The Same as Always
"I'm exactly the same as always, though."
"I'm sorry... what?"
For a moment I was thrown off by words that fit the situation so poorly, but then I remembered Leo's particular circumstances.
Beneficiary of a race change — a Nymph.
Superior physical abilities and high spirit affinity compared to humans, with one notable quirk: the mentality of a young child.
It wasn't that her intelligence had actually dropped to a kid's level, but right now, heavily eroded by the Penalty as she was, she seemed far closer to an actual child.
Hmm.
Looking at those big, glistening eyes, I couldn't detect a shred of scheming.
She really does just want to see it.
"The Hatchling, you mean?"
"Yes! I wanted to see her so, so bad!"
Leo solemnly balled her tiny fists.
Along with the chat, plenty of people here were voicing concern, convinced there had to be some trick behind it — but showing the Hatchling wasn't difficult.
Leo and I were reasonably close in the first place, and we were hardly on bad terms.
Besides, whatever anyone said about the Empire or the Penalty, I knew the Leo I knew wouldn't attack the Hatchling or pull any dirty tricks.
But there were a lot of eyes watching right now.
I belonged to the Kingdom's side.
Leo belonged to the Empire's.
Leo herself was almost certainly asking out of pure, simple curiosity — but there were bound to be people unhappy about me showing off Sgaredo, the very heart of this raid.
Handing the enemy the core of everything, just like that.
Agreeing on nothing more than "we're friends" with no other justification was a murky call in a situation like this.
I stared at Leo, lost in thought for a moment — and then it came to me.
"Ah. That works."
"?"
"Of course. Absolutely, of course. Come right in."
"...Huh?"
Sensing something was off, Leo shuffled backward.
But it was already too late.
Why on earth are a Nymph's cheeks this squishy?
I'd fondled them in the past, too, but this remained one of life's unsolvable mysteries.
A softness and springiness no ordinary human body could hope to compare with.
"Ubb..."
Sure, a Celestial's body was better on pure specs, but this was a matter of feel.
The Celestial wins on paper, but the Nymph wins on pure sensory joy?
"Thop iiiiiit..."
The addictiveness was so overwhelming I felt like I could knead them all day...
"Thop doiiing that!"
Squish, squish!
Leo, both cheeks being enthusiastically kneaded, stomped back a step in an adorable huff.
She'd been fondled so thoroughly her cheeks were practically gleaming, but nothing was worn down or damaged. A Nymph was half-spiritual in nature, so her skin stayed perfectly pristine without any upkeep at all.
I lowered my hands with a sullen, disappointed look.
"Done already?"
"D-done?! It's been thirty whole minutes!"
Only thirty minutes, though.
"Ugh... just show me the hatchling already. I'm getting dizzy over here."
"Oh. Is that all it was?"
Should've just said so.
I flicked my hand.
Out of subspace popped the pure-white Hatchling, Sgaredo.
"Urrrrr!"
"Whoa."
Sgaredo looked around the room that had been set aside for me and Leo.
She'd grown considerably over the past two weeks again, and now boasted the size of a large dog.
Small, for a dragon — but next to Leo...
"...Sh-she's big?"
"She is. She's a dragon, after all."
She didn't look it, but this was ancient dragonkind — a Frost Dragon that had once been impressively large even compared to others of her kind.
The size of a large dog wasn't much for a freshly hatched dragon, but against Leo in her childlike form it was enormous.
Standing up, she'd probably be two or three times Leo's height.
Sgaredo's entire form filled Leo's wide, trembling eyes.
Her face still hadn't shed its baby fat, but her body was ten times the size it had been the first time Leo saw her.
And Leo herself was a Nymph far, far smaller.
"Whoaaa?"
"Oh."
Flap.
Sgaredo fluttered down in front of Leo.
She tilted her head, observed the tiny Nymph for a moment, then seemed to lose interest entirely, drifting past her and over to me instead.
