The Chaotic Stone Sauna

by Nagaharu Hibihana

  I thought she was cute and receptive of those feelings, and now she put on a dress she had never worn before of her own will. There was no problem with that.

  Clena and I exited the Unlimited Bath right as Rium and Rakti woke up.

  “...Good morning,” Rium tottered over to me sleepily and hugged me.

  Rakti was holding her arms out behind Rium, but wasn’t moving an inch. It looked like she was trying to imitate Rium, but was hesitating. I’d be happy if she just threw all caution to the wind and jumped at me, but waiting wouldn’t help either way.

  “G-good morning...”

  “Morning, Rakti.”

  ...So I reached my arm out and gave her a hug, and then she greeted me in a flustered tone. I pet their heads for a short and relaxing duration, but they couldn’t get started changing like this. I closed the door to the Unlimited Bath, then headed for the bedroom door and once again opened the bathroom door from there. I left the girls to Clena and moved to the living room.

  Once the door to the Unlimited Bath was opened, I couldn’t travel far away from it, but I could at least walk around a neighboring room if the door was close by. I spotted the back of Roni’s head as she sat on a sofa beside the fireplace.

  “Oh, Sir Touya! Good morning!”

  Her wolf ears perked up at the sound of the door opening, then she turned around and greeted me with an energetic smile.

  “Were you mending our clothes?”

  “Yes, but these three are a little too battered up.”

  I followed her gaze to see three sets of clothing on a small table. They were all tattered and covered in holes. Those were the clothes we had worn during our battle against Goldfish.

  “There’s no helping that. Let’s go out to buy more after the blessing ceremony is over.”

  “Oh, we need to buy some for Rium and Rakti as well.”

  “Oh yeah, we do.”

  We had met up with Rium after leaving Ceresopolis, and Rakti during our search in Hadesopolis. Neither of them had much in the way of spare clothing. Rakti aside, Rium had made thorough preparations for her journey. Her possessions were still meager though, compared to how much we had been carrying around in the Unlimited Bath. We still needed to buy our bedding at Ficus Brand, so we’d get more clothing during the same trip.

  “Where’s breakfast?”

  “It’s already been delivered. On that table over there.” Roni directed her line of sight at a large table in the middle of the living room. On it were several semicircular lids covering whatever food lay underneath. They were freshly delivered.

  Several chairs had also been set up around the table for us, including a large one without a back for Rulitora. This temple must have been used to dealing with demi-humans, considering how they’d prepared this without us having to ask.

  “Alright then, the others should be coming out soon, so let’s all eat breakfast then.”

  “Sure!”

  The girls should still need a little more time to change. I needed some time to wake Rulitora up, too. I might have to get personally involved in the latter, but I should wait until Clena and the others got out of the bathroom first.

  I sat myself down facing Roni and helped her fold the clothes she had finished mending. She was adeptly weaving her needle in and out of the cloth. I had learned to sew a little in school. I recalled learning how to use a sewing machine too, but I had completely forgotten how by now. And yet this younger girl was sewing like it was the most natural thing in the world. There was nothing spectacular about this scene, nothing odd, yet it felt so mysterious to me.

  It had been a few months since I was summoned to this world. It wasn’t going on adventures or fighting monsters, but rather everyday life like this that brought about this sense of otherworldliness. Right now I was also feeling a sense of nostalgia, almost like I was homesick. This wasn’t a bad feeling, either. I let myself soak in the comfortable mood as I waited for the bedroom door to open.

  Rulitora returned to the bedroom after we finished breakfast. He’d be sleeping again until lunchtime. Until then, we passed the time by organizing all our loot inside the Unlimited Bath. After excluding the equipment with spells cast on them and antiques that might hold some value, all that was left were just old items we needed to sell off.

  We had the option of repairing the items and making them look a little more attractive, but then we had to consider if it was worth the effort. Roni and I took care of the physical labor, while Clena, Rium, and Rakti were in charge of estimating how much the antiques might be worth. Lunch came around before we knew it, Rulitora got up, and we ate our meal together.

  My blessing ceremony came after that, but it was to be conducted in a tunnel inside Mt. Lemnos rather than in the temple itself. I took along a fully armed Rulitora as my bodyguard, then we arrived after a shaky carriage ride to the largest tunnel there was for mining “fire stones.” It was apparently the place with the highest concentration of fire spirits in Hephaestusopolis.

  Our guide cleric took a torch, lit it up using magic, and entered the tunnel. He had probably used a fire spirit summoning spell. The dark tunnel gradually grew brighter as we advanced until it became bright enough that we didn’t need the torch anymore.

  “Whoa...”

  “This is where the ceremony will be conducted,” our guide priest said as he turned back toward us, looking proud. I had been rendered speechless.

  We had been guided to a ceremony space with countless crimson crystal pillars peeking out from the stone walls, each of them giving off a light that colored the whole room red. I unwittingly blurt out when I saw the fantastical sight...

  “...It’s hot!” I didn’t know if it was fire spirits or if it was just because we were inside a volcano, but the air was incredibly hot. I felt immediately dispirited realizing that the ceremony would be conducted in here. I’d never say that to the cleric though, what with him looking all smug.

