Dungeon's Final Boss: Banished by My Boss, the Goddess, to Earth—So I'll Continue My Past Life - 105

Chapter 105: Before the Request

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For now, things had calmed down. I gave Minister Niitaka a proper explanation again, since I had caused him trouble. I couldn’t keep the matter of Aomi Prefecture a secret, so I told him about it.

Minister Niitaka, who had already started to forget about the Kingdom of Peschel, turned pale as he remembered, and turned even paler when he realized Aomi Prefecture was the same thing as the Kingdom of Peschel.

“How many real prefectures are there, then?”

He was struggling with the thought. It was certainly something to wonder about, but even I didn’t know the answer. Whether Minister Niitaka would be able to meet with Shelheim or not was unclear, but he would probably start thinking about how to make contact with Hamashiro.

If we believed the goddess’s story, then that woman was acting for the safety of Japan. I also called to apologize to Samejima-san. It turned out we didn’t need the lawyer at all. She didn’t seem too bothered by that, but the existence of world-encroaching dungeons was probably not something she found amusing.

I could tell her agitation from the tone of her voice, even over the phone.  As for cursed objects, both parties told me that the occult was outside their jurisdiction.

Well, it’s outside mine too, really.

When it came to dungeon monsters, “curses” were perceived as persistent weakening debuffs. Some merely lowered abilities, others worked powerfully under specific conditions, some were time-limited, and others slowly drained life over time.

But “sorcery” felt subtly different from that. I couldn’t quite explain how, but it was like some sticky, intrusive presence mixing into the system. Just looking at the required materials for that curse resonance entity or whatever it was had given me that impression.

Well, in any case, that wasn’t the concern right now. I rode a taxi and got off in front of my apartment. Since the emergency was over, I had to go about things normally.

“Now then…”

Just as I murmured while looking up at my cheap apartment, I heard a car stop behind me and the sound of someone getting out.

“Oh, Jiro!”

It was Piroane.

“Just got back yourself, huh?”

“You too? From Nijou-san’s place?”

She had supposedly gone to visit Youki Nijou in Kyoto around the same time I had left for Kyushu.

“Weren’t you supposed to return first and help out Samejima-san?”

“Well, about that… Recording TikTok videos with Youki turned out to be way too much fun.”

She said that while showing me a video on her smartphone. The two of them were dancing inside a dungeon.

“Looking for photogenic spots inside a dungeon was like, a whole new experience. That idea is gold.”

Oh, I see.

So, she got so absorbed in shooting videos that she was late, rather than focusing on dungeon exploration.

“Well, I doubt Samejima-san expected much from you anyway, so it’s fine.”

The fact that Samejima-san hadn’t complained meant as much.

“Hey! What’s with that attitude?! You were playing around with Mio too, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t playing around that much, you know.”

We were bickering in front of the apartment when I suddenly heard a bang sound. Looking up, I met Mio’s eyes as she looked down at us from the communal corridor.

“Ah—Mio.”

“Jiro-san!”

“I’m back—”

Mio jumped over the railing of the communal corridor and leapt down.

“Jiro-san!”

“Mio—oof!”

I quickly wrapped my arms around her torso, but then something heavy smacked into my head.

A soft object slid down in front of my face, sealing all the gaps.

Ah, I can’t breathe.

Come to think of it, the second floor of a cheap apartment like this was nothing for a B-rank awakened like Mio. Still, since she had jumped toward me, it was only natural for me to catch her. And if I didn’t catch her there…That would’ve been bad in a different sense. 

“…I’m so glad you’re safe…”

As I was thinking all that, Mio’s voice echoed above my head as she cradled my head in her arms.

“I was really worried about you.”

“…Sorry mmph mmph… I somehow avoided becoming a criminal mmph mmph mmph mmph mmph—”

“Wait, you were about to become a criminal, Jiro?! What an idiot!”

“…”

Without a word, I launched a precise back-kick into Piroane’s solar plexus.

After that, since it wasn’t a conversation we could have outside, we decided to order all kinds of food for delivery and eat together. Pizza, chicken, burgers—pile the fries that came with the sets onto a plate, and it became a mountain of food. The canned beer we drank while snacking on them tasted amazing too.

“I see, so that’s what happened.”

By the time the mountain of fries was about halfway gone, my explanation had ended.

“Shel—Shelheim… munch munch”

With her face a mess from teriyaki burger sauce, Piroane muttered something.

“That woman! How dare she try to use my Jiro! So arrogant!”

“You know her?”

“She’s Shenhari’s older sister!”

“Shenhari? Oh, the one who tricked you?”

“That’s right! Because of her… Ggrr…”

“So it wasn’t a coincidence that their names sounded similar.”

“Exactly. They’re from the ‘She’ family!”

“She?”

“Yeah. All their names start with ‘She’—it’s a naming thing.”

“So it’s like ‘She’ is their family name?”

Then Shelheim would be She-lheim, and Shenhari would be She-nhari?

“Then, do you also have relatives in the Pi family?”

“Of course. I was the Pi family’s top achiever, I’ll have you know!”

“The Pi family…”

So Piroane would be Pi-roarne? Then would Saitou Piroane actually be Saitou Roarne? Nope. Roarne sounded too normal, that wouldn’t do.

She’s definitely Piroane. The Pi part is essential.

That meant the rest of the Pi family might be just as eccentric as her.

“So, what did Shelheim ask you to do?”

“She gave me a job to destroy a dungeon that’s serving as a supply source for cursed objects used by the enemy.”

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