Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 7 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: An Impossible Embrace

The door to my room flew open with enough vigor that I thought the hinges would break. I went on guard against the shocking sound.

Without heeding my reaction, Gerbera entered the room, her pure-white hair fluttering behind her.

Something was wrong. Her practically transparent cheeks were now bright red, and her breathing was rough. I could tell at a single glance that she was in an excited state. It was honestly a little scary.

“Wh-What’s up, Gerbera? I thought you went out to gather herbs...”

“My Lord, I heard from Rose. Is it true we’ll be able to depart tomorrow?” she asked, ignoring my question entirely.

No, rather than ignoring it, it was more like she was too panicked to answer. This was fairly common for her. Huh...? In that case, it wasn’t all that strange.

After thinking about it, I calmed down a little. From what I could see, she hadn’t burst into the room because of some impending danger. Judging by the situation, she had returned from gathering herbs, asked Rose about her progress, and then made her way here. Not that I knew what had her in such a rush, though.

“It’s true, we’ll be leaving tomorrow,” I replied.

“I see...”

Gerbera pursed her lips and frowned. Was there some sort of problem with leaving tomorrow? With that question in mind, I watched as she turned around and closed the door—then bolted it shut.

“Uhh, hang on. Why are you locking the door?”

Gerbera turned back around without answering me. Just as before, she seemed panicked. Next, she shifted her focus to Asarina, who was looking curiously back and forth between us.

“Asarina,” she said, “could I have some time alone with our lord? I’d like to speak with him for a bit.”

No sooner than she asked, Gerbera walked toward me. I didn’t really get it, but she was startlingly vigorous. Asarina backed down, overawed by her behavior, and I reflexively took a step back myself.

“Hey, Gerbera? You okay? You’re acting weird.”

“Is that so? I haven’t slept the past two days. I might be acting a little off. Forgive me.”

She hadn’t slept? Gerbera had been using the bed next to mine.

“I’ve been all alone in this room with you, My Lord. How could I possibly sleep?”

This stunned me into silence. I knew what she’d meant, but there was something a little off when she spoke of it so proudly.

“I’d rather you praise me for my self-restraint in not pouncing on you,” she added.

“I think it’s usually the other way around?”

I stiffly drew back as Gerbera steadily closed in. The room was small, though. I couldn’t keep it up forever.

“My Lord...”

Once she got within reach, she looked up at me with her red eyes. It was like they were sparkling. Anxiety started filling my heart as I thought of a certain possibility. We were under attack by an “enemy’s” unidentifiable glamor. Up until now, they’d shown no signs of wanting to hurt us, but their objective remained unknown. As such, we didn’t know how long that would last. After all, it wasn’t certain how much of an effect this glamor could have on my servants. If, by some chance, Gerbera was deceived and lured to the “enemy’s” side...

The moment that thought came to mind, she took action.

“My Lord!”

I couldn’t react. Gerbera leaped into my chest with the agile movements of a beast. She stretched out her arms and wrapped them around my torso like snakes. She was too fast, and I had no time to brush her off. I had no means of resisting. Gerbera put all her strength into her arms and squeezed. Her voluptuous breasts pushed against me, and she hugged me close.

“Huh...?”

My mind couldn’t keep up. I could only tell that this wasn’t a hostile attack. On the contrary, there was deep affection in this display. Gerbera’s soft skin pressed against me. She stirred slightly, still embracing me as if to savor every last part of my being. Her breasts squished against my chest, their presence clear in my mind. My clothes were a poor barrier against the soft feeling and the sweet urges born from it. Gerbera pressed her nose to my collarbone and took in a deep breath.

“Haah...”

Her satisfied sigh soaked into my chest. I could feel the heat from her burning passion and her overflowing love. That heat shattered my last restraints. My body moved to return Gerbera’s embrace on reflex, but before I could, she leaped away from me.

“Huh...?”

I was dumbfounded, my arms outstretched with nowhere to go, much like the impulse surging out of my heart. Gerbera was already out of reach. I felt like I had just gotten tricked by a wily fox.

“Mm. All’s good now,” Gerbera said, nodding deeply.

Apparently, she was completely satisfied. My face was probably pretty pathetic at this point.

“What was that...?” I asked.

For the time being, it didn’t look like Gerbera had been beguiled by the “enemy” like I’d feared. That was a relief, but I couldn’t understand the meaning behind her sudden embrace. She had come in so quickly, and she’d squeezed with all her strength...

All her strength? Gerbera? On me? Something was out of place. Once more, there was something strange about this, but I couldn’t tell what. There was only one thing that remained perfectly undeniable. Something about this situation was definitely weird...but as a result, Gerbera was now smiling with satisfaction.

“I wonder why? I thought I’d be able to do it now,” Gerbera said, squeezing her arms around herself. It was like she was reflecting deeply on the sensation from that brief embrace. “But any more than this would be no good. Reaching the final stage is something I must attain through my own efforts. That’s why this is enough for today.”

I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It also looked like she really didn’t know what she was saying herself. Still, she looked so satisfied. Seeing her like that, I couldn’t help but smile wryly.

