hadn’t moved a muscle in her face as she spoke. I guessed that she was just the calm, silent type. I wasn’t sure of Rium’s status, but she looked like a little girl, so I spoke on a first name basis right from the start, and she didn’t seem to mind. I later learned that she had journeyed here from Athena, another kingdom in the Olympus Alliance, after garnering an interest in the rumors about the newly-summoned heroes.
Sera put a hand on Rium’s shoulder. She looked really happy. “She’s only 14, yet she’s already become a skilled crystal mage.”
“Crystal mage?”
I soon learned that Rium could use what was called ‘crystal magic,’ which had the power to create magic items. The name came from how the mages used special crystals charged with magic, otherwise known as magic crystals, to create all sorts of different things. When Rium defeated the monster that attacked Haruno, she’d pulled what had looked like a silver skewer from her pocket. In the next moment, she’d transformed it into a silver spear and skewered the monster. On a side note, the tools used to make status cards were all created by crystal mages.
Still, if Rium was 14, that’d make her a second-year in middle school in my world. Visually, the small girl looked like an elementary schooler. She seemed rather cold, especially in contrast to how giddy Haruno and Sera were. They both must have thought Rium was the most adorable girl they’d ever seen, and perhaps they were even starting to look upon her as a little sister.
From the next day on, Haruno’s party started training in the temple courtyard. The temple elder had convinced her to train within the temple grounds since it was so dangerous outside. While I was busy tending to my daily duty of carrying water out from the bath, Haruno and Sera took on Rulitora in sword training. I readjusted the location of my door so that I could watch them as I worked.
Haruno looked very dignified when she held a sword – and very cool. I had heard that she used to do archery, but it was hard to believe that she’d been a complete swordfighting amateur until a dozen or so days ago. Haruno’s movements already looked clearly sharper than Sera’s.
“B-but you’re making good progress too, Sir Touya!” One of the temple servants encouraged me as they waited for the current barrel to fill up with water.
It was true that compared to when I had first started, I could keep up with Rulitora and the temple elder much better now. But I had no intention of getting conceited and believing that I actually had some sort of hidden potential. Haruno probably wasn’t a hidden sword master either. Like the temple elder said, it was all thanks to the blessings we’d received from the Goddess of Light, the most sacred being in this world. At first glance, Haruno looked like a quiet young lady, so watching her gallantly swing a sword toward a huge lizardman made for a pretty impressive scene.
Meanwhile, Rium became interested in the Unlimited Bath for some reason, and had gone inside. Within the bath, there was only a single curtain that separated the bath from the changing area. At that moment, the curtain was open. I had placed the barrel in the changing area, and was using the shower to fill it up with water as I sat next to it on a plastic chair I had brought in from the bath area. Where was Rium? Well, she was crawling in the bath area, seemingly unconcerned by how wet she was getting, and staring intently at a certain object.
“What is this?” she asked, snapping my eyes away from Haruno’s training. In her hand, she held a shampoo bottle.
“That’s shampoo,” I answered. “It’s basically soap that’s meant for washing hair.”
“...But it feels like there’s liquid inside,” she said, as she shook the bottle next to her ear and tried to listen to what was happening. Her eyes made it seem like she was confronting me about something. Since liquid soap didn’t exist in this world, it must have seemed like I was lying.
“No, I’m not lying. Here, give it to me, and stick your hand out.”
Rium suspiciously handed the shampoo bottle to me. When I pressed down on the nozzle and a little shampoo squirted out onto her tiny hands, her eyes grew wide. She probably didn’t even understand how the nozzle worked.
Next, I scooped some hot water out from the bath and trickled it over her hands. “Here, try lathering it up.”
“...Like this?” As Rium moved her hands around, they slowly became covered in white bubbles.
The soap in this world was more primitive than what I knew, and didn’t lather up this beautifully. The male servants who were still waiting for the water to fill up also curiously gazed at the bubbles. As Rium stared at it, her eyes lit up. Despite the fact that she had been so curt up until now, I felt like I was finally starting to see traces of an expression that befit a girl her age – it even looked a bit childish. No wonder Haruno and Sera find her so adorable.
“Hey, don’t eat that! It isn’t cream!”
The moment I saw Rium pop open her mouth and move some bubbles toward it, I frantically stopped her. As I quickly washed off the bubbles, Rium glared at me again, but for some reason, this time she looked strangely childlike and cute.
“What’s going on in there?” Finished with their training, Haruno and Sera peeked inside the Unlimited Bath. Rulitora hated the steam, so he was standing a bit behind them.
“Oh, well Rium just tried to put shampoo bubbles in her mouth.”
“Oh... Sorry. Rium, that isn’t food.” Once Haruno corrected her, Rium drooped and stared down at the ground.
She looked like a pouting puppy, so I tried to cheer her up. “I’m sure any other person from this world would’ve thought it was cream, too.”
“Perhaps. They don’t have much soap to begin with, and it doesn’t make many bubbles,” Haruno added. She bathed in the temple everyday, so I figured she knew what she was talking about.
“Touya...”
“Hm? What is it, Rium?” Rium yanked on my sleeve, so I crouched down and listened to her.
“It’s interesting. I want to try this bath from another world.”
“...What?”
“Rium?!” Haruno screeched.
Without warning, Rium had dropped a huge bomb on us, and it had left Haruno reeling.
Still, I could tell Rium was dead serious by the way she was staring so intently at me. It seemed like she really didn’t mind bathing with me. Haruno tried to talk Rium out of it, while Sera also fell into a panic.
“Um, Rium... I th
ink you should wait to become better friends with him before you do something like that...”
“We aren’t friends?”
“No, you are! Touya’s your friend!”
“Then we can go in together!”
“But, um, that’s different!!” Haruno shouted, as she swung her arms up and made a big X. It was fun to see her acting so surprisingly unladylike and cute.
Unable to go on watching, Sera tried a simpler approach. “Rium, think about it for a moment. Bathing together means that you and Touya both need to get naked and sit next to each other in that tiny bath. Doesn’t that sound embarrassing?”
“No.”
“Well, it is! It’s extremely embarrassing! I’m getting embarrassed just thinking about it!”
Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work on Rium. Sera only seemed to be making herself more and more embarrassed with her own imagination. Even she had her dense moments. In contrast, the two of them made the ever-nonplussed Rium seem colossally brave. And I must say, I was starting to feel a bit sad at how desperately they were trying to change Rium’s mind. Guess I shouldn’t have stared at their chests so much...
“You need to be better friends than you are now!”
“I don’t understand.”
“Understand! Please!”
“Why do you keep shouting at me?” At last, Rium cocked her head and started questioning Haruno’s frantic protests.
In response, Haruno looked at me, and blushed again. Where had all her thunder gone?
“Umm...” I began. “If there’s something you don’t want me to hear, I guess I’ll just leave...”
“No, it’s not that! It’s nothing like that!” Haruno began swinging her arms madly.
Eventually, she seemed to calm down a bit. Clearing her throat, she looked back to Rium and started to speak in a quiet voice. “Rium, you aren’t a child anymore, so you need to take better care of yourself. Bathing together is something you can only do with someone you really trust.”
Mixed Bathing in Another Dimension: The Hero of the Unlimited Bath Page 8