Several minutes after leaving the Village Head’s house,
I returned to the inn and we started to have dinner with Gantt-san’s family.

[Ahhh, Maria-san’s cooking is as delicious as ever.]
[Gahaha, that’s right, that’s right. That’s because Maria’s cooking is the best in the world!]

Listening to Gantt-san’s praise,
Maria-san face started to take on a shade of red, but she looked happy.
The both of them were close as ever.
While I was thinking that,
Mari who was sitting next to me started to tug on my sleeves.

[Nee~ Nee~ Yuuma-san. This is the dish that I made, here have some.]
[ooh, which one?.]

I took a bite out of the dish that Mari made.
Yep, it"s delicious!
As expected, it was not as good as Maria-san’s, but it was still quite delicious.
When I told Mari that it was delicious, Mari did a guts pose.[1]

[Ah come to think of it Yuuma, are you seriously going to go alone to subjugate the Guros Rabbitsu tomorrow?]
[Yes. Well, to be exact, it is two of us; Shingu and myself, but]

As I said that, Gantt-san looked a little meek.

[Shingu, huh. As I thought, he is still obsessed with the Guros Rabbitsu. Well, it"s not like it wasn"t expected, after all, it was the Guros Rabbitsu which took Jirugu away…...]

While Gantt-san was saying that,
He had quite the troubled expression on his face.

[Gantt-san was an acquaintance of Jirugu?]

[Hmm? Ahh, Yes Jirugu and I were childhood friends.
We used to fool around together quite a bit back then since we were quite close. Thinking back now, I should have handled things more carefully.
It"s nothing but an excuse since I was also around when Jirugu died.
But by the time I had noticed it, it was already too late. It was cruel of me.
As an adult, I had the obligation to help out as well, but by the time I realized, Shingu had already become all alone.]

That means it couldn’t be helped.
Because by the time you knew it, your childhood friend had already died huh….
I continued to look at Gantt-san who had such a depressed expression on his face.
Both Maria-san and Mari were looking worriedly at Gantt-san.
Gantt-san noticed the stares.

[Oops, sorry for telling such a dark story during the meal.
Yuuma, Maria and Mari, I"m sorry for worrying you.
Alright, let"s get our spirits back and continue with the meal.]

Gantt-san said to make the gloomy atmosphere a little livelier.
And so I started to talk with a smile as usual.
But when I looked again, he had quite the painful expression.
Tens of minutes later,
Dinner was done, Maria-san was washing the dishes and Mari had returned to her room.
I also stood up to return to my room so that I could get some sleep.
Then Gantt-san who was sitting in front of me suddenly had a serious expression on his face,

[Hey, Yuuma. It’s not something that I have the right to request of you, but tomorrow, please take care of Shingu.]

Saying so, Gantt-san bowed his head to me.
for a while now, people seem to be asking for the same thing.

[Understood. I promise to protect Shingu as much as possible.]

As much as I possibly can.
It might be rude, but I definitely can’t promise to make sure he lives.

[Thanks a lot, Yuuma. Honestly, I would really like to go with you, but the strength in my body is not enough to be able to accompany you…...]

Although it’s rude, it’s true.
I don’t really wish to use my Skill Sign isolation this time as much as possible.
In a situation where I would have to fight the Guros Rabbitsu while protecting both Shingu and Gantt-san, I would be highly unlikely to be able to do so.

Oops, before that, I"ve completely forgotten to ask Gantt-san something.

[Gantt-san, how do the Guros Rabbitsu look like? Actually, I wanted to ask Zonga-san, but various things came up and I, therefore, hesitated to ask him.]

To my question,

[Ahh so it seems that Yuuma did not know about Guros Rabbitsu. I see, then I shall explain it briefly, it looks like a Rabbitsu but it"s huge.]

It’s just the body which is huge?
I still can’t seem to find it to be very strong…..

[Huhu, don’t think that it’s weak just because of that. but, it is certainly true that its figure is really huge. None of them are less than 5 Meters.]
{EN: imagining a 5-meter tall fanged rabbit…they"re scarier than I thought}

5 Meters, you say?
If what you are saying is true then it is even larger than the Cyclops that I had fought before.

[Besides having such a huge figure, it can also move at abnormal speeds.
it was because of this that we were never able to hit it with our attacks…….]

So that’s why they were unable to catch it in the forest.
However, I can now understand from this story that it seems to be quite the puissant enemy.
It’s certainly a bad match for Shingu who wishes to kill this foe, and in some cases, I might need to speed up. If possible, I would like Shingu to take down this enemy…….

[Gantt-san, thank you very much for the information. I now understand that the Guros Rabbitsu is stronger than I expected. I will make sure to be careful and not do anything dangerous.]

Ok then, I shall excuse myself for today.
So I said to Gantt-san and went back to my room to sleep.
Maria-san was kind enough to give me the same room which I had used a few weeks ago.
I entered my room and lay down on my bed as I did before.
Yup, it’s still the same bed as before.

[Haa~, a lot of things happened today.]

Never did I expect that I would be coming back to Barris Village so soon.
Even though it hasn’t been long since I came back from the Golem Mountain Range.
I wonder if I did a bad thing, I should probably make it up to Sari next time.

But still, this request that I accepted blithely, has become quite an important request.
There"s the thing that both Gantt-san and Zonga-san asked for, and that was to protect Shingu properly tomorrow. Ahh, I did not expect that I would be babysitting children.

But, I can’t seem to understand why.
Why did accept the request to protect Shingu, to protect such a child? It"s not that I don’t like children, but I can’t understand why I would accept the request.
Then, when I was thinking about such a thing, only one answer came to my mind.

[I get it now, so that was why…..]

It might be a half-hearted answer, but this could be the only possible reason.
It was because we are similar.
Although our circ.u.mstances are quite different, the current Shingu does remind me of my past self…..
Since I feel that way, I definitely won"t abandon Shingu.
Haa, it was such a simple reason.
While I was pondering that in my mind,
I heard a guuguu sound by the bed, but before I noticed it I was already asleep.

{TL: This Shingu character would have been more interesting if it was loli, then we could have had some fun scenes.}
{EN: Seriously mete you LOLICON… The readers don"t need to know that you"re a LOLICON, knowing that you"re a LOLICON could put some readers off you know… some might even be tempted to call the police just for safety"s sake if they found out you were a LOLICON}

[1] EN: this pose:

or or

…well something like those….