It felt like we were being toyed with, but I didn’t care now. I was just satisfied to see Gerbera’s content smile. I wondered why that was, and as I did, I recalled Rose’s terrific mood, Mizushima’s radiant smile, and Shiran and Kei’s happy figures.

“Oh...”

I was astonished. At that moment, I finally arrived at the truth of the matter.

◆ ◆ ◆

Late at night, when everyone was fast asleep, I slipped out of bed. Gerbera was lying down in the bed next to mine. Perhaps because she was lacking sleep, or because she’d gotten too excited during the day, she was resting well now. I listened to the sound of her breathing as I left the room, and then I descended to the first floor.

The floorboards creaked in the stillness of the night. Many of my companions had sharp senses. Normally, someone would’ve noticed if I snuck out like this, but nobody did. I wasn’t surprised. I knew just by the fact that the spirits could be tricked that my poor sneaking skills would suffice.

“Good evening, my dear.”

When I got to the bottom of the staircase, I found the proprietress waiting for me at the reception desk. Her features gave her a gentle air, and her smile was calm and sweet.

“You have something to speak with me about, right?” she said. “Shall we talk further within?”

I nodded, and she guided me to another room on the first floor. She told me to wait at the table inside, then left the room. Several minutes later, she brought two servings of tea on a tray.

“Is this okay?” she asked. “Coming on your own, I mean. Are you not a little anxious?”

“I trust you enough for this. Besides...if something does happen, Gerbera or the others will sense it right away and come charging in.”

“Well, you have a point there,” she conceded, making no attempt to refute my claim. She just chuckled and took a seat across from me.

Now then, where was I to start? She didn’t seem to have any intention of rushing me. She simply looked my way with a gentle expression. I took a sip of the hot tea and then cut to the chase.

“For the last few days, I’ve been feeling that something wasn’t right. It seems there’s an ‘enemy’ out there who attacked us with some kind of glamor magic. The only ones who felt something was off about the current situation were myself and Asarina.”

“Ssster.”

The proprietress gazed at me, then at Asarina, looking a little troubled. Well, I could imagine what she was feeling. It wasn’t that I was capable of sensing something out of place, but rather that I just kind of ended up sensing it anyway. I swallowed my urge to smile bitterly and continued.

“There were two mysteries,” I explained. “First, Gerbera is here. She’s lived for many years in the Depths of the Woodlands. She’s a legend among monsters. A monster of the same level might be able to cast a glamor on her, but she’s sensitive to hostility. I doubt she wouldn’t notice an attack.”

“And what would the other mystery be?” she asked.

“After they trapped us in this glamor, the ‘enemy’ never harmed us,” I answered, twirling the hot cup in between my hands. “It’s pointless to attack using only a glamor. There has to be some kind of physical attack on the weakened targets to accomplish anything. Yet, this ‘enemy’ didn’t do a thing for three days, despite the increasing possibility that the glamor could come undone the longer this went on. I couldn’t understand why they cast this glamor on us...”

I could no longer hold back a begrudging smile.

“Well...I suppose you wouldn’t. Your entire premise was wrong,” she said.

Who? And what for? I’d misunderstood the situation from the start.

“It wasn’t an attack,” I said. “Of course we didn’t come to any harm. It didn’t matter how sensitive Gerbera was to hostility. Our ‘enemy’ wasn’t an enemy to begin with.”

Going as far as tricking the spirits so that I could see Shiran and Kei so happy was a message from the non-enemy telling me that they had no hostile intent. Also, Asarina had tried to tell me something else.

“Danger. Everyyy—one. Know. No?”

If we’d truly been in danger, everyone would’ve noticed, right? That was what she’d tried to say. The fact that Gerbera hadn’t noticed anything amiss proved that our current situation wasn’t dangerous.

“In that case, what was the purpose of all this?” I asked, lowering my eyes to my cup.

I saw images of my companions’ faces in the pale-red water as they’d been for the last few days. All of them looked so relaxed, or like they were having so much fun... I’d been the only one on edge and on guard.

“In truth,” I continued, “we were all supposed to ‘enjoy this time of dreams’ during our stay. But because I didn’t get fully caught in the glamor, it got all messed up.”

Having said that, from my point of view, nothing could really be done about that. For example, what would happen if someone ended up in their dreams while still awake? The world would be illogical and ominous, making it impossible to have fun, right? My situation was something akin to that. In other words, it was an unfortunate coincidence—unfortunate for me, because I’d worried the entire time, and unfortunate for the one who’d provided us with this delightful dream.

“I remember now,” I said. “One of my companions told me before about a strange tale involving a certain traveler. The name of the play based on the story is The Misty Lodge.”

I looked up and met the gaze of the woman in front of me before continuing.

“Once upon a time, a traveler was attacked by a monster. Being accustomed to danger, he managed to escape, but he lost all of his provisions and water. There were no settlements nearby, so he was destined to die by the roadside. The traveler continued walking in desperation, dizzy from starvation and exhaustion. After several days, a mist began to fill the area. And the moment he thought everything was over, he finally found an inn.”

