The Fervent Sand Baths

by Nagaharu Hibihana

  I picked it up and saw something that looked like a fish bowl inside. There was no physical bowl, though. The water itself formed an orb that remained inside the helmet. And in it was Goldfish. I’d hoped that his bowl would have cracked and broken from the impact just now, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case. I secured the helmet under my arm, opened the door to the Unlimited Bath, and ran inside.

  “What are ye doing, bastard?!”

  “I’m inviting you inside my gift! Show a little appreciation!”

  “You fool! Hiding me away will do nothin’! All I need to do is throw those weapons around and your friends will be all sliced up! Just like this!”

  I immediately closed the door to the bath, but Goldfish only sneered at me. That last part must have been him using his spell... to make the suits of armor and weapons from outside attack everyone again. I kept the door closed, though, and instead headed toward the bath.

  “Hahahah! You dimwit! You tryin’a seal my magic again with that water of yours?! Too bad for you, but as long as I have this water, yer water’s not gonna do nothin’ to me!”

  Goldfish, having spotted some knives and forks, started throwing them toward me. I shielded myself with the helmet, but two knives manages to pierce themselves into my arm and thigh. Since the floor here was wooden, I wasn’t able to bury the utensils.

  “Heheheh... how long can ye hold on for? Oh, I know. Why don’t we bet on who dies first, you in here or yer friends out there?”

  He raised the utensils at me again, minus the two that were stuck in me.

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be the first one to go.” I jumped inside the bathing room and closed the door behind me as a shield.

  We were enveloped by hot steam once I entered the bathing room. The knives and forks slammed against the door, but that was all they did. Fortunately they lacked the power to bust through.

  I pulled the knives out of my body and threw them inside the bath before Goldfish had a chance to do anything with them. He shouldn’t be able to access them anymore. I then started pushing buttons on the control panel next to the bathtub.

  “W-what are ye playin’ at?!” Goldfish yelled out. He must have finally caught onto the abnormal situation.

  Steam started escaping from the cedar tub and the water inside started to bubble. He must have spotted it now, too—the number “100” on the control panel. Though he might not have been able to read it, seeing as how it was written in a language from my world. A normal bath wouldn’t have these extreme settings for safety reasons, but my Unlimited Bath did. It could run up to 100 degrees Celsius and make water boil.

  “Y-you bastard... don’t tell me...”

  “I think you’ve got something wrong, Goldfish. Nothing can interact with us from the outside right now, so in turn we can’t affect anything inside.”

  “What?!”

  “Your magic isn’t reaching outside right now.”

  “Y-yer lyin’...” Goldfish looked suspicious of me, but I wasn’t just making things up.

  Once I closed the door, we were cut off from all outside influence, but we couldn’t do anything from inside as well. That was one of the special traits of my Unlimited Bath. The black suit of armor must be still and lifeless right now, having been cut off from Goldfish’s magic.

  I approached the cedar bath and hung the helmet over the water. The steam was hot— I couldn’t stay here for long.

  “So now you know, what happens outside doesn’t count. It’s a bet whichever one of us dies first. There are still plenty of knives outside, do whatever you want with them.”

  Goldfish tried writhing the helmet around, but I didn’t loosen my grip.

  “W-Wait... if I die, then I can’t summon another demon lord...!”

  “Then what did you ruin your country for?! There’s not a single citizen of Hades left! Or were you hoping to create a kingdom of the dead?!”

  I ignored Goldfish’s plea and aimed a shower head inside the helmet. I sprayed water inside, cutting the helmet off from his control, and the water orb fell out. I made sure the orb fell into the boiling water before throwing away the painfully hot helmet and jumping out of the bathing room. As soon as I passed the door, I saw the knives and forks all pointed at me. Unsurprisingly, he had mustered his strength for one final attack.

  “Who will die first, huh...” The moment I spoke, the knives and forks flew at me with great speed. “...Sorry, but there are a million ways I can shield myself in here.”

  Instead of me, the utensils ended up piercing a folded up bath towel. I wrapped them all up in the towel and pressed it down on the ground with my feet. I could feel them twitching around under my feet, but they weren’t putting up much of a fight. My victory was sealed if I just kept doing this.

  I waited until the utensils stopped twitching, then lowered the temperature of the water using the control panel. The inside must have been a sauna right about now, so luckily I could control the temperature from the outside. I opened the door and hot steam blasted in my face. It wasn’t as bad as when I first started boiling the water, but it was still unpleasant. I then went back to open the door to the Unlimited Bath.

  “Touya!” Clena ran over to me once she noticed the door was open. She had her usual sword in her hands, already sheathed. Looks like she got it back safe and sound.

  “Where’s Goldfish?”

  “Being boiled.”

  “I see...” Heat was coming from inside, so she must have been able to tell.

  “Are you alright, Roni?”

  “Piece of cake!” She must have gotten seriously injured, having taken the brunt of the damage earlier, but she still managed a courageous smile. Her bravery was so endearing.

  “Thank you as well, Rium, Rulitora.”

  “It’s fine, I only called him here.”

