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Chapter 88
Ruphas crossed her arms as if she was thinking about Sei's words.
Sei could only brace himself and wait to see Ruphas's reaction.
While waiting for the next time Ruphas opened her mouth, he tried to maintain his mind to remain calm in anticipation for whatever surprises the next few words may entail.
Nevertheless, contrary to Sei fortifying his mind as if he was a soldier walking towards certain death, Ruphas's answer was extremely trivial and off-putting.
"Nothing in particular."
"N, nothing? You mean to say there's no reason?"
"That's right. To begin with, we only came to this country to test my subordinate's abilities. Now that it's done, I have no intention of proactively doing anything to this country."
In response to that reply by Ruphas, Sei tried to ponder on it without showing anything on his face.
In all likelihood, she was not saying a lie. However, it did not seem like she was saying everything.
That was because if everything was actually done, there would have been no more reason for her to remain in this country.
Since she was still remaining in this country now that the hunting festival had concluded, it meant there was a corresponding reason.
Nevertheless, he believed that reason did not involve doing anything to this country.
"Anyways, you lot, how long do you plan to stay in those appearances? Those forms intimidate others even if you're not doing anything. Hurry up and turn back to your human forms."
When Ruphas called out to those behind her, all of the giant beasts on standby all vanished at once.
In their places were a white-haired gentleman, a lady with a large amount of exposed skin, and a young man with red clothing.
Sei recalled those appearances.
That's right, there was no mistaking it... It was the group of eccentric people who were in the line together with Virgo two days ago.
Which meant, the individual that was referred to would be Virgo when Ruphas earlier said: "to test my subordinate's abilities."
(No wonder she was overly strong... )
Sei was not surprised by this fact. If anything, he even felt happy to finally figure out why.
An individual who was not a Hero or a Supreme Ruler and yet was able to rival Friedrich and possessed the ability to erase mana itself.
Ahh, no wonder. Of course, there was no way she was just an average person.
However, if that individual was a subordinate of Ruphas Mafahl, he could accept it.
After all, she was someone who was able to raise the level of others easily.
(.... . It wasn't as if I was.... being deceived. )
Just for a moment, Sei felt like Virgo was deceiving them, however, he immediately rejected that thought himself.
At the very least, Virgo herself was extremely pure and a good girl.
There was no mistaking that. And even if that was all an act, it only meant that he didn't have the eyes to judge other people properly.
He admitted that he was not highly intelligent. As such, he decided to believe in his instincts.
After personally interacting, speaking, and fighting together, he decided to believe in her.
Then, as a result of choosing to believe in Virgo, another option became available for Sei to take. A brand new path opened up right in front of Sei for him to tread upon.
"... Right now, at the bottom of that mountain is a girl called Virgo who was fighting together with us. She stayed behind and is currently in a battle against one of the 7 Luminaries. She is... your subordinate, right?"
"I see, you were also one of the high-ranked participants from the hunting festival.... Libra."
"Yes, there is no mistake. I have indeed found Virgo's biological response from the direction of the mountain."
After hearing about Virgo, Ruphas immediately turned to speak to the attendant who was standing by on the side.
When she did so, the attendant reacted as if she had been waiting to be asked and replied back with the confirmation of information even before her master had given the order.
Sei could only shudder at the fact that she was able to detect a person even from this distance.
"S - so, honestly, I personally believe that it is pitiful to let her fight alone. But... as a practical problem, our party consists of no one but members who rely on physical attacks. However much we will it, there is not much that we can do and... Although I realise it's quite shameful... like this, all we could do was try and find someone who seemed capable in order to ask for their help."
".... ."
"So, would you fight together with us?"
- Now, how would she react!?
Sei awaited Ruphas's next few words as his palms were drenched with sweat.
Although the way he asked was bad, Sei's aim was to establish a cooperative relationship through fighting together for Virgo's sake.
No, to call it "fighting together" was way more than a little presumptuous. After all, there was just simply too much difference in power.
Nevertheless, his instinct told him whether he could directly establish a cordial relationship here or not would determine what would happen in the future.
Additionally, the chance of that succeeding was not low by any means. If Ruphas was really not a bad person as Megrez had taught Sei, she would at least be magnanimous enough to decide to help one of her subordinates.
