Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 6 (4 page)

Lilly’s staring at me, lost for words. That’s how angry I am.

My goddess—the one person in my life whom I hold in higher regard than any other—has just been insulted. Nothing else in the world could infuriate me this much. She is my family, my
goddess
, and this bastard is looking down on her, talking about her like she’s trash.

Every person in the bar looks at me in silence. I don’t know if the little prum man has lost his nerve, looking at me as I tower over him. There is an unmistakable hint of fear in his eyes.

Somehow, he forces his lips into a sneer and says in a shaking voice:

“S-see? Bull’s-eye. Can’t bear the shame, eh?”

Whoosh!
Blood rushes up into my head all at once.

Overpowered by this wave of emotion, my body moves on its own.

“Don’t do it, Mr. Bell!”

Lilly’s voice can’t stop me now. My hands are yearning for this bastard’s throat.

One heartbeat before I could grab hold—a sudden burst of air.

A leg comes flying into my line of sight—
whok
—and buries itself in the prum’s face.

“Bmmph?!” The prum lets out a muffled yelp of pain as he and his chair crash to the floor.

A river of blood flows from his broken nose as his eyes roll back in his head and several parts of his body start twitching. He’s out cold.

The bar once again falls silent as the man who threw the kick and deprived me of my target, Welf, stands on one leg beside me.

His right foot is still outstretched as every set of eyes in the bar looks his way.

Did he cover for me? Was he just as angry?

I stare at him in disbelief. Welf smirks. “My foot slipped,” he says with impudence.

He narrows his eyes and grins at the other adventurers at the table. It’s almost as if his actions are a signal.

The prum’s friends stand up at once.

“You son of a bitch!”

“Now you’ve done it!”

One of the adventurers kicks the table, sending it spinning into the air. The sound of shattering dishes instantly echoes throughout the bar, accompanied by the screams of the staff. The adventurers throw everything out of their way in a mad charge toward us. Meanwhile, Welf grins and loosens up his right arm with a few swings of his fist.

It takes me a second to come back to my senses, but I tackle one of them who’s trying to attack Welf from the side.

^____
Waaa!!
The other customers’ voices erupt into a wall of sound. “Why, why is it always adventurers?!”

A fervor sweeps through the confined tavern. Lilly’s voice somehow manages to cut through it all as punches and kicks are thrown in every direction.

This is an all-out brawl. All tables and chairs within range are instantly thrust out of the way as we engage the offending adventurers to the delight and incitement of the bar’s customers. Mugs and bottles in their hands, they surround our battle in no time.

I bob and weave, dodging and counterattacking in an atmosphere so electric that it lights up the night. Now Level 2, Welf is able to keep all four of the attackers at bay on his own more than once. He must be used to this kind of fight. One adventurer charges at him, but he just smiles before sending the guy flying backward with an impressive uppercut. I move into the fray, duck down to the floor, and sweep my right leg forward. I catch an animal person behind the knee and he falls flat on his butt with a loud “Gah!”

I dip and dive again, dodging even more punches and kicks as Welf and I use a basic formation to overwhelm our opponents, just like a frontline attacker with middle support in a three-man cell fighting monsters in the Dungeon.

“…”

Our audience gets steadily louder as our two-man cell overpowers their four-man group.

However, the last of the prum man’s friends chooses this moment to make his move.

He’d been sitting in his chair all this time, calmly drinking what was left in his glass.
Crash!
He throws it to the floor and stands. His movements are swift and glamorous—sure, I’m being distracted and can’t watch too closely, but I still notice—as he approaches Welf.

The man grabs hold of Welf’s outstretched arm just before it makes contact with another adventurer’s face, pulls it back with one hand, and flips him on his back.

“Uwah!”

“Welf?!”

A new wave of rage consumes me the moment I see him land. I charge his attacker head-on.

I throw punch after punch, but he keeps dodging by the slimmest of margins—I catch a glimpse of his pompous smirk between my fists.

Suddenly his body becomes a blur. Just like that, my punches hit nothing but open air.

“—”

I’m very confident in my speed and agility, but it feels like he’s trying to show me up. He’s laughing at me.

