Chapter 30. Talent (1)
Chapter 30. Talent (1)
-Tap, tap, tap, tap.
The moment that irritating sound echoed through the cluttered room.
Ymir, who had shoved aside even the book she'd been reading and taken to drumming her fingers against the desk, finally lost patience and turned toward the calendar on the wall.
A full week had passed since the last marked date.
Yes—the day she'd last seen that man who'd been such a nuisance.
"...He's late."
Dave.
The porter and errand-runner Serika—soon to be the hero party's leader—had brought into the party.
He didn't seem to know the group he'd joined was the hero party, but he did have some awareness that it was a rather extraordinary party.
And he also knew that he himself didn't quite fit into such a party.
"Even so, a whole week without coming back is way too late!"
She'd respected his desperate desire to cling to this party, but still—
"Ah, right. I got on your nerves too, didn't I? Acting all nice on the surface while stewing behind my back, getting all worked up, you absolute...!!"
If this was how it was going to be, she should never have paid him any mind in the first place. Hadn't she just made a fool of herself, waiting around for him to come back?
In a fit of temper, she slammed her hand down on the desk—and the vibration sent everything around her collapsing in a cascade.
The moment the haphazard mountain of books and stacks of paper hideously ravaged the room.
Ymir, belatedly realizing her own blunder, clutched her head and let out a sigh.
"...Ah, damn it. It's filthy again."
Of course, she didn't necessarily need to tidy the room personally.
Simply by spreading mana through the vicinity, she could scan the feel of a book she sought or inspect the words inscribed within it, then pull whatever she wanted right to her.
But even that took a certain amount of effort. She couldn't deny that using telekinesis to extract distant objects was easier when targeting a tidy room rather than a chaotic one.
'It was a bit easier when he was around.'
That alone was enough to feel the difference between when he was present and when he was absent.
Beyond that, the pathways had been clear, so fetching coffee was pleasant, and most of all—even though it was barely one meal a day—the food he prepared had been decent enough.
No, not just decent. It had been the best thing she'd ever eaten.
Unlike the palace chefs who focused solely on making elaborate, high-quality cuisine, his cooking showed consideration for her—someone who needed to concentrate on her research.
'Well, he was sincere enough about helping me that he even accounted for things like that.'
So he wouldn't have simply grown tired of her and left. Ymir's conjecture carried persuasive weight grounded in that reasoning.
There had to be a reason he'd vanished without sending word.
Perhaps he'd ended up venturing outside the city in the course of his information-gathering, or maybe something had happened to him along the way...
-Drip.
The moment her thoughts reached that point, even the irritated tapping of her fingers stopped, and silence began to coil through the room.
Something had happened...?
Surely not—could something have gone wrong with his safety, preventing him from returning?
'...No, that's going too far.'
Right. Hopeless as he might be, wasn't he someone Berdia had acknowledged?
He aimed to be a porter, sure, but his abilities as a scout had likely been proven to some extent. Someone with his innate survival instincts wouldn't recklessly dive into danger.
So his safety was probably fine. That's what she tried to tell herself, tried to feel relieved—
"...Damn it."
In the end, Ymir couldn't focus and put down her pen.
Resting her head against the desk, his face alone still surfaced in her mind.
'How about taking a little rest?'
No matter how many times she tried to push him away, the man who took the openings that damned woman provided and persistently showed his face in her world.
Telling her she should get some sleep, that she needed to eat proper, nutritious meals at regular intervals.
The endless stream of kind nagging—as if he'd become her mother or something—had been irritating at the time, but now that those words were absent, she couldn't help feeling strangely empty.
Enough that even thoughts she'd never normally entertain began to surface.
'What was "resting" again...?'
Rest.
At least since she'd entered the Academy, it was a concept that had ceased to exist.
Her life had been poured entirely into academics, research, and proving herself to the scholarly world—excluding only the bare minimum of sleep.
So when she thought of rest, she couldn't help but picture relatively simple things first.
Just sleeping, strolling through the streets, spending time with friends, drinking, or perhaps spending time with a member of the opposite sex who caught her interest.
'Something like a date, for instance...'
A date.
Her? Someone who couldn't even manage her own hair and wore nothing but a single thick robe because she didn't own any proper undergarments—someone with zero interest in appearances?
"What a ridiculous notion."
Something like that would never happen to her, not if she lived a hundred lifetimes. She had always been concerned only with her own affairs, and her life was fated to end with her quietly growing old while staring at books.
Besides, for someone who'd kept people at a distance all her life to harbor feelings like 'expectation' toward anyone, regardless of gender—wasn't that absurd?
'Well... if he asked me to, that'd be a different story.'
Right. If all those things he said—that this place was where she belonged and such—weren't just empty flattery, then he would definitely return.
Everything Ymir thought from that point on was predicated on Dave doing exactly that.
'If he really did put in the work investigating, and he's just late getting back because he came up empty-handed... he'll definitely be disappointed.'
He might even hang his head the moment he saw her and apologize.
Saying he couldn't fulfill the request she'd made.
He'd probably blame himself, even knowing full well there was no way a beginner could obtain vital information on witches that even she, a Grand Archmage, couldn't acquire.
