I'm a Goddess to Be Devoured by the Protagonist - Chapter 23

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————

Episode 23
Clink. Clink.
Then she plopped down beside Sirius.
More precisely, beside the bottle of alcohol.
“What’s your name?”
She asked in the kind of familiar tone you’d use with a friend you’d known for about ten years, despite meeting him for the first time.
The voice was unmistakably female.
“Sirius.”
“I’m Deneb.”
Well done, old man. Your role ends here.
Inwardly, I delivered a line like some shadow puppet master manipulating him.
Deneb poured from the bottle as if it had always been hers, filled a cup, and produced a straw from who-knows-where, then proceeded to drink through it.
The sight of someone her size sucking drink through a flimsy straw jammed into the tiny hole of a helmet was remarkably absurd.
“This place’s beer tastes like garbage, but this stuff? This is good.”
“Our beer’s actually quite tasty,” the tavern keeper offered.
Deneb paid no mind to the comment and continued.
“My husband went into the Dungeon a month ago and hasn’t come out.”
The odds of a human surviving a month in a hellhole like a Dungeon were slim.
Even if he were alive, that raised questions.
Why hasn’t he left?
There’s no reason to stay in a place like that for a month. He should get out immediately.
Usually, there was a reason when someone didn’t come out of a Dungeon.
Dead, or some other circumstance.
Sirius offered no hollow consolation. He simply listened to Deneb’s story in silence.
“Are you a knight?”
“An adventurer.”
“Ah.”
She’d asked because of Sirius’s upgraded armor.
Now he would surely look to Deneb like a madman who’d earned some decent money only to throw himself into a Dungeon.
“You’re planning to go into that Dungeon?”
“Yes. I have my reasons.”
“Hmm. And if you go in and can’t come back out?”
“The odds are still in my favor that I won’t die.”
“What are you basing that on?”
He paused for a moment before answering.
“Just my intuition.”
What’s he talking about? I haven’t told him anything about the Dungeon’s difficulty.
Even the easiest Dungeon can kill you if you drop your guard.
I’ve been deliberately sending him into progressively less dangerous ones, but did he notice that? How would he even know? I told him to enter his second Dungeon.
Deneb looked at Vega. He, who had been quiet until now, looked flustered and at a loss when her gaze landed on him.
“What’s your relationship? You don’t seem to be siblings.”
We’re a Party—a Dealer and a Healer together.
“Someone I happened to meet and ended up traveling with.”
Sirius seemed to have judged it wise not to reveal to a stranger the existence of a Healer, practically a legendary Pokémon.
“In a world like this, you’re traveling with someone who’s not even blood-related? You really are out of your mind.”
[ ( ´o｀;) ]
That’s a misunderstanding. He’s perfectly fine.
“So? When are you planning to leave?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, we’re scheduled to depart.”
Since mechanical civilization hadn’t developed in this place, clocks were expensive. So I couldn’t give an exact time.
“Mm. Got it.”
That was the end of the conversation. Deneb rose to her feet and headed toward the tavern’s lodging quarters.
By then, the bottle was completely empty.
* * *
“What are you doing? Let’s go.”
[ ( ˙o˙) ?? ]
I was dumbfounded. Anyone watching would’ve thought we were longtime companions.
“You don’t even know where the Dungeon is. I’ll lead the way.”
For reference, I’d written down the Dungeon’s rough location in my quest log, so Sirius could have found it on his own. But he didn’t stop her from coming along.
And I wasn’t about to stop her either.
He was meant to come along from the start. It was easy enough to guess, given that alcohol had been used as bait.
She’d accompanied me on <The Journey> as well, but her voice hadn’t been nearly so bright then. I couldn’t tell if yesterday’s drinking had simply lifted her spirits.
Deneb was an excellent combatant just to look at, clad head to toe in plate armor. Why she insisted on staying fully armed even outside battle, I couldn’t fathom.
The Dungeon entrance lay hidden in some forgotten alley. Mist poured from a gap in space as if reality itself had cracked, settling like cotton candy and lending the place a dreamlike quality.
This was no good sign.
“Hmm. It wasn’t like this before,” she murmured.
Deneb ran her hand through the clouds, her voice tinged with unease.
The reason the Dungeon entrance had fallen into such a state was obvious enough. The Dungeon had fed well on people and grown stronger for it.
We drew our blades and advanced cautiously into the entrance, scanning our surroundings. Billowing clouds filled the Dungeon’s interior.
