Ch.202Side Story: How Did You Return?

Latina had a very confused expression when she heard about the outside world, but eventually she came to accept it. It seemed to be because she came from a world where humans and monsters fought until one side was annihilated.

I just had to rack my brain a bit to come up with a plausible answer when she asked what the original Earth was like. It was a question that couldn’t be easily defined.

“Now it’s Miss Mira’s turn.”

As soon as the explanation was over, Latina boldly demanded an explanation, saying it was my turn now, and the others moved as one body, as if they had been waiting for those words, taking me to the top floor of the Eternal Guild headquarters.

It was a large room with several beds that could easily accommodate ten people with room to spare, which they said they had prepared for when I would return someday. There was even an elevator inside the room that connected to my room on another floor.

“If you don’t have anywhere else to live, you can stay here. We’ll take care of everything.”

“…Isn’t your intention a bit too transparent?”

“Intention? What intention? We don’t know what you’re talking about. Right, everyone?”

Their ability to shamelessly avoid answering was top-notch. Even Latina, who clearly couldn’t have been briefed beforehand, joined their ranks quite naturally.

I couldn’t really blame them since they had probably held on with the hope that I would return someday. I would just have to endure this in many ways.

“Right. Weren’t you busy with requests? Like subjugating gates. We can do this later when everyone has free time. Go ahead, I’ll be waiting.”

“We have canceled the requests.”

“Canceled? Why?”

“To make time by force if necessary. You can speak so casually about waiting until we have free time because you do not know how busy we are. If we were to do that, the opportunity might never come until death. Besides, we only need to arrive before the gate spills out monsters, do we not?”

Everyone except Latina and me seemed to agree with what Ellisier said. It was natural that the two of us wouldn’t know. I wondered if the situation on Earth was that serious.

“In the end, it is not us who will regret it, but them. What will they do if we cancel the request? It’s not like they won’t ask for our help in the future. So it doesn’t matter if we show some nerve a few times. Those who would criticize us for this would find reasons to criticize us no matter what we do, so we can just ignore them.”

I awkwardly smiled along as I watched Laura grinning somewhat eerily.

“So, what really happened?”

“I’ll tell you. It’s a rather long story, so let’s sit down somewhere first…?”

Before I could finish speaking, someone pulled me onto their lap. Based on body proportions, there was only one person who could handle me like this.

Chairwoman Erestica.

Large fingers pulled at my body as I sat on soft thighs as wide and thick as my waist. Something round near my head spread apart, and my head went inside.

A weight that was not just heavy but almost violent, along with a warm coziness, enveloped my head. At the same time, a sweet milk scent filled my nostrils. Somehow, the fragrance seemed even stronger than before.

‘…What is this exactly?’

I couldn’t help but laugh inwardly. I could barely register the soft, squishy feeling of her lower abdomen against my back or the elasticity of the thighs I was sitting on.

Is this size even possible for a human? Well, strictly speaking, she’s not human but a dragon, so it’s possible. But I have no idea why they’ve gotten even bigger. Don’t tell me she deliberately grew them.

Erestica hugged me tightly with a beaming smile. As my head sank deeper between her breasts, my peripheral vision narrowed significantly. Even sounds seemed slightly muffled.

“What’s wrong, child? Didn’t you need a place to sit?”

“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind.”

“You’ve been patient for so long. I’d appreciate it if you’d let this one slide.”

“……”

Could it be that her seemingly yielding attitude toward the others until now was all for this moment? Everyone else seemed to share my thoughts, looking back and forth between Erestica and me with bewildered expressions.

“…Perhaps you disliked it? I’m sorry. Maybe this is better suited for the other children—”

“No, it’s fine. My mouth isn’t covered, so I can still talk like this.”

The chairwoman, who had been sniffling, tightened her arms around me again. I couldn’t see her expression, but she was probably smiling.

To begin with, only the chairwoman could manage this position. Even setting aside height differences, everyone else’s chests were far too small to completely envelop my head.

Whether objectively or subjectively, none of them—not Ellisier, Rosaria, and Nika with their never-to-be-outdone sizes, nor Laura, Priscilla, and Latina with their certainly-not-small proportions—were sufficient to completely envelop and wrap around an entire head.

As for Leona…

“……”

Well, she did look somewhat dazed. Unfortunately, that wasn’t something I could help with.

And Leona wasn’t completely lacking either. It’s just that the comparison point was too extreme.

“After the dimensional gate closed—”

I began my explanation, deliberately ignoring the sensation of the two massive fat deposits heavily pressing against not just my head but my shoulders, and the warmth of Erestica’s body enveloping me completely.

“Kuhak!”

