Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 14 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Past and Present

After getting forcefully teleported, we encountered monsters right as we finally grasped the situation we found ourselves in.

“Senpai! Something’s coming this way!” Katou said, stifling her voice.

Her eyes were directed at a shadowy figure. It was at the end of the dimly lit corridor, so at first, I thought it was human. However, its limbs moved far too unnaturally for it to be one.

“A puppet-type monster?” I mumbled.

Unlike the magical puppets of the Depths, this puppet’s body was made of materials similar to the corridor itself. I knitted my brow. Our short-lived relief at our enemy’s apparent miscalculation of our destination, and their subsequent loss of initiative, faded quickly. We hadn’t considered the possible presence of monsters. The foe who’d teleported us had chosen a really dangerous place to bring us.

Three puppets appeared and, upon noticing us in this empty corridor with nowhere to hide, came running right at us.

“S-Senpai!” Katou called, seemingly at her wits’ end. “Forget me and just run away!”

She probably judged that she would be nothing but a hindrance. It was true. In our current situation, I had nobody to rely on. We were at a disadvantage in terms of numbers too. I had no choice but to accept that. That said, abandoning Katou and running away was impossible for a multitude of reasons.

“Hang on a sec, Katou,” I said, grabbing her shoulder and stopping her as she stepped forward to try and act as a decoy.

“S-Senpai?”

“There’s no need for that.”

It was a pretty bad situation, but not so bad that such tragic determination was necessary. After all, I possessed the strength to fight monsters now. Taking out three at once while protecting Katou would be a little too much for me, but there was a way of handling this.

“Sorry, just put up with this for a bit,” I said.

I obviously didn’t have the time to give her a full explanation while monsters closed in on us. After apologizing to her beforehand, I hefted Katou up in one arm. I wanted to keep one hand free, so I had her cradled to one side. It was somewhat like holding up a child. Fortunately, Katou was fairly petite, even for a girl. As long as I remained careful, she wasn’t going to throw me off balance. With my magically reinforced strength, it was easy enough to hold her up. Unless I carried her in both arms, I would need her whole body glued to mine for this, so I had no choice but to have her put up with that.

“W-W-Wah! S-S-Senpai?!” Katou raised her voice right next to my ear. It was a little embarrassing, but now wasn’t really the time to be worrying about that.

“Wrap your arms around my neck and hang on tight!”

The moment after I instructed Katou to do this, the puppets charged. First, I had to get some range on them. I kicked off the ground hard and jumped backward. Katou obediently did as she was told and wrapped her arms around my neck. She squeezed tightly, and as we fell back as one, the puppets gave chase with their cudgels in hand. I wasn’t going to let them get close so easily, though.

I continued moving backward and held out my free left hand toward the incoming enemies. I always carried Rose’s gifts on me—the Asarina Bracers and the Rosette Dagger—in my magic bag. I’d equipped them the moment we found ourselves here. These bracers were a magic tool that Rose had fashioned to protect me. If I poured mana into them, I was capable of creating bullets of any element.

“Eat this!”

I shaped a wind bullet and fired it at one of the charging puppets. The projectile hit it square in the head, toppling it over backward. This wasn’t enough to defeat it, but I’d succeeded in stalling it. Meanwhile, the remaining two puppets were getting closer. A vine flew out of the back of my outstretched hand and assaulted them like a whip.

“Ssster!”

Asarina entangled one of the remaining puppets. She hadn’t sealed its movements completely, but the act obstructed its mobility somewhat. As a result, the last puppet was ahead of the others. Things were going exactly as planned. That was when I finally took a step forward.

We wouldn’t get anywhere by constantly running away. If we bumped into more monsters before losing these ones, we would only burden ourselves with having to handle more foes at once. Our only recourse was to finish them off one by one. Asarina was already coiled around my left arm, working as an exoskeleton.

Ever since Asarina started parasitizing me, she’d grown stronger, her roots running deeper and deeper into my left arm over the course of time. As a price for that, I’d lost some dexterity in my fingers. Lately, my left hand could no longer do much more than vaguely grasp objects. However, what I’d gained in exchange was great. My loss of delicacy was made up for with sturdiness. It was enough to withstand an equally powerful force.

I let my mana flow, reproducing forty percent of the genuine Great White Spider’s Tyranny. At this level, it wasn’t a noticeable burden anymore. I warded off the incoming cudgel with my bracer and took a swing as we crossed.

“Shatter.”

My fist pulverized the puppet’s torso.

◆ ◆ ◆

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

“No...”

I defeated the remaining puppets with the same decisive one-on-one precision, then let Katou down to the ground.

“I’m surprised,” she muttered, staring at me wide-eyed. “Senpai, you’ve gotten so strong. You can even take on multiple monsters at once, while still protecting me the whole time.”

“Now that I think of it, you’ve never seen me fight any monsters, huh?”

During our journey, Lily and Gerbera had handled the majority of monster encounters. In Aker, I’d gone out to suppress monsters near the reclamation villages several times, but Katou hadn’t come with us on those occasions. Perhaps her reaction was only a matter of course.

“I can more or less handle this much,” I said. “Besides, they weren’t all that strong.”

At most, they were at the level of monsters from the Fringes. If they had come from the Depths, it might have been a far harder fight.

“But...” I added, letting the word fall limply.

“But?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

A certain fear came to mind, but I kept it to myself. Nothing would come of mentioning it. We had no way of doing anything about it from here, so there was no point in making Katou anxious. Instead, I strengthened my tone a little.

“Anyway, I can hold my own against monsters as I am now. It’s not much of a problem to have you with me. So don’t ever mention me abandoning you and running away again.”