Putting it the other way around, if she was someone that would abandon Virgo here, Sei would have to fundamentally change the way he thought about things.
He wondered if the response from Ruphas would be what he had been hoping for.
"Yeah, that is fine."
"Re, really!?"
"Yeah. To begin with, Virgo is our colleague. Even if you had stopped us, we would have gone to help her."
Looking at Ruphas who was saying that with a delightful smile, Sei's expression brightened.
Seriously. She's much more of a reasonable person than what I've been hearing.
The legends may have been wildly exaggerated, maybe she's not such a scary person after all.
Just as he was feeling reassured, from behind Ruphas came rushing a torrent of water as if it was trying to swallow everything in its path.
It seemed it had already reached this point as they were talking.
In the heat of the moment, Sei almost tried to shout, "It's dangerous!"
However, that did not occur, and above all, even before he could shout out loud, Ruphas had already moved into action.
She grabbed the nape of a young girl with blue hair and evacuated her from the line of fire.
And without a moment of delay, as if she was sweeping away a fly, she thrust her palm forward.
Surprisingly, when she did so, the torrent of water which had already came rushing right in front of them dispersed away. Additionally, due to the pressure from the fist, the torrent was blown far away.
"!?!!?"
- Water, which was supposed to have been invulnerable to physical attacks, was blown away!?
Physics, natural law, and everything else was all irrelevant. Overwhelming power and level itself became the law.
As if such an unreasonable thing was being stated, Sei's mouth dropped wide open and he thought for a moment.
I take back what I just said. Ruphas is definitely a scary person.
*
Due to an unexpected prompt by the Hero for collaboration, my mood skyrocketed.
With this eel-ated feeling, I even felt like I could make a broiled eel on rice out of it.
Of course, something like that was definitely not possible, but what I was trying to say was that I was feeling the highest peak of happiness from this thrill. [1]
But yeah, in all honesty, one of the problems I had been facing was how to establish a relationship with the Hero.
If I had badly chosen to be hostile, there were more than enough chances for the full-power one-sided fighting from two hundred years ago to occur all over again. [2]
Although he was not currently an enemy I would lose against, he was still a Hero, after all. If the Goddess interfered and played her hand, I did not know what kind of a monster he would turn into.
You know, like the scenario you might see in the stories. Originally, it was a battle that he could not win due to the sheer difference in abilities. Then, the hero suddenly became unreasonably strong for various reasons like being angry over the death of his companion or awakening a random sealed power, then overwhelming the last boss in a single moment.
Of course, those things only happened in stories. It was different from reality.
Therefore, what I was thinking of was blurring the line between reality and fantasy.
But... unfortunately for me, this world was the Goddess's story.
Furthermore, I believed she was someone that liked mainstream developments. Worse yet, to achieve that mainstream development, she was someone who would ignore plot holes and inconsistencies that might occur as a result.
That was why, in this world that she created, the laws of physics were not doing their jobs at all. It was very much possible that the rate of acceleration downwards would change based on the weight of the armour equipped. [3] It was very much possible that equipping claws on both hands would double the amount of power one had.
In other words, if I were to underestimate the Hero carelessly, the Goddess could come in and interfere and it would not be strange for him to have surpassed me by the time I noticed.
With all that taken into consideration, a collaboration with the Hero was a great development that I gladly welcomed.
Having said all that, I had hidden the matter about Sagittarius.
If I carelessly blabbered and resulted in them saying, "Let's just defeat Sagittarius in case, " it would be troublesome for us.
"Oh, by the way, Ruphas-sama, there seems to be a group of people that's been staring at Ruphas-sama from over there."
"Ahh, them?"
"Yes. And it seems we are acquainted with several of those faces."
After being prompted by Dina, I had a careful look at the people who mostly comprised the Hero's party.
Although I was not acquainted with the tiger and the gorilla beastkin, I remembered previously meeting the rest of the people.
The bald man was definitely Gants whom I met at Svalinn and the adventurer on the side was called Jean if I recalled correctly.
Because the other three had weak presences, I could not remember them properly, but I could at least recall they were part of the warrior-only party which had an unbalanced party composition.
And the person who had already fainted whilst spewing foam out of his mouth was the handsome elf nii-san who had taught me many different things when I was first summoned to this world.