A human being so stupidly kind...
The Dave Ymir had seen was that kind of person.
'That would really be a problem. If he goes fretting over something I only sent him on to get him out of my hair...'
Yes, no matter how antisocial her disposition, she wasn't entirely without a sense of responsibility.
Being burdened with responsibility for things unrelated to her—like the hero party—was annoying, but having someone suffer harm over a task she herself had requested was something she absolutely wanted no part of.
'When he gets back, what should I do for him?'
So, since it was already done, she might as well prepare something to satisfy him when he returned.
Whether that meant spending a bit of her research budget to treat him to a feast, or preparing a magic item he might like.
'Or maybe repaying him with my body...'
Her body.
The kind of compensation any man would at least consider once.
And Ymir, though she neglected her appearance, was fully aware that she possessed the charm to captivate men.
Even just her chest—essentially a pair of burdensome lumps—was the object of longing and jealousy for some.
And he definitely perceived her as a woman.
At first she'd wondered if he was a eunuch since he showed no reaction, but considering his mind had gone straight to her breasts when she offered a reward, it seemed he was simply good at hiding it.
So her body could serve as a fine reward for him too.
Her chest, of course, and if necessary, lower...
And beyond that.
"...No."
The moment her thoughts reached that point, her face stiffened.
"No, no, no. That's too far even for me."
It wasn't that she was embarrassed.
She'd at least entertained the thought that it might happen someday, but she'd always figured it would be something she decided for herself—not something she got swept into or was coerced into.
Still, she'd rather live her whole life as a virgin than grab just anyone and engage in such vulgar acts. Not even a sliver of that thought existed.
After all, if she truly hadn't cared at all,
she wouldn't have stormed out back when the Academy chancellor demanded 'that sort of thing' from her.
'Right. Going that far is out of the question.'
Just a little bit—
the very thought that it might be possible with him had faded.
-CRASH!!
At that moment, the sound of a door being violently thrown open rang from outside the room.
Ymir reflexively turned toward the entrance, a smile tracing her lips, and immediately rushed out of the room.
"He's here."
Berdia and Serika were still far from returning from the Great Forest. There was no one else who'd come to this mansion but him.
So he'd definitely come back.
"No, wait—why am I getting happy about this?"
Advancing while suppressing that feeling as much as possible, she soon spotted a silhouette in the entrance hall and shouted out.
"Hey, you—I told you not to make a racket when I'm trying to concentrate...!"
Unable to fully hide her buoyant heart, the corners of her lips curled upward.
-Thud!
"...Huh?"
The moment her headlong dash came to a halt, her face drained of color as she took in the sight of him collapsed on the floor.
Blonde hair and bronze-tinged skin...
"Hey, you..."
Yes, it was Dave.
The man who'd been utterly incommunicado for a week had appeared before her with bandages wrapped all over his body.
-Trickle.
But had he been unable to care for himself while rushing here?
When the bandages gaped open and blood began to seep from the torn wound beneath, Ymir felt her breath freeze before she even realized it.
"What in the world, why..."
"Dungeon."
Even in that state, barely clinging to consciousness, Dave explained his circumstances.
"There was word that a dungeon... activated in reaction to a place where a witch once dwelled... appeared..."
"...Stop."
Ymir sealed his wound with mana and forced her voice out.
"Somehow... made a connection... got introduced to a party by a guild staff member... joined them... got the others' consent..."
"You idiot, you can tell me that later! If the wound gets worse like this...!!"
First, emergency treatment—then get him to a healer. She'd just made that judgment and moved to lift his body, but it was only for a moment.
At the bottle filled with red liquid immediately held out before her, Ymir dispelled even her will to gather mana and stared at him blankly.
"From the witch's corpse... that appeared as the boss monster... I managed to draw some blood..."
And she simply listened to his explanation.
A dungeon is a place created when the surrounding environment becomes distorted in response to the Demon King's presence. What manifests inside depends on the environment that existed before the dungeon appeared.
A boss monster born from a dungeon created in response to a witch's remnants—it stood to reason it would be modeled after a witch.
"But suddenly... the boss's corpse went berserk..."
"...You."
"Still, I managed to draw the blood."
Yes. Inside the glass bottle clutched in his hand.
Was unmistakably the blood of a being called a witch. A sample imbued with the power of the witches themselves—something she'd believed no longer existed in this world.
"Will this... be of some help to your research, Ymir?"
Facing this man—far weaker than herself—who had risked his life to obtain such a thing, her face crumpled with anguish.
"...You idiot."
And self-loathing far beyond that—
"Who told you to go this far for me?"
—began to lodge itself in her heart like a dagger.
***
She hated people.
But she hadn't hated people from the start.
It was only that her academic talent and advanced physical development drew attention, and as a result of the envy and lust that followed, she'd had no choice but to grow clumsy in dealing with others.
The emotion Ymir had felt toward people back then was probably closer to fear.
Still, even with who she was, there had been someone she could approach without hesitation—someone you might call a friend.
Until, unable to understand that heart, they quarreled fiercely and parted ways.
Until she faced her again in the worst possible form.
