Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 6 - Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Staredown by the Riverside

“That was close...” I mumbled, taking a seat on the riverbed.

A rapid white stream ran before me. It was the same river that flowed beneath the mountain road we had been using. Unfortunately, I had gotten caught in the landslide Gerbera had caused, and even though I hadn’t been injured, I had lost my footing and fallen into the river below. The rapids were fierce, and they had washed me a fair distance away. I was glad Iino hadn’t taken me down, but it would still take a considerable amount of time to get back to where I had been.

I let out a sigh as I listened to the sound of the crackling campfire—I had lit one so that I could dry my soaked clothing. I felt the heat against my bare chest as I turned my gaze away from the river. There were three people crowded around the campfire with me.

“Katou,” I said to one of them.

The girl with pigtails turned my way. She was also drying her clothes, so she had taken her shirt off. Her slender shoulders and the curve drawn by her back as she cradled her knees made it difficult for me to find a place to look, to say nothing of her bewitchingly exposed side. Having said that, I believed I had to say this while looking her in the eyes, so I focused only on her face.

“What is it, Senpai?” she asked.

“Please try to keep the reckless acts to a minimum.”

It was her plan, but Katou had been in the most danger from the landslide. Unlike my servants and I, she couldn’t even manipulate mana, so she could have easily died there. She had acted because she figured she had a good enough chance for survival, but the thought of what would’ve happened had anything gone wrong sent a shiver down my spine.

“But at that point...” Katou started to say, but she stopped when she saw my expression. “Never mind. Understood. I’ll be careful whenever it’s possible.”

“That doesn’t really put me at ease...”

“Tee hee. Sorry,” Katou said with a modest but sweet smile. “Thank you for worrying about me.”

“Sure thing...”

Even though I tried looking her in the face as much as I could, I couldn’t erase what I’d seen below her shoulders from my mind. Even though Katou was petite, and her chest was quite modest when compared to Lily, I could still see her womanly bulges pressed tenderly against her knees. I averted my face in a fluster.

I can’t look at her that way, I told myself. I knew this, but I was still a man. I couldn’t keep my eyes from wandering just a little. Rather, it was physiologically impossible for me not to react when we were both half naked. That applied doubly so with a cute girl like Katou. I’d managed to get over my wariness of her, but my reaction to her half-naked body was probably my biggest failure. It was actually better when I saw her as eerie.

“Master, are you cold?” another voice said. I was glad there was someone else to distract me from Katou. “If the fire is not sufficient enough to warm your body, I can go gather some kindling.”

“I’m fine.”

This was Rose. She turned her masked face toward me, her dull gray hair still dripping. She didn’t have to worry about catching a cold, so she was still wearing her wet clothes. Be that as it may, the way the fabric stuck to her hard mannequin body was strangely vivid. Rose was also rather defenseless, and it seemed there was still a lingering feeling in my mind from seeing Katou as a woman.

I let out a sigh and refocused myself. As I did, a deep crack running down Rose’s abdomen became visible through the creases in her clothing. It was the damage she’d suffered from Iino’s body blow. I knit my brows at the painful-looking wound.

“How about you? Is your body all right?” I asked.

“Combat is still possible,” Rose replied.

It was a questionable answer, in my opinion. Still, it was just like her. She was always thinking of how to protect me.

“All the same,” she added, “it seems this damage will have some effect on me.”

“Well, no helping that.”

“I’d like to exchange parts, but our luggage was scattered with the manamobile. If I could at least recover my sack of magic tools... All of my spare parts were in there, including my extra torso.”

“Sorry, Rose. It was an emergency. I didn’t think that far ahead...” Katou said apologetically, her expression downcast. She had planned the entire landslide.

Seeing her friend shrink into a ball, Rose shook her head. “I’ve finished analyzing the majority of the sack’s contents already. Even if it’s lost, I believe I’ll be able to recreate them on my own. Besides, it isn’t your fault, Mana.”

“What...? Are you saying it’s my fault?” the last person sitting around the campfire said in discontent.

She had glamorous black hair and sharp features, and her slender body belied the extraordinary engine hidden within. This was Iino Yuna, the cheater nicknamed the Skanda. She had lost her prided speed, though. She was sitting with her legs stretched out in front of her. A blood-soaked cloth was wrapped around her left thigh, and her right ankle was fixed in place with a simple brace made out of a branch and some cloth.

“Hey! Majima! Quit ogling me!”

Iino noticed my gaze and knit her delicate brows. Incidentally, she was also in her underwear. I didn’t think a cheater could catch a cold, but she had taken off her wet clothes because they felt gross. She glared at me as I responded with half-open eyes.

“Relax, I’m not interested in your body at all.”

“Wha—?!”

She was fairly flat, but Iino was still beautiful. Her long and slender limbs were graceful. Strangely enough, though, I felt nothing from seeing her in her underwear. It was like I just didn’t care. Well, maybe that made sense. Even though we were gathered around a campfire like this, Iino was our enemy.

We found ourselves in a curious stalemate. The Skanda had temporarily lost her vaunted legs, but that didn’t mean Rose and I could defeat her now. She would just strike us down if we were to attack her.

Conversely, Iino couldn’t attack us with that wound, although I was keeping my distance to an extent and staying on guard, just in case. Besides, even if she caught us, she couldn’t bring us back if she couldn’t walk. Iino couldn’t use healing magic either. Fortunately for us, she was strictly a frontline combatant.

Katou was pretty much responsible for all of this. In that instant when the landslide was about to take her, Katou had used her imitation flash runestone. Iino hadn’t had any time to think. Compounded by the fact that Katou had caught Iino totally off guard at the time, the runestone had completely blinded Iino.

