Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 11

by Fujino Omori

  The black mist lingered stubbornly despite the repeated blizzards. Welf had decided that he could turn it to his advantage by using it to hide his presence as he fought, and that was why he asked Hestia to send his message to Fels. Mikoto must have heard him, because her voice came back through the oculus.

  “Got it!”

  Presently, he heard the lizardman’s roar. Welf could sense the monsters scattered around him responding to the command to move forward. And then, the adventurers pursuing them. Cursing his inability to hold them back, Welf continued to swing his magic blade in the direction Tsubaki told him to.

  We’ve just gotta keep that dwarf pinned here!

  The road where Gareth stood had turned into a river of ice. They had stopped the first-tier adventurer.

  On the outskirts of southwestern Daedalus Street, Hestia dripped with nervous sweat. Next to her, Haruhime had turned white.

  “Oh, this is bad. This is really bad…!”

  “Yes! It’s awful!”

  In the aftermath of the fierce attack from Loki Familia, the names of the Xenos were scattered across the magic map. The enemy had ruined their prospects of reaching the central zone of the Labyrinth District.

  As if to drive home the dismal message, Hestia saw a lone symbol moving away from the group.

  “No, Wiene! You can’t go that way!”

  The dragon girl was striking out on her own.

  Wiene was running.

  Some of her scales had been torn off, and crimson blood was seeping from the gaps.

  She gripped her wounded left arm and plunged into the black mist.

  Fels’s smoke had overflowed the main avenue and filled the alleys that surrounded it like a spiderweb. The thick fog that blotted out the stars was probably visible from anywhere in Daedalus Street.

  If Wiene stopped in the mist, the adventurers would surround her. She knew that. And she knew that even now she was running farther and farther from the other Xenos. But she could not stop her feet.

  They’re…coming…!

  Arrows flew at her ceaselessly, grazing the hood of her robe and her pointy ears. Loki Familia archers. Terrified of the bolts flying to kill her, she turned a corner. The dragon girl’s diabolical pursuers were drawing closer.

  “Huff, puff…”

  Wiene struggled to find her way through the Labyrinth District. She didn’t have an oculus with her, so she could not turn to the goddess for help. The black brick buildings stretched up as far as she could see, turning the streets into canyons. Countless side alleys branched off like fissures, beckoning the girl into the abyss of mist.

  At last, Wiene broke out of the dense, still fog that blocked her vision.

  “!”

  She emerged into a scene of ruin. The black bricks had given way to ancient cobblestones surrounded by clusters of the strangely shaped, crumbling buildings Daedalus had designed ages ago. Every few minutes, the tremors and rumbling from the battlefield shook loose a rain of sand and stone fragments.

  The scene suggested that in her confusion, Wiene had crossed the border of the Labyrinth District’s western region and entered the northwestern section. She paused for a moment and looked around at the wider and slightly less complicated roads.

  “There it is! I found it!”

  “!”

  At the sound of the adventurers’ shouts, Wiene took off running again. Evading the rain of arrows, she turned a corner. Her bluish-white skin and scales covered in sweat and her silver-blue hair tangled beneath her robe, Wiene plunged desperately forward, clinging to an invisible hope.

  But.

  “—”

  As if to crush the monster’s wish, the starlight illuminated a figure far in the distance.

  Wiene stopped breathing.

  I’ve made it this far somehow, but…

  The brown-skinned woman’s bare feet were planted firmly on the roof of a building, and she had an unbelievably huge double-edged sword over her shoulder—an Amazon.

  It was Tiona Hyrute.

  Why—?

  Wiene recognized her as a threat. She could not understand how one of the pair Mikoto had blown away earlier could be standing before her now.

  “Well, I guess since I’ve happened across one, I better do something about it,” the Amazon muttered to herself.

  Tiona didn’t really know why she’d ended up in this place. If she had to say, it was probably because she’d seen the black mist creeping to the northwest.

