Sloan the Boomer
“Bright light, bring your warmth here.”
When the most gifted mage in history poured mana into the command and ordered the phenomenon itself, her loyal servant proved its absolute submission.
In an instant the rain-soaked cave dried out completely, the air turning warm and cozy as if a pile of firewood had just been lit.
“Hoo…. Thank you, thank you. Hyaaa, that was so clammy. Perfect.”
Soaked to the bone from the rain, Sloan rolled around on the now-warm cave floor. Dust puffed up in little clouds. Camilla, who had been sitting right beside her and caught the unexpected collateral damage, frowned and tapped her staff.
“That’s why I told you to cast a protection spell before going out.”
“Wouldn’t have lasted an hour anyway…. Waste of mana.”
Besides her monstrous strength and toughness, Sloan possessed an absurdly high magic resistance—closer to a golem or a dragon than a human. That was probably why even Camilla’s body-enhancement magic barely took hold. Thank the gods for that…. If it had worked properly, nothing in the world could have stopped her.
“Hooo….”
Sloan first peeled off her leather-lined metal gauntlets and dropped them with a heavy thud. They must have weighed a fair bit; the sound echoed slightly.
Then, with freer hands, she casually loosened the shoulder guards. That wasn’t cloth armor, yet she handled it with practiced ease. She stripped off the two arm guards next, unbuckled the clasps, and let the backplate and breastplate tumble free. Those things weren’t cheap, were they…?
She started to remove the waist guard around her lower body, then seemed to decide it was too much trouble. Instead she leaned her back against the cave wall and simply regulated her breathing—hoo, hoo.
“Ugh…. Having magic bounce off me has way more downsides than upsides.”
Under the plate armor was quilted padding. Even that thick, tough fabric couldn’t hide the enormous breasts now on full display.
My eyes flickered before I could stop them. A second later I felt a gaze from the side sharp enough to carve flesh.
“Tsk.”
I didn’t need to look. It was the jealous elf, Elisa. She kept glancing back and forth between me and Sloan… as if monitoring whether my eyes wandered.
Filthy terrifying. She didn’t seem to have caught me, though. If she had, she wouldn’t look away—she’d just keep staring me down.
“Vulgar and crudely huge…. Quantity over quality, really.”
“Hm? Did you just say something?”
“I said it’s mealtime. We’ve already walked half a day today alone.”
“Ah, right. Camilla, I’ll leave it to you again.”
Camilla, who had been warming her chilled body in the rising heat, tapped the floor with her staff.
“Bring out the meal.”
Space tore open with a sharp zzzt. That was high-level dimensional magic—opening a subspace without a single complex incantation? While I was still gawking, assorted food tumbled out.
Salt-cured pork and beef, dried herring, and black bread so hard it looked like it could break teeth. A single wheel of hard cheese was the only thing that made the desolate spread look halfway civilized.
“Ugh…. We need to find a village soon. Eating this stuff sober is rough.”
“If we take down one or two more Demon Kings I should be able to slap freezing magic on this space. Not working well yet.”
I sat there with my mouth hanging open, questioning reality. Was this really something a human could do?
Subspace. Even that Urk Heizen had mass-produced entire cadres of ogre mages just to cast space-distorting teleportation…. Yet this woman treated subspace like a glorified food locker.
“Hm? Camilla, something’s missing.”
“I took everything out. Ah, if it’s water I can just make it with magic—”
“No! Not that! The wine!”
At Sloan’s words, Camilla and Lylie’s faces went slightly pale. Why the sudden dread?
“Ahahaha…. Alcohol? Sloan, didn’t we agree you weren’t drinking anymore? After the disaster last time.”
“When did I ever say that! It’s fine. After I took down that Demon King my body got a lot stronger. I won’t get rowdy this time!”
Rowdy? So Sloan was a lightweight. Good to know. This woman’s weakness was booze. Hehehe…. Maybe I should test just how weak right now.
Meanwhile Elisa kept rubbing the inside of her thighs with one hand. I held back a comment and spoke up.
“To celebrate catching a new Demon King, how about a drink? If not now, when?”
“That’s true! And you can’t wash down this salty, rock-hard food with just water.”
Once the Hero herself said it, Camilla had no choice. She bit her lower lip hard and pulled out several bottles of wine, letting them drop onto the floor.
“Uh…. I-I’ll go further inside. I’m not really hungry.”
“Hey! Lylie…. Jumping ship already?”
