The Chaotic Stone Sauna

by Nagaharu Hibihana

  “...Hm?”

  The buttons on my shirt were off by one. So Rakti had helped, too. A smile formed on my face as I imagined her clumsily trying to button me up.

  I stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway that doubled as our storage room and met eyes with Roni. Her eyes grew round as soon as she saw me, then they started forming tears, and finally she leaped into my chest, overcome with emotion.

  “Sir Touyaaa!”

  I braced myself and supported her weight. Alright, my feet were steady. It looked like I had recovered just fine after sleeping.

  I buried my face into her frizzy cream-colored hair that smelled of shampoo, hugged her tight, and patted her head. Since she had recently gained an understudy by the name of Rakti, she was acting more like a proper servant lately, and rarely put her raw emotions on display like this. I used the opportunity to pamper her as much as I could right now.

  The others noticed the voices and started filtering in one by one. Roni realized how she was acting and tried to get away, but I wouldn’t let her. Then Rakti jumped onto us, making it even harder for Roni to peel herself off of me. Rium circled around behind me and jumped onto my back. I could still maintain my posture even with the three of them clinging onto me, which was a sign of how much stronger I had gotten. Maybe it was just my character to pay more mind to something like this over killing a dragon.

  Clena didn’t cling on to me, but I could tell that she was getting a little teary-eyed. Rulitora looked even more like he was about to burst into tears, though. I had gotten good at discerning the facial expressions of sand lizardmen lately.

  “I’m so glad you woke up, I really am...”

  “You’re exaggerating... well, maybe not. How long was I out for?”

  “Two days.”

  “Two days, huh...”

  Rulitora answered my question. I had been even more exhausted than I thought. Had I not opened the door to the Unlimited Bath before passing out, Clena would have run out of energy and our entire party would have been done for.

  “We could still use the Unlimited Bath, and Rakti said you’d be fine, but...”

  “Sorry for making you worry.”

  “I don’t want to say we had no choice, but we really had no choice. We couldn’t have continued the expedition without taking care of that.”

  “And we didn’t have many other options for taking it down.”

  I had honestly braced myself for them getting angry at me for doing something so rash, but both Clena and Rulitora had realized that we had no other options at the time. If I never woke up again, though, they’d have been stuck within this poison gas forever. I needed to apologize for making them worry about that.

  Even the ketolts held off from using the fire altar to give my MP some rest. That being said, they hadn’t just sat around doing nothing these past two days. Clena expanded the water veil to encompass the dragon’s corpse, then they began dissecting it.

  “We got our hands on some purretty rare goods!” Shakova said, then held out a star-shaped scale about the size of my palm.

  I accepted it and saw that it was faintly transparent. I flicked it with my fingers and it made a hard sound, like a mineral. I held it up to the light, which made it look almost like jade.

  “...Is this really one of that dragon’s scales?” I asked in awe.

  “It really is. I was surprised too when I first cleaned one up.” Mark nodded with a meek expression. It was initially dark and dull from the poison gas and mushroom spores, but after putting on a pair of gloves and washing it, the scale showed its true colors.

  I couldn’t believe it. That slow, elephant-sized dragon that looked like a hippo had actually been adorned these beautiful scales that could pass for jewels. Since it was as big as an elephant, they had managed to collect a huge amount of scales. They were still in the middle of washing them.

  “We gathered sooo many, meow!” Shakova was hopping around in joy. I could understand how he was feeling. Since he loved flashy things so much, this was the best possible thing for us to find.

  Mark sat next to him, sighing. He must have been depressed, thinking about how many they still needed to clean. I wanted to help, since it seemed like they had a lot of work remaining, but apparently cleaning these scales required a delicate touch, and they wouldn’t let the rest of us participate.

  “By the way, can you use magic again yet?”

  “Hm? Ohh, I think so.”

  “Just one spell. We’re still in the middle of dissecting this, so you need to rest up in the meantime.”

  I was about to take on whatever request Pardoe had for me, but Clena interrupted. I felt perfectly fine already, but Clena was forcing me to rest again after fulfilling Pardoe’s request.

  “So what would you like me to do?”

  “We’d like you to purrify the dragon’s corpse.”

  “Purify it?”

  “We heard there were purrification spells among cleric magic.”

  There indeed were—a light one and a fire one. I only knew the light one right now, though.

  “We got all the scales off it, but the rest of its rotten flesh might turn it into a zombie dragon.”

  “...It can turn into a zombie?”

  “It had so much vitality that it’ll definitely start moving again even after it’s dead.”

  Since undead skeletons existed in this world, I shouldn’t have been surprised that zombie dragons existed, too. Now I understood why Clena was letting me cast one spell before resting again. I needed to purify the dragon’s corpse before it could turn into a zombie. I was still in my pajamas, but it would be fine to step out to cast a single spell. We couldn’t go outside without the water veil, so I followed Clena’s lead and exited the Unlimited Bath.

  “......Ugh.”

  I didn’t want to describe it. The scene right beyond the door was doing no good for my mental well-being. Though it couldn’t be helped after all its scales had been stripped off of it.