  Once she had finally landed on the ground after Mikoto’s tornado, she’d headed back toward the battlefield with Tione, who was insane with rage. But when she saw the jet-black mist spreading northwest, Tiona had changed directions.

  The south side was still okay. The only ones down there were adventurers. But she’d heard that there were still some townsfolk on the northern side of the Labyrinth District who hadn’t managed to evacuate. Her instincts told her that things could get nasty if they tried to head to the outskirts through the mist, and that had led her to follow the cloud to the northwest.

  “I’ll take this one down,” she said to herself.

  When Wiene saw Tiona toss her double-edged sword to one hand, she sped off in the opposite direction.

  For all her youth and inexperience, the dragon girl could sense that she was in a desperate situation. As she collided with Loki Familia pursuers, all hope drained from her face. She leaped into an intersection as the adventurers and Tiona closed in on her from both sides.

  Huh?

  A little boy was standing near her.

  A human…child…?

  It was a pale, young half-elf, hugging a kitten to his chest.

  Wiene saw her own reflection in the child’s pupils. Her two amber eyes peering out from the dark hood and, above them, like a drop of blood on her forehead, her sparkling third eye. The sight of her monster’s face wreathed in darkness would surely be enough to petrify any small child.

  Wiene hesitated for a moment as she faced the terrified boy. Just then, she heard a loud explosion from the direction of the battlefield that shook the ground.

  An instant later, it gave way to a powerful roar.

  Suddenly, one of the buildings looming above the child’s head pitched forward and began to crumble.

  “Ruu?!”

  Screams exploded from the mouths of Lai, Fina, and Maria as if their chests were bursting open.

  “Ouka?!”

  “It’s coming—!”

  As they saw the building tipping forward on the west side of the intersection, Chigusa and Ouka dashed into the street, their weapons in hand.

  They had arrived at the corner just a minute earlier, still searching for the little boy who had run back to the orphanage all alone. They had felt a flood of relief when they caught sight of the half-elf on the east side of the intersection. That was immediately before the explosion.

  “Miss Tiona?!”

  “Oh no!”

  Ouka saw the monster in the torn robe racing with frightening speed into the intersection, the little boy frozen in place, and the astounded Loki Familia members. Then he noticed the dilapidated building falling toward the intersection.

  I won’t make it!!

  Within his heart, Ouka screamed silently at the horrifying disaster about to occur.

  Ah…

  It was a familiar scene for Wiene.

  The mountain of bricks falling above the boy’s head. Back then, it had been packages falling from a horse-drawn cart.

  You should just leave him there, Wiene’s fearful heart whispered to her.

  The people will scream and throw rocks at you. They will all hate you, and sadness will overwhelm you, and your heart will wear thin, and your days will pass in miserable tears.

  But—

  Wiene asked her heart a question.

  But even so, Bell saved me, didn’t he?

  She had heard from her brethren about the boy’s plight. It was her fault that even now he faced hostility and malice on all sides
. When Wiene learned that, she had burst into tears and felt a tightness in her heart.

  Bell had saved Wiene even though he knew people would throw rocks at him.

  Wiene’s fearful heart had nothing to say in response. Instead, it gently urged her onward.

  The next moment, the heat in the finger pushing her forward burst through her skin and her robe and grew into a new wing.

  “—!!”

  The potential of a dragon turned Wiene’s body into a bluish-silver arrow speeding toward the child.

  She spread her wing out to block the mountain of falling brick, using her body to press the half-elf boy to the ground.

  “Ruu!!”

  The collapsing rubble drowned out the screams of the other children.

  The sound of avalanching debris enveloped the intersection as a waterfall of stone descended.

  By the time the rush had subsided, an enormous cloud of dust had ballooned from the wreckage, and the entire area was littered with jagged hunks of stone.

  “…Ah.”

  Wiene and the boy were in the center of this collapsed building.

  The boy was lying faceup on the ground, and the vouivre was pressing her hands against his face as she peered down into his eyes.

  Her outstretched wing had not been able to block all the rubble. Blood dripped from her head onto the boy’s cheek.

