Aria Forte
Cold sweat ran down my back. The feel of her chest, or anything else — none of it even registered. My mind had gone completely blank.
"What? Come on, tell me~ We promised we'd be honest with each other!"
Rin was beaming that bright, sunny smile of hers and pressing herself against me all over again.
"W-well... I'm not sure what you're referring to..."
"The clothes that unnie and the little kobold are wearing — those are all Earth clothes."
"It's just... they have similar clothes in that world, too..."
"You're telling me people wear windbreakers and dolphin shorts in the lightning mage's world?"
"They just... look similar, that's all..."
At my answer, Rin's eyes went cold again.
"Do I look like an idiot to you? What, did Adidas expand into the other world too?"
Fuck!
There was no talking my way out of this. But how the hell did this pink-haired girl even recognize the brand? Don't tell me she's from Earth?
"Th-then how do you know about that, Rin?"
"My name is Sasaki Rin. Does that ring a bell? Choi Minwoo, from Korea?"
Ah. So she's Japanese. But why the hell is her head pink?
"For the record, I dyed it. They sell the dye at the Consumables Shop. Pretty, right?"
"Ah... yeah..."
"So? You're not going to tell me? I'll seriously get upset, you know?"
"Ah, well..."
What do I do? Do I just come out with the Wanderer skill?
"I wonder what it is? I woooonder~? What kind of skill lets you bring stuff over from Earth?"
But is she even someone I can trust?
"Heeh~? Maybe it's a skill that lets you order from an online supermarket?"
What if this snowballs into something that comes back to bite us?
"Then was that skill being called Primordial Power a lie~?"
What do I do? What the hell am I supposed to do?
"Excuse me! Don't you think you ought to step back a little?"
Huh?
Aria looked at Minwoo and Rin, glued together as they were, and wondered.
What on earth are those two talking about that's so much fun...?
Aria Forte. Eldest daughter of House Forte, and a single flower of the Empire. As a noble, her life had lacked for nothing — the lightning-magic talent that ran in her family's blood, the grace of a lady who was kind to everyone she met, and a beautiful face to match. She had grown up wanting for nothing, and she had always been brimming with confidence.
And then there was the old story her father, who doted on her so, used to tell.
"The founding head of House Forte was chosen by the goddess. He struck down the demons and returned a great hero."
The first patriarch, who had served as a messenger of the gods. He had come home bearing tremendous power, and upon that power he had raised House Forte into what it was today. So when Aria was first summoned to the Base Camp, she knew at once. This time, it was her turn to follow in her ancestor's footsteps.
And it was there that she met Minwoo.
I've never seen anyone with arms that thick...
Muscle like that was something she had never encountered in her life. And yet he was an ordinary man, with not a trace of mana to be felt from him. His way of fighting was bizarre, too — no technique to speak of, just wildly swinging his weapon around and barely scraping by on luck. A complete mess of a person. But he was also a man of courage, who never ran even when things got dangerous.
An impressive man. But not on my level.
The ancestor of House Forte had slain demons alongside outstanding companions, and Aria was certain she would do the same. Her talent as a mage was beyond question, and she had trained in dagger arts as well. But she had one fatal problem: she had never seen real combat. Raised as the precious flower of House Forte, she had been surrounded by people who praised her gifts to the heavens — and she had never once been given the chance to actually fight.
And so her gaze had lingered on a dropped weapon. And so she had picked up an enemy's blade without the faintest idea of what he could do. Two enormous mistakes, and both of them had brought her to the brink of death. And both times, that talentless man had saved her.
What an incredible person...
That was why, when she learned that Minwoo had died, she had been so terribly sad. But Aria still had to find a way to survive in this world. And just as it had always been in her greenhouse-flower of a life, she accepted without a shred of suspicion those who showed her kindness.
Then one day, Minwoo — whom she had thought dead — came back. But the man she met again was different, somehow.
Timid. Suspicious...
Watching him doubt people who had been nothing but kind to her, with no grounds whatsoever, made her angry. Was a talentless, small-minded man simply incapable of being otherwise? Was he jealous because his skill was inferior? It was so pathetically small.
But in the end, he had been right about everything. And once again, Minwoo saved her from the danger she had walked into.
Her own foolish choices, one after another. And that man, saving her every single time. The yellow mana was alien and strange, yes — but that hardly mattered. He was just so unbearably cool. Like the prince from the fairy tales her father used to read her as a child.
I have to apologize to Minwoo...
But a girl raised in privilege found it terribly hard to form even a single word of apology. What rose in her mind instead was the compulsion to display a noble's mercy — and then another foolish choice on top of that, insisting they spare Bren. And still Minwoo kept helping her. He never blamed her. He brought her delicious food. He brought her new clothes. The clothes were a bit revealing, perhaps, but he had said she looked pretty, so it wasn't all bad.
