Chapter 60
Chapter 60 - Sea Sheep
After the broadcast, Granessa met up with Adam and Mei inside their cabin.
Adam sat at the table beneath the magical display window, sipping from a glass of water. Despite being inside what was essentially a giant video game world, it was still real life, and he still needed water to survive.
Mei lay spread-eagle across the bed with Naomi perched on her chest in her tiny form. The little fairy-sized oni held an equally tiny sketchbook in her hands, drawing clothing designs while Mei watched and offered her input.
“No, it should have Velcro there instead of buckles,” Mei said, pointing at the sketch.
“But Velcro is too loud. If you wanted to open the pocket while hidden, it would reveal your location,” Naomi refuted.
“Buckles are also loud when you close them.”
“Hmm... string, then?”
While the two continued their discussion, the door opened and Granessa stepped into the room.
Luckily, they were on an orc-made ship. Otherwise, Granessa would have had to duck to get through the doorframe.
Instead of saying anything, the first thing she did was sniff the air a few times.
“It smells like sweat in here. Were you two working out last night?” Her nose wrinkled slightly before she took another sniff. “But what's that other scent?”
Adam nearly choked on his water.
Mei glanced up from the bed with a mischievous smirk.
“We had se—”
“Yes! We had a serious workout last night,” Adam cut in before Mei could finish her sentence.
Granessa glanced between the two of them, her expression slowly turning amused.
“So you had sex. You could just say that. It's not something to be embarrassed by. It would honestly be stranger if you hadn't.”
She shrugged as though there was nothing unusual about the conversation before sitting down across from Adam. She then poured herself a glass of water from the magical, spill-free pitcher sitting on the table.
Naomi nodded in agreement.
“Indeed. It shows that you two have a healthy relationship. Unlike my ex-husband and me. All he ever focused on was work, work, work. He never paid me any attention.”
Everyone immediately turned toward Naomi with equally baffled expressions.
“You were married?!” Mei asked.
“When?” Adam asked.
“To who?” Granessa asked.
Naomi blinked at the three of them before slowly shaking her head.
“Yes. It was a long time ago,” she sighed. “About three years ago was when we got divorced. As for who... that's not important.”
She rolled her eyes and glanced away, looking slightly embarrassed. Though it was difficult to tell when her skin was already red, so they would never know whether she was actually blushing or not.
“You guys go about your business. Forget I said anything.”
Before anyone could ask another question, she vanished from sight, having retreated into the legendary closet inside Mei's inventory. Because her soul was connected to the item, she could enter and leave it whenever she pleased.
The three of them stared at the empty space above Mei's chest for several seconds before slowly looking away.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Adam said.
He always forgot that Naomi was a full-blown adult more than twice their age. It was easy to think of her as some mischievous little fairy when she spent most of her time in her tiny form. Not that her normal form was any more adult-like, considering her small stature and youthful appearance.
“I wonder who her husband was?” Mei asked.
“Probably another oni,” Adam said with a shrug. “But we aren't here to talk about that.”
Granessa took another sip of water before leaning back in her chair.
“So what are we here to talk about?”
“The things we learned during the broadcast, of course!” Mei answered as she leapt off the bed.
She landed squarely in Adam's lap with surprisingly little force, as if her body weighed barely anything at all.
Noticing his confused expression, she explained, “I gave my pants a cushioning effect before jumping.”
With Naomi's help, Mei had become quite proficient at imbuing passives into clothing. Naomi was a professional when it came to all things clothes, and that included the act of imbuing passives. She knew things that even Ymir couldn't teach them.
Mei nestled comfortably into Adam's lap before grabbing his glass and downing the rest of his water. She let out a satisfied sigh as she set the empty glass on the table
“We won't be able to figure out what that BlueDye guy was talking about with Earth, so we can leave that aside,” she said. “But he did bring up some good points about our magic usage.”
Granessa frowned.
“He didn't say anything like that about me. Just you two.”
“Right, which is why we want your help,” Adam said as he rested his chin on Mei's shoulder.
“I'm not a very good teacher, though...”
“Oh, we don't need you to teach us,” Mei said, shaking her head.
Unfortunately, the sudden movement sent her multicolored blonde-and-black hair whipping backward and directly into Adam's face.
Mei's stats were high enough that practically every part of her body could theoretically count as a weapon, including her hair. Luckily, Adam wasn't too far behind her in stats. His perverted regeneration ability also helped, so he didn't take much damage from the accidental assault.
He brushed several strands of hair from his face and spat out the few that had managed to get into his mouth before continuing.
“We were hoping you'd spar with us. Only... we'd be using lethal force, if that's alright?”
Granessa blinked as she slowly understood what they meant.
“Ah. You want to use my immortality to train.”
She nodded readily.
“Yeah, that's fine. Should we start now?”
“Are you sure you're okay with that?” Adam asked. “You'll have to experience a lot of pain. Of course, I'll heal you as best I can so you don't have to experience too much of it, hopefully. But still...”
Granessa shook her head with a completely bland expression.
“Doesn't bother me at all. Pain, that is.”
She pointed toward the scars covering her body. Most of them were old, though a few were much newer, left behind by Bakari.