The reaction of someone who had absolutely no desire to get close.
Leo, wearing the expression of someone watching the world end, hurried over to my side and drew a small circle in the air with her little hands.
"Just a week ago she was this... this small, I swear..."
"A week ago... ah. Before she molted."
Back then she'd been about Leo's size.
Small enough to cradle in one arm.
Not anymore, though.
Still refusing to let go of that last thread of hope, Leo cautiously reached out a hand.
Sgaredo snorted at her.
Leo looked at me with pupils quivering.
"You can pet her."
"Uuu!"
"It's fine."
Believe it or not, she's a well-behaved student.
Hyah! Leo threw her arms around the Hatchling without a second's hesitation.
"Woooowwww..."
"......Ugh."
Hard to say who's holding whom, honestly.
It looked far more like the Hatchling was being hugged to her than the other way around...
"Hehe... see? She's not all hard scales. Told you I was right."
Leo looked purely, simply delighted.
"So did you really come for the raid, then?"
"Yep."
So answered Leo, busily stroking Sgaredo's scales.
It certainly sounded plausible, but...
"Really? Not one other reason at all?"
"You can ask all you want, I don't knooow. All I heard was that the Empire's joining the raid. That's it. Hehe."
"Then when did you log in?"
"Umm, excluding bathroom breaks and meal times... about 38 hours ago...?"
?
Thirty-eight hours?
She had seemed more over the top than usual, sure, but she'd been logged in far longer than I'd assumed.
And as far as I knew, the Penalty didn't fade the moment you logged out — the value only started decreasing after a set amount of time had passed.
But then again, she'd been cycling in and out before the value could drop even a little...
"At this rate you might as well just move in here permanently."
"Huh?"
At this point, I doubt her Penalty would ever wear off at all.
Apparently her ears hadn't been fully closed after all, because Leo whipped her head around.
"N-no way. Me? I'm perfectly fine."
"Funny how the people who aren't fine are always the ones insisting they are."
"Then should fine people go around saying they're NOT fine?!"
Whoosh! The moment Leo shot to her feet, Sgaredo — still cradled in her arms — jolted in alarm and scrambled backward.
And then, as if she'd been waiting for exactly this, she hid behind me.
"Ah."
"......."
"That was — um. A mistake. Really. For real."
"Mm-hm."
"It was though. Really really really."
"I know. I believe you."
In any case, Leo and the Empire's forces would be joining the raid.
If the Empire's goal truly was the subjugation of the World Boss, there shouldn't be any major problem.
Countless kingdoms, alliances, and players with countless different aims had already flooded in — the Empire would simply be one more among them.
Leo gazed longingly at Sgaredo for a while, then walked over to a chair and sat down.
"Honestly, I'm more curious about you, Miss Lily."
"?"
"You sealed away an incredible boss, you're raising a hatchling, um. And you were the first discoverer, but you're not claiming any of the rights or anything!"
"......"
"First discoverers usually claim all of that, you know. Even when they can't kill it alone, their claims get recognized."
The rewards for a World Boss defied imagination.
The baseline was Mythic Grade, and every so often an item would drop that pushed past its limits — the kind people called Beyond-Mythic.
And guilds or kingdoms would often hand rewards, or assets they already held, over to whoever first discovered the boss.
That was how seriously the rights of the first discoverer were treated.
"But you? You just told everyone to kill it without taking a single thing for yourself. You even unsealed it for all the people who'd gotten worked up over the Empire."
Oh, and...
"The people who ambushed the hatchling — you just caught them and let them go, just like that! If it were me, I'd have smashed every last one of them!"
"...You do seem different somehow."
"I'm exactly the same as always, though."
No. Very different.
The Penalty was the same, but something had changed.
If I had to put a name to it... yeah.
Is she on the Empire's side — 'for now'?
Leo planted both short arms on the table and slid forward.
"And the most important thing."
"......"
"If you could've killed it all by yourself... why are you giving it away to everyone else?"