  I didn’t want to look at it for any longer than I had to, so I started casting the spell right away. I stuck my hands out toward the dragon’s corpse, then started chanting the light purification spell like a prayer. A bright light formed a circle around the corpse, grew to the size of a pillar, and engulfed the entire corpse.

  “Purification complete!”

  The spell ran its course, and after the light faded away, all that remained was the dragon’s bones. The bones weren’t part of the purification process, but they wouldn’t be reanimated like skeletons now, either.

  “Ohh! Look at all the purretty bones! I thought they’d be burnt to a crisp after the purrification!” Pardoe exclaimed in joy after seeing the remains of the dragon.

  The fire purification spell was essentially the equivalent of cremation. It really would have burned everything to a crisp, so that spell wouldn’t have left all these bones intact. I had assumed I only needed to learn one purification spell, and I was glad that ended up being the light one. The Goddess of Fire had also agreed, though hesitantly, to my suggestion, which must have been because she knew that that would have happened as well.

  In any case, we needed to carry all these bones inside. We’d be safe as soon as we shut the door to the Unlimited Bath. Clena could put her water veil away and take a break as well.

  “Alright then, let’s carry them inside.”

  “Sir Touya, let me take care of that.”

  “Yes, Touya, go rest.”

  I tried to help, but Rulitora and Clena stopped me.

  “No, you need to take a break too, Clena. You had your water veil out the whole time they were collecting the scales, right?”

  “I’ll take a break right after we finish this.”

  “We’re only transporting them inside, so it won’t take long,” Rulitora said, then swiftly picked up the entire dragon skull. I see, so it really wouldn’t take long with him around.

  The three ketolts also adorably picked up a bone each, hauling them inside with a he
ave-ho. They’d all be fine. I went ahead inside to lie down in the tatami mat room.

  “...I don’t smell, right?” I could detect a bit of a rotten stench from my clothes, so I changed into a set of spare pajamas just in case. All I needed to do now was lie down on the futon, but I devised a little plan before that.

  It wasn’t anything major. All I did was place two pillows right next to each other on the futon and lay down on the edge of it. Clena would come here to rest after she finished her work outside. I wanted to play a little trick to see how she would react to the open space right next to me.

  “......”

  “...Wanna sleep here?”

  She nodded in reply... Rium, that is. The one who ended up getting caught in my trap was Rium, who arrived before Clena and snuggled into bed next to me. I was disappointed that I wouldn’t see Clena’s reaction, but cuddling Rium to sleep was hardly a bad outcome, either. This was a sure way to heal my mind back to tip-top condition. And this was a secret, but when I woke up the next day, I found Clena sleeping next to us, huddled up in another futon she laid out herself.

  Fourth Bath – A Visit to the Ancient Bath

  After the ketolts finished tidying up the rest of our spoils from the dragon and I fully regained my energy, we walked for another day and a half, and then finally made it to our destination.

  The ledge turned into a sudden and steep cliff that didn’t look possible to traverse on foot. My solution to that was summoning earth spirits to create a foundation for us, then using it to hoist us all the way up the mountain.

  The landscape that greeted us when we arrived above the ledge could be described as nothing more than bleak and barren. I didn’t know if the poison gas had caused it, but the trees that surrounded the edge of the cliff were completely withered. Once we crossed the ring of dead trees, we saw sand and rocks, then a building that we could only assume was the demon generals’ hideout beyond it.

  I hadn’t been able to tell how large the hideout was from far away, but it was actually fairly small. At least that was my first impression as we stood on the ledge. The cliff itself was big, which made the building look even smaller in turn. Beyond the cozy-looking cabin was another larger building. The two of them combined still didn’t match the size of Pardoe’s mansion.

  And then there was all the sand and rock in front of the buildings. This might have been the garden.

  “It’s a dried-up zen garden...”

  “...Zen garden?” Rium asked, clinging to my waist.

  “What’s that?” Clena was also confused as she stood next to me. So the people of this world didn’t understand what a zen garden was.

  “It’s a dry garden. The sand is supposed to represent water and imitate a scene in nature.” I gave a brief explanation since I was no expert either.

  Rulitora scanned his eyes across the withered garden with a quizzical expression. “...This is a garden? It looks like nothing more than a wasteland to me.”

  It was no surprise that Rulitora would think so, considering how he’d grown up in the void. If I were to pick an environment that this garden reminded me of, I’d choose the Torano’o settlement as well. I only realized that this was a zen garden because I was from Japan, but the people of this world would only see it as a dreary garden with rocks randomly strewn about—or not a garden at all.

  “Um, Sir Touya? Is this ‘zen garden’ something from your...?”

  “Yeah, from my homeland. It’s a traditional Japanese garden.” Roni hesitated in asking her question, but I gave her an assertive reply.

  Indeed, this was a type of Japanese garden. It would make sense for the demon lord and the five great demon generals, who were summoned from Japan 500 years ago, to know what this was. I would never have expected to find a zen garden in such a remote place in another world, though.

  “So if the sand is water... are the rocks land?”

  “I would assume so.”

  Rium picked the idea up surprisingly fast. The others slowly showed signs of understanding after they heard Rium’s comment. The three ketolts had their eyes especially wide. They might have been taken aback at the sight of artistry from another world.

