Playing as a Tank

The reason I wanted to stay with Asha even after the remarkable dinner was simple.

Because something similar happened in the first playthrough.

Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same situation as now.

The time and place were slightly different from now.

But it was a case worth referencing in that a child like me asked to join the guild.

Back then, just like now, she promised to let me join the guild, but in reality, she neither let me join nor even took me to the guild headquarters.

I suppose if I were Asha, I wouldn’t have really let a child who had just been rescued from a dungeon, with no real power yet, join the guild either…

But from my perspective, I needed to avoid the same thing happening again.

Therefore, I had to keep Asha from running away, even if it meant making a childlike request to sleep together.

That’s why I firmly held Asha’s hand, enduring the embarrassment that was rapidly rising from somewhere deep in my heart.

After somehow returning home with Asha and starting to pack together, I finally felt a bit relieved.

Someone who was carefully putting various necessities into a bag didn’t seem like someone who would abandon me and disappear.

Yes, honestly, I thought there would be no problems after that.

I thought all I had to do was quietly go to sleep with Asha and head to the Lunatic Guild headquarters early in the morning, hand in hand.

“Lua. Do you still have the bath additive I bought you last time?”

But from the moment Asha asked about the bath additive I didn’t even know existed, various unforeseen problems arose.

Something even more difficult to handle than being carried in a princess hold by Asha was forcibly carried out regardless of my wishes.

As a result, even after wiping off all the moisture from my body, I couldn’t properly meet Asha’s eyes.

However, for some reason, the real problem started after that.

“Many things will probably change from now on. Still, as long as you’re by my side, it’ll be all right. Yes, definitely all right…”

I belatedly realized that Asha’s affection toward me easily exceeded the level I had imagined, and I was engulfed in a slightly dizzying sensation.

It was a gaze too creepy in many ways to be simply defined as mere fondness, which made my spine even chillier.

I-is this a horror game?

The dialogue is a bit…

No, very scary.

It was very different from what I had seen on the monitor.

Various thoughts that filled my heart, which I couldn’t erase even after the sun rose again.

They didn’t disappear even after I took Asha’s outstretched hand as always and headed toward the vehicle—which operated on magic stones instead of oil or electricity—that had come to pick us up.

We arrived at the metropolis, which couldn’t even be called a village as a white lie, about two hours later.

“…It’s huge…”

Although I already knew roughly what it would look like, seeing the cityscape directly with my own eyes rather than through a monitor felt a bit different.

It was generally similar to what one would typically imagine as a modern city, but the differences that stood out in the details also played their part.

That’s why I had been absently looking out the window for some time.

Is this how a country mouse felt when visiting a city mouse’s home for the first time?

This world, which had been using mana power for several hundred years, felt strange in many ways.

Well, that’s the story until we arrived at the Lunatic Guild headquarters.

“Oh? You’re not as surprised as I thought…”

No, I was surprised.

It’s just that the biggest surprise was how exactly it matched what I already knew.

It was a different kind of surprise than unfamiliarity.

Still, befitting one of the three major guilds, it boasted a grandeur that rivaled any major corporation’s headquarters.

I suppose I could share my honest impression.

“So, this whole building belongs to you, Big Sister?”
“Hmm. I guess it does, if you think about it.”
“Wow… Big Sister is really amazing!”

After that, I continued to express genuine admiration, unknowingly making Asha’s shoulders soar to the sky.

Typical of someone unusually weak to children, she seemed slightly at a loss even with mere verbal praise.

So, while I was pouring out somewhat excessive reverence toward Asha for a while.

-Thud.

“…It’s been 2 minutes since the report of your arrival came in. What are you doing here?”

Along with the sound of something light falling to the ground, a composed female voice was heard from behind.

For some reason, Asha’s noticeably flustered appearance as she slowly turned her head was a bonus.

“T-Tana. Well, you see—”

What followed was a not-quite-excuse for standing at the building entrance for so long, directed at a person dressed similarly to Asha.

However, since it had no effect on the person whom Asha herself had described as inflexible.

“Be quiet, and know you won’t be able to go home today.”
“W-what?!”
“This is punishment for leisurely chatting in front of someone who stayed up all night.”

