Nateaser: Reborn As My Love Interest

Aoi - Ch. 122

Nothing made sense anymore.

Even though this entire world was surreal, and I thought I was well prepared, I didn't expect any of this. It was a brand new dungeon, or at least it should have been, a fine opportunity to prove myself, and take revenge.

Humiliated by my remaining companions before, I fell only deeper into disgrace. I didn't pull my weight during this expedition, and now I was at their mercy, losing all hope.

The monsters outside were nothing compared to what we encountered down here. From the luminous floating planktons and the fairies, everything was dangerous. The harpies and horned minotaurs were one thing. I saw monsters looking like a mixture of children's nightmares kneaded together.

And if the smallest critters caused trouble, the largest one was deadly. It lost interest in us and flew off the distance, but everything happened so fast. If it decided to return, I would only notice that we were dead, which was still the better outcome.

Whatever my group of wizards ran into while chasing those pixies, they were all gone. They left nothing but mangled corpses behind. How much they must have suffered? Was it because of my bad leadership, or was it all inevitable from the start?

At least when the penal squad rebelled, they did it at the best possible time. They got themselves wiped out by the attacking harpies, and I only finished the job. They were too weak and disloyal even as meat shields, so I never felt bad for them.

But the gladiators were different. I didn't trust them as the wizards, but I relied on them. They were the cream of the irregulars, who honed their skills through brutal fights in the arena. Yet everyone I sent scouting vanished. The rest turned into ashes while running for their lives from the huge dragon appearing out of the blue.

Could the King's army fare better? Or if they had a more capable commander, who wasn't blinded by pride and the promise of revenge? I could only blame myself, for becoming a disgrace to the Sea People.

Now I was stuck in this alien world with the paladin and Nordhaben's Princess, the two people I hoped to get rid of first. It was no longer about getting back at them, it turned into a struggle for survival and a desperate search for a way out. After I acted all high and mighty, my entire world collapsed as I had to cooperate with them.

The fact that a Crantan deity possessed the Princess didn't help. But once the behemoth appeared, I downgraded it as the second biggest problem. I tried not to think about what would happen if a god got loose inside the dungeon since I was powerless against it.

That deity remained silent for a reason too. She couldn't deal with the dragon, a creature of pure legends, that nobody saw in centuries. Nobody defeated one in a millennium either.

Each could wreak havoc on my home if they escaped before I did, but a god could be at least reigned in by a banishment spell. Not that I could cast it or wanted to contact the Inquisitorias, but a solution existed for that problem. Against the behemoth, I saw no hope.

In every world or dimension, my expedition was disastrous. Even if I returned home at this point, nothing but shame would await me. But I wanted to survive, a good enough reason to work with the northerners or at the very least follow them around. I got reduced to this.

Forget about proving myself, or further the glory of Saipole. I could no longer pretend that I had come to protect them either. Even escaping this hell was more than I could hope for now, placing one leg in front of the other. If I didn't stop thinking about anything, I could only find suffering. That is, until we stumbled on those monsters at the smoke stack, and the idiots walked up to them.

Standing at the foot of a hill unnoticed by the enemy was the perfect opportunity to ambush. The minotaurs were only armed for a melee. But no, they gave themselves away. While following them was tempting, the danger startled me at the last moment. I hid in the dense forest to see how things would develop, and couldn't believe my eyes.