  And then the ceremony itself was what you’d call a nightmare. Before me were five clerics, including the temple elder at the center, flexing their muscles and dancing wildly. This had been going on for about an hour now. The beads of sweat flying off their bodies glistened in the light, making me downright depressed. And this was all part of the official ceremony to grant me the Goddess of Fire’s blessing.

  The Goddess of Fire was also the goddess of passion and enthusiasm, so her ceremonies tended to inspire a lot of feverish dancing. So naturally, all of the temple elders were buff, wild dancers. I was sure everyone here were elites of the temple of fire.

  I mean, the ceremony for the Goddess of Earth’s blessing was just the elder reciting ritual prayers in the most soothing atmosphere possible. I had been blessed by the Goddess of Light the moment I was summoned, but I wondered if the princess, who was traveling with the hero Cosmos right now, had danced during the summoning ritual.

  Apparently this group of nightmarish dancers included women in the past. The elder didn’t necessarily have to participate, either. But still, right now they had been dancing for over an hour in this sweltering heat that had me soaking in sweat just sitting there. It was barely tolerable for me, the observer, but for them it must have been rough enough to be considered torture.

  Since it must have been a prestigious job, I was sure many people tried to step up to the challenge, but it wasn’t surprising that the few who could survive the harsh environment were men. I’d heard the previous temple elder had chosen female dancers despite that, so it must have depended on each elder’s personal vision. Since the current elder himself participated in this torturous ceremony, he must have had a particularly noble heart. That elder was currently dancing before me half-naked, muscles glistening and white teeth sparkling under the red lights. He showed me a smile so fresh that I wanted to punch him in the face. Okay, maybe I was getting a little irritated from the heat.

  The clerics danced like mad for another ten minutes or so, and then the ceremony was finally over. The heat was painful enough
to deal with, but I was more mentally drained after my eyes had been repeatedly violated. I stumbled my way out of the tunnel and back to Rulitora.

  “...Are you alright?” he asked me with a dubious expression, but that couldn’t be avoided. After all, the clerics had emerged from the tunnel after me, beaming with smiles after a job well done. I endured another shaky carriage ride back to the temple, where I met back up with the girls in the VIP room.

  “Wh-what are you doing...?”

  “Nothing, I just need a little healing...”

  I hugged Clena, then Roni, then Rium and Rakti together as soon as I saw their faces. They all looked a little startled, but still let me do as I pleased, probably noticing my temperament. Rium wrapped her arms around my waist, hugging me back.

  “...Oh yeah, sister Fire’s ceremony is a little intense.”

  Rakti was the only one who could understand the ordeal I went through. As I hugged her petite body, she reached a hand out to pat me on the head. Ahh, she was healing my soul. I patted her on the head in return.

  “Alright then, now that you’ve been healed, let’s go update our status cards,” Clena said, clapping her hands. It was cute how her cheeks were puffing out a tiny bit.

  She had arranged our donation to the temple while I was at my blessing ceremony. It was the norm to contribute a donation to the temple whenever they did something for you. This was the case for the two temples back in Ceresopolis as well. Since we were staying here and had them conduct the blessing ceremony, we’d donated gold coins when we first met with the temple elder. The reason we waited to update our status cards was because the update would reflect our conditions at the time. We wanted to rest up from our travels first, but we also considered that the blessing from the Goddess of Fire might affect things, so we waited until we could do an update all at once.

  The donation Clena had prepared was meat. She had planned on buying fruit first, but after doing some research with the clerics, she learned that they’d be happier receiving meat as a gift. Indeed, I could imagine them more easily chowing down on whole roasted meat than daintily munching on fruit. I was afraid that some buff men would start dancing again to conduct the status card updates, but thankfully the procedure was the same as any other temple’s.

  Rulitora’s level had gone up to 30. That was the limit for any normal person, but I doubted this was it for Rulitora. His stats had slightly improved across the board. For a warrior as well-rounded as him, maybe his stats simply didn’t change much.

  Clena had risen to level 22, and Roni level 21. You were considered first-class after passing level 20, so now I had not only Clena, but also Roni as first-class party members. Clena’s MP and MEN had grown significantly after all the time she had spent controlling wind spirits while we traveled through the underground tunnel. Roni’s TEC had also grown a fair amount. I wondered why, but TEC represented how dexterous you were with your hands. During our travels, she had endeavored to cook and do the laundry, butchered whatever monsters we defeated, and above all, learned how to use the washing machine flawlessly. It was no wonder why her TEC had grown so much.

  “Your MP and MEN grew pretty fast, Clena.”

  “I know you don’t mean it that way, but that sounds condescending coming from you.”

  “Come on...”

  I knew she wasn’t angry, but she looked a little exasperated. It wasn’t hard to tell where she was coming from though, since my own MP and MEN stats were flying off the borders.

  The lines on the radar chart showing my stats had just barely widened in angle. My other stats had increased as well, but it was honestly nothing impressive. Clena must have found it hard to be happy about my compliment after looking at my stats.

