The news that "Torquetam" had been renamed "Four Aster" spread like wildfire.
Apparently, it was a massive shock to most of the delvers in Hydrangea.
That's just how popular "Torquetam" had been.
And with good reason. A party made up entirely of beautiful girls.
There was no way it wouldn't draw people in.
Who had come up with the new name also drew plenty of attention.
Thinking that through beforehand, I... didn't go and put in my real name like an idiot.
Heh heh heh — this is exactly when you come in handy.
"Night King."
That's what I wrote. Though I figured I might catch flak for it.
I mean, come on, I'm not the Night King.
But nobody said a word, and it was accepted without issue.
Wait, was that a field where you could write whatever you wanted?
Turns out that was completely wrong. If you fool around in the naming field, it won't get accepted.
Worse, they can revoke your delver credentials for insulting the Delvers' Guild.
I hear they can even dissolve your party.
Then how did mine get through...?
..........
Still... who would've thought my past life memories would hold something that heavy.
Brood parasitism, infidelity, brainwashing — there are limits, you know.
I couldn't help but wonder just how many memories I had crammed in there.
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to recall them so casually.
Later on, Lupinus showed up and handed me a payment for "advice and naming rights" — some mystery amount.
The two items added up to 43,000 oro, which was by no means a small sum, and I was genuinely surprised.
I had absolutely no reason to refuse, and if anything, I could only think of reasons to accept, so I gratefully took it.
And so, five days passed.
The witch still hadn't returned.
We'd been working together every day on crafting the original mana-restoring potion, but we'd hit a dead end.
"Uhehehehe... pretty butterflies of rainbows are flying..."
The moment I stepped into the lab, I found the rabbit had failed another compounding attempt and was tripping out.
At first I'd panicked, but since the elixir fixed it right up, I'd gotten used to it by now.
I gave her a sip of elixir from a small vial.
"Failed again?"
"Y-yeah..."
"This is tough, huh."
"---Sigh. We've hit our limit doing this alone."
"Yeah, we really have."
I'd known that from the very beginning.
For starters, Hyaern's ideals — or rather, demands — were just too high.
He requested a "one-of-a-kind original energy drink."
No way. That's impossible.
Seriously, how can a seasoned alchemist come up with something this amateurish?
But well, I'm into that sort of thing too, so I tried a bunch of stuff with Hyaern.
I thought it was cheating, but we even tried mixing in some elixir.
That was the beginning of a big mistake.
Elixir turns out to be a liquid you should never mix.
Well, mixing it was fine — it was a liquid you should never drink.
And that's how
the designated taster —
a rabbit named Hyaern — collapsed.
Seeing that, I managed to avoid drinking it.
Thanks. You're a guinea pig. I mean, Hyaern.
Anyway, mixing it was off the table, and elixir use was strictly forbidden.
For the record, the "dead" rabbit came back to life once we gave it some elixir.
"So, what are we going to do?"
"The witch. We need her power."
"I figured it would come to that."
But that witch is still in the royal capital.
No idea when she'll be back. The ring communication won't connect for some reason.
Whether it was because the distance was too great or because she was in the dungeon, I couldn't tell.
"Shall we rest for a while?"
"That would be better, yes."
Even Hyarn looked tired.
"Come to think of it, 'Torquetam' apparently changed their name."
"Yes, Bid formally joined."
"I thought he quit?"
"They discussed all of that and decided to change the name."
"Huh. What did they go with?"
"'Four Star.'"
"Not bad."
"You think so?"
Since they'd come up with it on the spot, I had a feeling there might have been a slightly better name out there.
"Wof. I think we should put the Enadri original on hold for now and move forward with preparations for the full-scale exploration of that ship. And as I suspected, Lady Riv's assistance is indispensable. So I'm thinking of commissioning 'Four Star' as the primary delver party."
"Sounds good to me."
"I don't doubt their abilities, but I want solid combat power. First-class."
"Then we'd be asking the witch, Munieka, Shiro, and Kaede?"
"Hold on. Why are there so many first-class delvers?"
Hyarn looked half exasperated, half bewildered.
I pressed on regardless.
"If the witch gets back, we could ask Agaro, Megadia, Narcissus, and Kenoken too."
"That's too many. What kind of connections do you have?"
"Well, y'know, it just sort of happened over time. Ha ha ha."
Even I had to admit I knew an awful lot of first-class delvers.
Though the fact that most of them were women... I'll keep that to myself.
After chatting for a while, I parted ways with Hyarn and headed back to my room in our shared residence.
The witch was in my bed.
"Wha—"
She was lying on her back, using her three tails like a blanket, sleeping soundly.
"W-Witch...?"
Her silver hair, flowing down past her hips, rustled softly, and her large fox ears twitched.
She was fox-folk, but she wasn't concealing her true form—deeply, soundly asleep.
"............"
We'd just been talking about the witch. At the time, I'd figured she still hadn't come back.
And yet here she was, asleep in my bed. Fast asleep.
"So this is what they mean when they say your brain bugs out."
I found myself muttering that without thinking.
W-Well, whatever. At least she was safe.
I'd known it already, but still—certainty doesn't exist in this world.
Even a one-in-a-million chance means it could happen to the witch herself.
This world is harsh, no matter how it looks, and human lives are lost as easily as trash.
"…………"
I hesitated to wake her up, so I picked up the crescent-shaped vessel from the kitchen.