I was swept away by time, flying for a while before falling back down and rolling on the ground.

But even after crashing to the floor, the torrent of time showed no sign of stopping, and I had to endure being thrown here and there, rolling around pathetically for quite some time.

The thought of treating my severed right arm didn’t even cross my mind. I needed to focus all my attention on maintaining my posture, or I might die from landing headfirst somewhere.

Eventually, I managed to find something to anchor myself and thrust my holy spear into it. After countless attempts of the spear slicing through empty space, it finally stuck somewhere, wrapping around the nearby time and fixing it in place, which slowed down my tumbling.

I barely managed to stand on my feet. Only now was it somewhat bearable. Conversely, this meant that even with the holy spear fixing time in place, “somewhat bearable” was the best I could hope for.

Moreover, even this wasn’t perfect. Even now, the flow of time was slowly seeping in between the fixed time. I strained my legs to withstand the flow and looked around.

—Kuooooo…

It looked like a sea of gold had spread out before me, but there was no time to admire or marvel at its beauty.

How could I appreciate it when a storm and tsunami were simultaneously raging in that sea? I quietly stretched my aching body.

‘I’ve bought some time… but what do I do now?’

Blood dripped from the cleanly severed surface of my right arm. The droplets that fell into the golden light congealed into dark red scabs in less than a second, then turned to powder and disappeared.

Even though I had barely caught my breath, the flow seeping through the holy spear was gradually disappearing. If I stayed here like this, I would truly be torn to pieces. And I had no idea when time would restore itself.

‘…Wait a minute.’

Suddenly, a good idea crossed my mind. Hadn’t the goddess and demon god warned about this? Please refrain from using the holy spear as much as possible because it can affect time.

Since I was already struggling to twist the flow, I might be able to use this to my advantage. I hastily used healing magic to stop the bleeding at the severed surface and gripped the holy spear more firmly.

I didn’t know the method. I didn’t know if it was possible. I was just blindly charging ahead, trusting only the statement that the holy spear could influence time.

“Right. It’s not like I have any other options anyway.”

I had nothing to lose. I infused power into the holy spear and twisted my arm with the sensation of pulling time. The web-like strands of light grew larger and clung to the nearby space.

Then I felt the flow weakening slightly.

‘…Is it working?’

If this method was correct, I had a rough idea of what to do next. Just like before, using the holy spear with the feeling of pulling nearby time, as if tearing out time itself.

I infused more divine power. The holy spear writhed.

—!!!!!!

A silent explosion occurred. As the divine power inherent in the holy spear burst out in an instant, the nearby time itself was completely erased, creating a space where literally nothing existed.

Now was the time. I opened a dimensional gate to the coordinates that the goddess and demon god had found and jumped in with all my might.

It was an incredibly close call. The dimensional gate was shattered by the flow of time immediately after I jumped in. If I had hesitated for even a second, it could have been dangerous.

“Where is this place?”

The place I arrived at was somewhere I had never seen before. A place that looked like a cave but didn’t seem like an Earth cave—an ambiguous place like that. Could I have entered the wrong coordinates after coming all this way?

Just as I sat down thinking I should catch my breath first, I heard an unfamiliar voice.

“So it’s that guy.”

“…That’s roughly what happened.”

“To think you could pull on time itself, how…”

“Maybe I wasn’t just pulling on it. The flow of time was different between the worlds. It was the same after I came here.”

The time I spent sitting and resting was literally just enough to catch my breath a few times. But it took the creature who entered through the gate several hours to detect the magical reaction and find me.

Since that magical reaction clearly came from the dimensional gate I created, the natural conclusion is that the flow of time was different.

“It’s the same reason why seven years passed here while I was wandering in that world.”

Cold sweat ran down my back even as I spoke. It was really a close call. If I had found the method even a little later, it might have taken more than 10 years instead of 7.

Struggling desperately to return was the right answer.

“That’s all I have to say. Now it’s your turn. What happened here?”

I pushed away Erestica’s hands and got up from her lap. It was time to switch from listening to speaking. Erestica, who had been sulking momentarily, buttoned up her shirt one by one.

I couldn’t help but marvel at how remarkable that shirt was for withstanding such a burden. Since she wasn’t even wearing underwear, the shirt essentially had to bear all the weight.

“Alright. Where should I start explaining—”

At that moment, the watch-like device on Leona’s wrist lit up red. Leona frowned and sighed, about to throw the device away before stopping herself. The other six did the same.

“Mira, do you have time?”

“I’m free, but… what’s going on?”

The issue isn’t whether I have time or not, but whether the people here will let me go.

“If you’re okay with it, we’d like to show you directly how we’ve been doing while you were gone.”