And that apology she had finally, painstakingly managed to offer.
Ah... How could a person be so mature? How could anyone be that cool?
And yet, oddly, Minwoo kept spanking her. But... she found she didn't dislike that, either. If anything, the thrill of it left her with a rather curious feeling.
This mission, I'm going to talk with Minwoo a lot!
Aria watched for every chance to speak with him. But the one actually glued to his side was that pink-haired girl, Rin. And Aria found, for reasons she couldn't quite name, that she disliked that situation very much.
"Rin? Can you hear me? I think it would be best if you kept some distance during a mission."
Aria's voice was firm.
Is she helping me?
Had Aria overheard the conversation with Rin? She knew perfectly well that I was deliberately hiding the Wanderer skill. So she was bailing me out, right? That's the Soul Trio for you. Rock solid!
"Whyy~? Minwoo-oppa said a fragile archer has to be protected from right beside him!"
When the hell did I ever say that?!
"Don't tell me... are unnie and Minwoo-oppa dating?"
"Th-that's not it at all... we simply need to focus during the mission!"
"Focus? I don't think Minwoo-oppa is focusing at all~ I wonder what he's been staring at that's got him so distracted?"
"M-Minwoo is incredibly strong! I'm sure he's concentrating just fine even now!"
Sorry... that's not actually true...
"And Minwoo looks uncomfortable, so... please, the mission..."
"Heeh~? Oppa, are you uncomfortable~? For real?"
Guh. One mountain after another.
If I told Rin I was uncomfortable and to get lost, a girl with her personality wouldn't just accuse me of eye-raping her — she'd go around blabbing about the Earth items, too. A lose-lose from hell. And here I was, stuck between two women, unable to move either way. Why did this keep getting worse?
Stress was piling up with nowhere to go — and then, at the perfect moment, Garon glanced back at us and spoke in a low voice.
"Shh. It's coming into view. There could be a lot of monsters, so we approach quiet from here."
"Tch. You better tell me later!"
Yes! Thank you, Garon-hyung! Thank you so much! I knew you were a good man from the moment I met you. Never doubted it for a second!
But it wasn't over. I'd seen how relentless this Rin girl was. She would not stop until I talked.
I'll deal with that later.
Right now, I needed to focus on the mission. The Wanderer business... I'd figure something out eventually.
Anyway. We advanced toward the village with care. Its name was Veil, and it wasn't a large place. The moment we stepped inside, the breath caught in my throat.
I'd imagined ruins, given that a Demonkin had swept through. But the scene in front of us looked like a meticulously built movie set. Nothing remained but the village's empty husk — not a single living thing moved anywhere. No sound. No smell. And somehow, that was worse.
Vargo, the canine beastfolk, sniffed the air here and there, nose twitching.
"There's no scent of life at all. Not even the smell of corpses."
"No signs of a fight, either. The people just... vanished."
Celine, the half-elf, was scanning the surroundings as she said it.
"Let's keep moving. Demonkin always leave traces behind."
Following Garon's orders, we began to push slowly, carefully, into the deeper parts of the village. We kept our tension wound to the breaking point in that suffocating silence, eyes on every shadow, and inched forward one step at a time.
We'd been searching for quite a while when Vargo caught a scent.
"Boss. There's a very faint smell. It's Demonkin."
"Can you keep tracking it?"
"Yes. It leads further inside."
We held our breath and followed Vargo, moving at a crawl. He led us to the plaza at the center of the village. And the instant our feet touched the middle of that square—
A deep, rushing vibration swept through the air. In the space of a heartbeat, the world around us warped.
"Huh? What the—?"
The sky bled red. No — more precisely, a crimson membrane had unfurled over the entire plaza.
"It's a barrier!!! It's a trap!!!"
Celine's scream tore through the square.
"Retreat! Get out of here, now!"
At Garon's shout we spun and ran with everything we had. But the translucent red veil sealing the plaza had no intention of letting us leave.
WHAM! WHAM!
Garon brought his shield down on it again and again, but the barrier showed not the slightest sign of breaking.
"Damn it, Celine! Can you dispel it?"
"W-wait. The structure's too complex! I need time!"
The tiles of the plaza floor heaved and scraped. Something began crawling up through the gaps — human-shaped, but with the flesh torn away in ragged chunks. A nightmare of an appearance.
"Ghouls!!!!"
It wasn't one or two of them. The entire floor of the plaza heaved over on itself, and dozens of ghouls came clawing their way up from below.