  “—Shoot it!”

  “?!”

  An arrow bounced off Wiene’s wing.

  How had this scene appeared to those who watched it unfold? At least to Maria, the children, and Loki Familia’s members, it looked as if the monster had attacked the child with its dreadful wing, and by chance the rubble had fallen onto its head.

  Wiene looked down as a band of angry adventurers approached from beyond the settling dust. She rose from the boy’s side and began running. A moment later, Maria and the children and other Loki Familia members rushed to take her place next to the boy.

  “I’ll go after her! You guys protect the children!” Tiona shouted to the adventurers, raising her sword as she ran after the monster.

  “Got it!”

  Maria, Lai, and Fina hugged the dazed Ruu, who was gripping the kitten tightly.

  “Oh, Ruu! Ruu!”

  “You dummy! What were you doing?!”

  “Ruu, are you okay?”

  Maria, Lai, and Fina were all crying.

  “No, you’re all wrong…Mother, Lai, Fina,” he whispered faintly as they held him close. A drop of the monster’s blood trickled down his cheek like a tear.

  “Big brother…was right all along.”

  The half-elf child stared up at the deep-blue night sky as his foster mother held him. His lips trembled as he made out the faintly shining moon beyond the settling dust. The child’s sobs echoed through the ruins.

  A few steps away, Ouka and Chigusa were standing stock-still.

  “Ouka…what just happened?”

  “The monster protected him? Protected a child…?”

  The two had been standing immediately beside Wiene as the scene unfolded, and they had seen all the details that Maria, the children, and Loki Familia members had missed from their position behind the vouivre. Now they exchanged puzzled whispers about what they had witnessed.

  Their words trailed off, and they gazed toward the street where Wiene had disappeared.

  A short distance from the intersection, two pairs of footsteps echoed down a narrow alleyway illuminated by timeworn magic-stone lanterns.

  It had taken only a few moments for Tiona to catch up with the fleeing Wiene.

  “Here we go!”

  “?!”

  The Amazon handily swung her double-edged sword down, blocking Wiene’s path of retreat.

  Although the sword did not hit the dragon girl, her thin legs collapsed from the force of the impact and the gust of wind from the rapidly swing of her weapon. Tiona did not waste this chance to lift her sword in preparation for another thrust.

  Ah…

  Wiene didn’t even have time to shield her body with her single wing. Even if she had, the sword would have skewered her, wing and all. In the last instant, as the Amazon closed in on her, she squeezed her eyes shut.

  “…?”

  She waited and waited, but the piercing thrust of the sword did not come.

  Very timidly, she opened her eyes. The huge double-edged sword was suspended in front of her chest. When she looked up, Tiona was standing there silently with a deeply conflicted expression on her face.

  “Uhhh, errrrr, mmmm…yeah!”

  After groaning and grumbling for a minute, Tiona nodded and pulled back her weapon.

  “I just couldn’t do it after all!!”

  She tossed the sword over her shoulder. The massive weapon rolled across the ground with a grating crash.

  “Huh…?” the vouivre whispered hoarsely from her bluish-white lips.

  The best word to describe her expression would be “stunned.”

  “You…you saved him, didn’t you? That little boy.”

  Wiene reacted with surprise.

  “I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying…but you’d better get out of here fast.”

  “Ah…”

  “Not everyone is a softhearted idiot like me, you know.”

  Tiona stared down at the monster. Wiene didn’t know what to do, but very timidly, she stood up. She opened her mouth slightly as if to speak, but at that moment the booms of the battle echoed down the alleyway, and she hurried away.

  Just once, she turned to look back at Tiona, then disappeared.

  The magic-stone lamps flickered in the alleyway. Left alone, Tiona picked up the sword she’d tossed away and slowly raised her eyes to the heavens.

  “…This is how the Argonaut must have felt…”

  Her words faded into the cloudy night sky.

  “Tiona!”

  “Oh, hey, Tione.”

  When she left the alleyway, Tiona bumped into her twin. Tione frowned angrily and pressed in close to Tiona.

