The Night Watch is primarily tasked by species such as Beastmen, who have excellent night vision, or classes like Thieves, who possess magic or skills that can see through the darkness.
Simon, a sniper specialized in ranged attacks, is nearly powerless in this dark night without night vision goggles.
Moreover, while his concentration is high, in terms of physical abilities such as stamina and endurance, he is only as capable as one would expect for his age and appearance, making him ill-suited for long hours of watch duty, and he soon seeks rest.
While Simon can rest the whole night unless the enemy launches a night raid, he descends from the rooftop not to his assigned room, but toward the room where Chrono is likely already asleep.
“Older Brother, is he already sleeping?”
The time for Simon and Chrono to take a break is nearly simultaneous, but Chrono is supposed to return to the barrier front after taking a nap of about two hours.
As Simon descends the stairs and glances down the corridor leading to Chrono’s bedroom, he notices,
“Ah, Lily…”
Despite her small stature, her distinctive form, having two pairs of wings, can be immediately identified even from a distance.
In fact, among the Adventurer Alliance members, Simon and Lily are the only ones whose appearances clearly indicate they are children.
“Hm, what is it, you?”
(Ugh, and she’s back to being an adult… It’s fine if she’s still a child, but this person is genuinely scary like this…)
Lily’s two-faced nature is already a well-known fact within the Adventurer Alliance, and Simon is no exception.
In fact, he learned early on that she has both a childlike and an adult personality.
The day he met Chrono, Lily barged into his laboratory, shouting furiously due to some misunderstanding, which has left a significant trauma for young Simon.
“Uh, um, it’s not a big deal, but…”
With his eyes darting around, Simon stumbles over his words, but Lily, without needing telepathy, already has a good idea of what he’s thinking.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean she will respond immediately with understanding.
“Well, Chrono is already sleeping, so please come back later.
Chrono is more tired than anyone else, and if you disturb his sleep, I won’t forgive you.”
“Eh, but then what about you, Lily—”
“I’m fine, I just came to sleep beside him.”
“Oh, is that so?”
(I heard Lily went straight to another room to sleep after coming back, but does that mean she specifically moved to Brother’s room?)
It’s not overly abnormal, but Simon wonders if there’s really a necessity for her to share a bed with Chrono to that extent.
“Understood? Now hurry back to your room.”
“Ugh, okay.”
However, Simon thinks, watching the strong glint of will in Lily’s round eyes, that everyone has something they won’t yield on no matter the situation.
“Sigh.”
Watching Lily disappear beyond the door where Chrono is sleeping, Simon reluctantly turns on his heels.
“I wanted to talk about various things…”
“—So does that mean you wanted Chrono to praise you?”
“Whoa!? Suus, why—”
Sudden intervention in his muttering surprised and embarrassed him, and before he could contain himself, Suus quickly covered his mouth with her hand.
“Be quiet; it’s true that Chrono wouldn’t get mad, but Lily will.”
Simon nods in agreement.
“Too bad she got ahead of you; you can have Chrono praise you tomorrow. Just fully enjoy it.”
“Eh, no, that’s not it… It’s just that I, like, used a rifle and a machine gun in real combat for the first time, so I thought I should properly ask how it was…”
“Hehe, let’s just consider it that way.”
“Seriously, it’s the truth!”
Seeing Simon’s red face as he protested made it obvious whether Suus was right or not.
While there might be some truth to what Simon is saying, ultimately, it was just a secondary consideration. Deep down, his true desire was undoubtedly to hear Chrono say, “Well done,” acknowledging and praising his first research.
“However, when I first saw you heading toward Chrono’s room, I couldn’t help but wonder if you were trying to sneak in at night.”
“Sneak in at night? Huh!? No, definitely not, that would be weird since we’re both guys! And why are you looking at me like that!”
At least Chrono still thinks of Simon as a girl, but fortunately or unfortunately, Simon remains unaware.
“Still, you’re already at an age where you should be familiar with romantic feelings; I noticed you had at least some fond glances toward Chrono. Or so I thought.”
“I’m normal!”
He firmly denies it; indeed, he has friendly feelings for Chrono but it doesn’t mean he likes guys.
“Well, I wonder, among the members of the Adventurer Alliance, there’s Foana and the three Huntresses, who are pretty good-looking girls, but you don’t seem to show much interest?”
“If I look at everyone with weird eyes, I’d just be a pervert.”
Certainly, he can acknowledge that the girls Suus mentioned are beautiful; Simon does not possess a warped sense of aesthetics.
“Then how about Lily? She’s exceptionally beautiful, but I wouldn’t recommend her.”
“Absolutely not with Lily.”
No matter how attractive she might be, it’s common sense to become uneasy when someone glares at you as if they would kill you with their gaze every time you meet.
“Well, then—oh, got it.”
“Can we stop this conversation? I’m not good at talking about my crush or anything like that—”
“Having big breasts is a requirement, huh?”
“Um, please listen to me…”
Sighing, Simon slumps his shoulders.
What can I say to escape this strange conversation? Looking down at the floor, he ultimately fails to come up with a good response, and when he raises his gaze again,
“How about this?”
In front of Simon, two swaying mountains appear.
“Eh, what!? What happened, why did your breasts get bigger?!”
“Oh, can I take that reaction as a good sign?”
“I’m just surprised!”
Suus wore a somewhat mischievous smile as just a few seconds ago, her flat chest had no claims at all, transformed now into something akin to a bountiful hill, as though blessed by the earth mother.
The size of each breast was larger than Simon’s head, and this overwhelming mass pressed against her thin shirt, threatening to burst through.
“What the heck is this…?”