  As for my level, it had risen to 24. It had been lower than Clena’s at our last update, so I had passed her during our battle in Hadesopolis. Our levels increased by absorbing a portion of the blessings every living creature in this world possessed after defeating them. It was probably accurate to describe it in RPG terms as EXP. That made it easy to understand why Rulitora had only grown one level, too. He was already strong to start with.

  But why had my EXP gain surpassed Clena’s and Roni’s so much? Sure, I had used far more magic than they had. However, that only affected stat growth, not necessarily level gain. I’d heard that being blessed by the Goddess of Light let you gain EXP faster, but the biggest difference must have come when I dealt the finishing blow on Goldfish.

  “...You beat me.”

  Rium’s level was surprisingly low. She was only level 15. She was noting how I had surpassed her level, but I didn’t tell her that that had been the case since Ceresopolis.

  Her MP and MEN were even higher than Clena’s, and her TEC was fairly high as well, but her HP, STR, and VIT were all incredibly low. She had managed to travel on her own from Athena to Jupiter, then from Athena to the void, but apparently that had nothing to do with her level. She didn’t actually seem that well versed in traveling, so she must have carefully avoided any possible dangers while traveling around on her flying disc. She had always been the type to ignore anything that didn’t interest her, though that wasn’t the case in regards to us.

  Rakti was last, but since we had picked her up in the middle of our journey, she didn’t own a status card yet and had to have a new one made for her. You could say she was similar to the farmer raver who’d fled his village to join the hero Ritsu Nakahana. The clerics didn’t find anything strange with her presence in our group.

  She ended up only being level 1. Her stats were no better than any ordinary human’s. This went without saying, but those stats reflected the temporary body she had created after her seal was lifted, not her actual stats as the Goddess of Darkness. We couldn’t have anyone finding out her true form, so this worked out just fine.

  “We should buy a maid uniform for her,” Clena said first thing after we finished having our cards updated and returned to our room. She went on to explain that it was relatively common for families to be attacked by monsters or thieves when traveling, and children would often barely escape and then be taken in by other travelers. It was common for temples to take those children in, too. That would explain why the clerics didn’t seem suspicious of Rakti at all, even though she didn’t have an ounce of fighting power in her.

  “Maybe they’re expecting us to give Rakti to the temple?”

  “Huuuh?!” Rakti cried out from beside me after I asked my question to Clena.

  Don’t worry, we won’t be leaving you at the temple. It made me happy to hear that she wanted to stay with us so much, though.

  “Well, there’s no way we could explain adding her to our party from just these stats.”

  “Yeah, she’s just an ordinary girl... no, her stats are even lower than average,” Rulitora mumbled as he peered at the status card in Clena’s hand.

  I didn’t know what was considered average, but it looked like Rakti’s temporary body was on the weaker end of the scale. Though it was temporary, this was still her one and only body in this world, and it seemed difficult for her to summon any more strength to it than she had right now.

  “I-I can use magic! Dark magic! It’s really cool!”

  “Don’t. You can’t let anybody else find out.”

  Rakti tried to object, but Rium denied her right off the bat. Though it was normal for travelers to carry some secrets, I attracted attention as a Hero of the Goddess, so I needed to keep up appearances.

  “So I was thinking—we could register her as a labor raver who handles odd jobs for us, which wouldn’t make it strange for her to be traveling with us.”

  “The same as me then,” Roni said with her chest held high. She was Clena’s raver, after all.

  “The same as Roni?! So I’ll be able to be of service?! Yes, please do that for me!” Rakti jumped up with her arms raised high. She had thought we were going to abandon her at the temple from our conversation, so she seemed especially desperate.

  She herself was
wishing for it, so it was probably the right decision to bring her along as a labor raver who took care of odd jobs.

  “Can we really register a goddess as a raver, though?”

  “They’ll make sure she doesn’t have a criminal record, and as long as she hasn’t done anything particularly heinous, her records won’t even make it to a neighboring country...”

  “So they won’t be able to look her up too thoroughly. I guess that works...?”

  “Yes, Rakti will probably be considered as someone without a citizenship.”

  Apparently it was a common situation for demi-humans, and not unheard of if someone happened to be born far away from any nation. There wouldn’t be any problems registering Rakti.

  “Touya, let’s go! Let’s go right now!” Rakti pulled my hand even though she probably had no idea where we should be going. Are you okay with that, Goddess of Darkness?

  Clena laughed, telling Rakti to calm down. “You don’t know where the raver market is, right? Let’s go ask one of the clerics.”

  “Oh, good idea!” Rakti replied energetically, her mood the opposite of how it was just a moment ago.

  We asked the nearest cleric we spotted from our room, who quickly guided us to where the raver market was. The registration process went even more smoothly than expected. Since we weren’t buying from the market itself, all we had to do was pay a registration fee. And thus, Rakti officially became my labor raver.

  “Would the Ficus store have clothing that could pass as a maid uniform?”

  “Anything that needs to be worn on the road would have to be custom ordered.”

  So the maids who stayed in the city to work were different. We’d planned to visit the great pervert’s store anyway, so we ordered Rakti some clothes along the way. We also bought some everyday clothes, then headed back to the temple.