“What’s wrong, Rium?”
“......”
But she didn’t say anything in response. I peered at her, wondering, and then she looked straight at me and began to speak.
“...I want to sleep together.”
I was caught off guard for a moment.
I looked up at Clena and found the same expression on her that I had. I then looked at Roni, whose eyes were sparkling with excitement. Finally, I looked back at Clena as we smiled at each other.
“...Well, there’s no reason for us to sleep separately just because we have enough blankets.”
“Alright, let’s all sleep together tonight.”
One blanket definitely wouldn’t be enough for all of us, but two could work if we huddled together, and another two for the floor.
Rium wasn’t expressive by any means. But her cheeks looked a bit red now, and she had the faintest of smiles. It made me happy just looking at her.
That night, Clena, Roni, Rium, and I slept all huddled up next to each other.
As I lay down, Rium spoke up from beside me.
“Touya.”
“What is it?”
I tried to look in her direction, but before I could do so, I felt something touch my cheek. They were Rium’s small lips.
“...A goodnight kiss.” She said, then turned her cheek over to me. I immediately returned a peck on it.
“Hm?” I felt a gaze in my direction, so I looked past Rium to see Roni, who was looking at me with expectant eyes. I deduced what she was waiting for and sat up, and she also got up with a beaming smile.
“A goodnight kiss for you too, Roni.”
“Yes, please!”
I leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek, and she gave me three firm smooches on my cheek in return. Then she blushed while squealing in a high-pitched voice. It was so endearing.
“...And for you, the one who’s pretending to be asleep.”
Clena had turned over in the meantime and had her back to us. But her shoulders quivered in response to my words, so she was definitely only pretending to sleep. I didn’t want to leave any of my friends out. I wanted to give her a goodnight kiss, too. So I decided to tease her a little.
“If you don’t wake up, I’ll kiss you someplace else~”
Clena instantly sprung up, her face bright red.
“Wha, where in the world are you planning to—?!”
But I didn’t answer her question, and instead crawled toward her from underneath my blanket. She didn’t even move when I put my hands on her shoulders, and she squeezed her eyes shut with her face still beet red. I didn’t stop my approach, drew my face close, and gave her a passionate kiss.
“...Huh?”
On her forehead, not her cheek.
Clena let out a shriek. Where in the world was she thinking I’d kiss her?
“I said someplace else, not necessarily a weird one.”
“Wh-wh-wha...!”
Clena became even redder, until she was blushing all the way to her ears.
“!!!!!” She looked like steam could start spouting out of her head at any moment.
So I pushed her down and smothered her face with kisses.
The incessant downpour continued into the next day. It was less like a steady rainfall and more like a waterfall that had escaped the clouds.
At least it didn’t go on all day. There were distinct periods of time when no rain would fall. Though that didn’t necessarily mean clear skies—it was still cloudy and somber. It was about fifty-fifty overall.
When it was raining, we used stakes and a large tarp for a makeshift tent to rest ourselves. When it was cloudy, we focused on moving forward.
If it were just us, we could retreat inside the wagon, but we needed the cover to shield our horse from the wind and rain as well.
“Back in the settlement, we’d go hunting when it was cloudy.”
“This must be a tough season for sand lizardmen, since you’re so sensitive to humidity.”
“Maybe so, but our reservoirs rely on rainfall, so it affects us in more than one way.”
They disliked it, but couldn’t live without it. The Torano’o tribe and the rainy season had a complex relationship.
Fortunately, monsters were less active during this season. Sandworms were averse to the water too, but they hardly ever appeared within the void.
So whenever it was cloudy, we would continue traveling in our carriage, whether it was day or night. Rium had to sleep at night, but that wasn’t an issue in our carriage.
It was night at the moment, too. I was in the driver’s seat, but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see the moon or stars. There was hardly any greenery around us, only a wasteland of dirt and rocks. The darkness, too, made it a lonely sight. I summoned ten light spirits to illuminate our carriage and the surrounding area.
It had been three days since we entered the void. It had gotten much colder, but also soggier, since the last time we were here.
From where I sat, I could see Rulitora as he walked beside us, surveying our surroundings. During our travels, he kept himself mostly outside the carriage. He was faster on foot than on a horse, after all. Even though there was less monster activity now, we had only Rulitora to thank for being able to travel both day and night.
I glanced inside the carriage to see Rium using Roni as a lap pillow.
“You’re surprisingly alert at night, Roni.”
“Well, I’m used to it~”
Back when it was just Clena and Roni, they had a strict master-and-servant relationship, so Roni must have been on night guard duty more often.
Clena had found a bag among our cargo that made for a comfortable pillow and was taking a nap. We rotated driver and rear guard duties, and it was currently Clena’s turn to sleep.
“Sir Touya, rain is coming.” Rulitora informed me from outside the carriage, twitching his nose.
“Is there any place we can stop?”