In the end, the spectacle of the guild master being dragged away by the vice guild master who had grabbed her wrist unfolded.

Fortunately, Asha must have given prior notice about me because I was taken along as well.

The problem was that the “measurement room,” a facility that could precisely quantify my capabilities as a tank, was currently full.

Befitting someone at the very top of a large guild, Asha didn’t have much flexibility in her schedule.

So what’s the conclusion?

“If you’re bored, you can play with these dolls. Or should I call someone for you?”
“N-no. I’m fine…”

I sat quietly buried among various dolls in the corner of the spacious office.

Unlike the first playthrough, there was no skip button, so I had to kill time for quite a while.

But surprisingly, I wasn’t that bored.

The reason being…

“This will disrupt the schedule. It’s impossible without hiring additional external staff for this time slot.”

“It doesn’t make sense to continue contracting with them when there have been defective products not once but three times. Similar companies are plentiful, so there’s no need to renew the contract.”

“Handle the academy lecture matter yourself. There’s no scheduled appointment for that time anyway.”

Because watching Asha, who was caught by [Tana] who doubled as vice guild master and secretary, buried in mountains of documents was quite entertaining.

“L-Lua! Please help stop this sister!”
“…………”

In the end, I deliberately pretended not to hear Asha’s occasional requests for help while slightly turning my head to the side.

It wasn’t like I could stop her in the first place.

I had learned to the point of exhaustion in my first playthrough that there was nothing to gain by going against Tana’s mood.

Unlike now, where I was an overpowered character from the start, in my first playthrough with a relatively normal start, there were aspects where she viewed me unfavorably because I was a “parachute hire”… but anyway.

Come to think of it, neither Tana nor Asha properly knew about my stats or skills yet.

While the representative of the Lunatic Guild was ultimately the guild master Asha, the real power holder within the guild was the vice guild master Tana.

In the current state where my favorability had neither increased nor decreased, I needed to stay as quiet as possible for now.

There was nothing to gain by talking to that cold-blooded person unless it was some kind of turning point that absolutely required intervention for a better future.

“Hey, Tana. How many hunters have been dispatched to the Asad Dungeon?”
“One B-rank and three C-ranks.”
“Only four? Isn’t that too few?”

However, perhaps the saying about tigers appearing when you talk about them wasn’t nonsense.

Coincidentally, that “story that seemed to require intervention” soon flowed into my ears.

Because the first prologue of an event that would surely cause both Asha and Tana considerable mental stress if I just listened quietly was heard in the form of voices.

“Why are you so obsessed with a plain normal-type dungeon? The personnel already dispatched are sufficient to manage it.”
“But I have a bad feeling about it…”
“It seems you’ve already forgotten about the trouble you caused because of those instincts. The complaints that poured in every other day are still vivid in my memory.”

I moved toward the people who were having a discussion about deploying additional personnel for dungeon management.

Clearing monsters directly might be too much right now, but this wasn’t about that. I can definitely do this much.

Come to think of it, I didn’t need to enter the dungeon and fight monsters directly; I just needed to subtly drop a few hints, so it wasn’t that burdensome.

So, softly.

“Huh? Lua?”

I peeked my head over the desk where several reports were spread out.

What I slowly reached out and picked up was a report about a monster whose true identity had not yet been revealed, among various reports about the Asad Dungeon.

A report about a monster that was the main cause of the tragedy I would first encounter in .

I then asked about the identity of what, no matter how I looked at it, appeared to be just an ordinary lizard monster.

“Is this a dragon?”
“…It’s just an ordinary lizardman.”

What I faced was a dry, uninterested gaze without even a grain of sand’s worth of interest.

However, undeterred, I persistently clung to the claim that a monster without even wings was a dragon.

“Haah… Having a good imagination isn’t bad, but reality is quite different from Ms. Lua’s imagination.”

Not long after, when Tana’s patience finally reached its limit with a deep sigh.

“But no, I just saw a dragon that looked like this in a magazine…”

In the conversation that had been going on for nearly ten minutes, I subtly let slip a soliloquy that, for almost the first time, had some basis to it.