I paused to wet my tongue with a sip of tea.

“The traveler thanked the heavens for his terrific luck. He was courteously welcomed into the inn and spared from his grisly fate. However, when he left the inn the next day, he noticed something odd. There was no way an inn would be in the middle of nowhere like that. By the time he realized this, there wasn’t a single trace of the inn left...”

That was the end of the story. There was, in fact, a lot more in the middle, but I left that out and kept things to a basic summary. Up until very recently, I’d completely forgotten about this tale. Even Shiran, who’d told me about it, didn’t seem to remember. Something had likely made us forget, seeing as that knowledge would have made it difficult to establish this situation. The fact that I could remember now was proof that the glamor was coming undone, or perhaps this room was special.

“It seems this tale has been passed on for a long time in many places. Of course, the witness changes to a farmer or a hunter here and there. The one common point is that they all reached an inn while walking through a thick mist, and during their stay, not a single one found anything out of the ordinary about the clearly strange situation.”

Far too many details of this story coincided with the phenomenon we were currently experiencing. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, especially considering we’d conveniently forgotten about this very story.

“The interesting thing is that, for a very long time, witness accounts of the Misty Lodge have popped up every few decades. It couldn’t possibly be the work of humans. It couldn’t be monsters either. They would never save people, after all... That’s common sense in this world, right?”

I paused to check her reaction. The woman smiled back at me. Her smile was gentle, but I couldn’t see what hid behind it. I felt like I was being graded as I continued.

“I have the power to grant hearts to monsters. But all it really amounts to is helping those who already have the foundation for a heart to grow from. The Great White Spider Gerbera, who has lived for many years, already had something like a heart before we met. There’s also the precedent established in The Tragedy of the Undead King Carl about the undead monster who ruled over an entire country. It’s more than feasible for a monster to have a heart without my presence.”

All my ability did was stimulate the growth of a heart that was already there. It did speed up the process, but given enough time, it would have happened regardless. It was just simple logic.

“Up until now, I thought such beings only existed within the Depths, the Abyss, or the Dark Woods. But that isn’t necessarily the case. I was careless. Not all monsters settle in one place.”

I had witnessed one such example myself. There were monsters who swam through the air as if it were a great ocean—tripdrills. They formed massive schools and moved across the continent with the seasons. Migratory monsters did exist in this world.

“From all that, I came up with a theory,” I said, putting my cup down on the table and facing the woman before me. “The one who saved the travelers in the tales of The Misty Lodge is a migratory monster who uses mist as a medium to cast a glamor. In short, that’s you.”

The proprietress’s smile deepened as she listened to me.

“Could I correct you on two points?” she said, seemingly enjoying herself. “I don’t cast a glamor using mist. The glamor is but a portion of my magic.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that this inn isn’t just an illusion. The most powerful glamor magic can rewrite reality.”

“Rewrite...reality?”

“You could say I create another dimension. Everything here is reality. My magic creates a separate world of mist.”

“Another dimension...”

I gulped, recalling the taste of tea in my mouth. Now that I thought about it, the traveler in The Misty Lodge staved off starvation by staying at the inn. Illusions couldn’t fill one’s belly. But if this was another reality, it explained how the traveler had been saved. But that was way too...

“I feel like you’re saying something really outrageous...” I said.

“Not really,” she replied with a shake of the head. “The world I create is brittle. In truth, if someone like Gerbera were to go wild, it would shatter in an instant.”

Nevertheless, she was creating a whole other dimension, even if only temporarily. It was definitely a dreadful ability. I’d been somewhat jokingly under the impression that a fox or a tanuki or something was tricking us...

“What on earth are you?” I asked, finding it difficult to mask the tension in my voice.

I waited for her answer with bated breath. In contrast, the woman interlaced her fingers over the cup in front of her, maintaining her gentle smile the entire time.

“Are you aware of what monsters are, my dear?”

“Huh? That’s a little sudden. Creatures who possess mana...right?”

The woman shook her head. “That definition isn’t strictly correct. As long as they have mana, even a wooden puppet or a corpse can move. They don’t need to be living creatures. No. Not only that. In essence, they don’t need to have physical substance...”

Right then, the woman sitting in front of me disappeared. Her gentle smile, her golden-brown hair, her petite body... Everything vanished without a trace, though I hadn’t even blinked.

“Wha—?!”

“Physical substance doesn’t matter. A monster’s true nature is mana.”

I heard a voice coming from nowhere. I wasn’t being bewitched by glamor magic, though. I could feel her presence in the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and in each and every piece of furniture in the room. She was making me understand, whether I wanted to or not.

“I see...” I muttered. “So the Misty Lodge in the tales isn’t something a monster created using glamor magic. This entire dimension created through magic is actually...”

“Yes. Exactly.” Before I knew it, the woman appeared once more and nodded with a smile. “I am the Misty Lodge itself. I am the monster who wanders this world for eternity. I am the very magic that creates this world of mist.”