“I endured all of these just fine. A few deaths aren't going to stop me either.”
Adam opened and closed his mouth.
He wanted to point out that Granessa had nearly suffered a mental breakdown after the bloodletting. However, he couldn't bring himself to say it.
It was better to let her believe what she wanted rather than burst her confidence. Adam had his own trauma, and he knew better than most that it was sometimes best not to pick at old wounds. Otherwise, they might begin to fester all over again.
“Let's go now!” Mei said.
Despite saying that, she made no attempt to stand up from Adam's lap.
With a resigned sigh, Adam was forced to pick her up as he stood. Granessa followed behind them as they stepped into the hallway, where the teleportation circle was located.
“Hey, since teleportation can be placed inside a magic circle, can't you cast it yourself?” Mei asked from within Adam's arms as she stared up at him curiously.
“I guess...”
“Try it, try it!”
Adam sighed, already knowing she wouldn't take no for an answer.
“Okay.”
“Grab my shoulder,” he told Granessa.
Even though he wasn't sure whether he could actually teleport, he figured it would probably be best if they were all together. Taking a deep breath, he envisioned them being whisked away in a bright flash of light, just like what happened every time they used the teleportation circle, before appearing safely on the deck of Titan's Grave.
“[Teleport],” he said, casting the spell.
In the next instant, all three of them found themselves a few inches above the deck.
Unfortunately, the ship was still moving.
They dropped toward the deck as Titan's Grave continued sailing forward without them, and a massive mast promptly drove directly into their faces.
The impact sent them bouncing across the deck. They rolled and tumbled until they crashed into a collection of wooden barrels, eventually coming to rest in a giant heap with arms and legs twisted together.
Adam had somehow ended up at the bottom of the pile with Granessa's foot planted directly in his face and Mei's elbow jammed into his spine.
It was worth noting that Granessa never wore shoes.
It was also worth noting that despite being pinned between two women, Adam was not thrilled in the slightest.
He was in immense pain from several broken bones, including a very smashed and flattened nose that was leaking copious amounts of blood.
“Did you just teleport onto a moving ship without variable coordinates?”
A gruff male voice came from nearby.
“I don't know whether to call you three brave or very, very, very stupid.”
They didn't know the man's name, but they recognized his voice as belonging to the officer in charge of maintaining the magic circles. He was the very mage responsible for placing them all over the ship.
As it happened, he had been performing a routine check on the main deck's magic circle when he witnessed the three of them appear in midair.
He stared at the tangled mess of bodies for a moment before shaking his head.
“I think I'll go with the last one,” he said after a slight pause. “You're lucky you didn't end up inside the mast and only collided with it instead.”
Adam wanted to say something along the lines of, “I don't feel very lucky”, but he was afraid that if he opened his mouth, he'd end up eating a toe sandwich, which did not sound very appetizing.
Maybe if he had a foot fetish. Unfortunately, he wasn't so lucky.
“Whose hand is squeezing my boobs?” Mei asked. She paused for a moment before looking down. “...Oh, it's mine.”
“Whose hand is squeezing my butt?” Granessa asked.
“Oops, I thought it was Adam's,” Mei said.
“You didn't stop...” Granessa pointed out.
“Oh, did you want me to?”
Adam barely managed to twist his head sideways enough to speak.
“Both of you get off me,” he groaned.
“All three of you get off me!” a tiny, muffled voice shouted from somewhere underneath the pile.
“Did we crush someone?” Mei asked.
“Apparently,” Adam said. “Get up before we kill them. Whoever they are.”
“Was there someone else here...?” the mage mumbled, looking around in confusion.
They somehow managed to untangle themselves and staggered to their feet, immediately looking around for whoever had been caught underneath them.
However, there was no one there.
“Huh? Did you guys hear that voice just now?” Mei asked, genuinely puzzled. “Where’d they go?”
“I'm here,” a weak voice responded.
They glanced around again, following the voice until they finally realized where it was coming from.
Granessa's back.
Adam, Mei, and the mage stared in shock at the little creature stuck to Granessa's back.
Unfortunately, Granessa herself couldn't see it.
“What? Is something on my back?”
She twisted around, trying to look over her shoulder, but she couldn't turn far enough to see what was there. After a few failed attempts, she finally reached behind herself and grabbed something strangely wet and kind of sticky.
“Wait!” Mei tried to warn her.
Unfortunately, she was a second too late.
Granessa pulled the tiny thing free and stared at it in her hand for a moment.
Then a terrified screech escaped her mouth.
“AAHHH!!!”
Granessa frantically shook her hand, trying to throw the creature off.
It didn't work.
No matter how violently she swung her arm, the sticky little thing refused to let go.
“Ah! Ah! S-stop swinging me! Please! Stop! Ugh! I'm gonna puke!” the little creature cried in the voice of an aggrieved young woman.
Despite having the voice of a young woman, it looked nothing like one.
It was strangely cute, though.
The creature had the white body of a slug, two purple antennae, a pair of black, button-like eyes, and a simple black line for a mouth. A bush of green and purple tipped leaves covered its back, each one glowing faintly with an almost magical light.
It looked like someone had combined a sea slug with a bush and then shaped the result like a sheep.
A sea sheep.