Heizen's hideout was bigger than Hydrangea's dwelling.
The overall structure was similar. A dummy exterior with the entrance in the center.
What differed was the absence of a courtyard and a watchtower.
The square buildings on the left and right sides could only be entered from the second floor.
Let's start with the square black building on the right.
Four doors lined the left side at even intervals. Including the third floor, that made eight rooms in total.
Every room had the same layout: a bed, a small table…
A closet, a small shelf for odds and ends—simple. There was also a small window.
So many rooms. What exactly did Uncle want this hideout to be?
"The room cleaning is all done, des. All the bed sheets have been discarded and replaced, des. Eh? Where did I get the bed sheets from, you ask? I brought spares from Skiar Coffin Ele, des. I got the Witch's permission, des. Also, while I was at it, I gathered the laundry and put it in this house's laundry room washing machine to wash, des."
Actually, Skiar Coffin Ele had one flaw.
It had no laundry room. Both the Witch and I had been slow to notice this.
In the end, Shaldina and Anna Kreutzen ended up handling the laundry using the bathroom.
She was all too eager, insisting that washing was a maid's job.
Even so, this house actually had an automatic washing machine.
An automatic washing machine is legendary. Its price is in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions.
Uncle. Where did he get his hands on one?
The first floor was the living room. There was also a large fireplace.
The back was the kitchen. Apparently it was a full-fledged commercial-grade setup, not a domestic one.
Miss Anna Kreutzen had cleaned up and everything was spotless.
"I didn't really use it much to begin with. So there wasn't much to clean."
Uncle. You never cooked or anything?
Behind the first floor, there was a door leading to a hallway.
That hallway connected to the square blue building on the left.
This meant there was no need to go all the way up to the second floor.
At the end of the hallway, there was a toilet against the wall.
It was a flush toilet, and nobody had used it.
The blue building had three empty rooms on the second floor and a storage room on the third.
The third floor especially had a large open space that served as a warehouse.
Unlike the rooms next door, the empty rooms had no beds or anything.
If anything, the layout here felt a bit more spacious.
The first floor housed the bath. A laundry area, a changing room, and the bath itself.
The bath was a rock bath, and — would you believe it — a natural hot spring.
Turns out, you can find hot springs all over the Heizen area if you dig.
So there were cheap bathhouses all over the place.
"Chardina's the same way, but there are a lot of people who love baths."
Isn't that just how all women are?
I wonder about Uncle, though. His place in Hydrangea didn't have a bath.
But if you've got a naturally occurring hot spring, building a bathhouse seems like the obvious thing to do.
Then there was the long, thin white three-story building in the middle. The entrance was here, and here alone.
The building was an atrium design, with the second floor forming a walkway.
Doors opened to the left and right. The third floor was a passage leading to the roof, which you could access from here.
The roof was empty. A fence simply encircled the tops of all three buildings.
The view, however, was excellent. You could take in the entire horizon of Lake Riev, which looked just like the sea.
This building had an underground level.
Down below was Heizen's junkyard. Probably the junkyard for the entire Great Heizen Forest.
For now, we decided on our rooms and hauled our luggage in.
Most of my luggage was knives. The loot from the river pirates still hadn't been sorted through.
"Wof, got a sec?"
"What is it?"
I opened the door.
There they all were: Mineha, Bid, Shaldina, and Anna Kreuzen. A full house.
I wondered what was up.
"We're heading to the baths now."
"Can't wait for the hot spring!"
"So if you peek, we'll kill you."
"...!"
"I won't peek. I'm in my room sorting through the loot from the river pirates."
"Oh, the river pirate stuff."
"Yep. I got all sorts of good stuff."
I said with a grinning, excited face, and Mineha gave me a flat look.
"...You're like a child."
"I *am* a child."
I was a little miffed. I'm a minor, you know.
Mineha should be a child too, regardless of how she looks.
After that exchange, the girls headed off to the hot springs.
"...Come to think of it."
I sat down in a chair and thought.
When I first met Mineha, I'd accidentally seen her naked.
Even back then, her body was bewitching in a way you'd never associate with a ten-year-old.
But the current Mineha is several dozen times more attractive than that.
What on earth happened in such a short time?
"Thinking about it isn't going to help. Well, time to dig through the loot."
I was excited to see what kinds of knives I'd gotten.
You can never have too many knives. Not ever.
Ten minutes later.
"Well, this is rough."
Almost all of the knives were slightly rusted. Saltwater damage.
Lake Reeve connects to the Claudia Sea, so seawater flows in.
So the Leve River smelled of the tide, and the fish you caught there were saltwater fish.
If you went downstream it turned to freshwater, but the Leve Lake and River were practically the sea.
In that case, wouldn't that make them sea bandits instead of river bandits?
"It's because nobody maintained them, I guess. Hm?"
What's this box? Did we confiscate something like this?
It looked like a small, faded treasure chest. There was a lock on it.
"I don't have any keys on me."
Oh well, can't be helped. I pressed my fingertip against the keyhole and used Banish to break it open.
The box sprang open. Inside was—a blue jewel.
Then the knife belt clattered and shifted.
"What?"
When I picked up the knife belt, different sea knives rattled back and forth with a clacking sound.
"............"
I held it and drew a blade.
In the blink of an eye, three octopus tentacles seized the blue jewel and crushed it, wrapping around it as if chewing.