“I... Okay, I understand.”

Katou nodded obediently. Although, it was a little questionable whether I’d really gotten through to her. She saw herself in far too poor a light, after all.

“Sorry, Senpai,” she continued. “There was no need to run away at all, was there? You’re strong now.”

“No... Even if I wasn’t strong or anything, it’s impossible for me to abandon you and run away.”

Katou blinked in confusion, then smiled amicably.

“You really do treasure your friends,” she said. “Thank you.”

That wasn’t what I meant, though. I suddenly recalled what’d happened before this incident. If I’d gone with my impulse and succeeded in conveying my feelings, things would probably be different. Given the circumstances, it was out of the question to continue that conversation now.

“Okay then, shall we get moving?” I suggested.

Setting aside conveying what I’d wanted to say before being teleported here, I decided it was good enough to have convinced her not to commit to self-sacrifice.

“We didn’t expect to find monsters here, but it doesn’t change what we have to do,” I continued. “We need to rendezvous with the others while the enemy is a step behind.”

“Right.”

“That being the case, sorry. Katou, I’m gonna have to carry you again.”

“Okay... What?”

Katou’s eyes turned to saucers, and I once more scooped her up.

“Hwah?”

This time I held her across both my arms, so she wasn’t totally glued to me. Instead, her face was much closer to mine and we could look each other in the eyes.

“S-Senpai? Wh-What’re you...?”

Katou was so red that it was clear to see even in this dimly lit corridor. I couldn’t deny how adorable it was. I had no intention of ignoring my own feelings any longer.

“You won’t be able to react if something happens, right?” I said. “I’m not as strong as the others, so if that happens, I’m not sure I’ll be able to protect you.”

“So...it’s a countermeasure against ambushes?” Katou said, demonstrating wisdom in spite of her shyness. She sank into thought, still red to the cheeks. “But don’t you have the Misty Lodge?”

“Yeah, I do.” I nodded, knitting my brow a little. The Misty Lodge was in fact capable of seeing everything within its reach. If I deployed it far and wide, it would be improbable for anything to ambush us. That would normally be the case. “As a matter of fact, I’ve had it deployed for a while. Its spatial perception isn’t working well. I can manage when things are really close, but it’s no good at a distance.”

“Huh? What’s causing that?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, but maybe it’s a special property of this place.”

I took a look around. In more familiar terms, our surroundings looked a lot like an underground concrete tunnel. The wide rectangular corridors diverged every now and then and went on and on. The stone walls were smooth and glowed faintly. It was tranquil and immaculate, and had a certain mystique to it. It was clear there was some kind of magic at work here. It wouldn’t be weird for some force to be blocking the Misty Lodge’s perception.

“I wonder what this place is? It’s really mysterious,” I said.

“It is,” Katou agreed, then narrowed her eyes in contemplation. “It looks strange enough as is, but it’s weird for such a vast space not to be covered in dust.”

“Now that you mention it...”

The air wasn’t dusty and the walls weren’t moldy. There was no way someone was cleaning a place that was infested with monsters. Was this some kind of magic too? I thought it over for a bit, then shook my head.

“Well, at any rate, our number one priority is linking up with the others and getting out of here,” I said.

We could think about it afterward. I shelved our questions for now and had started walking when I suddenly realized something.

“This is my first time walking around like this with someone in my arms.”

Conversely, I’d been carried by others or ridden on others quite a lot. I wasn’t used to it, so it was hard to keep my balance.

“Sorry, Katou, but can you wrap your arms around my neck?”

“Y-Yes.”

Katou acted meekly. Her arms were slightly folded in front of her chest, and she timidly wrapped them around me. With this, she maintained her own balance much better too, making it a fair bit easier to walk.

“Thanks. This’ll work,” I said.

“Y-You’re welcome...”

This way, it would be easier to shift her over to one arm as I’d done before. This place was built like a dungeon, so it was sure to take us some time to find the others. To prevent Katou from exhausting herself, it seemed carrying her around was the best choice.

Still, it was a little embarrassing. As we remained quite literally nose to nose, Katou’s lips squirmed about.

“Senpai... Am I heavy?”

“Not at all. You’re real light.”

I trained regularly, so it was simple for me to carry her and walk in such a way, even just using my raw muscles. Now that I’d gotten more adept at using mana to reinforce my body, the task wasn’t a burden whatsoever. In my arms, her body was so slender, small, soft, and warm. I really understood why Rose always said that she was scared of breaking Katou whenever she touched her.

Back when I first met Katou, we both had to be protected by Lily and the others. Now, those girls weren’t with us. Instead, the strength to fight was within me. I had to protect Katou. No matter what happened, it was my duty.

Renewing my resolve, I focused on the mental path. Which way was best to link up with the others? The mental path was my inherent ability, so I was capable of gleaning the most information from it. I had a general grasp of where everyone was relative to each other. The closest were—

“Rose and Lobivia are relatively close,” I said.

“Ah, so Rose is here as well. And Lobivia too,” Katou said, a happy look on her face. It must’ve been reassuring to know her best friend was nearby.

“It looks like the two of them are trying to make their way here.”

“Is that so? That’s good... What’s wrong?” Katou asked, noticing my complex expression.

“No, it’s just, this is right after that matter with Okazaki. I’m a little worried about Lobivia.”

I’d kept her close, intending to pay attention to her until she was emotionally stable. I’d never imagined this would happen, so I couldn’t help but worry.

“You have a point,” Katou agreed, knitting her brow. “Lobivia is very levelheaded, but there are times she really acts her age.”

“We need to link up with them quickly so that she can relax.”

Coming to an agreement and nodding, we moved out to reunite with the others.