I Was Nearly Killed by My Fellow A-Rank Party, but Now I Fed a Nine-Tailed Fox Deep in the Dungeon. ~ “My Master, I Shall Never Leave Your Side for All Eternity,” the Legendary Monsters Said While Doting on Me. Before I Knew It, I Had Become the World’s Strongest Lord of the Demon Realm~ - Chapter 19 & 20

Meanwhile, Back with the Party

“You full now?”

“Yeah, thanks! Big bro!”

Suzu the zashiki-warashi said that with this super happy smile on her face.

“Oh right, we gotta get you out of those ragged clothes too… Tamamo, can you make some clothes or something?”

“Yep, something like clothes is easy with my youkai transformation.”

Tamamo said that, then plucked a few strands of fur from her tail and blew on them.

Poof—out came a full set of kid-sized Japanese clothes.

“I can really wear these!? Thank you, fox big sis!”

“It’s ’cause Kuon asked, but… shouldn’t we get you in the bath first?”

“Yeah, this inn’s got a big public bath. Can you take her in with you?”

“Hmm, Yukime, can you handle it? I’m gonna bathe with Kuon.”

“Tamamo, there’re other guests, so that’s probably not—”

“Don’t worry. I can just turn into a guy.”

“…Huh?”

◇◇◇

“…That was some nice hot water♪”

“Felt so good♪ Snow big sis, thanks for washing me!”

“Seriously, why do you wanna soak in water that hot… makes zero sense.”

“…………”

Everyone except me and Yukime looked totally satisfied.

Tamamo really did turn into a guy…

But her face was way too pretty, so she ended up looking almost genderless…

All the other guys in there got freaked out, and then she kept saying stuff like “Let me wash Kuon’s body for him” and sticking super close to me in the tub. It felt like I was doing something wrong the whole time, and my heart was pounding nonstop.

(There’s no way I can relax like that… gotta figure out the bath situation from now on.)

“By the way, the floor in front of the door was soaked. What was that about?”

“I asked the girl at the desk earlier and she said ‘I spilled some water,’ but she looked super panicked.”

“More importantly, how’re we sleeping? There’re only two beds, right?”

“Um… I-I’ve got a request…”

Suzu, now in her clean new clothes, fidgeted while she talked.

“I wanna sleep while being hugged by big bro Kuon…”

“—No way. Kuon’s getting hugged by me tonight.”

“Ah, what if I squeeze in the middle? It’s cold at night anyway…”

“…Mmm, fine, I’ll settle for that.”

“In between you two!? Yay, thank you!”

Suzu jumped up and down, totally excited.

“Then I’ll take the other bed.”

“You’re a yuki-onna, you’d be fine sleeping outside.”

“I wanna sleep as close to Nine-Tails-sama as possible!”

And that’s how we ended up sleeping that night.

“Ehehe… it feels like I’ve got a family now!”

The three of us squished together on the narrow bed, and Suzu looked so happy.

“You’ve always been alone, Suzu?”

“Yeah. Nobody ever paid attention to me. Big bro Kuon’s the first person who’s ever been nice.”

“Big youkai like me can control it, but regular youkai leak a bit of youki all the time. It makes humans feel disgust or suspicion without even realizing why.”

“Oh… I don’t feel anything like that though…”

“That’s ’cause you’re a youjuu tsukai, Kuon.”

“Ehehe, getting hugged tight by someone like this… I’ve dreamed about it forever. I was always just shivering alone in cold back alleys…”

Hearing that, I pulled Suzu’s little body even closer with way more affection.

“From now on I’ll do this whenever you want. Until your heart feels all warm.”

“Hafuu… I’m so happy it feels like a dream…!”

“Sigh, seriously…”

After hearing Tamamo’s little sigh, we all drifted off to sleep.

◇◇◇

Meanwhile, in the Eternal Frost Labyrinth…

Zex and Laon were huddled together, shaking from the cold.

“Damn it! We let that guy carry all the camping gear…!”

“I’m freezing…! Hey, wouldn’t moving around be better than this!?”

“If we do that, we’ll be dead tired when monsters show up and won’t be able to fight! Shit, if only Liliana was here, she could’ve put up a barrier!”

“You’re the one who betrayed her and ditched her!”

