Chapter 28: What Do You Mean, Lily Also Wants to Seize the Future? (Please Keep Reading) (Patreon)

At the current pace, conservatively estimated, each stat update would raise things by about one rank.

He still didn't know where that kind of speed ranked in Orario.

But—

Rozz figured it was just about enough to deal with those Lv1 Adventurers — the useless drunkards who'd hollowed out their own bodies.

Where was his own limit?

He'd never really thought about that question, but he'd only get a definite answer by actually trying. He gazed up at the towering Babel ahead.

"Well, here we are."

"Time to show the Adventurers of Orario what a real grind-dog looks like!!"

"..."

What was this guy muttering about now? She couldn't make heads or tails of it.

But that didn't stop Lili from looking at Rozz with open admiration in her eyes — she wasn't even sure herself why she felt so drawn to him.

Maybe it was because Rozz had the courage to refuse to bow to the same kind of malicious bullying she herself had once suffered, choosing to fight back instead.

Or maybe not... That was what the young Supporter told herself, though she knew that if the same choice were placed in front of her, she wasn't sure she'd have the courage to answer it the same way.

"Hmm..."

"Let's head into the Dungeon, then."

"..."

He seemed to notice the gloom hanging over the Supporter girl beside him — her mood shift was obvious enough to catch just from her tone. Rozz turned his head to look at her.

He was a little puzzled at first, but the moment he remembered the bullying Lili had suffered in the Soma Familia, he understood at once.

Even so, whenever Lili talked about her past, she always did it in that same offhand tone, but Rozz could still feel the weight she was holding back.

"Those who are happy spend their whole lives healed by their childhood; those who aren't must spend their whole lives healing from it."

Rozz didn't think of himself as the empathetic type — after all, no one could truly feel exactly what someone else had felt.

Besides, what she needed wasn't comfort.

That left him stumped, even as a self-proclaimed Galgame master — games, after all, came with preset choices to pick from.

First, set aside the fact that every option was the doting, pampering kind.

As long as you followed the author's preset script, no matter what, you'd unlock some special defeat-CG for the heroine.

Reality was nothing like that.

Noticing the complicated look on Rozz's face, Lili had a vague guess as to why. She looked up and said, lightly,

"I just suddenly felt a bit sentimental."

"I feel like... even if Lili were an Adventurer, if she faced the same situation as you, she probably couldn't have made the same choice."

"..."

[Option A: Comfort her — use kindness (yasashii) to soothe the wounds of her childhood.]

[Option B: Rationally comfort her, and tell her it's all Tokiomi Tohsaka's fault — the world itself is really to blame.]

Rozz simply changed tack, fully embracing that spirit of reckless bravado to the end, bypassing both hypothetical options — tugging at the heartstrings or genuine sincerity.

He decisively chose bravado instead:

"I'll tell you in the most direct, least roundabout way possible, Miss Lili: someone who lives in the past has no future."

"So—"

"Have you decided to seize the future?"

"..."

Right after that, the Supporter girl nodded earnestly. Facing Rozz's sky-high grin of bravado, she raised her hand, meaning to grab his wrist.

But then she remembered the unclean thoughts she'd had when they'd first met.

Lili didn't go through with it. Instead, she reached out and clutched the sleeve of his coat.

"Um... Lili wants to seize the future."

"?"

Rozz: Why are you grabbing me?

And besides, this sure as hell isn't the future!!

The Dungeon exploration that followed went off without a hitch, with Lili as his Supporter analyzing the floor's environment — monster types, weaknesses, and the like.

She even handled collecting the drops and Magic Stones, so Rozz could pour all his Stamina into the fighting itself.

Through a bit of simple questioning, Rozz also learned the reason why — Dungeon monsters that fed on unclaimed Magic Stones had a good chance of evolving, becoming a bigger threat to Adventurers going forward.

And so, he steadily grew stronger, pushing deeper through the Dungeon's floors, and naturally ran into a brand-new type of insect monster along the way.

Killer Ants.

Another monster known as a 'Newbie Killer,' though clearly not as difficult to deal with as War Shadow.

With the Adventurer's Shortsword Hestia had given him, he could easily crack through the monster's hard carapace and deal real damage.

But there was one thing to watch out for — these monsters had to be killed instantly, rather than left wounded, since an injured one would release pheromones and call the rest of the swarm.

During this stretch of time, just as Lili had said, Rozz would occasionally run into those Soma Familia Adventurers watching him from the shadows in Central Park, and the two of them would put on an act of being close.

That way, they could throw Enwan Kovo and the rest of that group off the scent, keeping Lili's current double-dealing from being exposed.

If there was one problem, it was that even though the closeness was all an act, Rozz always felt like there was something else in the way the girl looked at him.

Especially whenever he reached out and patted Lili's head.

He kept feeling like the blushing Supporter girl's eyes suddenly sprouted little pink hearts — and that wasn't something you could just fix by cranking up the voltage!

Otherwise, Rozz's daily life these past few days hadn't been much affected, except for Hestia's proposal to move in together.

That hadn't made any real progress yet, since it depended on Hestia getting paid first.

As for that, he had no objections, of course. What he needed to focus on right now was dealing with that group of Adventurers who had their eyes on him.

"Here I come, here I come~"

The communal dormitory.

The young goddess Hestia looked at her Familia member sprawled on the bed, exhaustion radiating from every inch of him, and a flicker of tenderness rose in her eyes.

She understood full well Rozz's resolve to handle the trouble himself.

Just from how completely drained his Stamina was every time he came back to Orario, and the Exploration Log that exhausted her just to read, she could clearly feel how hard Rozz had been working all this time.

So, Hestia hadn't intervened much — though that didn't mean she'd done nothing at all. If things ever turned urgent, then, when the time came...

she could always ask Hephaestus's Familia member, Tsubaki Collbrande, to step in and negotiate — surely those Adventurers would be happy to show some respect.

She gradually gathered her thoughts.

But the young goddess knew there was something more pressing to deal with right now — opening the blind box, updating Rozz's stats.

Hestia couldn't resist rubbing her hands together like a fly, her smile brimming with anticipation.

"Hehe~"

"It's been four days since your last stat update, Rozz... I'm so curious how much your numbers have gone up!"

[Author's Note: There'll be a bonus chapter tomorrow night, meow~ Also, please vote for monthly tickets and recommendation tickets, and please keep following the story — thank you, dear readers, meow~]