Try Not To Overdo It Today

Kikori!”

“Whoa!”

Then, when he went down the stairs, Aria, who had been at the counter, rushed at Kikori and hugged him.

“Thank goodness, you’re safe!”

“Yes. I’m back.”

“Yes, welcome back.”

Aria gave Kikori a tight hug, then pulled back a little and stared at him from head to toe.

“There are a lot of things I want to ask, but… first, who is the fairy on your head?”

“This is Orphe. A lot happened, and for now we’re in a cooperative relationship.”

“Hey, Kikori.”

“Hm?”

When Kikori tilted his head at Orphe, who had suddenly spoken up, Orphe flew down to hover near him.

“What is this one to you, Kikori?”

“What do you mean… um…”

When asked again like that, what kind of relationship was it, really?

A benefactor, a housemate, someone like family.

All of them felt right, and yet none of them felt exactly right.

“Well, someone like family… I guess.”

“Hm.”

“Is there something bothering you?”

“You’re different from Kikori, but I just thought you slightly step outside the bounds of humanity. Like, you’re human, but not an ordinary human.”

“Ah…”

Kikori wondered if that was because she was a berserker.

Right now, because of her mana abnormality, she could not fight at full power, but if she could, she would probably be far stronger than Kikori.

And thinking that far, something occurred to Kikori.

Aria’s mana abnormality… if it was Orphe, maybe she could heal it.

“Orphe. Do you think you might be able to heal Aria-san’s body?”

“No.”

“You can’t?”

He had thought that even if humans could not do it, maybe a fairy could… but it seemed that was impossible after all, and Kikori felt disappointed.

“I can tell what the symptoms are. But that’s the kind of thing you can’t do anything about unless you rebuild it from the ground up. You’d probably need something like a leaf from Yggdrasil.”

“Yggdrasil…”

In other words, if he had that, it could be healed.

Kikori felt like he could finally see some real hope.

“Thank you, Orphe.”

“It’s not like I did anything worth thanking me for.”

“Even so, thank you.”

Orphe fell silent and turned away, but Kikori truly was grateful.

“You two seem to get along very well somehow.”

“Yes, we’re good friends.”

“You really are full of yourself, aren’t you?”

Kikori laughed, brushing off Orphe’s glare.

“Well… I suppose getting along well is a good thing.”

“It’s not a good thing at all.”

“Well, I can’t really say anything about that… but Kikori, what about that equipment?”

“It came out of a Mimic corpse.”

It was the second lie he had told today, but at this point he could only keep it up.

“That armor looks almost like a dragon’s… there’s no doubt it must be quite valuable.”

“Yes. It helped me a great deal in the fight against the wyvern.”

“Wyvern.”

Murmuring that word, Aria began patting Kikori’s body all over, even though it was over his armor.

“…You’re not hurt anywhere?”

“I’m fine.”

“If that’s the case, then that’s good… but a wyvern. I never imagined something like that would appear…”

To the worried Aria, Kikori repeatedly told her, “But I was fine,” and after she firmly told him, “Try not to overdo it today,” Kikori and Orphe headed to Aria’s house.