“Ah… Nothing like a nice, hot bath after some strenuous exercise, huh?” Earnest raised her arms high and arched her back. Blade watched as her breasts swung up, following her arms. “His Majesty may not be the sanest man around, but when it comes to baths, he’s got a real good head on his shoulders.”
Blade remembered how much Earnest had whined about the bath’s mixed-gender policy at first, but she’d probably forgotten all about that by now.
“You should be more respectful, Anna,” Claire said with a troubled smile.
“What? What do you mean, Claire? More respectful? How so? Toward whom?”
Once upon a time, Earnest would immediately chastise anyone who acted even remotely disrespectful toward the king. She probably didn’t remember that, either.
“That aside, even with Anna and Lunaria working together, they still don’t stand a chance, huh?”
Blade shifted his gaze from Claire’s shapely breasts to Yessica’s slightly firmer ones. Lately, his eyes seemed strangely drawn to women’s breasts, though he wasn’t sure why.
“I got pretty excited today. I mean, it was the first time Anna and Lunaria fought together, you know? Usually, they’re constantly slashing and swinging at each other, whether it’s in the Proving Ground or just some hallway.”
“Hey! We don’t do it all the time, Yessica,” Earnest protested. “It’s only about once a week.”
“Yeah, right. More like once every three days. Or maybe every other day? …What do you think, Sophie?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I never tried counting.”
“Allow me, with my high specs, to be of assistance,” Iona said, cutting in. “I can provide statistical data accurate to any number of decimal places.”
Blade shifted his eyes away from Sophie’s small breasts and toward Iona’s large ones.
“So…how was it?” asked Yessica.
“Oooh… It was good, hee-hee-hee,” Earnest replied.
Their conversation was beginning to sound lewd, as conversations between girls sometimes did, but they were still just talking about Earnest’s team-up with Lunaria.
“Can I join in next time?” asked Yessica. “Maybe we could beat him as a threesome. Or is that still not enough?”
“According to my calculations, not even an eightsome would be enough to satisfy my master,” stated Iona.
“Wow. That’s pretty amazing.”
Blade could swear there was nothing suggestive about this topic at all. They were simply discussing how many people it would take to defeat him.
Which eight would it be, though? Earnest, Lunaria, Yessica, Claire, Sophie, the Overlord, Iona…and who else? Oh, right, Eliza was in the mix, too. If they all worked together, and Blade was still half asleep like before, then yeah, maybe they could beat him. He had once taken on the king’s guard, which was a twelvesome or even a thirteensome, and managed to hold out for an hour or so. With his current 18 percent limit, that was the best he could do, no matter how much he exerted himself. The king’s guard, after all, were active semi-champions.
But as he thought of all these trivial details, Blade began to feel a little lonely. He simply didn’t have enough breasts. If Iona’s are large, then there must be an extra-large pair somewhere out there that surpass even them…
“Hmm? What’re you looking at, Blade? You should try listening to us. We’re talking about how to defeat you—” Earnest stopped talking once she realized what Blade was looking at. Lunaria, alone in the distance, was soaking in the water. “Ah… Hey, where are you going?”
Blade stood up and walked away, his back to Earnest.
“Oh… Blade?”
Lunaria greeted him with her gentle gaze. Then she scooped up some water with her palm and poured it across her shoulders. It flowed down her body, gathering between her breasts.
Yeah. She definitely has the largest breasts. Extra-large, even.
Recently, Blade was starting to understand why all the boys were always looking at her breasts.
“I am sorry I failed to live up to your expectations earlier,” said Lunaria. “That barbarian girl was dragging me down, you see. If I could have another round of special nighttime coaching, I’m certain that I could progress another one or two levels in no time.”
“Special nighttime coaching” wasn’t anything particularly suggestive. It simply referred to a special training regimen, and last time, it had been a brutal massacre. Blade had killed Lunaria over and over again—and thanks to that, she had become used to dying (at least, for the time being).
“Just dying won’t help you improve by leaps and bounds any more, you know.”
“Oh? Then what kind of especially harsh training would you assign me?”
“Hmm… Well, you’ll see in time,” said Blade, keeping things vague. But that wasn’t why he’d come over here. “By the way, I had something I wanted to ask you.”
“Please, ask me anything you want. I’ll even tell you where you can find the moles on my body, if you’d like. Why wouldn’t I? Once you become my partner, you will learn everything there is to know about me.”
“Um. Moles? That doesn’t matter.”
“I-it doesn’t…?” Lunaria slumped over, dejected.
It seemed like this conversation was about to crash and burn, and Blade wasn’t sure why. The moles on her body? Really? Why is that important?
“But listen, I wanted to ask… Do you like being alone?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Well, it seems like you’re always off by yourself. You eat alone, you train alone… I guess you were with Earnest today, but still. You’re even alone in the bath, aren’t you?”
“…I’m with you right now,” Lunaria said. Her cheeks were slightly flushed. Was the water too hot for her?
“No, that’s not what I mean. That doesn’t matter.”
“I-it doesn’t…?” Lunaria was shocked once again.
Apparently, “that doesn’t matter” was one of her trigger phrases. Blade made a mental note.
“I just mean, like, are you alone because you want to be? Or would you rather have company?”
With Cú, Blade had made a bunch of assumptions, and that led to a lot of big mistakes. Dragons generally preferred solitude, so Blade had figured Cú would be the same. But she’d actually been suppressing her desire to make friends with everybody, and he’d only found that out later, much to his regret. There was no way he’d let himself make the same mistake twice.
“So what’s the deal? Are you a table-for-one kind of girl, or are you full of anguish and secretly longing to be part of the group?”
“‘A-anguish’…? I’m not sure I like either of those choices.”
“Which is it?”
“Do I have to give an answer?”
“Yeah. That’s an order.”
Huh? Wait, isn’t that how I usually deal with Sophie? I guess it works on Lunaria, too.
“W-well, what can I do, really? The only people I consider my equals are you and that girl. Though I suppose that girl is closer to a snail crawling around at my feet. Hee-hee… It may not look as if it’s moving, but if you watch closely, you’ll notice it crawling forward a few inches. Then if you look away, it’ll be three feet down the trail before you know it… You know what snails are, right?”
“Sure. They’re real tasty.”
“Huh?”
Blade used to eat them as a snack during extended field battles. But back to the point… “So what’s your answer?”
“My answer?”
“Yes or no?”
“Didn’t I just tell you?”
“You’re not making sense. Sure, snails make great snacks, but that isn’t what I was asking.”
“Okay, um… I’ll try to be a bit clearer.”
“Right.”
“Well… So, like…”
“Yes?”
“I mean…”
“You mean?”
“Um…”
“Um?” Blade waited patiently.
Then Lunaria began to speak. She sounded very, very shy. “I…I’d like some friends…”