I finally get him squared in my sights and lunge forward, only to feel sudden intense pain just below my chest. My eyes fly open in pain and I realize that he’s buried his knee in my gut.

He grabs my airborne body by my shoulder and forces my head up.

His incoming fist fills my vision like an oncoming boulder. Stars explode in front of my eyes.

“Mr. Bell?!”

I fly backward.

The adventurers watching our brawl jump out of the way and I plow into one of the round tables behind them. Lilly’s scream mixes with the splintering sound of wood breaking on impact.

My face feels hot. I’m on my back, a piece of the broken table underneath me. Reaching up to cup my bleeding nose, somehow I managed to get my head off the floor.

“That was just a love tap.”

He’s calmly standing on the other side of the wreckage, looming over me.

He’s a tall, kind of lanky adventurer. The man is handsome enough to rival an elf.

His long brown hair is well kept and neatly styled. The man’s skin is smooth and white, almost feminine. He’s wearing all kinds of accessories over his
Familia
’s uniform, including several golden earrings. Eyes as blue and vast as the sea are focused solely on me.

“That’s…Hyacinthus.”

“The Sun’s Favored Child, Phoebus Apollo…”

“He’s Level Three, a second-tier adventurer?!”

Many voices suddenly fill the bar, a whirlwind of shock and surprise. But my ears pick up something that make my fingers go numb.

Level 3—upper-class, second-tier adventurer.

This guy is a full rank above me.

“You’re a feisty one, Little Rookie.” Hyacinthus—I think that’s his name—has a high-pitched voice for a man.

His blue eyes leave me and hover for a moment over the prum man, who’s still twitching in his broken chair. He looks the other way, and the bodies of his fallen comrades reflect clearly in his eyes. He’s the only combatant who still has the strength to stand.

Lilly rushes over to help me, but I can’t climb to my feet even with her support. Welf has made it back to his knees. The man is just standing there, looking at us in silence. All of the excited energy that had filled the tavern a moment ago seems to fizzle out in an instant.

The muscles in my face start to tense, blood dripping from my chin as the man fixes his hair.

“You have inflicted injury on my friends. This is a serious offense. We will receive appropriate compensation.”

His blue eyes take on a sadistic gleam. I’m sure that’s what I’m seeing.

He sneers at me again and takes another step toward me as if to deliver a finishing blow. That’s when someone else makes their presence known.

Another splintering jolt hits my ears as yet another table is kicked into the wall.

“!”

Every head in the bar snaps in that direction.

The figure of an ash-colored werewolf man sitting on a chair greets our eyes. His leg is slowly coming down after kicking the table.

“Get lost, small fries, ya don’t belong.” The werewolf growls as if annoyed and itching for a fight, his facial tattoos rippling.

An anxious stillness spreads throughout the bar. The werewolf’s ears and tail twitch, revealing his bad mood.

I know him. I just can’t believe it.

—That guy.

That night still hasn’t faded from my memory.

That incident at the bar that became my motivation to chase after the female knight, the girl who’s become my idol.

One of
Loki Familia
’s adventurers, he was there the day I was mercilessly chased around by a Minotaur.

I think his name is…Bete?

“It’s your fault that this piss-weak beer started tastin’ foul, too. Y’killed my buzz, you repulsive wimps. Get outta my sight!”

He and a few other adventurers around him are all wearing the “trickster” emblem. All the adventurers around stand in awe of the group from the strongest
Familia
in Orario, and in fear of the leader of this particular group, the werewolf.

While much more boorish and harsh than Aiz or the others, he has the same aura of strength. I’m sure the others here have picked up just how dangerous this man is.

Only the handsome man is able to speak, or even remain calm as he shrugs back. “Hmm…How rude. Apparently
Loki Familia
has gotten sloppy. They forgot to put a leash on their dog, of all things.”

Bete’s amber eyes instantly narrow, his temper flaring as he glares at the man.

“Wanna be torn in half, pretty boy?”

Werewolf and human size each other up.

The tension in here is suffocating. Time stands still before the handsome one breaks eye contact first.

“I’ve lost interest in this,” he says as he turns away. “We’re leaving,” he tells his companions as he walks toward the exit on his own. The four of them somehow manage to stumble to their feet, lending a shoulder or two to their unconscious prum ally, and follow their leader out the door.