Even though the rest of us hadn’t been blinded to the same extent as Iino had, there were limits to what we could accomplish with minimal vision. Regardless, some had taken action flawlessly—Rose and Asarina. Neither of them viewed the world through eyes. As such, a blinding flash didn’t obstruct them at all.

Thinking back on it, Katou might have suggested this reckless plan to Gerbera precisely because she trusted Rose. She’d been sure that Rose would save her, and that was exactly what had happened.

Rose had protected Katou from the falling rocks, while I’d ordered Asarina to retrieve the two of them. Inevitably, Iino had gotten caught in that too. That was because Katou had picked up her fallen knife, and when the blinded Iino collided with her, she had stabbed the Skanda right in the thigh.

It was Rose’s specially made knife, so it had gone right through even a cheater’s muscles. Even though Iino hadn’t been on guard, this was still impressive. And with her attention focused on her injured leg, Iino had ended up hurting her ankle when the road collapsed.

Katou really did deserve praise for all this. She was utterly ruthless against her enemies. There was no way of stripping Iino of her combat abilities without doing something this extreme. Katou’s judgment had been right on the mark.

“By the way, Senpai. What do we do now?” Katou asked me.

“Let’s see...” I folded my arms and thought it over for a moment. “First, we need to meet back up with all the others.”

We had gotten separated from our group. From what I could tell before being blinded, Shiran, Kei, and Gerbera had escaped the landslide, judging by where they’d been when Gerbera hurled the manamobile. Also, after I’d figured out Katou’s intentions, I had thrown Ayame toward Gerbera. The action was so abrupt that I’d treated her rather roughly, so I had to apologize later.

Lily was the unlucky one. She was always influenced by the structure of whatever body she was mimicking. Not only had the flash blinded her, but she had fallen in the landslide. Something of that level wasn’t a threat to a monster like Lily, but she had ended up getting washed away down the river on her own. I could sense she was heading our way through the mental path.

“Let’s wait here for Lily. She’s got the nose of a wolf, so it’ll be faster for her to find us than the other way around. After that, we can meet back up with Gerbera and the others.”

Judging by her personality, Gerbera was going to chase me as soon as possible, but her movements would be rather sluggish. She only had a vague sense of direction to go by from the mental path, and she also had several missing legs due to Iino. Shiran and Kei had been with her, but Shiran couldn’t use healing magic as an undead monster, and Kei’s skill wasn’t sufficient to regenerate Gerbera’s lost limbs. It was likely Lily would reach us before Gerbera did.

“What do we do after that?” Katou asked.

“Just as we did before. We’ll go back to the mountain path and head to Aker.”

“Wait just a moment, Majima. Are you planning on running away?” Iino cut in.

I stared at her suspiciously, but she didn’t pay it any mind and returned a critical glare of her own.

“Come back to the Empire with me,” she said.

Iino had been like this the entire time. It was honestly a pain in the ass. I didn’t want to get involved with her at all, and now that we found ourselves unable to do anything to each other, I wanted to get out of here immediately.

The reason I was crowded around the campfire with her regardless of this was so that I could gather information. We had to talk, or I wouldn’t be able to obtain something that was otherwise unavailable to me. I had to speak with her, but only barbed words came out of my mouth.

“Go back to the Empire, you say? There’s no way I’ll happily tag along with someone who suddenly attacked us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Iino said with a severe expression. “Hang on... Suddenly attacked you? What do you mean? You were the one to instigate the fight with your pawns first.”

“Me? What’re you talking about? First, quit referring to them as pawns. Second, you were definitely the one who was blatantly hostile toward us.”

“So you suddenly attacked me?!”

“It looked like some random thug was about to kill me. Of course they would jump into action.”

“A-A random thug?! What’s with that?! There’s no way I’d suddenly try to kill you!”

We were talking, but we definitely weren’t on the same page. As we stared each other down, a clap resounded in the air.

“How about we start by sharing our circumstances?” Katou said.

Hearing her quiet voice cooled me down a little and stopped the blood from rushing to my head. I also realized I was practically incapable of controlling my emotions right now. Katou gazed at me gently as if to comfort me. I scratched my head awkwardly, took a deep breath, and calmed myself down.

I was pissed that Iino had injured everyone. However, we couldn’t have a proper conversation if I lost my composure, meaning I wouldn’t be able to get any information. After calming down a little, I thought about what Iino had said before. She had chased us because she was under the impression that I was one of the people who had attacked Fort Tilia.

She was only trying to capture me, not kill me. Now it made sense. In Iino’s mind, she had just been tracking a suspect, and once she voiced her suspicions to him, he had attacked her in a frenzy. That was probably her impression, at least. I had my own opinions on the matter, of course, and Iino certainly did too. Well, this all happened because of Iino’s misunderstanding. But even without that, we still had an unfortunate difference of opinions.

I let the strength out of my shoulders and sat back down, only just noticing I had unconsciously risen to my feet earlier. “Fine.”

Katou gave me a smile, then in a complete change, turned and glared coldly at Iino. “You too, Iino. Don’t you find it strange?”

“That’s not—”

“At the very least, you can tell that Senpai’s servants aren’t just mindless puppets, right? Both Gerbera and Lily were desperate to protect him. Did they look like pawns to you?”

Iino groaned as she pursed her lips tightly. She looked like she had suspected this when she was fighting Gerbera. Katou’s observation was right on the money.

“Besides, I won’t let you say such things about Rose,” Katou added with a strange amount of vigor. Perhaps unconsciously, her fingers crept over the hilt of the knife that Rose had made for her.

Seeing that, Iino let out another groan. “I get it already...”

And although she did so rather grudgingly, Iino backed down. We now had the chance to hold a proper conversation.