“How about that boulder over there?”
Rulitora pointed in the direction of a long, rectangular rock. It seemed big enough for us to make a simple tent with.
“Alright, let’s go. We should set up the tent before it starts raining.”
“Understood. I’ll go on ahead.”
No sooner had he stretched his tail parallel to the ground, leaned forward, and dashed off with impressive momentum. And just like that, his figure had all but vanished into the distance.
“Roni, we’ll be picking up speed too, so hold tight.”
“Got it.”
Roni wrapped her arms around Rium, who was still sleeping on her lap, then made sure to support Clena’s weight with her own, and I sped up the carriage.
When we arrived at the boulder, I was speechless. We had to check whether or not it was big enough to set up camp, but that had nothing to do with my reaction.
“...Hey, do these things appear naturally?”
The boulder was a perfect rectangular prism. It definitely didn’t look like something you’d find in nature. It was slightly taller than Rulitora and long enough to fit both the horse and the carriage.
Clena had woken up and stepped out of the wagon, and ended up with the same expression as myself.
“Maybe it’s... some sort of chiseled rock?”
“Like for construction purposes, you mean?”
“Right now most buildings are made from concrete, but I heard that in the past, they would use chiseled rocks like this.”
She wasn’t referring to the modern reinforced concrete I was familiar with, but something similar to what they used in ancient Rome. After studying all she could about the desert kingdom, she must have picked up some stuff about ancient architecture, as well.
In other words, this rock might have been used to build some structure long ago. It looked like a normal rock at first glance, but this could serve as evidence that the desert kingdom once stood in the center of the void.
“Well, we won’t get anywhere by just looking at
a rock. Let’s leave the speculations for later,” Clena said to me.
“Oh, you’re right.”
I remembered that we still needed to set up a tent before the rain arrived, so Rulitora and I took out a large tarp from the wagon. It was too big to keep inside the wagon, so we’d put it in the storage compartment underneath.
The tarp was made of monster fur and repelled water. It had four metal rings, one on each corner. Normally it was used as a divider for bathing and changing clothes on the road, but we were using it as a makeshift tent now.
“Okay, I’ll be right back. Summon spirit!”
I pressed my hand against the rock and summoned spirits of the earth. Several protrusions, compressed to be pure black, formed a vertical column up the rock. It was an impromptu ladder. I used it to climb the rock, and Rulitora handed me one corner of the tarp by hooking his glaive through a ring.
“Summon a few more spirits!”
I rested the ring on top of the boulder and shot a black stake through it. I made the tip of the stake wider than the ring so it would stay in place as long as I didn’t cut off my MP or run out of power.
I took another ring to the top and secured it in the same way, before returning to the surface. I stretched the opposite edge of the tarp out so that it formed a triangle with the rock and the ground, then rooted the remaining two rings to the ground. This was our makeshift tent that would be shielding us from the rain.
“It’s so convenient to be able to summon earth spirits.”
“A normal person wouldn’t be able to compress it as much as you do.” Clena replied in exasperation to my sincere words.
It felt like a waste to have these spells be so underutilized, but seeing how the amount of MP was the only thing deciding their effectiveness, I couldn’t say much more.
“Anyway, about how far are we from the Sage’s Spring now?”
“I believe it’s only a little farther to the east,” Roni replied.
The travelers of this world used the stars to guide their path. They didn’t have the North Star to guide them, but they could derive their general direction from the locations of various constellations.
Having the sky be so cloudy that it covered all the stars was particularly inconvenient. The last time we had seen a star was the day before yesterday.
Since the positions of the constellations changed between seasons, this field of knowledge had advanced to become its own science. Of course not everyone was an expert, and for a traveler it was enough to just be able to figure out which direction was north.
In addition to that, we now had Rium, who could fly up on her flying disc when it wasn’t raining to check the whereabouts of the spring in the distance.
“We can even check our direction through flight, so we don’t need to worry about getting lost,” Rulitora laughed.
To be honest, I was apprehensive about traveling without a GPS, let alone a compass or map, but it was nothing out of the ordinary in this world. I just wrote it off as a culture gap.
Still, Rium even had a telescope that looked like opera glasses which she could use to make out the direction of the Sage’s Spring, so it wasn’t likely that we’d stray off course.
“Hm, the rain started.”
“Wow, it’s pouring! I wish it’d just rain until morning and then stop for good after that.”
“Hahahah, that’d be great!”
And it wasn’t like it was a gentle drizzle, either, more like a loud and unrelenting torrent. We rushed underneath the tent as we talked.
“It’s pretty strong right now... looks like it won’t clear up for a while.”
“That works for us. Let’s use the opportunity to rest up.”
Traveling through the night put a greater toll on us, though we had no choice at the moment because of all the rain. Now that it was raining during the night for once, we should use the chance to get some rest.
“Let’s dig a trench around us so that the rainwater doesn’t seep in.”