If it's something like this, I might just be able to casually talk with them.
Thinking in that way, I decided to first approach them.
When I tried to do so, the tiger beastkin immediately fled and hid behind a tree and Jean and his crew raised their guard.
Gants seemed to be the only one who did not raise his guard.
Well, I'm thankful that there's at least one acting in this way.
"It's been a while, Gants. I'm glad to see that you're healthy above all else."
"...... Ahh, you too. Saphur... no, Ruphas Mafahl."
Unexpectedly, Grats did not seem to be that surprised.
If anything, he seemed to be content after confirming his suspicions.
"That reaction, could it be that you had already noticed?"
"Well, somewhat. To be able to blow Aries away with a punch... The possibilities would be limited to someone like the 7 Heroes or the Demon King. So when that happened, even an idiot like me knew you weren't some random person. Oh, by the way, since you were using an alias, does Dina-chan also have some other name?"
"No, mine is my real name."
Dina replied to Gants's question, however, I wondered if it really was her real name or not...
No, it was not the time to be questioning her identity.
In any event, it was a joyful miscalculation that Gants happened to be at this place.
Since he was here, we could probably progress the conversation more easily.
And... hmm... I suppose we also no longer required memory manipulation on Jean and his party.
I took a glance at Jean, who was looking at me and trying to figure out something, then signalled at Dina with my eyes.
When I did so, Dina nodded and snapped her fingers.
"Tsk! That's right. I remember now! The travelling merchants Saphur-san and Dina-san! And, Libra of the 12 Heavenly Stars! Wh, why did we believe until now that we were the ones who had conquered the Tomb ourselves?"
It seemed Jean's crew were suffering from slight confusion after suddenly regaining all the memories they had lost until now.
Though, from their perspectives, they had forgotten about a very important matter until this point, thus they would have been feeling strange about themselves.
For now, during the time until they recovered from their confusion, I decided to wake up the elf nii-san.
Recovery techniques were not my specialty, however, it was not as if I could not use them at all.
Anyways... If I consider his fainted state to be a status defect induced by [Sleep], I could do something about it just by dispelling a debuff.
Originally the sleep debuff would be dispelled when the individual received an attack from the enemy, therefore it would have been possible to wake him up just by tapping him lightly. However, in this case, since he had fainted, he probably would not wake up even if we hit him.
When I cast the spell, the elf nii-san woke up and dropped his jaw with a face that screamed his surprise as he looked at me.
"Ru, Ruru, Ruphas Mafaahhlllllll!!?"
When he saw me, the elf-san deployed a hemispherical shield which covered himself whilst sitting down.
Oi, that reaction really hurts you know.
But... this is such a thin shield, is that even fine?
It looked somewhat like he had put up a super thin piece of glass around himself.
As I was slightly worried for him about the strength of the shield, I tried knocking softly to check.
When I did, the shield gave off a sound and shattered, causing the elf to become stunned.
Oi, so fragile, so fragile. It was just like the barriers that easily broke from Showa-era anime. [4]
"Calm down. I have no intention of doing anything to you, and even if I did, a thin shield like that would be meaningless in helping you."
It was not as if I was trying to scare him, but I honestly questioned the usefulness of a shield which would break from a soft knock.
With that, it couldn't even be called a shield, it was just a seal. [5]
It looked like its only use would be to stick it randomly somewhere.
"Th, then what exactly...."𝐟rℯℯ𝘄𝑒𝒃𝓷o𝘃e𝒍 - 🅽🅽novel
"For a detailed explanation, you should hear it from that brave boy or Dina. But speaking just the conclusion, we've decided to collaborate with you. Well, it would probably just be for the duration of us staying in this country, but... I look forward to working with you."
Whilst saying that, I smiled towards the Hero's party.
When I did, their faces showed an expression as if they had turned stupid and then looked towards Sei.
Such a hassle. Although it was not that surprising if you consider my notoriety, the only ones who interacted normally with me was the Hero, Gants and....... the puppy which was swinging its tail around with a tongue sticking out at the foot of the Hero.
If one were to talk about the tiger beastkin, he's even gone further back than before.
As I was patting the head of the puppy, I thought about what was to come in the future that I had just put myself into and sighed a little.
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