Two hours.
In a way, it wasn’t all that long.
Sleeping for two hours, playing around for two hours… and so on.
In truth, two hours often feels like an incredibly short amount of time in everyday life.
But during that time, which ordinarily would have felt short, we had become fairly exhausted.
Because the density of those two hours was on an entirely different level from an ordinary two hours.
Have you ever fully immersed yourself in something for two hours?
For example, pondering a single problem for two hours in order to understand a magic theory.
Or perhaps standing in front of a large crowd for two hours at a competition or presentation, forced to speak the entire time.
Well… whether you have or haven’t doesn’t really matter.
I’m just saying to imagine it that way.
Those two hours would probably feel quite different from the two hours we spend sleeping or playing.
The two hours we’d just experienced were something along those lines.
No matter how much healing we had, wounds still formed and recovered, and that process steadily accumulated mental fatigue.
Every single attack threatened our lives.
And we cut down what felt like thousands upon thousands of Abraxases.
For us, those two hours had been a stretch of time that might never have ended.
In fact, if Eladrien hadn’t sacrificed her spirit to buy us time, we might have had to swing our swords for almost half a day without a moment’s rest.
Had that happened, even we would have had to brace ourselves for death.
From that point on, it would have become a war of attrition over who could endure longer.
And there were almost no cases of a dungeon losing in a war of attrition.
— Slice!
Fortunately, we survived them and killed every last one.
As the victors, we were cutting useful parts from their corpses and putting them into Signica’s subspace pouch.
Apparently, there was a rule that we had to collect as much of this as possible before the dungeon closed and submit it to the imperial family.
If clearing the dungeon hadn’t been enough, and we had also been forced to carry all these byproducts ourselves…
Let’s stop there. I don’t even want to think about it.
Long live artifacts! Long, long live artifacts!
— Whoosh. Whoosh.
The byproducts we tossed aside were sucked into the artifact on their own.
Thanks to that, we finished the work comfortably, and before long, the dungeon completely collapsed and we were thrown out of it.
““Haa…””
Once we confirmed with our own eyes that we were outside, each of us let out a breath for our own reasons.
“If any of you feel even the slightest discomfort anywhere, you have to tell me.”
After catching our breath to some extent, we took time to check whether anyone was injured.
If there were physical wounds, we had to treat them with healing.
However,
“El…”
Wounds of the heart could not be healed in that way.
Everyone looked at Eladrien with worried eyes.
As I said earlier, the reason we were able to clear this floor quickly was entirely thanks to her judgment.
Thanks to her, we were able to end things at a reasonable point without everyone suffering too much.
“I’m sorry… I should have done better.”
Signica lowered her head and apologized to her.
“What are you talking about? It’s fine. I made my own judgment and decision. Signica, you made the best judgment you could in that situation too.”
“…I’m still sorry.”
When Signica apologized once more, Veronica patted her on the back and said,
“No, it’s more my fault. The whole reason a Hero exists is to prevent situations like this from happening… I should have done better.”
“No, no. If you put it that way, I should have prayed more regularly…”
Everyone lowered their heads, reproaching themselves for their own shortcomings.
In the end, Eladrien instead became slightly flustered and calmed everyone down.
“No, really, it’s okay. Sylphy will be satisfied that she was able to help too. And spirits reincarnate again after some time passes…”
Only after Eladrien, true to her role as the mother of the party, spent a full ten minutes saying she was fine did this strange rush of apologies finally come to an end.
‘D… do I need to apologize too?’
Just as that belated thought crossed my mind—
— Whip.
She turned her head, looked at me, and said,
“At least you don’t do it.”
“Yes, ma’am…”
With her ultra-El-like senses, she acted preemptively.
Her expression said, Please, don’t.
Yeah, there are times like that.
When I’m genuinely fine, but the people around me make more of a fuss instead.
Since I knew what that felt like,
I quietly nodded by myself in the corner to show I understood.
***
The rush of apologies ended after ten minutes of her saying she was fine,
but it took another ten minutes for the gloomy mood to lift and return to normal.
“Nica.”
“What?”
“Can you teleport, by any chance?”
At her question, Signica’s expression immediately darkened.
“And you call yourself my friend?”
“Hehe…”
Veronica scratched her head with a bright, puppy-like smile.
“But it’d be better to go back and rest, right? Rather than walking back in this condition.”
“…Wait ten minutes.”
Normally, since she would have had to start chanting from the beginning to use Teleport, she would have been short on mana.
Fortunately, she had stored Teleport with a spell called Memorize, so even casting the same spell consumed less mana. Once a little more mana regenerated, she could use it right away.
No, wait. Is this really fortunate…?
If she’d memorized a 7th Circle attack spell…
Never mind.
That’s too results-oriented.
If I’m that curious, it’d be better to ask the mage herself later instead of thinking about it alone when I know nothing about magic.
Anyway,
while her mana recovered, we talked about various things.
The topics were mainly related to this dungeon, such as when and who would make the clear report, and when and how we would send the byproducts.
“All right… then that’s settled.”
— Tap.
Veronica closed the notebook in which she had been briefly organizing the conversation.
