A New Colleague

As for how the previous incident with the adventurers ended, I wound up taking their lives.

What happened was entirely my fault, but after incapacitating the five adventurers, I went to fetch Garmon-san.

I wanted to ask him what we should do with them now that they could no longer fight back.

But when I did, I completely forgot about the arrows sticking out of my body.

I’d never been shot with arrows before, and on top of that, they didn’t hurt at all, so… I think forgetting about them was understandable.

Yeah, maybe that didn’t really count as an excuse.

But when Garmon-san saw me like that, he flew into a rage and started chanting a spell to dissolve the adventurers to death with acid sorcery.

Rather than watch my summoner, my master, and the kind benefactor I adored kill people in such a cruel way, I would much rather dirty my own hands.

I desperately stopped Garmon-san and quickly ended the five adventurers’ lives so they wouldn’t suffer any more than necessary.

That was how the previous incident had ended.

To be honest, I’d simply been naïve and careless, but for the next several days, Garmon-san seemed a little awkward around me while still going out of his way to worry about me, which made me feel terribly guilty.

And today, it was decided that Garmon-san would summon a new guardian for the tower.

No, it wasn’t that I was being replaced.

Apparently, Garmon-san had always been capable of repelling a certain number of attackers himself, and he’d considered my summoning worthwhile simply because I saved him the trouble of handling chores, but being targeted this time had made him decide it was a good opportunity to reinforce the tower’s defenses.

…So Garmon-san could actually fight.

That was a little—no, extremely—surprising, but when I thought about it, Garmon-san had been living here long before I was ever summoned.

Naturally, he must have dealt with threats on his own until then.

So in the end, he really must have hated seeing me full of arrows.

Garmon-san had been incredibly angry that day, and my guilt threatened to come rushing back.

But if I showed it, Garmon-san would only start worrying about me again, so for now, I decided to be happy about getting a new colleague.

Yes, a colleague.

It wasn’t as though I was dissatisfied with living alone with Garmon-san, but even so, I was incredibly excited about having someone new join us.

Apparently, there were many different forms of summoning sorcery, and one could summon and contract not only devils like me, but also angels, dragons, magical beasts, phantasmal beasts, and all sorts of other beings.

Since we had the choice, I asked for someone humanoid—in other words, an angel—but Garmon-san told me that devils and angels were fundamentally opposed to one another, so that was out.

I thought I could probably get along with an angel just fine, but if the angel wouldn’t feel the same way, then there was nothing to be done.

Apparently, dragons were also out of the question.

That had nothing to do with Garmon-san’s ability or my compatibility with one; they were simply too large, and we didn’t have anywhere for one to live without it getting in the way.

After discussing our options, we settled on Cerberus, a high-ranking magical beast with three heads that served as the watchdog guarding the entrance to the Underworld.

I’d always wanted to own a dog, and according to Garmon-san, since Cerberus was a guardian of the Underworld, its attributes should make it highly compatible with me as a devil.

Garmon-san warned me that three heads meant it ate quite a lot and that caring for it would increase my workload, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest.

If anything, the thought that I’d get to take care of it even more made me happy, and from the moment we decided to summon a Cerberus, I couldn’t contain my excitement.

Apparently, summoning rituals in this world were generally performed at night, not just those used to summon Cerberus.

Come to think of it, I vaguely remembered that it had been nighttime when I was summoned too.

Apparently, the mana contained in moonlight caused fluctuations in the world and brought distant places closer together.

The summoning ritual proceeded in the tower’s basement, the sturdiest room in the entire structure.

I was accompanying Garmon-san both to learn what summoning sorcery was actually like and to protect him if anything went wrong.

Unlike devils, who were confined within a magic circle while the terms of a contract were negotiated verbally, magical beasts apparently formed contracts only after being subdued through force.

Even when the summoning itself succeeded, it was apparently far from uncommon for sorcerers to fail at forming the contract and be killed instead.

Garmon-san was an extremely skilled sorcerer, but against a magical beast with overwhelming physical ability, there was still a one-in-ten-thousand chance of something going wrong, so the plan was for the two of us to subdue Cerberus together.

Since I myself had been summoned by Garmon-san, my strength apparently counted as part of his own ability as a summoner.

“Come forth, guardian of the Underworld, spirit of the bottomless abyss, three-headed beast.”

With every word Garmon-san spoke, the mana filling the basement grew denser.

And when the mana in the room finally reached its peak, it appeared.

Its enormous body was larger than a bull’s, and it had three heads.

Its heads were certainly shaped like those of a dog, but the mana and sheer pressure it radiated far exceeded anything I’d imagined.

When all three heads growled at once, the very air seemed to tremble, and its brilliantly glowing eyes locked firmly onto Garmon-san and me—the prey before it—and refused to look away.

However, Cerberus made a fatal mistake with its very first move.

If it had started moving the instant it was summoned, there was a very real chance I wouldn’t have been able to keep up with it.

Instead, Cerberus chose to intimidate us first.

Perhaps that was the pride of a powerful creature, or perhaps it was simply curious about the ones who had summoned it, but unfortunately, I didn’t understand those sorts of pre-battle customs or subtleties.

―ruru―

The instant I confirmed Cerberus had appeared, I moved my tongue twice and activated gravity Magic.

I wanted to pin it down before it could move, before this could turn into a desperate fight to the death.

The battle was decided in an instant.

The gravity Magic I used this time was twice as strong as before—in other words, ten times normal gravity.

If Cerberus weighed around seven hundred kilograms, roughly the same as a bull, then a load equivalent to seven metric tons would have been bearing down on its body.

Considering its larger frame and three heads, the actual burden was probably even greater.

Amazingly, even under that load, Cerberus didn’t buckle at the knees, but it still couldn’t move immediately, and the magical chains Garmon-san cast next bound its body and forced it into submission.

After capturing Cerberus, Garmon-san let a faint wry smile appear at the corner of his mouth, but quickly erased it and addressed the beast.

“Beast, if you possess a name, state it. If you do not yet have one, accept a name from us.”

For some reason, Cerberus glared at me resentfully with those words, but then lowered its heads and let out a single growl.

It was a sign of submission, and Garmon-san nodded in satisfaction.

“That went rather faster than expected, but the contract is complete. All that’s left is to give her a name. Can you think of anything suitable? Incidentally, this one is female.”

Female?

I was a little surprised by Garmon-san’s words.

She looked so imposing and gallant that I’d assumed she was male.

Though, well, it was certainly true that women could sometimes be the stronger ones.

I tilted my head and thought for a moment.

Looking back into the three pairs of eyes staring steadily at me,

“Then how about Bella? I think Bella would be a good name for you.”

And with that, I decided on her name.