“What else was I supposed to do!? If I’d brought her she would’ve slowed us down and we’d all be dead!”

They kept arguing while shivering.

Even deeper down, Liliana was all alone, freezing her ass off.

“Tch, I can put up a barrier… but it barely does anything against this cold… I just wanna soak in a hot bath and crawl into warm blankets…! No matter what, I’m getting out of here alive and back to town!”

Off to Find the Next Youkai!

—The next morning.

When I woke up, Tamamo and Suzu were still fast asleep, and Yukime was right there getting way too excited just staring at Tamamo’s sleeping face.

“Yukime… take it easy, okay?”

I said that to her and then gently woke the other two.

“Tamamo, Suzu, it’s morning.”

“Mmm… no way. I wanna stay wrapped up in Kuon’s warmth a little longer…”

“Me too~ I wanna stay with big bro…”

“I’ll make breakfast. You guys want hot mochi pouches and egg omelets, right?”

“Ugh, that’s cheating!”

I somehow managed to get both of them up, we all ate breakfast together, and then headed out of the room.

“Sounds like you had a real good time last night, huh.”

“…?”

The girl at the desk gave me this knowing smile as I handed back the key.

“The bill’s pay later, right? Uh—”

“Nope! No charge! I had plenty of fun myself!”

“…Huh?”

“Come back anytime! You’re super welcome! Feel free to mess up the room too!”

“Uh… okay…”

We left the inn.

“I don’t really get what happened, but we stayed for free.”

“Fufufu…”

Suzu puffed out her little chest all proud.

“That’s the power of a zashiki-warashi’s ‘good luck’!”

“Really?”

“…Probably. I can’t really control it on purpose, so I’m not totally sure.”

“Hmm, makes sense. Zashiki-warashi do bring luck to people who treat them nicely. She might actually come in handy.”

“I’ll be useful! Please let me travel with you!”

“Still, dragging a kid around’s gonna be a hassle in a bunch of ways…”

“No problem!”

Right after she said that, Suzu shrank down super fast—shloop shloop—until she was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand.

“I can turn doll-sized! I usually don’t ’cause cats chase me, but like this, big bro Kuon can carry me easy, right?”

“Whoa, that’s actually super convenient! Does it make you eat less too?”

“Nope, still eat the same amount…”

Her clothes shrank along with her, so yeah, definitely some kinda youkai magic.

She just looked like an adorable tiny girl, but nope—definitely a youkai.

I slipped pocket-sized Suzu into my chest pocket and turned to Tamamo.

“So, to beat that Ryomen Sukuna guy who stole your soul… what’s the next step?”

“Hmm… ideally I’d wanna borrow power from one of the other great youkai, but—hmph.”

The second she said that, an arrow came flying straight at Tamamo’s forehead from way off in the distance.

Tamamo caught it mid-air, and the impact gouged a chunk out of the ground.

“…Well, that’s one hell of a reply.”

Me, Suzu, and Yukime all froze in shock.

“Wh-what was that just now…?”

“That was an arrow from one of the great youkai—‘Great Tengu.’ He used his clairvoyance to read my lips and shot it from miles away.”

It seriously looked like it dropped straight out of the sky.

How far away did he even shoot that from?

“Alright, time to send it back.”

Tamamo tied a talisman to the arrow and chucked it right back the way it came.

With a sharp “gyuon!” sound slicing through the air, the arrow rocketed off at insane speed.

“Would be nice if that actually killed him.”

“You can’t just kill him!? We need to ask for his help!”

“Oh right. Still, great youkai usually hate each other’s guts. Hmm…”

Tamamo thought for a second, then raised her index finger.

“Oh yeah! There’s gotta be some mid-tier strong youkai out there, like Yukime. If we force—er, politely ask them to cooperate, they could at least act as meat shields—uh, I mean, fighting power for us.”

Her real thoughts kept slipping out here and there.

“So where should we start looking?”

“Hmm, how about heading to a bigger, busier place first? Some youkai might be blending in with humans like Suzu here.”

“Yeah, and if we go to a larger Adventurers’ Guild, we might hear some youkai sighting reports too…”

I pulled out the map and pointed at a spot.

“Alright then, ten kilometers west from here! Let’s head to the fortified city ‘Looseworth’!”