“Since we’ve cleared the dungeon, we should decide what we originally meant to decide.”
“…?”
A question mark suddenly appeared in my head as I listened to the conversation.
What were we deciding?
I didn’t think I remembered anything like that…
“Ah.”
At that moment, Signica thought for a moment.
“Don’t tell me… the meal order?”
Veronica nodded in affirmation.
“Yep! That’s right! We cleared the dungeon, so we’ll have some free time for a while, won’t we?”
At her answer, Signica was about to scold her,
“No…! Ah… fine, that works.”
but ended up agreeing with Veronica’s opinion.
“Right?”
“Very good! Let’s hurry up and decide!”
“Well… do as you like.”
I was sure that until just moments ago, we had been having a moving and constructive conversation,
but I had no idea how the conversation had ended up like this.
Ah, maybe she brought it up because the mood seemed like it was getting too heavy?
“Now then, let’s decide who eats with him first. Is there anyone who wants to have a meal with our party’s rookie first?”
At Veronica’s question, everyone hesitated while glancing at one another.
No, but seriously, does it make any sense that the most popular women in the world right now—beautiful, capable, and honored—are debating who gets to eat with me first or not…?
Is this really a dream?
I’d been seeing a lot of illusions lately.
Maybe this too was actually just a delusion inside my head.
But…
This was not an illusion. It was fact.
“I’ll go first. That’s all right, isn’t it?”
After a very brief silence, Eladrien raised her hand first.
“Then I’ll go next.”
Next was Signica.
“Oh my… then I’ll take the third spot. Huhu.”
Third was Ariel, who laughed in a way that wasn’t very saintess-like.
And naturally, that left the last spot to…
“Then I’m last?”
Veronica. She would be with me.
“Good. Then let’s do it like this. Each person goes in order, and once you’ve spent time together, you let the next person know.”
“Sure.”
“Sounds good.”
“Understood.”
Uh…
Well… I don’t know if it’s tactless of me to think this,
but after going through a dungeon together this time… I kind of feel like there’s no need to get to know each other through recreation…
This is seriously way too much pressure.
No, if someone gives me something, of course I’ll gladly accept it.
What kind of man turns down something a woman openly offers him?
That would just disqualify him as a man.
But still… even so, I’m not so brazen that I can just gulp all of this down in one go.
Someone might see me walking down the street to eat with a member of the Hero’s party and curse me.
I might end up as gossip in the local paper the next day.
Even if I could honestly ignore all that, I was worried whether I’d even be able to swallow my food comfortably.
So, just in case, I tried sharing my thoughts.
Starting with Veronica’s objection,
“We’re all the same gender, so we naturally grew closer over time, but with you, Evan, we’re of the opposite sex, aren’t we? If we don’t deliberately create occasions like this, it might be hard for us to get to know each other.”
then Signica’s question-mark-inducing remark,
“I did pick you after seeing your face. After today, I found out you’re better than expected in other ways too, though…”
then the saintess, who suddenly treated me like a child,
“You’re more thoughtful than you look, Brother.”
and finally Eladrien’s indifferent reaction.
“I don’t really care what little brats say.”
My opinion was rejected by everyone.
Fuck…
“Now, then let’s head back. Signica, you’re ready, right?”
“Yeah.”
She gripped her staff and recited the activation word.
“Teleport.”
And so, I was dragged off and kidnapped… no, transported to Rotten Castle.
***
As soon as we arrived, we moved according to plan without even getting a chance to rest.
First, we loaded the byproducts onto a carriage and sent them to the imperial family,
then reported through a crystal orb that we had subjugated the dungeon.
And then we did the same thing once more to Marquis Rotten.
Because the dungeon within Rotten had been cleared.
Naturally, Rotten needed to handle the administrative processing.
“Hmmm…”
During that process, the marquis did look at me with a puzzled gaze.
“I understand.”
But it wasn’t a negative look, and to begin with, who would say anything to me in front of the Hero?
She had personally put me into the party.
As expected, nothing in particular happened.
‘But that doesn’t mean nothing will happen later, either.’
That gaze.
I’d seen it often somewhere before.
‘You… have talent. Become my disciple.’
‘…I’m sorry to say this when we’ve just met, but are you insane?’
‘Hahaha! You’ve got quite the foul mouth, my friend. Seems you need some education!’
Yeah, that.
It felt kind of similar to that…
Surely not.
From what I’d heard, his daughter was beautiful and talented enough to be called the Eternal Snowflower (萬年雪花) of the North.
In that case, there would be no need for him to take me as a disciple.
Anyway…
After we finished all the follow-up work we had to do,
““Huaaa…!””
we were finally able to rest—
No, wait.
“Um… but what about my room?”
“Huh?”
Please.
Don’t tell me I’m supposed to live here…
“Right?”
Phew.
Fortunately, it seemed this wasn’t their intention; they had purely forgotten.
Given the flow of things until now, I’d had a bad feeling,
so I was truly grateful they didn’t go that far off the rails.
“You may use this place while you are staying at the castle from now on.”
And so, without any particular commotion, I asked the marquis and was given a nearby room where I could live separately.