The last of them gone, a tranquil calm falls within the bar.

…Did he just…help me?

Loki Familia
forced the other group of adventurers out…For the life of me, I have no idea why Mr. Bete would do something like that.

My mind stops racing and I wipe the dried blood off of my face…Slowly but surely.

The werewolf steps forward; he’s coming right toward me.

“Eh?” comes out of my suddenly tight throat, and I’m not the only one. The adventurers who witnessed our brawl waste no time in getting out of Bete’s way. My butt’s still on the floor as I look up at his imposing figure. He comes to a stop right in front of my feet.

My heart trembles. The feeling of being made into a laughingstock that night rears its ugly head in the back of my mind.

He made me feel like a fool in front of Aiz. I could do nothing, only run away. That despair threatens to take over my mind once again when suddenly I see his left hand reaching down to me.

He’s extending his hand—but there’s no time to take it. He grabs hold of my collar and forcefully pulls me up.

I can’t breathe.

“—Know yer place.”

He pulls me up to his face, nose to nose.

The rage burning in his eyes is overwhelming. No sound comes out of my mouth; I have to nod. I can feel the strength pulsing in his fingers. Just keeping eye contact is terrifying.

Then he lets me go, dropping me on the spot.
Thump!
Pain shoots up my legs and into my back as soon as I hit the floor. Mr. Bete’s mouth twitches before he turns around and walks toward the door himself, anger emanating from his back. His tail swishing looks like an ash-colored flame in his wake.

The rest of the adventurers in his group quickly jump to their feet. One of them sets some money on the counter as all of them follow him outside.

First the handsome man and his group, then
Loki Familia
leave Hibachitei.

“Are you okay, Mr. Bell?”

“Damn those guys, what were they trying to pull…?”

Lilly sits down next to me as Welf massages his lower back, eyes still on the door.

I nod at Lilly and follow Welf’s gaze. The door is still open. I can see the dark back street and even a piece of the night sky. I touch my face and instantly feel pain course through my swollen lip.

The bar staff is already hard at work, throwing away broken chairs and tables and sweeping up the splinters that litter the floor.

We’re the only ones left, but none of us knows what to say.

A little time has passed since the brawl at Hibachitei.

Welf, Lilly, and I have made our way to a hidden room under an old church,
Hestia Familia
’s home.

“Ohh, so there was a fight,” the goddess calmly says as she rubs medical cream on my face—it’s cheap stuff, so anyone in Orario can buy it. My face tenses up whenever her fingers pass over one of my many cuts and nicks.

We’re here to explain to her in our own words what happened and heal up at the same time.

We’re not hurt
too
badly, but the goddess was extremely surprised to see us covered in bumps and bruises when we arrived. Lilly told her what happened and the goddess seemed to accept her explanation. We apologized to the bar’s owner after the fight and told him that
Hestia Familia
would pay for the damages.

“Turns out you’re a bit more rambunctious than I thought, Bell. I’m kind of happy about that, but it makes me sad, too…”

“Mr. Bell has been acting like Mr. Welf! Mr. Bell has been behaving more and more like a violent adventurer ever since he met Mr. Welf!”

“Hey, hey, you know that’s not true…Wait a sec, there has got to be a nicer way to say that!”

The goddess’s gentle fingers glide across my face as we sit side by side on the bed. Lilly and Welf are on the sofa directly next to us. The two of them have been arguing ever since Lilly claimed that only an idiot would waste a potion to recover from a bar fight and began roughly smothering Welf’s injuries with the same ointment the goddess is using on me.

Lilly’s taken on an aura of superiority ever since we left the bar. “Lilly can’t believe this…This’ll come back to haunt us…Please consider how worried Lilly is.” She keeps repeating herself under her breath.

The goddess listens to what she has to say and does her best to smile at us.

“I’m surprised at you, getting into a fight like this. Then again, you
are
a boy, Bell.”

“…”

Her thin fingers are gentle as she rubs more cream onto my face. I feel really bad for making her worry, but I stay silent.