“I’m a Slime, you see; I usually disguise myself to avoid standing out, but if I so desire, I can have one or two breasts, hehehe, as you can see, it’s all within my control.”
As she proudly thrusts out her chest, it jiggles enticingly.
Noticing Simon’s instinctive reaction as he reflexively followed that movement with his eyes, no man would blame him.
“But more importantly, what do you think?”
“Eh, um, what do you mean…?”
Taking a step closer, Suus leans slightly forward to match Simon’s eye level.
If he shifts his gaze down just a little, he finds himself staring into the alluring deep cleavage revealed by her wide-open shirt.
Simon’s face turns noticeably red as he desperately averts his gaze elsewhere, and it’s impossible for Suus not to notice his innocent reaction.
“What do you mean, ‘what’—”
But not satisfied merely with that, she doesn’t retreat, and it’s impossible for Simon, with his level 1 experience with the opposite sex, to understand what she is thinking.
“—It’s like this.”
Before he knew it, her hand had grasped his wrist, and Simon’s right hand was drawn in without a chance to resist against Suus’ ample chest.
The soft, warm sensation pressing against his palm, separated only by a thin shirt, has enough intoxicating feel to completely shatter any rational thought a man might have.
“Whoa!? I-I’m sorry! I need to sleep now! See ya!!”
But it seems that was just too much stimulation for Simon.
Waving his hand away in a panic, he ran off, his face reddened even more, muttering as he dashed to his room.
“Ahhahaha, he’s just so cute—”
With a smile, Suus watched Simon leave.
“—I might just get serious about this.”
She whispered one last comment before quietly leaving the scene without a sound.
—
The Crusaders stationed in Wat Village were supposed to pull out by the end of that day, ideally having taken over Arz Village as a new occupation site by now.
However, they retreated temporarily, blocked by the Demon Race’s defensive line fortifying the village across the Rhone River, ensuring that they would remain in Wat Village at least until tomorrow.
The Cyprus Mercenary Corps, accompanying the Crusader occupation force, was also the same, and as usual, they had set up camp on the outskirts of Wat Village.
The laid-back Cyprus should have been in bed with his female subordinate by this hour with the moon in the sky, yet he was standing just outside the campsite in the woods.
Although he was out of sight, his subordinates were on guard nearby, and several presences could be felt faintly around him.
Leaning against a large tree, Cyprus held a short staff in his hand.
At first glance, it appeared to be a gnarled black branch, but its surface was covered with white geometric patterns, and the tip was sharply pointed like a spear.
“Shoving this old version of ‘Aranea’ on me, reactivating it after a day is going to be a hassle!”
As Cyprus grumbled toward whoever had given him the short staff ‘Aranea’, he stabbed the tip into the ground forcefully.
“مراقبة سرية لمعالجة الرقيق العنكبوت”
Responding to Cyprus’s incantation, the white patterns drawn on the staff began to ominously blink.
In tandem, a magic circle with the same black backdrop and white patterns spread out gradually from where the staff was plunged into the ground.
The patterns of the magic circle, now extending about a meter in diameter, resembled a spider’s web.
“—’Sight Record Spider'”
What materialized was a summon spell, and as the name suggests, it conjured a familiar in the shape of a spider.
Black spiders crawled up from the depths of the magic circle, appearing as if they were emerging from the bottom of a body of water.
Each spider was about the size of an adult’s palm, and seeing several dozens of such large creatures oozing out would instinctively evoke a sense of horror in anyone watching.
However, Cyprus, the caster, felt nothing of the sort; he merely observed the scuttling spiders around him with an expression of indifference, as though it was something natural.
The summoned spiders quickly vanished into the darkened forest.
Yet, within a minute, the spiders began to return.
“…Tch, some of them are missing, defective products.”
These spiders bore identical appearances to the ones he summoned earlier, but they were instead the ones he had dispatched just the previous night.
The ‘Sight Record Spider’ had the role of monitoring.
Since the Cyprus Mercenary Corps had not sent a request for combat today and was ordered to stand by in Wat Village, they had deployed this familiar to record the battle conditions.
“I heard they got easily beaten and had to run home from some demons or whatever, well then, let’s see what kind of situation it is—”
Cyprus placed one of the returning spiders onto his palm.
Then, fragments of images and sounds began to emerge in his mind.
While it required a commensurate skill level to interpret what this familiar had recorded, for Cyprus, the caster, it was hardly a challenge to grasp the chaotic stream of imagery and audio flooding his consciousness.
“—Oh, discovered an elf girl, nice, this is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
What emerged was a trio of elves, each with blonde hair and blue eyes, their age varying from girl to woman, yet all boasting stunning features that would make the most renowned elves proud.
As magical bows were drawn from beyond the fence and thunderous arrows were launched, soldiers advancing across the river fell one after another.
“Hm, but still, it’s mostly just the demon race’s trash—”
Cyprus continued to express somewhat mocking impressions as he read the recordings, but as he continued, his expression began to shift gradually.
Initially wearing a grin as if sizing up his prey, his face had drained of all emotion by now.
“—Oh, I see, so this is what it is.”
Muttering this, Cyprus flung the spider from his palm as if discarding it.
The spider disappeared into the magical circle of the spider web still lingering on the ground like a frog leaping into a pond.
“Interesting, this makes it worth coming all the way to Pandora; hehe, it seems I’m literally guided by fate.”
What could possibly bring him such delight?
A ferocious smile spread across Cyprus’s face as he cheerfully returned to the campsite.
—
Oh my, what has happened to Sue…
Congratulations, Sue has evolved from a thief to a busty thief! Sue has learned a new skill: Puff Puff!
Thus, the protagonist took a back seat in this service scene. But the question remains, did Simon grope breasts or slime…