How many centuries has it been sleeping here...?
Well, okay, I’m getting all sentimental, but I know this isn’t a real ruin. It’s a dungeon, so it’s just built to look like this. It’s a ruin-themed area.
“It’s pretty,” said Shiro.
“Yeah,” replied Kuro.
“For sure. Didn’t think you guys could appreciate something like this.”
“Back at yooou.”
“Guess I kinda misjudged you,” said Shiro.
“Heh. Listen to you two.”
Uh, so my girls and the delinquent are acknowledging each other? He looks pretty pleased with himself, rubbing his nose like some manga protagonist. Well, he’s always like that, so it doesn’t bother me anymore. If I just think of him as a cosplayer, it makes him easier to deal with.
“What’re your names?” he said.
“I’m Shiro.”
“Kuro.”
“I see! Nice names.”
Kuro chuckled proudly.
“You got that right!” followed Shiro.
The way they grinned at each other made them look just like a group of friends. I guess sharing that moment of awe over the ruins sparked some kind of connection between them.
Sure, our first impression of him had been the worst, but today he’d been more or less protecting us. He was pushy, but maybe Shiro and Kuro were starting to think he wasn’t actually a bad guy. And for him, traveling together must’ve made him see us as part of his group. Setting myself aside, Shiro and Kuro are five at heart, so they’re straightforward. It’s hard to dislike them unless you’re really twisted.
Still, he’s awfully calm today. Hard to believe he’s the same idiot who called them slaves and demanded I hand one over. Maybe this is the real him, and he was just in a bad mood that day. People have different sides, after all. This is probably one of his.
“Wh-What’s your name?” Machina asked me.
“Thor.”
Machina had probably spoken to me so I wouldn’t be left out. From the delinquent’s perspective, I was so quiet he must not have even thought twice about me. That was fine by me since I was trying to stay under the radar, but to Machina, it must have looked like I was intimidated by him. I couldn’t just brush off her concern, so I answered properly. She’d been looking out for me this whole time too.
“All right, let’s go,” said the delinquent.
“Myah.”
“Arf.”
Shiro and Kuro nodded in agreement. Maybe now I don’t have to worry about accidentally provoking him anymore?
The green area, despite its beautiful appearance, turned out to be the most difficult area we’d faced so far.
First, there were the magical beasts. The huge ones had stopped showing up completely, but in their place, a ton of small stealth-type beasts started appearing: green venom slimes, deadly worms that hid under the sand, and even ultra-small sniper-type golems that fired poison like bullets.
Every one of these vicious beasts hid in the green sand and attacked with lethal toxins that could’ve killed you if they touched you. To make things worse, the sand here carried a faint trace of mana, which dampened the presence of any enemies hiding inside it. Thanks to the black-haired duo’s intuition, we usually found them before they attacked, but the golems that shot long-range poison often got the first move, so we couldn’t rest easy. There were a lot of magical beasts too; sometimes several monsters popped up within less than fifty meters of progress.
That alone was bad enough, but the traps were even scarier. Up until now, traps activated when you stepped on a switch or passed in front of them. They were deadly, sure, but not hard to avoid or disable. In this area, however, the trigger conditions had gotten way nastier.
First, there were the sensor-type traps, like infrared beams. Even Shiro couldn’t always spot them, and if it had been just the three of us, we would’ve been triggering them nonstop.
And then there was another terrifying way they activated: monsters setting them off by accident. If a monster tripped a sensor, it would unintentionally activate the trap, so no matter how carefully we moved, the wandering monsters had so many traps going off in the distance that they made it nearly impossible to deal with. More than once, we got caught in traps that scattered poison over a wide area or rained arrows down around us, and we had to rely on magic to heal.
Oh, Machina can use healing magic, so I didn’t have to do anything. I did secretly use purification and detox on the three fighting in front, though.
That part was pretty tough. I had to stretch my magic thin and activate it inside Shiro and the others for just an instant so Machina wouldn’t notice. I also did my best to suppress the glow that usually came with casting magic so she wouldn’t catch on.
Shiro and Kuro were having a great time fighting alongside the delinquent. Ever since they’d acknowledged each other at the entrance to the green area, they’d gotten close fast. He might’ve been stupid, short-tempered, and kind of a jerk, but his vibe was basically that of a kid. Maybe their mental ages matched? And that typical delinquent trait—being soft on anyone once they considered that person part of their group—was definitely helping.
Now the atmosphere among us is downright friendly. But they’ve gotten so friendly that the girls accidentally blurted out that I was good at cooking. I didn’t want to give out too much intel, but I can’t exactly tell them, “Don’t talk about me.” If the delinquent hears that, he might get mad again, and that’ll ruin the relationship we’ve built.
Oh, and there’s one more annoying thing.
This place was huge. It was just endless ruins and the green surface of the water stretching on and on. The water wasn’t too much of a problem, but we barely got any food.
The green venom slime’s core needed to be detoxed before it could be eaten, and since the beast was so small, its core was about the size of a gummy snack. As for the deadly worm, its intestines were edible, but they needed to be specially cooked with magic. Naturally, the golems were completely inedible.
The moss growing in the area could be eaten if cooked, but it tasted muddy and unpleasant. When Machina figured out it was edible, I’d thought maybe she had a cooking-related cheat, but it seemed she could only tell whether something was poisonous. Sure, I could’ve made the moss or deadly worm intestines passable, but I wasn’t about to use cooking magic in front of the duo. Shiro and Kuro knew that, so despite looking awkward about it, they ate the roasted moss.
Right now, we were resting in a circular plaza, sitting together in a ring. We washed the poison stains off of our clothes and filled up on moss.
“So, you met a god?” asked Shiro.
“Woooow.”
“Heh! At first, I didn’t realize that old man was a god,” said the delinquent. “When he started talking all high and mighty, it made me wanna punch him.”
The delinquent, pleased by Shiro’s and Kuro’s amazement, bragged about what had happened before he was reincarnated. To be honest, I’m reacting a lot too. It’s pretty interesting hearing about people’s reincarnations.
Both he and Machina had been high schoolers, but it wasn’t the kind of thing where their whole class had been reincarnated together. Their circumstances had been quite different: the schools they’d attended, the grades they were in, and even where they’d died.