Satisfied with my treatment, the goddess takes her hand away and looks at me with serious eyes.

“However, fights are never a good thing! It’s just like what your supporter said. You realize you really got hurt this time!”

I let her finish and then immediately stand up.

Everything that happened in the bar, all the anger, I can’t keep it in anymore.

“But those guys—they insulted you!”

This might be the first time I’ve ever talked back to her. Lilly and Welf freeze and look up at me.

I wouldn’t care if they’d insulted me—I can take it.

However, they went after the people I care about—they insulted my
goddess
. She can’t expect me to let that slide.

My goddess has given me so much, and that prum man made her out to be nothing more than dirt under someone’s boot.

I clench my eyes shut in an attempt to keep tears from leaking out from the rage built up inside me. The goddess looks up at me with unblinking blue eyes.

She just stares at me for a moment before a small smile appears on her lips.

“I’m happy you would get this angry for my sake. But doing so put you in a lot of danger and that makes me much sadder.”

The goddess’s soft tone is in stark contrast to my body shaking in anger.

“I understand how you’re feeling, Bell. If it were the other way around and someone insulted you, I’d be mad enough to breathe fire. But if I got into a fight over it and came back injured like you did today, how would you feel?”

“…I’d want to cry.”

“See? That’s how I feel. I know it’s unfair, but please don’t get angry if you hear someone say something bad about me. Gods are happiest when their children are healthy.” And then she smiles at me. “Make a joke out of it next time. Something like ‘that wouldn’t anger my goddess, she’s got a big heart’ or something like that.”

The goddess…
My
goddess’s words cool my hot head.

She gently accepts all of my anger and rage, contains it, and helps me let it go.

Her smile unravels the knots of emotion that had built up in my chest.

I fall silent, nod, and apologize. “I’ll put up with it next time…I’m sorry.”

I look at the floor as I make my promise before looking up at her face. She’s smiling from ear to ear—absolutely beaming, like a healthy flame in a fireplace.

Tap, tap.
She pats the bed next to her. I do what she’s asking and take a seat on the bed. She gently runs her fingers through my hair. I’m starting to blush, but I don’t move away.

Lilly and Welf watch the two of us. They do nothing to try and hide their amusement.

A calm, serene mood fills the hidden room under the old, run-down church.

“Lilly’s worried about how the other
Familia
will respond. It would be nice if they didn’t hold a grudge and come after Mr. Bell.”

The goddess had been rubbing my head and shoulders and was about to lean in for a hug when Lilly voices her concern.

Welf runs his hand over his black jacket, looking for damage. He doesn’t even look up when he adds, “I started it. Bell should be fine.”

“That may be so…but adventurers have a lot of pride. If their
Familia
is concerned about losing face, there might be a problem.”

“Hmm, that’s a good point.” The goddess looks over at Lilly and agrees with her. “Shall I talk to their god to prevent problems down the road?”

“I’m sorry, Goddess…”

I bow a little bit, but the goddess forces a smile. “Oh, it’s fine. Do you know what
Familia
they were from?” she asks me.

“Um, I think…” I try to remember everything before the fight started and recall the details. My memory clicks, and I tell her. “…they wore a sun emblem.”

Golden emblems bearing the mark of the sun flashed in the moonlight pouring down from the cloudless night sky.

They gathered in a dark alley, away from the light of the magic-stone lamps.

A group of six men made up of humans, animal people, and prums had found their way into one of the countless alleyways in the city of Orario.

“Gimme a break, Hyacinthus. Why do I always have to do the crappy part…?”

“Hee-hee, don’t be that way, Luan. You get to be the star.”

Hyacinthus grinned at the little man, who still had the well-defined outline of a boot on his face. The rest of the group traded laughs, further damaging their prum ally’s ego.

The prum adventurer named Luan had a youthful face. His smooth cheeks twitched in disapproval of the role he had just been assigned.

Hyacinthus’s lips curled up into a shrewd grin as he took in the anguish on the prum’s face.

“There was some unexpected interference, but we accomplished our goal…”

The noises of Orario’s vibrant nightlife were distant.

The handsome young man smiled fully as he mentioned his god by name.

“Lord Apollo will be most pleased.”