I rinsed it lightly, then blended two types of tea leaves inside.
"…Mmn… Wof… boy…?"
"Sorry. Did I wake you up?"
"Ahhh… Kon seems to have fallen asleep, dear…"
She rubbed her sleepy eyes, a little embarrassed, and slowly sat up.
Then she got into bed with some effort, looking stiff. She wobbled, but I didn't ask why.
"Tea? Would you like some?"
I poured tea into a cup and offered it.
The witch lightly ran her fingers through her hair, pushing it back, then took the cup and took a sip.
"Hmm, hmm. A pleasant taste. You've improved, dear."
"Thank you. I didn't realize you were back."
"To tell you the truth, I only just returned. I intended to surprise you, Wof boy, but, well… I dozed off. How embarrassing, dear."
The witch's cheeks flushed faintly with embarrassment, and she hid it by drinking her tea.
I smiled.
"You must have been tired. It was an anomaly in the dungeon, wasn't it?"
"Yes, yes. Absolutely, an anomaly in the capital's dungeon is just too sudden, dear."
"What kind of anomaly was it?"
"Well, well. It was a rampage by some monsters that weren't particularly notable, plus a mutant variant of the dungeon lord controlling them — what you'd call an anomaly. But if there was one thing that changed, it was the dungeon girl."
"Dungeon girl?"
Hmm. That rings a bell somehow.
"You know, you know — lately there's this whole boom of dungeon consciousnesses incarnating in the dungeons."
"Ah… that thing."
That thing, huh.
"Mm-hm. Thanks to that dungeon girl's help, the anomaly was quelled faster than expected."
"So they're in the capital too…"
The incarnation boom is really going around.
"Now every dungeon has one as a mascot. Now then, young Wof — anything happen on your end?"
"W-Well, there was quite a lot…"
I explained everything to the witch, one thing at a time.
Since we had time, I decided not to summarize and just tell it from start to finish.
How Mineha-san got into a fight with Ranjia-san, the consciousness of the Hydrangea dungeon.
How, as a result of that fight, the dungeon ended up tagging along with me for some reason.
How I met Kaede-san. How we ended up fighting a fake ninja group called the Nameless.
"Oh my, oh my. The Nameless — now there's a nostalgic name."
"They were terrified of witches, and held a grudge."
"Heh heh heh. Can't imagine why — I did wipe them out once."
The witch spoke with a hint of fond nostalgia, which I chose to ignore given the terrifying content.
Next came the matter of being asked to make Enadori using a new product from the Haiyarn Trading Company.
Then came having to go pick up a sample of said Enadori.
The lab turned out to actually be a massive migrant ship on one of the moon's satellites, and that ship had become a dungeon.
"Well, well — a massive vessel containing an entire city on one of the Moon Sisters, is it? Yes, yes. That's very, very interesting indeed."
"Are you familiar with the Wall of Sky, Witch?"
"Of course, of course. It is the greatest obstacle for any who aim for the sky, after all."
So she did know about it after that.
Next came the commotion at Torquetam, and how Bid nearly quit.
It turned into a conversation where everyone spoke their true feelings, and for some reason I ended up participating too.
The party was renamed to "Four Aster."
"Oh ho. Oh ho. Speaking one's true feelings is quite a difficult thing, you know. Done poorly, it could easily have led to the party dissolving entirely."
"You're right. But this time it worked in our favor."
"Hmm, hmm. Sometimes poison can be medicine."
Ah, yeah, that's fair.
The Witch listened with interest, enjoying my story all the way to the end, chiming in now and then.
When I finished, my throat was dry, so I had some tea. *Phew.* Refreshed.
"Heh heh, heh heh — as expected of young Wof. Every last bit of it was interesting."
The Witch smiled with satisfaction.
I gave a faint, wry smile.
"Every last bit of it was a struggle. I'm still struggling."
If anything, I feel like there isn't a single day that goes by without some kind of trouble.
Not that I'm the worrying type or anything.
"Hmm, hmm. That's right, you know. As for me, I'm deeply interested in that massive ship containing an entire city. But but, honestly, the top priority right now would be that energy drink, wouldn't it. A stimulating beverage with effects like a potion — now that's something I never would have thought of, you know."
"Really? I figured the Witch would have come up with something like that."
"No no, even I'm still trapped by common sense and preconceptions, you know. 'Stimulating' paired with 'recovery' — that's precisely what makes it so unexpected. When you hear 'recovery,' you think 'healing.' And healing is supposed to be gentle and calm, with nothing stimulating about it — that's just the common sense of it all, you know."
The Witch let a mischievous smile play across her face.
It's like medicine with a spicy kick to it.
A spicy potion would make you seriously question whether it's actually healing you.
"Oh, I happen to have seven different types of energy drink samples here. Want to try one?"
"Oh my, oh my — I already have tea, so perhaps later, you know?"
"You can have them even if you don't drink them right now."
I took the seven types of energy drink out of my pouch and lined them up on the kitchen counter.
The Witch gazed at the seven distinctive cans with eyes full of curiosity.
"Hmm, hmm. So that's where development hit a dead end, huh."
"Yes. Would you please lend me your help?"
"Of course, of course. I may not be much, but I'd be happy to lend a hand, you know."
"Thank you so much!"
Yes! Awesome. The Witch joins the fight!
Now we can win this!