  “I’m just glad you’re safe.”

  Rium was clinging onto Rulitora’s back.

  On that note, when I asked how Rulitora got into the room, he said he simply cut a hole open with his glaive. He might have gotten noticed if he crashed through the wall, so he cut a triangle using the floor as the base, then carefully lowered the cut piece of wall to the ground.

  Now that we’d cleared that up, I needed to treat all of our wounds. I wanted to confirm whether or not Goldfish was dead first, though. Maybe we should take him outside and crush him under our feet to be safe.

  I reentered the bathing room to find the water back to a normal temperature and Goldfish floating just below the surface, belly-up. I pinched his large fins and lifted him out of the water.

  “What?!” I was intending on only lifting him out, but the orb came up with him. It was the same orb that was inside the helmet.

  “The bastard’s still alive...!”

  “Don’t think ye can kill me off so easily! Curse yer hides!!”

  Goldfish fired something at me. I let go and dropped him to the floor. I couldn’t muster any strength into my legs anymore and collapsed onto the bathing room ground.

  “Prepare to suffer... ye scalawag...”

  I gazed at Goldfish, who was finally on his last breath, gradually fading from consciousness.

  I had a dream.

  I wasn’t sure if I was standing or lying down. I might have been floating in the sky or buried underground. I was only sure of the pain coursing through my entire body and my shortening breath.

  I saw three shadows, though I couldn’t tell how close or far they were. The one that stood out most was a woman with blonde hair tied in a high ponytail. She was tall, clad in a long dress with pure white hems. I thought she was a radiant beauty, but she wore a harsh expression on her face. She had her hands at her waist, reproaching one of the other shadows.

  The one being reproached was a woman with black hair. She was sitting down hugging her knees so I couldn’t say for sure, but she looked petite. In contrast to the other girl, she was clad in a pure black dress, with her long straight hair spreading out on the ground and melting into her sk
irt. She was teary-eyed and her shoulders trembled as the blonde-haired woman kept condemning her. She seemed kind of ephemeral.

  The last shadow was trying to calm the blonde-haired woman down. She had wavy green hair and dark brown skin. She had a larger build than the blonde-haired woman, which combined with her gentle expression reminded me of a towering tree.

  The black-haired girl might have noticed me since she looked over through her tears, seemingly about to burst out crying any second. The blonde-haired girl took a glance at me as well, but instead she looked even angrier and scolded the black-haired girl some more. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but I could read as much from the atmosphere. Lastly, the tree girl came over to me with a gentle smile, reached her hand out, and all of a sudden my pain and shortness of breath had vanished like they were never there. I closed my eyes with a relaxed expression.

  That was the dream I saw.

  “Ugh...” I woke up from that strange dream to find Roni and Rium’s worried faces staring down at me. Rium had tears in her eyes, to say nothing of Roni.

  “Lady Clena! Rulitora! Sir Touya has awakened!” Roni called out as she waved her disheveled custard-colored hair around. Rium poked my cheek, probably wondering if I was okay. Her cocoa-colored hair tickled my cheek as she drooped her head down.

  “Are you okay?”

  “...Somehow, yeah.”

  I tried to sit up, bearing the pain of my wounds, but a twang shot up my arm when I pressed my hand against the floor. That was the wound from when I grabbed the knife. My hand was still in the gravel-cover I had made, so I removed it and closed the wound with my healing light. I had several others wounds across my body, but nothing worrying.

  I looked around to find that we were in the armory that Goldfish had hidden inside. The others had brought out blankets for us to rest on.

  I couldn’t detect the rotten smell anymore. I guess Clena had ventilated the air in here. The door was closed and Rulitora was sitting at the hole in the wall he had cut, keeping watch outside with his back facing me. He turned around, though, probably curious about me. The carriage was parked right under the hole in the wall.

  It was bright outside. Either not much time had passed since I had collapsed, or a whole night had already gone by.

  Clena came over to me, her silver hair a mess. From that, I assumed an entire night had passed.

  “How long was I out for?”

  “Almost a whole day.”

  So it really was the latter. She probably didn’t have the time to do her hair yesterday.

  “I’ll reheat the soup for you.”

  My stomach grumbled in response. It was just before noon right now. We had started exploring the demon lord’s castle after having a light lunch yesterday, so that meant I had skipped dinner and breakfast.

  I noticed that a lot of our luggage had been taken from outside the Unlimited Bath. I had collapsed with the door to the Unlimited Bath still open, which would have consumed my MP all the while and placed a heavy burden on me. Clena must have realized that and took blankets and other things out, closed the door, and had us rest outside. They didn’t know when I would wake up. It was a wise decision, considering how they couldn’t open the door again until I did.

  “What happened to Goldfish?”

  “We thought it’d be bad to shut him inside, so we took him out. But as soon as we did, he turned into waste and disappeared.”

  “So he’s completely dead now?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Clena replied, drooping her shoulders. Looks like Goldfish had been completely destroyed. “More importantly, how are you, Touya?”

  “I don’t feel great yet, but could be worse.” I said, then stood up. My limbs moved just fine. All operational.