  Rakti, however, was looking somewhat scared. Rium was already at my left, so she circled around to my right and hugged my waist.

  “Um, so does that mean... there’s really a demon general here...?”

  “Seems like it. One of the Five Great Demon Generals.”

  Rakti looked up at me with fear in her eyes. The Five Great Demon Generals and the demon lord were all summoned by Goldfish, a cleric of the Goddess of Darkness, and were given the blessing of Darkness. The demon lord had yet to rise again, so whoever made this hideout must have been among the Five Great Demon Generals.

  Rakti had nothing to do with Goldfish’s past deeds, but she must still have felt related to it as the Goddess of Darkness. Goldfish was definitely the one in the wrong there, not Rakti. She had never given an order to summon anyone. I tried to soothe her by patting her on her head. She could only feel my heavy gauntlets, but still looked a little happier.

  We started approaching the two buildings, opting to circle around the withered garden because we’d feel guilty for trampling over it.

  Our party neared the first building, but it was still completely silent from within. I checked with Rulitora and Roni, but neither of them detected any presence spying on us. Maybe the demon general was out for now.

  I saw lush green trees behind the cabin. There was still some poison gas hovering near the ledge, but it looked like it didn’t reach this far. I told Clena as much, and she ceased casting her water veil.

  “That chimney...” Pardoe looked up at the other building behind the cabin, thinking to himself. He was concerned about the chimney sticking out from the roof.

  “Pardoe?”

  “The chimney on that house over there. It looks a little strange for a kitchen chimney... Purrhaps that building’s a workshop.”

  “So they were making something in there?”

  This drew Rium’s attention. She mentioned that the building looked small compared to the smithy in Pardoe’s mansion, but it was the perfect size for a crystal mage’s workshop. If that really was a workshop, the next question would be what the demon general was making in there.

  We decided to check out the smaller cabin first. If the other building was a workshop, that would imply that this one was their house—in other words, we’d be more likely to find the demon general in here. If the demon general was the type to create a zen garden, I considered the chance that the cabin might be a Japanese-style house... but it was just a building with white walls, similar to the ones in Hephaestusopolis.

  “I do not detect any traps, Sir Touya.”

  Roni scouted out any possible traps for us. She had apparently become an expert at this after helping Clena sneak out of the house several times when they were young.

  “Okay then, make sure you stand to the side when you open the door. I’ll stand in front.”

  There were no traps, and the door wasn’t even locked, so I had Roni open the door from a safe angle. Rulitora seemed like he wanted to say something, but I was the most suitable among us to stand in front of the door with my Magic Eater.

  “No one’s inside...” I gripped the handle of my Crescent Moon as the door opened, but it was completely deserted within.

  Roni inspected the cabin, looking out for any traps, but we found nothing. That wasn’t such a surprise after looking inside, though. The cabin was essentially in ruins. The tables, chairs, furnishings, rugs, and everything else were rotting away.

  “Hey, Touya. Look over here.” Clena called for me from a room deeper inside, where we found a single piece of cloth pinned to the wall. The cloth was also in tatters, its colors faded. “I think it’s a flag...”

  “The demon general’s?” I asked, and Clena nodded in response.

  “Do you know whose it might be?”

  “Sorry, I can’t tell by the
flag alone...”

  “...This is the Flame Devil’s.”

  “Huh?” A voice suddenly cut into our conversation, and I looked down to find Rium clinging to my waist. I looked at the flag again, and the drawing on it definitely looked like a flame.

  “Do you know this flag, Rium?”

  “The Flame Devil fought against Athenapolis before... I saw a painting of angels fighting against demons, and this flag was on there...”

  Angels, huh. Considering what Haruno had told us in her letter, those must have been the winged demi-humans, the glaupis, and not angels. So if this flag was here, that meant this hideout belonged to the Fire Devil.

  Roni looked inside a basket in the kitchen, then grimaced. Rium, Rakti, and I followed suit to find a massive clump of dried-out mold. I couldn’t even guess what that used to be. Though considering how he was living in this environment, maybe he ate mold itself. The one thing I could say for sure was that no one was living here right now.

  “Oh, let’s go check out the other building too. Purrhaps they’re living in the workshop...”

  “Yes, maybe they shut themselves in their workshop for a month because they’re too absorbed in their work...”

  “Both of you are speaking from expurrience...”

  Pardoe and Shakova spoke with their eyes averted, but Mark gave them both an accusing stare. So both of them had locked themselves in their workshops before.

  This looked like far more than a month’s worth of decay, but who knows, maybe demons could shut themselves off for a longer period of time. We all braced ourselves again and approached the supposed workshop.

  “Sir Touya, Sir Touya! There’s another building over there.”

  “What?”

  Rakti pulled my hand when we circled around to the back of the cabin. I looked in the direction she was pointing and saw a silhouette of something that looked manmade behind the trees. It didn’t look very big, so we decided to investigate this first.

  “Meow? These rocks...”

  “Have you noticed, Mark?

  These stones are lining up to form a path.”

  “The road is blending together with nature...”