  “Why’d you run off without telling me? I was looking for you!”

  “You came after me? I figured you’d be busy fighting over on the main street.”

  “The captain told us to stick together! I’m not going to disobey him, am I? And…what about the monster? I heard you chased one over here.”

  Tiona considered lying to her sister but decided against it.

  “Yeah, I let it go.”

  “What?! It didn’t escape; you purposely let it go?! Are you crazy?”

  “But—!”

  “‘But’ my ass! These are unique circumstances. Didn’t you hear what the captain said?”

  “But, Tione, even you know those monsters are more than just smart…”

  “Hmph.”

  “I think they’re different from regular monsters. I don’t get a negative feeling from them,” she told her sister frankly, thinking back to the adventurer she’d found who was unconscious but not dead.

  For a moment, Tione was silent, as if she knew Tiona had hit on the truth. But her anger quickly resurfaced.

  “Shut up! I’m going to get that black minotaur no matter what! I’m out of here!”

  “You just want revenge!”

  The sisters ran off side by side, bickering as they went.

  “Goddess Hestia, where is Wiene?!”

  Fels’s voice was coming through the oculus.

  “She’s in the northwest, heading farther and farther away!” Hestia screamed back.

  She was at her post in the southwestern outskirts of Daedalus Street. As she looked down at the dragon girl’s name moving steadily northward across the magic map, Hestia could feel her heart thumping faster and faster.

  “Can’t anyone go rescue her?” she asked.

  “It’s impossible. The adventurers are fighting hard…! If Lido or anyone else left, we’d be done for!”

  Through the blue crystal, Hestia could hear the monsters howling in a furious battle. Frown
ing, she frantically thought about what else they could do.

  If Fels can’t help, then the closest ones to Wiene are Welf and Mikoto…No, that’s impossible, too; they’re holding off the adventurers! And Lilly and Bell are too far!

  Fels and the Xenos were fighting in the western sector, just on the edge of the central zone, and Mikoto and Welf were very close by. Lilly was due east, and Bell was heading southeast, stirring up trouble with adventurers. It would be hard for them to reach Wiene as she fled to the northwest.

  It was clear the adventurers were pursuing Wiene as she headed north through the Labyrinth District. Hestia felt like every tick of the hands on her broken watch shaved off more minutes of the girl’s life. She was at a loss for what to do, when—

  “Aaah!”

  “Haruhime?!”

  The girl, who had been on the tower rooftop with Hestia, had leaped off the edge.

  Just as her golden hair and crimson kimono disappeared into the darkness of the Labyrinth District, the loud crack of something breaking rang through the air. Panicked, Hestia peered over the edge of the roof. Far below, she could make out a hole in the roof of a barrack and, below it, the renart’s form stumbling forward as if she had rolled onto the ground.

  “—!!”

  Haruhime had abandoned all trace of logic or reason at the thought of Wiene in peril, and she literally jumped into the night to find her. Hestia, too, threw aside her indecision, grabbed one of the oculi, and shouted into it at the top of her lungs.

  “Bell! Help!”

  “Wiene has run off from the Xenos! And now Haruhime has gone after her!”

  Hidden under my veil, I panic at first when the goddess’s voice unexpectedly comes through the oculus. But as I listen to her desperate plea, the blood drains from my face.

  “Wiene’s by herself?!”

  Burning with anxiety, I slip into a back alley to get away from the shouts of the adventurers.

  Wiene is all alone? And no one can get there to rescue her? The vision of the girl crying by herself is deeply upsetting. As I pull up a map of Orario in my mind’s eye, I know that we are in an awful situation.

  I am in the southeast. Wiene is in the northwest. We’re as far as we can be from each other. If I take the most direct route to her, I’ll run straight into Loki Familia’s encampment in the center of the Labyrinth District. It’s impossible for me to get through without a hitch, invisible or not. But a detour around their encampment would take forever. No matter how I think about it, I know I can’t make it in time on my own two feet!