  If what happened in my dream was real, then I had reason to believe I was fine. I couldn’t be sure of anything right now, though, so I left that unspoken.

  “Want to go and see what changed inside after all that?”

  I assumed I had leveled up after defeating Goldfish—the Masked Cleric, one of the demon generals—not to mention having been cursed by him, as well. I opened the door to the Unlimited Bath, fully expecting it to have changed from before. And sure enough, the sight that greeted me was completely unfamiliar.

  “...A garden?”

  “Hm? Isn’t it too small to be a garden?”

  The changing room was always the first thing to greet you, but this time there was a space of around one meter, or one stuto in this world’s units. A stone path led to another door, which I assumed was the changing room. But other than that, the space was just scattered with gravel. The door leading to the changing room had an ultramarine curtain hanging in front of it with the word “bath” written on it. I decided to inspect our current one stuto space before opening the door to the changing room.

  It was surrounded on both sides by walls. I had thought it was a small garden at first, but after walking around, I discovered that the path formed a loop all the way around the bath. It felt like a building inside a large room. There were windows, but I couldn’t tell what was beyond them since it was dark inside.

  “I’d call this more of a pathway than a garden.”

  “It’s cramped.”

  Clena and Rium, who were following behind me, couldn’t figure out what this space was for. I had thought this might be a good place for Rulitora to rest, since the steam didn’t reach out here, but unfortunately it’d be little too narrow for him.

  “Don’t tell me...”

  It was an intriguing development, but thinking about that dream I had I came up with a possible explanation.

  In that dream, a women who might have been the Goddess of Light was reprimanding a woman who might have been the Goddess of Darkness, and then a women who might have been the Goddess of Earth took away my pain.

  You could say that my gift was “inside” me, though of course not in the physical sense. The bath inside this box-shaped building was currently caught between the Goddess of Light’s blessing and Goldfish’s curse. And the gravel pathway at our feet was the “Earth.” The Goddess of Earth’s blessing enveloped the bath itself, keeping me from taking damage. Thinking about it that way, the dream made sense.

  “Sir Touya... Whoa, what’s that?!”

  Roni had come back with a cup of soup. I took it from her and started sipping on it. It was too hot to gulp down all at once, but it warmed my body right up.

  “The real question is what’s inside.”

  “I’ll open the door, just in case. Touya is the only one who can use healing spells.”

  “...I’ll leave it to you then, sorry.”

  I wanted to be the man here, but Clena was right. If this were a game, a recovery spell would heal you right up even if you were on the verge of death. But since this was the real world, I needed to be in good enough condition to cast the spell. I noticed that Clena and Roni were wrapped in bandages all over. Since I fell unconscious, they hadn’t been able to heal the wounds they’d suffered from the battle against Goldfish.

  “How about I heal those injuries first?”

  “This is nothing. Let’s go inside first. We won’t be able to heal ourselves at all in the future if anything happens to you.”

  “...I understand. I’ll heal you guys right after we check out what’s inside.”

  “Thank you.”

  Roni stood on guard in front of me, while Clena opened the door from the side.

  “H-huh? Hold on, there’s no door knob. Nothing happens if I push it either,” Clena grew flustered, not having seen this type of door before. Come to think of it, I’d never seen sliding doors in this world before.

  “...That’s a sliding door. Try pushing it to the side.”

  “Huh? Oh, you mean like this?” Clena pushed the door to the side, blushing a little. It opened with a rattle. The sound was pretty nostalgic for me.

  There wasn’t any battle between light and darkness going on inside, it was safe—but even so, the view h
ad completely changed yet again.

  “More doors?”

  “Looks like this was just the entrance.”

  It looked like a square building from the outside, but there were a few more rooms inside. There was an entranceway right where we entered, and another door. The inner door was check-patterned frosted glass, and we could tell it was dark on the other side.

  We opened the door to find that there was indeed no lighting in there. I looked beside me and surely enough, I saw the faint glow of the keys to a control panel. Inspecting it closer, I found that it was just the light switch. Of course, my bath had always had light switches in the past, but this one had been upgraded with even more options.

  I turned on the light to find the biggest room we’d seen yet in this bath. Judging by where our luggage had ended up, the room was about twice as big as it was before. There was a sink and washing machine to the left and right of us. I had thought the entrance was narrow compared to what we had seen from outside, but the sink and washing machine took up those couple extra chunks of space jutting past the door.

  Along the wall on the farther side, there were two doors. The one on the left was the same folding door that led to the bathing room. We opened it, looked inside, and saw the same Japanese cedar bath as before.

  The doors on the right were actually fusuma panel doors. We opened them cautiously to find a room laid out with tatami mats. It was eight tatami in size, with another set of fusuma inside. I opened the fusuma, excited that there might be futons inside, but unfortunately it was a completely empty closet. The room was about the same size as the bathing room, including the size of the closet.

  The girls were all flabbergasted at the unfamiliar architecture.

  “What is this room...?”

  “This is a type of room from my world. Just like the changing room with the wooden floor and the cedar bathing room.”