“Aaaahhh!”
That was when it happened. Beyond the distant mist, a man drenched in blood clutched his head, writhing in agony before his body crumpled to the ground.
“How is that…?”
Deneb murmured in disbelief, then hesitated before moving toward the man’s location.
Or rather, she tried to.
“Stop. Let go.”
Had Sirius not seized her wrist, she would have gone to him.
“Most likely the work of a Mental Attack-type Monster.”
It seemed he’d made that deduction thanks to what I’d told him about the Dungeon’s characteristics.
But Sirius had never set foot in this Dungeon before, and there was no way he could know anything about a place from which no one had ever returned. If Deneb pressed him on how he knew, it would be difficult to explain.
He’d said I could claim some god had told him if necessary, but I wasn’t sure how to manage that.
“What are the odds that the husband she hasn’t seen in all this time would conveniently collapse near the Dungeon entrance? It seems like a deliberate ploy to lure us in with a sensational scene.”
“That… does have a point.”
Deneb gripped her helmet with one hand.
“But what if that really is my husband?”
Even as she said it, she seemed to accept Sirius’s logic and made no further move toward the figure.
Fwoosh.
The form of the collapsed man didn’t persist long before vanishing entirely, as if the Dungeon had erased the false image once it failed to lure prey.
“See? It wasn’t real, was it? You’ve got good instincts.”
“Anyone would have noticed something was amiss.”
“Such humility.”
Having found its direct attacks ineffective, the Dungeon began openly eroding Deneb’s mental fortitude.
The image of her husband pierced through by thick tendrils, then him clawing at his own skin in desperation—scenes too gruesome to merely witness played out in succession.
“Why only my husband? Is this Monster targeting only me now?”
“I’m not certain.”
“You don’t have anyone precious to you?”
“…No one.”
“Ha. Remarkable. Here stands a person with nothing to lose, which means I’m the only target. How typical.”
As we pressed deeper into the Dungeon without hesitation, actual Monsters began to emerge in earnest.
Creatures with cottony fur wrapping their bodies fluttered about on fairy-like wings.
From the front of one of them, glowing dust coalesced before launching forward like a missile.
“Don’t dodge.”
Deneb spoke an odd command from beneath her helmet.
Shwoom!
Before Sirius could even ask, a shield of green holographic light materialized.
It was his magic.
Deneb served as the vanguard, the shield at the front. That was why I’d chosen to travel with her.
Deneb carried a sword, though she wielded it poorly. Yet she couldn’t simply wield a shield instead. She summoned a shield through magic, and if she held one in her hands as well, she’d be carrying two shields at once.
This was also why she couldn’t have entered the Dungeon alone to rescue her husband.
She could not shine by herself. She was a person who shone while protecting others.
Once the shield for her husband and comrades, she’d lost those she was meant to protect and now sat rotting in a corner of the Tavern, sucking on a straw through a bottle of alcohol.
Thud!
She drove the Monster back with her shield.
“Now!”
Sirius seized the opening without hesitation, leaping forward to strike.
Slash!
The Monsters, their faces carved with long gashes, burst apart and vanished.
“Wow, you’re quite skilled.”
Though I’d seen many people, I’d never encountered a swordsman of Sirius’s caliber before.
The remaining Monsters circled warily at the arrival of a formidable opponent.
“I’ll target the largest one among them.”
-What? Why? You don’t like the look of that one?
Sirius tightened his grip on his sword instead of answering. Deneb shrugged and, deciding to go along with his lead, hefted her holographic shield and braced herself to strike down the monsters at any moment.
-I’ll clear out all the small ones. You use that time to go after the big one.
-Understood.
Deneb swept her shield with practiced speed, deflecting the monsters’ attacks in rapid succession.
The largest monster among them, sensing that both of them had their sights set on it, lurched upward in panic, trying to flee into the air.
-Use this—jump off it!
Deneb shifted her shield beneath him. When Sirius’s foot touched it, he grunted under the strain, but managed to keep it steady.
Boom!
As Sirius’s blade tore through the monster, something small—about the size of a palm—tumbled down.
-Whoa. Is that a Skill Scroll?
It was the reason Sirius had targeted the largest monster. The Skill Scroll had dropped from it alone.

—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————