Chapter 30 - The Laid-Back Master Room
“Hnn? Who’s that?”
The Master was watching through his monitor as an unfamiliar female knight walked into view.
“Looks like the usual vice-captain is showing them around, so... oh, are these the infamous members of the First Unit?”
...Yikes. They were scary.
There wasn’t even a trace of knightly elegance about them. It was clear at a glance—they were a squad made entirely for combat.
“If the usual lady-knight squad is like the friendly neighborhood patrol cops, then these folks give off the vibe of hardcore detectives raiding a yakuza office.”
“Hmm~? Who are you talking about, Master?”
“Peta-chan, I think that’s the First Unit we’re seeing now.”
“Oooh, I see~.”
Well then, may as well kick back, sip some tea, and enjoy the show while listening in on their conversation.
Now that they’d entered the fifth floor bath, I’d only be able to pick up basic info like names and ages from a single soak.
That made it all the more important to pay attention to what they were saying.
“Master, bring out the yokan too~”
“Sure thing. Mm-hmm, nothing beats tea with yokan. You’ve developed a fine sense of taste, Peta-chan.”
I tapped a smartphone-like screen and pressed the buttons to generate some tea and yokan, then handed the food over to Peta-chan.
“Mmm~ So sweet! So good!”
Probably thanks to my constant experimentation with different foods, Peta-chan’s palate was starting to resemble that of a Japanese person.
If I were trying to train her taste buds to fit the standards of another world, I had to wonder—was this the right direction?
Well... to be honest, I didn’t really know. So she’d just have to roll with my preferences. I mean, there was no way I could accurately guess what kind of flavors would best suit another world’s people anyway.
“The baths on this level are extremely popular with guests from both inside and outside the kingdom, and the line tends to be very long.”
On the monitor, the vice-captain was politely guiding them while giving an overview of the Hot Spring Dungeon.
“She’s supposed to be a high-ranking noble, right? And they’ve got her acting like a glorified tour guide...”
Apparently, the First Unit held a remarkably high status in this kingdom.
Which suggested that, in the Kingdom of Sepans, even social rank could be overturned by merit and strength.
The male knights’ order was probably structured similarly.
“But in exchange for that high status, they’re essentially forced to spend most of their lives in brutal dungeons... so I guess that’s why the nobles don’t complain too much. The loot they bring back from other countries must be that vital to the national economy.”
Nibbling on some okaki and yokan, sipping my tea, I mused idly about the politics of this place.
“Master, how come you can hear just a few lines of conversation and already figure out all this stuff that doesn’t even seem related? I don’t get it...
Oh! Master! Next I want uiro and yatsuhashi!”
Peta-chan had already finished the yokan and was placing her next order.
Talk about refined taste...
Those were souvenirs you could pick up on trips a while back—I’d only brought them out once before as part of a specialty sweets sampler set, and yet she remembered the names perfectly.
Honestly, I had the feeling that Peta-chan’s learning ability was way better than mine. Her past learning environment must’ve just been terrible.
Before long, the First Unit’s knights skipped the crowded second floor bath and moved on to the third and fourth floors instead.
What bodies they had... Covered in scars, with strange muscle knots bulging all over. It was like they were carved from stone.
I’d only ever seen bodies like that in weird human-interest TV segments—like guys who’d carried giant festival floats on their shoulders for ten years and grew gigantic calluses.
Even though it was a bunch of lady knights bathing, all I could think was—Wow... Holy crap... What muscles!
Not even a flicker of lust crossed my mind. None. Zero.
And on the fifth floor? Their captain—or someone who looked like one—punched a spontaneously spawning boss monster to death. With her bare hands.
Is this lady even human?
If I remembered right, the boss on that floor was a monster spawned from the miracle distortion we’d been using in the Master Room.
Lately, Peta-chan and I had been enjoying making meals out of the miasma for fun, so the boss had been popping up nearly every day now.
Well... not that I minded.
It wasn’t like it was all that strong—nothing the official knight squads couldn’t handle with ease.
“Hey hey, Master! Can you bring out some marubouro and, um, Zabieru too~?”
...Right, sure. I pulled them up like she asked, but man—both of those were souvenirs from Saga and Oita. I’d only ever eaten them once in my old life.
Were these even accurate recreations of the real thing?
I took one of the treats for myself and gave it a bite. Yeah, I think this is about what it tasted like... maybe?
That was as much of a conclusion as I could reach.
I didn’t remember the original flavors clearly enough to say whether the replication was spot-on or not.
Potato chips, chocolate—stuff I used to eat all the time—those came out perfectly, so I hoped these were right too... but honestly, I had zero confidence in that.
“Huh? She’s actually going into the fifth-floor bath? Well, unless she becomes a regular, all I’m gonna get is her name. So it’s not like it matters whether she goes in or not.”
Just in case, I pulled up the info on the scary-looking woman who seemed to be their captain.
Touji Noyu (43)
That was all the system gave me.
If she came back and bathed again before leaving, her full title would probably pop up—Captain of the First Unit, Female Knights of the Kingdom of Sepans.
But I doubted she’d soak often enough for that.
Once they blitzed their way to the eleventh floor and returned, they'd probably be off to some other dungeon anyway.
Hmm? Now they were having a debate over whether to go into the sixth-floor bath or not.
Everyone around her clearly wanted to go in, but the captain was holding firm—pragmatic and laser-focused on strength above all else.
The vice-captain was trying to reassure her, insisting that the bath wouldn’t reduce skin durability or anything like that. So they’d actually tested it, huh?
I had set it up so that the hot spring wouldn’t lower anyone’s performance, and that’s how it was supposed to work—but I had no way to actually prove it myself.
Glad to know those settings really did function as intended.
Eventually, the First Unit members agreed to enter the sixth-floor bath—The Moisture Bath.
Oh wow... the moment they stepped in, things really changed. Their hair and skin suddenly looked radiant. The whole scene started giving off this strange erotic energy, like I was watching a cast of hyper-muscular fighting game girls in the nude.
Their beauty had bloomed so dramatically and suddenly that the knights were left speechless—then burst into uncontrollable laughter at the sight of one another.
“Pfft—hahaha! I can’t—this is too much!”
“What the hell, why is everyone suddenly cute?”
“This is like the Second Unit, not us!”
“Bwahahaha!”
While everyone around them roared with laughter, a few of the women were quietly crying, pretending to laugh too.
Maybe they were overwhelmed by emotion—after all the sacrifices they’d made in their lives as First Unit knights, they were seeing the beauty they’d lost finally return.
When the others noticed that, the mood shifted. The laughter died down, replaced by a more subdued, tender silence. Joy, but held close to the chest.
And through it all, that captain—Touji—just kept watching with a complicated expression.
“Vihita… are you absolutely sure this doesn’t weaken us?”
“Huh? Ah—yes, Ma’am!”
“You’re only talking about skin durability though, right...? Damn. I hope it’s really okay.”
...Hmm. She wasn’t wavering at all. Looked like she was genuinely concerned that regaining their feminine spirit might affect their mental toughness.
Scary woman. A total pro—she thought about nothing but the mission.
“If their skin’s fine, then what else could even weaken— Oh, Master! I want coffee next! And a sweet that goes well with it! Something I haven’t tried before!”
Peta-chan, totally carefree, threw out her next request without a trace of concern.
Coffee and a treat to go with it, huh? And something new, at that.
Let’s see... she’s already had cakes, cookies, donuts—hmm. This one’s a tough pick...
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