CH 89

“The aftermath, in more ways than one.”

Translated by Dawn

“Post-processing in more ways than one.”

“Well, I guess that’s about it.”

Such a voice echoed through the cave surrounded by the silvery white world. Of course, the voice belonged to me. The bandits were iced by the magic of the “Ice Mist,” transforming them into mute ice sculptures. To put it simply, they were dead.

Just to be sure, I waved my hand in front of the bandits’ faces to check if they were still alive, but of course, there was no reaction and they were definitely dead. After confirming their deaths, I put the dead bodies of the bandits into Storage. I decided to take them back with me just in case there might be a bounty on them. ……It’s a disgusting takeaway.

After I finished storing the corpses, I deactivated the Ice Mist magic and returned to the original cave. Now, the next one was her, the only survivor in the place.

“H-hiii.”

“Now then, Onee-san, you’re the only one alive…”

“H-help mee! Don’t kill mee!!”

“…”

Oh come on, what do you think I went to all this trouble for? I didn’t leave you with the intention of doing something nasty. She had unsolved suspicions that had not been cleared up. It was the existence of her brother that was mentioned by her.

If she really had a brother, there would be no problem. However, if she was lying to me, it would be a problem. Anyway, I should do something about this Onee-san’s clothes first. I couldn’t bear to leave her in her adult clothes. I haven’t woken up to that yet, but in another year or two, I might get interested in it. It was a good thing I hadn’t awakened to the sexual pleasures yet.

When I tried to get closer to her to give her clothes, she backed away from me on her buttocks. Well, I guess it was inevitable……. Even though they were bandits, suddenly a large number of people were killed in an instant. It would be strange to see the culprit in front of you and remain calm.

I looked down at my feet and wondered why there was something like a puddle of water, but I understood it in an instant. ……I see, so you leaked.

I approached her at a leisurely gait, casually dodging the puddle of pungent odor the Onee-san had created. To her, however, it seemed to be the steps of the Grim Reaper, which only spurred her to beg for her life in a half-maddened state.

At last, she was cornered by the wall of the cave from which she could escape no further, and with a look of despair on her face, she clenched her eyes as if waiting for the moment of judgment. …No, you know, I won’t do anything.

“Let’s see, this one’s not right, and this one’s too small. Hmmm, oh, this seems to be the only one. Here you go, Onee-san.”

“….”

“Hey, why don’t you stop looking at me and put this on?”

“Huh?”

She opened her eyes with trepidation, so I held the clothes out in front of her. I didn’t mention it too much, but she was now without a stitch of clothing on. So to speak, she was completely naked…….

“First of all, we need to talk, but we can’t talk much with you looking like that. So put this on.”

“Huh? Ah…iyaaa.”

She seemed to recognize that she was in a shameful state that she could not show to others, and she was making girlish noises as she covered herself. She took the change of clothes from my hand and went to change, but for some reason, her hand stopped and she turned her gaze toward me, wriggling her body. What was it?

“U-um, can you turn around so I can change my……clothes?”

“Yes? Oh, don’t worry about it. I’ll never look at Onee-san in that way, so don’t worry about it. I dare say again, I would never, ever, ever be aware of Onee-san right now, not one bit, not one flea poop!!”

“Guhh.”

“Huh? What’s wrong Onee-san?”

When I declared in a high voice, she stopped moving with both hands and knees on the ground and her gaze downwards. Her appearance was very similar to the state of “orz” that used to be expressed on Internet forums. Apparently, my words had hurt her pride as a woman. Well, it can’t be helped, since I haven’t woken up to it yet.

It took a while for her to recover from the freeze, but she finally put on the clothes I gave her and we were finally ready to talk…….

“I knew it, the clothes don’t fit right on you…”

“Yes, they are tight, especially in the breasts and hips.”

“That’s right, Onee-san’s boobs are uselessly big. And your butt too.”

“Guhh.”

It seemed that my casual remark had further wounded her pride. Don’t worry, Onee-san. The wound is still shallow, okay?

I decided to ask her for more details about her clothing size after I got back to town. We hadn’t introduced ourselves to each other before that, so I took this opportunity to introduce myself.

“Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Rolando, and I’m an adventurer.”

“Ah, yes. My name is Natalie. I used to be an orphan and now I live in a slum.”

Once we had introduced ourselves to each other, I checked her status again.

[Name]: Natalie

[Age]: 19 years old

[Gender]: Female

[Race]: Human

[Occupation]: None

Physical strength: 500

Magic power: 100

Strength: F-

Endurance: F

Agility: F+

Dexterity: D+

Mental Strength: D

Resistance: C+

Luck: E-

[Skills]: Sewing Lv4, Cooking Lv2, Cleaning Lv3, Arithmetic Lv2

[State]: Fatigue (Extreme), Hunger (Extreme), Awe (Extreme)

Hmm, hm, from what I saw, she seemed to have a full range of skills in the housework area, and I was concerned about her strangely high resistance for an average person, but the rest of her stats were generally very normal.

Come to think of it, I remembered that the new Analysis ability allowed me to see the condition of health of the person I analyzed, so I tried to use it, and as you can see, it displayed the obvious results: fatigue and hunger. Extreme probably meant that she was very tired and quite hungry.

I would guess that the state of awe was probably coming from the fact that she was in front of me. How scared is this woman, extraordinarily scared? Well, I’m partly to blame for that…….

I decided that I needed to do something about Natalie’s hunger, so I took out some soup I had left over from Storage and handed it to her. Natalie was bewildered when she was suddenly handed the soup, but she gulped and swallowed her saliva when she smelled the delicious aroma wafting through the air.

“You must be hungry, so eat up.”

“Eh, b-but…”

“You can’t eat after seeing a dead person”

“I-it’s not like that, but…….”

Natalie had an indescribable look on her face as if she were wondering if the soup I handed her was poisoned, perhaps out of her wariness of me. No, I can put a bandit on ice, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to kill her with poison…….

—Groooowll

As I was thinking about that, suddenly a loud sound echoed through the room. I looked at the source of the sound to see what had happened and saw Natalie putting the soup on the ground, her face red, and holding her stomach. ……I see, it’s her stomach bug.

“You’ve big boobs, big hips, and a big belly bug. Now all you need is a big fart and you’ll be perfect!”

“Ughh.”

My one word was a painful blow to Natalie, and she fell on her back. Apparently, it was a fatal wound. I, on the other hand, was giving a thumbs-up with a fresh smile on my face that made it hard to believe that I had said such a cruel word. What, no delicacy? There are times in this world when it’s better to tell the truth. Watson-kun?

“Kuh…kill me already. Kill me…”

“Oh, what…sorry.”

I never thought I would hear “Kukkoro” come out of her mouth as an ordinary person who wasn’t a knight. It seemed that Natalie’s life point was zero. Well, enough with the farce, it was time to get serious and figure out what was going on.

After that, I gave Natalie some soup, which she managed to recover from, and asked her what had happened. As I guessed from the conversation among the bandits, it was fine until Natalie stole a magic bag containing belongings from the bandits and sold it for money, but she was caught by the bandits who noticed it, and taken away to their hideout.

“Slurp slurp, haa. So I was about to be assaulted by bandits, and then you came. Oh, can I have another one?”

“…If you eat too much all of a sudden, you’ll throw up what you eat, you know?”

“It’s fine. I can eat as much as I want right now—Ugh, blaargh.”

“Uwaa, disgusting! That’s why I told you…….”

When a person suddenly ingested food in a weakened stomach condition, the stomach was not in a condition to accept it, and in some cases, the person would spit out what they had eaten. This seemed to be exactly what happened to Natalie at the moment, and she suddenly vomited up the food she had eaten.

A sour smell filled the area. The smell was so intense that I had to immediately use wind magic to move the air in the area to eliminate the odor. After that, I had to just tend to her until she recovered her health. …Honestly, I just want to go home.

After that, in order to somehow improved her physical condition, I tried recovery magic, which I had not yet started to try and learn, and was easily successful, and was able to learn the recovery magic that I had longed for. ……The learning process sucked, though.

As it was, I took her in my arms to a nearby transfer portal and managed to get out of the dungeon, but in many ways, it was a disappointing and head-scratching experience.