“Sorry! But you know how it is!”
She was acting like someone preparing for a natural disaster. Was a drunk Sloan really that bad? I had plenty to say, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Hey…. Elisa.”
“What.”
“Is Sloan’s drunken behavior that terrible?”
“You’ll see.”
Elisa muttered while madly stroking her chest and thighs, looking completely uninterested in the conversation.
“Wiiine!”
“Drink slowly…. Don’t guzzle it like last time.”
“Got it! I’ll control myself this time.”
Even as she said it, Sloan stuffed jerky into her mouth until her cheeks bulged. I genuinely wondered if that was physically possible.
Right after, she swallowed a pickled herring the size of my forearm in one gulp, pounded her chest like she was choking, then reached for the wine. It didn’t look like good wine.
“Hooo.”
“Too fast!”
“It’s fine. It’s fine. This much is still—”
Whoosh—! Sloan’s brown skin flushed crimson in an instant. I didn’t know human skin could turn that red.
“She’s gonna explode.”
“What?”
“Sloan’s gonna explode!”
“The Hero isn’t a barrel of gunpowder…. How would she explode?”
“I-I don’t know. I’m going over to Lylie!”
Contrary to Camilla’s panic, Sloan was still binge-eating—just a little slower than before.
No… the speed she’s chugging the wine is getting faster, isn’t it?
Gulp, gulp…. She touched the food less and less. Drinking took its place. Already on the third bottle. When had she finished that much? For a lightweight, her capacity seemed weirdly high.
“Hooooooo—!”
“We’re screwed…. Fourth bottle.”
“How many last time?”
“One and a half.”
“…And the damage?”
“Three weeks recovery. Even with Lylie’s healing she was bedridden for days. And my staff snapped.”
Wait. Three weeks recovery? Did she start beating people when she drank?
“Vally? You egged Sloan on, right? So you take responsibility. Attend her until she sobers up.”
Attend her? Something to do with her drinking habits? This felt ominous….
I didn’t have enough standing in the party to refuse Camilla, so I got up and sat beside Sloan.
“Oh! You’re here! You’re here. Why’s everyone running away! It’s lonely drinking alone!”
“I’ve been right here the whole time.”
“Was that so…? Vally! Hehehe. Vally really is cute-looking.”
What? She didn’t seem particularly dangerous. Eyes a little unfocused, face red, but that was it.
“I am cute, yes.”
“Ihihihi…. Not even denying it?”
“I hear it often enough that I know. It’s not wrong, is it? I think I’m cute.”
Of course I did. Even I thought my face was pretty. Honestly, if you gathered the most beautiful humans alive and mixed them together, they still wouldn’t reach my toes.
Only the truly beautiful ones, though…. Too bad I couldn’t show that side.
“Wanna try some? This is from my hometown. Pretty tasty.”
“I’ll gladly drink….”
I couldn’t refuse someone’s goodwill—especially Sloan’s—so I took the wine without much thought.
Haa…. What is this garbage? Cheap as hell. Grape quality, the oak barrel they aged it in—everything’s trash. Did they even water it down to bulk the volume? Ugh…. Rotten grape water would taste better than this.
How was anyone supposed to get drunk on this swill?
With Sloan’s physical abilities, her liver should have been overwhelming enough to purge anything harmful. Why couldn’t it break down alcohol?
Maybe she was weak to poison. That would explain why she was like this.
Poisoning….
That was practically my specialty. I knew over a hundred kinds of venomous creatures.
“Vally!”
“Yes?”
“Pour me some.”
“…There’s no glass?”
“Wine tastes best when a man pours it! Right, everyone?”
…Haa. What was she even saying. She was completely gone on the alcohol. Could someone like this really be called a Hero?
“It’s started…. Sloan’s drunken antics.”
“Hope the cave doesn’t collapse….”
Those two had been whispering for a while. What exactly was about to happen that had them so on edge?
Weren’t they overreacting?
“Vally.”
“Yes.”
“Hss. Looking at you now… you seem a little short on manners.”
“Huh? What nonsense is—”
“When a woman is pouring her own drink alone, you know. You hurry over, strike up conversation first, huh?! And pour the drink for her.”
Eyes unfocused, lips curved in the faintest smile, she stared straight at me.
“No, that’s ridiculous—”
The moment I opened my mouth in exasperation, Sloan slammed her fist into the wall with a thunderous bang.
“Tsk!!!!!”
…Ah.