"Whoa! What the—what's going on?"
They crushed it and the blue jewel vanished. Then the tentacles sheathed the blade and retracted on their own.
"…Um."
What just happened? Was it a favorite snack of theirs? Wait, did they eat it? Absorb it?
"Hmm. No idea."
Since I had no idea, I just decided to let it go.
Thinking it was too late to worry about it now anyway, I calmly tucked the different sea knife into my belt.
"Well, shall we get back to it?"
I went back to sorting through the spoils knives.
The useless ones were all Banish, one after another. About six of them, maybe.
Oh, this one's impressive. It has a skull-shaped crossguard.
A small, intricate skull... Surely it's not real, right?
The texture when I touched it wasn't wood, wasn't stone — it had that distinct quality of bone... Surely it's not real?
Also, doesn't this kind of thing usually come attached to a cutlass?
I'd seen it in pirate movies from my past life.
I pulled it from its black sheath. It was double-edged, thick, and had a dull color. Visually, it seemed pretty ordinary.
The sharpness was ordinary too. A weird knife, but interesting. I'll hold onto it for now.
There was a knock at the door.
"Come in."
"We're done with our bath, so next up is you."
Mineha-san came in while speaking, with a faint wisp of steam rising from her.
"Understood."
"So, did you find anything interesting?"
She asked as she sat down on my bed.
Her cheeks were faintly flushed, probably still warm from the hot spring.
She had a towel wrapped around her head and was dressed in light clothes. Maybe because she'd just finished drying off, she still seemed damp.
"How about this?"
I showed her the skull-shaped shield-guard knife.
Mineha wrinkled her face, calling it in rather poor taste.
"It's not a real skull."
"It looks real, though."
"...It shouldn't be real."
My confidence was gradually fading and I was starting to think it might actually be real. I shelved the thought for now.
Next, I showed her the folding knife and the swordbreaker.
"Hey, you had some weird knife, didn't you?"
"Weird?"
"The one with tentacles coming out—I don't even know if that's the right way to describe it. That kind of knife.
Back then—
and I saw it again during the river bandits fight."
"Ah, this one."
I held up the knife from the Different Sea.
"What happened to that one?"
"I received it. As a thank-you."
I idly wondered whether Agaro and the others had gotten anything too.
I wasn't the only one who'd taken down the sahagin.
It's hard to believe I was the only one who got something.
I wonder what the other three received.
But there's one thing I know for sure.
If I got a knife, then Agaro definitely got booze. No doubt about that.
The other two, I have no idea.
Juihy might have gotten bones or something? No, he's not a dog.
Narsus... I have absolutely no clue.
"As a thank-you gift, it's kind of creepy."
"But it's useful."
"I can't deal with it on a biological level."
Mineha rejected it outright. Yeah, I get how she feels.
But in a game from my past life, I used tentacle weapons all the time.
Knocking enemies back, wrapping them up and squeezing them to death, smashing through obstacles.
They were actually pretty handy.
After that, we continued sorting through the loot, going back and forth with Mineha.
"There are so many rusty ones in here."
"Because nobody maintained them at all."
"Do you maintain yours, Wof?"
"Once a day, I check the condition, apply oil, and give it a light sharpening on a whetstone."
Though the kukri knife that turned into an elixir knife doesn't really need any of that maintenance.
And then there's the knife from another sea. Dagaa's too. Agaro's modified knife was the same.
"Keeping yours in good shape, I see."
"Do you take care of your weapons too, Mineha?"
"...I used to, but my current Demon Star Manifest Spear has a self-cleaning function. It stays clean on its own."
"Huh, that's nice."
The Lab's work, all right.
Speaking of the Lab, that brings up the Perverted Rabbit. Haiyan. I wonder what he's up to right now.
He's probably getting handsy with someone and getting strung up again.
"Well, yes — oh, I do maintain my armor. It's just that the armor... has been feeling tight lately."
"............"
"What's with that silence? It's not like I've gotten fa... well, whatever. Anyway, I've been thinking about getting new armor."
"Also at the Full Moon Bazaar, by any chance?"
"Mm-hm. If there's something good, of course. It's just... that armor is a memento of my father, so it's not easy to let go."
Mineha's father. I didn't know his name, but he was definitely of the Universal Folk.
He used to be Ruriha and the witch's party member, in charge of maintaining weapons and armor.
He also handled repairs and crafting — a truly exceptional Meister.
The witch had mentioned before that they'd lost someone irreplaceable.
"Is that so?"
"Oh, I just remembered. My armor — my mother said it was flexible."
"It stretches and contracts?"
"Yeah. So she said it could be resized, but it doesn't really feel like that to me?"
"Hmm... How about asking the Witch about it?"
"The Witch?"
"She used to be in your father's party. She might know something about armor."
Mineha thought it over for a moment.
"Fine. It's a pain, but I'll ask."
"Do you dislike the Witch?"
It was a question I'd been wondering about for a while.
Mineha made a complicated face.
"I don't dislike her exactly, but she makes me uncomfortable. She's too close to the master, you know?"
Her response was so dry it was hard to believe she was the same person who adored her master.
"So, um... you reconciled with Emmy, right?"
Mineha said it offhandedly.
"Officially, yeah."
"..."
"It's not that simple to just move on. We're not adults yet."
Mineha flopped down onto my bed.
I didn't really know how to feel about that.