“That’s a good idea. I’ll help.”
Clena and Roni were bluffing their way through the exhaustion, but I could tell they were tired. The time had come for me to be a man and let them rest. I opened the door to the Unlimited Bath and entrusted the sleeping Rium to them, while Rulitora and I got cracking.
“Ah, you should make that a little deeper.”
“About this much?”
Geez, this journey had no intentions of letting up on me. But I felt a sense of accomplishment from all the effort we had put in together so far, a feeling I had never experienced in my old world.
The rain didn’t stop until just before noon the next day. Thanks to that, we were well rested and picked up the pace until we reached the Sage’s Spring.
The outer edges of the void weren’t so much a desert as they were a wasteland, but what we saw before our eyes was just like an oasis in the middle of the desert.
The spring was about the size of an elementary school pool. It was surprisingly big. Vegetation and colorful flowers in full bloom surrounded its edges, and right across from us stood two trees.
“...Isn’t it awfully clear around here?”
Astonishingly, the sky above it was bright and clear despite it being the rainy season.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Dark and gloomy clouds filled the sky all around it. There was a hole in the sky right above the spring, as if it were the eye of a typhoon.
“Is there a spell that can do this?”
“N-no, I mean, I’ve never heard of one that could...” Clena was at a loss for words, her eyes wide open in disbelief.
To me, this kind of weather was just as mysterious as the concept of magic, but for someone well versed in magic like her, the only thing that stood out as unusual was this particular phenomenon. Just another one of those culture gaps.
“The water is so clear...” Rium stepped out of the carriage and peered into the spring, impressed.
I stood next to her and looked into the water, which was clear enough that you could see all the way to the bottom. This would be a rare sight back in my world.
Clena, Roni, and Rulitora followed. The five of us stood before the spring.
“A normal traveler would be scooping this water up right around now.”
“But we have Sir Touya’s gift.”
“So who cares about spring water!”
Could you guys read the mood a little better?
That reminded me, I’d heard before that fish couldn’t actually live in water this clear. I wondered if that applied to this spring as well?
We were pretty set when it came to our water supply, so we had no reason to try our luck here.
“Oh yeah, there are a few other Sage’s Springs besides this one, right?”
“Yes. It’s part of the legend of the first sacred king, so I think they created a bunch of dupes to hide the location of the real one.”
According to legend, the first sacred king found the demon lord’s castle thanks to the guidance of a sage in a spring.
“So if we assume that the demon lord’s castle is in the desert kingdom, we can assume that this spring is the real one since it’s the closest?”
“That sounds about right.”
So we were currently standing on the site of the legend. Thinking about that kind of moved me.
“I wonder where the sage might be?”
“Uh, this story is 500 years old.”
You’d think he’d be long gone by now, but this fantasy world had me consider the fact that he might still be alive depending on his species. This was the only area where it hadn’t been raining, so it was perfectly reasonable to consider some power would still be at play here.
“Oh, a fish.”
“Huh, where?”
Rium pointed to an area below the taller tree, where a small fish was jumping out of the water.
The fish was so tiny, I was impressed that she even noticed it. And that there was still life, even in this spring in the mid
dle of nowhere. It really took me by surprise.
The fish leaped in and out of the water as it made its way toward us. Looking more closely, I could see that it had pretty large fins despite its small body. I couldn’t tell what species it was, but its appearance reminded me of a fancy goldfish. The pseudo-goldfish made its way to us, popped its face out of the water, and...
“What’s the matter, young’ns? Ain’tcha gon’ drink the water?”
...started talking to us in human language.
Thanks to the Goddess of Light’s blessing I was able to understand this world’s speech, but judging by how flabbergasted the others looked, I guess he really was using actual words. Rulitora looked over our heads into the spring, amazed.
“I guess this really must be the Sage’s Spring, with something so strange living in it.”
“Hmm? That’d be me.”
“What?”
“The sage.”
“......”
“......”
“W-wait... This tiny fish is the sage?!”
“The very one.”
The pseudo-goldfish—er, sage, rather—snapped his head to the side. Was that his way of trying to look smug?
“Come now, I bet yer knackered from travelin’ through this wasteland. Take a sip from the spring, travelers!”
“Oh, no thank you, we have plenty of water,” Roni responded politely, even though she was talking to a fish.
After hearing that, the sage looked away and muttered. “Pft! If ye’d just drank the water I would’ve turned ye into my loyal puppets.”
Well that was dark.
“Guess that leaves me no choice!”
“...Summon spirit.”
I didn’t know what was going on, but I could feel that he wasn’t on our side. I quickly summoned earth spirits, raised the floor of the spring, and launched the fish-sage onto the shore.
“Hack... can’t breathe...”
The self-proclaimed sage was flopping about on the ground. Now then, what should we do?
“Let’s put him in a bucket for now. We don’t want him to escape.”
The Fervent Sand Baths Page 11